Becoming of identity in Foreign Legion, by Héctor Viel Temperley: legionary, “traviata” and more

Abstract

In Legión Extranjera (1978), the seventh book by the Argentine poet Héctor Viel Temperley, we observe how, in veiled and indirect ways, an obliquely masculine identity, disruptive of the standard, more mature by integrating the anima, the feminine aspect of the deep psyche (Jung; Emma Jung; Marshall), is being traced. To analyse this construct, we take as a basis the paratexts and an epitext (Genette): his second interview (Confirmado); we situate the book in its contexts (García Helder; Echavarren) and according to its initial reception (Aguirre; Fontenla; J.D.L.) in order to disarticulate as unique the most widespread interpretation, subsequent to Hospital Británico -the mystic one-. We then analyse the figure of the soldier, highly valued by Viel Temperley (Arancet Ruda), here in association with the image and the syntagma of the Foreign Legion. The emergences of the anima are discovered both via the constant and diversely presented duplicity, as well as some compositional mechanisms and the feminine double of the legionary, who is here the ‘Traviata’; a complex reinforced by allusions to popular mass culture, for example in cinema, radio and advertising (Acosta López; Álvarez, Orchansky and Petrone; Devoto and Madero; Petrone; Vicchio). In the writing (Filinich) of the book, an author-editor becomes evident, composer of a long poem (Paz; Graña), in which the Foreign Legion functions as a paragram in a generative sense (Kristeva), semiotic condensate (Jitrik) or lyrical function (Verdugo), by observing the unfolding of the text from a matrix nucleus, a multi-vocal Legion that is signalling a masculine identity that is difficult to grasp, that must be interviewed in the interstices.