Poética de la culpa y la confesión en El libro vacío, de Josefina Vicens

Abstract

The Empty Book (1958), by Josefina Vicens (1911-1988), has attributes which define it as a confessional work. This article analyzes the assertions of the protagonist of the novel José García when he experiences a deep guilt and appeals to be ambiguously forgiven for trying to write a perfect book. The guilt and the confession, predominant in the text, are tackled through the following: the rhetorical technique captatio benevolentiae; the narrator’s larval state and stripping (La Confesión. Género literario, by María Zambrano); the silence’s imposition and unfathomable condition (The Writing of the Disaster, by Maurice Blanchot); the summit of being and the incompletion as a goal (Notebooks, by Paul Valéry); the ghost novel (The Preparation of the Novel, by Roland Barthes); and the dependent or conditioned beauty, as well as the free or self-sufficient beauty (Critique of Judgment, by Immanuel Kant).