“Luces del Sur” de Pablo Dobrinin. Posibles vínculos entre lo fantástico y la estética de lo grotesco

Abstract

Pablo Dobrinin is known for a long history of publishing in Uruguayan and international media and a way of writing related to fantastic literature, science fiction and fantasy. In this article we propose a reading of his short story “Luces del Sur”,[1] where an unemployed man seeks refuge in his grandmother's house, a situation that degenerates into an incestuous relationship and a fatal outcome that strains the limits of reality. Priority will be given to the construction of the female character: the aforementioned grandmother, who suffers from senile dementia, extreme obesity, and who lives in a state of absolute isolation. Thus, the hyperbolic peculiarities of the character –along with others– will be put in relation to Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas about a grotesque body. From here and following a hermeneutical approach to the fantastic events in the story, we will relate this aesthetic of the grotesque, with the ideas that define the fantastic as a symbolic transgression of the moral order, as expressed by theorists such as Ana González Salvador or Irène Bessière.