Philosophical or poetic reason? An approach to pain in Cerrazón sobre Nicomaco (1946), by Efrén Hernández

Abstract

This paper proposes a reading of Cerrazón sobre Nicomaco. Ficción harto doliente (1946), nouvelle by Efrén Hernández, based on María Zambrano’s Filosofía y poesía (1939). In Hernández’s work, the narrator and protagonist is torn between two positions to face great pain: one that could be considered of a philosophical nature and another of a poetic one. At different times, he adheres to one or another way of relating to and conceiving the world and the word, to the extent that both his actions and his narration oscillate between the constant effort of reason and the clumsiness of the imagination. During the analysis, the passages that contribute to this conceptual tension are highlighted, and the intertextual relationship of this work with the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, the Canticle of the Sun by Francisco of Assisi and with a certain poetic tradition of Christian roots is emphasized. In his contradictory nature, Nicomaco Florcitas asks the questions and leaves the reader in the endless debate, in the ins and outs of a life that at most is painful fi ction, a dream or nothing.