A WOMAN WHO WAS NOT OF THIS WORLD
THE BIOHISTORICAL AUTHOR JUAN RULFO
At one time Rulfo announced that he would publish two works with the titles La Cordillera (The Mountain-Chain) and Días sin Floresta (Days without Scrub-Lands). These books never did appear. On the other hand Rulfo became known world-wide due to numerous translations of El Llano en Llamas (The Burning Plain) and of Pedro Páramo. He worked for the Instituto Nacional Indigenista, wrote booklets for the cinema and television, sold automobile tires, and was a record keeper and Mexican immigration official. In Guadalajara he launched the magazine Pan together with Juan José Arreola and Antonio Alatorre; he lived in an orphanage while an albacea (testamentary executor) took charge of his inheritance. His parents died when he was still in his childhood. According to information obtained by Felipe Cobián Rosales (1), Juan Rulfo was born in Apulco, close to San Gabriel, in the state of Jalisco, on May 16th, 1917.
Paratextuality
The last article published by Juan Rulfo (2) was titled "Pedro Páramo treinta años después" (Pedro Páramo thirty years afterwards). Here we are informed of the novel's previous titles: The manuscript was successively designated Los Murmullos (The Murmurs) and Una Estrella Junto a La Luna (A Star Next to the Moon). Finally, in September of 1954, it was submitted to the Fondo de Cultura Económica for publication; it was now titled Pedro Páramo. In March of 1955 there appeared an edition of two thousand copies. The title Los Murmullos referred to the structure of the text. It brings to the fore the existence of numerous textual narrators, in relation with whom Juan Preciado and Dorotea occupy the position of narratees. The latter in turn constitute textual agencies relating to one another as counterpoints, due to the fact that they both emit and receive the disclosure of discourse. The second title, Una Estrella Junto a La Luna, served to underscore the symbolic dimension of the text but at the same time complicated its appraisal upon a first reading, which was perhaps not totally advantageous in the case of an inherently complex discourse; it is perhaps for this reason that Rulfo was to abandon it. The title referred to Juan Preciado's act of focalizing the zenith while lying on the floor in the home of Donis.
Pedro Páramo is an open text which has given rise to numerous interpretations. The organization of time and space is far from conventional. The following citations may shed light on this matter. During an interview Juan Pablo Rulfo (3) had this to say about his novel:“It is a very simple work. One must merely keep his eye on the passage of time. I don't know why they say it's so difficult.” According to Gabriel García Márquez (4):
“Carlos Velo has done a surprising thing: he has extracted the temporal dimensions of Pedro Páramo,
and he has restructured the récit in accordance with a rigorous chronological order. As a mere method of
labor this has seemed to me legitimate, although in reality the result is a different book; it is plain and
unseamed. But it has been useful to me in gaining a better insight into Juan Rulfo's secret carpentry; it
lays bare his singular wisdom."
For these reasons we have adopted a reading whose itinerary is indicated at the beginning of each chapter. From our vantage point as biohistorical readers as well as co-authors of the text, we would posit the existence of three narrative components underlying the total histoire: 1) that of Pedro Páramo; 2) that of Susana San Juan; 3) that of Juan Preciado. Following the implicit chronology of the text we arrive at a division which assigns four of the six chapters to the central protagonist, in accordance with the following biographical sequence: puberty, youth, maturity and decline; the remaining two chapters would pertain to Susana and Juan Preciado respectively.
The Cátedra edition of Pedro Páramo is the one which seems to us the most adequate. It represents the labour of José Carlos Gonzalez Boixo, and is based on the second edition of the novel which was published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1981 with the rubric "edition revised by the author". As González Boixo points out, the latter actually consists of the original manuscript of the work rather than a correction carried out decades afterwards. González Boixo's edition is divided into 70 apartados (sections). This would clear up the confusion as to the actual number of apartados that has cropped up due to differences in later editions. In his footnotes the Spanish scholar documents the changes to be found in the different editions of the work and in addition offers us other useful historical and cultural information, as well as his personal appraisal of various events in the novel. Those studies on the structure of Pedro Páramo which do not take into account the second edition published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica may offer some problems due to the changes which have occurred in the different editions. We would thus wish to stress the fact that our interpretive study together with its annotations refer to the following publication: Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo; edition of J. C. González Boixo; Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1985.
Focalization
When we speak of focalization we are referring to the term employed by Gérard Genette (5). According to the latter a narrative sequence is presented by a narrator through the medium of a prism or given perspective; nethertheless, this presentation does not constitute necesarily the narrator's point of view, but rather could be that of any of the characters. This concept of Genette has the advantage of eliminating the confusion between perspective and narration which always tends to crop up when instead of "focalization" we define this phenomenon as "point of view". We would underscore that in the present study we are not interested in either the focalized or the focalizer per se, but rather in the discursive act of focalization, especially in as much as this entails a process of the unconscious as a general phenomenon, the manifestation of the repressed in one or in several characters. Thus we are not concerned with describing the focalization of each character or narrator separately, which would in fact be more akin to a mere act of cataloging. The focalized is only of interest as a means of access to the unconscious; for example, the star next to the moon focalized by Juan Preciado is the morning star, Venus. However the fact that Venus is the second planet from the Sun as well as the fact that it is situated at a certain distance from the earth shed no light on our discussion. On the other hand it is illuminating to note that for ancient México Venus represented an unconscious archetype, Quetzalcoatl, a phallic symbol and representation of the paternal. This symbolization is highly congruent with the patriarchal element present in the discourse of the narration of Pedro Páramo as a whole.
The Unconscious
The unconscious is the proper object of study of psychoanalysis, as has been pointed out by Jacques Lacan and Louis Althousser (6) This concept points to broad perspectives for the study of narratology. The application of psychoanalysis to discourse alows us to appreciate its unconscious content and at the same time to gain cognizance of a good number of aesthetic qualities, as Freud (7) was to underscore in "Das Unheimliche" ("The Uncanny"). If we accept the criterion that the object of psychoanalysis is to detect the unconscious content of a given discourse, we will be allowed to avoid the objection that we are somehow engaged in the study of the flesh and blood author through the analysis of his fantasies. In the same way the study of the unconscious will permit us to draw near to the world of the muses, of the duende, and of those demons who take possession of human contingencies in order to direct the productivity of the text. But, what is this unconscious? Sigmund Freud described it in the following manner:
“The unconscious consists of those representations which are latent, which we have no ground to
suspect are contained in the life of the psyche, as is the case with memory, since such a representation
may be present at one moment in my conscious mind, disappear from it unexplainedly in a given
moment, only to reemerge at a later date without any modification but no longer similar to a new
sensorial perception but resembling rather a recollection. While the representation remained apart from
the conscious mind we must assume that it was indeed present in our psyche, albeit in a latent fashion,
although we cannot explain in what form it was contained in the latter.” (8)
The unconscious manifests itself even when we do not perceive it in spite of our attentiveness. One of its manifestations is palpable in the joke, which provokes the laughter of its recipient without the latter becoming cognizant of just what he is responding to. The humorist possesses the faculty of bringing forth the unconscious and of concealing it once again with the same deftness. He lays bare what civilization has repressed, that which normally remains unsaid. The same quality is present in a work of narrative fiction; in a subtle manner it manifests the repressed unconscious. The real reader does not necessarily detect this content consciously, but there is established nethertheless a process of communication "beneath the surface of the water", between the discourse and its receiver; subconscious communicates to subconscious.
We have called the present work The Unconscious Focalization in Pedro Páramo because its essential aim is that of pinpointing how the unconscious is to be discerned in this novel of Juan Rulfo. We will attempt to bring this phenomenon to the fore in our examination of the focalization carried out by the various narrators and characters present in the novel's discourse in order to shed some light on their essential configuration.
The theme of Adromeda
The times of Susana and of Pedro Páramo are convergent. They came to know each other and shared games in childhood, they ceased to see one another for some thirty years and they became united in marriage shortly before Susana's death. We are dealing with a tragic and fatal love story informed by a plot suggestive of that of Wuthering Heights.
Juan Rulfo's novel coincides with the myths of Orion and of Prometheus; this coincidence is found above all in the appearance of patriarchal signifiers and in exploits realized under similar circumstances. Pedro Páramo's relation to Susana San Juan invites a comparison with another of the heros of Classical Mythology, Perseus. It is interesting to recall the adventures of this hero after his severing of the head of the Medusa, as is related here by Father Garibay K. (9):
"On his way he came across a woman chained to a tree. It was Adromeda, the daughter of the king
Cefeus. He ran up to set her free, but her parents were keeping watch on the beach and came running
to tell the hero that he could only liberate her with the condition of becoming her spouse. The monster
which Poseidon had sent to lay waste Filistea was wandering about nearby. The hero showed it the
head of the Medusa, which caused it to flee to the sea. It was converted into coral. During the
wedding celebration there arrived on the scene Agenor, the brother of Belo, and demanded that
Andromeda be surrendered to him. The only means of doing so was to kill Perseus. A band of men
tried to seize the hero. He took out the head of the Medusa and converted more than one hundred
individuals into rocks." (p. 204)
The personality of Perseus is assumed by Pedro Páramo. Having realized the exploit of the taking of power during a period of thirty years, he prepares to unchain his beloved. Out of nothing, the cacique takes possession of Comala and its surroundings. He acquires Power through usurpation and through that ultimate form of castration, assassination. His chosen instrument is Fulgor Sedano, who with his multiple phallic symbols would appear as a representation of the Medusa's head, about which Freud (Obras completas, p. 2697) affirms the following:
"To decapitate = to castrate. The terror of the Medusa is then a terror of castration in relation with the
sight of something. Numerous analysis have familarized us with the circumstances in which this occurs.
(...) In works of art the Medusa's hair is usually represented in the form of serpents, an image which
in turn derives from the castration complex. It is noteworthy that in spite of being horrible in
themselves, these serpents actually tend to mitigate the element of horror. Here we find the confirmation
of the rule according to which the multiplication of phallic symbols signifies castration. The vision of
the Medusa's head paralizes whoever contemplates it, it petrifies him.
There are several motifs which suggest a comparison between the relationship of the Media Luna lovers and the legend of Perseus but the most significant is the theme of Andromeda. Bartolomé San Juan takes his daughter to a mine that bears that very name and they live there for many years. Susana's father is as greedy as Pedro Páramo, but he does not share the latter's success in the attainment of fortune. Bartolomé lives in the mining caves as though he were a dragon. The study of folklore (Funk And Wagnals,1972) tells us the following concerning the theme of Andromeda (10):
"It is one of the principle themes in folkloric tales, in which a damsel destined to be sacrificed to a
monster is rescued by a hero. This theme is to be found throughout the world; it always accompanies
other themes of the dragon slayer. It is possibly an elaboration of that very ancient concept of the struggle
between the forces of light and darkness that we find in the Babilonian combat of Marduk-Tiomat, or it
may be a reflection of the ancient custom of presenting human sacrifices to the water gods. Tales relating
this theme are to be found throughout Asia and the Americas." (p. 55).
Two psychological themes
In chapter IV of The Unconscious Focalization in Pedro Páramo we studied the first psychological theme in Juan Rulfo's novel: Power. The stories of Susana and Juan Preciado coincide in our view with the second psychological theme in the work. This is the theme of horror. When Pedro Páramo's deceased mother awakens him in the morning in order to announce the death of don Lucas, we do not detect fright in the young Pedro's strange focalization. Fear is not natural to the cacique. When as a child he elaborates pleasurable thoughts concerning his playmate Susana within the solitude of his dark chamber to the accompaniment of rainfall making its presence felt in the window pane, Pedro's mood is one of sadness and melancholy. Despite his grandfather's recent death, Pedro shows no preoccupation for the end of existence; neither does he become afraid of the dark. He does not even feel guilty for neglecting to pray the rosary for the eternal rest of his deceased progenitor. In "The Metamorphosis of Puberty", (11) the third essay of that work which he titled "Three Essays for a Theory of Sexuality", Freud suggests that those children who are frightened by stories told to them by some nursemaids, are predisposed to an exaggerated sexual instinct. This is due either to precocious development or to excessive indulgence:
"Here the child behaves like an adult, transforming his libido into anguish when he fails to achieve its
satisfaction. This is exactly how the adult behaves when he falls into a neurosis due to some obstacle in
the satisfaction of his libido; he will begin to experience anguish as soon as he finds himself alone, that
is, without the presence of that person whose love he had deemed secure. He will attempt to make this
fear disappear by the most infantile of means." (p. 1226)
Pedro Páramo was very fortunate in this respect. He is not troubled with internal horrors; he lives alone after the departure of Dolores. He felt secure in his dealings with Damiana and Fulgor. He never experienced panic on account of an external event; indeed, we find no indication in the narrative of his feeling fright in his dealings with the worlds of the living and the dead. Pedro is the scourge of Comala and its surroundings; he strikes his neighbors with terror. This occurs at the narrative's mimetic level of reality, not within the domain of the supernatural. On the other hand in the story of Juan Preciado we see how this narrator-narratee dies of nothing less than panic on finding himself at the crossroads between those two worlds described in such detail by Donis' sister.
In the story of Susana this theme appears with three different focalizations and narrative times. First, when in her childhood Susana is obligated to descend into a well where she encounters a skeleton (12). The horror of the experience causes her to faint and maintains her in a state of unconsciousness for several days (PP, p. 161). Second: the scene in which Justina returns from shopping after observing the Indians, and a phantom orders her to go away while touching her on the shoulder; Susana's nurse lets out a shout which is heard all over the surrounding territory. It is Justina who shouts but she denies this to Susana (PP, p. 152). Third: there is the fear perceived by the villagers and which they focalize at different points in the narrative discourse; this fear is provoked by those cries which are heard in the Media Luna.
The moment of Justina's shout would appear to be the most terrifying incident in the novel from the real reader's vantage point. Notwithstanding, this focalization does not concern our present study, since our object is that of establishing the essential traits of Susana San Juan's character. Neither are we concerned with that climate of fear which the inhabitants of Comala experience in the vicinity of the Media Luna, that estate now dissolving into a phantasmal environment. Only the frightful descent of Susana into the well bears relation to our present investigation because it presents us with a strong symbolic relation with three of the typical dreams related by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams. The descent into the well represents the descent into Susana's unconscious. The action is carried out by her father, who has bound her by means of a rope. Susana's ascent to the surface is also realized by this parent; she is now without consciousness. In the language of dreams to ascend signifies the realization of the sexual act (13). Therefore this representation would tend to confirm on the symbolic plane the suspicion of incest between Bartolomé and Susana.
It is not possible to affirm the existence of such a relationship on the basis of the literal level of the novel's discourse since there we find no more than possible suggestions. We know that a female child initiates her contact with the external sexual world through the agency of the image of the father, towards whom she channelizes her libido. Later on the positive solution of this Oedipal complex will allow the female child to channelizes her libidinal energy towards males external to the ambit of the family. This would appear to be the normal destiny of Susana's soul, as we see in her adolescent games oriented towards her love for Pedro. Such is the common destiny of every woman on her way to emotional maturity. However an accident was to change the entire course of Susana's life, leading her to madness through the reappearance of the repressed. In her case as in that of all female children, this repressed element is the desire for wedlock with the father. Civilization has blocked this desire and re-oriented the incestuous impulse through the death wish (masculine), which is made to predominate over the pleasure principle (feminine). In her childhood Susana directs her sentiments towards Pedro and through her own masculine dimension those rules are imposed which turn her love for the father towards a similar object (Pedro and Bartolomé both possess an anal character as is evident in their ambition for money).
Up to a certain point everything was favorable in Susana's psychological development, but her hopeful destiny was cut short by a fatal occurrence: the death of her mother. This incident redirected the whole of Bartolomé's libidinal charge towards his own daughter. Thus Susana undegoes a powerful re-orientation towards the repressed while becoming her father's woman; she is forced back into her infantile prehistory and is converted into a child psychologically. She will remain schizophrenic for the rest of her life and will not ever regain a sense of exterior reality. Freud (Totem y tabu, p. 27) tells us in "The Horror of Incest" (14):
"Psychoanalysis has taught us that a boy's earliest choice of objects for his love is incestuous and that
those objects are forbidden ones -his mother and his sister. We have learnt, too, the manner in which,
as he grows up, he liberates himself from this incestuous attraction. A neurotic, on the other hand,
invariably exhibits some degree of psychical infantilism. He has either failed to get free from the
psycho-sexual conditions that prevailed in his childhood or he has returned to them-two possibilities
which may be summed up as developmental inhibition and regression. Thus incestuous fixations of
libido continue to play (or begin once more to play) the principal part in his unconscious mental life.
We have arrived at the point of regarding a child's relation to his parents, dominated as it is by
incestuous longings, as the nuclear complex of neurosis." (p. 22)
In Susana there takes place a regression to infancy. If incest had remained on a platonic level she would simply have been converted into a neurotic with hysteric manifestation: attacks of anguish, facial contractions, etc. or with maniac-depressive manifestations: alcoholism, obsessive rituals, nymphomania. Actual sexual contact with her father has plunged Susana into psychosis.
Our hypothesis is confirmed by two typical dreams which are produced in the psychobiography of Pedro Páramo's second wife:
D1) Dreaming about her own death: "I'm here, face up, thinking about those days to forget my loneliness. Because I won't be lying here for only a little while. And I'm not in my mother's bed, I'm in a black box, like the coffins they use for burying the dead. Because I'm dead..."--Kemp Translation, p. 74.
If we view this literary act of Susana as a fantasy it is possible to analyze it as a typical dream. Psychoanalysis affirms that dreams about the death of loved persons or about one's own death refer to desires carried out during childhood. When the dream represents loved ones these are usually the subject's father or mother (Interpretation, p. 291). For a child death does not have the same meaning as for an adult; in childhood death only signifies absence, which means that if a child desires the death of a loved one this does not translate as anything more than the wish for his absence. But when this desire is fulfilled in such a manner as it was in Susana's case, the consequences are psychologically catastrophic. Susana sees herself as dead because this is the price which must be paid for having desired her mother's death. In dreams the law in operation is that of requital.
D 2) Dream of entering the sea. (Psychoanalytic interpretation leads us to the conclusion that the real author was right when in an interview he affirmed that Florencio did not really exist (15), (Gonzalez Boixo, Introduction to PP, p. 40) that he was no more than a fantasy of the mad woman): "My body loved to stretch itself out on the hot sand. I closed my eyes and spread my arms and legs to the soft breeze that came in from the sea. And the sea came up and washed my feet with its foam..." --Kemp Translation, pp. 93-94. Freud (Introduction, pp. 171-172) tells us the following with respect to dreams of this type: "In dreams birth is frequently expressed by the intervention of water; we submerge ourselves in water or emerge from it, which means that we give birth or are born."
Roberto Cantú (16) has underscored the fact that Florencio and Pedro Páramo share a number of experiences with Susana, one of these being that both of them bathe with her. In our opinion Florencio is an idealization of Pedro Páramo on the part of Susana. He is also the masculine and aggressive portion of the bisexual structure of Susana's own soul; we know that the amorous object represents the ideal of the Ego since love dissolves barriers and lovers are converted into a single psychical entity. When Bartolomé took his daughter as his woman he destroyed her masculine constitution and thus brought on the collapse of the ideal configured by her Ego; hence the vehemence of Susana's reproach to her father: "Didn't you know that I'm crazy?" (p. 154)
Both, dream 1) and dream 2) represent a regression to the mother. Seeing oneself dead also signifies the desire to return to the mother's womb. This theory is confirmed when we see that Susana dies in a fetal position. The fantasy of nakedness that we have labeled dream 2) is a dream of being born or giving birth and in the beauty of Susana's focalization we detect her great hope and desire of being born once more and of being another. Susana dreams of achieving felicity. This phantasy is related to the two previous ones: D 1) and D 2), since nakedness represents a return to childhood (when children go about naked they enjoy their exhibitionism). The return to childhood has two aspects: this regression represents the desire to be happy as in that period but it leads Susana to the misfortune of carrying out her incestuous wish to wed her father, which upon becoming reality is a great source of affliction.
FOOTNOTES
1) Felipe Cobián Rosales, "Dato fidedigno: Rulfo nació el 16 de mayo de 1917" (Creditable data: "Rulfo was born on the 16th of May in 1917"), La Jornada, daily, January 11 1986. "The baptismo of Carlos Juan Nepomuceno, consecrated by the interim curate Román Aguilar, has been recorded in Book 69 as item 166 in the baptismal annotations..." "In the parochial church of Sayula, on the eleventh of the month of June of 1917, I, the priest Román Aguilar, interim curate of this parish, solemnly baptised and placed the holy oil and sacred chrism upon a child born in this city, the sixteenth of the month at five in the morning; I christianed him Carlos Juan Nepomuceno..."
2) This lat article of Juan Rulfo was written for the agency EFE and its section "Great Signatures", dated March 1985.
3) Armando Ponce, Pablo Rulfo: "La viveza de los sueños de mi padre contrastaba con su ausencia en la vida real". ("The liveliness of my father's dreams contrasted with an absence in real life".)
4) Gabriel García Márquez, "Nostalgias sobre Rulfo" ("Nostalgic Reminiscences of Juan Rulfo"), daily La Jornada, México D. F., January 10 1986.
5) Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1980, p. 206. Cited by Slomith Rimmon Kenan in Narrative Fiction; New York & London; Menthuen, 1983, p. 71.
6) Louis Althousser, Freud y Lacan, Barcelona, Cuadernos Anagrama, 1970, p. 24.
7) Sigmund Freud, Obras completas, Madrid: Bibliteca Nueva, 1973, Tomo III p.p. 2483-2505.
8) Sigmund Freud, "Some observations on the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis".
9) Angel M. Garibay K., Mitologia Griega; Mexico, ED. Porrua, col. Sepan Cuantos..., 1985
10) Funk And Wagnals, Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, San Francisco, Harper and Row, 1972.
11) Freud, Obras completas; p. 1226
12) Sigmund Freud, Interpretación de los sueños , Madrid, Alianza Editorial, t. II, 1972, p. 243: "Cuando lo inconsciente tiene que “Cuando lo inconsciente tiene que hallar representación en el sueño, a título de elemento de las ideas de la vigilia, encuentra una apropiada sustitución en lugares subterráneos, los cuales representan, en otros casos exentos de toda relación con la cura psicoanalítica, los genitales femeninos o el seno materno”.
13) Freud, Interpretación… p. 193: “Los escalones, escalas y escaleras, y el subir o bajar por éstas son representaciones simbólicas del acto sexual”.
14) Freud, Totem y tabú, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1970, p. 27.
15) Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo, Madrid, Ediciones Cátedra, 1985, p. 40. En la introducción, González Boixo refiere la entrevista hecha con Juan Rulfo de manera específica para la edición. “Ese hombre que se casó con ella no existió nunca. Son locuras, son fantasías. Nunca conoció el mar. Nunca se casó con nadie. Siempre vivió con el padre”. En ediciones posteriores González Boixo ha reconocido que no es posible saber qué es creíble y qué no, de lo que decía Rulfo; porque al principio defendía a capa y espada que si lo había dicho el autor, y eso era la verdad definitiva.
16) Roberto Cantú, “De nuevo el arte de Juan Rulfo”, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Madrid, núms. 421-423, julio-septiembre, 1985, pp. 305-354. “Susana intentará hacer de Florencio un ser sintético que aúna la juventud y la diferenciación consanguínea de Pedro (ser diurno) con la relación impuesta por Bartolomé (ser nocturno). Florencio en su estado sintético debería cancelar la oposición entre relaciones <<fraternales>> (Pedro) y las relaciones incestuosas (Bartolomé)”, p. 329
