SOURCE: "A Secret Idiom: The Grammar and Role of Language in Tres tristes tigres," in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. VIII, No. 16, Spring-Summer, 1980, pp. 96-117.

In the following essay, Merrim examines the rhetorical forms and figures of speech employed by Cabrera Infante in Tres tristes tigres.

                          Tú, que me lees, ¿estás serguro de
                                      entender mi lenguaje?
 
                                                 —Borges
                                   "La biblioteca de Babel"

Since even before entering the text proper, the reader of Tres tristes tigres [Three Trapped Tigers] is warned (in the "Advertencia") that the whole novel is written in an "idioma secreto," the nocturnal jargon of Havana, it comes as no surprise to find critics saying that "a new language is created in the space of the text itself." This kind of statement, however, tells us nothing in particular: all literary works create private languages; a text is as much a linguistic as a fictional universe. Instead...