ABSTRACT
As Aristotle in the Poetics dictates, ‘a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.’ Though writers like Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa seem more obviously dissident because of their political postures, the more marginal writers, like Infante, Sarduy, and Reinaldo Arenas, are dissident in a more corrosive manner, digging into the root of hypocrisy, into the very matter in which consciousness is inscribed, that is, language. Marginality and dissidence are also words that have been used to define the feminine place in history and culture. In Infante’s Inferno, woman is essentially an archetype: the mysterious other, a mirror in which Narcissus reflects himself or a screen upon which he projects himself. If the metaphor ‘mother tongue’ is deceptive, so is the myth of the Ursprach, the original speech. And just as the existence of that original language is highly problematic, so is the concept of the original text.
