Dark Side of Creativity with Bioy Casares' "The Invention of Morel"

Joana P. R. Neves: The Invention of Morel. Today on this island, ⁓ a miracle happened. Summer ahead of time. I moved my bed out by the swimming pool, then, ⁓ because it was impossible to sleep, ⁓ I stayed in the water for a long time. The was so intense. that after I had been out of the pool for only two or three minutes, I was already bathed in perspiration again. As day was breaking, I awoke to the sound of a phonograph record. Afraid to go back to the museum to get my things, I ran away down through the ravine. Now I am in the lowlands at the southern part of the island, where the aquatic plants grow, where mosquitoes torment me. where I find myself waist deep in dirty streams of seawater. And is worse, I realized that there was no need to run away at all. Those people did not come here on my account. ⁓ believe they did not even see me. But here I am, without provisions, trapped in the smallest, least habitable part of the island, the marshes that the sea floods once each I am writing this to leave a record of the adverse miracle. If I'm not drowned or killed trying to escape in the next few days, I hope to write two books. I shall entitle them Apology Survivors and Tribute to Malthus. My books will expose the man who violates the sanctity of forests and deserts. I intend to show that the world is an implacable hell for fugitives. that its efficient police forces, its documents, newspapers, radio broadcasts and border patrols have made every error of justice irreparable. So far, I have written only this one page. Yesterday, I had no inkling of what was going to happen. There are so many things to do on this lonely island. The trees that grow here have such hard wood. And when I see a bird in flight, I realize the vastness of the open spaces all around me. An Italian rug seller in Calcutta told me about this place. He said in his own language, there is only one possible place for a fugitive like you. It is an uninhabited island, but a human being cannot live there. Around 1924, a group of white men built a museum, a chapel and a swimming pool on the island. The work was completed and then abandoned. I interrupted him. I wanted to know how to reach it. The rug merchant went on talking. Chinese pirates do not go there. And the white ship of the Rockefeller Institute never calls at the island because it is known to be the focal point of a mysterious disease, a fatal disease that attacks the outside of the body and then works inward. The nails drop off the fingers and toes. The hair falls out, the skin and the corneas of the eyes die, and the body lives on for one week or two at the most. The crew of a ship that had stopped there was skinless, hairless, without nails on their fingers or toes, all dead, of course, when they were found by the Japanese crews in the Namura The horrified Japanese sank their ship. But my life was so unbearable. that I decided to go there anyway. The Italian tried to dissuade me, but in the end, I managed to obtain his help. Last night, for the hundredth time, I slept in this deserted place. As I looked at the buildings, I thought of what a laborious task it must have been to bring so many stones here. It would have been easy enough and far more practical to build an outdoor oven. When I was finally able to sleep, it was very late. I have not slept soundly since my escape. I'm sure that if a ship, a plane, or any other form of transportation had arrived, I would have heard it. And yet suddenly, unaccountably, on this oppressive summer-like night, the grassy hillside has become crowded with people who dance, stroll up and down, and swim in the pool, as if this were a summer resort. like Los Tekes or Marienbad. So this is the setting. ⁓ He has ⁓ been this island a mysterious crowd of people seems to have been just dropped onto the island without him noticing ⁓ any airplanes, any boats arriving He that the crowd behaves weirdly. They to the same songs all the time, Tea for two and a song that I don't know called Valencia, they these really weird behaviors whereby ⁓ they are dancing under the rain or they're swimming in a swimming pool that seems to be completely infested by bugs and creatures of all kinds and very, very dirty. He talks about vegetation of the which abundant and is ⁓ very, very seems to grow fast and not until the next cycle of growth. And therefore there are shoots and very but at the top ⁓ is completely dry, rotting ⁓ even dead. ⁓ trees are either incredibly almost impossible to break or work into, or are so dry that if you touch them, they immediately turn into dust. And so now I'm going to read a passage, so from page 14 to page 16, where he describes architecture, so the buildings that are in the island. So the island has four grassy ravines. ⁓ are large boulders in the ravine on the western side, the museum, the chapel and the swimming pool. are up on the hill. The buildings are modern, angular, unadorned, built of unpolished stone, which is somewhat incongruous with the architectural style. The chapel is flat, rectangular. It looks like a long box. The swimming pool appears to be well built, but as it is at ground level, it is always filled with snakes, frogs aquatic insects. The museum is a large building, three stories high, without a visible roof. It has a covered porch in front and another smaller one in the rear and the cylindrical tower. The museum was open when I arrived. I moved in at once. I do not know why the Italian referred to it as a museum. It could be a fine hotel for about 50 people or a sanatorium. In one room, There is a large but incomplete collection of books consisting of novels, poetry, drama. The only exception was a small volume, Bélidor travaux, le moulin perse, Paris, 1737, I found on a green marble shelf and promptly tucked away into a pocket of those now threadbare trousers. I wanted to read it because I was intrigued by the name Bélidor and I wondered whether the moulin perse would help me understand the mill I saw in the lowlands of the islands. I examined the shelves in vain, hoping to find some books that would be useful for a research project I began before the trial. I believe we lose immortality because we have not conquered our opposition to death. We keep insisting on the primary, rudimentary idea that the whole body should be kept alive. We should seek to preserve only the part that has to do with consciousness. The large room, a kind of assembly hall, has walls of rose-colored marble ⁓ streaks ⁓ that resemble sunken columns. The windows, with their panes of blue glass, would reach the top floor of the house where I was born. Four alabaster urns ⁓ six men could hide in each one, irradiate electric light. The books improved the room somewhat. One door opens onto the hall, another opens onto the round room. Another, the smallest one, is concealed by a screen and opens onto a spiral staircase. The principal staircase is at the end of the hall. It is elegantly carpeted. There are some wicker chairs in the room and the walls are lined with books. The dining room measures approximately 40 feet by 50. There are three mahogany columns at each side. and each group of columns supports a stand with a figure of a seated divinity that appears to be Indian or Egyptian ochre terracotta. Each god is three times larger than a man and is garlanded by dark plaster leaves. Below them, there are large panels with drawings by Fujita, which present a discordant aspect because of their humility. The floor of the circular room is an aquarium. Invisible glass boxes in the water encase the electric lights that provide the only illumination for that windowless room. I recall the place with disgust. Hundreds of dead fish were floating on the water when I arrived, and removing them was an obnoxious task. Now, after letting the water run for days and days, I can still smell the odour of dead fish when I'm in the room. It reminds me of the beaches in my country. where huge quantities of fish, dead and alive, emerge from the water to contaminate the air and receive a hasty burial at the hands of the outraged populace. The lighted floor and the black lacquer columns around it give one the impression of walking magically on top of a pool in the midst of a forest. This room adjoins the large room or assembly hall and the small green room with a piano, a phonograph and a screen of mirrors. which has 20 panels or more. The rooms are modern, pretentious, unpleasant. There are 15 suites. Clearing mine out completely made only a slight improvement. There were no more paintings by Picasso or smoked crystal or books inscribed by famous people. But still, I felt wretched and uncomfortable. one ⁓ of the really interesting aspects of book that it was only translated in the ⁓ 50s ⁓ in French and I suppose probably in English and other languages. ⁓ So it remained quite confidential ⁓ from who read in Spanish and who were in contact with the Buenos Aires intelligentzia and literary group. But it was translated, it really caught on to the point where Alain Robbe-Grillet so ⁓ one of ⁓ proponents the movement in France called Nouveau Roman, so a literary movement that also affected cinema, as you will see, ⁓ he so taken, Alain Robbe-Grillet by this story. that he ended up writing a script for a film called Last Year at Marienbad directed by Alain Resnais and is a very, very crucial ⁓ of filmography of the time. ⁓ It really marked era. ⁓ And it has also something really interesting that picked from this story, I believe, which is that ⁓ the so the say, ⁓ is always truncated. You can never really understand what they're talking about. And as a reader, but also as a ⁓ viewer, so a spectator of the film, you have to kind of piece together the story. it creates a of a transversal way of ⁓ the dialogues as if you had the ⁓ of having a second form of going into the story by just focusing on what the characters say to each other. it turns the spectator ⁓ or the reader into active part of the narrative. In this book, you cannot be distracted because you have a feeling that every detail is important because you are trying to piece together a narrative by an unreliable narrator because of course he is a fugitive, so he is scared. ⁓ but also because at points the text ⁓ is cut. Sometimes there are chapters that stop in the middle of a sentence ⁓ to give you that impression that he is writing in dire. ⁓ it also creates this that of weather and the tides, you will see, there may be some bits of the narrative missing. ⁓ And thirdly, because the character often says that he's trying different roots different plants, ⁓ eating different animals that he manages to catch. So sometimes he suggests that he may have been somewhat ill. So you know that he may been writing ⁓ while feverish and therefore you don't quite know where you stand. And the text becomes ⁓ a sort of a treasure hunt ⁓ for details and a sort of a constant ⁓ line of narrative. that you can consider to be, if not the truth, at least something that gets as close as it can get to it. he explores or he tells us that he has the opportunity to explore the museum. he discovers a basement ⁓ and then he discovers basement, a second basement under first one. ⁓ he finds machinery that ⁓ seems to activate ⁓ lights and all ⁓ the things that electricity obviously is used for. you have to also piece together the architecture. ⁓ One of the things that is also interesting is the description of the museum a or as a hotel is important because establishes a game of mirrors The island seems to be very, very small because from the marshes where he eventually needs to go and to turn into his home, he literally lives and sleeps. the sandbanks. ⁓ So from there he can see all ⁓ museum and the chapels or all the architectural elements. He has this very precise ⁓ score ⁓ of the tides, ⁓ of ⁓ the ⁓ days, ⁓ of the hours. ⁓ And so he tries draw sort of mental ⁓ of ⁓ ⁓ behavior, as were, of the atmosphere of the island. And later, of the people that have come mysteriously to inhabit it. So as the narration progresses, we realize that he's starting to get closer. a woman, beautiful, that he describes as a sort of pardon the expression, exotic woman that he ⁓ many, many times talks about as a gypsy. That's the word that is used. And so she seems to be this fascinating person who walks alone toward the shore, sits on a rock, starts reading or admiring the sunset. And she does this every day. And without any transition whatsoever, the narrator becomes completely enamored with her. He is absolutely smitten. He is more than that. He's obsessed with her and he loses all sense of reality. And what happens is that obviously he is no longer careful. And at a certain point, ⁓ the inevitable happens. The woman obviously sees him. Hello, this is Exhibitionistas – Notes on Art, your art wonderment podcast. And I am your host, Joana P. R. Neves art writer and curator. If you must, you can find work ⁓ on Substack under the name Art Thinkosaurus, the cherry on top of the show's notes, by which I mean you can it linked over there. So just a click away. But the thing is, she has an incredibly strange reaction to his presence. As he describes it, she, well, this may be an exaggeration, of course, maybe she was a bit more reactive, but she describes her as having the most and incredible control of herself. if you're curious to find out more about my writing. If you've been following the podcast, you know that the regular program is on a hiatus while we fine tune the show. And if not, you're in luck or lack thereof because you have chanced upon one of the special hiatus episodes dedicated to a specific book or text. to the point where she doesn't give away that she has seen him. As an art writer and curator, my work is not only to work with living artists and create exhibitions, but also to explore and think about the culture that visual art conveys, and also the ideas, the feelings, the instincts ⁓ what it is to human that it contains, ⁓ what world we live in is for us ⁓ and for non-humans. So this podcast is a step back from my work and a step into all the questions And like many curators, books are often my wandering tool. I'm sharing in these new episodes a few of those books ⁓ that have proven to be a source of critical thinking, but also ⁓ and ⁓ above ⁓ all, a source wonderment. So he says on page 28, it ⁓ was not as if she had not heard me, as if she had not seen me. Rather, it seemed that her ears were not used for hearing, that her eyes could not see. So I introduce, read and leave a last comment on my book of choice. There's a fair chance that it may be a favorite of yours too, or maybe it will be a discovery to which I say lucky you. I would have loved to be discovering the book of today's episode right about now. So this time, my book of choice. ⁓ stimulates many, many questions. And this is not an overstatement, he he's incredibly in love with her and he decides to try to connect with her, ⁓ And so of course, ⁓ what does he up with? ⁓ Flowers. do women want? What do women Flowers, obviously. How ⁓ is he going to find the flowers? What of flowers is he going to give her? ⁓ And how ⁓ is he going to establish situation where receives the flowers? So ⁓ one of which being, is there a dark side to creativity? Is creating the absolute objective of art and science? I mean creation in an almost godlike ⁓ way to bring something lifelike into the world. And if you do, what are the consequences? comes up with the most outrageous plan, which is to sort plant a garden saying, delineating a message, a few words. And the message is, I've written it here somewhere. There are several stories that ask this question, such as Honoré de Balzac's The Unknown Masterpiece, where a painter tries to achieve likeness so much that the painting becomes an accumulation of senseless brushstrokes and he goes mad. Arguably, my book here is about many different things and a little bit like Honoré de Balzac's, it also includes the ego The humble tribute of my because she always to the same spot, he knows that ⁓ the day after she's going to see these flowers. of the creator. So I am going now to read the passage where another character comes into play. And this character is incredibly disruptive for him, not because he may see him, not even because he may be dangerous, because it's a male character. This is the 1940s. I mean, it is literally 1940. And ⁓ it not an to say that it is an absolute favorite for those know it. ⁓ But I have a feeling, perhaps this is a generational error ⁓ that this episode's book a massively revered text that remains somehow a bit confidential. Of course then a man is going to have more power and is going to have more executive let's say to seeing ⁓ stranger in the island where he's vacationing with his friends. ⁓ that's not at all what worries him. What worries him ⁓ that this person ⁓ ⁓ in love with Faustine or trying to become ⁓ You'll tell me. So those who know rave about it and end up convincing others to read it. This has happened to me, actually. I was telling the plot to one of the people in a group of friends of this book, suddenly I realized that everyone was silent around us ⁓ to the story. her lover. And that's really what is of the utmost priority for him. I'm talking about Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. This is considered one of the great books of Latin American literature, more specifically Argentinian. If you're not familiar with the scene or the name of the author, suffice it to say other name. Borges, Jorge Luis Borges, the writer, poet and essayist, famously afraid of mirrors and Oh, and he is described as being dressed like a tennis player, which I found really interesting. So he says, Please believe me, Faustine began the bearded man with obvious desperation. And I found out her name at last. Of course, it does not matter now. No. particularly fond of labyrinths, and who wrote the preface of The Invention of Morel, deeming it, and I quote, "perfect". Now I know what you really want." She smiled again, with no bitterness or ecstasy, with a certain frivolity. I know that I hated her then. She was just playing with us. What a pity that we cannot come to an understanding. We have only a short time left, three days, and then it will all be over. I do not know what he meant. All I know is that he must be my enemy. He seemed to be sad. ⁓ So, Bioy Casares and were lifelong great friends, in fact, part of a group of intellectuals that gathered around a called which means in Spanish, South, ⁓ created by Victoria Ocampo. who was the sister of the writer Silvina Ocampo, who was also married to Bioy Casares. So as a card-carrying feminist, it is my duty to alert you to the fact that Silvina Ocampo was also a great writer whose work was at least abroad somewhat obscured by her husband and Borges and others. But I should not be surprised to learn that this was merely a pose. Faustine's behaviour is grotesque. It is almost driving me mad. The man tried to mitigate the gravity of his statement. He said several sentences that had approximately this meaning. There's nothing to worry about. We're not going to discuss an eternity. Buenos Aires, in ⁓ Argentina in ⁓ was ⁓ really in terms of literature and poetry. Morel said Faustine stupidly, do you know that I find you mysterious? In spite of Faustine's questions, he remained in his lighthearted mood. The bearded man went to get her scarf and basket. She had left them on the rock a few feet away. He came back shaking the sand out of them and said, don't take my words so seriously. Sometimes I think that if For instance, Sylvina Ocampo was also a visual artist and she studied in Paris with Fernand Leger ⁓ de able to arouse your curiosity, Please don't be angry. When he went to get her things and then again on the way back, he stepped on my garden. Did he do it deliberately or did he just not happen to notice it? Faustine saw it, I swear that she did. will have understood perhaps that this whole crowd ⁓ lived with great ease due to their upper-class And was able to abandon university ⁓ And yet ⁓ she would not spare me that insult. early on to study on his own and to dedicate his life to literature. He had a somewhat dandy-esque personality and ⁓ claimed to have wanted to be a professional tennis player or a boxer, professional boxer. The tennis player detail will be interesting when it comes to this book, at least an interesting detail, it's not a crucial one. She smiled and asked questions with a great show of interest. It was almost as if surrendered her whole being to him, so complete was her curiosity. But I do not like her attitude. The little garden is no doubt in wretched taste. But why should she stand there calmly and let a disgusting man trample on it? Have I not been trampled on enough already? But then, what can you expect of people like that? They are the sort you find on indecent postcards. How well they go together. A pale bearded man and a buxom, gipsy girl with enormous eyes. I even feel I have seen them in the best collections in Caracas. So despite having published consistently from a young age, Casares considered that The Invention of Morel was where he found his voice at age 26 in 1940. He used to read passages of his previous texts without saying who were by, making everyone laugh and mock them, after which he would reveal that they were his. He had a very particular kind of humor. So in Buenos Aires, in this whole And I still wonder, what does all this mean? Certainly she is a detestable person. But what is she after? She may be playing with the bearded man and me, but then again, he may be a tool that enables her to tease me. She does not care if she makes him suffer. Perhaps Morel only serves to emphasize her complete repudiation of me, to portend the inevitable climax and the disastrous outcome of this repudiation. ⁓ group, ⁓ there was dissension There the realists on one side and on the other, those preferred to see literature as an artificial or an experimental kind of craft. But if not, ⁓ it has been such a long time now since she has seen me. I think I shall kill her or go mad if this continues any longer. I find myself wondering whether the disease ridden marshes I have been living in have made me invisible. And if that were the case, this ⁓ belonged Borges and Casares. There is something quite odd that would be an advantage. Then I could seduce Faustine without any danger. So this for me is a crucial passage. this because The Invention of Morel a mystery ⁓ science fiction book. ⁓ you'd not imagine this to be of interest for the avant-gardists. But on the contrary, Borges ⁓ detective novels ⁓ they even translated together English murder mysteries. What fascinates them in these genres is the There are, in terms of plot, more important passages But for me, in terms of what the story is really about, ⁓ that's where story became really interesting. passage is incredibly creepy. So ⁓ if until here. obligatory structure. They are mechanical in some ways. What happens is that it is unclear whether The Invention of Morel ignores the mechanics of the genre, or whether it pushes it to its absolute or even if it is a commentary on the realist expectations regarding literature and art you were on the side of the narrator. So if you were somewhat feeling pity or feeling some compassion or some empathy for him, here you let go of that empathy. mean, if you don't, there's a problem because the way he starts thinking about Faustine because she doesn't react to seeing him, but she doesn't denounce him either, is that maybe perhaps something happened to him in general. And he became invisible. Maybe one of the things he's eating in the island and he thinks he has these thoughts quite often. is it not dangerous to copy reality? Maybe that has had a consequence ⁓ of some kind that is unknown to ⁓ our civilization it is maybe a plant unique to this island. ⁓ And here imagines that maybe he became invisible probably to eating some of these plants. And maybe then he has power. It seems to ask. So the setting is on an island and the title points to a character name, Morel. So here we start to see where the artifice lies. Of course, this is a reference to H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau over Faustine. So the first thought that comes to his mind is to take advantage of her So even before we start reading, we see that the story takes place in this invented island, but also in the meta island of Mohol. So there we discover a character which is the protagonist, but also the narrator. And soon enough, we understand that what we're reading is an account of his stay in the island In this passage, he is so jealous that his jealousy ⁓ makes him write about her in really hateful terms. So there's something that changes here. the two characters that are going to become the most important characters of the story, which is the narrator and Morel, sorry to say, Faustine is not that important. She really is a sort of ⁓ projection. ⁓ He is the writer. He is a fugitive and has chosen to hide there. The first sentence, as you will see, is striking because it announces a miracle. But then the first sentence of the second paragraph warns. It speaks of, quote, an adverse miracle, unquote. So the tone is set. We're in it for a ride described by the epitome of the unreliable narrator. I mean, it is kind of worth asking if, you know, everything in this text is projection, whose name we never learn. In fact, there will be two other crucial characters, Morel himself and a woman, Faustine, from whom the narrator must hide, but to whom he is also dangerously attracted. but we spend much more time with the ideologies of two characters, so the narrator and Morel So as told you, the first plot twist comes around the middle of the story. But until then, ⁓ lots of things happen. there's a sort of regularity the of these characters the island. ⁓ ⁓ know the first plot twist of the story is? the fact that I cannot tell you ⁓ why ⁓ this a about the dangers of creativity. I cannot ruin the plot twist. So warned, will read a few excerpts and tell you the story there are where you don't quite understand as a reader ⁓ whether the characters see or whether it's his paranoia that makes him ⁓ that ⁓ the ⁓ people ⁓ in the other, group, the characters in that group of people see him. There's also this sense that he gets closer and closer to them. cannot read it completely because it is about a hundred pages long. So there will be spoilers. You are warned. If you prefer to read with me and continue in between the excerpts on your own, imagine him as a sort of spectator of their lives. I will be using the 2003 New York Review of Books publication of The Invention of Morel And I will read pages nine to 11, then 14 to 16, then the page 28. After that, the pages 36 to 37, then half of page 54, and then page 79. And finally, the page There's ⁓ ⁓ strange moment where he sees them and he describes them as odious. We would describe them today as tryhards, as people who want to be eccentric, they're show-offy, because they sunbathing, ⁓ it were, in the rain, and then start dancing to ⁓ 103, tune of Tea for two and Valencia. he keeps ⁓ establishing these hypotheses. Why have they not ⁓ the police? Why they not denounced him? ⁓ And he tries to all kinds of scenarios. So without further ado, let's do this. page 54, ⁓ where I want to you an example of the sort of ⁓ elaborations in mind of ⁓ that tells himself. had been thinking all this for a long time. So now I was quite tired. And I continued less logically. I was not dead until the intruders arrived. When one is alone, it is impossible to be dead. Now I must eliminate the witnesses I can come back to life. That will not be difficult. I do exist. And therefore they not suspect their own destruction. And I had another idea. An incredible plan for a very private seduction, which like a dream would exist only for me. These vain and unjustifiable explanations came to me during moments of extreme anxiety. But men and lovemaking cannot endure prolonged intensity. He lives in the interstices of the lives of these people until disappear, So he into the museum, he goes into the basement again, and he ⁓ the motors. So he activates the machinery that is there ⁓ in order to have on page 58, it is finally announced that he understood what happens in the island. ⁓ by now, ⁓ a reader, you are so confused we understand that Morel is ⁓ eager to do something. of course, our narrator is there. ⁓ ⁓ discovering that there's actually 12 people in the island and they're all around the table. what happens in this ⁓ round of the presence ⁓ these people in the island is that suddenly the atmosphere of the island is very different things start to happen. increase in temperature. vegetation ⁓ is luscious crazier than ever. are two suns and two The temperature is high. It's very hot. he has no idea how people can go about their lives. So in this atmosphere, narrator finds his way into the museum. So he understands where everybody lives, where everybody sleeps, and he ends up sleeping in a room that is never taken up by anyone. So now he's very, very close to these people. And this happening, this gathering is to place. So Morel ⁓ starts ⁓ explaining his whole project. and again, also always in sort of truncated dialogue, ⁓ nothing is said ⁓ in ⁓ the way that you're used to in the science fiction narratives you have a ⁓ the character, the person who's finally going to do the big reveal or in the book, a very, very long narrative that doesn't sound very much like people speak. Here it's actually the opposite. It's so lifelike, the way the dialogue is rendered, that it's almost impossible to understand or to follow a complete story. is always interrupted by some commentary, by someone saying something. when Morel picks up the story, he goes somewhere else with the story. So it's a very peculiar kind of ⁓ and I've heard this about the invention of Morel from people, is that when you get to the end, you feel like you have to go back to the beginning and it all over again. because you have a sense that you missed something. And this truncated dialogue, I think, is very much responsible for that. And also the unreliable narrator kind of writing, obviously, So, ⁓ Mohel ⁓ starts explaining that he has been... doing these experiments with these machines that come from the idea of the projector. So the idea of the cinema projector, of the phonograph, because remember it's the 40s, so the machines that existed then were the TV, the phonograph, photography, so the camera, photographic camera, cinema. Morel from these very rudimentary machines us now in 2026, devises a machine that not only records ⁓ the image ⁓ of a body, so a perception, ⁓ also records ⁓ an ⁓ olfactory perception, the sense of smell. It also will record ⁓ the touch. so all these machines that have created come together in one single machine that is able ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ to record and then project, so reproduce ⁓ whole ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ slice of time with the characters, but also the plants ⁓ the sun and the moon and the sky and everything about that moment, it records it, which means that this is not a hologram. This is much more than that. This is a superimposition of a moment of time into the moment that you are living through. the present, which means that this character, the narrator has been living with characters from a film, but of course, ⁓ much more sophisticated film than ⁓ cinema or than the photograph. There's motion, but there's not only motion. He talks about how uncanny it is in the beginning once he knows that these are projections. how uncanny it is to brush by these images, these people that no longer exist on the island. Morel explains ⁓ the whole process. he mentions the fact that he was doing some tests in a factory in St. Gallen in Switzerland. ⁓ And one of the characters says, ⁓ wait, I've heard about this and I've heard that some people in the factory died. So this actually is a reason why they died. And there's a mention of another character, so of their friends that couldn't make it, who was the first guinea pig of Morel. And the same character says, wait, guys you're not understanding Charlie, the name of the character, if memory serves. has also died. So these experiments that Mohal has been doing on these factory workers and on our friend has caused death. And of course, by now you're piecing things together. the famous disease that is mentioned in the beginning of The book is probably the reason why these people do not exist anymore. These people died. so the in narrative is really interesting now because the question now is for us as readers, are these people guided by ⁓ Morel's intention? So there's Morel's invention and there's Morel's intention. His intention is to preserve consciousness, is to preserve what he calls the soul of each person. And he says, I was not able to preserve the whole soul. So whenever these people are reenacting the same thing over and over again, they have the part of consciousness that belongs to that moment. and the memories that were triggered by that moment and nothing else. you kind of wonder how is the narrator going to react to this? And that's where the second plot twist comes. And for me, the most important plot twists is not the one on page 58 or from page 58 to 70 something. It is what happens afterwards. So Morel, to be very clear, committed suicide. And the reason he wanted do it's because he wanted to do this someone. So he hints at the fact that he was in love with someone. You kind of understand that someone is in the island and of course our narrator thinks it's Faustine, obviously, and you kind of agree with him. And this person refused to do And so he decided to invite the whole group of friends. and to live eternally with this person and these people in the island. So he commits suicide and he kills all the friends that are involved in this experiment. So how does the narrator react to all of this? Firstly, he starts observing them. And then he ends up going into the basement again. And he does an experiment. So he, at a certain point, understands because the machine is activated by the tides. That's how Morel decided the projection was going to be activated. But of course, The predictions weren't right and so the tides start pushing the life of these people into ⁓ moments of the day that make no sense. so the whole thing kind of reminds you of AI. And I'm going to explain why there's another reason why this makes you think of AI when Morel talks about his experiments, he says that has those films, but he's not going project them unless his friends want to see them ⁓ because they are quite ⁓ unsettling. So ⁓ when he started developing his ⁓ his invention, the outcomes were not ⁓ they are in the islands that is lifelike. They're monstrous. ⁓ first he creates a monstrous reality ⁓ then he creates a reality that is lifelike. And you kind of wonder what is worse. I don't know if you've had this experience with AI, I tried to create an image of two people interacting. ⁓ So and the humans that the AI produced, it was AI ⁓ that with Adobe Express. ⁓ was so horrifying that I deleted them. And honestly, now I regret having deleted them. They were so, so scary that I just could not look at them and immediately threw them in the bin in the computer and deleted whatever was inside the bin. So the narrator once he ⁓ what has happened with and with all others, how does the narrator respond to it? So the narrator says or writes, now I able to view Faustine dispassionately a simple object. out of curiosity, I have been following her for about 20 days. That was not very difficult, although it is impossible to open the doors, even the unlocked ones, because if they were closed when the scene was recorded, they must be closed when it is projected. I might be able to force them open, but I'm afraid that a partial breakage may put the whole machine out of order. When Faustine goes to her room, she closes the door. There is only one occasion when I'm not able to enter without touching her. when Dora and Alec are with her. then the latter two come out quickly. During the first week, I spent that night in the corridor with my eye at the keyhole of the closed door, but all I could see was a part of a wall. The next week, I wanted to look in from the outside, so I walked along the cornice, exposing myself to great danger, injuring my hands and knees on the rough stone, clinging to it in terror. It is about 15 feet above the ground. But since the curtains were drawn, I was unable to see anything. The next time, I shall overcome my fear and enter the room with Faustine, Dora, and Alec. The other night, I lie on a mat on the floor beside her bed. It touches me to have her so close to me and yet so unaware of this habit of sleeping together that we are acquiring. So this is the behavior that he has ⁓ in relation to Faustine. ⁓ he goes back to the machinery and starts really analyzing how it works, he ⁓ understands how to make it function. And he makes a test with his hand. So he puts his hand in the beam of the recording device and immediately, because it is projected by the other machine, the hand is there suspended. this image ⁓ remains the reader's ⁓ mind there's somewhere ⁓ a just floating about and finally, ⁓ an spoiler alert, he ⁓ produces second film that superimpose the other I'm calling film because really no other way of describing So that's it. He chooses death. ⁓ He chooses to have that horrendous ⁓ end. He doesn't want to live anymore ⁓ as ⁓ this spectator. He wants to be part of the film. And if that does not ⁓ make you think a lot about these technologies have become. I honestly don't know what will. So the last last I'm going to read you are the final two paragraphs of the book. So it says, My soul has not yet passed the image. ⁓ If it had, I would have died. ⁓ I perhaps would longer see Faustine and would be with her in a vision. that no one can ever destroy. To the person who reads this diary and then invents a machine that can assemble disjoint presences, I make this request. Find Faustine and me. Let me enter the heaven of her consciousness. It will be an act of piety. to go back to my initial which is, is there a dark side to creativity? There's two sides to this question. Does this book explore a form of darkness and does it render it desirable? And the other question is, does creativity in the form of invention, of technological invention, does it have a dark side? I think that question by now is rhetorical because we know it does. precisely through a new version of it that is quite worrisome. But there's also a third thing, which is that this text is deemed visionary. It's deemed to be a text that somehow has foreseen and keeps on foreseeing it. So if you read it in the 80s, You wouldn't read it in the same way as you do today because the technology has evolved. And there's clearly a passage where he elaborates the possibility of a computer and even an AI because he talks about a text-based reality. So my question here is, is it accurate to say that this is a pioneering, ⁓ visionary ⁓ piece of literature? What does it say about our relationship to fiction? If you consider this to be a visionary or Adolfo Bioy Casares to have been this person who what was to come, does it mean that people who are writing now sort of these oracles ⁓ can foresee the future? ⁓ does it mean something far more important and far more interesting, as far as I'm concerned, which is the fact that Bioy Casares I didn't tell you this side of ⁓ his Casares had, at least that I know of, two children out of wedlock. So he had kids and Silvina Ocampo even took in one of them, ⁓ not saying that he was a horrible ⁓ He seems have been a very ⁓ dandy-esque kind character, ⁓ a really delightful person. ⁓ But sure, in this text is ⁓ a gaze text, absolutely. And why I read the where he describes Faustine as an object, he now sees her dispassionately, he says. So he always oscillates the relationship. I mean, not the relationship, but the feelings he has for the female character as a straight man are quite interesting to analyze. And you'll see where I'm going with this, because he is incredibly aggressive towards her, incredibly violent even sometimes, and incredibly passionate and loving at others. So this is the arc of the womanizer, right? This character is not a lovable character. This character seems to personify people who are given a certain power at a certain point and he reacts in a very specific way when he feels powerless, particularly regard the object of his desire or the subject, should I say. And so here the question I'm asking is, shouldn't we revere Bioicasares for having extracted from himself the worst size of his personality and to have imagined what's the potential of having recording machines, he enumerates them in the book. There are so many. What would prevent Bui-Casares to think there will be others? What kinds of recordings are we going to operate in the future? And if the purpose is, and don't forget that ⁓ Borges and Casares, and I think Ocampo as well, were not into the realism of the other side of ⁓ the Argentinian literature. And of course, there's also a social. a class issue related to these choices. And there would be a lot to say about that. The rich choose the artifice and maybe the working classes choose realism. Who knows? I'm not going to go into that. It's a question I leave in the open here. knowing that these writers were not into realism, might he have tried to be critical of a machine that is so realistic that it will be producing reality itself? So isn't he also saying, and there's a parallel at some point that he establishes with writing, he describes writing as recording of some kind, some sort of recording. But it seems that writing is capturing the soul, not of the character, but of the writer and his preoccupation. So what he could elaborate as a philosophy of technology of the present, but also potentially of the future and its ⁓ potential developments and how bad and how dark they could be in terms of. more frivolous disposition, which would be, prefer a kind of literature to another, but also a sort of an ethical stance in regards to creativity. Should creativity copy reality and at a certain point replace it? Or should creativity be an artifice that always has to clearly show itself as such? in order to be ethical. So is the darker side of invention perhaps the technology and the devices that are created for then artists and creatives of all kinds to play with? Is that their side of the story that is potentially dark? Because once given the power to create lifelike or lifelikeliness. Certain people, not all, but certain people will take this to an extent that will eventually corrupt our flesh as humans and kill the humanity in us. I think that might be the question that is contained in this book rather than praising it for having foreseen the future. which is not a reality at all, Casares was merely a person, he was just a writer. But the power, the real power of writing is this ability of a flawed human being to take ⁓ the less aspects of their personality to evaluate ⁓ what certain invention ⁓ can in the hands of a less well-intentioned person. And when you're writing, perhaps you are overcome by your own limitations and you can produce something that creates a form of distance between yourself ⁓ and what you do. And in that ⁓ distance, in that space that is created, when fiction arises, then there's a philosophical position that is presented. And this one is quite ⁓ useful and quite interesting when it comes to exploring the interconnection between ⁓ the human condition and technology ⁓ when it is used ⁓ to record and reproduce ⁓ reality in the ⁓ utmost version of life-likeliness. That's I hope you enjoyed reading the invention of Morel with me. I hope that this prompted you to maybe buy the book before you listen to the episode or maybe now that you've listened to the episode there's so many aspects of the book that weren't here that maybe this prompted you to buy the book or to borrow it ⁓ and to it for yourself. I certainly would advise you to do so. because it is an incredible experience. There would be so much more to say about the articulation of narrative and the relationship between writer, character and reader that it is absolutely worth it if you have made the decision of going into the book yourself, by yourself. If you do, leave a comment, tell me what you thought of it. I'm really, really curious. And if you are still here, it's probably because you enjoyed the episode. So don't forget, go to the show's notes, donate and help us continue with Exhibitionistas or become a paid subscriber to the Exhibitionistas files on Substack, which is a sub page of Art Thinkasaurus, my personal publication on Substack. ⁓ Yeah, and ⁓ support us. You can also explore my other writings that have nothing to do. with the podcast, but are always somewhat related to it because these are the ⁓ ideas and the matters that I step into when I step back from my work as a curator and a writer for artists and museums and exhibitions. So there it is. Explore it. And without anything left to say, I wish you a great, great ⁓ life, a great day, a great evening, a great morning. a great time after having listened to this episode and I thank you for having stuck around until next time. Bye bye.