El sueno de la historia.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Review

El sueno de la historia, by Jorge Edwards. Mexico City: Tusquets, 2000.

El sueno de la historia, by Chilean author Jorge Edwards, is a brilliant tour de force that compels readers to reevaluate their notion of knowledge. The protagonist, identified only as the Narrator, returns to Chile during the last years of the Pinochet regime after an almost ten-year absence. Immediately, he is thrust into a fear-ridden atmosphere that confuses and disorients him. While rummaging through some old papers, he becomes fascinated by the story of an eighteenth-century Italian architect named Joaquin Toesca, brought to Chile to complete the construction of the cathedral, and his young wife, Manuela Fernandez.

Married against her will, the lusty Manuela continues an affair initiated earlier with one of Toesca's students, the poor but promising Negrito Goycoolea. When she tries unsuccessfully to poison her husband, the authorities confine her to a convent. However, Manuela not only jumps the walls to recommence her affair with Goycoolea, she finds a way to make her husband a party to her escapades. As a result, church officials condemn her to an even stricter convent, but she finds other outlets for her libidinous urges. Eventually, the architect begins procedures to divorce Manuela, but circumstances contrive to bring the couple together again. In his attempts to extricate himself from this mess, Toesca counts on the help of his friend Jose Antonio, an archetype of the enlightened, eighteenth-century progressive, who reads Montesquieu and performs scientific experiments. However, the Inquisition ultimately silences Jose Antonio, leaving Toesca to cope alone.

The reader soon becomes aware of certain parallels between Toesca and the Narrator. Both find themselves in an unfamiliar, repressive environment. Both are confronted with realities that are not only bewildering but also constantly shifting. A leftist during his youth, the Narrator became disenchanted with socialism after the invasion of Prague. His ex-wife, Cristina, however, continues to be a rabid Marxist, working to overthrow the Pinochet regime. Her politics have rubbed off on their son, Ignacio, who is arrested for his political activities, then released through the influence of one of the Narrator's powerful friends, then detained and released again.

From the beginning, it is clear that Toesca's story is really the Narrator's concoction. The documents the Narrator is consulting provide only sketchy...