A mirror of history
the self and its reflections in Jorge Semprún's oeuvre. veinte años y un día
pp. 155-168
in: Ofelia Ferran, Gina Herrmann (eds), A critical companion to Jorge Semprún, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Posed in this way, the nature of the problem changes completely. It is no longer necessary to know which of the two, autobiography or novel, would be truer. It is neither one nor the other; autobiography will lack complexity, ambiguity, etc.; the novel accuracy. So it would be one, then the other? Rather, one in relation to the other. What becomes revealing is the space in which the two categories of texts are inscribed, and which is reducible to neither of the two. This effect of contrast obtained by the procedure is the creation, for the reader, of an autobiographical space. (On Autobiography 27)
