De noche soy tu caballo (Valenzuela)

De noche soy tu caballo por Luisa Valenzuela (1938- )
-de Argentina

-Beto, su amante, un guerrillero, se convierte en un “Desaparecido,” su cuerpo muerto flotando en el río

protagonista - sometida a varias torturas: “quemada con cigarrillos, pateada, amenazada, metaban un ratón para comerla por dentro, arrancaban las uñas)

Realidad o ficción?  Estaba Beto la noche anterior o no?  La botella de cachaca y el disco de Gal Costa

momentos de amor/ternura intercaladas con violencia, terror

género: masculinidad, femeninidad

 “The ephemeral circumstances shown taking place in “De noche soy tu caballo” turn into a haunting experience for both readers and narrator. Is the lover’s clandestine visit “factual” or illusory? Is it the naked truth, or is it simply a dreamy event experienced by the main protagonist? One thing is certain: the tale is a charming fantasy imbedded in a true house of horrors. It really doesn’t matter whether these events are taken as true or false; the fact is that the story is used to describe a mixture of tender moments enmeshed in acts of persecution and violence. The lovers, find solace, though fleetingly and under very trying circumstances. The narrator’s loving ambiguity lingers on in the repetitive use of the verbal phrase: “Te hacía” (“I thought you were”) pronounced after the moments when he stealthily rings at her door. Before their surprising encounter, the narrator tells Beto, her insurgent lover, that she had imagined him in a series of polarizing situations. At times she had seen him in dynamic participation, fighting, castigating, and eliminating the enemy; in other instances she had pictured him docile, in passive incarceration, tortured, or even dead. She tells him in an almost perfect monologue...”

“De noche soy tu caballo” por Luisa Valenzuela
Valenzuela (1938-present)
Buenos Aires, Argentina
post-Boom
1982, Cambio de armas
critica la dictadura, femenista
cuestiona el discurso → contradiscurso

A second story by Luisa Valenzuela, “De noche soy tu caballo” (Valenzuela 1982, 106), exemplifies a diverse, but no less devastating, kind of anguish caused by a similar repression, aggravated even more by persecution. The story unfolds with one of the nocturnal visits received by the main protagonist. “De noche soy tu caballo” borrows its title from a popular Brazilian song sung, we are told, by Gal Costa: “A noite eu so teu cavallo.” Both media titles produce a totally controlling equestrian metaphor which graphically delivers a restless, and yet unsurpassed, amorous longing for an absent lover. It also serves as a symbol of human intimate relations, truncated by the ups and downs of political persecution. The story is part of the deadly game of hide and seek between oppressor and oppressed.
The ephemeral circumstances shown taking place in “De noche soy tu caballo” turn into a haunting experience for both readers and narrator. Is the lover’s clandestine visit “factual” or illusory? Is it the naked truth, or is it simply a dreamy event experienced by the main protagonist? One thing is certain: the tale is a charming fantasy imbedded in a true house of horrors. It really doesn’t matter whether these events are taken as true or false; the fact is that the story is used to describe a mixture of tender moments enmeshed in acts of persecution and violence. The lovers, find solace, though fleetingly and under very trying circumstances. The narrator’s loving ambiguity lingers on in the repetitive use of the verbal phrase: “Te hacía” (“I thought you were”) pronounced after the moments when he stealthily rings at her door. Before their surprising encounter, the narrator tells Beto, her insurgent lover, that she had imagined him in a series of polarizing situations. At times she had seen him in dynamic participation, fighting, castigating, and eliminating the enemy; in other instances she had pictured him docile, in passive incarceration, tortured, or even dead. She tells him in an almost perfect monologue:
Te hacía peleando en el norte
te hacía preso
te hacía en la clandestinidad
te hacía torturado y muerto
te hacía teorizando revolución
en otro país. (“De noche . . .” 106)

-miedo como motivo recurrente.
Esto debido a que en ambos textos los protagonistas revelan un estado de miedo mediante paranoia y negación de lo que pudo ser realidad.

Beto, un revolucionario
detalle “botella de cachaca y disco de Gal Costa”
fin abierto, ella detenida, torturada por la policia, no sabe si Beto de veras visitó la noche anterior o si fuera ilusión