Germinal Nothingness: Displacement and Ritual Transformation in La Noche by Jaime Saenz

Abstract

In Jaime Saenz’s poem La Noche, mystical, linguistic, and symbolic elements interact to alter our conception of reality. I carry out such a reading by focusing on ritual and the ways that it influences Saenz’s poetic language. I show that this poem proposes to think about night as a cyclical territory in which time and space are decentered from their daily useage. This decentering reflects an identity crisis that emerges when we come face to face with the alterity within ourselves.