Metaphors and magic unmask the soul.

• Author: Bach, Caleb
• Position: Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela

IN TALES BOTH PERVERSE AND PLAYFUL, LUISA VALENZUELA EXPLORES THE DARK AND LIGHT SIDES OF LIFE'S UNPREDICTABILITY

ARGENTINE WRITER LUISA VALENZUELA HAS DEFINED HER COUNTRY'S ORIGINS IN TERMS BOTH VIOLENT AND LYRICAL. IN A 1983 ESSAY PENNED FOR THE NEW FORK TIMES, SHE REFERRED TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE RIO DE LA PLATA BY JUAN DIAZ DE SOLIS IN 1516: "POETRY WAS ALREADY LURKING: ON BOARD WITH SOLIS WAS MARTIN DEL BARCO CENTENERA, WHO WROTE AN ODE TITLED THE ARGENTINA, . . . A MISNOMER SINCE THERE WAS PRACTICALLY NO ARGENTUM, NO SILVER, THERE . . . IT WAS WRITTEN WHILE THE FIRST SETTLERS, SURROUNDED BY INDIANS, WERE FORCED TO EAT THEIR DEAD. THAT IS WHY I BELIEVE WE ARE DESCENDANTS OF POETS AND CANNIBALS." AT THE TIME, VALENZUELA'S ESSAY WAS CELEBRATORY AND QUITE SPECIFIC: "WITH THE RETURN TO DEMOCRACY, THE POET'S TIME HAS COME." STILL, IT REFLECTED AN ABIDING CONCERN THAT HAS OCCUPIED HER DURING MUCH OF HER CAREER: WHY THIS PENCHANT FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION FROM A HUMAN SPIRIT THAT ALSO CAN FIND EXPRESSION THROUGH PEACEFUL DREAMING WITH WORDS?

In Valenzuela's case, to claim direct descent from poets is accurate. Through her mother, Luisa Mercedes Levinson, a well-known author of novels and haunting, ironic short Stories, she came to know many other prominent members of Argentina's literary community. "I grew up with all these writers: Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sabato. They came to our home. That's one thing that probably led me to write. My mother collaborated with Borges on one story ("La hermana de Eloisa"). As a child I thought writing was dreary, drab, but they loved it. They could be quite obnoxious but funny. That impressed me that writing was more lively than one would think."

As a teenager Valenzuela placed her first articles with the youth magazine Quince Abriles. Instead of attending the university, she went straight into journalism on a full-time basis, working for several Buenos Aires newspapers and magazines (La Nacion, El Mundo, El Hogar). At age eighteen she published her first short story, "Ciudad ajena" [The City of the Unknown], a tale suffused with the themes of death, eroticism, and dreams that would endure in much of her later work. For a time Valenzuela also worked at the Biblioteca Nacional, which was directed by Borges and his deputy, Jose Edmundo Clemente. Valenzuela recalls that she wrote press releases for lectures sponsored by the library. "God knows what I wrote. I didn't even type well. But I was very proud because I knew I was in the presence of someone important. Borges was always pulling some book off the shelf and explaining. He could still see a little bit. The way he related to books was very beautiful."

At one point, Borges complained that rats were eating the books in the Biblioteca Nacional. "My mother had all these cats, sometimes as many as twenty. You thought they might eat you if you didn't feed them. She gave him one which she named Assurbanipal, after the Assyrian king mentioned in a Borges story. Then one day the great writer called very excitedly saying the cat was caught between the roof and cupola of the library, meowing and echoing, and so he realized the fantasy of his life: He called the fire department. My mother thought he would be furious because the cat never caught a mouse and had caused all this commotion. Borges said, 'Oh, no, no. I always dreamed of calling the firemen, but I wasn't permitted to as a child so this was a great opportunity.' Borges was very shy then, much shier than in his later years but sort of wicked you know . . . a picaro."

At age twenty, headstrong and impulsive, Valenzuela left home and headed for France. "Yes, I've been prone to radical shifts in my life," she ruefully admits, "and French sailors!" In rapid succession she married Theodore Marjak, who was in the French merchant marine, resettled in Normandy, and gave birth to her daughter, Anna Lisa. "But I got seasick," she says with a smile, and so the marriage ended in divorce six years later.

While in France Valenzuela continued to write, especially stories that tapped the rich folklore of Normandy and neighboring Brittany, "I was very hooked into the magic. I've always been trying to see that other world." Two memorable (and uncharacteristically gentle) stories came from that period, "El hijo de Kermaria" [The Son of Kermaria] and "Los Menestrales" [The Minstrels]. In the latter, a mother named Jeanne the Strong assigns a collective paternity to her son: the traits of nine nomadic musicians who temporarily lived at her farm...