2 ?b90

101
The poet thus has the duties of interpreter and shaman2 expressing the
higher truths of his peers who are not gifted with similar powers of under-
standing, so that they too my approach the mysteries of life and death.
Many family characters have been used to illustrate concepts which
Lezama considers as precursors of the tao to be rediscovered by Jos6 CemT.
Long before Jos6 Cemf comes to the forefront of the novel,, the ideas of
ausenciap as the void out of which images flowp and lejanial, suggesting
a similar concept but also implying the inaccessibility of that void, have
been well established. The image of the family tree has served to reveal
the ways in which the Olayas are in touch with higher truths; the most
important aspect of tao, in which the soul returns to oneness with the
creative void, to the completeness of the seed, is represented by Cambita's
death scene; Time, in the historical sense, is destroyed in many ways.
We have seen these elements in the family characters but they will be of
little use to Jos6 Cemi until he makes them his own., consciously and
through personal experience,, however painful. Lezama has described Jose
Cemf as "un presunto trasunto de mi personalidad" and regards him as "el
impulsador central de la novela. "
4
When asked to define Paradiso, he
has divided the novel into three parts on almost every occasion. The
three sections follow what he considers to be the pattern of his own de-
velopment as a poet, the essential growth in understanding which leads
to poetic maturity: "La novela es una vida, la de Josd Cem!,, y la mia,,
que estA metida por cada una de sus esquinas. Es un Wilhelm Meister
habanero y constituye hasta ahora la mds grande experiencia sensible e
intelectiva. realizada por un cubano, por un americano tambi6n.
5
The
novel is therefore an attempt to come to terms with Cuban and American
life as experienced by one person., a. poet,, by examining three stages in
one life: "Es mi madre,, mi familia; la amistad, en lo que significa de
reto religioso (la apertura del compds: la amistad) y. despu6sp la presencia