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being in order to truly grow to maturity, as in the case with Fronesis.
It would appear, therefore, that Oppiano Licario makes himself known fully
only to those who are able to look beyond ordinary causality, beyond death
and beyond the end of childhood innocence, those who realize that from death
of a certain kind comes abundant life. Both Cemi and Fronesis possess
this special knowledge, as their extensive speeches on the struggle between
St. George and the dragon reveal. The flight from childhood is an attempt
to escape from suffering and death, as is the horror of the nursing mothers
on TudSement Day; it results from a lack of understanding of the true mean-
ing of death, its creativity. The poet must be one who can faces the los-
ses in life and turn them to his own purposes, as Lezama has done with his
own father's death. Oppiano Licario, as a symbol of the deepest meaning
of life and death, is in great demand amongst all manner of men. Many
seek him, but most look in the wrong places and become entrapped within the
means they have chosen for their search. We have seen that in the twelfth
chapter the search for Oppiano Licario, in the preservation of life through
fame and culture, is useless without the personal experience of the questing
spirit which wishes to integrate itself in an understanding of past and pre-
sent, life, death and rebirth. For Lezama the'rebirth of Self and soul
seem to be intimately related in a complex process of growth, over which
Oppiano Licario presides. He is at once life and death.
The thirteenth chapter is an important prelude to the final mystical
exprience of Cemi, since it is full of signposts and false paths. Like
the twelfth, it is divorced from normal causality, forming a little allego-
ry which is nevertheless entirely relevant to the main body of the work.
Another most surprisingly unfamiliar group of characters gathers here around
Gemif and Oppiano Licario. The reader must resist his immediate desire to
reject the reappearance of Adalberto Kuller$ Martincillo, Vivo, Lupita and
TrAnquilo, all hailing from the second chapter, as an insult to his intelli7