Incarnate Memories and Foregone Love Stories

Right from the beginning that is a sense of significance in the seemingly trivial, like the falling of rain, and a glimmer of existential beauty to be found in repetition, exhaustion, and freedom from logic. If inexplicitness was a literary principle, this text would have passed with flying colours. It is a cruel master of portraying the impossible, a maestro of describing things not as they purely are but rather as what they seem to be, which involves infinite digressions on how it makes a certain character feel, which, almost inevitably, revives inner memories and sensations associated with it. New characters continually emerge, and Ana Maria’s life experiences are comprehended through isolated fragments of events that do not come together as a cohesive whole, but as the miscellany of memories forming her past life. It is a simplified Proustian rant, a full-blown poetic narrative without being entangled in immeasurably long sentences. The nature of identity in this book is one that is less conscious of itself than the sensation of its own experiences. On page 161 the narrative indulges in describing the unspoken desire for closeness and that kind of emotional sensitivity which occurs with two people who are beginning to become lovers but have not yet done so owing to the impersonal tendencies of most humanly relations. Eventually the text does succumb to such passions, and the murmurous desire for love is seen to move like a snake through the dense veins of human consciousness, creating an irrational dimension of remembrance, a fixed feeling of regret produced from the intricacies of love, permeating almost all her memories. Feeling and remembrance — that is what this modernist text (and of course, almost all others) is concerned with. For there are these moments in life, these delicately sentimental, arduously sweet, and yet painful sensations of remembrance that plague our minds — and it is this hidden significance, this pulsation of emotions that clog the throbbings of consciousness which symbolize, in their ritual of remembrance, the carnality of human emotions, and the spasmodic rituals of heartbreak. Her marriage with Antonio is one that is unhappy. Ricardo’s departure from her was insufferable. But how does she suffer? Moments of insanity, soul-searching, fury, and sickness tumble through the narrative of her actions, guided by an impulsive desire to return to her lover, to gain him back. There is no distinctive way in which she contends with these memories that she experienced when she was alive — only that they are vaguely outlined by instances of wild regret and despair. And so from all sides of the text there is this breaking of boundaries, this freedom from logic, this inexpressible revolution of thoughts and feelings made expressible through a miscellany of desire and dust-laden memories. There is a strong awareness of life being temporal and finite, and therefore subjecting individuals to the possibility of regret, failed relationships, and unspoken experiences. She has many regrets in life, but she has now no choice other than to succumb to the inactivity of death. Ana-Maria’s death was peaceful; these memories do not clog her mind, but rather pass through her thoughts like a long winding river, revealing its contents without truly bothering her. But is there life after death?