This essay is an attempt to describe a certain framework of empathy and intellectual controversy. At the center of this attempt is a short piece of prose by Gabriela Mistral: “Poemas de la madre más triste.” La Vida total, the name for this proposed framework, is a story of grief, of infinity, of joy, sight and blindness. After covering the theoretical groundwork for la Vida total, we will move to Mistral’s work and how it generates a beautiful vision for literature, in terms of praxis and implications.

1. COMPONENTS

The concept of la Vida total is not so much a novel concept as it is an extension of previous theories. Two concepts must be defined before la Vida total can be properly described: umwelt and polyphony. The first is understood according to the theory of umwelt by Jakob von Uexküll and the second by the theories of Bakhtin. We begin by discussing these terms and the relevant parts of their respective theories.

An umwelt (plural: umwelten) is “an organism’s unique sensory world” (Britannica). More complexly, Herman Weber defined it as “the totality of conditions contained in an entire complex of surroundings which permit a certain organism, by virtue of its specific organization, to survive” (qtd. in Winthrop-Young 238). Uexküll principally contrasted umwelten on the level of species: how the perceived world of a jellyfish is distinct from a human’s, a worm’s, a moss’, or a salamander’s. Many species lack sensory tools humans possess, like eyes, ears, and noses, but certain species possess senses humans do not, like some aquatic species ability to sense electric charge. The umwelt can only be constructed from sensory information; what exists outside of the senses cannot exist within the umwelt.

Species is only the first of many ways by which umwelten become differentiated. In the human case, all sorts of subjective experience alter a person’s umwelt: nation, culture, family, religion, profession, education, class, illness, genetics. As a person with PTSD perceives the world differently on account of prior sensations of trauma, their entire world, their umwelt, is changed according to the changes in perception. However, umwelten are not a deterministic model: “Nobody is the product of their milieu—each is the master of his Umwelt” (Uexküll qtd. in Winthrop-Young 216). An umwelt does not determine the choices of its singular inhabitant; an umwelt changes the choices its inhabitant can make. Not the least of these are the decisions a person makes in integrating subjective information into a coherent worldview, the decisions that go into the creation of umwelten.

We now turn to polyphony: the manyness of voices. The concept is first relevant in its typical literary sense: the authorial inclusion of many voices within a novel, including voices conflicting with the author’s, on a more or less equal footing. Polyphony, in terms of umwelten, is allowing multiple umwelten to become visible to the reader.

For the purposes of this essay, the concept of polyphony will be stretched a bit far (that polyphony, as used here, does not conform to its usual meaning is acknowledged). La Vida total is not only concerned with the confluence of voices within a novel (intratextual), but across works (intertextual). On reading an author’s oeuvre, there is polyphony. The many moods, selves, and beliefs the author inhabited across their working period produce different voices, voices which typically will not sum to a complete concept of the author. Borges reflected later in life: “I suppose my best work is over. … And yet I do not feel I have written myself out. … I no longer regard happiness as unattainable; once, long ago, I did” (“Autobiographical Essay” 260). Borges’ most studied stories often seem to communicate that belief in an unattainable happiness, yet, that belief represented a Borges that existed for a certain period of time and later ceased to be. A polyphonic perspective listens to both Borges.

One more process of polyphonizing is required. La Vida total requires polyphony to act across every text and every authorship. Everything that any human ever has, could, or will write is here viewed as a single, infinite text: The Human Text. The Human Text contains endless, unknown and unknowable voices. Each voice inhabits a unique umwelt, an umwelt which it will never share with anyone else. Nonetheless, this multitude of voices can form a single text. La Vida total is concerned with reading that text. Umwelten is la vida, polyphony is the total, which combined produce la Vida total.

2. LA VIDA TOTAL

What then, is la Vida total? La Vida total is to expand one’s umwelt to include as many umwelten as possible and live accordingly. It is an attempt to live and understand as many lives as possible within the constraints of a single life.

La Vida total is in large part a literary task; it is obsessed with the Human Text. It goes without saying that reading the full Human Text is impossible, unless the reader possesses at minimum an infinite amount of time. Many of its parts are irreversibly lost, just as many of its parts will never be written. Many authors’ texts exist in pure potentiality, prevented from ever exiting the mind: how many texts are unwritten solely because the author was illiterate and impoverished, without the resources of text creation! Although those texts cannot be read, they exist and, therefore, enter the Human Text. It is written by everyone, constantly. It contains everyone’s stories, every dead man’s untold tales. Olmec farmers, Sumerian accountants, Jainist mathematicians, Norte Chico architects, Kentucky gas station clerks, Taiwanese schoolchildren—all their contributions are coequal components.

La Vida total is, instead, the incomplete reading of the Human Text. It is a finite contemplation of an infinite literary object. Many things are hidden in the infinities of the Human Text. The Human Text is a timeless, spaceless, unchanging text composed of the deeply spatial and temporal umwelten. It encompasses humanity’s past and future, but also alternative histories that exist purely as potentials. The worlds of fiction, too, figure in the Human Text. Fiction’s polyphonic characters may correspond to real human attributes combined in an entirely possible fashion within a fictional body, unreal only in the sense that no human has yet been born with that specific expression or combination of attributes. If not, they correspond to flaws in the author’s beliefs about humanity (flaws which must be accounted for in the total concept of humanity). It seems reasonable to call whatever worldview or beliefs that result from comprehending the Human Text capital-t Truth, so la Vida total is also a search for Truth.

La Vida total is a constant accumulation of incoherent, apparently contradictory data and narratives, filtered eternally through the reader’s own sensory devices. So, this is the final key aspect: harmony. Just as the reading of the Human Text will always be incomplete, so will the interpretation and reconciliation of all that has been read. On some level, every umwelt belongs to the same world, produced by the same laws dictated by the character of this universe and its human subjects. This common genesis guarantees all these disparate umwelten, subjectivities, and expressions can be reconciled in polyphony.

Impossibility and paradox are recurring themes in la Vida total. After all, the very definition of an umwelt precludes understanding even one umwelt outside of one’s own. With respect to reading, interpretation, harmonization, and, finally, application of all that has been learned, each is an infinite task alone and an infinite task combined. There should be no pretense that living la Vida total is terminable. Instead, it is the belief that it is better to go as far as one can down this path of reading, learning, and growing, despite the fact that the end will never come.

3. AN URTEXT FOR LA VIDA TOTAL: “POEMAS DE LA MADRE MÁS TRISTE”

“Poemas de la madre más triste,” by Gabriela Mistral, is an essential expression of this framework. It is a pair of prose poems followed by a brief explanatory note. The phrase itself, “la Vida total,” is taken from the explanatory note: “tales prosas humanas tal vez sean lo único en que se canta la Vida total” (528). Gabriela Mistral “[escribió] los poemas … con intención casi religiosa” after witnessing a pregnant woman be brutally insulted by a man passing by the woman’s ranch. The first poem, “Arrojada,” deals with a pregnant woman being cast out of her home and abandoned by her family and lover (527). The second, “¿Para qué viniste?”, is the woman’s soliloquy directed at her child, in which she laments how the child would be unloved by all but her and yet, the child came to be in order to comfort her.

The act of cosuffering that prompted her to write these poems was, from the beginning, an expression of la Vida total. She states her purpose as beautifying motherhood, a state she never possessed, being childless her whole life. Yet, her poetry is that of a mother; she lives another life vicariously through her poetry. “Poemas de la madre más triste” is about the umwelten of single mothers in their full complexity: “The distress of abandonment and loneliness, the difficulties of motherhood, and the unexpected sorrow of desire are assuaged but not erased by the unconditioned love between mother and child. Gabriela acknowledges the great power of love but does not shrink from the despair and isolation that sometimes accompany maternity” (Zubizarreta 299). La Vida total, as exemplified in these poems, wrestles with the opposing forces and perspectives that occur, not just outside the individual, but within. Oppositions are allowed to coexist, not in peace per se, but without the demand that either side cease to be.

This is hardly unique to “Poemas de las madres más tristes” en Mistral’s work. As Alegria observes, her work is composed of “personal confessions, human documents instead of literary exercises” (25). He describes her poetry as “a voice too strong for the little songs that it wishes to sing. The movement is always there, a powerful, vast, rhythmic upsurge that encompasses people, landscapes, passions, hopes, bitterness, faith.” Mistral dives deep into her own life and lays it bare in her production of poetry: the “intensity of emotion which adds such force to so many of Gabriela Mistral’s poems, giving them the appearance of being wrung from the very depths of the poetess’ soul” (Preston qtd. in Zubizarreta 309). Mistral understood how la Vida total is a deep dive, not just into the souls of others, but into the umwelt of oneself.

In accordance with the polyphonic spirit, the phrase “la Vida total” is not exclusive to Mistral. José Martí too invoked it: “en la vida total han de ajustarse con gozo los elementos que en la porción actual de vida que atravesamos parecen desunidos y hostiles” (qtd. in Housková 25). Housková elaborates on Martí’s connection to la Vida total: “En la concepción de José Martí, … la armonía y la belleza surge por unión de lo contradictorio. Abarca angustia, tensión, espanto del mundo … En otro polo de la armonía tiene dimensión cósmica y dimensión íntima, unida con la ternura y la nostalgia por la infancia” (26). Mistral and Martí elaborate a vision of compassion and tenderness that makes the intellectual and emotional complexity of la Vida total survivable.

4. PRAXIS

Because almost every step of the process is infinite or otherwise impossible, la Vida total must use methods of approximation. The work of authors such as Gabriela Mistral is essential to la Vida total—la Vida total would be impossible without them. Authors perform the work of approximation simply by adding to the body of writing, but more sophisticatedly through techniques like polyphony and soul-exploration, the study of their own senses, perspectives, and emotions: the world as they can perceive it. Each additional entry provides another finite piece to incorporate into the infinite text, thus bringing the finite collection of readable texts closer to the infinite.

Beyond authorship, the matter of interpretation requires significant discussion of its own. Unlike infinite or infinity-approximating texts like Borges’ Book of Sand or “Library of Babel,” the Human Text is fully interpretable. For most of its pages, when one begins to read, they will, within a certain degree of error, understand the text. Although the Human Text spans all times and languages, it also includes all translations necessary for readers in any language to partake. A translation increases the error range of interpretation but typically will not make the error level intolerable.

Error is the key concern when approximating infinity with finitude. Oftentimes, it is impossible to know how severe the error has become. However, there is a mathematical guarantee to ensure the finite reader’s perspective approaches the infinite Vida total over time. If the reader’s perspective always trends towards expansion (so long as the knowledge gain exceeds the error growth) and there is no limit on the knowledge gain, then the perspective will approach infinite comprehension with all guarantee (this is a literary application of the monotone convergence theorem, the proper discussion of which is beyond the scope of this essay. See Bakker). In short, the two conditions are that the reader acquires more truth than error and that the reader is willing to take on all truth eventually. It could also be thought of constantly growing one’s umwelt, never letting anything remain outside it—an ever-growing bubble of perception. Given an infinite amount of time, such a perspective will become infinite. That is to say, it will comprehend la Vida total.

The first condition, ensuring knowledge gain overall exceeds knowledge loss or error, is difficult. From a finite perspective, locked within our own umwelten, it is impossible to truly know. Thomas Bernhard’s observations on truth from the author’s perspective can be inverted for the reader’s sake:

Truth, it seems to me, is known only to the person who is affected by it; and if he chooses to communicate it to others, he automatically becomes a liar. Whatever is communicated can only be falsehood and falsification; hence it is only falsehoods and falsifications that are communicated … What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell and write the truth, even though it never can be the truth and never is the truth. (qtd. in Thornton 210)

The reader cannot even be sure the author intends to write the truth. However, Bernhard’s argument provides a decanter for separating texts valuable to the seeker of la Vida total from those that are not. Texts that seek to tell the truth, and especially those that acknowledge their inability to capture the truth, are elevated. Texts that are unconcerned with truth are deemphasized. Texts that exploit, dehumanize, or devalue their subjects are condemned. As la Vida total is concerned with umwelten, such texts can only be studied to comprehend the darkened umwelt of the author, because exploitation, dehumanization, and devaluation of others cuts the reader off from the subjects’ umwelten, preventing polyphony and contemplation of la Vida total. By the same token, texts that emphasize kindness, sensitivity, and mutual understanding often (but not necessarily) serve la Vida total better than texts that do not. One more thing must be said respecting texts lacking value for la Vida total. Even though some voices must be rejected in their literal or umwelten-less interpretation and even if certain actions must be condemned unilaterally, part of la Vida total is still acknowledging the umwelten that produced these voices and actions. It is often required of the reader to reject the belief or action expressed, but understand why that belief or action came to be.

The second condition, avoiding limits on knowledge, is not so troublesome. It can largely be achieved by enjoying all good texts. La Vida total is not a framework concerned with canonicity or short-term cohesion. La Vida total requires macro and micronarratives, modernism, postmodernism, paradox, multiculturalism, literary revival, and the enfranchisement of diverse perspectives. The old canons cannot produce la Vida total, in their centering within specific historical-cultural moments. New canons can do no better; simply establishing a canon of integrated, diverse authors and cultures will quickly fall behind the growth of literature (to say nothing of how any canon will necessarily exclude works regardless of source that may benefit the particular reader in their umwelt more than the canonical texts).

The reader should not cut themselves off from the broad domains of human experience: religion, science, literature. Each offers human testimony. This is also true of media and moods. La Vida total cannot be found solely through serious philosophy or contemplation. Silly, preposterous, and casual works all form an essential and beautiful part of the Human Text (as a somewhat embarrassing but useful demonstration of this principle, this essay’s author cried to the Swedish pop song Caramelldansen because of its sublime demonstration of this point).

Silly media is not the end of the unconventional in la Vida total. Sometimes, knowingly preposterous interpretation can be profoundly valuable. Borges highlighted this in “Kafka y sus precursores.” The essay aptly begins with one of Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, which, like la Vida total, are resolved by infinite methods. Highlighting a number of Kafkaesque texts that predate Kafka, Borges observes:

si no me equivoco, las heterogéneas piezas que he enumerado se parecen a Kafka; si no me equivoco, no todas se parecen entre sí. Este último hecho es el más significativo. En cada uno de esos textos está la idiosincrasia de Kafka, … pero si Kafka no hubiera escrito, no la percibiríamos. El hecho es que cada escritor crea a sus precursores. Su labor modifica nuestra concepción del pasado, como ha de modificar el futuro. (395)

It is preposterous to read a text predating Kafka as being Kafkaesque and yet doing so can produce incredible textual and philosophical insight. Similarly, there are many occasions in which using a knowingly mismatched interpretative frame can be a valuable exercise (so long as the reader readily acknowledges that they are not interpreting the author, or even the text, but their own modification of the text).

In addition to the variety of texts, the reader should understand that a large part of la Vida total is acknowledging the validity of “enemy” or opposing beliefs and umwelten. Every reader is insufficient on their own, just as is every author. There is a certain requirement of humility; if the reader mistakenly adopts an erroneous belief during their search for la Vida total, that erroneous belief will limit their growth and keep them from la Vida total until it is corrected. This happens constantly and inevitably. Every human needs to go through that correction process.

In addition to these chiefly literary methods for pursuing la Vida total, there exist a glorious abundance of other practices that expand one’s umwelt. Of these, we highlight the neologism sonder, coined by the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

La Vida total is about exploration, discovery, and the beauty of diversity. Thus, its practice is accessible to people of many philosophies, religion, disciplines, and walks of life. The practitioner cannot do it all, like so many other parts of la Vida total. Diversifying the methods and disciplines employed for the expansion of umwelten should prove fruitful.

5. CONCLUSION

Unsurprisingly, the discussion of la Vida total cannot be completed. Like any stopping point in an infinite process, what is included and what is excluded is a matter of practicality. However, some final comments should be valuable.

La Vida total is an aesthetic of beauty, built from human difference and conflict. Interest in la Vida total is often attached to suffering. Gabriela Mistral employed la Vida total against the dehumanization of mothers in “Poemas de la madre más triste.” Her work elsewhere represents a struggle with powerful, internal pain or troubling outside forces; Wretmark identifies each of “Poema del Hijo,” “Meciendo,” “El niño solo,” “Poemas de las madres tristes,” and “Poemas de las madres más tristes” as possible expressions of her struggle with childlessness (35-36). José Martí died a martyr in order not to die of illness in Cuba’s war for independence, a war that ultimately subjugated Cuba to other foreign powers and set the foundation for the Castro dictatorship. This essay’s author has turned to la Vida total in response to the study of the true nature of genocide and the despair that comes from being unable to save or support anyone involved: the mad from their madness, the victim from their captor.

An objective model of reality cannot be correct unless it fully explains every subjective reality, every umwelten. Enough umwelten are pierced through with profound bitterness, pain, and suffering. The innocent, carefree child is part of it. So is the child soldier. La Vida total subjects its devotee to contemplation of pure pain and evil, which must be reconciled with the purest love and joy. It is an attempt to deal with the world as it is and, seeing truly, understand what to make of life.

Works Cited

Alegria, Fernando. “In the True Language of a Woman.” Review of Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, edited by Doris Dana. Saturday Review, 17 July 1971, pp. 25-26. The Unz Review, www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1971jul17-00025/. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Bakker, Lennard. “§2.4: The Monotone Convergence Theorem and a First Look at Infinite Series.” BYU Mathematics Dept., math.byu.edu/~bakker/M341/Lectures/Lec09.pdf. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “An Autobiographical Essay.” The Aleph and other stories, 1933-1969, E.P. Dutton, 1970, pp. 203-259.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “Kafka y sus precursores.” Borges esencial, Real Academia Española, 2017, pp. 393-395. Accessed 16 Dec. 2020.

Housková, Anna. “Defensa de la poesía: Martí y paz.” Inti, no. 83/84, 2016, pp. 19-31. www.jstor.org/stable/26309970.

Mistral, Gabriela. “Poemas de la madre más triste.” Gabriela Mistral: En verso y prosa, Antología, Real Academia Española, 2010, pp. 527-528.

“Sonder.” The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, 2012, www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Thornton, Megan. “A Postwar Perversion of ‘Testimonio’ in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s ‘El asco.’” Hispania, vol. 97, no. 2, June 2014, pp. 207-219. www.jstor.org/stable/24368766. Accessed 1 Dec. 2020.

“Umwelt.” Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/Umwelt. Accessed 17 Dec. 2020.

Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey. Afterword. A foray into the worlds of animals and humans, by Jakob von Uexküll, U of Minnesota P, 2010, pp. 209-243.

Wretmark, Astrid. “Coping with Childlessness and Perinatal Loss: Reflections of a Swedish Hospital Chaplain.” Reproductive Health Matters, vol. 7, no. 13, May 1999, pp. 30-38. www.jstor.org/stable/3775700. Accessed 16 Dec. 2020.

Zubizarreta, John. “Gabriela Mistral: The Great Singer of Mercy and Motherhood.” Christianity and Literature, vol. 42, no. 2, 1993, pp. 295-311. www.jstor.org/stable/44312170. Accessed 16 Dec. 2020.