Title: Woman and the infinite
First published: 1996
Description: Woman and the Infinite demonstrates how Pedro Salinas's poetry and frequently overlooked narrative and theater reveal a preoccupation with the nature of time, especially extraordinary moments that transcend space and time. Many of these moments are intimately connected with the man-woman, yo-tu relationship. Salinas's exploration of this theme is best understood in the context of other modern literary evocations of epiphanic moments.

Such literary phenomena as William Wordsworth's "spots of time" and James Joyce's "epiphanies" are among the precursors of Salinas's moments of eternity, as are moments of timelessness in works by Marcel Proust and the French Symbolist poets. Salinas's reception of the Symbolists was direct, but also refracted through his reading of the Latin American modernistas, especially Ruben Dario.

In his well-known commentary on Dario, Salinas connects the perception of woman with a visionary moment of extraordinary lucidity, a connection found in his own works.

Woman is elusive for Salinas. She has a multiplicity of forms and varying identities that are expressed with mirrors and shadows or Classical and Biblical mythological archetypes. All of these are found in "Aurora de verdad" from Vispera del gozo, a narrative piece which can be read as representative of Salinas's work as a whole.

Specific images in the story, including mirrored figures and references to mythological goddesses, are also key elements in a trajectory in Salinas's works in general toward an all-encompassing, absolute, and infinite moment.
Subjects: Space and time in literature, Criticism and interpretation, Women in literature, Salinas, pedro, 1892-1951
People: Pedro Salinas (1892-1951)
LC classification: PQ6635.A32 Z712 1996