Sin lengua: Imposibilidad, inefable y silencio en Declaración de las canciones oscuras (2019), de Luis Felipe Fabre

Abstract

This paper addresses how Luis Felipe Fabre, in his novel Decla­ración de las canciones oscuras (Sexto Piso, 2019), represents Juan de Yepes Álvarez as a writer that was “suspicious of the language.” In order to achieve this, both the documentation process supporting the novel as well as the in-depth analysis of the verses found in Noche oscura del alma —used by Fabre to write his poetic prose passages and fictional cutting which hold up the text: segments in which the narrator or characters denounce expressive impossibility, as happened to San Juan—are revised. Based on the constants of impossibility, ineffability, and silence as analytic guides, the present work analyzes several scenes of the novel, and in the final segment this paper concludes that the “mistrusting of language”—something that Fabre reclaims and resignifies from De la Cruz—is a symptom of how literature offers resis­tance to the lies and terror of our current contexts, even though Fabre in this work is talking about historical events as far away in time and as in place.