AUTHOR: Irene Gracia
PUBLISHER: Pre-Textos
GENRE: Short Novel
READER’S NAME: Adan Griego
DATE: April 15, 2015
“Life is a dream, and dreams are dreams as well,” so said the noted Spanish Golden Age dramatist Calderon de la Barca. In Irene Gracia’s award winning novella, dreams and reality often appear to be one and the same.
A brief prologue to the book introduces Bruno and his cousin Ulla, satanist characters plotting to take advantage of Elisa. She is about to embark on a long trip and jealously awaits the seducing Bruno at the airport.
This juxtaposition of good-evil is the leitmotif of an intriguing text that reaches a crescendo in a Medieval-like, oneiric phantasy that develops during a long flight between Florence and St. Petersburg. But, was it a dream? The epilogue leaves readers with such doubt.
An ensuing narrative re-introduces angelic Elisa (joined by her equally innocent cousin Aura) inhabiting an idyllic landscape brutally interrupted by Bruno. The ruthless warrior kidnaps Elisa, forcing her to marry him.
This duality of good-evil, vice-virtue is at times erotically appealing: a mysterious and handsome red-headed angel who only shows his back, tempting the virginal beauty, or a carnal feast worthy of a decadent Passolini film scene. But it can also be macabre: Bruno’s cold-hearted beheading of innocent young girls when Elisa refuses to consummate their forced marriage. Diabolic Ulla re-appears as the ruthless cousin who takes a “delicious pleasure” in preserving the heads of the young victims and making Elisa caress them.
Gracia’s text presents fantastic motifs of far-away castles with witch-like characters where the seemingly Good and Beautiful can fall from grace and the apparent Evil can attain redemption, if only to lose it again. For English-language audiences already too familiar with the supernatural and overtly erotic vampire narratives, Gracia’s novela corta offers the right elements for a text eagerly awaiting translation: “Dreaming about walking on water” is not that surreal a fantasy!
