SOURCE: "The Redeeming Quest: Patterns of Unification in Carpentier, Fuentes, and Cortázar," in Revista de estudios hispánicos, Vol. XI, No. 1, January, 1977, pp. 91-117.

[In the following excerpt, Jiménez-Fajardo details the significance of the inverted temporal progression of "Journey Back to the Source," linking the linguistic implications of the protagonist's search for a unified identity to similar developments in other Latin American texts.]

With strange cadences of his walking stick, an old Negro in Alejo Carpentier's "Viaje a la semilla"¹ reverses the course of time toward the origins, the seed. The demolition of the Marqués' palace is halted, then reversed; the Marqués himself reenters life, youth and infancy; as he returns to his mother's womb and nothingness, the palace disintegrates, all of its materials restored to their natural state.

This short story first appeared in an edition of one hundred plaquettes, and was later included in the volume Guerra del tiempo, published in 1958. Upon examining the narrative, it becomes apparent that some basic ideas were first explored in it which were to acquire great and prolonged emphasis in the later novels of various Latin American authors; we found this to be especially true of Cortázar's Rayuela and Fuentes' La muerte de Artemio Cruz.

Carpentier's work was certainly, after that of Borges, the first to receive wide recognition outside the Spanish-speaking world; one reason for this is that he introduced into his art concerns of extra-regional import and dealt with them at an exceptionally high artistic level. Such is indeed the case in "Viaje a la semilla" of which Fuentes says:

[ . . . ] el cadáver retrospectivo de "Viaje a la semilla" [ . . . ] sabe que sólo representa una representación anterior. Y sabe que su representación no existe fuera de la literatura. Como en Cervantes, en Carpentier la palabra es fundación del artificio: exigencia, desnivel frente al lector que quisiera adormecerse con la fácil seguridad de que lee la realidad; exigencia, desafío que obliga al lector a penetrar los niveles de lo real que la realidad cotidiana le niega o vela.²

In this essay we shall examine in some detail this important short story and trace thereafter what we take to be its most essential elements in the two aforementioned novels where, though of necessity reinterpreted, they have retained a central position. Our intention will not be to suggest direct influence, but rather to point out the basic coincidence of thought that together with Carpentier's work has placed that of these authors squarely into the mainstream of contemporary fiction.

"Viaje a la semilla" contains thirteen chapters which fall into interlocking sequences. From the strictly temporal standpoint, we find that two chapters (I and XIII) follow a forward duration and describe one evening and the morning of the next day; in Chapters II and XII, respectively, we have the initiation of the reverse flow of time and its ending; Chapters III to XI deal with the inverse unfolding of Don Marcial's life.

Closer reading reveals a more detailed pattern. Definite analogies between the initial and the concluding chapters become now apparent, particularly in the case of Chapters II and XII. In Chapter II, the old Negro instigates the reversal and he does so in two stages. First, as he waves his "wand," the palace regenerates itself. Once inside, when he lights the tapers in a kind of "flat luminem," the house is again filled with people, the Marqués' mourners. Chapter XII is almost exactly congruent to Chapter II. The first part presents Don Marcial's return to the womb, his second death, or rather, his reversion to latency; the second describes the palace's disintegration into its components and their reclamation by nature.

As for the remaining nine chapters, they subdivide naturally into three groups of three: in III to V we witness Don Marcial's manhood until the dissolution of his marriage; these chapters represent the negation of all possibilities of fruitfulness, or, in another sense, the suspension of one of man's elementary functions: to procreate. They end with the replacement in the garden of the statue of Ceres by that of Venus. Chapters VI to VIII describe Marcial's youth, during which he divests himself of the achievements of reason and learning, of the last vestiges of sexual desire, and where the art of war becomes a child's game on tiled floors. In chapters IX to XI Marcial progresses from childhood and magic to a purely instinctive rapport with animals, then to infancy and the womb.

The futility of the Marqués' life seems at first the main implication of the tale. His name, Don Marcial de Capellanías, itself suggests some of the more questionable elements (to the author, certainly) of Spain's legacy to Latin America: militarism and reactionary Catholicism. The mention at the end of the disappearance of Ceres' statue, in conjunction with a reminiscence of the Marquesa's drowning, underlines the idea of unfulfilled promise, and refers us to the beginning of the tale where, "[ . . .] una Ceres con la nariz rota y el peplo desvaído, veteado de negro el tocado de mieses [ . . . ]"³ (p. 77) contemplates the razing of the palace.

In conformity with a pattern of inverse suggestion consistent with that of inverse time-flow, the customary positive connotations of water as a life-giving force are here contradicted. At the beginning the fish in the pond ". . . bostezaban en agua musgosa y tibia . . ." (p. 77). In Chapter IV, when the Marquesa returns from her "paseo," the ominousness of the water attains its maximum intensity. It weakens in Chapter V to reassert itself in the form of distant thunder at the end of Chapter VII immediately preceding the death (and return to life) of Marcial's father, (p. 106)

Beyond the evidence supporting a reading in terms of lamented sterility, other factors in the story suggest a multifaceted significance. It soon becomes clear that the backward duration is not sustained throughout in the same manner, the transition to a more ambiguous treatment of the reverse flow of time taking place in Chapter VI. In this chapter there appears to follow a normal past to future development, seemingly under the impetus of music and erotic diversion.

The first paragraph is already suggestive of this shift, as the Marqués experiences the feeling of being caught in a reverse time flow:

[ . . . ] Marcia] tuvo la sensación extraña de que los relojes de la casa daban las cinco, luego las cuatro y media, luego las cuatro, luego las tres y media [ . . . ] Era como la percepción remota de otras posibilidades. (p. 89)

In this context it means the very opposite; his impression is, to us, that of normal duration. As the chapter progresses a "sarao" celebrates the advent of Don Marcial's minority. No longer has his signature any meaning or does the written word bind him: in effects, it is an indication that the mode of control exercised by language in the story is changing, the artifice becoming more muted.

The new modulation is introduced through the agency of a music box, a clock tuned to a new time: "Alguien dio cuerda al reloj que tocaba la Tirolesa de las Vacas y la Balada de los Legos de Escocia." (p. 90) Later on, as the youths search for old costumes in the loft:

La de Campoflorido redondeó los hombros empolvados bajo un rebozo color de carne criolla, que sirviera a cierta abuela, en noche de grandes decisiones familiares, para avivar los amansados fuegos de un rico Síndico de Clarisas. (pp. 90-91)

This sentence contains two erotic allusions as well as a remembrance of the past. La Campoflorido is currently the object of Marcial's advances, and the ancestor is remembered as having put the shawl to use in some long past seduction. The movement of the whole chapter is clearly a progressive one, a development further underlined by the donning of ancient garments as if to mark a plain distinction between past and present. The chapter ends on a note suggestive of the power of music over time.

Concurrently with the organization into three parts and four congruent chapters noted above, the story conforms as well to a double movement. At the outset we have an incompleted process: The old Negro witnesses the slow and arduous demolition of the palace; there is a resistance of the materials to total desintegration. A certain solidity of structure remains, a superfluity of matter and design:

Y por las almenas sucesivas que iban desdentando las murallas, aparecían—despojados de sus secretos—cielos rasos ovales o cuadrados, cornisas, guirnaldas, dentículos, astrágalos, y papeles encolados que colgaban de los testeros como viejas pieles de serpiente en muda. (p. 77)

His incantation initiates first a reweaving of the pattern until it reaches its greatest completion in Chapter V. The Marqués enjoys, in the first two thirds of this chapter, his greatest creative potential; water has temporarily lost its relentlessness and with it almost all of its negative import: "Volando bajo, las auras anunciaban lluvias reticentes, cuyas primeras gotas, anchas y sonoras, eran sorbidas por tejas tan secas que tenían un diapasón de cobre." (p. 87)

The transition to the unraveling takes place, as we noted, in the central and longer Chapter VI, where Don Marcial enters an existence "[. . .] en que los tribunales dejan de ser temibles para quienes tienen una carne desestimada por los códigos." (p. 89) This unraveling now proceeds until the last thread is untangled "Todo se metamorfoseaba, regresando a la condición primera. El barro volvió al barro, dejando un yermo en lugar de la casa." (p. 106) There is first progress toward a plethora of attributes (Chapter V) and a hardening of Don Marcial's individuality and separateness, followed by a withdrawal from this condition through his gradual discarding of the elements that constituted his distinctness.

Further consideration of the language clearly points to this bipartite structure. The usual development of anticipatory circumstance has been reversed in the first part of the story. As an instance the Marquesa's return from her fated afternoon "paseo" is followed by a series of ever diminishing cautionary omens:

Al crepúsculo, una tinaja llena de agua se rompió en el baño de la Marquesa. Luego, las lluvias de mayo rebosaron el estanque. Y aquella negra vieja [ . . . ] murmurando "¡Desconfía de los ríos, niña; desconfía de lo verde que corre!" No había día en que el agua no revelara su presencia. Pero esa presencia acabó por no ser más que una jicara derramada sobre vestido traído de París, al regreso del baile aniversario dado por el Capitán General de la Colonia. (pp. 85-86)

The second part of the story, from Chapter VI on, appears to conform to a more traditional pattern. There is noticeable emphasis on the imagery of growth: "Los muebles crecían. (. . .) Los armarios de cornisas labradas ensanchaban el frontis." (p. 96) "Cuando los muebles crecieron un poco más (. . .)" (p. 100) There are also clear instances of forward duration, as when Marcial witnesses his father overpowering a Mulatto maidservant:

Cierta vez [. . .], agarró a una de las mulatas que barrían la rotonda, llevándola en brazos a su habitación. Marcial, oculto detrás de una cortina, la vio salir poco después, llorosa y desabrochada [. . .], (p. 99)

or in his explorations of the house with Melchor when they discover that ". . . en desván inútil, encima de los cuartos de criadas, doca mariposas polvorientas acababan⁴ de perder las alas en cajas de cristales rotos." (p. 101)

Since Don Marcial is the last of his kin, it is appropriate that the process that carries him beyond the womb into nonexistence should also effect the disintegration of the palace, so that all that is left of it is mud and dust. This reabsorption by nature of her own marks a completion gradually brought closer by the Marqués' progressive divestment of his rational superstructure. The palace would then appear as the objective correlative of the Marqués' fully formed intellect. His return to the seed can be understood as an initiatory purification, in preparation of his entering the wholeness of nature. The singing, dancing and love play of Chapter VI assume in this context the significance of a ritual in the Dionysiac tradition. The process of purification toward a conjunction with the primitive is particularly explicit in Chapter VII, where Marcial progresses from the intricacies of scholasticism to elemental superstition:

Ahora vivía su crisis mística, poblada de detentes, corderos pascuales, palomas de porcelana, Vírgenes de manto azul celeste, estrellas de papel dorado, Reyes Magos, ángeles con alas de cisne, el Asno, el Buey, y un terrible San Dionisio que se le aparecía en sueños, con un gran vacío entre los hombros y el andar vacilante de quien busca un objeto perdido. (p. 95)

This apparent loss of rational substance is accompanied by an increase in intuition and freedom, as well as the return to a more basic type of understanding. At one point, "Su mente se hizo alegre y ligera, admitiendo tan sólo un concepto instintivo de las cosas." (p. 94) Later on, when he leaves the seminary, ". . . olvidó los libros. El gnomon recobró su categoría de duende; el espectro fue sinónimo de fantasma; el octandro era bicho acorazado . . ." (p. 94) The "evolution" from reason to instinct or magic, already clear in this sentence, is completed, as we saw, at the end of the chapter with visions of blue and gold virgins and angels.

Marcial's recurrent dream of San Dionisio seems to confirm our earlier suggestion of a Dionysiac quest, or journey. In Catholic lore, the context of Marcial's dream, San Dionisio was a decapitated bishop and the saint to invoke when one is possessed of devils. We are inevitably reminded of the Dionysos of myth (one of whose manifestations may be at the origin of the saint's story), especially since his mention in the text follows immediately that of "el Buey", one of the appellations of Dionysos being "Ox-King."⁵ Dionysos also often represents (as opposed to Ceres-Demeter) riotous nature and uncontrolled growth.⁶ It is worth recalling here that one also associates music and erotic sport (Chapter VI) with Dionysiac festivities.

In this stage of Marcial's journey, his mentor will be Melchor, the "calesero," appropiately one who transports people,⁷ Marcial's companion on his way "over." Melchor, named after one of the Magi, represents the very opposite of the life the protagonist has now left behind.

Marcial, now a child, likes Melchor because he knows songs that are easy to learn, has high boots, and can tame wild horses with his bare hands. They play games where one repeats nonsense syllables, and give meaningless names to things. When they play chess on the checkered floors, Melchor is "el caballo" who leaps over squares. The connotations here are clearly magical, with some of Melchor's characteristics reminiscent of a satyr's (he comes from the forest, has high boots, leaps). It is also at this time that Marcial acquires the knowledge of hidden things: ". . . Marcial supo como nadie lo que había debajo de las camas, armarios y vargueños . . ." (p. 100)

Later Marcial moves beyond the influence of Melchor and befriends the dogs of the house, in particular Canelo, the most unruly one. He understands the animals as he did Melchor: "Hablaba su propio idioma. Había logrado la suprema libertad. Ya quería alcanzar, con sus manos, objetos que estaban fuera del alcance de sus manos." (p. 104).

The last instants of Marcial's existence slip away to the shuffle of dealt cards, the ending moments of his predestined life: "Los minutos sonaban a glissando de naipes bajo el pulgar de un jugador." (p. 105). It is this predetermination that he escapes. Concurrent with the casting off of his rationalizing self is his apparent, progressive disentanglement from the snare of the written word. He once approached the boundaries of his circumstance as a literary character through an intuition of the two major premises of the story: the illusion of backward duration (Chapter VI), and the vaster artifice of writing:

Pensaba en los misterios de la letra escrita ( . . . ) maraña de hilos, sacada del tintero, en que se enredaban las piernas del hombre, vedándole caminos desestimados por la Ley; cordón al cuello, que apretaba su sordina al percibir el sonido temible de las palabras en libertad. (p. 83)

These two perceptions almost wrench the character away from his moorings in the fiction, as he speaks to the reader's own condition of possible predestination, that of a minor card in the cosmic game.

At a more immediate level of apprehension, the device of writing the story backwards (which in essence is what happens) changes its emotional impact. From the rhetorical point of view the various parts of the plot would, in a normal sequence, follow a crescendo of somberness. We would proceed from the freedom and gaiety of childhood through a period of formation of qualified success, to a short marriage, a decidedly cheerless widowhood and an abrupt death. By reversing the process the development becomes altogether positive. This hopeful mood overshadows, in fact, the sterility motif, and allows the tale to acquire its more profound impact as an initiatory and increasingly joyful journey.

With regard to the two types of duration, framing the reverse flow of the story within two normally sequential chapters (I and XIII) has the effect of further enhancing the radical impact of the inversion, as well as providing an exact external time reference: the story occurs in one night of ordinary time. What we encounter in this 'magical' night is a species of temporal funnel, in effect what science-fiction writers like to call a "time-warp."

An additional consequence of this scheme is to underline the role of language as the fashioner of reality. Numerous examples of the power of words stress this point throughout the tale. At the outset, the old Negro searches among the debris of the palace "(. . .) sacándose de la garganta un largo monólogo de frases incomprensibles." (p. 77) It is as if he were reharsing some incantation, the appropriate formula for his enterprise. When he enters the world of childhood, Marcial likes to give magical names to his favorite objects. Melchor's boots are called "Calambín" and "Calambán"; their secret hideaway is "urí urí urá." There are several explicit references to the ascendancy of language. (As we saw, Marcial begins to feel free when his signature no longer restrains him.) This ascendancy becomes patent in the reversed structure of the story, whereby the reader is deprived of his habitual context and compelled to discover the gradual conformity of each detail to the overall pattern. It is in fact this concept of self-conscious representation, which Carpentier will further evince in his later novels, that, to Fuentes' mind, contributed most to the renovation of Latin American narrative art.

The notion of a fruitless, incomplete reality in need of reordering and the exploration of language as a possible instrument to this end have also become major themes in the work of Fuentes and Cortázar. In Rayuela and La muerte de Artemio Cruz the pattern of exploration contains elements reminiscent of "Viaje a la semilla" in that it involves the return to an origin, or a privileged locus, where completeness may be found, as well as the consideration of death as a possible redemption. In these two novels, the implicit rejection of Western values is accompanied by the central character's actively pursued quest for an integrating vision; such is not the case in "Viaje a la semilla," where the protagonist remains essentially passive.

Both Horacio Oliveira in Rayuela and Artemio Cruz in Fuentes' novel suffer from what could be called an existential scission, whose overcoming would mark the end of their journey. The temptation is strong to see in this search for unity a contemporary version of the traditional search for a definition in the fiction of Latin America; often, in this case, the effort was aimed at discovering valid elements of a continental stamp by defining, for instance, the essence of Mexicanism, Argentinism, etc. Now, the intent and emphasis are different. Fragmentation is not seen as an accident of man, but is accepted as inherent to reality and our vision of it (it is irrelevant which came first). Consequently, the protagonists of Cortázar and Fuentes are incapable of spanning their inner rift; their quest is doomed from the outset.

Whereas the traditional hero could achieve a harmonious vision of reality where man had his own well defined role as a complete being, today's alienated individual finds this solution not only intrinsically impossible but meaningless as well. Horacio Oliveira and Artemio Cruz can only reach their wholeness, as does Don Marcial, metophorically, beyond their actual "reality," in the artistic unity achieved by the fiction of which they are a part. Thereby, their effort finds its fulfillment through the representation, itself reaching completion only as with Carpentier's story in the complicity of the reader. The end of the novel is the end of the quest, ultimately a culmination of language: this, together with a basic affinity of goals, allows us to view the essentially dissimilar trajectories of Artemio Cruz and Horacio Oliveira under the same light; as we saw, these very elements, though perhaps less differentiated, also inform the composition of "Viaje a la semilla." . . .

The view of the world offered by all three narratives is of a decisively negative cast. According to these writers, however, the nihilistic vision is not exclusively imposed upon us by the nature of things, but arises rather from man's incapacity to deal adequately with his environment. Such a situation has grown out of our wish to organize reality according to our needs, instead of adopting an integrating point of view, or from our decision to sunder our ties with the inner forces that control both reality and us within it.

Carpentier presents the picture of a sterile existence, one which, through the agency of magic, is allowed to become "unlived" and to resolve itself in a happy Dionysiac conjunction with the elements. In this manner he asserts both the incompleteness of things as they are and the possibility of another misapprehended reality. At the same time as he advances his protagonist's reunion with the wholeness of nature, he allows the reader both to view and to resolve the problem of discontinuity in the world and its appearance by soliciting his participation in the structuring of a specific instance of representation.

It is a similar design that allows the reader of La muerte de Artemio Cruz and Rayuela to go beyond the failures of the protagonists in their quest for an integrating vision and to participate in an instance of esthetic unity elaborated out of the seemingly unintegrated elements of their chaos.

These narratives are examples of self-conscious representation where the written word rather than reflecting reality creates of it a new occasion. All three, and particularly those of Fuentes and Cortázar, where this intention has become more patent, represent a Latin American counter-part to the efforts undertaken in Europe by such writers as Robbe-Grillet, Butor and Simon, whose decision to expand the powers of fiction and make of it the testing ground of the "real" have given a new vitality to the Western novel.

Notes

¹ Alejo Carpentier, Guerra del tiempo (México: Compañía General de Ediciones, S. A., 1970). Future references are to this edition.

² Carlos Fuentes, La nueva novela hispanoamericana (México: Cuadernos de Joaquín Mortiz, S. A., 1969), p. 56.

³ Italics mine.

⁴ Italics mine.

⁵ Cf. Hermes' staff with the ox-head.

⁶ I do not purport to describe specific correspondences between elements of the Dionysos myth and the substance of this story, merely to suggest general connotations.

⁷ Cf. Hermes psychopompos.