Instinto de Inez.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Books: instinct, intellect, and obsession

Instinto de Inez, by Carlos Fuentes. Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2001.

If you love early Fuentes--the Fuentes of Aura, for example--Instinto de Inez will be just your cup of tea. In his latest novel the internationally renowned Mexican writer returns to the fantasy genre and to two of his favorite themes: time and creativity. Inspired by the famed maestro Sergio Celibidache, Fuentes's protagonist, Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara, is a celebrated orchestra conductor known for his highly original interpretations of opera. The novel revolves around Atlan-Ferrara's performances of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, in which the Mexican mezzo-soprano Inez Rosenzweig Prada sings the lead female role, and the couple's intermittent love affair.

During their first rendezvous Gabriel shows Inez a photograph of himself and another young man, who inspires an obsessive passion in the singer. Gabriel explains that the mysterious young man has "disappeared," and he actually does disappear from the picture. Another story, parallel to the first, involves a prehistoric couple that, at the dawn of time, lives the most elemental of human experiences: fear, animal attraction, affection, procreation. In this antediluvian world, the female expresses her emotions repeatedly through song. Through singing, she gives voice to joy and anger, terror and ecstasy. For her, music is instinctive.

Gradually, the story of Gabriel and Inez becomes intertwined with that of this primitive couple. Inez blends increasingly with her ancient forebear, who surfaces in the mezzo's dreams and in her performances. Inez exists both in time and beyond time, moving naturally between the hierarchical, patriarchal world dominated by Gabriel and the egalitarian, maternal world of instinct. It is in this prepatriarchal world that Inez finds her love, the mysterious, disappearing boy, for love--that inexplicable, a-logical, motivating force--transcends and subverts time.

"Everything in music is artificial," Atlan-Ferrara explains to his cast. He exhorts them to find the "instinctive" or primitive in Berlioz. "Divorce your voices from every recognizable sentiment or...