Woman and Utopia in a Sky with Diamonds

The 1980s were strange times. A certain degree of well-being was permeating daily life, and for the beneficiaries of the education system life projects were sketched along well outlined paths. The economic well-being contrasted with the epic breath of the sixties, when the paradigms of austere egalitarianism ruled. Cubans all depended on the same food rations, and the wearing of jeans and work boots was becoming more widespread. Young people were going to boarding schools. Fulfilled, to a large extent, was the grand pursuit of social justice, though fissures could be seen in the necessary acknowledgement of differences. Impregnated with the moral values implicit in the spirit of the Revolution, those who were then coming out of schools noticed the contrast between an axiology presented in absolute terms and its relativity in concrete social practice. In tune with Silvio Rodriguez, we all sung "The era is giving birth to heart." The song "The Unicorn" was becoming one of the big hits of the eighties. The apparent simplicity of the tale was open to multiple readings. The notion of loss transcended the banal occurrence. Few perhaps knew the meaning of the mythical white animal of antique upholsteries. It evoked a mystery with the immense power of suggestion of poetry, and shifted the reference from the material object toward the unlimited region of the spirit. It was not essential to know that the unicorn was the symbol, in absolute terms, of a system of moral values founded on purity, to be able to recognize in the words and melody the nostalgia rooted in a sentiment of loss. The writers that published their first works at that time-from different poetics- referred to their experiences of infancy and youth as the source in which a worldly vision and values in conflict originated. In that context burst Senel Paz, who imposed himself, beyond the initial steps in the trade, with an unmistakable look, forged in the hyperbolic reference of his peasant roots. He affirmed that way, in symbolic terms, the vertiginous leap from the pre-modern age to urban modernity, from the absolute and solitary material precariousness to another form of solitude, the one concerning group-living in boarding schools, with their well-established rules. The assumption of the innocence point of view subverted the accepted conventions and appealed to the recognition of the difference. The power of righteous innocence spoke through David, a name also loaded of symbolic references that would accompany the author into these present days. Appearing at the end of a long literary silence, "En un cielo con diamantes" (In the Sky with Diamonds), Senel Paz's most recent novel, interweaves a complex scheme underneath the apparent tameness of tranquil waters in a linear story. With young people coming from the most far-flung areas in Cuba, the boarding school reproduces the nation's landscape. The intentional anachronism in the use of expressions of day-to-day popular speech and the reference to circumstances in our immediate present multiplies the range of time. David is now the bearer of the difference, inasmuch as a budding writer, an omnivorous reader and stubborn pursuer of absolute values crystallized in the utopian project of human construction. In the sky with diamonds can be read like a novel of apprenticeship. The story also constitutes - as seems to be one of the author's explicit intentions- the testimony of a generation encouraged in its growth by the perspective of forging a destiny through the intimate debate between the ideals and the claims of individual subjectivity. The space-time ambivalence, suggested by the boarding schools system as the convergent element for the entire nation, and by anachronism expressions and situations, moves David from his adolescence days to find him in the middle of contemporary conflicts, between moral values and the pact with the urgencies of reality. In this sense, a confederate wink refers the reader to the El vuelo del gato (Flight of the cat), a novel by Abel Prieto, a Paz contemporary. Prieto inscribes in the dense clay of cultural identity the contrast between absolute moral values and the way of thought of sly people, fixed within the borders of individual survival. The possible combination of such extreme polarization materializes in the future, after the birth of a son. In Paz's work, on the other hand, the debate between utopia and commitment to reality takes place in the conscience of David, his main character. An inter-textual play based on an implied literary memory, and a distance derived from the use of humor, strip "In the sky with diamonds" of dramatic nuances. David's character is shaped in dialogue with the look of others. Life is assumed as an unabashed apprenticeship adventure, although circumscribed to the concrete space of ordinary mortals. In the sky with diamonds, the fragile golden-haired maiden reveals herself as a pragmatic and experienced woman. The tangible being of concrete reality subverts what limpid moral values ought to be. The initiation to sexuality is the metaphor for the access to maturity marked by the acceptance of the world of possibilities with its flashes of plenitude and its dingy turns. The flowing prose of Senel Paz invites the reader to abandon themselves to the pleasure of reading. However, the true enjoyment consists in exploring the profound waters hidden under the surface of a lake in times of peacefulness. In the sky with diamonds urges an intense reflection that involves forty years of history crossed by the quest for making sense out of life, that indispensable earthly food.

Cubarte News News posted on 7/4/2008 4:57:48 PM

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