While on campaign, a remembrance of the two words is enough to send the Colonel spiraling into bouts of dizziness and confusion, alarming his underlings and fascinating readers. What’s known within the context of the story is that the words, once spoken or thought of, carry the power of a spell.
What exactly did Belisa whisper, and why aren’t readers allowed to hear it? Not even the readers, which adds a lingering sense of mystery to the story. No one but the Colonel hears Belisa’s gifted words. Hence the story’s title “Dos Palabras,” or “Two Words.” Isabel Allende, 1973. Hired by an ambitious Colonel to write a moving political speech, Belisa offers a bizarre bonus to her unsuspecting client: two magic words, which she whispers into his ear.
With this base material in mind, it’s not surprising that the first story Eva Luna tells her own lover (who, thankfully, is just a curious filmmaker and not a murderous king) is that of Belisa Crepusculario, a traveling scribe who earns her living with words. Similar to the Thousand and One Nights, Cuentos de Eva Luna is a work that exists only in itself, as the stories are insulated from the referential world by two frames: first by the quotations from the Thousand and One Nights that begin and end the collection, then by the larger frame of the love story shared by Rolf Carle and Eva Luna. As literary scholar Samuel Amago, who completed an extensive study of Allende’s short story collection, notes, Through her own narrator, Eva Luna, Allende channels the almost-mystical and feminine power of Scheherazade, who relies on her wits to prolong her life, cleverly keeping her murderous husband-king entertained with wondrous stories. Allende channels the almost-mystical and feminine power of Scheherazade, who relies on her wits to prolong her life.
0 kommentar(er)
