The Dialectics In Distant Star
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World history can be argued as repetitive cycle between the divine Spirit and human passions. This concept of dialectic is discussed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in a Reason in History. Hegel explains that God or Spirit wants to learn about His own nature and potential, and does this by becoming its opposite: man. Thus the Spirit becomes a physical creation. From then on, Hegel describes how the world develops as a creative clash between two opposites, thesis and antithesis, emerging into a synthesis. Dialectic motion is a process of alternation and rest. The synthesis becomes a new thesis, so the dialectic occurs in a continuous and endless process that never retrogresses. The antagonist in the novel Distant Star by Roberto BolaÑo embodies this dialectic process.
The thesis is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, a quiet, shy and reserved character. He is described as an autodidact who “talked as if he were living inside a cloud” (4). He has an eclectic style, yet is well-dressed and handsome. Many people envy Ruiz-Tagle because he has all the attention of the women in the poetry workshops, especially the beloved Garmendia sisters, and because he has the praises of the workshop owner Juan Stein. During the poetry workshops, Ruiz-Tagle only makes friends with the women and Stein and is only “affable but distant” (6) to the rest. Unlike the other poets who lived with their parents, Ruiz-Tagle is self-sufficient, living in flat, although unusually bare, by himself. At this stage of the dialectic, Ruiz-Tagle expresses himself through only his poetry, but his voice is not yet finalized. Ruiz-Tagle confides in Fat Marta, who points out that the poems that Ruiz-Tagle presents in the workshop seem to be written by a different person, but that his real voice would eventually revolutionize Chilean poetry.
In the meantime, Ruiz-Tagle who romanced his lovers evolves into a serial killer who murders his lovers and the other beautiful admirers. Ruiz-Tagle brutally kills the Garmendia sisters along with their mother. The antithesis of Ruiz-Tagle is manifested in this serial killer. As a murderer, Ruiz-Tagle negates beauty and serenity and becomes violent and ruthless. This characterizes Hegels dialectic of opposite moments that negate each other to result in a “solution” or “overcoming.” Benedetto Croce describes the negation of the thesis by the antithesis, which is eventually negated to form the synthesis:
The two moments in their separation are both negated, but preserved in the synthesis. The second term (in relation to the first) appears as negation, and the third (in relation to the second) as a negation of negation, or as absolute negativity, which is also absolute affirmation.
Hegel clarifies that the “wish for rational insight” or Reason is the thesis (Knoebel 340). Historical change occurs because God wishes to perfect His self-realizations by destroying current ones to form new and better ones, such as new societies and governments. The violent disorders (war, rebellions, revolutions) that occur throughout history are due to God struggling against Himself during this self-rationalization, so smooth transitions are rare. The opposite of the God or Spirit is matter. Gravity is the essence of matter while freedom is the essence of the Spirit. Hegel explains that matter “seeks its unity and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging toward its opposite” (Knoebel 342). Matter exists outside itself while the Spirit exists within itself as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is the “appreciation of its own nature, and also an energy enabling it to realize itself–to make itself actually that which it is potentially” (Knoebel 342).
Similarly, Ruiz-Tagle desires to find himself, to find his voice, and to express that voice effectively. Poetry is Ruiz-Tagles spirit, his freedom; while murder is the matter or the force of gravity that draws him towards destruction. Ruiz-Tagles first voice is the intriguing intricacies of poetry. Now his voice is the powerful morbidity of death. Thus, the violence appropriately accompanies Ruiz-Tagles struggle in this dialectic.
In the narrators next encounter with Ruiz-Tagle, he is a poetic sky-writer for the Chilean air force, under the name of Carlos Wieder. Carlos Wieder is the synthesis, the negation of negation. Bibiano ORyan illustrates the dialectic analogy of Wieder in how his name can have multiple meanings: “once more,” “again,” “over and over,” and appropriately “a second time” (40). Bibiano continues with ominous allusions to his name: “the Antichrist,” “refutation,” “monstrosity, aberration” (41). Wieders fanatic hobby as a serial killer is also evident in “weidento take morbid pleasure in the contemplation of an object that excites sexual desire and/or sadistic tendencies” (40).
Hegel elucidates, “the life of the ever-present Spirit is a cycle of stages, which, looked at in one aspect still exist beside each other, and when looked at form another point of view appear as past. The moments which Spirit seems to have left behind, it still possesses in the depths of its present” (349). Wieder aptly possesses both components of thesis and antithesis, politeness and violence. Wieder exemplifies the same politeness as Ruiz-Tagle in his sky poetry which are in Latin, “about the beginning of the world, about will, light and darknessLet there be light…” along with wishes of good luck (30). These sky poems earn Wieder celebrity. In fact, one of Chiles most influential literary critics Nicasio Ibacache praises Wieders “highly individual poetic style” and brands Wieder the “new eras major poet,” as Fat Marta had predicted earlier (35). As he was adored in the poetry workshops, he is once again adored by women across the nation. Many of his sky poems also display the women who he had loved and had murdered, thus combining the two opposites. Accordingly, Wieders art progresses from poems on paper to poems in the sky to poems in the sky about his dead lovers.
As the synthesis that negates the antithesis, Wieder negates the murders by justifying them with beauty in poetry in the sky, aestheticizing his macabre actions. Ingrid Sichy remarks how the “… beautification of tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they reveal. To aestheticize tragedy is the fastest way to anaesthetize the feelings of those who are witnessing it.” (Levi-Strauss 5). Correspondingly, the beautification of his killings reflects Wieders wish to portray these