2 ?b90

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Grace in Christian terms (between DoTla Augusta and Mrs. Squabs) serves
to highlight such an impression. The rending of the corpse in the
course of the rites, as in the legends pertaining to these gods, is a
commonplace. The body of Osiris is torn and scattered all over Egypt
(Hý 883); Tiamat, a monster representing untamed creative power in
Assyro-Babylonian mythology, is challenged and conquered by Marduk,
who imposes order on the world only after tearing the monster to pieces.
She seems to have been trussed up in a net like the manatee: "The Lord
spread out his net and caught her in it. / The evil wind which followed
him., he loosed it in her face. "
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His weapon, the strong wind, re-
minds us perhaps of the cordonazo hurricane wind beating the manatee.
There is no way of knowing which specific aspect of mythology Lezama
had in mind, but it is the overall pattern which is important. Other
fertility cults involved the same enactment of the violent death of
the lover/son of the Great Mother Goddess; she is immutable, while he
is ever changeable and prone to death, like the crops and beings he
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represents. Attis, Adonis and Tammuz were such gods.
The common
factor is the encouragement of fecundity and creativity by means of a
violent death and/or orgy which implies, as we have seen, a return to
the primeval state of undifferenti&ted chaos, full of potential. In
the Michelena episode the mediating element is the poetic image, re-
presented by the advancing manatee. The scattering of the pieces
of her body symbolizes the unleashing of creative power; similarly
the reflections and glitterings of her scaly flesh represent the waves
of meaning and significance exuded by an effective poetic image towards
the receptive reader. Bufiuelo de Oro's last act is most important;
by acting on the manatee and then beating on the door of the lighted
house, he is able to metamorphose the forms of matter, where the manatee
seemed to have failed: "Bandeja Saltamontes, con el puEo crispado, segula