"Ojos y Labios": The Erotic Dimension
of Bécquer's Rimas
A Feminine Writing by Bea Aaronson
University of South Carolina
Downolad
this article in PDF format
Avec l'oeil, la bouche est l'organe principal de l'aspiration
amoureuse
Julia Kristeva, Histoires d' amour p. 13 3
Through an obsessive semantic network of eyes, eyelids, eyelashes, mouths and
lips, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer opens an intersticial world of desire awaiting fulfillment.
Writing becomes the verbal intercourse between the poet's thirst for love and the unnamed,
unknown lover. Composed between 1859 and 1869, the Rimas create the space of an amorous
dialogue which ultimately articulates the dialectical forces of the body and the spirit
through a gigantic labial feminine metaphor, the "boca ... purpúrea granada
abierta" of Rima XII. (1)
Those forces are ultimately harmonized within the act and the image of the kiss, the
paroxystic "beso" of Rimas IX and XX. The inscription of the erotic body
into the fiber of Bécquer's writing creates a swelling, liquid space of
"jouissance," simultaneously hidden and revealed which characterizes feminine
writing, as it is qualified by Hélène Cixous, the French feminist author who coined the
expression "I'écriture féminine." (2)
Very few critics have hinted at the erotic
dimension of Bécquer's poetry, and none at the feminine quality of his writing. Russell
P. Sebold refers to the second stanza of Rima XXXII as one that "se trata del
manantial de nuestra existencia humana: la seduccion, el sexo, el orgasmo'(116), but never
cares to analyse this sexual force. Another critic, José Pedro Díaz, at the very end of
his book Bécquer, remarks on the erotic quallty emanating from the Rima XI. "La rima
XI tiene tema erótico, pero éste se identifica con el tema poético" (49), without
ever investigating the erotic quality of poetry. Díaz speaks of "un ideal
erótico" stressing that "casi todo el libro de Bécquer gira en torno al tema
erótico, pero este tema ... ofrece muy diferentes modulaciones" (49). But Díaz
never mentions or analyses those modulations.
After a brief definition of eroticism and its relationship to language, we will unravel
the many facets Bécquer's erotic feminine writing takes and will divide our analysis into
seven promiscuously interrelated phases that will take us through:
1- eroticism and otherness,
2- erotic semiology,
3- eroticism and feminine writing,
4- wet and orgasmic images,
S- methexis, leitmotiv and extended metaphor,
6- eroticism and the "in-between" A Feminine Space
7- the kiss
What is eroticism?
In his book The Double Flame, Octavio Paz clarifies the meaning of eroticism
in a most elegant and poetic manner: "Eroticism is essentially desire, a shot fired
in the direction of a world beyond" (13). lt derives, like love, from a sexual
instinct, but unlike sex which aims at procreation, eroticism aims at sublimation and
pleasure . . . eroticism is different from mere sexuality." Eroticism also needs
imagination and distance, that which separases the erotic act from pornography. There is
no imagination in pornography, whereas eroticism as "the human dimension of sexuality
[is] what imagination adds to nature" (142).
The word "erotic" comes from the ancient Greek eros and
erogenesis which means "sexual love." On the other hand, "pornography"
comes from the word porne which means "prostitute" or
"harlot." Eros, the god, is in fact neither a god, nor a man; "he is a
daemon, a spirit whose life is lived between the gods and mortals. The preposition
"between" defines him: his mission is to communicate, and to unite (Paz 44).
This "between" is very important to understand Bécquer's predilection for the
feminine "in-between" state, as we shall see later.
In this differentiation process, Paz analyses
the human amatory sphere and writes: "sex is the root, eroticism, the stem, and love
the flower" (38). The paroxystic goal of eroticism is orgasm: "the act in which
the erotic act culminates, orgasm, is inexpressible" (133). How does language
cope with the ineffable ? First, "the history of poetry is inseparable from
love" (Paz 42). Then, language becomes an exploration of the amatory feeling.
"Poetry as the testimony of the senses [is] made up of words linked together, which
give off reflections, glints, irridescences ... Eroticism is a poetry of the body and
poetry is an eroticism of language ... sexuality transfigured, a metaphor" (Paz 1-3).
What we will discover in Bécquer's Rimas is Paz's "eroticization of language"
(52).
For Roland Barthes, eroticism is "le mixte érotique de timbre et de langage,"
"la volupté des voyelles," that articulate the text as a body in a
"stéréophonie de la chair profonde" (104-5). For the French critic,
"I'ecriture est ... la science des jouissances du langage, son kamasutra" (14).
We shall see how Bécquer's semiological devices can be interpretad as kamasutra. Another
important dimension in Barthes's erotic language is the participation of the reader.
Indeed, as we read Bécquer's Rimas, at the level of the act of reading, a space of
"jouissance" is created between the writer and the reader, as we follow and
answer the poet in his " dialectique du désir" (Barthes 11).
At the philosophical level, in Georges
Bataille's words, eroticism is in human consciousness that which puts him or her in
question (35). Bataille emphasizes the sacred and transgressive character of eroticism
which propels consciousness towards the unexplored depths of humanness.
Next
Notes
Bibliography
Appendix
Todas las Rimas
Rimas I - XI
XII - XXIX
XXX - XL
XLI - LI
LII - LXV
LXVI - LXXV
LXXVI - LXXXVII
Some translations