Minifiction within the reflect vortex

I’ve identified the author Diego Muñoz Valenzuela for the reason that 90s; we have now an extended friendship and complicity in the similar international of literature and we have now each devoted ourselves to selling books and studying for a few years. We’ve additionally printed a lot of books of micro-stories or mini-fictions. Diego, for his section, has printed a just right collection of novels and books of brief experiences. How are we able to fail to remember the unconventional? All of the love in his eyes (1990) or the compilation of minifictions Angels and executioners(2002), edited via the cherished Cristian Cottet, from Mosquito Comunicaciones, one of the crucial first to put up micro-stories in Chile on a constant foundation. The gathering A small fact It hosted very brief texts via Jaime Valdivieso, Juan Epple, Juan Mihovilovich, to call a couple of Chilean writers. As a result of when writing targets without delay at good looks, oblivion is unattainable, it perseveres through the years and stays like a aromatic flower via time. And that is what occurs with the books of Diego, a born author, totally devoted to literature and artwork, as Camus or Kafka did; with out concessions, bending the hand of destiny or any tournament that would uproot him from his career. A hard job within the turbulent occasions of neoliberalism the place few are inquisitive about studying as a social and cultural excitement. As a result of writing and studying, dovetailed, if one may say so, imply a fading of time, a sweetness in everlasting rise up and alter.

I fondly take into account the anecdote that Diego would sometimes inform about brief texts he wrote at the buses (public shipping buses), whilst he used to be going to university after which to college. Diego known as those brief, rapid texts, amidst unexpected brakes, schoolchildren with massive backpacks, elbows and different occasions conventional of driving on a packed bus, with other folks putting at the steps, “micro-stories.” The days have been turbulent, stalked via the rabid canines of the dictatorship. Writing used to be a seditious, undisciplined, subversive act, and the burning of piles of books within the streets used to be customary. In all probability because of this, very brief texts have been written between one position and every other, at the transfer and within the urgency of surviving. No less than, that’s what Diego did.

And from the texts written in movement to Unattainable Universes. Science and Microfiction (Los angeles Tinta del Silencio, Mexico, 2023) there’s a quantum soar. A lot water has flowed over the bridges of introduction, minifiction has change into an increasing number of widespread and is “practiced” (like fencing) on ​​nearly all of the planet. From cellular texts to compressed literary velocity. Unattainable universes… It’s natural velocity and synthesis. And right here I quote Italo Calvino who dreamed of “immense cosmogonies, sagas and epics enclosed within the dimensions of an epigram.” Six proposals for the following millenniumvia Italo Calvino). DMV’s universes, reworked right into a quintessence, contact on complicated issues, a ways got rid of from the already identified and hackneyed intertexts, and concentrated in time and area, in philosophical wondering, in dystopias and machines able to surpassing human intelligence.

In sure texts there’s a bitterness of the crisis to return and which, by hook or by crook, already is, as though the long run weren’t such or have been topic to intricate temporal chains:

Revelation 1

You flip to your pc and go browsing. You open your favourite web page and with a wry smile you learn this micro-story. You might be amused via the nonsense. The display screen sparkles and turns off. The whole lot is going black. You too. You by no means end studying this tale. (44).

Right here there’s a tale in the back of the textual content, or in additional literary phrases, at the different facet of the reflect. And this is the relevance of the minifiction: the illusion of a superficial tale and a deep tale, which the reader must get to the bottom of. around the globe internet has long gone black. Writer and reader are in disaster, even if most likely this technological chaos used to be there prior to, lengthy prior to they existed. In all probability all the time It used to be darkish, black and the crimson The protector and benefactor of communications isn’t such, however a hallucination or an aporia. This mini-fiction represents the velocity of occasions, the place the human being is able to ultimate his eyes for a few seconds and, when he opens them, he unearths himself totally in every other fact. Strangeness, even horror, are regularly starting to change into routine, they’re able to being topic to switch. Allow us to learn two different texts about catastrophes:

Apocalipsis now

At the shores of a filthy and livid sea, the pregnant lady watches the flight of the remaining birds in the course of the polarized glass of the gasoline masks that helps to keep her alive. Within the distance, the ghostly silhouettes of deserted and empty constructions will also be observed, nonetheless smoking. Her nipples press towards the material of her nightgown as though they sought after to flee, as though there have been hope for the kid rising in her womb. (48)

The survivor

The one chook flies around the sky of the empty and silent town. Its flight is agitated, pressing, unsure, trembling, terrified. Nobody sees it, neither other folks, nor animals, nor different birds. Town is lifeless and most effective the chook lives. And also you learn this tale whilst abandonment and worry ascend like frozen snakes up your again. (48).

In each texts, two experiences are presented, one in every of which represents the thriller, what should be printed. If the reader makes an effort, she or he will have the ability to achieve the “object,” now not the target, however an emblem that represents the holy grail of literature itself: the tale open in lots of meanings. The reader, all the time provide, is throughout the womb of that surviving mom and could also be studying, within the right here and now, that different reader who’s fearful of what she or he reads. The being who reads, then, purposes as a mystical object, very similar to that during fairy stories the place there may be part a hoop that should be discovered or the sword Excalibur that should be unearthed from the stone.

Once more, I quote Italo Calvino:

«We will say that from the instant an object seems in a story, it’s charged with a different drive, it turns into one thing just like the pole of a magnetic box, a node in a community of invisible relationships. The symbolism of an object is also roughly particular, nevertheless it all the time exists. Let’s imagine that during a story an object is all the time a mystical object.» (Calvino, op. cit.)

The reader, then, is very similar to a magic object able to opening all doorways and none, as a result of the whole thing depends upon the attention with which it’s observed. Apocalypses, the place the whole thing ends, generate new chances. Tales should not have an finish, however quite feed off every different to change into more potent and not disappear totally.

Within the collection “Relatividad”, which is composed of 14 texts, time is each the protagonist and antagonist of the tale. The mini-fictions eat every different, expelling meanings and making a vortex of symbolism. Every of the texts enters an Einstein-Rosen bridge or wormhole, taking the reader with it:

1

From his earliest adolescence, time longed to be represented within the type of a winged clock. Having accomplished this in his maturity, he briefly took flight over the sea. Despite the fact that he used to be going rapid, he used to be gradual and turned into increasingly more worried to achieve the opposite shore. Haste and exhaustion betrayed him: he fell into stormy waters. He sank like a stone on account of the giant weight of the previous. There he remained, trapped within the abyssal depths. Thankfully, he left us eternity as an inheritance; from that comes this tale.

9

After many makes an attempt, I discovered a strategy to shuttle to the long run. All I needed to do used to be flip the gadget the other way up, it used to be that straightforward. I went ahead a couple of mins to take a look at and it labored. Now I do know that each long term shall be worse, I’ve to meditate at the eventual go back. It isn’t very tempting. Every now and then lack of expertise is preferable. I must forestall in the future, an interregnum the place previous and long term don’t have any which means. Why, you could say? To put in writing this micro-story, after all.

He studying objectoblivious to the vagaries of area and time, can proceed studying the tale, the micro-story, and be a part of the intricate means of verbal exchange. As a result of that is what it’s all about: the switch of data. It’ll appear paradoxical, most likely it’s irritating and might create an imbalance. In all probability the creativeness has all the time been eccentric and is the skinny rope on which the tightrope walker walks:

[…] “in a time when others be triumphant media “very rapid and really wide-ranging, and by which we run the danger of pulling down all verbal exchange via turning it right into a uniform and homogeneous crust, the serve as of literature is to ascertain a verbal exchange between what’s other insofar as it’s other, with out attenuating the variation however quite exalting it, consistent with the vocation right kind to written language.” (Calvino, op. cit.)

In case you have come this a ways it’s because you’ve got already heard the clicking of the minifiction. The texts of Unattainable universes. Science and microfiction will captivate any person with an open thoughts. Diego Muñoz Valenzuela’s guide isn’t in response to jokes or at the immediacy of what’s repeated time and again; it’s significantly unique and exposes irritating issues; it’s other and distinctive. Do you dare to go into the reflect’s vortex?

Technical sheet:

Unattainable universes. Science and microfictionvia Diego Muñoz Valenzuela.

Los angeles Tinta del Silencio Publishing Area, Mexico Town, 2023.

90 pgs.