Rudolf Steiner's Initiatic Method in Un año by Juan Emar

Abstract

In this paper I explore the implicit intertextual relationship between Un Año (1935) written by Juan Emar, mainly the chapter “Septiembre 1º” [September 1], and the initiatic method that Rudolf Steiner develops in The Way of Initiation (1918). Such a method informs Emar’s work following a particular literary appropriation and transformation that allows us to read the novel as the diary of an individual whose spiritual search is presented as a subversive-imitative narrative correlative. Emar’s central motifs reappear in this novel: the refl ection on being, vitality and the cognitive apprehension of life as a unit and as a totality. Thus, Steiner’s initiatic method enters the literary-occultist system that Emar upholds in his entire literary production, and is assimilated and surpassed by this system.