the Death of the Living and the Death of the Dead: An Exploration of Self in Maria Luisa Bombal's la Amortajada and Maria Zambrano's la Tumba de Antigona

THERE is a marked difference between a death that is imposed upon a living being and a life that is surrendered. In the former, images of murder or dying before one's time dominate the inescapable understanding that we are all objects at the mercy of some macabre grim reaper. In the latter, the living being gains subjectivity and control over his or her life and in turn takes death as its object. Such objectification of death almost assumes that it is no longer feared--it has come to be accepted as a natural and normal course. This objectification is essential to Maria Luisa Bombal's La amortajada (1938) as the work explores death as an opportunity for lucid reflection. As she lies in her coffin, Ana Maria reflects upon her life and generates a dialogue between her two selves: the self that she was in life, and the one who she is in death. The very nature of this dialogue welcomes death as a requisite element in the narrative, and the two deaths that she describes--the death of the living and the death of the dead--unify Bombal's Ana Maria with the figure of Antigone as she is portrayed in Maria Zambrano's La tumba de Antigona (1967). Because of Zambrano's work the reader can make the connection between the dialogue that Antigone entertained in her period of living death (the time she spent concealed in her tomb and prior to her suicide) and the reflections of Bombal's protagonist. I argue that La amortajada explores death as a necessary experience in the process of self-exploration and conceives it as a creative (and even generative) space. Death is central to the classical myth of Antigone: the death of her brother prompts Antigone's actions, she is sentenced to sure death in her entombment, and it is ironically by death at her own hand that she emancipates herself from her traditionally submissive role. La amortajada provides a definition for the twofold death that is first presented in my reading of the classical Antigone. The twofold death refers first to Antigone's social death, a death unaccepted by her when she is banished to her tomb, and second to her emotional and accepted death in her choice of suicide. Bombal's Ana Maria takes advantage of the living death generated by her author as a space for exploration and expression, rather than one of resignation and defeat. Like Antigone before her, Ana Maria authors her own death in her acceptance of the earth's embrace. Zambrano's Antigone and Bombal's Ana Maria rewrite life in death.