Duende by Alex Poppe (review)
2023; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/abr.2023.a906499
ISSN2153-4578
Autores Tópico(s)Spanish Culture and Identity
ResumoReviewed by: Duende by Alex Poppe Eugene H. Hayworth (bio) DUENDE Alex Poppe Regal House Publishing https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/duende/ 108 Pages; Print, $16.95 Consider the difference between the concepts of "being" (existing; happening; continuing or remaining as before) and "becoming" (to arrive or to come to a place or state). Since before Socrates, philosophers have struggled to explain how we come to know the world and our place in it, and what it is to be a person, assuming that Being is permanent, an unchanging and fixed state. In 1927 Heidegger, however, reconceived that notion. In Being and Time (1927) the philosopher describes Being as temporal and unfolding. We reflect, he suggests, on our own experience to come to terms with what we are. Alex Poppe's new novel, Duende, presents a series of reflections on trying to know others and how that experience shapes how we become who we are. Lava, a sixteen-year-old expatriate who, for reasons at first left unspoken, has been sent to live with her cousin Lola in Seville. The reason for her exile is one of the mysteries at the heart of the novel, but it is the journey she takes to acknowledge it that carries the reader along, spellbound, in this coming-of-age novella. Lava does not cling to her own sense of self—she questions it by examining six of the most important relationships in her life and the betrayal and heartbreak they have caused. Along the way, she learns the steps of flamenco. The dance, Lava says, announced "Yo soy"—I am. That I am reverberates throughout the book as Lava navigates the complicated steps of the flamenco dances and negotiates a series of complex relationships. She learns that the dance is both permanent and changing. "Flamenco es feurte," her aunt Lola tells her. Flamenco, Lava reveals, "is decision-making with no regrets." As Lava learns her first steps she thinks, "These movements were my first words in flamenco: me voy convirtiendo. I am becoming." The novel begins in late May 2015, the year Lava's father returns from prison. She is sixteen when her mother sends her from her home in Detroit to live with her aunt Lola in Seville. That is the year, Lava tells us, that she [End Page 82] "stopped believing in anything." In an early section of the story, Lava learns the difference between the Spanish verb ser, which is used to describe characteristics that are an essential part of the thing we're talking about, and estar. "Estar (to be)," her new friend Daniel tells her, "describes something temporary. . . . Ser (to be) is used for something permanent." And yet there are contradictions in how these verbs are used that Lava must learn. Upon hearing a radio story about a girl missing from the Seville fair and the girl's subsequent death, Lava questions the grammar of the announcement: "Ella está muerta," the announcer says. "Hey," Lava asks Daniel, "why do they say 'está muerta'? Shouldn't it be 'es muerta?'" "Yee American," Daniel replies, "we Spaniards do not think of death as permanent. Volvimos, we return. Our souls get reborn or something." Death is not a permanent state, but a kind of becoming. Lava's relationship with Daniel is the first of several encounters narrated in seven ephemeral chapters, each named for a flamenco dance. It is Daniel who first speaks the girl's name, introducing her to a group of his friends at a local coffeehouse. "Everyone, this is Lava." As she observes the group, she thinks each of them "would try on a persona of someone he thought he might become." They are like Lava, who is both being and becoming, both the hot molten rock erupted from a volcano and the solid rock that results from its cooling. She exhibits her passionate emotions in heated lovemaking with Daniel, a sexual encounter that results in the demise of their friendship. Her feelings for Daniel ultimately destroy the second relationship Lava reveals, her friendship with a German schoolmate named Astrid, her first girl kiss. When Astrid tries to kiss her again, there is an awkward moment when...
Referência(s)