Rayuela as Hypertext

In the chapter “Hypertext: An Introduction,” in George P. Landow’s book, Hypertext 2.0, the author introduces the idea of printed text acting as a hypertext, an idea first presented by Roland Barthes. As cited by Landow, Barthes described the ideal state of textuality as: “text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web, and path” (pg. 3). Foucault shared a similar view of printed texts taking part in hypertextuality. Landow cites Foucault’s views of text as hypertext from his book The Archeology of Knowledge: “the ‘frontiers of a book are never clear-cut,’ because ‘it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network ... [a] network of references’” (pg. 3). Therefore, these views of printed texts—as a result of their references to other texts, topics or authors via in-text references, footnotes, endnotes or allusion—classify them as a form of hypertext existing in a network.

Julio Cortázar, in his book Rayuela, takes Barthes’s and Foucalt’s ideal of hypertextuality in printed text to another level. The author gives the reader the freedom to read the text as she/he chooses to. For example, the reader may start from the first chapter and continue with the next chapters in chronological order until reaching the end. Or the reader may also follow a path proposed by Cortázar, zigzagging her/his way through the entire book. Or the reader may choose her/his own path, skipping chapters as desired or repeating chapters that had already been read before. This means that the reader is able to exercise her/his own volition in reading the text, giving her/him more power and removing the passive role of a viewer. As Landow indicates, “The multiplicity of hypertext, which appears in multiple links to individual blocks of text, calls for an active reader” (pg. 6).

A specific aspect of the hypertext Rayuela that I wanted to comment on was time. As indicated above, given that the reader may repeat chapters and jump from one chapter to another, without following a chronological or fixed order, the possible ways of reading this text are, in principle, infinite. Therefore, the concept of time must be able to adapt to the different paths that could be followed and repeated. One way to do this, as Delia suggested in her post (Delia, Oct. 10th), is by thinking of time as malleable. I actually do not agree with this interpretation. Instead of shaping and reshaping the idea of time to adhere to what we expect, Rayuela invites us to detach from all beliefs of what time should be like and feel like. This text suggests a non-linear way of appreciating time. Only when non-linearity in time is perceived as possible by the reader will she/he be able to enjoy the twists and turns in the different paths she/he may follow in this book.