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26
Heaven, the family tree is to be the axis mundi of the Cemi and Olaya
families. The first seven chapters of the novel are devoted to this
return to the origins through dream sequences and memory. Lezama has
warned his readers that his characters tend to gravitate from the every-
day to the miraculous and mythical and we must take him at his word,
charting carefully their movement through the novel.
The reader is told nothing more about the Colonel's ancestry until
much later, after being introduced to the Olaya family in Jacksonville.
Some confusion arises from the fact that Jos6 Eugenio now seems to have
been an orphan from the age of ten years and has been brought up by his
maternal grandmother. Another surprise is that the Enriqueta of the
gossA familia has now become Eloisa. In her introduction to an annotated
edition of Paradiso, Lezama's sister Eloisa remarks:
Se ha tomado como un error el que J. L. L. Ilame Enriqueta
a nuestra abuela Eloisa. "Otro zapote, Enriqueta, " es
una frase de cufio familiar que implica "repeticidn. "
(Enriqueta era hermana de El sa y estaba casada con otro
vasco,, Juan Felipe Lezama).
The true identity of Enriqueta can be discerned within the text of ParadisO,
not without some difficulty. However, the early appearance of Josd Maria
Cemi, followed by that of his orphaned children, presentsa problem in the
novel's structure. These may be slips of the I)en, but without them we
might miss the tale of the Spanish emigr6 who has a mystical experience in
the New World, or alternatively the story of the resentful Tio Luis and
the career and marriage of the forceful Jos6 Maria as a new Cuban. As
it is, we receive first hand accounts from People involveds speaking from
very personal viewpoints. Lezama is highly selective in his choice of
family anecdotes, and it seems that he is quite prepared to subjugate in-
dividual characters to the requirements, not of plot in the accepted sense,
but of an evolving system of ideas to be presented in the novel. This is