INDEX

The key: the word
The floor: language
The windows: the senses
The doors: genres

THE KEY: THE WORD

Literature is made with words. Not with ideas, not with emotions, not with
outbursts of the senses. At the bottom line what we have on the paper are
words. They alone, naked, all-powerful. What are they? How do they work? What
mystery do they hold? How can they nourish our hearing, open the imagination
for us, sharpen our intelligence, make our spirit robust?
     If we want to enter into the house of literature, we should have the key.
The word is that key. Its minimum unity. And it is a living being that travels
and that pulses and that changes like all of us. The word sleeps and the word
speaks. It sleeps and speaks simultaneously. And both actions are inherent,
defining it. It is not, as some ages thought, a nucleus of meaning wrapped in a
sonorous skin; a fruit whose pulp is the content, and the husk, mere form. The
20th century opens with a new conception of the word, seen as a coin with two
faces: the signified and the significand; neither of the two is privileged,
both are substantially necessary. Ferdinand de Saussure had posited the example
of a leaf of a book written on both faces: we cannot burn just one side. We cannot,
then, strip the dressing from the word so as to leave its essence. Because the
dressing is an essential part of its meaning.
     If I suddenly decide to call the ball, "window," it would be splitting the
function of the word, which is a sound with a meaning for my interlocutor. It
would be using half of the word window, and half of ball; that is to say,
nothing in reality.
     Translation to another language is the action of legitimately splitting
the words. For window we exchange the Spanish sound for the English sound, such
that the English-speaker understands what we want to say even though she hears
something different. Nevertheless translations never are total because each
language imprints its own modulations onto its words. "Vaso" in Spanish refers
to the receptacle, to the item; "glass" in English, to its transparent
material; "verre," in French, to glass itself.
     I recall the lovely experience which we spectators had in the Mexico City
Museum during one of the international poetry festivals, before a Japanese
poetess who spoke her text before the translator. The poem had been artificially
divided, for necessary reasons, into sound and meaning. First we heard it,
later understood it. Yet only thus did we access the fullness of the work.
     A translator is in reality an interpreter, like the pianist being an
executor of Chopin's work. And it depends on her talent, not on the fidelity to
the words being translated, but instead on the spirit of the text; perhaps the
less the skill the more the subservience. Sometimes, the interpretation is
totally unfortunate, as if the violinist were to play like the throat of a cat.
Milán Kundera tells how in one paragraph where he had expended his literary
labors to deliberately repeat the word "house" to succeed, it had been
supposedly improved by the translator who used all the synonyms in the
dictionary: abode, dwelling, home, et cetera. Kundera still has not recovered
from the blow.
     Synonyms are nothing more than ghosts of the word. Because none is total.
Each word is individual and has its own matrix. Like brothers, the more they
appear identical twins, there is a metric that distinguishes them, the
centimeter more of height, the less effusive temperament. There is no single
act of birth for them, each one being a distinct being with its own digital
track. We note for example the popular refrains:

     -Public virtue, private squalor.
     -Between a rock and a hard place.
     -Whoever sows the wind, reaps the tempest.

     In general these are phrases that are formed of two parts, each one of
which contains its key word, the noun that contains the fundamental signification.
     In the first refrain, virtue and squalor are the key words. In the second,
rock and place; in the third, wind and tempest. If we exchange these words for
synonyms, we discover that the refrain is broken, that is to say, its common
usage. The nuance that the synonym introduces into the sentence, however small
it may be, serves to approach the same phenomenon from a new angle.

     -Harmony in the street, chaos in the house.
     -Between danger and fear.
     -Whoever sows violence reaps desolation.

The more distant the synonym is, the more originality the sentence will have.
We can do the same with the remaining words:

     -Harmony in public, chaos in private.
     -The danger here, the fear over there.
     -One who burns with violence ignites desolation.

     If we play with the order of the phrases, and also with the order of their
parts, we shall have our own poem, absolutely original, born, paradoxically,
out of the more current and common areas of popular speech:

     -The inside of your fear stings in the air,
      here the harmony is only chaos,
      and the chaos there is harmony.
     -Danger is that which you ignite
      like violent solitude.

     The variants are as many as the possibilities themselves of the language.
As a text it brings all texts along with it. To write is to have found the
thread, yet not the black one, but that of an endless tangle.
     Each word, then, is a world. The Alpha that Borges describes, that
infinitesimal point which contains all existing points. It is the microcosm
that encloses the macro-cosmos. It is the door through which we enter to
everywhere. It is the atom that contains the universe. It is the key to the
whole language.
     Let us put it to the test. We will explore the word from within. We shall
decompose its atom as in a nuclear explosion. I choose at random and insist
that any can serve for the example: DIAMANTINE. I am going to extract from this
word some of those that are contained in it.

Those that begin with the sound DIA:

     Diary
     Diadem
     Dialogue
     Diabolical

Those that end with the sound INE:

     Unforeseen
     Citrine
     Figurine
     Intervene

Thus, I have four pairs of words:

     diary - unforeseen
     diadem - citrine
     dialogue - figurine
     diabolical - intervene

In order to unite these pairs I am going to extract new words that relate them.
A writer is always a marriage consultant who intertwines words so that others
will be born. She is also an engineer of bridges and roads who constructs paths
between words according to the distance, the characteristics and the
necessities of both.
     I then discover that:

     My diary for tomorrow still unforeseen,
     tonite by the moon's diadem of citrine
     I hear dialogue, and see a silent figurine,
     and something diabolical will intervene.

But it also could be that:

     Diary, such sadness was so unforeseen,
     the loss of my diadem of yellow citrine,
     no dialogue can recover that figurine
     unless diabolical luck can intervene.

And if I take liberties to play with this entire heap of words born from
DIAMANTINE, I could say:

     Tell me, o unforeseen, diadem of the moon,
     of your dialogue with the citrine light whose kiss
     enfolds a smile.
     What diabolical desires convene to unite or untie
     sadness and joy,
     from peace thawing memories
     still frozen as that marble figurine.

To write is to play with the dictionary. As the great Michelangelo said: "The
perfect form created by the mind of god already exists in the marble block; I
merely remove the excess marble." If we propose it, the entire dictionary of
the language could enter into the poem born of the word DIAMANTINE. Even the
word "crap" can have a diamantine glistening when it petrifies beneath the sun
by a dumpster in a literary description. It is the magic of the language. The
genius that inhabits it. The human creation par excellence.
     They are the same words that are used to converse, for a telephone
message, to create the grocery list, for a political discussion, to pray, to do
philosophy, to scold the child, to demonstrate love, to hurt, to write a story,
a novel and a poem. They are the same. There are no catalogs of words. What
makes them different? The same word changes in function if we use it to order
breakfast and later for a poem. In the first instance, the word is literal:
"bread" means only that, bread. In the poem it can mean many more things:
spirit, heat, embrace, life, sun. "The bread of your gaze...the warm bread of
the horizon extending itself around me." But furthermore, the elements of the
word are allocated in a different manner. In the spoken word the meaning weighs
more than the expression. The what, has more standing than how it sounds. And
this because in speech we use other complementary languages which embellish it,
such as the tone of voice, manners and the gestures. On the other hand in
writing, and above all in literary writing, the signifier is more important.
The word is only the paper, blank, without visual, tactile, olfactory,
gustatory, or auditory accompaniments, over and above the sound of the letters
themselves. It has to justify itself through its primary natural resource, by
which it penetrates the speaker. To give the what of literature, one must
handle the how. The former always depends on this. Therefore the true meaning
of that that we are attempting to communicate is implicit in the signifier
which we have chosen.
     There is a primitive example that almost sins with clarity, and is the
following set of phrases which the husband speaks to his wife:

     On their honeymoon: How do you feel, old lady?
     At 20 years of marriage: How did you become an old lady?
     After 40: How! You still feel, old lady?

The differences are made by the commas and the modulations. Yet these are not
sufficient, one has to relate them varying the tone of voice. If we desire to
take this joke to literature, we would have to use other words, those that are
contained in the phrase "old lady," to provide, within writing, the variations
of the voice. Now it would not be a joke, but a story:

     How (s)he awoke fresh.
     How (s)he awoke ugly.
     How (s)he awoke dead.

Whose variant also can be a poem:

     How you awoke feeling rain,
     how you awoke feeling wind,
     how you felt the waking earth.

Thus, by forfeiting the advantages of speech, I have obtained the advantages of
literature. Writing, then, is not transcribing speech, but instead making it
intelligible, universal and memorable.
     Play with the words. This is the door by which to approach the literary
creation.

THE FLOOR: LANGUAGE

In the beginning was the verb. And God said, "Let it be the light," and it was
the light. And this means that the word of God is action. It names and creates
the entire universe, in a single movement, at the same time.
     The divine word is, then, the object. The human word is nothing more than
a metaphor of that object. For God it is the act; for us, only the desire for
that act. Are we, made of image and resemblance, not perhaps only metaphors of
God?
     Therefore when we discover words we become human, we ascend that scale
towards the Creator, converting ourselves into his echo across the face of the
earth. Thanks to words we transform ourselves into the only beings with divine
aspirations, we learn to name and to create our own interior world: the ideas,
the fantasies and the hopes that only acquire body through words. We invent the
language, and it chiseled us, differentiating us from the rest of the species.
The spirit breathed into us, and with it, the consciousness of a destiny, the
notion of time, and the impetus for transcendence.
     The language par excellence is our language. All living beings have
languages; that is, systems of communication. From the odors that signal danger
or pregnancy, to long-distance smoke signals. These are sensory languages and
acquire complexity according to the level of evolution of the species. We
humans too use many of these avenues of communication, and even have added more
sophisticated forms, when we change our style, for example, in the language of
social class; or the chocolates and the flowers in the language of courtship.
Nevertheless, they all continue to be sensory forms of communication.
     When our ancestors discovered and invented words, the verbal language was
born. In that moment, we too were born as human, and to our animal condition
the title of rational was proudly added. The verbal language or tongue is the
only one that uses words, therefore is not only sensory. We recall that the
word is comprised of signifier and significand. The first is the sound, the
part that corresponds to the auditory sense, its sensory element. Yet the
second is the concept, and to understand it reasoning is needed.
     A tongue is the finest, most complex language, with the greatest
expressive capacity among the others. It is up to now the most complete,
although not unique. Today we keep using numerous languages in daily life
complementary to the verbal, without which we would have been unable to
survive. But poverty in the use of the language implies an impoverished,
elemental life, almost animalistic. That which defines us par excellence
as humans is precisely, the language. No other species has gained access to
this expressive capacity. A person with few words in her vocabulary is an
unevolved person; a stammering people is a population of servants capable only
of taking orders from those who do talk, not of commanding. The richness of our
verbal capacity is at the same time the measure of our spiritual development.
     Which came first: our evolution as a species, so as to reach language, or
the fortuitous encounter with language, which led us to evolve? One and the
other. The chicken and the egg were born together. And our brain was ready to
take the leap. And the surroundings required better responses from us to
survive. One day someone paused to hear that the sound the herd made resembled
thunder. And another day someone else heard how each one seemed to be positing
with their mouths the sound of that beast itself. And at last it occurred to
someone to produce those sounds without there being thunder or being among the
herd. Then the others bristled as if before thunder or animals, and prepared
themselves for the danger. The miracle happened. They intuited how those
sounds, made deliberately with the mouth, which tried to imitate the natural
sounds, had a unique power: they caused the object to appear without its being
present. Where would it appear, if it were not opposite us? Within consciousness.
     With lightning speed, consciousness was taking shape in our primitive
humanity. Then, we were truly prepared to invent the language. Paragraphs above
I said that we discover and invent the language; and it is no contradiction. We
discover the power of the word as a metaphor for the object. And we invent the
language as a human system of communication. During that night in the times we
just evoked, the discovery was made. The invention emerges when the group
notices there are many variables in human sounds and that one must choose the
right one for each case. It is not possible for each member to interpret at
will the natural sound reproduced with the mouth. To perfect this communication
system it must be regimented. All rules are artificial; they are assumed by
consensus and are arbitrary in the purest sense; they are the result of the
faculty of selection and determination of who holds the authority. Here, the
authority is the consensus, which selects among many a single sound to hold
constant, inaugurating the new system. And this fixed sound is called
onomatopoeia.
     We have arrived at the first level of the language, constructed from
onomatopoeias that capture the sounds of nature. All languages in fact retain
their onomatopoeias, although each one has been fixed into a particular manner.
In Spanish the rooster sings kikiriki; in French, cocoricó; in English,
cocka-doodle-doo. Some foreign onomotopoeias can seem demented to us,
like this last. But thus they were originally set by the respective group.
     The diversity of tongues, which are the concrete forms of language, is no
more mysterious than the obligatory isolation under which human groups lived in
the past, for geographical and climatic reasons, and from the imponderable
distances. Not even in the 12th century of our era could Latin remain intact
throughout the Roman Empire, and it began to flower into seven distinct
languages among which is ours. And ours also starts to become dialects in the
21 countries where it is spoken, in spite of satellite communications,
television and the international computational networks. Modern linguistics now
does not refer to the Spanish of Mexico, or to the Spanish of Colombia, but
instead to Mexican and Colombian. There even are those who mention Vera Cruzian
as against Yucatanian, for example. Even the barrios or neighborhoods flaunt
their particular modes of using the language: the girls of Polanco, the guys of
Tepito.
     The specific manner of using the language is called speech. Yet
there always should be a group which uses it. A single person does not comprise
a consensus, is insufficient to create speech that, furthermore, would have no
communicative function. Every word is a cog in the system and, as such, obeys
the fundamental law of the language: paradox. On one hand, it is born from a
natural sound; on the other, that sound is artificially set by consensus and
judgment. Both faces of the paradox need to be fulfilled for the language to
continue to exist. Discovery and invention.
     A personal anecdote in relation to onomatopoeia: when I was 15 years old I
lived almost a year in Canada with exclusively English-speaking persons. A
moment arrived when I missed my language so that I would sigh crossing the
street. One day I heard a dog barking and my heart leapt with happiness,
thinking "he is speaking Spanish!" More accurately, I felt it. Clearly, it was
the most familiar sound to reach my ears in many months. I "heard" the dog in
Spanish, because the onomatopoeia of the bark in Spanish was known to me:
guau. But with perfect security the Canadians who accompanied the dog
"heard" it bark in English, with its corresponding onomatopoeia: arf.
     Thanks to the first level of language, the human being begins to
communicate and to grow. First one's needs grow. Onomatopoeias are no longer
sufficient. The expressive capacity must be refined. Our level of evolution is
shown by the complexity of our needs. The cow is happy with its pen, its hay
and its bull. The modern woman needs, in addition to roof, bread and man,
professional realization, to be economically independent, to vote, to do
aerobics, send faxes, read the newspaper, go to therapy, to the beauty salon,
to have a computer, to enjoy Jaime Sabines, among thousands of other things.
     Onomatopoeias evolve, then, so as to widen their range of expression and
so cover the new needs. One must say whether the thunder is strong or
restrained, if it already sounded or is still to sound. Then grammar emerges.
And we are entering upon the second level of language: symbolism.
     On being grammaticized, the onomatopoeias lose a little of their fidelity
to the sound of the natural phenomenon. But they gain in nuances of the concept
they represent: thunderous, thundering, thundered, to thunder, thundersome,
thunderlike, thunderness, being words already converted into nouns, verbs,
participles, adjectives, and adverbs. Symbolic words, because their sound is
only the symbol, and not a reproduction of the original. Every language will
trace, by the same arbitrary consensus, the lineaments of its own grammar. Yet
in all the symbolic words the sap keeps flowing that makes them part of nature.
Thus the most diverse languages retain their resemblances.
     With this second level language has grown exponentially, because every
onomatopoeia is capable of engendering dozens of new words. It is the miracle
of the loaves and fishes: there always is for those who truly need it. And
those who labor most in this world of symbolic words are the writers, those who
seek, more than to communicate, to cause emotion to be felt. In many forms it
is the symbolic words to which they refer, because these are incarnate sounds.
The word "whisper" is a whisper, is whispering. Upon saying "shiver" we are
already shivering, because we repeat, in fact, the physical reaction that the
cold provokes. On the other hand, political discourse that is characterized by
lack of compromise and its demagoguery avoids this second level of language,
with the goal of wrapping the information in an excess of signifier words,
that is, with abstractions.
     And we attain the third level of language, which is, precisely, that of
the signifier words. These words have no referent: there is not an
object or phenomenon that might be named by them. They are only signs signaling
nothing individual or particular. They serve only to create relations among the
other words. This level appears due to the necessity of creating better and
finer nuances in communication. And it is formed from the words of grammatical
relation: conjunctions, articles, adverbs, prepositions; and by those of
abstract relation, which are many of the verbs and their subsequent nouns that
serve to express processes between one phenomenon and another, and between one
object and another. For example, to love, to educate, to grow, to think;
and the nouns derived from them, like love, education, growth.
     The new words are also considered on this third level of language, which
are those that keep emerging as civilization advances, so as to baptize the
objects created by human beings. The new words of the 20th century are easily
identifiable: astronaut, computer, fax. But we think that the words,
table, spoon, plate, tablecloth, armchair also were in their moment
new words. Although they do have objects that they designate, these words
belong to the second level because they did not arise from natural sonority.
There was no phenomenon of origin which brought light to them. But in order to
obey the fundamental law of language, which is the paradox between the
necessary and the arbitrary, the selection of the new words has its own
process.
     When a new object is invented, like television, first the function for
which it was created is defined: to see what is far away, thus the speaker goes
back to the origin of her language, which is the remote in time that can be
reached. In our case, to the origin of Spanish, which is Latin and Greek.
Tele in Greek is distant, "vision from afar." Lastly, from the many
possibilities that are found to combine: "visiontell," "teleview," et cetera,
the one most adequate to the sonority of the language is chosen by consensus.
Spanish does not permit too many consonants together; since its nature is
vocal, we adapt the new words which actually come to us from English by adding
an initial e yielding esmog, estrés.
     To create neologisms, or new words, is always valid when no word exists in
the language to designate the object, given that it complies with the baptismal
law of origin, and always attends to the sonority of the language itself.
     The three levels of language are inclusive, co-exist simultaneously and
complement each other in perfecting the verbal expressive capacity. To know
words according to the level to which they belong permits us better dominion of
the discourse. And literature is what is sought: to say it, and say it well.
     In a poem by Carlos Pellicer there is a verse that is a clear example:

     Grand, solemn wings folded in the distance.
     Their crystalline cry shivers the border.
     There all notes tumble into the tomb,
     here glass and crystal are crushed to order.

There are no onomatopoeias, but there is symbolism: folded wings, to
shiver, crystalline, tumble into tomb, crushed, crystal, and
glass. The remaining words belong to the third level, of grammatical
relation (articles, adverbs of place and of quantity, prepositions) and
abstraction: grand, solemn, distance, border, all; and new words, like
notes and to order.
     We noticed that the poet chooses key words whose sound resembles that
which is symbolized: tumble, into, notes, crushed. With this a
sonorous atmosphere is achieved that tries to reproduce echoes of the phenomena
referenced, like the rhythmic movement of the sea. Thus it causes us to feel,
more than understand. Or better, we understand because we feel.
     Yet if we leave only the symbolical words in the verse, we shall read:

     Folded wings
     shiver, cry crystalline
     Tombs tumble,
     crystal and glass crushed.

     The poem continues to exist. We have reduced it to its most authentic
sonorous expression, to its idiomatic brain stem. The poetry exists,
palpitates, nourishes, then, through the symbolism of its words. It is what we
call its humus of origin. Even the foreign speaker will vibrate to the
rhythm of the wings hearing those verses without needing to understand their
meaning. The rest of the words are nothing but accompaniment or embellishments
with which Pellicer adorned the core.

THE WINDOWS: THE SENSES

The senses are the windows of perception. If the body is our house, we have
five windows through which we receive the world. If one closes, the other four
are there to make up the lack. Even one alone suffices to maintain
communication. Our first contact with the world is always sensory. Sight,
hearing, smell, taste, and touch are our first-hand informants.
     Cold is a tactile stimulus, for example. It makes me tremble, my skin
bristles, it afflicts me. Due to these sensations, certain emotions of anguish,
of desperation, are produced in my interior. Then, I notice there is born in me
the sensation of impotence, of abandonment, and even up to hate. In that moment
there arises in my mind the idea that the cold is harmful and must be avoided.
I elaborate a set of propositions whose conclusion is that we all should have
roof and blanket to protect ourselves from the cold. I put forth equality and
love of the neighbor. And the first thing I do is to share my overcoat with the
poor.
     This is the natural process of human beings in relation to their world.
Life is defined, precisely, by the bilateral relation between an inside and an
outside. When the chemical elements grouped themselves in such a way that one
could differentiate an interior and an exterior following the emergence of a
membrane, life was born. Was it simple chance or the imponderable divine
finger? Everyone should choose the reply. That which is within our reach to
understand is that the greater the interchange between inside and outside, the
richer; that is to say, the more evolution. The unicellular organism exchanges
few chemical elements with the environment; the human being, millions of subtle
nuances at the flight of a bird, in each vibration of light, in each tearful
blink. And this relation begins with the five senses. Starting from them we
receive the stimulus that the world sends us, we develop it through a process
of assimilation, and we give our response in the form of actions. With our
action we return to the world what it has given us, and we return it enriched;
that is, we transform it. The action is our human capacity of creation, our
manner of dialoguing with the Creation. We shall return to the example:
     The world initiates the dialogue with us, and sends us a stimulus:

STIMULUS FROM THE WORLD: cold.

We receive it through the senses:
SENSATION: bristled, chapped skin.

And we assimilate it in our interior:
EMOTION: anguish, desperation.
SENTIMENT: impotence, abandonment, hatred
THOUGHT OR IDEA: the cold is harmful and must be avoided.
IDEOLOGY OR SET OF RELATED IDEAS: justice.
DOCTRINE: Christianity, socialism.

The we return it to the exterior with our creative response:
ACTION: I share my coat and distribute the riches.

Thus, we have transformed the world, improving it, adding something to it that
it did not have before; in this case, the distribution of wealth, yet it well
might be that the action is a poem about cold: we also would have added
something new to the world, a way of causing the reader the feel the crudity of
the cold, which can itself convert into the stimulus that the world sends to
move toward a transformative action, although one may not have felt cold in
one's own body.
     The dynamic of this relation, the intensity and the frequency of activity
in this process reflects the degree of creativity of each human being.
Creativity is namely the capacity to be creative, to create through action; in
the last analysis, of transforming the world adding to what it had, enriching
it with new content. A cup is a human creation, also a highway, a philosophical
tract, a symphony, a verse, a caress that forgives.
     Therefore the senses, perfectly open, attentive, in a perpetual state of
alert, are this basis of our creativity. And we have been closing them without
noticing; some are almost asleep, anesthetized by lack of use, and only
reacting confronted by brutal stimuli. That converts us, though, also into
brute beings. How long has it been since we paused to contemplate the spiderweb
of the sun between the branches of a tree? We would not be able to say what the
fabric of our clothing is made of without seeing the label. Now we feel nothing
more than blows or burns. Do we hear the tinkling of the ice in the glass, as
part of the ritual of refreshment, before drinking the water? Do we know how a
night of rain tastes and smells, a night of love?
     To complete the creative cycle one must pass by each of the points in the
process. We cannot arrive at the idea without having passed through the
sensation. All action should be in its turn a product of the process to achieve
its transformative function. The problem occurs when we want to separate and
confront the sensations and emotions with the ideas and actions, as if they
followed different processes. It is common in our western civilizations to
posit a horizontal line, as if feeling and thinking were rivals. It is such
that we have convinced ourselves that our senses fall on one side and our
thought on the other, and we become the battlefield for two irreconcilable
enemies. We accept ideas that come to us from outside, only because "society"
imposes them, and we do not notice they are not our ideas since they have not
emerged from our own process; that is to say, they are not the confluence of
our sensation, our emotion and our feelings. Therefore we feel they are enemies
of our profoundest intimacy. Yet we do not believe in this profound intimacy of
ours, because we have not been trained to value it. On the contrary, we have
been taught not to recognize it, not to give it credit, to consider it
suspiciously imaginary, contradictory and irrational. For the sake of obeying
the mandates of foreign thought, we have forgotten how to decipher the message
of our inwardness. Frequently we ask which of our loves we must serve: those I
feel or what I think, what I desire or those I owe. And this is no more than a
false problem, an artificial dilemma, manufactured by the vices of mass
society, whose objective is to control, manipulate and impede the complete
existence of the individual.
     Feeling and thinking are on a vertical line in our dynamic of
incorporating the world. They are two stepped functions complementary for
integral development. They are our resources, both perfectly valid, necessary
and inclusive so that our actions shall have meaning, orientation, coherence,
and efficacy. I feel, then I want, then I think, then I act.
     To feel is the patrimony of art, and as such, literature has its place
during the first steps of the process. Literature functions as the original
stimulus that first provokes sensations in us, which we elaborate towards
emotion, feelings, thought, and action. A story, a poem, a single verse, should
make us feel, for example, the cold of snowfall upon the skin even if we are in
the tropics. Thus literature is life aggregated to actual life, permitting us
to have the experience through the words.
     The author posits the words that will provoke sensations. If achieved, the
writer and reader, between them, will do all the rest. To obtain this objective
one must convert to literary language and this primarily means, to go to the
most primitive sensation. How to literately communicate the sensation produced
by a swig of beer upon the palate? If pressed, we say it tastes...well, of
beer! and if they insist, we explain that it is half bitter yet rich. With this
we say very little and it is so abstract that it also fits many other
beverages, including lemonade. We are remaining on the terrain of the
adjectives, "bitter," "rich," whose interpretation is totally random. In truth,
we are "half" communicating something we cannot describe without tacit, cryptic
and even tautological elements. With that phrase we do not stimulate in the
questioner the sensation we propose: our words do not cause her to feel the
mouthful of beer.
     The purpose of literature is substitute stimuli, which words transform
into the fact itself; for in them the beer spills from hearing to the palate.
How to accomplish this? I insist: by recovering the original sensation. Beer,
does it prick the tongue, the throat? Yes, its bitter bubbles produce pinpricks,
feeling like a knockout with stars. And, since it is a liquid, they seem to
swim in the sea.
     Thanks to that we felt the sensations of the pinpricks we could compare
them to points of starlight. Why stars? Perhaps because although it prickles
and is bitter, the sensation is pleasurable, like being in a kind of heaven. We
also compare its liquidness with the sea, and then we launch a phrase where
beer is: a bitter knockout of tiny stars in the sea of my throat. Thus
literature is born. In this manner abstract adjectives are converted into
phrases of substance, that is, with nouns which place us in the center of the
phenomenon itself. We are embarking, then, on the purest terrain in literature:
metaphor.
     We recall that the word is a metaphor of the object, and literature is the
metaphor of the word. To be effective in provoking sensations, metaphor is our
tool. And the simplest method of defining it is the capacity of the language to
use different words referring to the same object.
     We recall also that language is a convention and we cannot alter it
without consensus. The sun is a star in the sky because we have so decided to
call it. Yet thanks to metaphor I can speak of "the shining suns of your
visage," although this does not refer to the celestial body, but instead to the
radiance of your gaze, the brightness of your eyes. And to express the many
nuances of that gaze of yours I can use the entire dictionary, practically any
word fitting: "the enormous plates of your eyes," "the blue silk of your gaze,"
"the steady orbs with which you look at me"...
     The construction of metaphor has three fundamental steps.

1. ESTRANGEMENT

Our gaze at the object in question must become estranged. My pen, for instance.
I am going to describe it, as I use it, as if one did not know what it is. "A
cylindrical object that leaves a track by being scraped over a surface." I
have, then, three elements: the cylindrical object, the track and the surface.

2. ASSOCIATION

Now I associate those three elements that comprise the function of my object
with three others similar in use:

     A needle that leaves a border around a cloth.
     A knife which leaves a scar on the skin.
     A ship that leaves a wake in the sea.
     A skater who leaves a scratch on the ice.

I can continue almost infinitely. I have once more felt familiar with my pen
because it has delivered its function to me in the form of a needle, a
knife, a ship, a skater. These are those which occur to me.

3. RETURN TO THE ORIGINAL OBJECT

Now I can construct my metaphors, making the associations become comparisons
with my pen. Each one of these associations carries a different nuance. In
fact, I do not have only one pen, but four, because there are four modalities
in which I can write with it:

     My pen is the needle that embroiders love onto the fabric of your heart.
       I write you with the strokes of a scalpel, intending that my words leave
     scars on your skin.
       I do not want my pen to be like a ship that only leaves a wake in the
     sea, do not want to disappear so quickly, need you to hear me and thus I
     write to you.
       This verse has come from me with the speed of a skater, and we hope it
     does not simply scratch the ice of the page.

You do not always have to expressly use the word "pen," but can slide to others
that it contains, like "to write," "verse," "page," et cetera. What is
important is that the possibilities for expression multiply. Furthermore, with
these same metaphors we can construct many more sentences, including
contradictory ones. For example, to make the needle sharp and not a
signal of amorous constancy, that the scalpel be a sign of precision
and not of aggression, that the ship be more fast than evanescent,
that the skater suggests cold more than quickness. I can go on almost
forever. Metaphor enables my pen to be capable of everything.
     These capacities flourish thanks to our cerebral potential. The brain has
two hemispheres: the left for logic and the right for intuition. Both are
equally necessary and complementary for human development. Logic is not
necessarily "reason," and intuition is not merely "emotion." I mean that reason
is the product of both; and emotion is the origin of both. Pure logic is simply
an empty pathway; pure intuition is an unbridled and blind horse. Only their
integration can put the horse on the path, cause it to open its eyes and
conserves the passion.
     Curiously this cerebral structure has impressed itself on the geography of
our planet in a more or less artificial manner. West and East, beyond both
cultural antipodes, continue to imagine themselves as two separate cosmic
visions. In the West logic is privileged because it is what differentiates the
human being from the rest of the species; in the East the human being is seen
as one more part of nature, thus it privileges intuition, which is the fount of
primal understanding. Then the rivalries of the competencies are created. Which
is the best? Which is true?
     We would say, neither by itself. The West has forgotten ecology due to
dehumanized technology. The East has forgotten progress due to an abstract
mystique. Furthermore, no country is purely western or oriental. Everywhere
both cosmologies exist, above all in actuality.
     Even more, in every individual there lives a westerner and an easterner,
because every brain is comprised of both hemispheres. At times we tend to be
more western when we favor logic in our decision-making; at times, on the
contrary, we are guided by the wisdom of our intuition. The ideal is to
recognize that both of these two forms of knowledge of the world exist, that
they are not at odds, and that we have them at our service. It is not necessary
to choose one, as if they were exclusive. They are steps in the same process.
     Let us return to the origin: sensation is the window of perception;
emotion and feeling, the raw material of intuition; the idea and its
derivatives, the substance of logic. Reason is the culmination of the cycle.
     Sometimes logic is confused with reason, and intuition with unreason; on
occasion it is said that logic is cold, and that intuition is foolish. It is
like saying that our right arm is better than the left, or vice versa. Both
turn out to be supremely useful for life, and it is absurd to have one
paralyzed and the other overburdened.
     We have limited our senses in this way, according to the education that
the culture to which we belong has imposed. In the West the senses are arranged
in the following manner according to their order of importance: sight, hearing,
smell-taste, touch. Smell and taste we presented together because without the
first the second does not function, speaking physiologically. In the East, the
order is exactly the contrary: touch, smell-taste, hearing, sight.
     Each culture has its explanation, certainly convincing. For the West, to
see is synonymous with "to understand"; light, with knowledge; darkness, with
ignorance. On a second level, to hear is also a way to assimilate, to
comprehend. In third and fourth place, to smell is to capture, to taste is to
approve or disapprove. To touch is somehow dangerous, threatening; touch now
breaches the logical defenses, which is why is corresponds to the final level.
     For the East touch is the fundamental sensation of existence, the most
primary and the most complete because it embraces the entire skin. If the
newborn is not touched, it dies. To feed itself, it sniffs and suckles; thus,
taste and smell are next. Those three are indispensable senses for survival. In
fourth place, hearing, which occurs in the round and at a distance, to flee in
time or to approach as that is indicated. Lastly, sight, the least trustworthy
of our senses; its field is only frontal and any wall stops it, and further is
susceptible to multiple optical illusions. It is the sense that we ourselves
deprecate when we wish to submerge ourselves in the deepest sensations of which
we are capable of feeling. Do we not close our eyes to feel the humid heat of a
kiss?
     Both arguments have their weight. Yet the consequences of falling on one
single side are also weighty. In the West it advances in the democracies, but
sex has been genitalized and the human relation is given through gadgets and
plastic; in the East all sorts of dogmatisms and fundamentalisms appear, yet
eroticism and the integrative doctrines are a lesson of humanity.
     Ultimately certain oriental notions continue to enter into western
culture. We recall the quote from Helen Keller, blind and deaf since birth:

     I have heard talk of the rainbow, of the stars, of the play of light among
     the leaves. I would like to see all that. Yet much more than sight, I
     would wish to access them through hearing. The voice of a friend, the
     happy and noisy sounds of the neighborhood, the fantasias of Mozart...
     Life without all that is much darker than blindness.

Starting from this declaration from one who has suffered in her own flesh the
lack of two senses, doctor Bernie Siegel, the American doctor, professor and
author of various books, indicates that "blindness separates us from objects,
while deafness separates us from people." Elsewhere, in the University of Miami
in the United States, an Institute of Touch has been created to study the
repercussions and therapeutic possibilities of developing that sense. These are
only two brief examples.
     We return to the same: it is not necessary to choose. The hierarchy must
be surpassed. Sight is light, but is not totally trustworthy. Touch is
fundamental, but can be dangerous. Hearing is my communication, and also my
guardian. Taste is my nourishment and also my form of approving. Smell is for
perceiving and for evoking; and the more capacities there are, the more open
will be my windows of perception.
     At the beginning literature is the art of translating into words the
perception of my five senses. To better understand its complexity, we have to
approach the world of the brain and its functioning. The brain consists of
three systems: the reptilian, the limbic and the cortical or neocortex.
     The first is the most primitive and it empowers us for the defense of our
territory and for the use of aggression as a form of survival. The second
embodies the sensations, the emotions and sexuality.
     The third, the most evolved, is that which handles ratiocination.
     Art, because of its sensory nature, accesses the limbic system. Every work
of art is in principle a visual, auditory, tactile stimulus, and even
olfactory-gustatory in the case of culinary art. Thus we "feel" art more than
understand it. Dance, music, painting, are forms made of sounds, colors,
outlines, lines, which convert into emotions within ourselves. They are pure
signifiers, without a predetermined meaning. Each spectator will encounter her
own meaning, according to their biography, their culture, their particular
spiritual state.
     Yet literature is a separate case among the arts. We recall that the word
is simultaneously signifier and signified. This causes literature to be an art
like the others, and at the same time, totally different. Due to its signifier
aspect, that is, by the sounds of the words, literature is an auditory stimulus
that reaches the limbic system, like music. But by the meaning of the words,
literature is already a conceptual proposition which also accesses the cortical
system or neocortex so as to be understood by reason, in addition to being felt
through emotion.
     Literature fulfills two simultaneous functions in the brain, although the
emotional is that which rules, or that which in the first instance calls the
tune. By this we wish to say that beyond the meaning, the signifier should be
the standard-bearer on the road towards the brain. It is the form of touching
the door, and the limbic is what opens it. Then, once inside, the concept
clears the way toward reason. Were this not so, one could not distinguish
between a philosophic essay, or a list of purchases, between a poem or a story;
or worse yet, these last would have no object, which take the long road yet the
most beautiful to reach in the end the same destination.
     Certainly the poem and the story merge in reason, but after approaching
every corner arrive charged with emotional baggage which has satisfied the
heart with those "reasons of the heart unknown to reason." Therefore they say
more, with more depth, with more fineness, than the simple direct voyage in a
straight line of the idea.
     The resources of literature for this enriching travel are the handling of
symbolism in the signifier, and metaphor in the signified. Symbolism sonorously
creates the phenomenon; metaphor creates the image of the concept. The result
of them together is the creation of more sensory stimuli for the limbic system,
and more associations for the cortical.
     In this brief exploration of the brain, we have seen its structural aspect
divided into two hemispheres; its functioning, into three systems, and now we
shall conclude with its dynamic, in four states or levels.
     According to the number of brain waves per minute, the state or level in
which we find ourselves will vary with precise characteristics.
     In beta, we are perfectly vigilant, on alert, we might say, with an average
between 12 and 14 waves per minute.
     In alpha, we are dozing, as if in a waking dream, between nine and 11 waves.
     In delta, it is light sleep like that of a nap, between seven and nine.
     In theta we sleep profoundly, with four to seven waves per minute.
     The alpha state is that of creation. To perceive the world more widely and
deeply we should drop total vigilance, which supposes directed attention,
turning from all that is not its objective, its theme. For example, if we are
driving in the rain on an unfamiliar highway, we do not pause to contemplate
the scenery, because what is important is to arrive safely. But if there is no
threat, we drive automatically and can enter into the alpha state to appreciate
the light through the clouds, and wander among the daydreams that that
sensation awakens in us.
     The pediatric doctor and psychoanalyst Winnicot calls this state the third
space, that which is created to relate inwardness with exteriority. It is the
space bridging two worlds that normally are found separated.
     The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung speaks of the "active imagination,"
which is the process of union between consciousness and the unconscious.
     In any event, this state is like the crucible where the elements are mixed
that are going to originate the work of art and which are born as much from the
physical stimulus as from the emotional movement: sensations, images, memories,
fantasies, dreams... We can all induce this state, seek it, name it, evoke it.
The techniques are varied, from meditation to the diverse methods of mental
control. But we do not forget that the best manner to inhabit it is to live
with the senses open to the meaning of life. Nor do we forget that it is the
road towards aesthetic experience, and that this occurs by perceiving as much
as producing, which are the two stages of artistic creation. There is no better
technique for entering into this state than the discipline at one's desk, be it
reading or writing.
     What has been called "inspiration," the "muse," "divine dictation," or
"magic touch" can be evoked though a pivot in our attitude and be the outlet of
our creative will.
     Lastly, we approach the conceptual, the literal, the figurative, and the
sensory. These are four modes of assimilating in our interior that which our
senses trap of the external world. We consider the example of sight, to achieve
greater clarity. Before a photograph of some wrinkled hands, we can see the
same image conceptually, literally, figuratively, and sensorially.
     In the first case, we shall be inferring: "It pertains to an old person."
In the second, we would simply say they are some wrinkled hands. In the third,
we could allude to the nobility or dignity of a life fully lived. But in the
fourth case, which is the least practical, we would only see, truly, what the
photograph displays: lines that cause grooves in a ridged and wavy surface.
     The four ways of seeing are important and complementary for our perceptual
capacity. Yet for literature the third is particularly rich. The figurative
glance permits us to strengthen our associations, to linger in the sensation
while composing a cosmology, that is to say, a proposition for understanding
the world: the bird is the fowl, but also liberty; the flower is a plant,
but is the symbol of the fugacity of beauty, et cetera.
     However the fourth type of seeing, the sensory, is indispensable for
literary creation, because it is there that the fount of metaphor is born. The
lines and the furrows that form wrinkles on the hands in the photograph can be
compared with the lines and furrows of the dunes in a desert, or to the lines
and furrows in a pleated blouse, or with some rippled hair. Thanks to these
visual comparisons, exclusively sensory, the description acquires previously
unthinkable dimensions, and there opens a practically infinite range of
variants. The ancient hands may be as immovable as the silent desert, or as
pure as the fabric of a never-worn blouse, or may evoke the waves in all the
hair they have carressed.
     In order to accomplish the act of authentically seeing, one first must
see. And seeing is primarily a sensory act. Yet it happens that our education
has placed much more focus of attention upon the conceptual terrain, to the
degree of passing over and above the literal. If we perform the test and show
someone the image of a tiny foot, they will instantly exclaim that it depicts a
baby, although only the naked foot appears in the picture. If we insist,
perhaps there will be someone who perceives innocence and tenderness in that
image. And it is unlikely that someone might see, for example, the crest of a
rooster with its five colorful points, although sensorially, the image of the
five toes might resemble it.
     There is no way of seeing better than the others. Just as there is none
for hearing, smelling, touching, tasting. All are necessary, inclusive,
constructive, and form part of our integral development. What is bad is to
favor some at the expense of others. To open the senses to all these steps in
the process of assimilation is also a matter of conscience and discipline.

THE DOORS: GENRES

Suddenly, I observe that I am in the middle of the house, because having the
key in my hands, having walked across the floor and having approached the
windows, I have arrived at the home of literature. I am here, living the
incomparable experience. Now I want to share this world, communicate with the
outside, share what is happening to me, how it enriched me and continually
transformed me. The need is born in me to express myself. But I notice that the
house includes several doors. If I wish, I can hasten out through one of them.
Or walk slowly towards the one positioned for sunshine. Although I could also
go through the back door, or through the narrow one, or through the wide
crystal one...
     What do I prefer? Where do I wish to exit? If I fly, my exit will be
dazzling and quick; if I walk through the small door, I should do so with
minute precision; if I opt for the ample one, my attitude will be different,
and I would want to say that I need that space in order to walk with liberty.
     How to know where I should exit? I alone can recognize this within myself.
It depends what I want to say to the world. Or better, where I want to place
the accent on what I am going to tell them. If I know beforehand what each of
the exits offers me, I shall have better possibilities of choosing the most
adequate for my desires. Because, if I do not select correctly, I run the risk
of remaining stuck in the middle.
     I am selfsame, wherever I exit, but my message will reach the world in a
different fashion from each exit, because my manner of expressing it will have
a distinctive nuance. At first probably always to choose a single door, which
already worked for me and that I know; yet soon I shall discover that at times
what I want to say is better heard if I attempt another of the exits. Only
after having explored them all, will I be able to say I have taken possession
of the house. The house is mine and I enter and leave as the owner I am,
soaring and with feet on the ground, every time I wish to express something.
And since my relationship with the outside has become more enriched through so
much entering and leaving, each time I have more things to say.
     The house is literature. The word is the key to enter. The senses are the
windows through which the world penetrates and nurtures me. The doors are the
literary genres from where I want to voice my response to the rest. I am the
prime material which boils in my interior and seeks to be born, expose itself
to light, to reach your other me, the male or female reader.
     Let us make a survey from the origin of the genres to their current state.
At the beginning of language, it was the word; and at the beginning of
literature, was poetry. Thus as the word is a metaphor for the object, poetry
is the metaphor of the language.
     Poetry, from the Greek poiesis, means "creation." Effectively,
poetry is the human creation; a duplicate human creation, the creation of a
creation. If God created the world, human beings created the language, which is
metaphor for the world; and with it, created poetry, that is the metaphor of
language. Art was born then. The art of the word, in its origin, is poetry.
     A day arrived when humans discovered that words not only served to refer
to objects, but also that to play with them, they themselves created new
objects, imaginary objects that awakened sensations and provoked emotions even
more intense than those natural. This "supernatural" capacity, that is, which
is beyond nature, and that is the product of the human being, is one of the
defining ingredients of art. Art is the human equivalent of the divine creation
that is nature. Poetry, whose original meaning extended to all human creation,
is the source of what we call literature.
     Today the word, poetry is used academically to define only one of the
several literary genres. Nevertheless, it still retains echoes of its
beginnings, when we use it trying to praise the quality of other genres-"This
novel is pure poetry"; and we do it extensively almost with any human product
of excellent manufacture-"These enchiladas are a true poem"; we even use
it to be admiring of the scenery-"What a poetic afternoon!"
     The expression and the concept of literature are born during the modern
era, when human knowledge is reclassified to make it more functional. But this
art is born as poetry, which is the language's song, the language that is
beyond itself, language as verse, the language as the summum of its capacities
as signifier and significand, as the splendor of the sound and the gold of
the meaning; poetry, jewel of language.
     We remember Alfonso Reyes: "I was born making verses, I continue making
verses, I shall die making verses," which did not match with his excellent
prose, because he knew that every writing man or woman, if they are truly that,
is a poet at the root of their pen. And even those who never have exactly
written a poem, seek for poetry, that is to say language's song, to be present
in the soul of their text.
     Almost since the beginnings of poetry it expressed itself via three
fundamental dimensions. The epic was the receptacle for the collective
experiences of the outside reality. In it were sung the feats of the people
and their heroes. The Mio Cid or The Iliad are perfect examples. It stood
in for history, because that did not yet exist as conceived of today, a social
science.
     In lyric poetry personal emotions, the inner world that identifies
us as human, were expressed. Love, fear, solitude, mortality, the passions, and
the secrets. Practically all love poems belong to the lyric, from Catullus to
Garcilaso de la Vega, from Sappho to Sor Juana, from Rubén Dario to
Octavio Paz.
     Drama had as its goal to represent an action, to bring a
determinate situation into the present moment so as to present it in a more
lived and direct manner. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Molière, only to mention
some examples so distant in time and space, belong to dramatic poetry.
     The epic, by its historical quality, traps past time; the lyric is non-
temporal because it planes above the differences and defines us by the
essential; the dramatic is the here and now, the present action. Between the
three, the art of the word complied fully with its expressive function: to
tell, to sing, to represent. Until the society evolved and the necessary
changes emerged.
     Art is a cultural phenomenon, insofar as it exists in a society, and thus
its essence is permanent change, as with all living being. Poetry, like all
living entities, not only this alone, lives in company with others. The others
are the other cultural phenomena. And all interact among themselves,
nourishing, modifying, recreating, becoming new phenomena.
     Philosophy, which was the mother of knowledge, gradually accumulates so
much within that ultimately it needs to share with the sciences. The exact
sciences and the social sciences. As the daughters they are, the sciences obey
the law of life and separate from their mother.
     Parenthetically, philosophy kept staying apart and lean, and even ran the
risk of perishing, for the sciences finished by robbing all its functions. It
raised ravens. However, at its final extremus, it found a way to survive,
becoming an analytical method. During the last century, philosophy moved from
being the sovereign mother to be the servant of the sciences, which used it
simply as a methodology. Only in recent years, and beginning the third
millennium, philosophy begins to obtain new impetus, or rather, recovers the
old one, when with good reason it demands that which always has belonged to it:
that lingering in the ultimate questions, which neither the sciences nor
religion have been able to answer. Neither scientism nor fundamentalism have
satisfied the needs of the human spirit. Philosophy has returned to the
attempt, at least, to be in the fight; this is its true function, to clear the
way, without the arrogance of the sciences or religions which have wanted
above all to arrive at a theme to be imposed as unquestionable.
     The term "literature" to define the art of the word was coined around the
18th century, the so-called Enlightenment century, for their eagerness to
systematize knowledge and arrange it with new nomenclatures and definitions. It
was then when different literary genres were described. But at the beginning
the sacred word, separate from a god or "the muses," the word that transcends,
that creates, that transforms, was named poetry. Maybe this term will
continue to be the purest, the most direct, that which reveals the very
entrails of its art.
     Everything that was written was done in verse, but when the notion of
literary genres emerged, and also the notion of "writer," instead of poet, the
definition of "literature" occurred and the functions were distributed among
them and the new social sciences emanating from philosophy.
     When history became an autonomous social science, and journalism appeared
as the mouthpiece of the news, epic poetry had to find new nourishment. It
renounced verse and returned to being narrative. The narrative gave
birth to the novel, to the chronicle and to the story.
     Dramatic poetry evolved in its function as scenery and sought other
languages than verse, such as the corporal, the gestural, the visual, et
cetera, until becoming another autonomous art: the theatre, among the scenic
arts.
     Only lyric poetry remains intact and is what today we call simply
"poetry," combining verse and the lyric sentiment of origin.
     History appropriated from general truths the orientation of a nation or
people. And to narrative remained the concept of fiction, which is not
synonymous with "lie," as many can mistakenly think, but instead refers to the
particular truths of individuals. While history provides an account of the
events of the Mexican Revolution, the writer Mariano Azuela, in his novel
The Underdogs, recounts the history of one of the anonymous protagonists
of such events. History and literature turn out to be complementary for
profound comprehension of the human condition.
     Indeed the literary genres have remained classified in the following
form:

     NARRATIVE: story, chronicle, novel.
     POETRY: in its distinct classical or contemporary varieties, with or
     without rhyme, but always in verse.
     ESSAY: an adopted son of literature, whose natural mother is philosophy.

Narrative, as we already stated, narrates individual truths in prose, presented
in an academic way: fiction, whose substance is an amalgam of deeds
lived, observed, dreamt, imagined, read about by the author or authoress and
that independently of their veracity, possess verisimilitude and express
human nature. Veracity is the provability of something that is sustained
as true. History should be true; literature, lifelike.
     As chronicle, narrative describes an occurrence, that as its name
says, comes in cronos, time. The chronicle has been lent to ordinary
journalism as one of its genres. The difference between a journalistic and a
literary chronicle is that the first takes account of exteriority, of the news
of a fire, for example, while the second reveals the inwardness, causes the
readers to feel the fire, the heat of the flames. I prefer to use the terms
"exteriority" and "interiority," which are complementary, in place of
objectivity and subjectivity, for these result in being ambiguous and almost
always provoke antagonistic interpretations.
     The story is not necessarily a short text, is distinguished by
positing a situation, that is, the confrontation of two contrary forces.
Chekhov, the father of the modern story, says that the classical story is that
which contains the following points:

a) Introduction
b) Presentation of 1
c) Presentation of 2
d) What 1 does to 2 and vice versa
e) Outcome

Point d is the key, without it there being no story, and actually sufficing to
achieve it. 1 and 2 do not represent characters, but instead forces that
struggle: love and hate, prison and liberty, living or dead, et cetera, and
whose origin is the eternal battle between good and evil.
     The novel is the vehicle par excellence for character. A
string of events where the character or characters have to decide, act,
recognize, evolve, reveal the labyrinthine trace of their steps, is the
matter and function of the novel.
     With regard to poetry as a literary genre, it might be said that it is
a song, a wound in the sound of words in order to discover their multiple
meanings. Its materials are verses. Every line is a verse. Each set of verses
is a strophe. The text is called a "poem." They exist with or without rhyme,
with precise, observable measures, or with those that each author may wish to
propose. Among its conceptual resources are images and metaphors; and
alliteration or repetition of sounds, accentuation and the use of symbolic
words are some of its sonorous resources.
     The essay is the son of philosophy, its expressive medium par excellence.
Its function is to propose an idea, a thesis, to argue it and demonstrate it.
Literature, like the other scientific and social disciplines, has taken loan
of it to make it its own genre. The specifically literary essay is that which
addresses themes of literature: theory, the creative process, critique, etc.
     Rarely is a genre given in purity. All are intermingled, because every
work includes song, situations, characters, descriptions, and ideas. What
defines it as belonging to a determinate genre is the emphasis that is placed
on some of those elements. Every text is born through a poetic impetus, just as
children, it is supposed, should be born of love. From the moment of
conception, the boy or the girl already has a gender, although the parents do
not know it yet. Like the text, even though the author is unclear about it, the
work that will see the light will exit by one of the doors in the house of
literature, the door which is cut to its measure and that is waiting for it
ready to open.
     If one who writes wants to sing of an emotion, a poem will come out; if
one is interested in sharing the crux of a situation, she will give it the form
of a story; if we need to relate an event, we have the chronicle; if one is
pursued by a character who takes on actual life, we shall follow it in a novel;
if he has a fundamental idea to communicate to us, it will be expounded in a
literary essay.
     Nevertheless, faithful to its origin, at bottom they will be like poets,
even without writing an actual proper verse in their lives. First, because art
was born in this way from the word; and second, because that keeps being its
marrow-the search for an unrepeatable form which expresses what vibrates
within me.
     Opening the indicated door, I shall reach you, you shall have me in your
hands, and our hearts will beat in unison.

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