Poetics of space in Rectángulo de San Andrés by Mauricio Kartun

Abstract

This article studies the transformations in the dramatic poetics of space in the volume Rectángulo de San Andrés, by Mauricio Kartun, which includes four of his pieces: Chau Misterix (1980), La casita de los viejos (1982), Cumbia Morena cumbia (1983) and Rápido nocturno aire de foxtrot (1998). The four texts rework a common element: they are connected by the geography of San Andrés, where Kartun lived his childhood and adolescence, and to which he usually returns, already adult, physically and / or spiritually. To give unity to his book, Kartun drew up the image of a "rectangle", a geometric figure that makes up the layout of only two blocks in the neighborhood seen from the sky. The image is productive: the four "sides" of the "rectangle", in tetralogy's metaphor, correspond to the four works, precisely two long and two short. In turn, the surface of the "rectangle" evokes a "playing field". The representations of the space of San Andrés in each of these pieces are analyzed and compared to observe, in the diachronic axis, their invariants and mutations.