B O O K R E V I E W
INEZ
w h a t p r i c e, e t e r n a l l o v e?
BY TAMARA KAYE SELLMAN
B O O K R E V I E W
INEZ
w h a t p r i c e, e t e r n a l l o v e?
BY TAMARA KAYE SELLMAN
INEZ
Carlos Fuentes
© 2000, © 2002 trans. Margaret Sayers Peden
Harcourt, 148 pp.
$12 paperback
FOR ROMANCE and passion in an undeniably magical realist setting, Inez (In Instinto de Inez) by Carlos Fuentes fits the bill. The novel, while not one of the Mexican author's most accessible, incorporates many alluring elements: nonscientific time travel, opera of the most obsessive variety and speculation about the very first lovemaking between man and woman—all told within the beautifully spiraling construct of infinity.The story premise seems basic enough: Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara is a world-famous orchestral director ("modeled on one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, the Romanian Sergiu Celibidache," reports Fuentes); his diva (possessive usage intended here) is a young Mexican soprano, Inez (Fuentes credits Maria Callas for that inspiration). The novel begins with Atlan-Ferrara preparing to conduct his final symphony in Salzburg at age 93. He contemplates a crystal seal that was given to him by his sometimes love Inez, who he first "conquered" when he was 40 and she, 20. The seal, which seems to empower Atlan-Ferrara in his romantic pursuit of Inez, lends the story its most supernatural aspect, for it acts as a talisman, embodying for the conductor a "living past, the receptacle of all he had done." It is, in a sense, a keeper of human memory.
In fact, the retrospective aspect of this novel is its main theme. This sweep through time does not limit itself to the present: Fuentes, in a second narrative, takes the reader back to, literally, The Beginning, to render a telling of a likely first meeting between primitive man and woman, rendered as neh-el and ah-nel, the original lovers. The Beginning is, itself, a kind of operatic endeavor: neh-el and ah-nel discover one another, cohabit space, share their resources and, eventually, succumb to the "song" they share by making love (which, in the presence of beasts and Nature, is depicted as a primitive and instinctual, if beautiful, act). In fact, from the point of view of the female, the romance is less about the act itself, and more about the sharing of song as language, of making a kind of human music together. It might be better described as the first pure rendering of musical passion, and definitely something you could see enacted, with elegance and refinery, on a stage.
It's this music that, moving back into contemporary mode, serves as the conductor's Holy Grail. His life's work, as the illustrious conductor of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, involves recapturing that raw human song that marked the first passionate human expression, a unity between speech and song which he believes has been lost over years of civilization.
The Damnation of Faust is an opera that eludes the ambitious conductor even as he perfects it over his lifetime, a piece subject to the discretions of individual interpretation, and yet a production that can never be owned, not even by the arrogant Atlan-Ferrara himself. This bit of humility renders the man likeable, as well as the fact that he understands how "music is an inversion of time." We get the sense that for all the ego that he puts into his work, the work is ultimately not about him at all. It's really about recapturing true, raw beauty.
When he first encounters the beautiful Inez, it is during the London Blitz in 1940. Bombs are exploding throughout the city during rehearsals when Atlan-Ferrara recognizes immediately Inez's suitability for the diva's role. This isn't just scene-setting: Fuentes means to imply the Faustian connections between love and death right from the beginning of the contemporary plot line.
This defines the challenge in the relationship between conductor and diva (and man and woman). Atlan-Ferrara, who sees himself as the conduit between music and score, sound and silence, seems to believe his role is to refine the primitive power of Inez (and not only of her voice). Inez, in the meantime, seems less interested in filling a predefined role in the orchestra than in unleashing her own sound, a fierce individuated cry that seems impossible to tame. Since both artists are at the top of their game, the controlling nature of the situation creates all sorts of tension. It doesn't help that Atlan-Ferrara is ruggedly handsome and Inez, timeless in her beauty.
As one might guess, the tension moves from stage to bed, where Atlan-Ferrara tries, but fails, ultimately, to conquer Inez. In fact, their relationship between stage and bed seems to be equalizing: he commands her in the opera, certainly, but "she was queen of the bed." The conflict between them is less a physical issue than a philosophical conundrum: which is more divine? Love of art/beauty or love of another person? Mixed into the blend—especially when considering the second, more primitive, narrative—are the classic confrontations between men and women (which Fuentes posits were established at The Beginning when Man decided to make the rules).
And so the narratives intertwine, between conductor and diva and primitive man and woman. It takes the reader a little patience awaiting the connection between the two narratives, and the movement between time changes is, initially, disconcerting, but it resolves itself by the first third of the book.
The contemporary relationship between Atlan-Ferrara and Inez, definitely one we would consider the love of a lifetime, is interrupted over decades as they move into and out of each other's lives. Separated, they suffer regret and the burden of memory, as well as the open question of where they are headed as a couple. Their romance is undoubtedly too primal, too big, for the civilizing confines of marriage, but without each other, they are incomplete.
When we move back into Atlan-Ferrara's consciousness as the aged maestro (is it miraculous that Inez remains youthful and preserved, even in old age?), we see him facing his mortality while reflecting upon the one thing that, for him, captures the eternity of Inez: the crystal seal. The seal itself is a puzzle, linking past and present and future in a way that suggests timelessness for the person who holds the seal. This is enacted in the final scene of the conductor's final performance of The Damnation of Faust in a way that is equal parts primeval, elegant and otherworldly.
Inez is, in some ways, a departure from Fuentes's more obvious pursuits into Mexican identity. It is "the opera that permits me to travel in time...," Mexico's most celebrated novelist told NPR. "It is Berlioz who invents this original dissonance, this extraordinary mystery of the origin of music and the origin of voice."
Still, one might argue that the highly decorated author Fuentes is also exploring, more subtly, the larger relationship between Mexico and Europe. After all, he has spent an appreciable time in both places and served as a former Mexican ambassador to France (the place of Atlan-Ferrara's origin). Symbolically speaking, Atlan-Ferrara might be standing in as the conquering civilized European male, while Inez might be considered the uncultivated, beautiful Mexican female that requires the conductor's civilizing hand. Certainly, the maestro talks down to the Latin Americans in his orchestra at one point regarding their reliance on reality as their salvation from what he seems to think is crudeness.
The same theme, of the arrogance of colonizing power, arises on a more basic level in the novel's Ice Age narrative. The passionate encounter between the world's first lovers seems to indicate two things: the male's physical dominance and the female's spiritual dominance in the relationship. When, later, neh-el and ah-nel enter into a village, we learn that at one time the village had been matriarchal, until the physical assertion of the patriarchs changed the rules (it seems, Fuentes is suggesting, forever).
This isn't the first time magical realism has made comparisons between Latin America and Europe based upon a gender-implied worldview or an observation about Latin America's "wildness" over Europe's "civility." Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa have approached these comparisons ruthlessly in their own work.
This book, described as "a magical novel of love and art, life and death," won the IMPAC Dublin Award. However, while Fuentes's narrative style is, by all accounts, typically elegant; and while the book is a short, quick read; Inez is challenging to digest.
This isn't really a problem with the parallel storylines; once the reader gets through a section of both past and present, the linkage is obvious and natural. Nor is it a problem with shifting temporality. In fact, that is one of the areas where the story succeeds. The shifting of time makes this story work, more than anything else.
Perhaps it's the fact that the book seems destined to tend to the philosophy of love rather than to the more intimate proposals of the human heart. Not that this story isn't intimate; there are rhapsodic encounters. But the repartee between the conductor and Inez remains elusively distant and formal, even in their post-coital moments.
Or, perhaps Fuentes was aiming for an intertextual depiction of romance à là colonialism by training the spotlight on Faust? If that was the case, he lost this reader beyond the more obvious connections between life, death and love.
Some of the context is there, especially in the violence in the Ice Age scenes. The male's appropriation of female power at the birth of the first child of passion. The "justified" murder in the village. The outcasting of the original mother. These events certainly parallel contemporary collective injustices like war and misogyny, and it's clear that the maestro spent his life trying to control these aspects in his productions of Faust. But when I move back into the intriguing (perhaps even more intriguing than the operatic scenes?) Ice Age scenes and look beyond the more obvious parallels, I can't help but wonder at odd things.
Such as: Where is this Ice Age section taking place? Lascaux is a good guess, judging by the cave drawings that were part of the early depiction of the place. But therein lies the problem; I felt like I was guessing a lot. This, from a reader who generally pursues books that are laid out as puzzles.
Also, Atlan-Ferrara has a mysterious brother Inez discovers in a photo. The fading image of the man in the photo ("absent from the present") suggests a loss, but of what? Innocence, maybe. Or it could be that the brother is the conductor's more "civilized" (to turn a phrase) alter ego, the one that Inez really would have been better with, but would never have. Is this Fuentes saying that evil will always have command over good? I don't know. Again, these sorts of watercolored references left me wanting. I actually didn't mind being required, as the reader, to confront some of these philosophical questions. But without a little more context, I felt lost.
I wonder if the problem is that there were too many chunky themes in this book, and too little plot. I like a "chunky" plot with lots of complexity, but the themes, at least for me, should be clear. It seems that a more developed plot and more accessible themes in Inez would have made for a better book.
For such a dissatisfying read, I'll admit that it may simply require of me a second reading to be fully appreciated (and a reacquaintance with Faust).
(In fact, I wonder if readers without any basic understanding of Faust might be rather lost by this story. I'm not sure it's a problem, overall: Fuentes's readers are a sophisticated lot, so I can't imagine too many of them not having some acquaintenceship with all things Faustian.)
But Inez has some wonderful things going for it. Fuentes's contemporary depiction of hell as both a destination and a definition, not only for today's world, but even for that first world in the Ice Age, rings authentic. Also, the author's writing style is lovely and the basic themes he presents are timeless and rich.
I also really love the idea that song was humanity's first pure speech. In essence, the "voice" of the Ice Age scenes is the melodic composition of humanity, with Fuentes's highly dramatic operatic encounters lending high art to its meaning.
And the circularity of time and memory is fascinating and well crafted: we are all connected to neh-el and ah-nel (and perhaps, bound to their fate?). Our collective behavior is so deeply etched by these early human memories, how can we not be destined to repeat the course of events described in the village scenes (which might be a confirmation of Dostoevsky's concept of city as "accidental tribe")? I also liked the troublesome notion, suggested in the Ice Age drama, that one's voice inevitably becomes the world's voice as well. We are all, in a sense, bound to our world and its problems, and always will be.
Ultimately, Inez works as a romance of the ages. William Carlos Williams once wrote, "Rigor of beauty is the quest. But how will you find beauty when it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?" Fuentes may not have perfectly answered this question (rhetorical as it is), but he's crafted a love story which thrives on this very premise. For hopeless romantics, this story should prove perfect in its elegance, timelessness and complexity.
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