WATER AND THE ETERNAL FEMALE: A STUDY OF CIRCE AND THE POET MANUEL CIGES APARICIO ACCORDING TO THE THEORIES OF GASTON BACHELARD

Abstract

The novel Circe y el poeta, written by the Spanish Manuel Ciges Aparicio and published in 1926, is, as the title suggests, a reinterpretation of the myth of the Greek sorceress. Indeed, Sara –the most prominent female character in the story– is a modern seductress in the manner of Circe (1927) by the German painter George Grosz. This essay aims to demonstrate –based on Gaston Bachelard's theories about the material imagination of water– how Ciges Aparicio uses this element as a symbol of the feminine, of pain and of death.