Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos

Fantastic Literature and the Representation of Reality

Author(s): MARTHA J. NANDORFY
Source: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Otoño 1991), pp. 99-112
Published by: Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos
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MARTHA J. NANDORFY

Fantastic Literature and the

Representation of Reality

Todo estudio dedicado a la literatura fantdstica implica una oposici6n que en

Ia mayorta de los casos queda implicita. El destino de lo fantdstico parece ser
una categorxa negativa planteada en contra de todo lo que se considera como
normal, natural y objetivo. Esto no constituirla una oposici6n tan radical si los
supuestos dados del discurso filos6fico se consideraran como pertenecientes a un
enfoque especifico sobre un segmento de la realidad pero, como propongo
examinar en este trabajo, el saber tiende a concebirse como una totalidad.
La base de mis reflexiones es un estudio comparativo de tres obras que
pueden considerarse como principales dentro de una perspectiva en torno a lo
fantdstico: Introduction A la littdrature fantastique de Tzvetan Todorov,
Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion de Rosemary Jackson, y En busca
del unicornio: los cuentos de Julio Cortazar de Jaime Alazraki.
La deflnici6n de lo fantdstico como algo esencialmente "otro" frente a otros
generos literarios surge de la exclusi6n logocentrica de la diferencia y el deseo
de reprimir al otro. La pregunta principal de este trabajo podria formularse
en los siguientes terminos: ila ambigiedad, tiene que situarse marginalmente
entre dos absolutos - Ser/Nada - o habita inevitablemente el lenguaje,
destruyendo asi las bases mismas de un discurso tedrico de Ia identidad?

Any study focusing on fantastic literature implies an opposition which

often remains implicit. The fantastic seems destined to be a negative
category set against what is taken to be normal, natural and objective.
This would not be such a radical opposition were the givens of
philosophical discourse thought to belong to a specific perceptual
frame focused upon a segment of reality, but as we shall see, this is
rarely the case for knowledge conceives of itself as totalizing. When
associated with logic and representational language, reality shrinks to
a fully accessible and cosy entity outside of which nothing remains
apart from the fantastic things and events "existing" only in fantasy,
in other words, unreality, illusion, nothing.

REVTSTA CANADTRNSE DE ESTUDTOS HISPANIcos Vol XVL, 1 Otonio 1991

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 100

In this paper I wish to address the theoretical problems arising

from the logocentric tendency to exclude those experiences which
highlight the indeterminacy of language. The basis of my reflections
will be a comparative examination of three major studies on the
fantastic: Tzvetan Todorov's Introduction d la litterature fantastique,
Rosemary Jackson's Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion and Jaime
Alazraki's En busca del unicornio: los cuentos de Julio Cortdzar. This last
work is based specifically on Cortdzar's short stories, but explores
these with the aim of reformulating theoretical notions of the
fantastic. I too will be referring to Cortdzar's work because it
challenges many fundamental theoretical assumptions.
Many studies of the so-called fantastic attempt to define it without
first defining the unfantastic or "real" which is thus posited as the self
evident and closed basis for all experience and thought. The following
quotation from a lecture on physics by Professor Bohm offers an
interesting definition: "The word 'reality' is derived from the roots
'thing' (res) and 'think' (revi). 'Reality' means 'everything you can think
about.' This is not 'that-which-is.' No idea can capture 'truth' in the
sense of 'that which is"' (Zukav, 326-27).
It may seem unusual to cite a physicist in a commentary on
fantastic literature, but any reflection upon the fantastic requires a
"making conscious" of what we mean by "reality." When discussing
literature, we move back and forth between, on the one hand, the
notion of reality as "the world of action" and, on the other, represen
tation as an artistic mode subject to conventions. What is more difficult
to accept is that our modes of perception may be just as artificial and
that our ideas of reality may be conventions like any other. When the
distinctions break down and we find ourselves not outside the entity
"reality," but inextricably within it, representation of any kind
becomes highly problematic. The notion of mimesis loses its tradi
tional foundation since the possibility of imitating or even re-creating
implies access to an a priori reality.
In his overview of the New Physics, Gary Zukav explains that
"access to the physical world is through experience. The common
denominator of all experiences being the 'I' that does the experienc
ing. In short, what we experience is not external reality, but our
interaction with it. This is a fundamental assumption of
"'complementarity'" (115-16). The "in here/out there" illusion is
shattered in physics by the wave-particle duality of light. At the
subatomic level, it is no longer possible to simply discover the nature
of the object under study, because the presence of the observer
influences the phenomena. Zukav suggests that the implications of this
pararlox are operative in all our attempts to sealk about reality. In

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 101

literary studies this principle of complementarity translates to

textuality.
Before passing on to the studies devoted specifically to the fantastic,
it might be worthwhile to mention briefly two classical studies on the
representation of reality: Aristotle's Poetics and Erich Auerbach's
Mimesis. In spite of being historically distant from each other and from
us, the world-views and specific notions informing these works
continue to have a surprisingly firm hold on Western thought.
According to Aristotle, the artist "must always represent one of
three things - either things as they were or are; or things as they are
said and seem to be; or things as they should be" (xxv. 2-3). These
options reveal the assumption that we can know how things are apart
from how they seem to be. It is also worth noting the "either/or"
construction of this precept. It is one that is continually encountered
in studies of the fantastic, and poses a great obstacle to the imagin
ation. Aristotle maintains a constant tension between the two objects
of representation, that of abstract, universal truths and that of accurate
likenesses. Although the different ways of representing imply freedom
from such epistemological constraints as "can we know how this or
that really is," the choice is subject to artistic conventions: the realistic
style is suitable for representing vulgarity, while nobility requires
idealizing embellishments.
Auerbach's Mimesis belongs to the Aristotelian tradition but inverts
the hierarchy of absolutes and particulars in favour of the latter. In
accordance with his historicist perspective, he prefers things as they
really were or are, at least on the level of particulars. He, neverthe
less, shares Aristotle's notion of essences and universal or "deep"
truths. His chapter on Don Quixote is very pertinent to our discussion,
for here he must deal explicitly with both reality and the fantastic. He
expresses the essence of the novel in a nutshell: "The whole book is
a comedy in which well-founded reality holds madness up to ridicule"
(347). He never mentions the multiple narrative framework of the
novel which in fact is very slippery ground for a "well-founded
reality."
Don Quixote partakes of this wholesome reality but his idie fixe
repeatedly induces him to exit from it, out into that no-man's-land of
mere fantasy. His dilemma could be considered in the light of the
fundamental assumption of complementarity: what we experience is
not external reality, but our interaction with it. Don Quixote is
constantly interacting and so, according to this new vision of reality,
he shares in it as much or as little as anyone else. If Auerbach had
concentrated on the protagonist's interaction with other characters,

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 102

Don Quixote's uniqueness would still stand out. His madness,

however, would then be contained within a reality which it would
contaminate, thereby making it unbearably ambiguous. His interpreta
tion does not permit such mingling to attenuate and extend the
boundaries of reality:

At best we might say that the hidalgo's madness translates him into another,
imaginary sphere of life; but even so the everyday character of our scene and
others similar to it remains unharmed, because the persons and events of
everyday life are constantly colliding with his madness and come out in
stronger relief through the contrast. (343 - my emphasis)

Don Quixote's problematic interaction with others is not seen as

tragic or even serious, because his madness is excluded from reality
and humanness. At one point it seems that Auerbach is prepared to
tackle the thorny question. He asks: "but is it true that the world is
well ordered?" However, instead of searching for the answer within
the configuration of the text, he categorically states that "the question
is not raised" (357).
While it might seem inappropriate to associate Don Quixote with
fantastic literature, we have seen that the critic is forced to define his
or her notion of reality implicitly, when the familiar is misrecognized
or made strange. In contemporary literature illusion often permeates
the subject's existential space as otherness, thereby creating problems
which are perhaps more fundamental and do not seem to expect any
solutions. The heroes do not generally "see the light" at the end and
reincorporate themselves into the order of things, for suddenly order
itself assumes the ephemeral quality of illusion and even things loose
their substance.
Tzvetan Todorov attempts to side-step the philosophical issues of
the nature of reality by focusing on the fantastic as a literary genre
which is structurally determined. Strangely enough, this genre is
ephemeral; its existence depends on the implicit reader's first reaction
which should be one of hesitation in the face of uncertainty:

Le fantastique occupe le temps de cette incertitude; des qu'on choisit l'une ou

l'autre r6ponse, on quitte le fantastique pour entrer dans un genre voisin,
l'6trange ou le merveilleux. Le fantastique, c'est l'h6sitation 6prouv6e par un
etre que ne connait que les lois naturelles, face i un ev6nement en apparence
surnaturel. (9)

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 103

Note the underlying "either/or" structure and the dichotomy of

illusion versus reality governed by known laws. Todorov insists that
there are only two possible solutions, but as soon as we choose one of
them, the genre ceases to be or becomes something else. He does not
explain why we must choose nor why we have only two options. It is
inevitably so because reality is posited as a knowable entity, which
then can only be transgressed in two ways: either the self is mistaken,
or the world is mistaken - in other words - marvellous.
The marvellous, here, implies a form of escapism into an incon
sequential realm generating the kind of reader response we may
define as complacent amusement. According to Pierre Mabille: "le but
rel du voyage merveilleux est, nous sommes ddja en mesure de le
comprendre, l'exploration plus totale de la rdalitd universelle"
(Todorov, 62). Although Todorov cites this ideal, he is careful not to
be led out of his structural perimeters into what he refers to as
anthropological phenomena. Similarly, in spite of identifying the first
function of the fantastic as producing a particular effect on the reader:
"peur, ou horreur, ou simplement curiosit6 - que les autres genres ou
formes littdraires ne peuvent provoquer," and in spite of positing the
fantastic as a genre existing in the reader's mind, in the duration of
hesitation, he excludes the reader as extraliterary.
Todorov further differentiates the uncanny, the fantastic and the
marvellous by situating them temporally. This seems to strengthen the
irrevocability of structure. The uncanny pertains to the past since what
seemed inexplicable (at the time of the reading), later becomes known.
The marvellous pertains to the future because it deals with the
unknown. Before proceeding to the fantastic, let us examine these two
distinctions. Situating the unknown in the future implies that when we
get there it will become known and if it doesn't it is simply incon
sequential nonsense. In other words, the unknown is just a temporary
blank because ultimately everything is knowable. If, on the other
hand, we interpreted the marvellous as "that which is" or "l'explora
tion plus totale de la rdalitd universelle," we would have to content
ourselves with contemplating it in wonder. Pondering the
epistemological problems also characteristic of the New Physics, Zukav
comments:

To stand in awe and wonder is to understand in a very specific way, even if

that understanding cannot be described. The subjective experience of wonder
is a message to the rational mind that the object of wonder is being perceived
and understood in ways other than the rational. (65)

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 104

If instead of experiencing hesitation, we experienced this kind of

wonder when confronted with the fantastic or the marvellous (the
distinction would start to blur), we would not have to choose one of
two possible solutions.
Todorov situates the fantastic in the present of the reading, which
accounts for its ephemeral quality, for when we reach the end we
either explain the mysterious, thereby relegating it to the past, or
marvel at it by projecting it into the future. Both the familiar and the
strange, the explicable and the inexplicable could conceivably co-exist
within a world-view that is in its widest scope marvellous. This is what
Cortdzar says about Oliveira's vision in Rayuela (Alazraki, 102), despite
the fact that there are no fantastic events in this novel comparable to
Remedio's disappearance on the wings of her bed sheets, or Padre
Nicanor's levitation provoked by drinking hot chocolate in Cien anos
de soledad.
In Rayuela the marvellous vision does not respond to a world
governed by new and unknown physical laws that are simply accepted
by the protagonist, the narrator, the reader, or by anyone else.
Oliveira and the other characters move in a world that is completely
mimetic in that physical laws are not contradicted and yet the world
is not a familiar and comfortable place. On the contrary, it is
unfathomable and pregnant with potential due to Oliveira's perpetual
ly open state of mind. The absence of both supernatural events, and
language pushed to the extreme limits of subjectivity, suggests that
being-in-the-world and communicative language are problematic
enough.
Todorov's "either/or" proposition, together with his insistence on
a final solution, are inoperative if the self can only experience its
interaction with the world and if solutions are only provisional
reflections of the questioning self. In such a world, the uncanny retains
its mystery because strange events resist definitive explication, and the
fantastic merges with the marvellous; it brings the marvellous into
reality from the supernatural realm without naturalizing it in the
positivistic sense.
According to Todorov, language can free itself completely from the
constraints of reality to create purely fantastic entities that have no
existence. This idea again implies that the self can know reality as a
distinct object, and can also choose to fabricate things that are outside
of it. This would mean that we ourselves are not part of reality. His
thematic study of the fantastic further divides self from other and
perception from its object, in spite of the fact that these divisions are
so obviously defied by tets narrated in the first persn. The separ

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 105

ation between states of mind and things has been shown, from various
disciplinary perspectives in the twentieth century, to constitute an
arbitrarily imposed order. Such narratives as CortAzar's "Axolotl" and
"Noche boca arriba," to mention only two, cannot be submitted to this
kind of examination due to the merging of the perceiver and the
perceived. It is no wonder that Todorov considers the last aesthetically
satisfying examples of the fantastic to be Maupassant's tales.
Todorov claims that for the fantastic to emerge the reading must
be neither poetic nor allegorical. The allegorical is relatively easy to
define. The poetic, however, poses more difficulties because instead of
clearly defining the boundaries of significance it explodes them.
Todorov deals with this by offering such a simplistic definition of
poetry that the whole issue of meaning is eliminated. Citing Roger
Caillois, he states that poetry creates infinite images which seek
incoherence as a principle and reject any signification (37). The
fantastic, therefore, is said to be located halfway between these infinite
images and the limited images of allegory. This dualistic structure,
with the fantastic perched precariously midway, is the paradigm
seemingly generated by the logocentric faith in the principle of non
contradiction. We may want to ask whether ambiguity is necessarily
the product of such a perceptual frame. In other words, can it only
exist marginally midway between two absolutes, or can it thrive in a
bigger way beyond the limits of a logocentric vision?
Todorov's premises and methodology do correspond to the works
he selects as representative of the fantastic, but ultimately he "ou
bien's" himself into a logical cul de sac where he is forced to deny the
possibility of literature in order to save reality:

Pour que 1'6criture soit possible, elle doit partir de la mort de ce dont elle
parle; mais cette mort la rend elle-meme impossible, car il n'y a plus quoi
6crire. La litt6rature ne peut devenir possible que pour autant qu'elle se rend
impossible. Ou bien ce qu'on dit est la present, mais alors il n'y a pas place
pour la litterature; ou bien on fait place a la litt6rature, mais alors il n'y a plus
rien i dire. (183-84)

In a similar vein, he states that psychoanalysis has invalidated our

need for fantastic literature. In spite of its absurdity, this is a very
revealing statement, for the fantastic certainly deals with the uncon
scious. What makes this compulsive choosing between two truths
absurd is the fact that Todorov is seeking a cure not for psychosis, but
for the division inherent in the signifier in language. If there is

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106

anything that the "fantastic" demonstrates it is precisely that choosing

the conscious over the unconscious is a self-defeating proposition.
In being faithful to the principle of non-contradiction, Todorov
constantly sets himself two possible solutions, one of which must
cancel the other. This perceptual frame differs only superficially from
Auerbach's, for while Todorov dedicates his study to the fantastic, he
does not allow it to enter into and expand our notion of reality. He
maintains Auerbach's dichotomy of reality versus illusion, modifying
it slightly to reality versus literature. Todorov gives an accurate
account of how reality and the fantastic are represented in nineteenth
century literature. It is, however, ironical and unfortunate that his
perceptual frame belongs so inextricably to that century and not to his
own. This leads him to purely negative conclusions about the
hopelessness and unsatisfactory nature of both art and life. He
manages to identify the most modern experiences, but interprets them
from a strictly rational viewpoint that cannot elucidate their signifi
cance.

In her study Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Rosemary Jacks

takes issue with Todorov on several points. First of all, she asserts th
the fantastic has not disappeared, but has assumed different forms. S
claims that it is an unconscious form of discourse and that it can on
be understood in a subversive relation to the dominant ideology of
given period. Also, in contrast to Todorov's insistence on the sup
natural basis for the fantastic, she says that in a secular culture "it d
not invent supernatural regions, but presents a natural world inver
into something strange, something 'other"' (17). The emphasis
"this world" seems to harmonize with the marvellous vision of Rayue
the Yonder evoked by Morelli as something which is already presen
in us. It is felt; we need only the courage to reach into the da
(Alazraki, 105-106). Jackson's view of absence, however, does n
seem to allow for this positive implication of potential:

Unlike marvellous secondary worlds, which construct alternative realities,

shady worlds of the fantastic construct nothing. They are empty, emptyin
dissolving. Their emptiness vitiates a full, rounded, three-dimensional visi
world, by tracing in absences, shadows without objects. Far from fulfillin
desire, these spaces perpetuate desire by insisting upon absence, lack, the n
seen, the unseeable. (45)

Envisioned in this way, the fantastic is clearly a nihilistic forc

Jackson warns that it would be naive to equate fantasy with anarch
or revolutionary politics, and that its subversiveness relates

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 107

disturbing the rules of artistic representations and literature's

reproduction of reality (14). She nevertheless relates the subversive
functions of the fantastic directly against culture.
Todorov's dichotomy of everyday reality versus the supernatural is
here replaced by culture versus the unconscious. Just as Todorov
restricts what he calls reality to the narrow and simplified realm of the
rationally knowable, Jackson simplifies the notion of culture by
equating it to the power of a dominant and repressive ideology. Just
as Todorov posits this narrow reality as a basis for the intervention of
the supernatural, Jackson's repressive culture forms the basis for the
rebellion of the unconscious forces. She considers the literary work to
be a social product and also a mirror which can reveal our uncon
scious desires, and thus possibly provide a cure for society's ills: "De
mystifying the process of reading fantasies will, hopefully, point to the
possibility of undoing many texts which work, unconsciously upon us.
In the end this may lead to real social transformation" (10). This
proposal reveals that Jackson too believes in an ultimately knowable
reality that should be controlled for the good of humanity.
It is difficult to reconcile this sociological optimism with the
negative definition of the fantastic as a form of artistic subversion. If
it constitutes a discourse of absence and loss that expends itself in a
void, much like Don Quixote's madness according to Auerbach, then
how can we decipher and "harness" this imaginary realm? Since it is
the dominant ideology of a culture that banishes or represses certain
tendencies, it could be speculated that the subversive fantasy will
actually challenge the system and break down its hegemony. But when
the opposite of culture is postulated as the unconscious whose desires
are anti-social, its victory would mean the destruction of society and
culture. This struggle is, furthermore, seen as a danger to the
individual: "It is important to understand the radical consequences of
an attack upon unified 'character,' for it is precisely this subversion of
unities of 'self' which constitutes the most radical transgressive
function of the fantastic" (83). While the title and introduction of her
book suggest a celebration of the subversive power of fantasy, her
ultimate objective is to divest it of this power, to interpret the
discourse of the other, to absorb it into consciousness in order to serve
the very culture which she initially equates with a dominant and
repressive ideology. Like Todorov, she seeks a cure for our ills by
eliminating the unconscious. In other words, she hopes to remove the
repressive ideology of modern culture by repressing the unconscious.
While in Todorov's approach the fantastic as supernatural is
excluded from knowable reality, in Jackson's view it is present within
reality as a violent undercurrent which must be continually silenced

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 108

for the sake of cultural continuity and individual sanity. We may,

however, ask ourselves if fantasy isn't just as impotent when repressed
within reality to the status of absence and desire, as when it is
banished beyond the perimeters of reality. The desire to express
reality in all its vastness is seen by Jackson as issuing from a "demonic
pact... synonymous with an impossible desire to break human limits,
it becomes a negative version of desire for the infinite" (57). She bases
her observations about the negative consequences of the fantastic on
concrete textual examples, but her conclusions stress denial just as
strongly as Todorov's:

To give representation to an imaginary realm is, however, not possible. This

realm is non-thetic, it has no "human" discourse. To attempt to give it a voice
in literature is a manifest contradiction. Nor can human subjects return to that
realm without losing their "humanity," their language. Figures who attempt
this return to undifferentiation, in fantastic tales, are doomed to failure. (91)

These may in fact be the logical consequences of the fantastic, but

are we not imposing foreign categories upon it by placing it in a
marginal relationship to rationalized reality? It is true that "most
versions of the double terminate with the madness, suicide, or death
of the divided subject," but many of Cortazar's stories can be cited to
challenge the assertion that "'self' cannot be united with 'other'
without ceasing to be" (91). Those tales that end in the destruction of
the subject are predicated upon this view of the necessarily unified
self, but there are other possibilities. In "Axolotl" for example,
consciousness does manage to transcend the confines of form and
successfully assumes the other's point of view. There is a sense of
frustration and defeat due to the impossibility of communication,
given that the narrative voice can only experience and speak from one
place at a time but, in the end, neither subject is destroyed by the
experience.
It would seem that like Todorov, Jackson too works within the
categories of what she herself defines as bourgeois nineteenth century
realism. She attenuates the negative categories, however, by borrow
ing a term from optics to create an interesting metaphor about the
fantastic's marginal and ambiguous realm:

A paraxial region is an area in which light rays seem to unite at a point after
refraction. In this area, object and image seem to collide, but in fact neither
object nor reconstituted image genuinely reside there: nothing does. This
paraxial area couldl be taken to represent the secetral regrion of the fantastic,

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 109

whose imaginary world is neither entirely "real" (object), nor entirely "unreal"
(image), but is located somewhere indeterminately between the two. (19)

This metaphor is similar to our subatomic references, but it still

opposes reality to illusion and situates the fantastic precariously
between the two in accordance with Todorov's scheme. I think that the
metaphors inspired by quantum mechanics are more appropriate for
several reasons. First of all, they do not deal with objects and hence no
"objective reality" is set up as the basis for oppositions which inevitab
ly lead us into negative categories. The idea of interaction, the
observer's self conditioned relation to everything, also overcomes the
unnecessary dichotomy between self and other. Instead of dividing
experience into "real," "unreal" and "indeterminate intermediary,"
reality is exploded to include different levels of experience. In this
way, the unconscious and the irrational, or arational exist not just as
anti-social, anti-real forces, but as legitimate modes of being within the
infinite variety of possibilities manifested in the indeterminacy of
language.
Indo-European languages, however, pose a serious obstacle to the
expression of arational experiences because of their intimate ties to
logic. Instead of denying the possibility of meaning in the fantastic
mode as Jackson does, Jaime Alazraki deals with the language problem
by exploring the supra-rational potential of poetic discourse:

Como todo lenguaje, las metiforas de la literatura neo-fantistica buscan

tambien establecer puentes de comunicaci6n, s6lo que ahora el c6digo que
descifra esos signos ya no es el diccionario establecido por el uso. Es un
c6digo nuevo, inventado por el escritor para decir de alguna manera esos
mensajes incomunicables en el llamado "lenguaje de la comunicaci6n." (75)

Alazraki's use of the notion of absence is more relativistic than

Jackson's for, instead of associating it with nothingness, he attributes
absence to the problem of understanding. Negating at the ontological
level and doing so at the epistemological level relate to essentially
different perceptual frames. Alazraki's notion of absence neither
renders the fantastic impotent nor empties an apparently full reality.
On the contrary, apparent reality or Cortdzar's "gran costumbre" is
empty, but fantastic incursions into reality through apertures reveal
both difference and unity. Here too the fantastic is located within
reality but instead of occupying a reduced, marginal place, it consti
tutes the greater part of reality, in which the "gran costumbre" is a
form of blindness. Apparent reality, in what Alazraki calls the neo
fantastic, is in fact an illusion and the fantastic vision and realm are,

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 110

therefore, more real. This inversion saves the fantastic from being
marginalized as perversion, subversion, madness or nonsense.
While Alazraki's metaphor for the relation between the fantastic
and reality is based on a language - that of geometry, non-Euclidian
versus metric - it expresses essentially the same concepts arising in
quantum mechanics and relativity. Indeterminacy and
complementarity do not negate, but rather extend the boundaries of
signification. The subsequent vastness makes ultimate truths imposs
ible, but acknowledging this impossibility constitutes a kind of
understanding. Alazraki's approach differs generally from the other
two in that he does not draw simplistic distinctions between mimetic,
marvellous and fantastic modes, but instead associates all three with
a new perceptual frame that attempts to overcome the repressive
structures of our aristotelian tradition.
My view is that the works of Todorov and Jackson reveal that both
strictly formal and social criteria limit the fantastic to a negative
otherness from reality or culture. We have seen that such a perspec
tive is essentially informed by the same rationalistic bias as Auerbach's
interpretation of Don Quixote. The terms "mimesis," "marvellous,"
"fantastic" and even "neo-fantastic" all postulate the restricted realm
of the knowable as the basis for either imitation or deviation. While
Auerbach seems to be unaware of the artificial limitations of what he
calls reality, Todorov and especially Jackson are aware of it and yet
work within its confines. Alazraki recognizes that these terms reflect
cultural, historical prejudices that we have not yet managed to replace
but which are being modified in spite of the conservative forces of
language. His interpretations of Cortazar's stories actualize his theory
in a satisfying way, because they neither impose nor evade meaning.
Alazraki's understanding of literature as a deeply significant but
irreducible metaphor of existence balances our need to comprehend
and communicate, with our new recognition of the indeterminacy
inherent in all discourse. While dichotomies still inform our percep
tions, they are now interrelated to expand the imagination instead of
restricting it to choose between truth and illusion, as dictated by the
absolutist frame of perception.
Once we realize that there is no simple referential equation
between words and things, we also realize that all definitions are
approximations requiring both the elaboration of multiple contexts
and an awareness of the polysemic and mutating nature of language.
The designation "fantastic literature" cannot be reduced to a formula,
for it has come to mean may things which need constant redefining.
The fantastic opens up the narrow confines of rationalized reality and
destabilizes language by playing with it poetically, converting redcintive

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dichotomies into expansive metaphors. The most precise meaning of

"fantastic," whether in an artistic or scientific context, would seem to
be "potential;" potential capable of actualization in experience and
expression as long as it is not subjected to the rationalistic practice of
exclusion.
If we accept this open perspective of reality, then the meaning of
"mimesis" is also exploded to include what we have been referring to
as the fantastic. While this is an interesting development reflective of
the diachronic adaptability of language, "mimesis" can also be situated
within a specific historical tradition that projects a very different view
of reality. It would perhaps be destructive and even impossible to
delete the past connotations of such terms, for they preserve a way of
thinking and being that we still feel compelled to re-examine in order
to better understand the current developments in the study of
textuality. Auerbach uses the term "mimesis" to mean the representa
tion of reality but, regardless of whether we consider reality to be
ultimately knowable or unfathomable, the idea that we can only
experience interaction with it makes the entire concept of representa
tion problematic. It is the representation of these infinitely diverse
experiences which we now call fantastic. Severing our ties with the
analitico-referential episteme interwoven in language may very well
be impossible in spite of the fact that, according to many contempor
ary thinkers, it is now undergoing enormous changes. We must
grapple with these changes in our theoretical work in order to keep
up with the literature which has already overcome many of the pitfalls
of a dualistic philosophy. While CortAzar himself resorts to the term
"fantastic" for want of a better one, we can appreciate that instead of
dissolving or emptying reality his work, and that of many of his
contemporaries and successors, is dissolving the barriers of the binary
systems dividing experience from thought, and the fantastic from
reality. This is not to say that difference is being erased by an all
encompassing notion of unity, for such a move would only perpetrate
the idealistic desires of a metaphysics of presence. Instead of limiting
our conceptual scope to oppositions such as Being/Nothingness in
which one of the two terms invariably dominates and defines the other
in relation to its morally superior sense of self (Male/Female), the
recognition of difference provides a way out of hierarchies towards an
appreciation of the other. Furthermore, once difference is tolerated,
the other - in this case, the "fantastic" - can be acknowledged and
appreciated without being appropriated, for appropriation always
leads back to a stifling unity which represses otherness.
Much of recent literary production makes the logical structural
distinctions between mimetic, fantastic and marvellous inoperative

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 112

because the indeterminacy of language is now being allowed to play

itself out. Once the notion of the decentred subject is no longer
repressed in the development of fictional characters, the old dichot
omies separating human subjects from their environment and from
each other are undermined. Mental or subjective experiences
previously defined (and thereby dismissed) as fantastic must now be
included in our accounts of a reality enriched by difference.

University of Calgary

WORKS CITED

ALAZRAKI, JAIME. En busca del unicornio: los cuentos de Julio Cortdzar, Madrid,
1983.
ARISTOTLE. Poetics. Ann Arbor, 1970.
AUERBACH, ERICH. "The Enchanted Dulcinea." Mimesis: The Representation of
Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton, 1953.
334-58.
JACKSON, ROSEMARY. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London and New
York, 1981.
TODOROV, TZVETAN. Introduction d la littirature fantastique. Paris, 1970.
ZUKAV, GARY. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An overview of the New Physics. New
York, 1979.

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