sed de mar (artículo en inglés)
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Undermining the Space of the Hero: Esther Seligson's "Sed de mar"
Author(s): Mariana SolaresSource: Letras Femeninas, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Invierno 2005), pp. 139-152Published by: Asociacion Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina HispanicaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23021591.
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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.
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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
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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:
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
bbreviated 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
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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).
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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.
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8/12/2019 Sed de Mar (Artculo en Ingls)
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