SOURCE: "René Marqués' La mirada: A Closer Look," in Latin American Literary Review, Vol. VIII, No. 16, Spring-Summer, 1980, pp. 196-212.

In the following essay, Hortas examines mythological, Christian, and sexual metaphors in La mirada.

René Marqués La mirada was published in an unexpurgated first edition in Puerto Rico in 1976, two years after Spanish censors had refused to grant it publication unless certain objectionable passages were either deleted or modified. The last major work of the widely acclaimed Puerto Rican writer before his death in 1979, La mirada has generally been dismissed by critics as an incoherent, disjointed piece of writing by an author past his prime. In the recent issue of the literary review, Sin Nombre, dedicated to René Marqués, La mirada commands very little attention and no praise at all. Arcadio Díaz Quiñones states flatly:

Over the last few years his literary output was...