Mexico: Fondo Editorial Estado de México. 2023. 120 pages.
When two words become one to create the name of a book with plenty of palpitations, CorazoNadas [Hunches, a word that in Spanish links heart—corazón—and nothing(ness)—nada—], by Ana Clavel (FOEM, 2023), deploys a way of narrating that connects meaning, from both bodily extremities to the unique movement of a hybrid word, passing through the idealization of certain gigantic miniatures of playful demeanor in the human heart. Ana Clavel, a well-known Mexican writer, had already combined sensorial fragility with strength to confront certain instinctive acts, in works such as El amor es hambre (Alfaguara, 2015), A Brief Treatise of the Heart (Alfaguara, 2019), and Por desobedecer a sus padres (Alfaguara, 2022). This new edition of CorazoNadas immediately takes us back to essays such as Territorio Lolita (Alfaguara, 2017), where silenced desires recreate puns to point to the forbidden. Again, erotic and fictional literature creates a word that throbs with high intensity, as if it had enough palpitations to continue going until it reaches a state of ecstasy, a life filled with multiple bodies and shapes.
Starting with the visual, it is not only the photographs Ana Clavel included in some of her works that show us the mobility of a Little Red Riding Hood or Alice in Wonderland. There are also other ways of creating bodies in her words. In CorazNadas, a brief poem like “Nueva noche bocarriba” is a pyramid; another one, “La irresistible tentación de la inocencia,” is a rhombus with a symmetry that shows a heart in a mouth; and a third example, “Destino,” is a rose whose falling thorns belong to the stem of its letters. Here we can see the flower sprout through words:
Al que nace
con corazón
de martirio
del cielo
le caen
las
es
pi
na
s
.
[On those born
with martyrdom
in their heart
from the
sky fall
the
th
or
n
s
.]
As in the works of Guillaume Apollinaire, the calligrams by Ana Clavel take up the figures that recreate grammatical meaning, just as certain Roman numerals do. In “Cuento de hadas,” the numerals I and II announce chapters of only two lines in a story that always starts with “Y cuando despertó…” [And when they woke up…] by Augusto Monterroso—but this time it is about the moment when the heart wakes up in the hand, or outside the chest, and connects with stories of horror or serial killers. In “Más variaciones de Pascal,” the I and II are just a line that addresses the balance of scientific basis through the transcendence of certain words:
I
La razón tiene sinrazones que el corazón no entiende.
II
El corazón tiene sinrazones que la razón padece.
[I
Good sense speaks nonsense that the heart does not understand.
II
The heart harbors nonsense that good sense suffers.]
When the writer approaches pain, the suffering goes beyond the spiritual and the heart. Like a body, it can also stop. That is the way the Roman numerals representing the feminine side of “Shakespearianas” can be read:
I
Cuestión de vida o muerte permanecer con el corazón en su sitio: el Mercader de Venecia.
II
Cuestión de amor y muerte mantener el corazón con uno: Romeo y Julieta.
[I
A matter of life and death to remain with the heart in its place: The Merchant of Venice.
II
A matter of love and death to keep the heart to oneself: Romeo and Juliet.]
This trip to Italy in love, to Venice, to lovers that sprout in short lines and disappear among them, allows us to question what we are. In “Il nostro”—“Casanova tenía un gran corazón… entre piernas,” [Casanova had a big heart… between his legs]—the sexual also combines with the representation of the organic in the realm of desires which, in the history of humanity, have been represented as hearts, instead of a recreation or drawing of hidden parts of the body where longings and pleasurable passions are stimulated. The famous Italian lover’s capacity for seduction, beyond a heart that moves down through three suspense dots, is also a symbol for the shadows, for the nocturnal, for that “Corazón Insomne” [Sleepless Heart] through which it is possible to travel across dreams: “Soñé con un lugar maravilloso donde la gente dormía toda su vida y sólo se despertaba para ir a su propio entierro” [I dreamed of a wonderful place where people would sleep throughout their life and only wake up to go to their own burial].
“We close pages of the book and we go back to all the desires that the minifictions have managed to plant as an answer to that silent question we always ask our hearts but to which, this time, other multiple forms and stories have also dared to respond”
Life—like a shared pleasure or dream, like a delectable act in the dark—has a route replete with stations for its representation in this book. In its index, as if we were readers cruising along the rails of love and pleasure, we stop at the first station, “Liminar,” followed by “CorazoNadas,” until we arrived at “CorazoTodos” [a word connoting heart and everything]. Without any detours, the final stop takes us to the duplicity of hearts among shadows: sketched, drowsy, returning to their limbo. Twin sisters, two creatures that an artist illustrates from the double meaning of this word: the illustration of naked bodies, the Enlightenment in the thinking of open minds.
To conclude, Ana Clavel plays with “la perfección súbita de un mundo exultante, pero a la vez tan silencioso cuya belleza a menudo nos pasa inadvertida” [the subtle perfection of an exalted world, whose beauty is, at the same time, often so noiseless that it goes unnoticed]. Once more, we make a stop at the final station; we close the pages of the book and we go back to all the desires that the minifictions have managed to plant as an answer to that silent question we always ask our hearts but to which, this time, other multiple forms and stories have also dared to respond.
Translated by Adriana Vega Mackler
