[In the following essay, Magnarelli considers the stories in Tres novelitas burguesas both realistic socio-economic depictions of modern bourgeois society and self-referential works concerned with the natures of and relationships between truth, reality, art, and language.]

"il me semble que c'est une pure question de mots . . ."

Literary theory of recent years has focused on the plurality of the literary text—that is, on the capacity of the signifier to evoke two or more different signifieds. In this manner, the literary work is acknowledged to carry a sociophilosophical message as well as a linguistic inquiry, as the text not only refers to the world which surrounds the writer and his interpretation of that world but simultaneously comments on its own existence and mode of being.

Perhaps there is no recent text which demonstrates this duplicity and plurality more overtly than José Donoso's Tres novelitas burguesas.² Although analyses of the text have centered on the stories as socio-economic portrayals of modern life (portrayals which I do not deny), I shall study the work from other perspectives too and disagree strongly with the critic for the New York Times Book Review who refers to the tepidity of the second story and sees the third as mechanically carried out.³ I shall focus principally on Atomo verde número cinco but examine all the novelitas in terms of what they say about both themselves and art in general. I hope to show that the text undermines our traditional concept of the relationship between "Truth" and art while it centers on the contradictory nature of the artistic creation and the process of naming.

As the title suggests, Tres novelitas burguesas is a trilogy of novelas. While the protagonists of each story are the secondary characters in the other stories, each segment is autonomous (at least superficially), and there are only peripheral references to the events of the other stories. The text's preoccupation with language and art, however, is underscored from the very beginning by means of the titles of the individual stories. Each title, in itself, refers to another work of art: linguistic, musical or pictorial. Chattanooga Choochoo, title of the first story, refers to a North American song of the big band era and, thus, to both a musical and linguistic work of art; Atomo verde número cinco is the name given to a painting done by the protagonist of that story; and, Gaspard de la nuit refers to the composition by Ravel. Thus, to a greater or lesser extent each composition considers the position and nature of another work of art while it indirectly considers its own creation and being.

The first story, Chattanooga Choochoo, recounts some of the events in a week of the life of two Barcelona couples: Ramón Solar, his mate, Sylvia Corday, and their friends, Magdalena and Anselmo Prieto. The action of the story (although not the narrative itself) begins at a social gathering; Sylvia and Magdalena, identically dressed, perform a song and dance number to the tune, Chattanooga Choochoo. The story concludes a week later at a similar gathering when Anselmo and Ramón, also identically attired, do that same song and dance number. In between we learn that Sylvia's features are painted on her every day by her husband or Anselmo and that her entire face may be erased at any moment (reducing it to a blank, white ovoid) and re-painted according to the desire of the man at hand. Thus, to this extent her existence, her form, her personality, are entirely dependent upon the whim of another (that other always being male), and her features, individual characteristics, are always repetitions of others' features and, thus, not individual at all. During this same week, Sylvia teaches Magdalena the technique of dismantling her husband when he becomes vexatious or superfluous. The women also have the ability to store the pieces away in a suitcase until they have need of their husbands and are ready to re-assemble them. Thus, in this story the identity of each individual, each character, is dependent and repetitive.

While the student of naturalism or sociology will be offended by the "unrealistic" dismantling of the characters in this text, he will no doubt attribute it to a representation of a Freudian dream of power. On the other hand, we must not neglect the importance of the text as language analyzing itself. In this work, the literary character, a linguistic entity recognized as such, is overtly portrayed as a more or less arbitrary conglomeration of signs—signs, words, elements of meaning which can be joined, separated or erased at will. In many respects this novela underscores Sylvia Corday as the literary character par excellence. Just as any character can never be more than an arbitrary grouping of nouns, adjectives and verbs, Sylvia is overtly just that. Her creators work with her blank, white face as they use a blank sheet of paper (or in the pictorial arts, perhaps a blank canvas). Her creators write or paint, with other materials, on that blank space and create the character and personality they desire. The text in this manner emphasizes that the literary character is a mere assembly of words and that, contrary to our traditional manner of viewing the character, the group of signs from which each character's signifiers are chosen is finite and shared.⁴

Furthermore, this story in many ways might be seen as self-reading; that is, the text seems to be perusing and interpreting itself as it progresses. Closely related to the detective novel, where the protagonist's main function is to find the clues and "read" or interpret them, Chattanooga Choochoo focuses on Anselmo, who, like the detective, repeatedly tries to discover the significance of various events and words of others. He finds as he "reads", however, that the words are not directly related to a single, specific referent and signification; instead, each group of words allows for multiple exegeses. For example, many of the story's beginning pages examine Anselmo's attempts to interpret the words of Sylvia:

Al pasárselas, Sylvia insistió:
—Y Magdalena tiene tan buen gusto . . .

¿La había saboreado? Quizá porque pasó la carne junto con decir esas palabras, pensó repentinamente que aludía a ese "sabor" de Magdalena que sólo yo conocía, y esto me hizo replegarme ante la antropófaga Sylvia. Pero se refería, naturalmente, a otra clase de "gusto": al "gusto" que había presidido, como el valor más alto, nuestra visita a las casas durante la tarde, proporcionándonos un idioma común, un "gusto" relacionado con el discernimiento estético determinado por el medio social en que vivíamos (p. 13).

As the story concludes, we discover that Anselmo has encompassed all the major roles in this detective-like story. He has become the narrator as well as the detective or reader of clues while at the same time he is the "murderer" (to the extent that he "erases" Sylvia) and the "murdered" (to the extent that Magdalena disassembles him). Thus, the single signifier—Anselmo—includes all the apparently contradictory referents.

Like Chattanooga Choochoo, the second story, Atomo verde número cinco, also seems to concentrate on the topics of language and reading. Marta Mora and Roberto Ferrer, an upper-middle class couple without children, have installed themselves in the "definitive" apartment. Roberto, a dentist by profession, paints in his spare time. He and Marta have gone to every expense and effort to surround themselves with perfect and carefully selected objects, which, they feel, reflect their very individual personalities. The irony, of course, is that, as in Chattanooga Choochoo, these personalities are not "individual" at all, and even the rooms and objects have been created and combined with considerable influence from others. Just as soon as all but one item in the apartment is finally and definitively located and Roberto is awaiting the "right" moment to begin painting in his empty studio, various items begin to disappear from the apartment, starting with the painting by Roberto, entitled "Atomo verde número cinco." As the objects continue to vanish, Roberto and Marta discover that, after fifteen years of marriage, neither of them any longer possesses anything which belongs to him alone; everything is shared. What they never realize in the course of the narrative is that not only is everything communal property between the two of them, but that, in turn, all (like their very language) is shared with the rest of their society—neither of them has anything which is original and not common to the rest of their group. They suspect everyone, including each other, of stealing their possessions, but Roberto recognizes, enigmatically, that these are not robberies at all—things just disappear. The discovery of a piece of paper on which the name and weight of the painting is written leads them to a wild search in a poor neighborhood, and the text ends, not unlike other Donoso narratives, in a savage, physical, animal-like struggle in the night when language has been replaced by mere guttural sounds.

On one level, then, we might understand this text as a metaphor for art which, lacking just one word, one dot of color, one musical note, becomes invalid and cannot hold itself together in an organic whole (presuming that the disintegration which characterizes the story was effectuated by Roberto's failure to hang that one last painting). But, on another level, the text might be interpreted as a subtle criticism of the social class of material wealth. Here Donoso portrays a pair of characters whose existence is created and defined by means of objects and possessions. It seems that, without such material goods, they would not exist: "enamorado de los objetos, prisionero de ellos, dependiente de ellos" (p. 155). In addition, the frivolity of their lives is emphasized by the fact that the protagonists have nothing better nor more transcendental to do than buy objects and worry about arranging and furnishing the house. As the text notes, the activity of seeking furniture and accessories is not only "una tarea apasionante," but also "un acto de compromiso" (p. 107). Thus, the story scorns all that is frivolous and idle in a social class which has no higher nor more altruistic aspirations than material wealth and objects to symbolize that affluence. And, perhaps the ultimate problem is one of possession and a realization that the individual may never be truly capable of possessing anything in the very strictest and most exclusive sense, just as in Chattanooga Choochoo, where even "personal" features were shared.

Another social problem which arises in the text, and a problem which is perhaps inherent to any social class, is the problem of marriage and possession. The story dramatizes the individual's loss of his or her own personality, identity, in marriage. Marta complains that Roberto has stolen everything that is hers and that she no longer has her own existence or personality: "En sus largos años de convivencia se habían confundido sus fronteras a costa de tanta consideración y de tan abundantes sentimientos positivos, y ya ninguno de los dos tenía nada" (p. 169). The text also states, "Marta recordaba las mil formas en que Roberto la había anulado, sin dejarla tener nada propio," and "era como si, bajo la presión de Roberto, ya hubiera comenzado a desaparecer definitivamente" (p. 170). In other words, the creation of the pair, the unity, the sum of the parts, has resulted in the erasure of the individual; by means of the amalgamation the autonomous part has disappeared in much the same way as the recognition of the plurality of the sign disappears in the text.

On this same "social" level, the story depicts the life of this class in all its orderly arrangement and careful planning. Everything has a determined position within this society, and everything must remain in that place. It is curious and, I believe, revealing that this class (or at least the two protagonists) demonstrate a necessity to feign an ability to confront disorder and the unusual; Roberto dreams of living as a "hippy" and dedicating himself to painting although it is clear to us that he would never be capable of such a "disordered" existence. With the first appearance of fortuitous and unexplainable elements—unplanned happenings which do not already fit perfectly into the schematized outline—such characters become totally unstable and begin to disintegrate.

In this respect, one of the principal topics considered in the narrative is the universal desire for precision and stability. The characters of Atomo verde número cinco want to install themselves in "el piso definitivo . . . de manera permanente" (p. 107). They pursue ways to impede the movement and flux of life and retard the endless succession of time. For them, the most frightening and disconcerting is all that is imprecise, ephemeral, transitory and disordered. Thus, their principal activity in the early parts of the novelita must be to regularize and systematize all aspects of their life to the extent possible. For this reason, it is very important to them that the flat be definitive and fixed. But, as we all know, such permanence is neither realizable nor to be found, for the world and life are imprecise, imperfect and transitory, and only art fixes and arrests them, as Ortega y Gasset has indicated:

La precisión de las cosas es una idealización de ellas que el deseo del hombre produce. En su realidad son imprecisas . . . son sólo aproximadamente ellas mismas, no terminan en un perfil rigoroso, no tienen superficies inequívocas y pulidas, sino que flotan en el margen de imprecisión que es su verdadero ser. La precisión de las cosas es precisamente lo irreal, lo legendario en ellas.⁵

Thus, all the efforts to arrange, order and regulate can only end in the complete opposite, for ironically, the very attempt to achieve the ultimately mythic harmonic state inevitably underlines the lack of that same conformity—that is, the effort to impose homogeneity emphasizes its absence.

There is little doubt that this endeavor to fix and classify everything is the primary element in the love Roberto feels toward painting. For him, a painting signals a world which is already in harmony, manageable and perfected. This "world" is in an immutable form and seldom introduces the gratuitous. It represents a firm, concrete, tangible world. For this reason, "la pintura confortaba a Roberto—cosa que no hacía su práctica odontológica, distinguidísima pero quizá demasiado vasta—, como también su cautelosa colección de grabados: litografías, xilografías, aguafuertes . . . algún buril . . ." (p. 108, my emphasis). Clearly, the irony is to be found in the continuation of this citation: ". . . sobre todo, en que lo enamoraba la espontaneidad, la valiente emoción de la síntesis." Without question, there is very little in the etching which we could call undeliberated or spontaneous inasmuch as the etching quite specifically depends upon precision, intention, careful work, prearrangement and the very finest of lines.

Furthermore, and still on the socio-philosophical level, the novelita dramatizes the universal nightmare of getting lost in a strange, unknown place and spending the rest of eternity trying to find one's way back to the familiar and known:

¿ . . . él y Marta se quedarían dando vueltas y vueltas, eternamente, en coche, por las calles de la ciudad, buscando el número de una calle donde ellos habían instalado su piso definitivo, pero que ahora no existía? ¿Buscar y buscar, rodando hasta agotarse, hasta envejecer, uno al lado del otro en el asiento del coche, decayendo en medio del tiempo que pasaba y de la ciudad que crecía y cambiaba, hasta morir sin encontrar el número . . . (p. 161).

This quotation points to the vastness and emptiness of the world of our subconscious and of our nightmares, while it simultaneously perhaps marks the futility and absurdity of the endeavors and tasks we assign ourselves throughout life. As the novelita ends with the words, ". . . huir aullando de terror hasta perderse por el inmenso escenario vacío" (p. 188), an appropriate termination to an absurd search, we are reminded not only of the immensity and vacuity of our world, but also of the notion of Shakespeare and Calderón, among others, of the world as the great stage of life with the drama we represent on that stage.⁶

Now, if the text were to stop with these interpretive possibilities, without any other dimension, it would certainly suffice. But, there is still another dimension—the linguistic, the level on which the text underlines its own existence, its own formation, and investigates (metaphorically, at least) the very material of its own creation. In this story, the self-criticism exists as a concomitant part of the narration. Alicia Borinsky has noted that there are two types of self-criticism: "la autocrítica incorporada como tema en la novela y la autocrítica asumida como condición inherente a la narración, sin establecer distancias que permitan la distinción de momentos en los cuales un narrador privilegiado se desdobla en contemplador de la obra"⁷ Clearly, Atonto verde número cinco pertains to the second group. It does not take much imagination to apply all that we have said about painting and other art forms to language and literature. In the same manner, it is patent that, to a certain degree, the word functions as art does to adjust, stabilize and limit "reality". The act of denomination and classification is a means of confronting the infinite and fortuitous in the world which surrounds us. To be able to assign a name to a phenomenon makes it more manageable, more exact, and thus, less threatening. By means of the word, the chaotic world becomes simplified and categorized. As Foucault has noted, the word does not function merely as a name, but simultaneously retards and fixes the process of the action.⁸ Literature, then, as a conglomeration of words, usually functions in a manner very similar to that of painting: it organizes this world by taking a small segment of the totality, fixing it and presenting us with a part already controlled and tamed. Often literature demonstrates a causality that we cannot find in the casualness of life. Thus, the word gives consolation in much the same sense as painting does. As Roquentin of La nausée has said, "qu'y a-t-il à craindre d'un monde si regulier?" (p. 11). Also, like the painting, the word seems to present, make present, that which is already (and always will be) absent. Such a phenomenon was, of course, already apparent in El obsceno pájaro de la noche, where we saw that words not only created a world but also functioned to limit, regulate and make the "real" world less frightening:

. . . con mi nombre impreso tantas veces, nadie podía dudar de mi existencia . . . .⁹

. . . cómo alterarlos y perderse dentro de sus existencias fluídas, la libertad de no ser nunca lo mismo porque los harapos no son fijos, todo improvisándose, fluctuante, hoy yo y mañana no me encuentra nadie ni yo mismo me encuentro porque uno es lo que es mientras dura el disfraz. A veces, compadezco a la gente como usted, Madre Benita, esclava de un rostro y de un nombre y de una función y de una categoría, el rostro tenaz del que no podrá despojarse nunca, la unidad que la tiene encerrada dentro del calabozo de ser siempre la misma persona (pp. 155-56).

Nevertheless, I suggest that the clue to the comprehension of "Atomo verde número cinco" may be found in the phrase, things disappear. The disappearance of things may well be the result of a linguistic process. As long as one confides naively in a close and immediate relationship between the thing and the word, and while one accepts as fact the notion that the word presents, makes present, represents the things (and only one thing), there is no problem and all remains in a very comfortable, if oblivious, state. But, the problem arises with the suspicion or premonition that such a relationship is based on myth, on another creation, and that it does not exist. To say or to write the word in no way presents the thing, the object, the referent. As Derrida has defined it, in fact, writing is "nom courante des signes qui functionnet malgré l'absence totale du sujet".¹⁰ Thus, things disapear, and the text itself underlines and emphasizes the fact that the occurrences are not thievery but disappearances.¹¹

Let us remember too, that the entire dilemma of disappearance began when Roberto found himself alone with his possessions or things—at this moment the "robberies" began. Similarly, Roquentin found himself terribly alone with objects and reacted in much the same fashion: "Les choses se sont delivrées de leurs noms. Elles sont là, grotesques, têtues, géantes . . . je suis au milieu des Choses, les innommables. Seul, sans mots, sans defénses. . ." (p. 177, my emphasis). It appears, then, that the problem arises with the destruction or demystification of the immediate relation, with the separation or distancing of the word from its referent. As our story progresses, things continue to disappear and distance themselves from the words or signifiers. I suspect that we are to understand that without names, without language which subdues somehow the thing, classifying and limiting it, some of the objects necessarily disappear and vice versa (let us remember the linguistic theories which insist that things exist only when they are named, classified and put into categories), while others lose their definitions and their limits, to expand and become threatening. But again, such a process is not new, but could also be seen in many places, including Cien años de soledad.

Poco a poco, estudiando las infinitas posibilidades del olvido, se dio cuenta de que podía llegar un día en que se reconocieran las cosas por sus inscripciones, pero no se recordara su utilidad. Entonces fue más explicitó. El letrero que colgó en la cerviz de la vaca era una muestra ejemplar de la forma en que los habitantes de Macondo estaban dispuestos a luchar contra el olvido. . . . Así continuaron viviendo en una realidad escurridiza, momentáneamente capturada por las palabras, pero que había de fugarse sin remedio cuando olvidaran los valores de la letra escrita.¹²

Stripped of its affiliation with the thing, the word, too, becomes dangerous. As Foucault has suggested, "je suppose que dans toute société la production du discours est à la fois contrôlée, sélectionnée, organisée et redistribuée par un certain nombre de procédures qui ont pour rôle d'en conjurer les pouvoirs et les dangers, d'en maîtriser l'événement aléatoire, d'en esquiver la lourde, la redoutable matérialité".¹³

The text, thus, centers on the reading of the small piece of paper on which the words, "Atomo verde número cinco Peso 108," are written. The writing is completely misread as the address at which the painting will be found (rather than simply the title and weight of the painting), and it is this misinterpretation of the word which leads to the self-destruction of the conclusion. What becomes clear is that Marta's and Roberto's problem is as much linguistic as social. The couple has failed not only to understand the plurality of any sign, but also to see the arbitrary and ephemeral relationship between the signifier (signifier in both the sense of words and in the sense of objects, possessions which they want to "reflect" their personalities) and the signified. They have simplistically found a one-to-one relationship between the signifier and the signified and have overlooked the fact that the very attempt to capture a single, definitive signified is but the first step in its erasure. Each signifier has a multiplicity of referents, and choosing the correct one at any given moment is the very key to comprehension, communication and signification. Instead, they have buried themselves in the signifiers as the significance has begun to disappear, and they have failed to comprehend that their signs must be the very essence of plurality, insofar as each is shared not only by more than one referent (and vice versa), but also by more than one speaker, writer or reader. In this manner, it is also evident that the words "las cosas desaparecen" may be understood in relation to the linguistic theory of Derrida.¹⁴ One of the bases for his theory is the notion that written words do not function solely as symbols of sounds, that their significance is a result of the supplement and that finally the only thing which remains is the "trace". Similarly, as was noted in La nausée, "il ne reste plus que des mots . . . mais ce ne sont plus que des carcasses" (p. 52).

Thus, when things disappear within the text, there are two basic ways to react: one can seek (futilely) the lost origin or referent, or one can pretend not to notice the problem—"No hablar, no elucubrar. Aceptar, nada más" (p. 164)—that is, by means of suppression one can ignore the dilemma completely. And both reactions are dramatized in Atomo verde número cinco. At first the pair pretends not to notice what occurs, or at least they make an effort not to talk about what is happening. This response, of course, reflects the almost universal credence (subconscious though it may be) that by not pronouncing, not mentioning or verbally expressing the event (by not making it linguistically manifest) it will not exist (again implying that the word itself grants or denies existence). The suggestion is that without articulation, without linguistic recognition and confrontation, things cannot exist and/or disappear (in their previous form, at least).

This tendency not to confront or acknowledge the outside world (external to the subject, that is) is a propensity we find frequently depicted in the works of Donoso. This was the great attraction of the imbunche in El obsceno pájaro: to have all one's orifices sewn up means not to have to face the world, not to have any contact with that world and, thus, not to be threatened by it:

aquí adentro se está caliente, no hay necesidad de moverse, no necesito nada, este paquete soy yo entero, reducido, sin depender de nada ni de nadie (p. 525);

soy este paquete. Estoy guarecido bajo los estratos de sacos en que las viejas me retobaron y por eso mismo no necesito hacer paquetes, no necesito hacer nada, no siento, no oigo, no veo nada porque no existe nada más que este hueco que ocupo . . . Sé que ésta es la única forma de existencia . . . porque si hubiera otra forma de existencia tendría que haber también pasado y futuro, y no recuerdo pasado y no sé de futuro (pp. 537-38).

Similarly, it is important to Roberto and Marta "no hablar, no enlucubrar. Aceptar, nada más. Darle vuelta la espalda a los acontecimientos y quizás así, ignorándolos, lograr conjugarlos" (p. 164).

The other reaction to the disappearances consists of first recognizing the problem and then trying to encounter the lost relationship, those presumed ties between the signifier and the signified. But the only possibility that remains to reconstruct this lost relationship (which is something of a paradise lost which probably never existed) will be to seek the origins, the referent, that is, to re-create the connection. Thus, in a certain sense and in a very dramatic manner, the novelita becomes the search for origin; the protagonists forget the significance of the words and must re-encounter, re-discover the referent, the significance. The problem is that they fail to recognize that it is the very context which gives meaning to things and to words and that once torn from their context, they change meaning or lose their significance. As the narrator notes, "era increíble cómo había cambiado ese mueble al arrancarlo del pesado ambiente burgués de tónica indecisamente postmodernista de la casa de la madre de Marta, y cómo, trasladado al contexto depouille del piso nuevo, adquiría un significado estético totalmente contemporáneo" (p. 116). This search for origins is the motivating factor in much of Donoso's work; for this reason Mudito, too, sought the origins of the myth of the niña-beata and Inés returned to the Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales. In a metaphoric sense, it is for a similar reason that Marta and Roberto go out in search of the painting at what they thought was an address, Peso 108: "Con la perspectiva de recobrar algo—una esperanza de reconstruir todo el edificio de civilización y forma que habían perdido . . ." (pp. 171-72). Significantly, "en el vestíbulo soñaron, un instante, en cómo sería el vestíbulo a su regreso, cuando hubieran recobrado todo lo perdido, y era como soñar con la paz y el descanso que proporciona el lenguaje de los objetos queridos que sirven como puentes para comunicarse, o como máscaras que los protegieran de la desnudez hostil que habían estado viviendo desde hacía tantos días" (p. 172, my emphasis).

In this manner, then, it becomes evident that the act of simply not confronting or ignoring the world evinces a reaction that is not completely distinct nor distinguishable from the act of seeking origins. In both instances there is ultimately a negation of the fundamental complexity: things are not to be found in a simple, neat form that art proportions them. To seek the origin or to simply refuse to face the dilemma are two methods of avoiding the problem of the relation (or its absence) between things (the world) and art (linguistic, musical or pictorial). In both cases the problem results from the acceptance that art creates or captures presence or essence, while, paradoxically, the problem is temporarily solved by this same acceptance (but apparently only temporarily). For this reason the attitude of Roberto and Marta is especially relevant: "Se quedaron mirando—melancólicamente, impotentemente" (p. 157). They dream of simple presence but are unable to encounter it, re-introduce it. They realize, although perhaps in an almost unconscious manner, the impossibility of discovering or witnessing the origins. As for the language and the word, it is the pretext, the delusion that gives solace; with the recognition that it is only pretense and that the gratuitous and fortuitous still play a major role in their lives, Roberto's and Marta's world of possessions must crumble. And so, things disappear or threaten, and the words become meaningless.

Similarly in the third story of the trilogy, we once again find the non-uniqueness of identity and possession stressed. The protagonist of the final novela, Gaspard de la nuit,is Mauricio, who has recently come to live with his mother, Sylvia Corday (of the first narrative). Unconcerned about the things which interest other boys of his age, Mauricio passes his days whistling "Gaspard de la nuit" and wandering through the streets trying to entangle others in his tune—"el círculo que trazaba la música de Mauricio iba a dominarla y a tragársela" (p. 204). The story concludes after Mauricio meets another boy who looks and acts exactly like him, but who is poor and in rags. The two boys exchange clothes and identities, and the poor boy returns to assume the material affluence of Mauricio's life, while Mauricio frees himself not only of possessions but also of name, family and identity to enter a limitless world.

On the surface, Gaspard de la nuit would appear to bear little thematic resemblance to the other two novelas. But as we look more closely, we discover that there are interesting similarities. When Mauricio first arrives in Barcelona, Sylvia struggles to establish a relationship with him, only to discover that there is something about him which makes her totally uncomfortable. That "something", in fact, is that she cannot find the words which label him, which describe him, and, in turn, which limit and define him. In a similar manner, Mauricio views her efforts to find signifiers which are applicable to him and which will define him as violation, violation which he hates, but which he simultaneously tries to inflict on others through his music. In the end, Sylvia is happy with the "new Mauricio" because he speaks a common language, and she can find adjectives which are applicable; similarly, the "old Mauricio" is content because he has escaped this naming, this violation, this limitation.

To this extent, and analogous to the other two stories, we might see Sylvia in this story as the realistic, naturalistic writer or reader. She seeks "the right words, to name and describe events, people, objects, emotions, sensations".¹⁵ But Mauricio, like Donoso himself, objects to this limitation. Donoso, in fact, has noted his own movement away from social realism,¹⁶ and Humberto of El obsceno pájaro has criticized those "escritorzuelos" who believe in the existence of a single reality to be copied.

Thus, while it would unquestionably be easy to understand Tres novelitas burguesas as a depiction of bourgeois society, its dreams and its fantasies, it simultaneously becomes clear that the text is equally concerned with its own existence and its own status. If Donoso were attempting only to portray society, there would be no need to have made the stories so closely interrelated. Ultimately, there can be little doubt that the correspondence of characters in the narratives underscores a linguistic concern. The characters, groups of signifiers, each united by a "proper noun" or name, are repeated in the three novelas just as all signifiers, all adjectives, are inevitably repeated, shared and exchangeable.

Concurrently, the format of separating the entire text into three individual stories rather than joining it into one more or less unified novel, emphasizes the isolation of the literary sign. While superficially shared and repeated, like all signs, each character is, nevertheless, isolated and distinct as a result of the context in which he is presented. In the final analysis, The Sylvia of Chattanooga Choochoo bears no more resemblance to the Sylvia of Gaspard de la nuit than if they were two distinctly named characters placed in similar social milieus. The mask worn (or the face presented) by Sylvia in the first narrative must necessarily be different from that of the last narrative, in spite of the repetition of name and other signifiers, because the context is different—in one, she plays the femme fatale, and in the other, the mother.

In conclusion, the texts are not simply descriptions of some external events. Instead, the trilogy is also a self-portrait and a self-analysis. Donoso is not just seeking the right words to describe experience, but trying to analyze experiences which are neither separate nor external, but ultimately a part of the product itself. It is not a question of mere transposition into words, but an analysis of those words and that very transposition. Just as Salvador Elizondo has intricately and inseparably linked the moments of writing, reading and commentary,¹⁷ Donoso, in Tres novelitas burguesas, has made the creation and the commentary synchronic, identical and indivisable and has shown that without the word, without art, there is no possibility of possession, and although this artistic, linguistic possession is but a delusion, it is the very basis for the entire bourgeois world.

Notes

¹ Jean Paul Sartre, La nausée (Paris: Gallinard, 1938), p. 57.

² All page numbers will refer to the Seix Barral edition (Barcelona, 1973).

³ See Anatole Broyard, "The Exile Who Lost His Tongue", New York Times Book Review, 26 June 1977, p. 14. In reference to other Donoso works, see Michael Wood, "Latins in Manhattan," The New York Review, 19 April 1973, pp. 35-39.

⁴ Without a doubt, all that is said about a literary character here is equally applicable to any artistic entity created by any of the non-verbal mediums.

I discuss Chatanooga Choochoo in greater detail in "From El obsceno pájaro to Tres novelitas burguesas: Development of a Semiotic Theory in the Works of Donoso" which will appear in Contemporary Methods of Literary Analysis, ed. Randolph Pope (New York: Bilingual Press, 1978).

⁵ "Introducción a Velázquez-1954," Obras completas, Tomo VIII (Madrid: Revista del Occidente, 1965), p. 652.

⁶ There are many other apparent links between this novela and theater. One must inevitably think of the theater of the absurd in relation to the story as well as Ibsen's A Doll's House, among others.

⁷ Alicia Borinsky, "Repeticiones y máscaras: El obsceno pájaro de la noche" Modern Language Notes, 88 (March 1973), p. 281.

⁸ Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses (Mayenne: Gallimard, 1966), p. 302.

⁹ I quote from the Seix Barral edition (Barcelona, 1971), p. 150.

¹⁰ Jacques Derrida, La voix et la phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1972), p. 104.

¹¹To steal connotes an action mediated by an agent while to disappear suggests the lack of such an agent.

¹² Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1971), p. 47.

¹³L'ordre du discours (Mayenne: Gallimard, 1971), pp. 10-11.

¹⁴ I refer especially to the thesis expressed in De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967).

¹⁵ These are the words of Michael Wood, op. cit., p. 35.

¹⁶ Juan Andrés Piña, "José Donoso: Los fantasmas del escritor," Mensaje (Santiago), No. 246 (enero-febrero de 1976), p. 51.

¹⁷ See El grafógrafo (México: Mortiz, 1972), especially "Futuro imperfecto," p. 77-86.