Simultaneidad, punto y conciencia en "Ayer", de Juan Emar

Abstract

During the 20th century, the physical and philosophical theories of authors such as Henri Bergson (1859-1941) established a duality in the concept of 'time'. On the one hand, from an objective point of view, time is a magnitude created by humans in order to arrange the facts of existence in a spatial disposition like a succession. On the other hand, from a subjective point of view, time is primarily simultaneous, as the human mind melts, fuses, and interweaves thoughts. Consequently, it is the concept of duration that rules, and it is the point -rather than the line- that is the basic unit of measure. This theory was a key aspect for the configuration of the avant-garde and, in fact, some of the more representative writers og the avant-garde select it, precisely, as the main reflection in their writings. This is the case of the Chilean writer Juan Emar (1893-1964) and his novel "Ayer" (1935). In it, the protagonist and authorial voice narrates the tour of the city of San Agustín de Tango he took with his wife the previous day. In different 'stages' of the way the protagonist manages to realize the real temporality of the universe in ecstatic instants. The aim of this paper is to show how Emar's work is directly connected both with the theory of avant-garde and with contemporary theories about the time, by means of two mechanisms: promoting the aforementioned reflection as the topic of his work and twisting the language and the generic frame of the novel so as to express the real temporality of the conscience.