Time: temporal relations between story and diegesis

Mode: modalities of narrative representation

Voice: how the narration is involved in the story, and the relationship between the narrator and the audience.

3.2.1. Time: temporary distortions of order. Analepsis, prolepsis and anachrony in Leila Guerriero’s work: the rhythm (I)

When we confront the order of disposition of events or time segments in narrative discourse with the order of succession of those same events or time segments in history, narrative anachronisms are produced, that is, different forms of discordance between the order of the story and the order of the narrative, among which are analepsis and prolepsis.

According to Genette, analepsis consists of “Any subsequent evocation of an event prior to the point in history where we find ourselves” (1989: 104). The anachrony can also consist of a prolepsis: “Any narrative manoeuvre that consists of telling or evoking a subsequent event in advance” (Genette, 1989:121).

Guerriero uses analepsis and prolepsis with a high level of frequency, and sometimes even includes one within the other. Below, we analyse several examples of the profile of Argentinean artist Guillermo Kuitca. Un artista del mundo inmóvil (Guillermo Kuitca. An artist from a motionless world) (Guerriero, 2013). In the following example there is an analepsis: (“at thirteen he became”); and a prolepsis (“what he would not be again for a long time: a success”). In other words, she tells us that Kuitca was successful at thirteen, but that he wasn’t successful for a long time afterwards. The she announces that he will again be successful in the future. Guerriero is highly frugal in her use of resources: in one sentence she summarises a person’s life for us: “At thirteen he became what he would not be again for a long time: a success” (2013: 79).

In the story, Guerriero describes the scene when she first arrives at Kuitca’s house. Everything is narrated in the present tense, and suddenly she introduces a very brief analepsis that provides clues as to what the character is like: “outrageous”.

When Guillemo Kuitca appears, coming down the stairs that lead to the upper floors, he does not look like someone who has been out of control (2013: 78).

There are other examples of prolepsis. In the first, there is a description in which the entire paragraph is the present tense until Guerriero uses the prolepsis to anticipate that there will be more interviews, and to foresee how Kuitca will behave in those interviews.

And when he raises his head, with light-colored eyes, he has a gaze that he will have again at other times: remorseful, and completely sad (2013: 80).

In the second example, Guerriero is narrating his biography in the past when she suddenly leaps in time to the future, almost as if it were a prediction. It is a prolepsis within an analepsis.

Meanwhile, he lived at his parents’ house and was precisely in the centre of a dark vortex, and even though he could not have known it, Siete últimas canciones (The Last Seven Songs) would be the last show he would do in his country for the next seventeen years (2013: 83).

In Facundo Cabral, Soy leyenda (Facundo Cabral, I am a Legend), published in the anthology entitled Plano Americano, (American Portrait) (2013), Leila Guerriero narrates a long encounter with the famous Argentinean singer-songwriter