Writing With(in) the Borders: Paratexts in Un viaje de invierno

Abstract

The present article focuses on the role of paratextual elements—epigram, marginal notes, and musical partitures—in Juan Benet's Un viaje de invierno (1976), with special emphasis on their role in the reading process. Gérard Genette's work on paratexts will serve as a helpful entry to my analysis of the Spaniard's novel. When conceived as the components of a liminal space that mediates text and off-text, Benet's paratexts serve to explore and enrich the zona de sombras inherent to his narrative vision. This slippage situates readers on the thresholds of interpretation and underscores the indeterminate quality of aesthetic (re-)creation. The interconnected, and often contentious, “zones” of the work engender multiple readings, vitiate chronology, and reinforce several recurring themes such as alienation, death, and rebirth. The novel brings to the fore the reader's role in negotiating the highly indeterminant components of the text and the paratext. Through this process, Benet eschews the tenets of casticismo and highlights the role of enigma central to his literary theory and praxis.

Keywords:

• indeterminacy
• liminality
• paratexts
• stylistic shifting

Notes

1. According to the author, “El estilo más irresistible no será nunca el de un costumbrista; el más alto exponente de la expresividad de la lengua no se deberá ir a buscar, en ningún caso, entre las prosas castizas, en las descripciones sazonadas con sabores caseros o en la humilde jerga de los silenciosos monjes, los pícaros de corte o los hidalgos hambrientos” (La inspiración y el estilo 169).

2. See Baeza; García Pérez; Margenot.

3. Critical reception of Un viaje de invierno has been sporadic at best, in part because of its relative inaccessibility compared to other works by the author. For studies on his third novel, see Azúa; Benson; Herzberger; Navajas.

4. The author discusses his views on “el tiempo absoluto” in El ángel del Señor abandona a Tobías, esp. in ch. 6.

5. Benson argues that “el lector constatará pronto que no hay una clara relación de jerarquías entre ambos textos” (241). My reading suggests that Benet approaches the traditional use of marginalia parodically.

6. See Hutcheon for a discussion of parody.

7. See Benet's La inspiración y el estilo (esp. 46–50) for a discussion of the Bible from a stylistic perspective.

8. The complete text is as follows:

• Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

• Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

• Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

• Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

• If the true concord of well-tunèd sounds

• By unions married do offend thine ear,

• They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

• In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.

• Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

• Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

• Resembling sire and child and happy mother,

• Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing;

• Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

• Sings this to thee: ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’ (Shakespeare 752)

9. Benet discusses this concept at length in La inspiración y el estilo, esp. 157–80.

10. From a somewhat different perspective that acknowledges the notion of slippage but does not account for its relationship to music and time, Azúa has observed that the texts and notes in Un viaje de invierno “son como dos temas musicales que resbalan el uno sobre el otro sin jamás mezclarse” (15).

11. Benet draws a parallel between reading Faulkner and listening to Schubert: “Faulkner me ha dejado paralizado muchas veces. Me ha pasado con párrafos y con libros enteros, porque él no tiene esas bajadas de tensión de Conrad…. Es lo mismo que pasa con los cuartetos póstumos de Schubert, que dan de sí tanto que puedes pasarte 15 días pensando, sin hacer nada más” (Alameda 25).

12. See Hess for a discussion of code switching and stylistic shifting.

13. See Gullón for a mythological reading of the novel.

14. See Morford and Lenardon for a detailed account of these initiation rites, particularly 231–37.