An exotic narration of family history, the theme of adolescent friendship, homosexualism, mythology, and world scriptures, Paradiso embraces what may well be Latin America's greatest literary testimony to universal man's intellectual and spiritual evolution.

Within a complex narrative of Gongoristic imagery, disguised allusions, and vague limits of external reality, the enigmatic significance and symbolic themes of Paradiso represent the work's greatest difficulty. A careful examination of the novel's highly philosophical content, revealing a concentrated focus on religious systems of the orient and the various symbols associated with them, led to my investigation of the eastern philosophies. An analysis of the concluding chapter of Paradiso, the culmination of Lezama's symbolism, revealed that many images logically corresponded to the metaphorical code and emblems of the Atma-Buddhic system. Based on the symbols of this philosophy, it is possible to recreate a symbolic spiritual journey of the protagonist, José Cemi, in his...