Macho Ethics by Cortés Jason;

Author:Cortés, Jason;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

[Literature is . . . an art of the tattoo; it inscribes, it ciphers in the amorphous mass of informative language the true sign of meaning. But this inscription is not possible without a wound, without loss. In order for that mass to become a text, in order for the word to communicate, the writer has to tattoo it, and insert inside her his pictograms. Writing would be the art of those graphs.][42]

The presence of violence in Sarduy’s discourse should not surprise the reader, since, for the Cuban, writing equals subversion, and as such it is always associated to a sort of iconoclastic élan. In Colibrí, however, Sarduy underestimates the destructive power of writing and strangely seems to be unaware of, what I would call for a lack of a better term, its “democratic iconoclasticism.” This would explain, at least in part, why the authorial figure at the end of the novel, in what I suppose would be an affirmation of his ethicity, disavows his proximity to Colibrí/writing, thus abandoning his authority.

Let’s return then to the last scene of the novel when, right after the burning of the Big House, Colibrí enters the Regent’s boudoir and finds a collection of stuffed birds and all sorts of makeup.[43] Colibrí looks at himself in the mirror and soon notices the signs of aging. Colibrí’s introspection lends the scene a peaceful air, as if the corpses of those who didn’t survive the razing of the Big House did not litter the surroundings of the edifice. This is how Melquíades’s room in Cien años de soledad (1967) would have looked if the winds of destruction had not flattened Macondo.[44] Both Aureliano Babilonia and Colibrí finally catch a glimpse of their own stories, as if looking at a mirror, but for Babilonia to understand means to disappear:

He began to decipher the instant he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room. For it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men.[45]

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