The Mystical Backwards in the Story “Rito” by Juan García Ponce

Abstract

Mysticism has not always gone through the same road nor in the same sense.In some works of literature it is presented as an inverted mysticism. In the story“Rito”, by Juan García Ponce, a mystical process is performed traversing theways of evil. Commencing with the nakedness of a Young beautiful woman’s body, the eroticism and the sexual act, it is intendend that the Spirit of Divinity manifests itself. In this story the transgression and perversion of the socialnorms of behavior within marriage is present. The characters in the story, Lilianaand Arturo are spouses. However, they like to practice a ritual in whichthey invite to dinner an unknown individual. The purpose is to put into practicethe “laws of hospitality” that the French writer Pierre Klossowski proposed in his novels Roberte tonight and Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In the secularlevel, the husband, as master of the house, must access the mystical level of Host; in turn, the Mistress of the house, as wife, must access the mystical levelof Hostess. Thus, the husband must offer his wife to the guest, as the unknownThird. The husband, as Host, contemplates his wife’s sexual act with the guest:she is the hostess; and the unknown Third functions as the angelic element thatconnects the profane to the sacred. In the sexual act and in the nakedness of the beautiful woman’s body is manifest the Spirit of Divinity.

Keywords

• García Ponce
• “Rito”
• mística al revés
• erotismo
• perversión
• leyes de la hospitalidad