Audio Coursesby JellypodLesson 01 of 8
Overview
John: Welcome back to CríticaZoma. I'm John, and as always, I'm here with Grace. Today, we're diving into the world of uncanny rabbits and surreal women. Grace, I gotta say, this is one of those topics that just... unsettles me in the best way.
Grace: Yes, John, I think that's the perfect word—unsettling. We're talking about the uncanny, or as Freud called it, "lo siniestro." It's that feeling when something familiar suddenly becomes strange, almost threatening, but not in a horror-movie way. It's more like, you know, when reality slips just a little bit and you start to question what's possible.
John: Exactly. And Cortázar's "Carta a una Señorita en París" is such a great example. I mean, a man who vomits rabbits? It's absurd, but the way it's written, it just... it gets under your skin. There's no explanation, no logic, and that's what makes it so effective. It's not about fear, it's about that weird, dreamlike discomfort.
Grace: Right, and I think that's what Freud was getting at with the uncanny. It's not just the fantastic or the supernatural—it's when the ordinary world is twisted just enough to make you doubt your own senses. In Cortázar's story, the protagonist is so normal, so polite, and yet he's dealing with this impossible, almost comical problem. But it never feels funny, does it?
John: No, not at all. The first time I read it, I remember thinking, "Wait, am I missing something? Is this a metaphor, or is it just... happening?" And honestly, as an editor, I love stories that make me question reality like that. It reminds me of the first time I read Kafka, actually. That sense that the world is just a little off, and you can't quite put your finger on why.
Grace: And that's the power of the uncanny. It's not about monsters or ghosts—it's about the everyday made strange. And Cortázar does it so well, you almost don't notice how disturbing it is until you're halfway through the story and you realize you're completely unsettled.
Grace: So, let's talk about the rabbits. In "Carta a una Señorita en París," they're not just cute little animals. They're... well, what are they, John? Guilt? Excess? Something from the unconscious?
John: Yes, that's the big question, isn't it? The story never tells us what the rabbits mean. Are they a symbol of something the narrator can't control—like guilt, or anxiety, or maybe just the overflow of his own mind? Or are they just... rabbits? I always go back and forth. Sometimes I think they're about the things we try to hide, the stuff we can't keep inside.
Grace: I had a class once where my students argued about this for almost an hour. Some of them said the rabbits were pure excess, like the narrator's life is so full he can't contain it. Others thought it was about fragility, or even shame. And then someone brought up Leonora Carrington's "Los conejos blancos," and suddenly we were talking about cannibal rabbits and rotten meat. It got very lively, let's say.
John: Oh, Carrington's rabbits are a whole different level. In her story, they're not innocent at all—they're voracious, almost monstrous. There's this scene where the woman feeds them rotten meat, and it's just... I mean, it's grotesque. But it's also fascinating, because it takes the rabbit—a symbol we usually think of as harmless—and turns it into something uncanny, even threatening.
Grace: Exactly. And I think that's why both stories work so well together. Cortázar's rabbits are soft and almost pitiable, but they still disrupt the narrator's life. Carrington's are openly disturbing, almost like a nightmare. But in both cases, the rabbit becomes a symbol of the unconscious—of things we can't control or explain.
John: And maybe that's why the stories stick with us. They don't give us answers, just more questions. The rabbits are whatever we need them to be—guilt, trauma, excess, or just the weird stuff our minds come up with when we're not looking.
John: Speaking of Carrington, her life was... almost as surreal as her stories. She was British, got involved with the surrealists in France, had this intense relationship with Max Ernst, and then—well, things got dark. Trauma, exile, all of it. And you can see that in her art and writing.
Grace: Yes, her biography is essential to understanding her work. After Ernst was detained, she suffered a severe psychological crisis, and then there was the trauma in Madrid—she was institutionalized, and that experience marked her forever. When she finally made it to Mexico, she found a kind of creative refuge, but the darkness never really left her art.
John: And in "Los conejos blancos," you see that trauma come through. There's this macabre feast, the woman with the long black hair, the house full of bones and skulls, and of course, the rabbits eating rotten meat. It's like a nightmare you can't wake up from. And then there's that ending, with the falling fingers—it's so bizarre, but it feels loaded with meaning. Or maybe it's just meant to unsettle us, I don't know.
Grace: I think it's both. Carrington was always playing with the boundaries between reality and dream, sanity and madness. Her friendship with Max Ernst was part of that, too—they influenced each other, pushed each other into stranger and stranger territory. But Carrington's vision was always her own, shaped by her experiences as a woman, as an exile, as someone who had seen the world fall apart and had to rebuild it in her imagination.
John: Yes, and you can feel that in her work. It's not just surreal for the sake of being weird—there's a sense of survival, of making sense of trauma through art. And the rabbits, the grotesque feasts, the leprosy at the end—they're all part of that language.
Grace: So here's the thing—Carrington was never part of the Latin American Boom, not officially. But she was there, haunting the margins. Her surrealism, her radical imagination, her experience of exile—they all echo the tensions at the heart of the Boom, especially that breakdown of rational reality, the intrusion of the unconscious.
John: Yes, and her move to Mexico really matters. She became part of this whole ecosystem of exiled artists and writers—Remedios Varo, Elena Garro, all these women who were challenging the rules of narrative, pushing against what was expected. It's like, the Boom is usually mapped through these big male novelists, but Carrington and her circle were doing something just as radical, just in a different register.
Grace: And when you read Carrington next to Cortázar, it's not about who influenced whom. It's more like cross-pollination. They're both channeling the strange, the intimate, the absurd—not as a style, but as a way of resisting literary realism and social norms. They show us that the imagination doesn't care about borders—national, linguistic, or even generic.
John: That's such a good point. Including Carrington in the conversation forces us to rethink what counts as "canon." The Boom has always been about language, nationality, genre—but Carrington disrupts all of that. She reminds us that literature is bigger than any map we try to draw around it.
Grace: And maybe that's the real lesson here. The uncanny, the surreal, the strange—they're not just literary devices. They're ways of seeing the world, of surviving it, of making sense of what can't be said any other way. And that's why these stories still matter.
John: Absolutely. Well, that's all for today. Grace, as always, it's a pleasure to get weird with you.
Grace: Likewise, John. And thank you to everyone listening. We'll be back soon with more literary strangeness. Take care, everyone.
John: See you next time on CríticaZoma. Bye, Grace.
Grace: Bye, John. Bye, everyone.
