José Donoso's Monadologic Dream: "La puerta cerrada" (The Closed Door)

Abstract

José Donoso's short story or nouvelle "La puerta cerrada" ("The Closed Door") is read from a poetic-philosophical perspective. The concept of "monad," coined by G. W. Leibniz, is used to characterize the ethos of the protagonist, Sebastián Rengifo. His impenetrable spiritual essence -his lunar dimension, his solipsism vis-à-vis his social and family relations- is understood in light of the physical-metaphysical notion of the "monad." The protagonist plumbs the depths of his own dreams looking to extract from them a universal light. This narrative process places the argument of Donoso's story in the tradition of the Romantic quest for the "blue flower" that the dreamer finds in his dreams. In Sebastián's case, it seals off his return to the real world as he wakes up only to find that "closed door" which emphatically reduces his condition to that of a "monad."