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Luis Fajardo Linares

Which is the Real One?

After reading Which is the Real One? I have divided it into a series of signifiers or

units of sense to analyze it. I have selected 14 lexia or units of meaning according to Roland

Barthess article TextualAnalysis of Poes Valdemar. These lexia are:

(1) The title Which is the Real One? (2) I once knew a certain Bndicta (3) who filled

earth and air with the ideal, and whose eyes scattered the seeds of longing for greatness, beauty

and glory, for everything that makes a man believe in immortality.

(3) But this miraculous girl was too beautiful to live long; (5) and so it was that, only a

few days after I had come to know her, she died, (6) and I buried her with my own hands one

day when Spring was swaying its censer over the graveyards. I buried her with my own hands

and shut her into a coffin of scented and incorruptible wood like the coffers of India.

(7) And while my eyes still gazed on the spot where my treasure lay buried, (8) all at

once I saw a little creature who looked singularly like the deceased, stamping up and down on

the fresh earth in a strange hysterical frenzy, and who said as she shrieked with laughter: (9)

Look at me! I am the real Bndicta! a perfect hussy! (10) And to punish you for your

blindness and your folly, you shall love me as I am.

(11) But I was furious and cried: No! no! no! (12) And to emphasize my refusal I

stamped so violently on the earth that my leg sank into the new dug grave up to my knee; (13)

and now, like a wolf caught in a trap (14), I am held fast, perhaps forever, to the grave of the

ideal.

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Lexia 1. The title constitutes an enigma, and this enigma points out a duality about the

real or unreal Bndicta that I as a reader need to resolve, determines which one would be the

real one.

Lexia 2. This lexia indicates a deictic function because the narrator is saying that I once

knew a certain Bndicta, but Bndicta refers to women in general instead of a particular one.

As a proper name Bndicta means blesses or blessed and is related to religious and

Christian tradition. In lexia 3, by using adjectives like ideal, greatness, beauty, glory, the

narrator places Bndicta in a celestial plane as she was sacred or divine. He4 cannot touch her

because she only exits in his mind according to his religious beliefs. Immortality implies that a

man ideally believes he is immortal like the divine Bndicta. I visualize chronological, cultural,

and religious codes in these lexias. If in lexias 2 and 3 the story evolves in the narrators mind,

now lexias 4, 5, and 6 supposedly show that the story develops in a material plane, but

everything continues in an ethereal environment or world. The narrator is very active, and

Bndicta is passive. Nevertheless, after a short time it is impossible for him to bury Bndicta

with his own hands, and put her in an incorruptible and sacred coffin. This is because she does

not exist. She is not real. Nouns as burial, censer, coffin, and coffer refer to cultura l and

religious codes. Spring refers to an idea of Bndictas renaissance as it happens with flowers

and connects to Catholic ceremonies when a censer is used. When the narrator puts her in a

coffin of scented and incorruptible wood it gives an idea about cedar, a special wood used to

construct some religious furniture, for instance tabernacles, altarpieces, etc. As a reader, I

observe that Bndicta was buried by the narrator as if she were a living being or as if he tries to

keep her according to his ideals. In this part of the text, there is a deictic function.

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In lexia 7, the narrator is gazing at the place where he has buried his treasure. In lexia

8, he suddenly sees a new woman appeared. From that moment, the narrator becomes passive.

Now she is active so, their roles reverse. This new woman who looks like Bndicta, stamping

up and down on the fresh earth, is hysterical and frenzied. At the same time she shrieks with

laughter and tells him in lexia 9, Look at me! I am the real Bndicta. She identifies herself as

a prostitute and says you shall love me as I am as a punishment for his blindness and folly in

lexia 10. Again in these lexias there is a deictic function. But, once again, this new Bndicta

does not exist, because between this one and the first Bndicta there is nothing. Now in lexia 11

after the narrator has heard Bndictas bad intentions, he reacts with rage, saying No, no, no,

and refuses what she has said, stamping the earth so violently that his leg gets caught in the grave

and he stays trapped, as lexia 12 shows. So in lexia 13 he is trapped in his creation. I infer that at

the beginning of this story he finds himself on a superior level and the woman on a lower level,

but now the situation has changed, and their roles have reversed. In this way, if first the man (the

narrator) dominated the woman, now the woman dominates the man. In the last lexia, the

meaning would be that maybe the man will stay forever a prisoner of the earthly and unearthly

ideal. In most of the lexias there are deictic functions.

In conclusion, with Barthess structural analysis helps to divide the poem in little units of

meaning, or lexias, that help to resolve the enigma about the real or unreal Bndicta that the

author poses in his poem. The concrete situation is that the narrator has created both Bndictas

in his mind, so they are only an abstraction. Furthermore, I realize that the story in the poem has

a metaphor that relates the man to the wolf, and Bndicta to the lamb. First, when the narrator

says that he knew Bndicta and describes her, I see that he created her in his mind because he

thought that he could eat any woman. Second, as it says in lexia 13, like a wolf caught in a trap

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means that he fell down in his own trick, and the wolf is the metaphor used instead of man. At

the end, the outcome is that the man cannot eat any woman as the wolf cannot eat the lamb.