Cory Hahn SPN 381 M, Dr. Salgado 5.11.

2012

El sexo, bestia Sempronio, sirve para la reproduccin y para el deleite de la especie, como sirve el estmago para el deleite y la digestin. Pero ni el estmago ni el sexo deben evidenciarse de manera jactante en la poesa ni en ninguna otra disciplina superior. Juan Ramn Jimenez

A Wealth of (Im)materiality: Origenismo and Anti-Origenismo in the Special Period The Juan Ramn Jimenez quote in the epigraph, taken from the summer 1946 volume of Orgenes: Revista de Arte y Literatura, clearly demarcates the boundaries of what had already become a critical poetic agon that would play a part in distinguishing the core members of the Orgenes group from their predecessors as well as from several of their contemporaries. The division pertains to philosophical foundations in materiality, on the one hand, and Idealism on the other. The presence and importance of the flesh would come to represent a problematic ground for debate between the two leading figures of mid-twentieth century Cuban literature, Jos Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piera. This debate is a multifarious one, especially in light of the eroticism present in Lezamas Paradiso. Perhaps because of the complexity, recent attempts to theorize the neo-origenismo movement in the 1990s have, by and large, ignored it. What remains is only half of the picture. In James Buckwalter-Ariass Cuba and the New Orgenismo, we find Lezama and Piera bracketed together in a two-dimensional rendering of a multidimensional aesthetic movement. In Buckwalter-Ariass defenseand he makes this very clearthe neo-origenista works he analyzes are often guilty of this same simplifying process. In order to extend and thereby round out his argument, this paper seeks to address the question of

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materiality and Idealism as represented first between Lezama and Piera and second between the neo-origenistas and their Special Period contemporaries (as represented herein by Pedro Juan Gutirrez). Before entering into a comparative analysis of Pieras La carne de Ren and Gutirrezs El Rey de La Habana, I will examine Buckwalter-Ariass strategy for dealing with Lezama and Piera within neo-origenista texts so as to carve out a space for the material/Ideal binary. With support from Esther Whitfields scholarship on Special Period fiction, I argue that Gutirrezs self-aware distancing from a Lezamian aesthetics of Idealism contextualizes the neoorigenismo movement and helps to explain the complexity and hypocrisy of re-introducing origenismo in the 1990s. I. A Space for Expansion in Buckwalter-Ariass New Origenismo James Buckwalter-Ariass Cuba and the New Origenismo examines the re-emergence of various literary themes in Cuba in the 1990s that deliberately recall the literary-esthetic movement that stemmed from the publication of the journal Origenes in the 1940s and 50s. His book offers a direct, unapologetically Marxist analysis of how neo-origenismo came into being as a result of the termination of certain restrictions that had impeded Cuban writers from publishing their works abroad. This lifting of international publishing restrictions was one of several governmental efforts to respond to the extreme financial crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Among other institutional paradigm shifts taking place around the same time were the temporary implementation of the Dollar, as well as the opening and marketing of Cuba as a tourist destination. Consequently, in Buckwalters view, these changes signaled the

beginning of a trans-Atlantic exchange of Cuban commodities that simultaneously depended upon the renewed purchase of Cuba as a cultural product as well as an ideological configuration of Cuban-ness within the global marketplace. This would prove, without question, to require a

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new marketing strategy. The long-stifled writers and their new-found access to international readerships provided a new Cuban image by returning to an old one, one whose problematic relationship with political and economic structures could serve as a spring-board into various contemporary social discourses. The neo-origenistas latched onto certain keybut often

vagueconcepts from the Origenes group to address issues such as gay rights, aesthetic principles, and political censorship. Buckwalter argues that art per se has not finally won outover the utopian political project and its small-minded bureaucrats; rather, Cuban literary narrative of the 1990s works meaningfully, according to the rules of the publishing industry, to rearticulate the relationship between its literary icons and its revolutionary history, between literature itself and the utopian political imagination (7). In this vein, Buckwalter espouses neoorigenismo with the Origenes project primarily in terms of its emblematic appraisal of its predecessors, and not in its actual narrative form or aesthetic aspirations. The works examined in this book, in other words, recover the Origenes project on an ideological level but their poetic strategies are more closely aligned with historical realism than with Garca Marruzs verbo encarnado. Problematically, this and other efforts to theorize neo-origenismo has tended to conflate certain discrepant figures whose participation in the Origenes1 publication was never founded on the same aesthetic or ideological grounds. Here I am referring specifically to what is likely the most well-known of the disputes within the group: the Lezama/Piera agon. Buckwalter-Arias, for example, considers only momentarily the significance of the vastly divergent perspectives of Lezama and Piera. In fact, he acknowledges this outright in his introduction, stating, I will not attempt here to provide a thorough account of the polemics surrounding the orgenistas in the

To distinguish the Origenes group from the publication around which they formed, I will italicize all mentions of the magazine.

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second half of the twentieth century (10). Opting to focus instead on the trajectory of events that placed the members of the Orgenes group on the margins of Cuban literary and political consciousness , Buckwalter-Arias essentially leaves Pieras polemics out of his line of sight. He touches on the problem by reminding us that Virgilio Piera and Jos Rodrguez Feo had attacked Orgenes from the pages of their journal Cicln in 1957, in the first issue of which they proclaimed borramos a Orgenes de un golpeAnd following the triumph of the Revolution, the attacks initially came not from the new political class but from younger writers (15). Buckwalter-Arias includes this snap-shot of a lengthy and complex issue not to delineate an aesthetic or ideological dispute among the group, but to explain historically the groups position on the fringe of the Cuban politico-cultural terrain. It is immediately ambiguous as to how or why Piera simultaneously formed a part of and stood in opposition to the Origenes group. Looking to the sections of Buckwalter-Ariass work that consider the influence of Lezama and Piera on neo-origenismo further problematizes the issue. In a way, each chapter of Buckwalter-Ariass work deals with Lezama as the undisputed leader of the Orgenes group. The section that most closely connects with the section on Piera, though, is the first chapter. Therein, he interrogates the cultural politics in and surrounding Senel Pazs story El lobo, el bosque, y el hombre Nuevo as representative of a paradigm shift that establishes various trends common in neo-origenista texts. El lobo, as well as the film it inspires, Fresa y Chocolate, offers an elaborate re-reading of a scene from a previous story written by Paz, Almuerzo, in which we find an ideologically dubious almuerzo lezamiano. Buckwalter examines the three works as they resonate with the pequeo-burgues premise of Lezamas decadent meal from Chapter Seven in Paradiso. Specifically, he reads the trajectory stemming from Paradiso, through Almuerzo and El lobo, el bosque, y el hombre Nuevo, toward Fresa y Chocolate as

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indicating a shift from bourgeois elitism to a politically radical activity. In Buckwalters terms, the re-significaiton of the almuerzo lezamiano signals an homage to the cultura criolla whose signifiers of privilege had been anathema ten years earlier, an homage to a culture that is no longer imagined lording it over the masses, in fact, but that now represents a subaltern culture that has managed to survive the Revolutions efforts to eradicate it (23). Furthermore,

Buckwalter interprets the unlikely friendship between David and Diego as a narrative reconciliation of the Hombre Nuevo (or Che Guevara figure) with the artistic elite (as an idolized Jos Lezama Lima). In this vein, Davidthe militant, macho Hombre Nuevoand Diego Lezamas textual spokespersonmust reconcile their differences in order for the country to progress beyond the economically stagnant post-Soviet reality. Thus, Paz employs Lezama as a bifurcated thorn in the side of the established order. He represents for Paz and for other neoorigenistas that would follow him both an icon of homosexuality and a criollo aestheticism. Buckwalter-Ariass treatment of Piera is all but too similar to his treatment of Lezama. If he historically glossed over Lezama and Pieras differences in the introduction, he also keeps his hands clean of the dispute as he considers Piera a representative of the Orgenes group in Leonardo Paduras Mscaras. Buckwalter returns to reconsider issues of sexual politics that resonate with his analysis of Pazs El lobo, el bosque, y el hombre nuevo. Like Pazs story, Paduras detective novel Mscaras sidesteps an opportunity for a direct discourse on sexual politicsas represented in this case not by Lezama but by Pierafor a far-reaching struggle to realign post-socialist cultural politics with the realm of authentic culture itself (114). These contestable notions of cultural politics, literary art, and authentic/high culture bemoan some of the main areas of disagreement between Lezama and Piera, yet their summary here succinctly totalizes Piera and the Orgenes group into a two-dimensional, uniform collectivity that never

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existed as such in the first place.

Buckwalter-Arias smartly avoids this problem by again

emphasizing the historicizing impetus of his project over the literary aesthetic or sensibility of the writers he chooses to represent the Orgenes group. By the 1990s, he writes, the historical conditions were right for Pieras redemption in literary and critical circles. This redemptioncannot be expressed now via literary aesthetic or sensibility akin to the writers ownPiera must be redeemedbut not by deploying his own discursive strategies (113). Herein lies my main concern with this and similar treatment of the Orgenes group within the 1990s, or, for that matter, any time: the problem with avoiding the sensibilities of the poet/playwright may allow for a clear historical conceptualization of the neo-orgenista trend, but only at the expense of the very crucial details that resist facile summarization. Among other important particulars, it erases the fact that the political and aesthetic ideologies within the Orgenes group were never homogenous. This may also lead to a reductionist definition of the neo-origenistas whose political positions and aesthetic strategies are likely as varied as their origenista antecedents. Lastly, but not of least significance for this analysis, we must not ignore the presence and successes of other Cuban writers in the 1990s that were deploying [Pieras] discursive strategies in direct opposition to the high-aesthetic style heralded by the (vast majority of the) Orgenes group and recovered by the neo-origenistasamong them, Pedro Juan Gutirrez, Zo Valdz, and Fernando Velzquez Medina. Prior to Buckwalter-Ariass theorization of neo-origenismo, several scholarly projects had already interrogated the impact of the post-Soviet economic crisis on Cuban literary production, but none have directly considered the opposing positions of aesthetic highmodernism and realism within the international marketplace. Most notable among them, Esther Whitfields Cuban Currency: The Dollar and Special Period Fiction offers what at first seems

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to be a very similar Marxist argument to Buckwalter-Ariass: the economic situation in the socalled Special Period [in times of peace] availed Cuban writers to the globalizing, free-market trend that would ultimately impact the content of the published works. Her argument more specifically concerns the impacts of tourism, the foreign gaze, and the perception of authenticity within the subgenre of Special Period Fiction. Though Whitfields and Buckwalter -Ariass interests overlap, neither effectively considers each others subgenres as contentious, despite the fact that they quite literally contend for their own places in their shared publishing market.2 To problematize this absence further, Whitfields work does not bear a single mention of origenismonew or otherwisedespite the inclusion of an entire chapter on Antonio Jos Ponte. The Ponte chapter does include an incisive contrast between him and Pedro Juan

Gutirrezand the Gutirrez chapter does include several contrasts between his style and that of more highbrow aestheticismbut the antagonism surfaces more as a side-note than a central consideration.
For Antonio Jos Pontethe predicament and allure of the city lie in its living ruins, as they do for Pedro Juan Gutirrez. But whereas Gutirrezs fiction borders on what its critics have called sociology, it is to architecture that Pontelooks for his elaboration of the ruin; and whereas Gutirrezs lens is fixed on lives as carnal and their material needs as immediate, the scope of Pontes is angled more broadly, encompassing the relationship of life to the structures that harbor it (127-128)

This comparison serves its rhetorical function as a transition from the Gutirrez chapter to the Ponte chapter. More importantly, it offers a glimpse at what I see as a very important distinction between Ponte (as neo-origenista pace Buckwalter-Arias) and Ponte (as Special Period-ista pace Whitfield). Buckwalter-Ariass Ponte embodies neo-origenismo for his work El libro perdido de los Origenistas, and Whitfields Ponte envisions the city as a nostalgic warzone in various of his stories and essays. The varying texts, though, put forth an essential notion of the visibility of
2

This does not necessarily imply a shared readership. The fact that Gutirrezs works cannot be sold in Cuba underlines this fact.

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decay in Havana that connects the past, present, and possibly the future. As Whitfield reminds us, this plays into Lezamas imaging of the ruin as an apocalyptic vision of a lasting city (154), but, as we will see in the below analysis of Gutirrezs El Rey de La Habana, it does not stray too far from the anti-lezamista materiality and carnality important to Piera either. We must not let Pontes shared position within each of these subgenres conflate the significant stylistic and ideological divergences between the neo-origenistas and the Special Period writers that do not share their interest in (neo-) neo-baroque aesthetics. II. The (Neo-) Lezama/Piera Problem At this point I will take a step back from my discussion of Buckwalter-Ariass and Whitfields theorizations of Cuban literature in the 1990s to establish a framework for locating and interpreting the distinctions between Pieras and Lezamas poetic praxes within post-Soviet texts. As there are multiple points of divergence between the two iconsas well as many studies that have already elaborated on themmy intention here is not to synthesize or provide a comprehensive list of them. Rather, I hope to put forth a foundational ground for comparison in the 1990s based on what I perceive to be the central binary opposition between the two: Lezamian idealism and Pierian materialism. In the following pages, I will briefly introduce this binary as represented by the two literary giants before articulating examples of their corresponding incarnations in the 1990s. Cintio Vitier, one of Pieras earliest and most commonly cited detractors, offers a foundation on which we can contextualize the Piera/Lezama agon. His often fierce criticisms of Piera in the years of Origenes simultaneously marginalizes, if not ostracizes, him from the group and in the process reveals an initial framework for what he believed to be the Lezamian project. Duanel Daz draws attention to Vitiers denunciation of Pieras La isla en peso in the

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following excerpt, quoted from Lo cubano en la poesia, to exemplify what he considers the limits of Vitiers origenista poetics, but I prefer to consider the limit as a border that separates the lezamiano from the antilezamiano:
La vieja mirada del autoexotismo, regresiva siempre en nuestra poesa, prolifera aqu con el apoyo de un resentimiento cultural que no existi nunca en las dignas y libres transmutaciones de lo cubano. Trpico de inocencia pervertida, huit clos insular radicalmente agnstico, tierra sin infierno ni paraso, en el sitio de la cultura se entronizan los rituales mgicos, y en lugar del conocimiento, el acto sexual. Pero ni siquiera los valores de la carnalidad sobreviven, porque los copuladores son imgenes vacas, contornos de sombras. Retrica, pulpa, abundancia podrida, lepra del ser, caos sin virginidad, espantosa existencia sin esencia. Es obvio en el tono y la tesis de este poema el influjo de visiones que, como las de Aim Csaire en Retorno al pas natal, de ningn modo pueden correspondernos. Nuestra sangre, nuestra sensibilidad, nuestra historia, como hemos visto en este Curso, nos impulsan por caminos muy distintos (qtd from Daz, 122).

This review offers descriptions against which we can define, in Vitiers view at least, the lezamiano and the antilezamiano. If Pieras La isla en peso is filled with cultural resentment, perverted innocence, and insular agnosticism, then the corresponding adjectival definition of the Origenista aesthetic could consist of appreciation, respect, and religious belief. Vitier very directly opposes knowledge or learning with sexual activity; rhetoric, flesh, and spoiled abundance find their counterparts in the lezamian imago, in the idea, and in the pureness of the essence; and his repetitious nuestra, nuestra, nuestra assumes a flat suya, suya, suya that belongs to Piera and any that dare conform to his poetic sensibility. A flat rejection of his poetry of copulators in the place of thinkers is not enough to entrench his dislike for the poem: even the carnality might have had its redeeming character were it not for its emptiness. It is this sentencing that provides a key to the lezamian aesthetic (as co-sponsored by Vitier) that goes well beyond a Christian teleological poetics and enters into a problematically Sausserian realm of signs and signifiers. Without dissolving into an instance of linguistics or reader response theory that would assume a different signification for the signifiying corporality/carnality for any given reader of La isla en peso, suffice it to say that the idea of an empty image carries with it

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a great deal of theoretical/philosophical baggage. But even if we remove Christianity and its preestablished exegetic practice, as we assume Piera does and would have us do and certainly as Buckwalter-Arias advises in his argument on the impossibility of a Christian connection in neoorigenismo, we are left to question the practice of valorizing the ephemeral/ideal over the corporeal/material. It is perhaps in light of the above oppositional thinking that moves Piera to identify himself as a purveyor of el antilezamismo. As Thomas F. Anderson reminds us, Pieras participation on the fringes of the Orgenes movement was fraught from the first years of the magazines publication and it only worsened, despite the inclusion of a relatively small number of Pieras writings, until he eventually left Cuba. Anderson points out the direct contrasts between Pieras Vida de Flora and Lezamas Muerte de Narciso, suggesting that Pieras poem can be read as a parody of Lezamas foundational work. Against the complex metaphors, voluptuous vocabulary, and lofty tenor of Lezamas poemPiera pitted crude language, unrefined imagery, and a conversational tone (Anderson 42, 43). This opposition of aesthetic refinement and brutish conversation, coupled with the above consideration of the material/ideal binary, will prove necessary to contextualize the position of the realismo sucio writers against the neo-origenistas. I want to emphasize that I consider the idealist/materialist binary crucial not only in the terms as discussed briefly here, but alsoand essentiallybecause I view it as part and parcel of the other points of opposition that famously separate Piera and Lezama: namely, Catholic/atheist, apolitical/political, cosmic/telluric, Cuban/Antillean, poetic/antipoetic, etc. III. Triangulating Pedro Juan Gutirrez, Twice Pieras fleshy materialism is, without a doubt, rampant in Gutirrezs work. Comparisons between the two could likely be articulated using most any of either artists

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writings. However, the task of situating each author in opposition to their respective origenista trends requires the explication of a pair of texts that notably stand at odds with their neo-baroque, high modernist contemporaries. Since Gutirrez works with prose, Pieras La carne de Ren is better suited for comparison than the equally iconoclastic poetics of La isla en peso, La carne, or La vida de Flora, which all face-off against the Lezamian standard in their own right. Gutirrezs El Rey de La Habana offers the double benefit of representing anti-

(neo)origenismo and aligning productively with various scenes from La carne de Ren. Whats more, El Rey dialogues with Senel Pazs El lobo, el bosque, y el Hombre Nuevo and the umbilical almuerzo lezamiano that nourishes it as it connects with Paradiso and the Orgenes group. The analysis that follows, then, will perform a dual triangulation fitting of Pontes El libro perdido first connecting Gutirrez to Piera and eo ipso Lezama, then contrasting Gutirrez to Paz and, consequently, the neo-origenistas. Pedro Juan Gutirrezs El Rey de La Habana can be categorized as a picaresque bildungsroman wherein the protagonist, Rey, struggles to survive the day-to-day cruelty of extreme poverty in Havana. We are first introduced to Rey at thirteen years old, just before his brother accidentally kills their mother and then, in a rush of guilt, himself. As if this were not enough emotional trauma for the young boy, his grandmother subsequently dies without a word or display of discomfort. Similarly silent and confused, Rey is then unable to verbalize the circumstances of the three deaths to the police and is consequently taken to a juvenile detention center. After several years in the reformatory, Rey escapes and begins his life as a homeless vagrant. Reys material conditions are bleak and inconsistent at best. His life dissolves into a cyclical obsession that oscillates constantly between sex and food, desire and hunger.

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Regarding Gutirrezs style as anti-(neo)origenista, I doubt anyone would argue that his prose shares any commonalities with Lezama beyond the geopolitical backdrop of Cuba. Nevertheless, we should not overlook the fact that Gutirrez himself has typified his work as such, and has done so specifically in contrast to those of his contemporaries that aspire towards the neo-baroque aesthetic of Lezama. Anke Birkenmaier has quoted Gutirrez as saying, "Hay cada vez ms gente que escribe. Incluso la gente como yo, que escribe una especie de realismo sucio, de realismo profundo, de realismo fuerte. Y al lado t ves gente que escribe como Lezama Lima, de manera crptica, cerrada. Abilio Estvez, por ejemplo, es totalmente lezamiano" (Birkenmaier). This quote goes a long way to couch Gutirrez within a dialogue regarding the realismo sucio writers in contrast to their cryptic and closed-off counterparts. Gutirrez reaffirms this in describing his literary influences: "Para m, Lezama Lima siempre fue muy cerrado. Yo tuve modelos mucho mejores en los narradores norteamericanos: Mark Twain, que no s por qu me fascinaba, Hemingway, Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, toda esta gente" (Birkenmaier). Regardless of his vaguely stated affiliations, we can generate from this and the preceding quote a better understanding of Gutirrezs sordid realism as grounded in terms that align more closely with those of Piera. Like El Rey de La Habana, Pieras La carne de Ren is also a coming of age story whose adolescent male protagonist is bombarded, as the title suggests, by carnal impulses. Rens father, the leader of an amorphous resistance to an equally indistinct power structure that seeks to control the consumption of chocolate, wants his son to replace him when he is mature enough to do so. That time comes with Rens twentieth birthday and his subsequent

matriculation in La Escuela del Dolor. Like Reys term in the reformatory, this brief but not insignificant stint in Rens life portrays a failed institutionalization of the adolescent that would

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have placed him more concretely within the parameters of a broad community with shared goals. Failing to assimilate, then, results in Rens isolation from the Cause. Following the assassination of his parents, he is left to fend for himself by finding work wherever he can to earn a living. In many ways, the fetishization of the body in La carne de Ren is very similar to the veritable obsession with desire present in El Rey de La Habana. One important aspect of this carnal focus belies a plot motivation dependent on the mutual satisfaction of multiple characters. Rens body is as much a contestable site for the pleasure of othersas I analyze more closely in the following pagesas it is a locus for his own pain. In an analysis comparable to BuckwalterAriass work on neo-origenismo and directly related to Whitfields discussion of the dollar and special period fiction, Francisco Fernndez de Alba interprets the presence of desire and fetishism in La carne de Ren as an economy of the body. Meat, like flesh and chocolate, he writes, becomes a commodity fetish based on the politics of controlling supply and demand. In the novel, meat, flesh, and chocolate are more than food and commoditiesthey structure and justify life (de Alba 71). Leaving chocolate aside, El Rey de La Habana operates according to a similar framework, only in an economically and politically distinct context. The Spanish term carne, both as signifying flesh and meat, sex and hunger, are the very tenets against which Juan Ramn Jimenez rails in epigraph to this essay. If ni el estmago ni el sexo deben evidenciarse de manera jactante en la poesa, then Pieras carnal economy of food and fornication takes on a slightly different meaning when reiterated by Gutirrez in the post-Soviet Cuba of the 1990s (Jimenez 4). Pieras La carne de Ren, after all, is a far cry from realism, but it does confront the neo-baroque aesthetic in the same way that Gutirrez confronts the closed-off, cryptic nature celebrated by neo-origenismo.

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The above skeletal outlines of Pieras and Guiterrezs novels leave us at a very crucial moment in both stories. The two young protagonists find themselves completely and utterly alone. In their desperation they resort to former family acquaintances for support and/or

guidance and are both confronted instead by the sexual advances of older women. Both scenes portray an almost ritualistic, oedipal sexual initiation from maternal figures that either set the tone for the rest of the novel, as in Reys case, or, in Rens story, draw important parallels to other narrated carnal exchanges. Rens aggressor in this moment is none other than Dalia, the woman whose sexual advances earlier in the story occasion the gift of an anatomy book intended to seduce him. A call from Rens father saves him from her advances in their first meeting but, with his death, there is nothing to interfere with her desires in their second meeting. In fact, through the contrasting monikers of ngel Exterminador and ngel Erotizador, Piera establishes a stark contrast between Rens father and Dalia (a mother figure) that underlines their oppositional interests in pain and pleasure. As Ren considers his options, he ruminates,
Sera posible que Dalia lo acogiera? Haba luz en su balcn. Sera muy tarde para llamar a su puerta? Para una mujer como Dalia las once era una hora cualquiera. Se acordara todava de l? Claro que no lo habra olvidado. Dalia, que siempre lo acogi con inters, que evit que sufriera un desmayo en la carnicera, bien poda ayudarlo. (95).

Before entering further into Dalias lair, it is worth noting the suspiciously similar moment that Rey experiences prior to meeting with his seductress.
Desde all poda ver bien su casa y a la vecina. Se qued un buen rato. Nada sucedi. Nadie se asom por la baranda. Sin pensarlo dos veces dej su puesto de observacin y fue caminando pausadamente hasta la puerta del edificio. Subi los cuatro pisos, hasta la azotea, y toc en la puerta (45).

These analogous instances set the tone for each scene. Rens considerate, questioning hesitat ion belies his naivet and innocence while Reys exaggeratedly thoughtless moment and the Hemmingwayian nothing happened remain faithful to his more instinctive impulses.

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Similarities between the two scenes proliferate as Dalias enthusiastically empathetic pobrecito! (95) corresponds with FredesbindasReys former neighbors Ay, muchacho, por tu madre! (45), and as both women invite their guests to eat and bathe: Dalias Lo primero es darse un bao; despus curar tan feos lamparones. Y por ltimo le dar una excelente cena, (96) meets Fredesbindas Voy a calentar algo para que almuerces. Pero bate primero para botar esos trapos churriosos (47). In keeping with the above perspicacity of Reys animal instincts, he becomes suspicious as his scene leads him toward becoming comfortable enough to take off his clothes and bathe. Ren, though, obediently agrees to everything without so much as speaking a word of resistance. As Dalia attempts to harden his carne with alcohol and intense lickingopposing Rens experience in the Escuela del Dolor when the objective was to soften him by the same meansthe contrast between the Exterminating Angel and the Eroticizing Angel comes full circle. Both pain and pleasure reside within the material/physical realm, but the exchange seems to be completely unidirectional. In these terms, the heterosexual initiation of Ren is more of an extraction or theft than it is an exchange. There is no indication that Ren derives pleasure from the seduction, the very absence of which would seem to negate its presence, especially within a work so dedicated to suffering. The notion of fetishistic exchange emphasizes the vastly divergent worlds in which these two scenes unfold. Inasmuch as Buckwalter-Ariass discussion of the possibility for the

almuerzo lezamiano in Senel Pazs El lobo to represent a transition from bourgeois elitism to state subversion, this reinstatement of Pieras carnal economy evinces an unexpected inflation or exchange rate that separates the two works. The potentiality for Reys sexual domination over Fredesbinda and the superfluous joy each experience in the act suggests a hyperinflation of the would-be exchange between Ren and Dalia. Reys scene plays out very

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differently than Rens, after all, and his sexual prowess proves as much an indication of his worth in this and subsequent sexual encounters as Rens flaccidity confirms the failed physical exchanges between him and everyone else he encounters. As Elizabeth Austin reminds us, the scene between Ren and Dalia is, despite its failure, as close as Ren gets to sexual fulfillment in the novel (Austin 54). Above all, these scenes commence a dialogue between the two works, a dialogue of masculinity, pleasure, and pain that bridges the temporal gap between them while also firmly placing each work on the same side of the material/ideal binary. Machismo plays an important role in the sexual politics of each novel. The presence or absence of male virility and the power it occasions for its possessor determinately affect the courses of the two protagonists. Herein we should also note the shared theme of sadomasochism in each work. As Anderson reminds us in her explication of the scenes of religious torture in La carne de Ren, the pain and pleasure principles become indistinguishable within the minds of the schoolmasters in the Escuela del Dolor. Their teachings inspire in their students an equivalence of sexual pleasure and physical torture. Rens total resilience to the project, however, denies not only his reception into the group, which, as mentioned above, will leave him vulnerable and alone physically. His lack of conformation also signals a psychological alienation from the group of homo-socialif not homosexualclassmates that is mirrored by his rejection of heterosexuality as instigated by Dalia. Within each of these attempts to initiate Ren into one group or the other we find a resistance to the connection of these arguably animal drives to the spiritual/religious realm. Here Anderson recalls Marquis de Sades The 120 Days of Sodom as influencing Pieras persistent denigration of spirituality. Concerning the utter filth in the orgy scene in La carne de Ren, he explains:
Like Sade, who resolutely denied the existence of the soul and created a world in which everything was material, Piera presents the members of the Escuela del Dolor as pleasure-seeking libertines who are driven into frenzy by their carnal appetites and

H A H N - 17 biological needs. In doing so the author implies that in his topsy-turvy world there is no place for the sacred or the divine (Anderson 178).

It would make little difference if we were to replace in this excerpt Gutirrez for Piera and the characters in El Rey de La Habana for members of the Escuela del Dolor. Despite Rens position on the opposite side of the machismo scale from Rey, each inhabit godless, soulless narrative worlds where spirituality and the possibility for redemption through sacrifice are completely removed from the animal and carnal aspects of their humanity. Their positions on the margins of their respective worlds align them with Agambens homo sacer: due to their material (read: economic, civic) inconsequentiality, they can be killed but not sacrificed. Such is literally the case for Rey as he dies alone in an abandoned container where no one will find him and metaphorically the case for Ren, as his death is simulated without meaning or consequence through the death and burial of his double in the cemetery where he worked at the time. Beyond the clear anti-lezamismo of Pieras and Gutirrezs debased spirituality, the problematic sexual politics of these novels also lead us into a second triangulation, one that will locate El Rey de La Habana directly between Piera and the Senel Paz/Lezama Lima connection. Buckwalter-Arias makes clear in his analysis of Pazs El lobo that the text and its film version may accrue some politico-cultural capital via its proximity to the more transgressive scenes from Paradisobut it relies more heavily on the novels use of homoeroticism as the point of departure for a broader mediation on culture (Buckwalter-Arias 32). In agreement with Buckwalter-Arias, I understand the reconciliation of the Lezama figure, Diego, with the figure of the Hombre Nuevo, David, primarily as indicative of a narrative catharsis and only secondarily as a discourse on sexual politics. In this vein, rather than directly engaging with the many existing analyses of homosexuality in the Paz story, my analysis will be geared toward a different kind of

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reconciliation: the parallel but quite contradictory reconciliation of Rey with the transvestite Sandra.3 Reys various encounters with Sandra, a young homosexual transvestite that lives in the same solar as Reys sexual partner and confidant Magda, provide what at first seems to be in stark contrast to the relationship that unfolds between Diego and David. Reys accidental selfintroduction to Sandra, though, follows an unexpectedly similar pattern to the meeting and befriending of Diego and David that precedes their almuerzo lezamiano. Sandras posture toward Rey is one of a vague erotic interest, coupled with an overarching distaste for his cleanliness and his general attitude toward life. S/he chastises Rey, echoing Diegos impulse to instruct David to behave less like a typical macho revolutionary. Ya, ya. Te dije que odio las vulgaridadesay, no encuentro un hombre fino, elegante, caballeroso, que me regale flores. No. Todos son iguales de groseros, sucios, malhabados (65). Rey does not exactly conform to the Hombre Nuevo figure, but his machismo aligns with the cultural standard according to Sandra all men are the same. Similarly, Sandra makes quaint literary references that fall on Reys deaf ears. Yo crea que habas mordido la manzana de la bruja de Blancanieves, she says, to which Rey responds, Quien es Blancanieves? Sandras reproachful derision following Reys question mirrors Diegos surprise when David asks if the picture of Lezama on the wall of his flat is of his father: Por ignorante que eres. No se puede hablar contigo (75). Also, the narrator of El Rey pays close attention to the relatively luxurious items decorating his/her flat, to the niceties of civilized living. Sandra disimulaba aquella zona con plsticos y cortinas, una lamparita roja colocada sobre una extraa mesa de tres patasEn fin, toda una escenografa de casita de juguete para esconder los escombros y dejar visible solo la belleza kitsch (88). This

Pineras La carne de Ren handles homoeroticism very differently than any of the other three works I am analyzing here and, so, I will not be including it directly in this analysis

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description of the relatively lavish digs immediately precedes Sandras declaiming that she is going to prepare him an almuercito of arroz con pollonot exactly an almuerzo lezamiano, but one whose relative rarity in the face of such extreme poverty as the novel exhibits reads as unlikely as the one Diego prepares for David. And if the almuerzo was transformed from an elitist bourgeois practice into a form of resilience in the ten years that passed between Pazs short story El almuerzo and El lobo, then the decade that would separate El lobo from El Rey would further reduce the lezamian feast down to arroz con pollo and beer. In other words, the culinary symbols of a repressed culture that offered the potential for rebellion in 1990 would have been practically a material impossibility by 1999. Within the context of Special Period fiction and its contending influences from the orgenes and anti-orgenes camps, the comparison of Rey and Sandras relationship with that of Diego and David discloses a very important crossroads: the accepting, antiseptic embrace of Diego and David may function as a catharsis for the Cuban readership, but, in light of El Rey de La Habanas sales exclusively outside of the country, the impact of Reys carnal, filthy fornication with Sandra (certainly a different kind of embrace that was possible for Diego and David) must be read in terms of the voyeuristic proclivity of an international audience. It cannot, nor could it ever serve the same function as the infinitely more subtle reconciliation of two opposing ideologies in El lobo or its filmic adaptation. This reveals the problematic

question of readership on the island, and readership of the island. It speaks to a fetishism of the flesh not entirely distinct from that discussed above in relation to the carnal exchanges in La carne de Ren, a meta-level fetishism of the tourist that consumes the texts that holdby paying witness toimpoverished Cuban flesh. Regarding the dilemma of a sought-after, touristic authenticity, Esther Whitfield writes,

H A H N - 20 To those defenders of a true Cuban literature, battling first against the dictates of revolutionary values and then against the capitalist notion of market value, Gutirrez offers a dissonant alternative. The five books of his Ciclo Centro Habana redefine truth not as an aesthetic idealas per Jess Daz, Abilio Estvez, Francisco Lpez Sacha, and othersbut as testimonial revelation (Whitfield 98).

This quote, which succinctly places Gutirrez as antithetic toward the high-modernist styles of the listed authors as well as the presumed other neo-origenistas that Buckwalter-Arias analyzes, conforms to Whitfields broader argument concerning the importance of the foreigners gaze on Special Period literary production. The notion of testimony may fit more neatly in a discussion of Gutirrezs Triloga Sucia, where Pedro Juan himself plays the role of the witnessing protagonist, yet the similarities he shares with the young Rey suffice to offer a narrative-voyeurism thematically consistent in all five of the Ciclo texts. Essential to Whitfields argument and to my own is her impression that Gutirrez and other Special Period writers take their texts as opportunities to put foreign consumption itself in the spotlight, exploring their own cravings for it (it is in their own financial interest, at least, to be consumed) and at the same time subjecting it to scrutiny, mockery, and censure (22). This is certainly a materialism of a different sort than that described above. Nevertheless it agrees with Buckwalter-Ariass interest in the problematic relationship between the (neo-)origenistas, foreign investment, and international distribution of an image of Cuban-ness. If we are to successfully conclude this dual triangulation of El Rey de La Habana in relation to Piera and Lezama in the mid-twentieth century, on the one hand, and, on the other, Lezama and Paz in the 1990s, we would be remiss to omit the third of three brief lines that Juan Ramn Jimenez includes in his denigration of the carnal urges in poetry. Following the abovequoted lines, he writes, Por estar dominado por el sexo, por ser animal inferior, el espaol en particular, ha sido tan poco aceptado en el alto oasis de las abstracciones universales, bestia Sempronio (Jimenez 4). Rey represents Jimenezs inferior animal par excellence, both

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dominated by sexuality and dominating sexually, that responds to, through the Spanish publishing gaze via its Sempronian opportunism. In agreement with Whitfields remark on the Special Period fictions capacity to critique the very foreign gaze it attracts, Gutirrezs noted epigraph somoslo que se vende como pan caliente thereby also addresses Cuban literatures problematic relationship with post-colonial influences such as Spain and the United Statesthe same influences against which the Orgenes group struggled. Rather than deriding the market by avoiding it, Gutirrez derides the market by participating in it. While his is not a neo-origenista tale of art winning out over the state via dubious channels of publication, Gutirrezs El Rey de La Habana is conscious and critical of that hypocrisy.

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Works Cited Anderson, Thomas F. Everything in Its Place: The Life and Works of Virgilio Piera. Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg: 2006. Birkenmaier, Anke. Ms all del realism sucio: El Rey de La Habana de Pedro Juan Gutirrez, [online available 5/10/2012] http://www.pedrojuangutierrez.com/Ensayos_ensayos_Anke%20Birkenmaier%20(Rey).h tm#Nota2 Buckwalter-Arias, James. Cuba and the New Origenismo. Tamesis Books, Woodbridge: 2010. de Alba, Francisco Fernandez. Money and Commodities in Virgilio Piera's La Carne de Ren, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 62:2, pp 67-82 (2008). Daz, Duanel. Los limites del origenismo. Editorial Colibri, Madrid: 2005. Gutirrez, Pedro Juan. El Rey de La Habana. Editorial Anagrama: Barcelona: 1999. Jimenez, Juan Ramn. Encuentros y Respuestas, Orgenes: Revista de Arte y Literatura, 3:10 (Summer 1946). Piera, Virgilio. La carne de Ren. Tusquets, Barcelona: 2000. Whitfield, Esther. Cuban Currency: The Dollar and Special Period Fiction. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: 2008.