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A Twice-Told Tail: Reinaldo Arenas's “El Cometa Halley”

2002; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 117; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1632/003081202x60279

1938-1530

Jorge Olivares,

Poetry Analysis and Criticism

This essay analyzes the articulation of transgressive desires in Reinaldo Arenas's “El Cometa Halley,” a parodic continuation of Federico García Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba. I argue that by moving the Alba sisters from Spain to Cuba and liberating their repressed sexualities, Arenas pursues his fantasies of sexual freedom. Linking his rewriting of García Lorca to the historically significant arrival of Halley's comet in 1910, Arenas relies on the comet's phallic tail to set the story in motion. More specifically, “El Cometa Halley” sketches a preoedipal fantasy of mother-son incest that recurs in Arenas's life and work.