Rilke y la nostalgia irónica en Virginia o el interior del mundo de Álvaro Pombo

Abstract

Displacement and death in their many expressions are topics that overlap and recur in the narratives of Álvaro Pombo (born in Santander, Spain, in 1939). Whereas in his urban novels, displacement takes place in the present, in the novels set in early twentieth-century Northern Spain, it generates a longing for a past to which the author and the reader never belonged. In Virginia o el interior del mundo (2009), part of the second group of works, the attraction for the past is inspired by the influence of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose multifaceted presence is a vital key to interpreting the novel. The purpose of this essay is to study the various forms of Rilke's intertext to suggest that the trace of the poet articulates a conspicuous reflection on contemporary nostalgia and its paradoxical condition. Staying within the postmodern perspective that frames Pombo's narrative, and drawing from Linda Hutcheon's and Svetlana Boym's theories on nostalgia in present society, we will see how the fascinated look over a mythic past is mediated by parody. The result is the ironic rendering of not only the poet, but more interestingly, of nostalgia itself.