Khadra Zerouali
Throughout history, there has been some sort of ritualistic tradition surrounding the dead. However, when it comes to power we do not often consider those being buried as the ones who hold power. We as the living bury the dead in order to receive some form of closure so that we can move on and leave the dead behind. Yet, I argue that these corpses have a power over the living and can gain a form of identity through those who are alive. In both Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s 1968 short story, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World'' and Tomás Eloy Martínez’s 1995 novel Santa Evita, the figure of the corpse - Esteban and Evita respectively - demonstrate an inexplicable power over the living beings in each community. As Georges Bataille wrote in Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, “Death is a danger for those left behind. If they have to bury the corpse it is less in order to keep it safe than to keep themselves safe from its contagion” (Bataille 46). While in each of the stories there is a perceived level of safety when handling the dead bodies, the danger comes in that sense of security. By feeling secure and in control around the dead, it is the living who unconsciously allow themselves to fall into the danger that the corpse actually poses. I believe that the corpses, Evita and Esteban, demonstrate in their respective stories that they are more than just corpses. They each contain an enchanting and mystical aura that transforms the behaviors of the living that they come into contact with which acts as a sort of contagion. While the corpses on their own lack any physical autonomy, they still hold an inexplicable power over the living. I argue that it is the personification by the living and magical nature of these corpses that allow the dead to gain autonomy in a new form. This autonomy is manifested in the removal of identity from the living. The living communities play with, name, and fantasize about the corpses which gives the dead power over the living. It is through these seemingly harmless actions by the living that the corpses gain autonomy.
While each of the corpses do not start out with having autonomy, their interactions with the living are comparable. Children in both “Handsomest Drowned Man” and Santa Evita set the tone for how the rest of their respective societies behave around the dead. The adults in each of the stories act in an infantile manner, demonstrating the start of a transformation in who holds power. In Lida Aronne-Amestoy’s article “Fantasía y Compromiso En Un Cuento de Gabriel García Márquez”, she takes on a scientific approach in analyzing how fantasy and magical realism appear in the different works of García Márquez. While I am not necessarily arguing the power of magical realism within the text, I agree with Aronne-Amestoy’s analysis of children within the story. She argues that “los niños actúan con espontaneidad, incorporando al ahogado a la rutina de sus juegos, desentendiendose de las convenciones de la muerte y de la necesidad de otorgar una identidad a[l cuerpo]” (Aronne-Amestoy 288). Because the children behave in a spontaneous manner and play with the drowned man as if he were a doll, the children remove the fear associated with the dead and begin to integrate him into their small community. Rather than fear the dead figure, I believe that the children understood the corpse to have once had humanity. I believe that this same argument can be applied to how Yoli reacts to Evita’s embalmed corpse. As a child she was told that the corpse of Evita was simply a doll and in her interview with the narrator, she recalls how she “loved that doll as you can only love a person” (Martínez 222). Yoli plays with the corpse of Evita and imbues new life into her through her deep love of the doll. She personifies the corpse of Evita so that the doll can have emotions projected onto it. Evita gains a new identity here through the projection of emotions, similarly to how the drowned man does in Márquez ’s short story. In both, the corpses become play-things for children which allow them to take on the identities that the children project onto them. However, the children are not the sole members of the community who impart a new identity onto the corpses.
In each of the stories, the corpses become symbols of fantasy for the adults. They begin to objectify the corpses and impose their own sexualized fantasies on them. For “Handsomest Drowned Man”, the objectification of the corpse begins with how the adult women react to him feeling “breathless” and “fascinated by his huge size” (Márquez 1). They also describe him as “the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen” (Márquez 1). Within these descriptions, the women of the village objectify the corpse of the drowned man. Similarly to the children projecting their fantasies of play to the corpse, the women project their sexual fantasies onto the drowned man. They imbue into him all they wish they could have out of living men. Their imagination leaves them breathless and injects the corpse with new life. According to H. Porter Abbott’s article “Immersions in the Cognitive Sublime: The Textual Experience of the Extratextual Unknown in García Márquez and Beckett'', the descriptions of the corpse are “commentary on feminine desire and the inadequacy of the masculine as it is normally found in its living, diurnal character” (Abbott 134). The corpse in Márquez’s story becomes a symbol for what the adults of the community either desire or lack. Therefore, because he does not have a known identity, the sexualization of the corpse becomes all the more possible. They create an identity for him and give him a new sense of power.
Similarly in Santa Evita, the corpse of Eva Peron becomes sexualized and objectified by the men who try to control her corpse. The first instance of this is through the story of the embalmer, Dr. Ara. Like the children, Dr. Ara “spent the afternoon watching over the Señora and speaking to her” (Martínez 19) and how he “had kissed her on the lips twice to break a spell that was perhaps the same as Sleeping Beauty’s” (Martínez 17). This demonstrates that adult men also participate in this fantasy of the corpse and embed a part of their desire into her. Dr. Ara communicates with Evita’s corpse and even goes as far as to portray himself as some sort of princely character as an attempt to live out the fantasy of being a savior to a princess. She is able to take on this identity, and many more due to what Leticia Romo describes in her article “El poder de La Referencialidad” as “el poder seductor de Evita consiste en su maleabilidad, en la imposibilidad de ser representada bajo un único signo” (Romo 100). Because of her adaptable qualities, the corpse of Evita can take on any role and can fulfill any fantasy. She, much like the drowned man, is able to do this because every time she is described by a living person, a part of their identity becomes hers which ultimately gives her power over others.
This power that is unconsciously given to the corpse continues on in the living desire to possess it. As Jane Lavery states in her article “Postmodern Interpretations of the Iconic Self”, the femine corpse of Eva Peron is “being objectified and abused, [however] Eva continues to be extremely elusive and powerful even in death. Those who attempt to possess, forget, or eliminate her find their efforts constantly frustrated” (Lavery 236). While Lavery only describes how this power applies to Evita, I believe that the same could be said for the drowned man. Moreover, this attempt of possession is very clear once the community gives the drowned man the name Esteban. The villagers begin to lose their control as “the more they sobbed the more they felt like weeping, because the drowned man was becoming all the more Esteban for them” (Márquez 2). The women of the village became more and more enamored by this corpse, who they focus on referring to as Esteban for the remainder of the story. They demonstrate a childish, possessive nature when talking about how Esteban becomes the more real “for them” and even go as far as to sob when they think of letting him go. However, by naming the corpse as Esteban, they grant him a brand new identity which becomes part of how he is able to gain power and autonomy quickly. As Mary Lusky Friedman describes in her article “The Corpses in the Corpus: Dead Bodies in Garcia Márquez ’s Fiction”, the villagers’ “increasing identification with the dead man, conveyed by a shift in the narrative voice… constitutes an adventure of the spirit” (Friedman 141). I believe that Friedman’s understanding of identification is similar to a relinquishing of power. When identification with an object, here being a corpse, occurs you relinquish a part of yourself so as to make that object more attainable in understanding. In placing identity into the corpse, the sentiments behind losing that corpse are similar to losing a part of yourself. This reaction to the possible loss of Esteban is similar to how Yolanda reacts to almost losing her memory of Evita as a doll. She regresses to a child-like state as she “burst into tears again. This time her tears overflowed her body and drenched the air” (Martínez 223). By learning the reality of the corpse, she loses something inside of herself and is struck with a deep sadness that permeates the air around her. It is as if the knowledge of the corpse solidifies how a part of her identity is missing forever. However, I believe that Yolanda’s memories and childhood identification with Evita is not necessarily gone, but instead has become a part of the transfer of power to the corpse.
Another aspect of transferring power to the corpses is the act of naming them. As Stuart Schneiderman describes in “Fictions”, proper names help “identify the subject and place him within a symbolic structure… If we are no longer to use proper names to identify people, what is left but descriptions of personality traits” (Schneiderman 157). Names are a source of power that allows the corpses of Evita and the drowned man to gain autonomy. It is another form of being able to take on an identity and control of the villagers. And although there are points where neither of the corpses are called by a proper name, they are still placed in a symbolic structure as they become representative of the desires and identities of the living. Within Márquez’s story, the drowned man is named by the village women but is confirmed by the men since they “were left breathless too” (Márquez 3). By leaving all members of the village breathless, it is as if Esteban takes a part of their life from them. He steals their breath and therefore, he is able to take on any identity he comes across, like a shapeshifter. While the drowned man does not possess any autonomy on his own, he is not limited by his physical constraints. The villagers imagine and project different ideas and personalities onto the corpse until they decide that “he has the face of someone called Esteban” (Márquez 2) only to be followed by the confirmation that “He was Esteban. It was not necessary to repeat it for them to recognize him” (Márquez 3). The naming and subsequent confirmation serves as a baptism for the drowned man as he is reborn with a new identity. This rebirth of Esteban grants him the autonomy that his corpse lacks. Similarly in Santa Evita, the corpse of Eva Peron goes through a plethora of names assigned to her. While she is called Sweetie by Yolanda, the main array of names is given to her by the Colonel. In his documents he refers to Eva as “‘that woman’…. She was the Mare or the Filly, which in the Buenos Aires slang of the time meant ‘hooker,’ ‘B-girl,’ ‘nut case’” (Martínez 14). I argue that the Colonel, among other characters, nicknamed Evita with these titles in order to remove power from her corpse. However, they have all “kept putting something into it: shit, hatred, wanting to kill it again. And as the Colonel says, there are people who have put their tears into it too” (Martínez 136). These men attempt to remove the symbolism from Evita’s corpse but find it an impossible task because too many people - including themselves - have put a part of their identity into her. She, like Esteban, shapeshifts to match what society desires of her to be. She is impossible to escape and it is as if she demands to be named.
In Lloyd Hughes Davies article “Portraits of a Lady: Postmodern Readings of Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Santa Evita” he states that “there is no escaping Evita’s spell even at the level of language itself” (Davies 420). When the Colonel analyzes the etymology of Evita, he notes how her name means “to avoid. To evade. To elude. To keep something about to happen from happening” (Martínez 115). The Colonel desperately wants to avoid Evita, but she marks the notion of avoidance in her given name. This produces an obsessive quality about her. In trying to avoid her, the Colonel becomes consumed by her. In the article “Eva Perón o La Construcción de Una Identidad: Un Análisis de Santa Evita de Tomás Eloy Martínez”, Idalia Villanueva Benavides explains how Evita’s transformation of identity “se diluye de tal manera que ya no se le reconoce con su nombre propio, Evita, sino que al final se le llama simplemente Persona” (Villanueva Benavides 20). While this article poses this transformation as something negative that erases Eva Peron’s original identity, I believe that it in fact demonstrates how she loses her name but then is identified as a ‘person’ rather than a corpse by the end of the novel. The final name that is given to Eva’s corpse by the Colonel is “Person” as to him she “was becoming more and more Person and less and less Deceased” (Martínez 238). He is the one who grants her autonomy by no longer referring to her corpse as deceased, but rather as a person. He imbues humanity into her and in this action, the Colonel loses parts of himself.
The final form of obtaining autonomy comes from the nature of the corpse itself. The corpses in both Márquez’s and Martínez’s stories do not possess any autonomy in their physical forms. They are moved around and constantly touched by the living characters of the stories. I believe that the final aspect in Evita and Esteban gaining power is their enchanting aura over the living. Each of the corpses have the ability to leave the living characters breathless, as the Colonel in Santa Evita describes that “just remembering her made him feel breathless, gave him chest spasms” (Martínez 256). Evita, like Esteban, has the ability to take the breath of the living away which in turn gives her corpse new life. In the article “Una Lectura Intertextual de ‘El Ahogado Más Hermoso Del Mundo’ de Gabriel García Márquez”, Graciela Maglia explains a comparison of “Handsomest Drowned Man” with the story of Odysseus in order to connect the corpse to the topic of mythology. Esteban is described as “el coronado, un elegido por los poderes superiores y, por tanto, ejerce un cierto influjo sobre los demás hombres” (Maglia 2). Esteban’s influence over the living villagers is demonstrative of his inexplicable power. He arrives at the village without “the lonely look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of men who drowned in rivers” (Márquez 1). His atypical appearance marks a change in a village which the women believe “had something to do with the dead man” (Márquez 1). Esteban has the ability to change not only the mind’s of those who gaze upon him, but can somehow also influence the natural order of the village. After receiving a name from the villagers, Esteban becomes a symbol for the village and he becomes intrinsically linked to them. Parts of their identity live in him and he can no longer be possessed by one person.
Similarly in the article “Obsesiones Necrófilas: Autoridad y Ética En Santa Evita de Tomás Eloy Martínez”, Jason Cortes describes how there is an obsessive quality that surrounds Evita’s body within the novel Santa Evita. While Cortes’s focuses on the necrophiliac aspects of the novel, I believe that this interpretation of the Colonel supports my argument, as he states that the Colonel is “enfrentado a la imposibilidad de poder poseer el cuerpo” (Cortes 332). The Colonel can never truly possess Evita’s corpse because of the autonomy and identity given to it. There is a mystic and almost curse-like quality that is held within her corpse. The more the living try to contain and possess her, the more expansive her reach becomes. The Colonel describes her as seeming “radiant, triumphant” and not letting “herself be tamed” (Martínez 259). She, like Esteban, cannot be tied down to pure symbolism or radiance. The more the living decide to personify the corpses, the more human the corpses become.
The identity and autonomy is also possible not just through their enchanting nature, but perhaps something more sinister - a curse. In Santa Evita, the Colonel begins to lose his mind as he becomes more and more obsessed with possessing Evita’s corpse. He describes her enchanting and seductive aura as “a curse [that] was already preying on his mind” (Martínez 267). She no longer simply was the corpse of Eva Peron, but her power and identity expands to represent the entirety of Argentina, since “only in death could a person be, like Evita, immortal” (Martínez 280). Evita transcends the living and becomes a symbol of immortality, destined to continue to return to the minds of the living. Her power comes from her ability to be remembered, which I argue is a form of autonomy. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator also falls prey to the curse of Evita’s corpse. He explains that if he doesn’t “try to know her by writing her, I’m never going to know myself” (Martínez 368). Although he never came into contact with her corpse, he is exposed to the curse through how she is remembered by those who did know her in person. By writing the story of Evita, the narrator places his own identity in her corpse. He too will feel lost if he chooses not to continue to write about her. She is not a corpse that can simply be avoided or put to the side, but rather a force of nature that demands acknowledgment and a voice in the afterlife. Otherwise, she makes her presence known by haunting the narrator’s dreams as “Santa Evita, with a halo of light behind her chignon and a sword in her hands” (Martínez 368). The corpse of Evita has an otherworldly power that infects the living and forces them to recognize and identify with her. In the article, “Volvere y Sere Millones: Los Cuerpos de Evita En Tomás Eloy Martínez y Nestor Perlongher”, Agnese Codebo utilizes the novel in order to discuss how Eva Peron’s body appears in multiple forms and how these forms are treated by different characters. I believe that when Codebo states that “Evita aquí se vuelve reliqui, en la medida en que las partes de su cuerpo se veneran como si se tratara de una santa o hasta de un cristo femenino” (Codebo 81), she is describing this level of immortality in identity. She no longer appears as a doll or as an untamable woman, but rather has saint-like qualities. She is honored and worshiped as a relic is, even by those like the Colonel who originally despised her very essence. When the Colonel is separated from her corpse, this absence was “like the absence of God” (Martínez 285). By likening her to a god or saint, she becomes more than just a single entity. The corpse of Evita was able to consume the identity of the Colonel completely until she became more than just a Person; She is granted the greatest form of autonomy in her afterlife, that of a deity. Her autonomy grants her power over the living because through this power she is able to live on and transform the minds of those who would oppose her.
In “Handsomest Drowned Man” this curse appears in a slightly different way. While there is no clear moment of disdain towards the corpse, the introduction of the corpse is first as “an enemy ship” (Márquez 1). This is the only moment in the text where the drowned man is described in a negative manner. However, this quickly shifts to positive and even ends with the village renaming their town in Esteban’s honor, for “there could be only one Esteban in the world” (Márquez 3). They recognize him as an individual with an irreplaceable identity, an identity that was given to him through their actions and desires. Similarly to Evita, Esteban reaches a similar level of autonomy. All of the villagers are marked both emotionally and physically by his presence and although they do hold a funeral for him, they understood “that everything would be different from then on… they did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present” (Márquez 3). They have come to an understanding that by allowing Esteban to leave, they have lost a part of themselves. Their identities are entwined with Esteban. However, the villagers, entranced or cursed by the corpse, change the structures and colors of their homes so that “Esteban’s memory [could be] eternal” (Márquez 4). While the villagers give Esteban the autonomy to return to the village as a memory, it is Esteban that holds the true power over the villagers. He holds their identities inside of him which grants him full autonomy. In addition to possessing the identities of the villagers, the ownership of the town moves from the villagers to the drowned man as it is from there on out known as “Esteban’s village” (Márquez 4). Although at the beginning of the story, Esteban was seemingly a signifier without a real relationship to the village or villagers, by the end of the story he transcends the role of signifier. His autonomy and identity allow the villagers to mourn and allow him to watch over this community as a deity would. Both Evita and Esteban surpass the autonomy given to them by the living and become an irreplaceable and powerful presence in the world of the living.
These corpses become whole worlds for the living that come into contact with them. They start their respective journeys as lifeless, enchanting playthings for both children and adults, but through the imbuing of the identity of the living to the corpses, that Evita and Estabn grow in power. While some may argue that the corpses are merely objectified by the living in these moments, I believe that it is the start of a transformation. The more that the corpses are spoken to and thought of, the more dangerous they become. The constant touching of the corpse imbues them with humanity. There is a transference of identity, as through touch and voice that Esteban and Evita are able to touch the living. Their reach becomes widespread that the living have no choice but to acknowledge the power in these corpses. Evita is likened to an immortal being and Esteban becomes the owner of the entire village. It is through the combination of mystical aura and personification of the corpse that Evita and Esteban can gain a newfound autonomy. It is as if the corpses have some sort of curse that slowly forces all who come in contact with the dead to give them an identity and, therefore, give them power beyond the grave.
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Biography
Khadra Zerouali is a third-year graduate student from California State University, Fullerton. She earned both her B.A. in English as well as her Single-Subject Teaching Credential from California State University, Fullerton. Her areas of scholarly interest include the Victorian, Romantic, and Gothic Eras, as well as Psychoanalytic and Marxist theories.
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