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Mariana solares is the author of undermining the space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "sed de mar" Seligson creates complex spaces for her characters in which they move and speak, rarely within a chronological time frame. The search ("la busqueda") is a common theme in her life and fiction, as well as in mythical stories about heroes.
Mariana solares is the author of undermining the space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "sed de mar" Seligson creates complex spaces for her characters in which they move and speak, rarely within a chronological time frame. The search ("la busqueda") is a common theme in her life and fiction, as well as in mythical stories about heroes.
Mariana solares is the author of undermining the space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "sed de mar" Seligson creates complex spaces for her characters in which they move and speak, rarely within a chronological time frame. The search ("la busqueda") is a common theme in her life and fiction, as well as in mythical stories about heroes.
Undermining the Space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "Sed de mar"
Author(s): Mariana Solares
Source: Letras Femeninas, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Invierno 2005), pp. 139-152 Published by: Asociacion Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispanica Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23021591 . Accessed: 01/04/2013 17:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Asociacion Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispanica is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Letras Femeninas. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Undermining the Space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's Sed de mar Mariana Solares Southern Illinois University Edwardsville In her fiction, Esther Seligson (Mexico, 1941) creates complex spaces for her characters in which they move and speak, rarely within a chronological time frame. Her work, including novels, stories, poetry, and essays, reflects the adventurous bent of the author. Seligson is a prolific reader; teacher; practitioner of astrology and divination; speaker of several languages; student of theater, art, literature, and mythology; resident of several countries (including Mexico, Spain, France, Israel and India); and believer in common spiritual patterns that cross cultures. The search ("la busqueda") is a common theme in her life and fiction, as well as in mythical stories about heroes.1 The novels Otros son los suenos, winner of the Villaurrutia Prize in 1973, and Sed de mar (1987) both follow women characters as they take voyages of exploration that will carry them beyond known time and space. In Sed de mar,2 the classical Penelope undermines the myth of the hero by leaving home to embark on her own mysterious voyage. After suffering agonizing desire and loneliness while Ulysses is exploring the world, Penelope abandons her traditional role as guardian of home to seek her own voice. She addresses her husband in her diary: Mariana Solares is an assistant professor of Spanish at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She received her PhD from the University of California, Irvine, in 1997. Her research and presentations center on poetry by contemporary Latin American poets, narrative and poetry written by women, and the study of collaborative works by poets and artists. She has an article in press on the Mexican poet Coral Bracho. This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 140 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 Quiero romper las olas con pies de gozo y mojarme los labios en la sed de mar, [. . .] danzar con reverente alegria en las celebraciones del vivir [...] Olvidar tus sirenas y mi tejido, el decreto de los Dioses [..(TR 106) The tale that Penelope tells here excludes such mythical elements as an explanation for life's mysteries, a sense of unity, or a means to return to origins.3 Seligson exposes the contradictions inherent in idealized images, whether of desired human figures or of life goals sought on a journey. Expressing a mix of fear, anger, and longing, Penelope writes the following: Enmudece la voz a fuerza de humillarse ruego, el anhelo se sonroja ... El tiempo del amor se transforma con el tiempo en sacrilegio y exige su reparacion, [...] Pero, tardabas, Ulises, y la tardanza empezo a cobrar su propia fuerza, a erguirse altiva, a socavar con su sonrisa la imagen de una espera cimentada solo en recuerdos. (TR 97) Because Penelope leaves home shortly before Ulysses' return, the two are not reunited. Ulysses, finding his wife absent, loses his way and fails to complete his mythical trajectory. In this novel, Penelope's experiences are chronicled in letters, writ ten in the first-person voices of Telemachus, the old nurse Euricleia, and Ulysses, and in her own fragmented diary discovered after her disap pearance. In the opening "Proemio," it appears that both Ulysses and Penelope are now dead as narrator Telemachus honors their supposed tombs: "Yo, Telemacho, he depositado, con arreglo a la tradicion, una guedeja de mis cabellos en cada una de las tumbas [. . .] y he rogado porque sus almas se reencuentren en la pradera de los asfodelos [. . .]" {TR 93). In the subsequent three chapters, Penelope and Ulysses narrate their stories, ending in the fifth and final chapter, the "Epilogo" written by Penelope in the form of a letter to Ulysses. Here, Penelope describes her final location as "la Isla del Tiempo Durable," a place inaccessible to Ulysses and where she is satisfied to be free from his space: "Aqui no existe huella alguna de tu presencia, y me veo en la libertad de inventarlo todome deje tanta remembranza apretada al telar, tanta hebra trunca, empezando con mi propio destino" (TR 114). Penelope believes that she is just a step away from silence, a place she hopes to enter in the belief that only there can she find a voice. Although it is not clear if she achieves This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Solares 141 this goal, she is transformed as she chooses a different position in textual space. Penelope alters the myth and effectively destroys the hero, but her voyages do not completely break with her mythical role. As a mythical woman, she has depended on the hero to determine her destiny, and it is this underlying mythical text that plays on her actions and experiences in this new version. The structure of Sed, consisting of several first-person accounts, creates a text that is ambiguous and without closure. Telemachus, who provides the opening narration, suspects that the nurse may have edited Penelope's diary in order to present a more favorable image of Penelope: "La carta que Penelope le refiere a Ulises llego mutilada, pues el men sajero fue atacado [. . .] De los fragmentos del diario, Euriclea nunca supo explicar las omisiones y puntos suspensivos" (TR 93). There are written fragments describing Penelope's ordeal during the twenty years that are silent in Homer's version. In Seligson's text, Penelope becomes entangled in a confusion of words and memories in which Ulysses remains absent, as she writes, "Una imagen, persigo una imagen cuyo numbre no encuentro, persigo un nombre cuyas letras no conozco, [. . .] si no me estoy enredando en las palabras a fuerza de no poder oirmelas, a fuerza de escucharlas s6lo en mis adentros, sin encarnarlas [...]" (TR 94). Desire Although Penelope will remove herself from her position of depen dence on the hero, she becomes divided as she steps outside her mythical role. Penelope's expressions of desire suggest that Julia Kristeva's views on love and psychoanalytic discourse are appropriate in analyzing her dilemma. Kristeva proposed that the subject sees the object of love metaphorically as an idealized, symbolic Other essential for that subject to exist ("Freud and Love" 247). When such an ideal object is absent, it may become metonymic, contiguous to but always separate from the subject. In either case, the Other is a symbolic ideal existing prior to any relationship with a lover (253-54). Penelope's imagined dialogues with Ulysses reflect a complex relation ship with an Other, in both metonymic and metaphoric terms. During his absence, Ulysses, functioning as ideal object of love, is metonymic in being remembered but out of Penelope's reach. Because its object remains an illusion, her years-long voyage of desire is destined to be unfulfilled. As Penelope senses Ulysses' imminent return, she fears the dark side of desire: disillusion and the confrontation with the unknown: This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 142 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 Y tengo miedo, si, algo oscuro amenaza con precipitarse incontenible. Me rompere [. . .] y lo imaginado pierde su densidad de perfeccion para transformarse en algo neutro, brutal: hay que retroceder, hay que huir o aprestarse a perecer en un grito de avalancha. (TR 98) Penelope decides to flee by embarking on a metaphoric second voyage with the assistance of the goddess Calypso. As the goddess performs in Ulysses' place, Penelope relives some of Ulysses' erotic experiences; in a letter to him, she explains, "Para entenderte yo a ti, para no devorar en el odio lo que si alcanzo su plenitud vivida, decidi embarcar y recoger tus pasos, tomar el rumbo de tus aventuras y retrazar los escollos de tu retraso. . (TR 117). She discovers what it would have been like to be simultaneously self and Other as she becomes both herself with Ulysses and Ulysses with Calypso/Penelope/Other: "Calipso desplego para mi todas las transformaciones, y por amor a mi amor, revivio conmigo sus enlaces contigo [. . .]" (TR 118). She describes the experience in terms reminiscent of Spanish mystics: "Todo alrededor era luz y temblaba. Mis parpados, mis brazos, mis senos, mis piernas se posesionaron de ti hasta confundirnos con el roce del aire en la paja" (TR 118). Abandoning desire as separation, Penelope enters a space of sensual experience and unity not possible in ordinary consciousness but accessible in imagination and in the text she writes; it is a metaphoric connection like that described by Kristeva in her discussion of love as the unification of subject with idealized Other. Kristeva shows that such unity can be achieved only in terms of the metaphor of love (in discourse) and with an ideal, not an actual, lover. In Sed, Penelope provides the metaphoric textual discourse, and the goddess functions as the ideal Other. Given the paradoxical nature of love relationships, the close con nection between love and hate makes the lovers' encounters inevitably destructive. Once the Other is perceived as different and separate from the self, Kristeva finds that it will be hated for its strangeness (Kristeva, Historias de amor 198). Despite her longing for Ulysses, Penelope expresses hate for the man who abandoned her: Todavia puedo levantarme y gritar "no quiero"; [. . .] puedo, a fuerza de amor, odiar, y no perdonar el que me hayas dejado ir [...] Aborrezco la ligereza con que me abandonas a la ausencia dfa tras dia como si ella fuese mi verdadero amante. (TR 105) This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Solares 143 Feeling this slender separation between love and hate, Penelope dreams of sexual encounters with Ulysses in which she also inflicts violence on him: Entonces comprendi que hubiera querido penetrarte, si, herirte en cada caricia con el mismo cristal con que tu heriste mi ser. No fundirnos. No. Penetrar y salir, penetrar y dejarte dentro un dardo inflamado [...] Hacer estallar tu ser en tu ser [...]. (TR 118) To free herself, Penelope figuratively destroys Ulysses: "[. ..] liberarme yo misma de la prision que me construi dentro ..(TR 118). In a space filled with sensation, where she is independent of her need to be seen by an Other, Penelope gives up desire and makes it impossible for Ulysses to complete his mission. In a reversal of roles, Ulysses returns to the space of forever-unsatisfied desire that Penelope has abandoned.4 Although the Ulysses of Sed does not reunite with his wife, he claims to long for her despite liaisons with other women and goddesses. In a letter to Euricleia, Ulysses recounts his vision of returning home and finding Penelope. His claims of being misled by goddesses and hindered by jeal ous gods show the traditional message of The Odyssey, as he describes overcoming obstacles in the exploration of life: "[...] buscando la expe riencia nueva y el conocimiento de las cosas, voluptuosidad en esa lucha de la voluntad por domenar sus limitaciones [.. .]" (TR 111). However, instead of Penelope's identifying welcome, he is distressed to find his roots destroyed by her disappearance: Estoy aqui porque Penelope ha sido la guardiana de mis rakes. ;Puede acaso el sembrador entregar su semilla sin depositarla en el surco que la fertilice? Yo soy el que vine a ser nombrado por sus labios [...] el des nudo que penetra en el recinto para ser purificado . ..(TR 112-13) Like Penelope prior to her flight, Ulysses seeks completion in the Other represented by his wife. In Ulysses' desire to return to his home space, we see what Luce Irigaray describes as the positioning and taking of the woman's space by the male in his need, lacking any consideration for the woman's wish to occupy another space without limits. Irigaray confronts the male and derides him: "You never meet me except as your creature within the horizon of your world" ( 47). Having endured twenty years This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 144 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 of confinement, Penelope steps outside that enclosure into a place not accessible to Ulysses, similar to that of Irigaray's narrator: "Already I am further than the furthest you could imagine [...] Elsewhere, because I am so close that you cannot see me, nor hear me, nor even touch me. I live in a space and time that are not yours [...]" (Irigaray 19). As in Irigaray's text, the male hero will fear to move outside his own circle or to recognize Penelope other than as an extension of himself and a means to maintain his roots in home and family ( 20). Penelope undergoes transformation as she moves outside the structured world of myth into a space beyond Ulysses' world. However, it is not clear if she finds the life-giving space of infinite feeling described by Irigaray ( 20). Silence, Names, and Games Even as Penelope tries to place herself in the spaces of silence and absence in the novel's final chapter, such an action cannot be compre hended. The reader imagines Penelope's final act, described by her as an entrance into silence, as part of an "impossible text" in the style of Roland Barthes. Barthes classified desire and textual descriptions into two categories: pleasure, which is accessible in experience and writing, and bliss, which cannot be described and becomes part of an "impos sible text" (20).5 In the mysterious space from which Penelope writes at the novel's close, it does not matter whether she is alive; she will remain, both for Ulysses and for the reader, in an ambiguous place of absence, like death in that it is not knowable and like "bliss" because it is beyond the bounds of language and description. Accordingly, in the final words of the novel, Penelope imagines the irresolvable contradiction of silence becoming quiet: "El silencio dimelo Ulises, .jhabla el silencio? ^Que dice el silencio cuando calla?. .(TR 118). She suggests that language itself will disappear, but we as readers know that language remains in the form of the text, even if the mythical Penelope is absent. We can only imagine the space of absence, where "bliss" does not require language. The silence preceding all writing is not achieved as the "new" text depends on the "other" one slipping through to give it meaning, even in ambiguity. The paradox of Penelope's new, desired position is that she cannot speak while claiming silence, nor can the play of myth be forgotten. For Ulysses and Penelope, there is a common theme that is also found in Homer's Odyssey, that of the trick, "el engano." The play of appearances This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Solares 145 and of language is also important in Sed, not surprising in a contemporary approach to a myth in which the metaphorical is its crucial function. The meaning of names as signs is explored, as it is in The Odyssey; but in Sed Penelope and Ulysses will take differing approaches to the game of names. Ulysses' heroic identity is maintained through his memories of home, all means being justified in the epic and in Sed to enable his return. In Sed, Penelope uses a measure of self-deception to escape from becoming the wife of a now-altered hero. Memory and dream become for her spaces where language and the simultaneous hope and fear of Ulysses' return are confused: Hablar de lo que no tengo, de lo que no se como decir [...] de mi cuerpo envuelto en el recuerdo de tu ultima caricia [...] fragmentos de sueno que vienen a irrumpir en plena vigilia lacerandome la piel, [. ..] ese juego entre la espera y el temor a que la espera termine [...]. {TR 94) Memory and dream are perceived as spaces of illusion or "engano" as Penelope repeatedly awakens from sleep or reverie to discover that she is alone, still waiting. Yves Bonnefoy provides an interesting analysis of the significance of the play on the concept "nobody" in Odysseus's (this spelling is used by Bonnefoy) heroic voyages. In Homer's version of the epic, trickery enables the taking of Troy as well as Odysseus's narrow escape from the Cyclops, during which he claimed to be called "No Man." In the course of his journey he pretends to be a stranger, and he arrives home disguised as a beggar. On his travels, Odysseus acquires a false identity, appropriate in a deceptive world maintained that way by the gods themselves. However, to return home he will need to rediscover his true identity as a hero, not as Nobody, and to merge the conflicting inner and outer worlds in order to take up an authentic inner place. Bonnefoy shows how, upon his return, Homer's Ulysses will oscillate back and forth between the sign of the beggar and that of the hero, depending on whether memory or trickery is required to achieve recognition at a particular moment. He reveals himself to the nurse Euricleia by exposing the scar he received from a wild boar years before, thus playing on memory. Bonnefoy shows that it is through the body and memory that Ulysses will prove himself to his wife, first in a show of strength in killing the suitors and then in knowing the secret of the bed he built around a tree: "The name, which had become Nobody through a cunning trick, must find its final basis in This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 146 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 a genealogy by finding evidence right in the hero's body, [. ..] the solid body of the craftsman who no longer needs to use tricks but can now construct" (Bonnefoy 497). Reference to that special inner space connects past and present and enables the Ulysses of The Odyssey to take on his own name, centered through the body in time and place (497). In Seligson's version, Ulysses is unable to return to his roots, symbolically preserved in the body of his wife. Finding Penelope gone, he writes, "La inalterable presencia de Penelope ocupaba en mi un espacio [...] ningun otro gesto alterabala imagen de surostro trasmis pupilas [...]" (TR 112).The hero has lost everything that anchored him. If Ulysses' return is seen, in Bonnefoy's terms, as a retiring from exterior deception in the world to interior authenticity at home, Penelope turns the signs around in Sed and moves into an exterior space to escape dependence and discover herself. The call that motivates her to flee is, like Ulysses' connection with home, a physical one that opens up her emotional horizons: "Y me toco el llamado, Ulises [...] es como un ansia de apertura, de abrir el horizonte hasta el limite de su latir profundo [...]" (TR 116). Her journey is more difficult because it is open-ended in space and time, having no destination other than to move away and to retrace Ulysses' steps. She does not find a name, an identity, or the words to describe her experience. In Sed, there is no word that could return to the speaker the power and unity of original creation. Rather, words and names are deceptive and in need of interpretation. Both Ulysses and Penelope will end up nameless at the novel's closeUlysses for lack of an Other to name him and Penelope by her own choice as she steps outside the myth. Ulysses remains "Nobody," stuck in a textual space constructed of pieces of his own myth, and Penelope accepts any name because she has not been "Someone" from the start: "Penelope ha quedado atras. Para la que hoy te habla da igual el nombre con que la nombren: Cora, Circe, Nadie. ^No fue asf como te nombraste?Nadie [...]" (TR 114).Because the myth cannot speak without its symbols, Penelope creates an ambiguous text that undermines the earlier one. Although Penelope as fictional character and voice suggests that the myth of the hero may be altered, it becomes evident that for the reader, this is impossible. The underlying presence of the traditional myth remains, preventing Penelope from occupying the space she desires.6 In her own writings, such as Didlogos con el cuerpo (1981), Seligson provides clues to Penelope's voyage and the limitations in achieving This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Solares 147 transformation in language. In Dialogos, she argues that the word/lan guage comes from the body in contact with another: "Recorrer un cuerpo como quien remonta la corriente de un rio hasta su origen, [...] el barro al que la palabra dara forma, [. . .] la indeleble marca de la vida, fluir incontenible de la voz emitiendo signos que son la piel misma, [. . .]" (TR 67). The body of the Other, as object of search, offers the potential for language and adventure: Mirar, tocar, escuchar, nombrar: recorrer un cuerpo es realizar un acto de palabras [. . .] Porque se sale hacia un cuerpo como quien parte de viaje por desconocida ruta, hinchadas las velas por azarosos vientos [...]. ("Dialogos" 67-68) From this perspective, the lack of another's body as the necessary space for the creation of words could explain Penelope's difficulty in creating a voice. She gives up the body to free herself from desire, but she also needs the body to create a voice. As Ulysses returns from the world, Penelope flees potential intimacy and enters another undefined and limitless space she has constructed for herself. The mythical space of origins, including the body as the source of language, cannot connect with the ambiguous spaces suggested in Sed as the mythical text is deconstructed. Penelope and Ulysses interchange multiple positions without meeting in any of them. In Sed, the sea repre sents a boundless space for Penelope, and thus she launches herself into it as a potential means to escape the interior prison of desire. In contrast, Ulysses moves about in the sea to prove himself but always longs to return to the interior, bounded space of home. Penelope remains within spaces of imagination, initially that of desire for the absent Ulysses within the myth that created her and then that of a voyage to a mysterious space from which she writes at the close of the novel. She moves from communing with absence to stepping into silence, from the space without the body to the space without language. Although Penelope's insatiable desire tears her apart in the absence of its object, in this novel she has the final word. By giving up desire, she makes it impossible for Ulysses to fulfill his mission. In a reversal of roles, Ulysses will now take his place in the space of desire forever unsatisfiedthat position abandoned by Penelope. Although Penelope and Ulysses will no longer fulfill their roles as symbols within the myth, their positions remain determined by their This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 148 Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 relationship to each other, even as the story changes in this revised text. In studying the paradoxes of Sed, Jacques Derrida's concept of the "key word" reveals how a text may be deconstructed rather than unified. Gyatri Spivak, in her introduction to Of Grammatology, defines key words in this way: If in the process of deciphering a text in the traditional way we come across a word that seems to harbor an irresolvable contradiction, and by virtue of being one word is made sometimes to work in one way and sometimes in another and thus is made to point away from the absence of a unified meaning, we shall catch at that word, (lxxv) The most contradictory of terms for Penelope is that of "silence." As she writes her story, she speaks of stepping into silence, an unimaginable place for her. The painful ambiguity (key word) for Ulysses is "absence," for the absence of Penelope undermines his mythical role and forces him to take another position that will involve neither presence nor absence. In the cases of Ulysses and Penelope, each moves away from completing the unified symbol: Penelope + Ulysses = the hero's voyage and return home. Instead, they become potentially separate signs of No One and of Silence in a written text that cannot be silent. Rather than acquiring different identities, the positions of the "new" characters appear to be interchangeable and to prevent any outcome in closure. Penelope will not actually become a sign of silence, only its possibility as a textual layer erased and written over. Reminders of the earlier mythical text make Sed readable and prevent it from being silent. "Silence" as a sign is thus not what it seems when both Penelope and Ulysses speak of existing in it once each has lost its Other. Both figures will alter their positions with respect to the concept of names and naming, traditional elements in language and creation. Whereas in the myth Ulysses was No Man needing to prove himself, here he remains forever in an ambiguous space, lacking the unity provided by mythic identity. Penelope occupies a similar position with respect to a name, but she accepts that she will have none. She does, however, take up a new position by writing and speaking, giving up the place of the passive object of desire incarnate. Together these two words, absence and silence, combine as another impossible sign that erases that of Ulysses and Penelope. It is the reader's sense of the previous mythical values that lends some meaning to their new positions. This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Solares 149 Penelope's apparent transformation becomes more ambiguous because we, as readers, cannot entirely separate the old and the new texts. Both silence and absence are impossible spaces for characters depending on myth and textuality. In apparent silence, Penelope will write herself, becoming No One as she replaces the myth of Ulysses and Penelope with the possibility that neither hero nor home were other than writings from another space of absence, that of desire and language. The reader, how ever, will not forget the original Odyssey as a journey completed, making a silent voice from nowhere impossible at the same time that the myth has been undermined. NOTES 'Discussion of Esther Seligson's background and interests comes from an interview published by Miguel Angel Quemain in Reverso de la palabra. This is an informative collection of interviews with many Mexican writers, freely pursuing their opinions on life and literature. Additional information also comes from my personal conversations with the author. 2Sed de mar will be abbreviated as Sed. All of Seligson's works referenced in this article can be found in the collection Trtptico, abbreviated as TR. 3For a discussion of the uses of myth in literature, including the voyage of the hero, refer to works by Juan Villegas, such as La estructura mitica del heroe. In Mythical Intentions in Literature, Eric Gould describes myth as an intention "to confront the unanswerable" in terms of multiple possibilities in language that transform meaning into form (178). Other contemporary approaches to myth and literature appear in works by Colin Falck and Milton Scarborough. 4The novel introduces the theme of unsatisfied desire in the title as well as the epigraphs, all referring to thirst and introducing the metaphorical nature of the language anticipated in the novel. The first epigraph is from the poem "Cuarto solo" by Alejandra Pizarnik: "Seguramente vendra / una presencia para tu sed / probablemente partira / esta ausencia que te bebe" (TR 91). This poem reflects the ambiguity of the novel's title as presence and absence are personified, the presence being the unrealizable quencher of thirst at the same time absence drinks its object dry. In Sed, Penelope occasionally feels that her imagined lover is absence itself, as she writes to Ulysses, "Aborrezco la ligereza con que me abandonas a la ausencia, dia tras dia, como si ella fuese mi verdadero amante" (TR 105). Pizarnik's poem sums up the nature of desire as longing This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 for an object that exists only in language. The second epigraph is from "Suite del insomnio" by Xavier Villaurrutia: "Tengo sed. / ^De que agua? / ^Agua de sueno? No, / de amanecer" (TR 91). Thirst implies a desire for a change that might reduce the suffering of the existing state, but it may not mean possession of the object of longing. The title of the novel, Sed de mar, suggests a boundless desire, like a thirst unquenchable because slaked on salt water. Ocean and water imagery appear often in the language of Penelope as she tells Ulysses he will forget her: "Olvidaras, sin mar, sin isla, sin balsa [...] libre de esa sed insaciable ..(TR 117). To describe her immense longing, she writes, "Quiero romper las olas con pies de gozo y mojarme los labios en la sed de mar, olvidar la lugubre cosecha de vigilias inclementes" (TR 106). Penelope metaphorically satisfies her thirst but not in a reunion with Ulysses; rather, Calypso acts in his place in an encounter both erotic and violent. The reader understands that, for Penelope, the unwritten space may be the silence and eternity of deathdesired but beyond conscious experience. The novel's title appears also to be an intertextual reference to a poem pub lished by Ramon Lopez Velarde in 1909, "Hermana, hazme llorar." In directing himself to the beloved "sister" Fuensanta, the lyric voice asks the following: Fuensanta: tu conoces el mar? Dicen que es menos grande y menos hondo que el pesar. Yo no se por que quiero llorar: serd tal vez por el pesar que escondo, tal vez por mi infinita sed de amar. Hermana: dame todas las lagrimas del mar ... (Obras 106) If Penelope's thirst is as boundless as the ocean in the sense of desire unsat isfied, in Lopez Velarde's poem it is love that is limitless in the suffering of the lover. Lopez Velarde's lover accepts his situation of separation from the beloved, whereas Penelope seeks to bridge the gap with her absent lover by entering another space and constructing herself. 5In describing the "pleasure of the text," Barthes finds that pleasure can be expressed in words and logic, whereas bliss involves the split subject and cannot be directly explained (20-22). This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Solares 6In her analysis of Sed, Aralia Lopez Gonzalez discusses Penelope's need to find her own name as part of a search for identity apart from that of Ulysses. Lopez Gonzalez finds that the act of negating her relationship with the hero is sufficient to provide Penelope a subject voice: "Se trata de un nombre indepen diente de la mediaci6n del hombre y su espejismo. Penelope dice 'no', se niega a ser asumida [. . .] como una abstraction; es decir, como una mujer ideal" (471). This action and the independent decision to leave home are sufficient for Lopez Gonzalez to conclude that Penelope has succeeded. However, I find that the new character will remain without an identity because of her existence in textual ambiguity. If acquiring a name is part of the formation of the male hero, then it is not surprising that Penelope would give up having a name as she refuses that path. WORKS CITED Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975. Bonnefoy, Yves. Mythologies. Vol. 1. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. Falck, Colin. Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Post-Modernism. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1994 Gould, Eric. Mythical Intentions in Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981. Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Albert Cook. New York: Norton, 1977. Irigaray, Luce. Elemental Passions. New York: Routledge, 1992. Kristeva, Julia. "Freud and Love: Treatment and Its Discontents." The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 238-71. . Historias de amor. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1987. This content downloaded from 132.248.101.205 on Mon, 1 Apr 2013 17:03:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Letras Femeninas Volumen XXXI Numero 2 Lopez Gonzalez, Aralia. "La otra etica: reinterpretacion femenina de mujeres miticas." Sin imageries falsas sin falsos espejos. Coord. A. Lopez Gonzalez. Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico, 1995. 465-75. Lopez Velarde, Ramon. Obras. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1971. Quemain, Miguel Angel. Reverso de lapalabra. Mexico: La memoria del Tlacuilo, 1996. Scarborough, Milton. Myth and Modernity: Post-critical Reflections. Albany: State U of New York, 1994. Seligson, Esther. Triptico. Presentacion de Jose Maria Espinasa. Mexico: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1993. . "Dialogos con el cuerpo." Seligson 61-87. . "Otros son los suenos." Seligson 19-55. . "Sed de mar." Seligson 91-118. Spivak, Gayatri. Translators Preface. Derrida ix-lxxxvii. Villegas, Juan. La estructura mitica del heroe. Barcelona: Planeta, 1973. 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