In "Las babas del diablo," one of the most challenging of the short stories of … Cortázar, the protagonist Roberto Michel is confronted with and, finally, overwhelmed by the deceptions posed by visual perception, chronological time, and discursive language. His account is a desperate attempt to arrive at the nature of truth about the traumatic experience that has destroyed him—ironically, rendering him incapable of conveying it in a rational manner. The reality of the experience is so unsettling that Michel ends by doubting whether it is knowable, communicable, or even whether it really exists apart from his imaginative consciousness.

Michel is a split personality in several respects. His background is both French and Chilean. His life is composed primarily of his professional work as a translator and his avocation, amateur photography. As a translator he constantly deals with the problem of finding the exact form to transmit...