2 ?b90

243
former glory, they are fit for their punishment: "Se les restaurar6 a la
normalidad de la c6pula con mujeres, pero en un lugar donde ya el fornicio
con hembra placentera est6 abolido. Ese serS tal vez su castigo" (1,378).
Unfortunately for Foci6n, his punishment begins long before his death,
as insanity sets in. His ramblings about Anubis and the anus contain ima-
ges of his useless struggle against the Great Mother in her terrible aspect
"Fronesis se adelanta con la jabalina, ' ýut "iY yo? Un puerco en colmillos/
para la trompa de caza" (1,493). For Foci6n, Anubis represents "un em-
bri6n anterior a todo el dualismo sexual" (1,493) and the red-haired youth
reappears as an alter-ego of himself, "venia huyendo del rechazo que le
daba su madre" (1,495).
Many of Focidn's failings have been revealed: his intellectual pride;
the chaos within, echoed in the student riots and in his admiration for the
perpetual rebel such as the Conde de Villamediana; his ignorance of the oppor-
tunities afforded by looking beyond the self, symbolized by the glimpses of
Oppiano Licario; his evil influence on the young and impressionable; his
-mQrcissistic and androgynous predilections and his tenacity in persisting
therein. We know of his freedom from "Original Sin" and of his confusing
cenception; his dual parentage, comprising a rational lunatic, an embodiment
of the Unconscious and a lustful and unfaithful wife with a second identity,
that of assistant to insanity. There is no spiritual guide in such a combi-
nation, no spiritual mother, and so Foci6n's feverish quest begins. Like
the hero in myth, he has two sets of parents but he is entrapped by them and
can never conquer the Unconscious. His closest approximation to capturing
the feminine half of his psyche comes during his happy love affair with
George but it is not enough to free him, as becomes clear from the line of
debate which he pursues.
The descent proves to have been successful when, shortly before Foci6n
is carried off to the assylum, we find that: