[In the following essay, Swanson examines duality as a central organizing principle of El obsceno pájaro de la noche.]

A notable feature of much recent criticism on José Donoso's El obsceno pájaro de la noche is the number of references to the text's inherent duality. Isis Quinteros sees the mythical level of the novel as being organized around a series of “relaciones en oposición binaria,”¹ while Adriana Valdés has commented that: “es constante la estructuración anverso/reverso en la narración.”² Josefina A. Pujals also asserts that “toda la novela es un juego sobre dos tensiones o polaridades opuestas, de unión y desunión, de aglutinamiento y fragmentación representados por los factores imbunche y desmembramiento respectivamente.”³

However, critics have so far tended to emphasize the ways in which binarism intensifies the complexity and ambiguity of the novel. Thus Promis Ojeda writes: “El obsceno pájaro es … una genial expresión de ambigüedad al mostrar la coexistencia permanente de los dos lados de la realidad.”⁴ Cornejo Polar agrees: “la reversibilidad enfatiza la caducidad de la oposición real/ficticio, cumple una clara función desjerarquizante y cancela toda opción de vertebrar causalmente el relato.”⁵ Achugar analyses the “dialéctica del afuera-adentro, de la verdad-mentira,” “la dicotomía mínimo-máximo, instante-eternidad” and the motifs of “máscara y disfraz que son anverso y reverso de una misma noción: la de persona:”⁶ but he sees these oppositions mainly as a manifestation of the futility of man's attempts to apply logical norms to fictional or non-fictional reality. The same outlook is implicit in the comments of Gertel and Hassett: the former feels that the element of reversibility indicates “la total negación de la realidad,”⁷ while the latter claims that “the stability between signifier and signified begins to lose its customary integrity, so that a mundo al revés emerges in which objects tend to be signs to their opposites.”⁸ Such views are summed up by Lipski:

Above all else, Donoso's novel is a novel of duality. Throughout the expanse of the text, a number of possible events or propositions are narrated, together with their opposites. The ensuing picture is one of total ambiguity.⁹

This systematic questioning of the nature of reality is indisputably an integral part of the text: the numerous oppositions and contradictions in the novel do plainly constitute a direct attack upon the notion of a reality that can be easily understood and transferred to the written page. The author himself has remarked, in an interview with San Martín, that El obsceno pájaro is characterized by “el binarismo como negación del maniqueísmo.”¹⁰ However, in the same interview, he also suggests that this ambiguity is not necessarily a barrier to identifying the novel's internal form:

Quisiera que fuera una cosa tremendamente polifacética, tremendamente vital, tremendamente movible, tremendamente barroca, no en un sentido de Carpentier; barroca como las ciudades medievales que de alguna manera tienen un sentido … De alguna manera, las ciudades medievales tienen un urbanismo propio interior que es como una acumulación de cosas en que se llega a una forma extraordinaria, maravillosa, que es un pueblo en que no hay un propósito inicial, sino que hay una sobreposición de vidas y tiempos que van creando un conjunto; que van creando una forma. … Yo quisiera que la novela tuviera esa forma que va más allá de la forma, esa metaforma, digamos de la ciudad medieval, que tiene todo el contenido, todo el significado y toda la contradicción que puede tener una ciudad medieval.

(Pp. 202-3)

Although the binary elements in El obsceno pájaro create uncertainty, they also provide a pointer towards part of the novel's hidden form. It is proposed here to examine the importance of binarism—not so much as a vehicle for ambiguity—but as an illustration of one of the novel's central organizing principles.¹¹

A consideration of Donoso's use of binarism necessarily involves the modification of certain purely formal approaches which do not always clarify our understanding of complex Latin American works like El obsceno pájaro. In a recent article on the novels of Sábato,¹² Paul Alexandru Georgescu highlights some of the limitations of the Barthesean approach in a way equally applicable to Donoso's novel. He posits the notion of a third structural layer beyond that of functions and signs, what he calls “signos numenales”: this level involves the use of metaphor, temporal perspective and parallel narratives in order to expand the significance of the text. In other words, the key to our understanding of the novel lies not in our ability to break it down into causal sequences but in an awareness of the inter-relationship of episodes and motifs on a wider, symbolic plane. As Valdés writes in a study of the “imbunche” motif in El obsceno pájaro:

la relación entre motivos no podrá depender sólo del argumento, del tiempo o del personaje: su sentido se irá constituyendo en parte muy importante por resonancias inesperadas, por una ligazón casi mágica entre los episodios.

(P. 139)

This third level of symbolic interpenetration unifies the novel's disparate narrative threads. Its internal coherence is based on one central opposition: that of order-versus-chaos, what Solotorevsky calls “el mundo luminoso y el mundo oscuro.”¹³ This is reflected symbolically in the stories of all the main characters: their actions may be seen as representing the invention of a construct or what Scott calls “heroic illusions or immortality myths.”¹⁴ Their sense of existential alienation leads them to develop an artificial order as an alternative to the reality of chaos. Practically every symbol or motif reinforces this idea. A whole series of lexically diverse elements combine on a semantic level provoking a free flow of associations between motifs that enhances the reader's appreciation of the text. It is this system of binary oppositions deriving from the order-versus-chaos conflict that forms the true internal syntax of the novel. It is not, of course, intended to suggest that the system is mechanically imposed on the novel with total consistency, nor even to imply that order and chaos are presented as utterly separate entities: each is seen to contain the seeds of the other, or even—as is the case with order—to exist simply at the level of aspiration. None the less it is the binary element which receives the main emphasis.

Images associated with order (or the desire for order) are systematically opposed to images of chaos, each individual image linking up in turn with a new variation on the same motif. A fundamental opposition is that between youth (representing order) and age (representing chaos). “Youth” here refers to the post-adolescent phase of the upper middle classes. The orphan girls, for example, represent chaos: but this is due not only to their age, but also to their status as orphans—social outcasts from the lower classes. There is, however, an interesting contrast between the early and later years of Jerónimo and Inés. Their superficially happy, youthful relationship soon gives way to the reality of frustration and old age. Inés consciously attempts to transform herself into an old woman: the anarchy of senility is “una forma de libertad”¹⁵ because it represents freedom from rational laws. Equally it is a state of neutrality, for this is nothing to look forward to: “soy libre, ya no podría sentir, pertenezco al sexo sintético que es el sexo de las viejas” (p. 400). It is significant that Inés explains her position to misiá Raquel Ruiz in sexual terms: if sexual activity is a symbol of the quest for fulfillment then Inés's withdrawal from the sexual world brings out her loss of hope and surrender to chaos.

The old women, along with Inés, constantly oppose games to reality. They prefer the fictional construct of the game to the real world. At the same time the game image, like the “viejas”, emerges as a representation of chaos. Games after all are based on chance. The game in which the old women stick fragments of saints' statues together in order to “organizar identidades arbitrarias” (p. 372) reflects, like the telephone game, the fragility of the human personality and the pervasive ambiguity of reality. Their withdrawal into the world of the game brings out another aspect of their immersion into a world of chaos.

The final chapter shows the order represented by the new home being overrun by this chaos the old women personify. Padre Azócar and the young priests come to move them but the women argue crazily about Brígida's surnames, go looking for pumpkin seeds and end by boarding the buses in a state of total disorder. Padre Azócar realizes that it is useless to organize “estos seres anárquicos” for “las mentes de las viejas se enredaban en una maraña que impedía todo intento de iniciar un orden” (p. 529).

The youth-age dichotomy finds its correlation in the masters-servants opposition. Servants are said to confront the unpleasant side of reality that their masters choose to ignore. Masters feel “pavor de las cosas feas e indignas” (p. 66). But in forcing their servants to perform distasteful tasks they lose part of themselves to their employees, “la mitad inútil, descartada, lo sucio y lo feo” (p. 64). The servants “fueron robándose algo integral de las personas de sus patrones al colocarse en su lugar para hacer algo que ellos se negaban a hacer” (p. 65). Consequently, they build up “algo como una placa negativa” (p. 65), achieving “el reverso del poder” (p. 66). Thus the ruling groups cling to a false notion of order while the servile class are seen as embodying the dark, negative, chaotic side of life their masters choose to ignore.

This opposition is taken a stage further by the establishment of several more specific dichotomies stemming from the master-servant idea. Misiá Raquel Ruiz, although Brígida's mistress, is forced to look after the servant's finances to the extent that she becomes a “prisionera de la plata de la Brígida” (p. 313), her life having been made a misery. This inversion suggests the encroachment of chaos upon an ordered vision of the world. Moreover, a whole series of related oppositions, operating on various levels, suggests that the same crisis is present in the Azcoitía family. The Azcoitías barely acknowledge of the existence of the Casa, inhabited as it is by such representatives of chaos as ex-servants and old women:

La falta de interés de los Azcoitía por esta Casa es secular. Como si le tuvieran un miedo que no se confiesan ni a sí mismos y prefieren desentenderse de ella en todo sentido menos en el de mantener el derecho de propietarios.

(P. 55)

A more specific opposition encapsulating the order-chaos, youth-age, master-servant idea is that of Jerónimo and Peta Ponce. Jerónimo imposes his own artificial order on to a world which he chooses to see in terms of a series of logically interlocking medallions. Peta, however, lives in “un desorden de construcciones utilitarias sin pretensión de belleza: el revés de la fachada” (p. 181). She is part of “el mundo de abajo, de la siniestra, del revés, de las cosas destinadas a perecer escondidas sin jamás conocer la luz” (p. 183). This human embodiment of chaos does not fit into any of his rationally conceived medallions, but belongs to “la leyenda enemiga que contradecía a la suya” (p. 182).

The opposition is given added force by other groupings in the binary chain of linking pairs. The first comes when Jerónimo's medallions are set against Peta's handkerchiefs. The beauty and perfection of the handkerchiefs she gives him contradicts the system of reasoned laws upon which he has so far based his life: “un tizonazo de admiración hizo trastabillar su orden al reconocer en la Peta Ponce a una enemiga poderosa” (p. 183). The second important related opposition is that created between the classical beauty of Jerónimo's four noble, black dogs and the “perra amarilla” (which is associated with Peta Ponce and the nursery-maid witch of the old legend). Significantly, his dogs are unable to capture the yellow bitch which steals their meat: the idea of chaos holds sway over the artificial concept of order. The conflict between historical time and mythical time underlines this point. In Achugar's view, both represent man's attempts to define reality. The old hag (possibly Peta Ponce) prevents Mudito from escaping at the end of the novel: “el triunfo de la Peta Ponce es derrotar las vanas construcciones que el hombre ha erigido contra el tiempo” (p. 266). Peta's ability to distort time makes her an embodiment of chaos and ambiguity: her apparent victory over Mudito emphasizes the ascendancy of the qualities she represents.

It would be interesting at this point to consider the role played by the various chaotic elements mentioned so far in Donoso's presentation of sexuality in El obsceno pájaro, for this too indicates yet another binary opposition within the novel. Stabb has remarked that “The erotic is clearly a defining characteristic of that obscene nightbird chattering in the ‘unsubdued forest.’”¹⁶ There does seem to be a very definite relationship between sexuality and fatality here: this again relates to the order-versus-chaos conflict because it involves the juxtaposition of an image of hope of fulfillment with an image of decay, death and despair. When Iris Mateluna is pretending that Damiana is her baby, her washing of the old woman's vagina provokes an orgasm in the aged lesbian (p. 125). When people are making love in the Gigante's car the yellow bitch appears at the window. When Jerónimo and Inés make love in the open the yellow bitch appears again sniffing and licking at the secretions left by their bodies (p. 194). Humberto thought he had made love with Inés on the night of Boy's conception but later suspects that the act took place with Peta Ponce:

en las tinieblas yo puedo no haberle dado mi amor a Inés sino a otra, a la Peta, a la Peta Ponce que sustituyó a Inés por ser ella la pareja que me corresponde, a la Peta raída, vieja, estropeada, sucia, mi miembro enorme la penetró a ella, gozó en su carne podrida, gemí de placer con la cercanía de sus manos verrugosas, de sus ojos nublados por las legañas, mendigando el beso de su boca acuchillada por las arrugas, sí, en las tinieblas de esa noche sólo los ojos del tordo vieron que fue el sexo de la vieja, agusanado por la cercanía de la muerte, que devoró mi maravilloso sexo nuevo, y esa carne deteriorada me recibió.

(Pp. 223-4)

He now feels terrified that Peta will return to repeat the sexual act with him. He still desires Inés but, through ageing she has now adopted the characteristics of Peta:

Así tiene que ser, así he sido siempre, Inés, Inés-Peta, Peta-Ines, Peta, Peta Ponce, jamás he podido tocar la belleza porque al desearla la convierto en desastradas dueñas de pensión.

(P. 431)

Significantly, when he attempts to seduce Inés she is transformed into the wrinkled old hag, Peta. The effect of this juxtaposition of the horror of old age with the supposedly youthful, vigorous activity of sexual intercourse is that it reinforces the novel's central existential message. Sexual activity, a bodily function, may represent the quest for transcendence, but by introducing the motif of old age into a sexual context Donoso suggests the inevitability of bodily decay. As we are so eloquently reminded in many of Vallejo's poems, we are in fact prisoners of our own body. Thus at the point at which the characters feel they may be achieving a symbolic fulfillment, they are in reality confronted with a terrifying image of chaos and death.

The order-chaos conflict present in the above-mentioned contrasting binary motifs is reaffirmed in a series of other oppositions less central to the plot. There is an ironic contrast established in the double presentation of don Clemente: when we first read of him he is described as an old lunatic who used to run naked around the convent; we later see him as he used to be, a wily politician in apparent command of his senses. The order in which the reader is given these two images of the same man expresses Donoso's view that the seeds of destruction are present in all of us. Madre Benita is set against the “viejas”. She develops her own construct in the form of charitable work in order to ward off the chaos represented by the emptiness of the old women's lives: “pobre (sic) viejecitas, hay que hacer algo por ellas, sí, usted se ha matado trabajando para no conocer el revés de la Brígida” (p. 29). The opposition of men and women also corresponds to the order-chaos polarity. Gutiérrez Mouat sees this in terms of a conflict between two approaches to narrative—the traditional (men) and the modern (women)¹⁷—but an existential reading can also be advanced. The motif runs throughout the novel but is most fully developed when Inés moves to the Casa. Inés, we are told, “ha ido impidiendo que su marido se desprenda de esta Casa, siempre por motivos irracionales, totalmente subjetivos, imposible comprender esos motivos que hicieron que generaciones de mujeres Azcoitía hayan ido intrigando y urdiendo una red de protección para esta Casa” (pp. 376-7). She compares the irrationality of women with the reason of men who take control of everything because “ellos entienden lo que significa y saben explicarlo, y explican tanto que las cosas dejan de tener significado” (p. 377). Just as men are false symbols of order and women symbols of chaos, Europe appears in the novel as representing order while Latin America is associated with chaos. Again the references are numerous; one striking example comes when Humberto describes Jerónimo's return from Europe: “el hecho es que la presencia de Jerónimo era una lección de armonía, incómoda porque era imposible emularla en estas latitudes bárbaras” (p. 163). The interesting feature of the presentation of these motifs is the way they all link together, providing structural unity and reinforcing the novel's central ideas.

So far we have been considering oppositions stemming basically from a youth-age, masters-servants dichotomy. Another obvious polarity is that set up between the Casa and La Rinconada. These are more than mere “metáforas de la ficción,” as Gutiérrez Mouat claims (p. 147). La Rinconada is an attempt to impose order on to chaos. Jerónimo wishes to destroy “ese inmundo laberinto de adobe, de galerías y corredores” and replace the wild trees and plants with “matorrales podados en estrictas formas geométricas que disfrazaran su exuberancia natural” (p. 230). This leads to two further oppositions—Jerónimo-versus-the-freaks and Jerónimo-versus-Boy. Jerónimo tries to suppress the sense of disorder implied by Boy and the monsters, refusing to “ceder, incorporarse al caos, ser víctima de él” (p. 161). However, the freaks themselves adopt La Rinconada as a construct against chaos too. The estate and the world beyond its walls are systematically opposed. They fear the collapse of “el paraíso del que ninguno se atrevía a salir” (p. 406). Emperatriz sees the outside world as an “infierno” (p. 407). After breaching the boundaries of the estate, Boy asserts that: “ahora que conozco la realidad, sólo lo artificial me interesa” (p. 485). He asks Dr. Azula to perform an operation on his brain to remove his memory of the real world so that he can return to “el orden inicial” (p. 485).

Humberto's mental crisis is also expressed in terms of this system of binary oppositions corresponding to the notion of order-versus-chaos. His problems are engendered by his father who instills in him the urge to become a person of stature and significance: this provokes his obsession with assuming the identity of don Jerónimo. From now on Humberto fluctuates between the need to become “somebody” and the desire to be “nobody”, between power and weakness, expansiveness and withdrawal, between what Goić calls “la voluntad de ser y la voluntad de autoaniquilamiento.”¹⁸ The problem is reflected in his ambiguous attitude to Iris Mateluna. During the telephone game he thinks he can control her thoughts but simultaneously fears her: if she wins he feels that “la sangre que el doctor Azula me robó volverá a correr por mis venas, dejaré de ser una mancha de humedad en una pared, me rescatarás, o no, quizás oyendo su voz me repliegue más, hasta quedar anulado” (p. 441). Sometimes he dominates Iris, sometimes he obeys her, “ciego y sin voluntad” (p. 82). It is interesting to note that the power-weakness opposition is reinforced by another symbol in the chain of interconnecting elements, namely that of the Chalet Suizo. It is something more than “the unattainable ideal home” referred to by McMurray:¹⁹ it brings out the contradiction between the reality of Mudito's situation and his absurd aspirations. He addresses himself to Iris:

Arranco mi mano de tu pecho. Enciendo una luz discreta y te muestro la cajita de música, abro la tapa, oyes el Carnaval de Venecia, tus ojos se van a iluminar, los haré asomarse a los espejitos de la puerta y de la ventana: te indico la puertecita, quiero que entres, ahora, ahora, ahora mismo, cazarte dentro de la caja de música.

—¿Creís que soy huevona? ¿Que vai a poder hacerme lesa con ese juguete?

No sé qué contestar.

(P. 142)

The conflict within Mudito is presented largely in sexual terms. He dreams of seducing Emperatriz. He will:

agarrala en sus brazos, penetrarla con su sexo, matarla de placer al ensartarla gritando con su sexo immenso …

Sintió su pantalón mojado. Su miembro decayó.

(P. 269)

At times he imagines he has a large, red, potent penis; but on other occasions it is a “trozo de carne inerte” (p. 431), “una cosa inútil” (p. 463). He feels his look controls don Jerónimo's virility: he has “la mirada cargada de poder” (p. 84) and thinks that his ex-master is desperate to “recuperar su potencia que yo conservo guardada en mis ojos” (p. 96). Yet he too is dependent upon the look of other people; referring to Iris he says:

Estoy acostumbrado a ser una presencia sobre la que los ojos se resbalen sin que la atención encuentre nada en qué fijarse. ¿Por qué me seguías, entonces, si ni siquiera me ibas a conceder existencia con una mirada?

(P. 76)

This conflict is, of course, as Bacarisse,²⁰ McMurray and others have pointed out, a symptom of Mudito's schizophrenia. At the same time though it fits into the general order-chaos binary system, the desire for sexual power and self-control corresponding to the need for a sense of order, and the reality of sexual feebleness equaling the process of succumbing to chaos and despair.

The taut web of inter-relations within the binary system is given added unity by a further layer of symbolic interpenetration. A whole series of images stems from one central symbol: that of enclosure. This image is itself binary in nature, for it suggests a conflict between inside and outside, appearance and reality, hope and despair, integration and withdrawal, order and chaos. There are two essential aspects of the enclosure image as presented in El obsceno pájaro. The first is its association with the concept of the construct, with the attempt to find meaning in things that have no meaning. A striking example is that of the packet. Although some critics (notably Borinsky, Gutiérrez Mouat, MacAdam and Magnarelli)²¹ see this image in purely literary terms (that is, as a reflection of the text as a series of linguistic signs behind which there is no deeper meaning), a metaphysical reading is, in my view, more convincing. Like Colonel Aureliano Buendía's production of golden fish in Cien años de soledad and Amalia's hopeless hunt for the missing finger from the statue of St. Gabriel, the process of wrapping things up is a symbol of the absurd, pointless activity that is life. The search for something of significance inside the packages corresponds to man's futile quest for meaning in life. Mudito asks:

¿No ve, Madre Benita, que lo importante es envolver, que el objeto envuelto no tiene importancia? … ¿Para qué sigue abriendo y rompiendo envoltorios … si tiene que saber que no va a encontrar nada?

(Pp. 30-1)

Other symbols link up with this one to reinforce the notion of the conflict between the desire for meaning (order) and the reality of despair (chaos). Mudito attempts to climb through a non-existent window, a recurring image in the novel; the window is illusory, only there “para que creyera que existía una afuera” (p. 303). The cells in the Casa are used as storage space for discarded oddments: Inés visits to search for “una sombrerera de cuero donde podía haber un envoltorio donde podía haber un sobre donde podía haber guardado hace años miles cierto certificado importante o cierta fotografía” (p. 55)—but as usual her quest is fruitless.

A second important feature of the chain of images of enclosure is their relation to the idea of withdrawal or escape. Solotorevsky has observed that “los ámbitos cerrados … representan la protección y la libertad, pero también el estatismo y la anulación. Asimismo el mundo de afeura … es mostrado como peligroso y terrible” (p. 161). As the characters attain an increasing symbolic awareness of the chaos surrounding them they attempt to recede even further into their own artificial constructs of order. As we have seen, the freaks prefer to stay within the boundaries of La Rinconada and Boy expresses his wish to languish in a mental limbo. The Casa, though itself a labyrinthine image of anarchy, is equally a symbolic refuge from chaos. Inés moves there after her hysterectomy (an operation which recalls Mudito's references to Iris's body as a “cáscara superflua” (p. 76), a mere “envoltorio” (p. 437), and indeed his description of himself as a worthless “corteza” (p. 217). Mudito thinks that “es terrible la ciudad” (p. 341), living in fear of the “abismo de la calle” (p. 347) as opposed to the Casa where he experiences the relief of being “adentro, libre” (p. 347) and enjoys “la paz de los corredores y las galerías” (p. 79). He begins to wall up parts of the Casa so that he can retreat even deeper into it (pp. 400-1).

Mudito's withdrawal also involves the destruction of his previous identities as he heads along the path to oblivion:

he quemado mi nombre definitivamente, mi voz la perdí hace mucho tiempo, ya no tengo sexo porque puedo ser una vieja más entre tantas viejas de la Casa, y mis papeles incoherentes de garabatos que intentaron implorar que se me concediera una máscara definida y perpetua, los quemo. …

(p. 156)

He imagines that Dr. Azula's operation has robbed him of 80٪ of his organs. He is now merely “un pedazo de hombre” (p. 336), even “esta manga exangüe a la puerta de un convento” (p. 148).

This process of withdrawal links up with another image in the chain, that of the “imbunche”. Valdés has made a careful study of this motif identifying both positive and negative aspects in it: it thus forms part of the binary system identified earlier. It is much more than a representation of “la tradición histórica chilena” as Vidal suggests.²² The notion of becoming an “imbunche” ironically constitutes an attempt to escape chaos by retreating into self-annihilation. Boy's operation transforms him into a kind of “imbunche”. This is a state to which the mentally disturbed Mudito also aspires. For him this would be “la paz total” (p. 288). He cries out to Peta Ponce:

déjame anularme, deja que las viejas bondadosas me fajen, quiero ser un imbunche metido adentro del saco de su propia piel, despojado de la capacidad de moverme y de desear y de oír y de leer y escribir, o de recordar …

(P. 433)

Thus, via the linking up of motifs on a symbolic plane, the story of a mythical creature effects our interpretation of the present. The pattern of events is developed further as Donoso introduces more variations on the “imbunche” theme. One is Mudito's identification with Iris's baby, the so-called saviour child. He is wrapped up in a kind of strait-jacket so tight that “me está reduciendo más y más, ya estoy tan pequeño que una anciana me podría cargar en sus brazos” (p. 391)—recalling the way the size of the clothes Inés knits for her longed-for child decreases concurrently with the decline of her hope. The process is taken a stage further with the introduction of the image of the sack. The old women sew Mudito up in sacks, transforming him into a “paquetito sin sexo” (p. 525). However, there is still an element of binarism present here:

slvenme, no quiero morir, terror, estoy débil, tullido, inutilizado, sin sexo, sin nada, rasado, pero no gritaré porque no hay otras formas de existencia, estoy a salvo aquí dentro de esto de donde jamás he salido …

(P. 538)

Yet, despite the comfort and security that the sack represents for him, he feels terror when the old hag carries him off. Although the struggle between order and chaos is present right to the end, Mudito's complete destruction in the novel's closing lines seems indicative of the triumph of the latter.

The ascendancy of chaos, then seems evident. Indeed order and chaos turn out to be ultimately inter-related: youth gives way to age; sexual activity leads only to frustration; the desire for power is contradicted by the truth of weakness; masters assume the characteristics of their servants, just as normal people assume those of the freaks. However, the binary system of inter-connecting images identified in El obsceno pájaro suggests that the novel's structure is not as chaotic as is often supposed: Donoso may not have approached his task with any preconceived plan, but he has clearly arrived at some kind of internal form. He debunks the myths of love, religion and reason but replaces them with a construct of his own: art. Thus the binary system extends to the novel's very structure: the act of writing itself is, if not exactly an attempt to impose order on chaos, then an attempt to achieve some sense of order by confronting the reality of chaos. It is therefore through the professionalism of his artistry that Donoso finds his own defense against the “unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.”

Notes

1. Isis Quinteros, José Donoso: una insurrección contra la realidad (Madrid: Hispanova de ediciones, 1978), p. 220. After the first note, subsequent references to all items will be given in brackets in the main body of the text.

2. Adriana Valdés, “El ‘imbunche’. Estudio de un motivo en El obsceno pájaro de la noche,” in José Donoso. La destrucción de un mundo, ed. Antonio Cornejo Polar (Buenos Aires: Fernando García Cambeiro, 1975), p. 143.

3. Josefina A. Pujals, El bosque indomado donde chilla el obsceno pájaro de la noche. Un estudio sobre la novela de José Donoso (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1981), p. 85.

4. José Promis Ojeda, La novela chilena actual (Buenos Aires: Fernando García Cambeiro, 1977), p. 170.

5. Antonio Cornejo Polar, “El obsceno pájaro de la noche: la reversibilidad de la metáfora,” in Cornejo Polar, op. cit., p. 108.

6. Hugo Achugar, Ideología y estructuras narrativas en José Donoso (1950-70) (Caracas: Centro de estudios latinoamericanos “Rómulo Gallegos”, 1979), pp. 251, 260, 270.

7. Zunilda Gertel, “El obsceno pájaro de la noche: des-encarnación, transformación, inexistencia,” Chasqui, II, No. 1 (November 1976), p. 18.

8. John J. Hassett, “The obscure bird of night,” Review, No. 9 (Fall 1973), pp. 28-9.

9. John M. Lipski, “Donoso's Obscene Bird: novel and anti-novel,” Latin American literary review, 4, No. 1 (1976), p. 43.

10. Mercedes San Martín, “Entretien avec José Donoso,” Caravelle, 29 (1975), p. 201.

11. The importance of binarism is not limited to El obsceno pájaro de la noche: much of what follows in this article is equally applicable to Donoso's other novels, for the same basic oppositions discussed here (youth-age, masters-servants, men-women, power-weakness etc.) recur constantly in his work. For reasons of space, it has been decided to limit the present study to Donoso's best-known novel: it is hoped, nevertheless, that this examination of El obsceno pájaro will promote further insights into Donoso's work as a whole.

12. Paul Alexandru Georgescu, “Ernesto Sábato y el estructuralismo,” Nueva estafeta, No. 41 (April 1982), 47-58.

13. Myrna Solotorevsky, “Configuraciones espaciales en El obsceno pájaro de la noche de José Donoso,” Bulletin hispanique, 82 (1980), pp. 150-151.

14. Robert Scott, “Heroic illusion and death denial in José Donoso's El obsceno pájaro de la noche,” Symposium, 32 (1978), p. 135.

15. José Donoso, El obsceno pájaro de la noche (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979), p. 399.

16. Martin S. Stabb, “The erotic mask: notes on Donoso and the new novel,” Symposium, 30 (1976), p. 177.

17. Ricardo Gutiérrez Mouat, José Donoso: impostura e impostación. La modelización lúdica y carnavalesca de una producción literaria (Gaithersburg: Hispamérica, 1983), p. 187.

18. Cedomil Goic, Historia de la novela hispanoamericana (Valparaíso: Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaíso, 1972), p. 262.

19. George R. McMurray, José Donoso (New York: Twayne, 1979), p. 134.

20. Pamela Bacarisse, “El obsceno pájaro de la noche: a willed process of evasion,” in Contemporary Latin American Fiction, ed. Salvador Bacarisse (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1980), 18-34.

21. Alicia Borinsky, “Repeticiones y máscaras: El obsceno pájaro de la noche,” Modern Language Notes, 88 (1973), 281-294; Alfred J. MacAdam, Modern Latin American Narratives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 110-118; Sharon Magnarelli, “El obsceno pájaro de la noche: fiction, monsters and packages,” Hispanic Review, 45 (1977), 413-419;—“Amidst the illusory depths: the first person pronoun and El obsceno pájaro de la noche,” Hispanic Journal, 2, No. 2 (Spring 1981), 81-93.

22. Hernán Vidal, José Donoso: surrealismo y rebelión de los instintos (Barcelona: Ediciones Aubí, 1972), p. 217.