Ovidian Poetics in the Works of Maria Luisa Bombal and Elena Garro
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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE AESTHETICS OF METAMORPHOSIS: OVIDIAN POETICS IN THE WORKS OF MARIA LUISA BOMBAL AND ELENA GARRO A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By NURI L. CREAGER Norman, Oklahoma 2004 UMI Number: 3122289 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3122289 Copyright 2004 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 © Copyright by Nuri L. Creager 2004 Ail Rights Reserved THE AESTHETICS OF METAMORPHOSIS: OVIDIAN POETICS IN THE WORKS OF MARIA LUISA BOMBAL AND ELENA GARRO A Dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES, LITERATURES, AND LINGUISTICS BY Dr. Mary É. Davis Dr. Pamela A. Genova Dr. Bruce A. Boggs Dr. EHen S. Green <Ma S. Madland Dr.-Gradyfp'. Wray Acknowledgments The threshold experience of metamorphosis carries the seeds of change, renewal, and destruction. Miraculously, we live, struggle, thrive, create, and die on the threshold of chaos. The task of writing reflects, in a sense, an attempt to come to terms with this dilemma by means of the imposition of order through the written word. But as metamorphosis proves, even words become slippery signifiers that often defy order. The creation of order in this dissertation from the linguistic and conceptual chaos that metamorphosis has often presented is due in large measure to the patient guidance of several individuals to whom I owe my sincerest gratitude. First, I wish to express my deepest appreciation to the director of this study, my mentor and friend. Dr. Mary E. Davis whose belief in my abilities sustained me through the most difficult challenges of my studies. Her consummate sense of style for the written word has forged me into the writer I have become. She is as Vergil to Dante, guiding the seekers through the often perplexing depths and pinnacles of the graduate experience, so that they may safely reach the light. To Mary E. Davis I owe the inspiration that led me to the fascinating topic of metamorphosis and to the poet, Ovid. To Dr. Pamela A. Genova, friend, mentor, and co-director of this project, I extend my heartfelt gratitude for her insights on French literature, her perceptive analytical suggestions, and her disarming esprit. Dr. Genova’s inexhaustible efficiency, and her constant, unwavering optimism, provided me with a role model that enabled me to complete this study in a systematic and timely manner. IV In addition, I am grateful for the assistance of the other members of my committee, to Dr. Bruce Boggs for his positive comments on my work, and for his expertise in poetry and music, to Dr. Helga Madland for her careful reading of my text, and to Dr. Ellen Greene for her insights on Ovid and his Metamorphoses. I would also like to thank Dr. Grady Wray for his prompt reading and close analysis of my work, for his warmth and support, and for his love of Latin- American women writers, a love that has encouraged me to continue to bring them to the forefront of critical attention. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues, Caridad Marchand and Samuel Manickam for the gift of time, and Margarita Peraza Rugeley for her sunny disposition which brightened some cloudy days. Most of all, I owe my deepest gratitude to my patient family, my husband, Steve, and daughter, Jenna, who have shared this long journey with me: to Steve, the soul mate who helped me find the path, and to Jenna, the muse whose own metamorphosis continues to inspire. Finally, I wish to dedicate this work to the strong, wise women who have most motivated me, my above mentioned mentors, Dr. Mary E. Davis and Dr. Pamela A. Genova, my dear sister, Cristina C. Creager, and most of all, my mother, Amparo Ferrandis Creager for her legacy of intellectual curiosity and resolute determination. Contents Acknowledgments iv Abstract vii Introduction Chapter One: Ovidian Aesthetics: The Wellspring of the 20 Metamorphoses Chapter Two: The Mythopoetic Imagination: Transforming 62 the Metamorphoses Chapter Three: Maria Luisa Bombai: Echoes of Post-Symbolism 88 Chapter Four: Ovidian Myth in Maria Luisa Bombai s Work: The 121 Personification of Desire in La ultima niebla Chapter Five: Elena Garro: Being and Otherness 189 Chapter Six: Through the Obsidian Mirror: Temporal 228 Metamorphosis in Elena Garro s Los recuerdos del porvenir Conclusion 306 Bibliography 329 VI The Aesthetics of Metamorphosis: Ovidian Poetics in the Works of Maria Luisa Bomba! and Elena Garro Nuri L. Creager Directors: Dr. Mary E. Davis Dr. Pamela A. Genova Abstract Marla Luisa Bombal’s La ultima niebla and Elena Garro s Los recuerdos del porvenir represent two models of the evolving tradition of literary myth. Their novels offer examples of enigmatic female characters whose negations of reality are aesthetically rendered as transformations that end in either figurative stasis or literal petrification. Bombai and Garro revise some of Ovid’s most fascinating myths in order to draw attention to the aesthetic dimension of their own complex texts, as well as to address fundamental questions concerning feminine subjectivity. The study begins with an analysis of the Ovidian concept of metamorphosis and its effects on the body, identity, and the corpus of the text. Chapter Two addresses the notion of "literary myth,” and contextualizes Bombal’s and Garro’s work within a tradition that allows the authors to reinscribe and transform myths (both Western and Mesoamerican) in their texts. Chapter Three locates Bombai s Impressionistic aesthetic within French Symbolist and Post-Symbolist poetics, and establishes Bombai as one of the first novelists to translate its aesthetic for Latin America. Chapter Four provides an explication of Bombai s La ultima niebla through the interpretation of the myths of Narcissus, VII Orpheus, and Pygmalion—myths that illustrate her protagonist’s psychic transformation and reveal a deconstruction of discourses on romantic love through parody and irony. Chapter Five both contextualizes Elena Garro within the avant-garde that characterized post-Revolutionary Mexico, and scrutinizes Garro’s critical response to the ideology of liberation. Chapter Six explores textual and temporal transformations in Garro’s Los recuerdos del porvenir, a work that reinterprets both the Surrealist myth of a golden age and the Mesoamerican myths of cosmic periodicity. The conclusion argues that, through the intertextual aesthetics of metamorphosis, these authors exploit the ambivalence of language in order to subvert essential notions of feminine identity and convey the paradoxes of Otherness, gender, and limitation. VIII Introduction Nous disons que le changement existe, que tout change, que le changement est la loi même des choses... mais ce ne sont là que des mots, et nous raisonnons et philosophons comme si le changement n’existait pas. - Henri Bergson La Pensée et le mouvant The Chilean writer Maria Luisa Bombai and the Mexican Elena Garro present enigmatic female protagonists in their works who often challenge, and even frustrate, the reader’s expectations. The conclusions of their novels offer examples of female characters whose gestures of refusal toward reality are aesthetically rendered as transformations that end in either figurative stasis or literal petrification. The recurrence of the theme of metamorphosis in their work draws attention to a web of related questions surrounding the concept of transformation that functions at the heart of their work, such as the vulnerability and integrity of the self, the problem of alienation, and the power of human emotions. In a more profound sense, the dynamic of metamorphosis accentuates the aesthetic dimension of their texts, and the intertextual practices which the authors adopt in order to appropriate and revise myths echo the foundational über text of transformation, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Latin poet’s eternally relevant work stands as an irreverent text that resists authority, mocks divinity and death, and transcends alienation and loss through the transfiguring power of art. The trope of Ovidian metamorphosis represents an affirmation of the irrepressible forces of life, and for this reason it denotes a seditious figure. By its very subject, Ovid’s masterful poem incarnates the inevitability of change, and it suggests the necessary destruction and transformation at the heart of renewal. His poem emphasizes mutation at the literal level as it dramatically portrays the interconnectedness and fluidity of all creation, and it trespasses the boundaries between rocks, plants, animals, and humans to bring about marvelous metamorphoses that defy credulity. However, Ovid’s playfulness has a serious side, for as he writes about transformation, he demonstrates the praxis of transformation in the literary tradition. Through the art of wit and imagination, he unravels the foundational myths of the Mediterranean world in order to reweave them into a new tapestry that reveals its own mode of construction and the creative genius behind it. As he writes about transformation, Ovid enacts the dynamics of intertextual metamorphoses that form the creative principle of his work, and he offers his magisterial poem as an exemplar to be remembered and transformed by future generations of writers. Bombai and Garro belong to Ovid’s artistic legacy. Their groundbreaking works form part of the same spirit of rupture and renewal that informs Ovid’s great text.