La circulación del tiempo en la obra literaria

Abstract

According to Octavio Paz, the passage of time seems cyclical to primitive people: life repeats the same acts in an eternal cycle, and we humans are reborn in this endless flow. However, after a certain degree of literary evolution, people begin to view time as linear and their own lives as inevitably finite. Art is, however, the place where this lineal time-stream dissolves, shows different structures and intermixes. But why are authors not satisfied with the concept of a lineal time-stream, and why do they find the concept of a looped timeline so alluring? And how can one convey the never-ending circle of time in the closed, stand alone world of a literary work, and what techniques can allow him to achieve the unachievable: to contain infinity in something finite? This study examines how Paz's mystical cyclical view of time acts in numerous novels of Julio Cortázar.