Language and loss

At the end of the previous chapter I alluded to the connection between (linear) time and language in Montejo’s work. However, such a connection is not just a matter of the language of Montejo’s poetry reflecting the inevitable succession of moments in ‘la estructura lineal presente-pasado-futuro’ (BC, 42). Neither is it simply a case of language being ‘on the side of the living’ and hence failing to bring the dead back without converting them ‘en otra cosa’ (AM, 202), although both these elements are present in Montejo’s poetics, as I have shown. The connection is more fundamental. Earlier we saw how Montejo’s essay ‘Tornillos viejos en la máquina del poema’ (VO) can be read as disclosing the presence of death within language per se, a reading suggested, moreover, by the terms and argument of the essay as a whole. And this reading is central in revealing to what extent Montejo’s quest to bring back the dead and all that is past is tied in with a parallel quest to evade the deathly nature of language. It is on the ramifications of this essential linguistic problematic within the presentation of loss over time in Montejo’s work that the present chapter will focus.

Looking more closely at the terms Montejo uses in his engagement with the symbol of the horse, we begin to see just how far language is implicated in his portrayal of (the effects of) temporal loss. In my analysis of how Montejo’s poetics envisages the notion of a uniting of the horse of life and that of death into one (cyclical) whole, I alluded to the importance of the reference to ‘la brida que me salve de un decurso falible’ (‘En los bosques de mi antigua casa’, É, 5). However, beyond what is explicit in this line, a crucial aspect of the envisaged quasi-religious salvation is found in the implicit morphological link between decurso and discurso. The fallible course of the journey of life leading inevitably to death, which Montejo seeks to avoid is also to be seen as the fallible discourse: language as inherently pervaded by death and loss. In effect, it is not just that language elides the dead. Rather, it is in being named in language that the dead are made dead, are made past.