The Museum of Eterna's Novel

A HOME FOR NON-EXISTENCE

In the construction of my novel, my fervent hope was to make of the novel a home for non-existence, for the non-existence necessary to The Lover, the Gentleman Who Doesn’t Exist, to effect his very real hope, by putting him in some region or locale worthy of the subtlety of his being. His exquisite aspiration is to have a place somewhere in my novel while he waits for his love to return from the other side of death, the one he named Bellamuerte, beautiful death, she who made death beautiful when she smiled at its coming. Only her Beauty died: a beauty made of separation and concealing, for death engenders all the beauty of Reality: it separates lovers, there is no other death. One does not die for oneself, nor is there death for he who has not loved; nor is there beauty that does not proceed from death, nor death that does not proceed from love, since death is what accounts for the exaltation of the Idyll-Tragedy, the idyll exalted because of a fear of death and the tragedy made of the deep sorrow of an idyll destroyed.¹

In other words, my novel has the sacred vocation and the allure to be the Where from which the Beloved will come, fresh, returned from a death that couldn’t best her, that didn’t need Her to purify itself. It only needed her to worry the Lover, which is why she’ll come fresh from death, not resuscitated but reborn, smiling just as she did when she left, as if her years-long absence lasted only an instant.²

The droning bees of Life will alight on the new smile of the returned woman, just as they did in her departing smile, finding for a time that both smiles were fresh and united in an ever-present time, an adamantine time that breath cannot corrupt.

The vigil of The Lover was also pure and singular. His non-existence, which is purer than death, gives him the power, “among equals,” to marry her again — as if she had died without confusion, or shame.

1 Cf.: “The Idyll-Tragedy” in Miscellanea, as well as other references in this novel. (Editor’s Note — Adolfo de Obieta)

2 M.F. had thought of consecrating a book to the “Ella” named or alluded to in various passages and who he later characterized as “character with the being of being awaited.” In a letter written in 1932 to Ramon Gomez de la Serna (in the Epistolario) he says: “I’ll soon finish my Novel of Eterna and my metaphysics Ella (theory of the Eternity of Figure, Feeling, and Memory)”, and from here I’ll start with a new page:

“Explanation. Having lived from a young age among poets, thinkers, musicians and statesmen, the inclination to occupy the public’s attention and to leave a public record neither dominates me nor repulses me. For the first time, already in the shadows and the superfluities of so-called life, the impulse to publish and perpetuate a public persona and a public action has appeared to me, which probably won’t happen again. So it is that I enter the world of professionals in the expression of thought and feeling just in time to leave it without any pretension possible, neither possessing nor mourning the tact and vigor of the profession; it’s better to beg pardon and aid beforehand so that my ambition to win a bit of glory for this name (an ambition that She will look upon with disapproval and pity) and principally, to win a bit of sympathy and knowledge of this person, her character and her actions.” (Editor’s Note — Adolfo de Obieta)