Stateless Memory and Narrative Instrusion. Images of Spain in Memoria de la melancolía by María Teresa León and Yo nunca te prometí la eternidad by Tununa Mercado

Abstract

Marked by the experience of their respective diasporas, Memoria de la melancolía, by Spanish author María Teresa León, and Yo nunca te prometí la eternidad, by Argentine author Tununa Mercado, remain in orbit with aspects related to the genres of the self but also in line with an internationalization of the memory that tends to widen the horizon in matters of the narrative of the traumatic past; they bring together a sum of conceptualizations about the diaspora, its consequences and its writing, which merits a convergent analysis. Their respective writing practices unfold a series of procedures in which the narrative of memory has especially abounded in the last years. An analysis of the reference to Republican Spain and the Spanish Civil War in these texts allows them to warn about the survival of an unavoidable period of the twentieth century that has continued to be resignified in the narrative of this side of the ocean. It also addresses mechanisms for approaching life stories that refract current concerns and questions, mediated by the gaze of exiled women.

I intend to record, in particular, those passages that show the authors in relation to Spain, with an idea of Spain and with the perception of a mismatch and a lack of harmony that constitutes them"”and that, even beyond certain historical circumstances, accounts for a ‘being out of place’ that is common to women, especially in extreme circumstances of loss and displacement.