The Realm of Silence The Two Novels of Josefina Vicens

The Realm of Silence: The Two Novels of Josefina Vicens
Author(s): Pamela Bacarisse

Source: Letras Femeninas, Vol. 22, No. 1/2 (PRIMAVERA-OTOO 1996), pp. 91-106
Published by: Asociacion Internacional de Literatura y Cultura Femenina Hispanica
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The
The
Two
Realm
Novels
Pamela
University
of Silence:
of Josefina
Vicens
Bacarisse
of Pittsburgh
Ainsi, entre deux langues,

votre element est-il le silence
Thus, between two languages,
your realm is silence
Julia Kristeva
Etrangers
a nous-memes
In the letter to the author that serves
as the preface to a recent

two narrative works, El libro vacio (1958)
Octavio Paz observes that above all the
and Los anos falsos (1982),
He detects in it
first novel is permeated by the theme of nothingness.
edition of Josefina Vicens'
a vision
of men and women "caminando

siempre al borde del vacio, a
la orilla de la gran boca de la insignificancia,"
'walking on the edge of
as he attributes to this
the void, of the great chasm of insignificance,'
text "una
filosofia
'a philosophy
of the world.'1
mundo"
ness
que
se enfrenta a la no-significacion
radical del
that faces up to the fundamental meaningless
To the best of my knowledge
Paz has not
expressed his views on the second novel, but since the two works have
so many thematic links his one comment may be enough to provide a
it is by
basis for an argument that applies
to them both. Indeed,
highlighting
similarities
attempt to locate the psycho

which Paz may well have
philosophy
that I shall
logical origin of the authorial

been the first to discern.
92
Letras
This
Femeninas,
Volume
XXII,
Nos.
1-2
(1996)
critical
aim suggests that questions

of social, professional
will
receive
scant
even though
attention,
insignificance
these are alluded to, both explicitly and implicitly, in the narratives;
and sexual
this is indeed
signposts
so since
it is my contention that the (in this case) false

and sociocultural
hierarchies pale into
when compared with Vicens'
ontological
preoccupa
of socio-economic
insignificance
tions. It is these which
afford universal
awareness
depth to the two texts, and

is vital to their classification
and to
of their universality
In fact, I should go so far as to affirm that
value judgments.
were it not for the date of at least the first novel (1958)and
even that
of the second,
both
be
(1982)they
might
possibly
immediately
critical
of a mature and generally-applicable

manifestations
post
feminism, of a tranquil authorial assumption that, in a literary context
if in no other, there is no longer a pressing need always to establish a
set of values, nor for a sense of evangelical
mission
gender-based
with the establishment
of unassailable
as its goal.
feminocentricity
judged
Neither
should there be an automatic assumption

that to write is to
battle in the arena of the gender war. The woman writer's self-esteem,
her right to write, can now be taken for granted; she has at last arrived
at a point beyond the long and difficult detour in the road that was
militant and explicit feminism.
It is not, I suggest, that Josefina
Vicens did not reach the point of detour in her lifetime, rather that the
orientation of her writings is (like those of Manuel Puig, and even
Clarice Lispector) one that lay beyond facile
pace Helene Cixousof
that what they reveal is a profounder
level of
of
a
far
from
circumstance:
that
understanding
consoling
suffering,
and ontological
humiliation
domain
insecurity are not the exclusive
manichaeism,
and
of women, however difficult and unjust our socio-economic

situation
be.
In
in
the
same
Latin
American
that
various
artists
fact,
may
way
Frida Kahlo and Octavio
Paz himself spring to mind have been
"natural surrealists,"
I contend that Josefina Vicens was
designated
always a natural post-feminist.
In any case, I feel that ontological
insecurity is the principal
thematic
element
in these
two novels, and the two most striking

of this are first, a reiterated, though usually implicit,
sense of "foreign-ness"
(or otherness), and second, constant depiction
manifestations
of the power and effects of human desire. It is as difficult for the

reader to avoid these features as it is to ignore the most pervasive
image, the one already referred to in my title: silence.
Bacarisse
93
Let us consider
"hombre
self-styled
write because
In El libro vacio, the narrator is a

"foreign-ness."
comun" 'ordinary man' (17) who has no wish to
he has nothing to say, but who nevertheless

does write
"quierfe] notar que no escrib[e] y quier[e] que los demas lo
noten tambien" he wants to note that he is not writing and he wants
because
others to note it too' (14). (Though this is by no means the first time
that an author has written about writing, this novel may well be unique
in its preoccupation
with not writing.) He goes on to justify his
starting a novel at this juncture
for twenty years by explaining
after resisting the temptation

that:
to do so
y poderoso
que actua dentro de mi,
vigilado por mi, pero nunca vencido. Es como ser dos. Dos que
dan vueltas constantemente,
Pero a veces me he
persiguiendose.
hay
algo
independiente
preguntado
^quien a quien? Llega a perderse todo sentido. Lo
unico que preocupa
es que no se alcancen.
Sin embargo debe
haber ocurrido ya, porque aqui estoy, haciendolo.
there's
something
that I'm
independent and powerful operating inside me

over but cannot control. It's as if I were two
watching
people. Two people who go around in circles all the time, chasing
one another. But sometimes
I ask myself who's chasing whom.
There comes a point where it doesn't
make sense. My only
concern is that they don't catch each other. Still, it must have
happened because here I am, doing what I'm doing. (13)
"Me
siento ajeno a mf' 'I feel a stranger to myself,' he admits (31,

subterraneo"
'the underground part'
my italics), for half of him"lo
the other half remorselessly.
The outcome is that he
(13)plagues
feels obliged to initiate a fight which, inevitably, he must be eager to
win even though he is aware from the outset that "no emprendiendola
es como la gan[a]"
'not starting it is the way to win it' (14). He buys
himself two exercise books, the first to jot down his thoughts, the
other for the definitive
version of his projected novel. The latter, of

is
the
course,
eponymous
empty book of El libro vacio, the last words
of which serve to underline the extent of his failure: "Tengo
que
encontrar esa primera frase. Tengo que encontrarla"
'I have to find
that first sentence.
I simply have to' (136).

From the beginning a split in the psyche of the putative author is
only too evident he is made up of two selves, neither of which is
94
Letras
Femeninas,
Volume
XXII,
Nos.
1-2
(1996)
the reader is also made aware of

a part of him (30)but
essentially
the gulf between the person who is writing (or, in a sense, not writing)
and the ambitious
young dreamer that he once was. It is equally
his sense of powerless
to ignore or even underplay
him when faced with his unimaginative
This overwhelms
of understanding
his insecurity and confusion,
wife who is incapable
impossible
alienation.
the other whose admiration

uncomprehending,
at work, and
a kind of straitjackethis
colleagues
that he attempts
man in general: on the one occasion
his two childrenone

of him constitutes
even his fellow
with a stranger he is rebuffed.2 What all this

conversation
down to is the portrait of a subject who is a foreigner in his own
of which he is only too
land: to others he is the Other, a circumstance
a serious
comes
what
the Other, who ultimately constitutes
However,
Freud designated das Unheimliche, the strange or foreign or uncanny,
resides within him.
simultaneously
conscious.
second novel, Los anos falsos, boasts another

and
this
is a point of interest since this too may be
male narrator,
thought to indicate the presence of the foreign Other within the author
Josefina
Vicens'
let us consider the unhappy nineteen

in
his
telling
story, reveals an extraordinarily
fragile
year-old who,
For
the
last
four static years, the false years of the
sense of identity.
title, he has been obliged to act as a substitute for his dead father.3 His
herself.
But for the moment
lack of an integrated personality is obvious as the novel opens: he is

to
his mother and sisters on their annual excursion
accompanying
what he sees as his own tomb, but which is actually that of his father.
all come to see me,' he
"Todos
hemos venido a verme" 'We've
explains;
'I greet
"me recibo
myself
en silencio
silently
brought.' Nevertheless,
pray for him' (141).4
Like the protagonist
and
las flores que traje"

y me agradezco
thank
for
the flowers I've
say
you
he goes on to say that "[r]ezan
por el" 'they
of El libro vacio, he makes valiant efforts to

the
becoming
dupe of his internal "foreigner," though this term
in this case since it alludes to a dearly-loved
may seem inappropriate
of his struggle to resist are
and admired
father. (Two
examples
avoid
perhaps enough: first, although he bears his father's name, he refuses

a cross to be placed on
to share his nickname; second, he commissions
that his father would have disliked its
the tomb in the full knowledge
it is painfully difficult for him to maintain any
However,
over his identity when he is constantly
or control
autonomy
confronted by others who demand that he be what they want him to be:
design.)
Bacarisse
95
As
que sostiene la casa" 'the man of the house' (144).
more than one metaphor materializes,
this phrase comes to mean that
he will actually become the father who will always live within him.
"el hombre
Needless
to say, he subsumed this alien identity on his father's death

four years earlier: before that they had been two different people with
functions and roles within the family and the
clearly delimited
community
boy almost
and in the world. Little time had passed though before the
mechanically
dug a hole in the still-soft earth of the tomb
"lo suficientemente
amplio
entrar"
[el]
'big enough for
This, he tells us, is
(170).
And yet they have
places.
which is indicated
como para que [su padre] pudiera salir y

his father to get out and for him to go in'
what has happened:
they have changed
not quite done that; they have, rather,

by the fact that now his fervent desire is to
merged,
be six years old again so that he can again listen to the words of a
someone
who was
and objectively
beloved
a
incontrovertibly
different person (208).
It is the confused
awareness
of
that most
"foreign-ness"
tension, but indications of the workings
Obviously, El libro vacio is colored by
obviously signals ontological

of desire are also suggestive.
the narrator's yearning to know how to {saber)
write in order to be
able to (poder) write and there are several short disquisitions
on the
novel.5 But a longing to become an integrated being, free and open to
all possibilities,
is evident too, together with the wish to escape from
isolation by means of meaningful and authentic communication
with
others (45), to be forgiven for "rotting," or stagnating as time passed
most important of allto acquire a consolatory
(13), andperhaps
sense of identity.6 At one point the protagonist attempts this by means
of the creative
from a new love:
gaze of recognition
emanating
he
decided
to
her
invitation
in
the
first
indeed,
accept
place, he says,
"no precisamente
para encontrarme con ella, sino conmigo mismo"
'not to meet her, exactly, but to meet myself (90).
There is a notable similarity between this search for a whole and
recognizable
protagonist
self and that which

of the second
is found
in Los
anos falsos.
The
novel is little more than a child but is almost
of time: "un dfa

by the inexorable
preoccupied
passage
de
..
.
uno
ser
lo
era"
'one
cualquiera
deja
que
day you just stop being
who you were' (150). Though change is beyond his control, he claims
equally
to be reconciled
to be eager to repair unsatisfactory
relationships,
with his mother and sisters (who had always been treated with disdain
both by him and by his father, 149), and to distance himself from the
96
Letras Femeninas,
Volume XXII, Nos. 1-2 (1996)
for whom his

connected
to the politician
task.
(142). An impossible
The connection between these often unexceptionable
desires and
insecurity might be suspect were it not for the fact that,
ontological
retinue
of suspect
father had worked
toadies
the
are simultaneously
prey to
For
in
incompatible,
yearnings.
example,
spite of his
with literary creation, the narrator of El libro vacio keeps
obsession
insisting that he has no desire to write. When he manages to avoid
paradoxically,
two
protagonists
conflictive
so for a week, he calls it "una pequena

victoria"
'a minor
and
abstinence
for
a
of
six
months, but
victory' (37)
promises
period
at the same time he is conscious
of the pointlessness
of destroying his
doing
feel obliged to describe what he has done in

Then,
writing (74).
although he claims to want to free himself from all
those obligations
that bind him to a miserable, aimless and exhausting
his
lifestyle and he has frequently toyed with the idea of abandoning
notebooks
since he would
wife and children,
when all's
said and done he loves them; he rather

in
freedom
and independence
are rather
fact;
enjoys family life,
and he is not afraid to admit that he would not
daunting concepts,
know what he would
do if forced to live alone.
Furthermore, though
the
of
profoundly regretting
impossibility
establishing
any kind of
authentic relationship
with another human being, it is he who quite
isolates himself and is chronically silent, always refusing
deliberately
to justify or explain himself to those he deals with on a daily basis.
Therefore he feels alone, even lonely, but ironically this is exactly
what he wants because
a solitary state indicates
a distinctive,
individualistic
and special condition.

he underlines the respect
(It is worthy of note that in his

and admiration
manifested by
that he is a writer.) In the end, the
daydreams
others when
they discover
and
of time does not prevent him from
distressing
rapid passage
waiting and hoping for something to turn up, even if this is no more
than a "blanca
e inutil espera" 'a white, pointless waiting' (161). Even

to know who he is is constantly undermined by a not entirely
with everyone
sense of being interchangeable
else.
disagreeable
his desire
the book it is emphasized

that he is an "ordinary man"
Throughout
who lacks "la medida" ('the measure,'
his favorite term) in order to
become somebodythe
raw material is not there, it seems. "Siempre
habra nuevos
he maintains
claims
been
Jose Garcia"
'there will be plenty more Jose Garcias,'

and when he
perverse pleasure,
with a certain
(57)
that he and his workmates
accused
of petty larceny,
who has
are, in a sense, a colleague
it might be thought that this rather
Bacarisse
97
statement suggests that the anonymity of communal

moralistic
life
can be consoling.
As for the protagonist of Los anos falsos, althoughas
we have
notedit
has occurred
with his mother
and
to him to attempt to improve his relationship

the
sisters, everything he says demonstrates
nature of his alienation

from them. He
permanent and irrevocable
cannot forget that he used to feel suffocated by his mother's embraces
and he is scornful of the fact that she invariably spoke to him in terms
that were "mimosas
y tontas" 'arch and stupid' (146); that when his

sisters, twins whom he describes as "flacas y feas" 'skinny and ugly',
were born he was absolutely disgusted (148); that his greatest desire
had always been to go on a long journey with his father, leaving the
three women at home; and that the family had always been divided
(149). Furthermore, the women continue to irritate him: they cannot
his
much less share them ("no

feelings,
don't
undertsand
'they
anything,' 195). They treat
him with a submissive
respect which he not only finds disagreeable
understand
entienden
sensitive
nada"
but which
is also quite unnerving because

it shows that they are
him
of
for
what
and
who
he actually is. With
incapable
recognizing
his father's death "se murio toda mi familia" 'all my family died,' he
says (187). Then, his political career offers him little hope of release;
although
considered
he
is
remorseful
because
he
deceived
someone
he
a friend with "el falso y estupido relato de [sus] parrandas

'false and stupid accounts of his drinking sprees
y [sus] "influencias"
and his connections,'
his inner foreigner, that is to say his father
'we're in this together,' 194) persuades
him to
("somos
complices"
on
off
and
of
his
intention
to
go
showing
talking pompously
"pisar
fuerte . . . y llegar muy alto" 'be ruthless and go places'
(175). It is
when the friend reminds him that they are "cuates"
that he
'pals'
decides
to sever
relations
with him. All this happens
as he is
to
find
out
who
he
between
a
desire to
is, vacillating
attempting
just
be his father, which is so pressing that he begins an affair with his
father's ex-mistress,
and the need to conform to the dictates of his
own personality ... if such a thing can be said to exist.
A close reading of both texts reveals the presence of what can only
be called a state of mental disorder in their protagonists, and some of
the disconcerting
symptoms may be familiar to many people even if
it is unusual to find all of them co-existing
in one subject and at such
an intense level. Nevertheless,
the novels
could conceivably
be
classified
as portrayals
of the unfathomable
nature
of the human
Letras Femeninas,
98
left at that if it were
and
psyche
not so obvious
that the desires
depicted in their pages are little more than signifiers. What is vitally
important is that all of them, even the fundamental longing to acquire
individual identity, are directed towards the
and be able to recognize
undeniably knowable, be this human, tangible or abstract. This is the
theories of
reason why, using as my starting point the psychoanalytic
Julia Kristeva, I would suggest that the basis of these desires-with-a
itself, the vital, life-giving force which has no
It is, of course, difficult to avoid reference to the current
predicate.
of rationalist
the concept
between
those who espouse
debate
predicate
is Desire
discourse
and the rationalist
model
of the self and those who insist on
the power
itself, but in the case of the novels of Josefina
time on the
fruitful to spend
it is not particularly
Vicens,
of whether reason should control desire (as Western
consideration
of desire
or defending the
tradition has generally maintained)
philosophical
What is more relevant is to emphasize the presence
counter-tradition.7
with the effects
its connection
of desire and to try to establish
in the narratives.
described
If desire
is indeed
a life-giving
the human
force, then it is less a question of

than of a need simply to be. Its
mere metonymic,
or
constitute
need to be somebody
will therefore
objects
values
(it should go without saying that this does not mean
displaced,
of putting a
and the only force capable
that they lack signification)
we
should
not
limit on desire will be death, although
forget Lacan's
varying
dictum
that with death
satisfaction.8
Lacan
of desire, not its

that alien desire which dwells in the
the eternalization
comes
also located
center of our being, with its "text" repressed, and has referred to an
inevitably contradictory and conflictive psychic split, similar to those
that may have attracted the reader's attention in these novels, when
of internal alienation.
on the concept
Any acts or
elaborating
in
oneself
without
which
one
observes
he
manifestations,
claims,
being able to establish a connection to the rest of one's mental life will
have to be judged as if they belonged to someone else.9
internal
of Julia Kristeva
the theories
regarding
Although
are almost certainly the most helpful in any attempt to
"foreign-ness"
sort of shape in this ontological
(there is no
puzzle
there
is
another
of
it
of
course),
point
definitively,
solving
possibility
to be borne in mind before turning to them, and that is that at the same
create
time
some
that a subject
desires,
to
avoid
made
unwittingly,
but perhaps
an effort is constantly,
of that desire, since
the satisfaction
Bacarisse
99
satisfaction
would
(seem to) be the equivalent of self-destruction.

("A
si
esta
no
sera
la
del
miedo
a la
pienso
angustia
gran angustia
I wonder if this anguish might be the great
muerte" 'Sometimes
anguish which is the fear of dying,' muses the non-writer of El libro
veces
in its refusal to be constrained

vacio, 34.) Desire "consists
by the
satisfactions
that would extinguish it," according to theorists such as
Leo Bersani and Julia Kristeva.10 The selection of one single object of
desire would constitute a totalizing action and this is something that
many people, including the protagonist of El libro vacio, are unable to
limit themselves to. He in particular has never been able to choose one
chocolate
from a selection in a box and when he was young he had not
even been capable of deciding which of two equally attractive sisters
he wanted as his girl-friend. In the case of the box of chocolates,
he
would keep the one he had taken "pero [su] deseo permaneci'a en los
otros"
'his desire stayed with the others' (75). "Lo queria todo," he
un
admits, "y no me resignaba a elegir, porque la eleccion significaba
'I wanted everything, and I couldn't resign
corte al total anhelado"
myself to having to choose, since choosing would mean a split in the
longed-for wholeness'
(77). So it is that he has no option but to be a
writer
who
does
not
write
because
the
written
word
would
him, and the adolescent narrator of Los anos falsos has to

compromise
become his dead father, but without abandoning
his own self." In a
in the frustrated author of the first novel has
sense, something
selected
a particular
of frustration; his internal

that "an ordinary
(and erroneously)
stranger presumably
supposed
man" would never be able to write anything, would have nothing to
deliberately
field
say and would therefore be incapable of satisfying his desire. "Yo no

'I don't accept my measure with
acepto mi medida humildemente"
he
assures
but
this
reveals
that at least he believes that
us,
humility,'
he recognizes
his own insufficiency. The basis for the dualism of the
narrator of the second
obliged
the voice
novel is even more obvious, for all he had been

moment in his life was to listen to
to do at the most traumatic
constant
of his own filial admiration

observations
mistresson
to replace
There
and love and combine
of othersfamily,
the subject of his resemblance
it with the
friends
and, later on, his

to his father and the need
him.
is a difference
between
the two
situations
which
does
appear to be rather important: in the first novel the protagonist's

desire to be a writer comes, apparently, from an autonomous
element
which he cannot in any way control but which is incontrovertibly
part
100
Letras Femeninas,
of him; there is no question of external interference

others who are indisputably others. However unlikely
on the part of
it may appear,
this means
that he can still conserve some power over the situation

and his life in general. He is more or less consciously
going towards
what he calls "una derrota buscada, hasta anhelada"
'a sought-after,
even longed-for defeat' (14). This is not so in the second narrative.
There is much more emphasis here on the impotence of the tyrannized
protagonist, who behaves as if mesmerized
by his recognition of the
desires of others. Even so, he does espouse these, thus intensifying
that part of his own suffering (itself a life-giving concept since it
connotes the lack which in its turn leads us to desire) which has its
basis in ambivalence.
even ambivalence
can be judged
However,
ontologically
positive; it may suggest "not incapacity, but power. It
contradictions
and conflict.
. . . [It] represents
an
encompasses
to
it
includes
rather
than
excludes."12
opening
experience,
Kristeva's
in various texts but in
thesis, which she has elaborated
its most
detailed
symptoms
suffered
form
in Etrangers
by real
is that the
nous-memes,
or
for a
foreigners,
exilesnostalgia
hatred towards others and themselves
time and place,

particular
in that it provides a certain consistency
(which is actually consolatory
and authenticity), a sense of being hated in their turn and reduced by
others to passive objects, feelings of isolation resulting from their
free individualism,
an inability to discover what they think
supposed
un
de
hombre
tantas
verdades
momentaneas,
("soy
que no se cual es
la verdad" 'I am a man of so many shortlived truths that I can't tell
which actually is the truth,' admits Jose Garcia, in Vicens' first novel,
to pre-empt their own exclusion
58), a tendency
by excluding
others are based on the fact that we are all strangers to ourselves.13
And the equally disconcerting
and revealing reaction to foreigners
human beings who are actually in situ confirms her views:
of
... cette experience de PabTme entre moi et 1'autre qui me

choque je ne le per9ois meme pas, il m'annihile
peut-etre parce
que je le nie. Face a l'etranger
que je refuse et auquel
je
m'identifie
a la fois, je perds mes limites, je n'ai plus de
Etrange
oil l'on m'avait laissee

contenant, les souvenirs des experiences
tomber me submergent, je perds contenance.
Je me sens "perdue,"
"brumeuse."
variantes
sont
les
de l'inquietante
"vague,"
Multiples
etrangete: toutes reiterent ma difficulty a me placer par rapport a
1'autre, et refont le trajet de 1'identification-projection
qui git au
fondement de mon accession
a l'autonomie.
101
Bacarisse
of the abyss separating me from the

[SJtrange is the experience
other who shocks meI do not even perceive him, perhaps he
crushes
me because
I negate him. Confronting
the foreigner
I reject and with whom at the same time I identify, I lose
I no longer have a container, the memory of
my boundaries,
when I had been abandoned
overwhelms
me. I lose
experiences
whom
I feel "lost," "indistinct,"

my composure.
"hazy." The uncanny
allows
for
variations:
strangeness
many
they all repeat the
difficulties I have in situating myself with respect to the other and
that lies at
keep going over the course of identification-projection
the foundation
of my reaching
autonomy.14
The movement
If it is true that we are

goes in both directions.
to
that
the
ourselves,
strangers
foreigner is within us, then the
of
the Other will disturb us. Furthermore,
we
"foreign-ness"
ourselves
are foreigners to everyone else.
Now it is quite obvious that for Josefina Vicens "foreign-ness"
is
a metaphor rather than a literal indication of the condition of an exile
who may (as Kristeva suggests)
be considered
a traitor to the home
territory. Even so, I feel that Kristevan theories will help us to classify
the orientation of the psyche of the author's creations, for at the same
time that both Vicens'
see themselves
as strangers to
protagonists
of the uncanny presence of the stranger

others, they are conscious
within. At first glance, the fact that the protagonist of El libro vacio
determines not to write in the first person singular seems to be merely
a sign of his interest in novelistic

but it also draws the
technique,
reader's attention to the non-existence
of a complete person capable
of homogeneity
of expression.
like the adolescent
in Los
Moreover,
anos falsos, we note that he is between two languages, just like the
geographic
stranger: Kristeva points out that in this situation the only
will be silence.
possible result the only element, the only "realm"
When the non-writer in El libro vacio thinks about his two selves
and the struggle between them, which he categorizes

as "evidente y
'obvious
and violent,'
it occurs to him to intervene and
pacify the situation. "Yo quisiera, naturalmente, darle la razon al que
violenta"
opina que no debo excribir. Y se la daria si lo dijera con lo unico que

eso puede decirse: el silencio" 'Needless
to say, I'd like to support the
one who thinks I mustn't write. And I'd do so if I said it in the only
way it can be said: with silence'
(30).
world, this silent condition resembles
In effect, as he confronts the

that of the adolescent
in the
102
Letras Femeninas,
second
book. There are invariably
two languagesthe
two referred to
are
that
of the truth,
by
fundamentally
they
but yearned for, and that of falsehood, or inauthenticity.
impenetrable
"Escribo
falsedades"
'I write untruths,' admits the first protagonist
Kristevaand
(54), only to add: "mi deseo es decir la verdad siempre, aqui, en este
cuaderno
tan mio" 'my wish is to tell the truth always, here, in this
exercise book which is so much mine' (73, my italics)that
is to say,
the book of (his) life. However,
the definitive text has still to be
written because truth is a transcendental
absolute for which there is no
place in human life.
There are also several examples
which connote otherness on more
comfortable
in Vicens
of different languages
levels. One is found
superficial
the
trial
of
the
first protagonist's
during
colleague,
Reyes, whose
response to the judges is silence. "Hizo bien" 'he did the right thing,'
claims the protagonist, for "la realidad de ellos es distinta, su lenguaje
es otro" 'their reality is different, they speak another language'

(103).
Then he and his son cannot share any elements of vocabulary
and
syntax because of the so-called

generation gap (85); the same is true,
this
time
for
reasons
of
class and ideology,
when he finds
though
himself in the company of some macho sailors ("lo importante era
hablar como hombre y tratar con rigor a las mujeres"
'what was
important was to talk in a manly fashion and treat women ruthlessly,'
or for the
108). He cannot find the language for everyday discourse
creation of that ineffable, miraculous
which
would
be a great
thing
novel.15
There are actually three levels of silence which constitute some

kind of response
to the impossible
in El libro vacio. The first is
manifest in the introspective behavior of the protagonist, a man of few
words
or written)
who will not reply to the
(either
spoken
observations
or question of others and who dedicates all his free time
to writing, the most silent pastime imaginable.
The second level is
made up by the writing itself, which is voiceless:
to write is to remain
silent.
But the final, absolute, silence is indicated by the (apparent)

fact that the protagonist does not even manage to produce a mute text.
In Los
anos falsos,
we have
another
elusive
and
quiet,
introspective character, but the author also makes explicit mention of
silence on more than one occasion.
There is, too, a plethora of related,
in this novel: indolent
perhaps interchangeable,
negative concepts
passivity
always,
nada"
'As
("Como
siempre, yo no hago absolutamente
I do absolutely nothing,' 141); the colorless (like the flowers
103
Bacarisse
taken
to
his
father's tomb, the narrator's

color "esta casi por
'is
on
the
of
but
no-one knows into
transformation,'
despuntar"
point
what, 141); the indistinct (he is pleased that climbing plants have all
but obliterated the insciption on his father's tomb, 142); the absence
of life (he describes his own face as "sin vida" 'lifeless,'
152); and the
solitude of someone who not only does not feel as if there is anyone
who understands him but also that he himself understands nothing at
all. And like the non-writer
of the first novel, he desires wholeness.

less
However,
power than the other protagonist, as we
have already pointed out, and in spite of his youth, he does realize
this. He knows, tragically,
that the only way for him to achieve
wholeness
is through death. "Tengo
he says to his dead
derecho,"
he has even
father, "ya que no lo tuve a la vida, a tener una muerte entera. . . .

Enteramente mi'a" 'I have the right, since I had none to life, to have a
whole
death. One that is wholly mine' (208). His short life, that is to
the
four years since his father left themor, more accurately, did
say
not leave themhas been forcibly divided between two sets of drives,
to use the Freudian
term.16 It has been as silent, passive, colorless and

as that of the protagonist of El libro vacio, but he suspects
that "el morir es un silencio que tiene que ser escuchado"
'dying is a
silence that demands to be heard' (154).
indistinct
The titles of both novels contain negative adjectives:

that the
book stays empty (non-writing) points to the nothingness that Paz was
referring to in his letter; then, in their turn, the false years connote
But to an extent this negativity is deceptive,
because
in
non-living.
fact the non-writer does produce a text, even though it may not be the
a
magnum opus that he was aiming for, and this text represents
struggle which does not end because its basis is desire, the predicate
of which, if it has one at all, is survival. When we leave the main
character, he is suffering from insomnia and wants to get on with his
and
writing (136), in spite of his sensation of internal "foreign-ness"
his "temblor permanente"
'constant trembling'
(34). On the other
hand, the last word of the narrator of Los afios falsos is "Amen" (208),
which appears to his mother and sisters to be a sign that he endorses

their prayers, but which actually marks the end of his expression
of a
desire to die in order to become
a whole entity rather than have to go

on tolerating a divided self.
So it is that the similarity between the two novels does not include
their endings.
The outcome
of Los afios falsos
is irremediably
what
is
in
this
world
can
negative;
impossible
only be resolved
104
Letras Femeninas,
beyond its limits, if it can be resolved at all. On the other hand, were
we to answer the question put by the son of the protagonist
of El libro
bien [tu historia]?"
'Does
vacio, "^Acaba
your story have a happy
ending?' (31), we might well say yes, and with a certain amount of joy
at that, for as Kristeva has observed, "des que les etrangers ont une
action ou une passion, ils s'enracinent.
Provisoirement,
certes, mais
intensement"
'as soon as foreigners have an action or a passion,

to be sure, but intensely.17
they
take root. Temporarily,
NOTES
1 Octavio
Paz. "Carta prefacio," in Vicens, El libro vacio. Los anos

All
translations
are mine unless otherwise indicated.
falsos (9).
2
he
explains that one of the reasons why he treats his wife
Significantly,
so badly is because her equilibrium and simplicity irritate him and because
he loathes "las gentes [como ella] que no son enemigas
'people [like her] who are not their own enemies' (20-21).
3
There
has
been
no movement
in "este
. . . que
tiempo
y no transcurre" 'this period of time which doesn't

which doesn't pass' (142).
4
This
a psyche
linguistic
of doubtful
format
of another
is reminiscent
integrity:
Jose
Donoso's
El
de si mismas"
no
[le]
pertenece
belong to [him] and

novel
obsceno
which
pajaro
deals
with
de la noche
(1970). For example, "a mi me guifta un ojo y yo le guifto el ojo del Mudito"
'she winks at me and I wink the Mudito's eye back at her' (27).
5
He
considers,
among
other
topics,
Formalist
ostranenie
(though
eschewing the term) and the creation of emotion via language (17); the aim
of writing and reader reaction (17, 18, 24); the technique of character
construction or, if this proves impossible, typology (26); the uselessness of
language as an authentic signifier (60); the gulf between the pomposity of
his written style and his simple speech (71); his diffidence regarding the
self-indulgent impropriety of describing the lives of others (99, 103); and
the compromising
6
He
points
nature of written language (118).
out that he loves
most of all because
the self
that does
what
he doesn't
want
to do
it separates him from that stubborn, hermetic no that has
him in thrall (29).

7 See
Eugene Goodheart's Desire and its Discontents for a stimulating
discussion of this polemic. I am indebted to him for both ideas and
terminologyfor example, the concept of desire without a predicate, which
he rightly attributes to Bersani and Kristeva (adding that for them "[d]esire
moves, floats, negates, shatters, aspires, it is itself a subject," 2), and the
phrase "the rationalist model of the self' (1).
Bacarisse
8
Baudrillard
writes
of a state
of "evanescence
and
continual
mobility"
in which "it becomes impossible to determine the specific objectivity of

needs....
The flight from one signifier to another is no more than the surface
reality of a desire, which is insatiable because it is founded on lack. And this
desire . . . signifies itself locally in a succession of objects and needs" (45).

Goodheart (Desire)
refers to "unlimited desire" which he judges the
Will (8).
equivalent of Schopenhauer's
9 For the views of
Lacan, see Felman (137) and Ragland-Sullivan
(77,
15).
10Goodheart
{Desire), 2.
" The difference between the written and the
spoken word is
for
oral
el
tienen
una esencia
"[l]a expresibn
emphasized,
y
pensamiento
efimera que no compromete"
oral expression and thought have an
ephemerality which does not oblige you to commit yourself (118).
12
"Lack"
is the
basis
for another
current
One
polemic.
view
is located
when we discover that "schizoanalysis ... attacks the fundamental Lacanian

notion of lack' head-on by arguing that, rather than being intrinsic to the
structure of subjectivity, lack is imposed on or injected into subjectivity by
strictly social (and hence historically variable) forces." (Holland, "The

Ideology. . ." in Ethics/Aesthetics, 60.) The author has invented the term
to describe
"Lackanianism"
the theories
of North
American
Lacanians.
For
those who agree with the "schizoanalysts," the social condition of Vicens'
characters will hold more interest; I suggest that lack does indeed form an
intrinsic part of subjectivity and that what changes with sociohistoric forces
is the nature of the objects

Goodheart's (52).
13
14
15
would
Kristeva,
Etrangers
Kristeva,
Etrangers,
of desire.
The views
a nous-memes!Strangers
276;
Strangers,
on ambivalence
to Ourselves,
passim.
187.
Although the protagonist speaks little, we find out exactly what he

say
were
he,
for example,
to abandon
his
family.
16The Freudian term

is, of course, Triebe (pulsiones
is usuallyand incorrectlytranslated as "instinct(s)."
17
are
Kristeva,
Etrangers,
19;
Strangers,
WORKS
Baudrillard, Jean. Selected
UP, 1989.
Donoso,
in Spanish) which
29.
CITED
Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford
Jose. El obscenopajaro
de la noche. Barcelona:
Seix Barral, 1970.
Letras Femeninas,
Shoshana.
Felman,
Lacan
Jacques
in Contemporary
Psychoanalysis
UP, 1987.
Goodheart,
1991.
and the Adventure of Insight.

Culture. (Cambridge MA: Harvard
Desire and its Discontents.
Eugene.
New York: Columbia
UP,
Ethics/
Holland, Eugene W. "The Ideology of Lack in Lackanianism."
Aesthetics. Post-Modern Positions. Ed. Robert Merrill (Washington
DC: Maisonneuve
Press, 1988.
Kristeva, Julia. Etrangers a nous-memes. Paris: Gallimard,

. Strangers
Columbia
to
Ourselves.
Trans.
Leon
S.
Roudiez.
1988.
New
York:
UP, 1991.
Ellie. Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanaly

Ragland-Sullivan,
sis. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987.
Vicens, Josefina. El libro vacio.
1987.
Los anos falsos.
Mexico
City: UNAM,

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The Realm of Silence: The Two Novels of Josefina Vicens

Author(s): Pamela Bacarisse

Ainsi, entre deux langues,

In the letter to the author that serves

as the preface to a recent

of men and women "caminando

attempt to locate the psycho

logical origin of the authorial

aim suggests that questions

it is my contention that the (in this case) false

depth to the two texts, and

of a mature and generally-applicable

should there be an automatic assumption

of women, however difficult and unjust our socio-economic

two novels, and the two most striking

of the power and effects of human desire. It is as difficult for the

In El libro vacio, the narrator is a

he has nothing to say, but who nevertheless

after resisting the temptation

independent and powerful operating inside me

siento ajeno a mf' 'I feel a stranger to myself,' he admits (31,

version of his projected novel. The latter, of

I simply have to' (136).

the reader is also made aware of

the other whose admiration

his two childrenone

with a stranger he is rebuffed.2 What all this

second novel, Los anos falsos, boasts another

let us consider the unhappy nineteen

But for the moment

lack of an integrated personality is obvious as the novel opens: he is

las flores que traje"

he goes on to say that "[r]ezan

por el" 'they

of El libro vacio, he makes valiant efforts to

perhaps enough: first, although he bears his father's name, he refuses

to say, he subsumed this alien identity on his father's death

como para que [su padre] pudiera salir y

not quite done that; they have, rather,

obviously signals ontological

self and that which

of time: "un dfa

Volume XXII, Nos. 1-2 (1996)

for whom his

so for a week, he calls it "una pequena

feel obliged to describe what he has done in

wife and children,

said and done he loves them; he rather

do if forced to live alone.

and special condition.

(It is worthy of note that in his

e inutil espera" 'a white, pointless waiting' (161). Even

the book it is emphasized

'there will be plenty more Jose Garcias,'

statement suggests that the anonymity of communal

with his mother

to him to attempt to improve his relationship