I have tasted, not read, the latest literary offering by Javier Puebla, The Son of Peter Pan, as if I were sipping a fine wine. Not a bottle, but a crystal glass. Holding back, seeking, surrendering to you… He calls it a ‘narrative poem,’ and yes, it has poetry, that which you can read bare, that which whispers that beauty, sadness, greatness… are made for you. It also contains narrative literature, a short novel, because with one ear it tells a story and with the other it speaks to us of guilt and forgiveness.
But here the poetry isn’t in its pure form; it doesn’t float above the prosaic, nor is the narrative prolix, and yet together they weave a braid that guides us to a matter that concerns us all, and woe to the one who does not feel implicated: the child we were and carry inside us. “Where is the child I was?” Neruda asked.
The matter never wanes in the life of any self-respecting person; active or latent, it is always there. The child who escapes us through that smile that colonizes our faces when we see them playing, or when we take them to the cinema or to the circus; the one who takes the wheel away from us when we’re with the friends toasting or playing. The game is his heritage, the present, his territory.
Inevitably, adulthood pushes the brat aside; life becomes something very serious, transcendent, but not even the most devoted to the important causes of maturity forget the child they carry inside. That is why the magnate of money and power who was Citizen Kane, as he was leaving, uttered his last enigmatic word: Rosebud, the name of his wooden sled from when he was still happy.
That braid we spoke of becomes a rope that lets us rise and fall, to the sky where one can fly, and to the mud where our feet sink. The entire poetic narrative sits thus halfway, between the happiness of never becoming an adult, ever, and the misfortune of not ceasing to be a child; between jail and freedom, between reality and daydream. And for that, what better realm than Peter Pan, which has come to us, in turn, from the original tale by J. M. Barrie, a theater piece filled with sadness, and Disney’s sweet and brilliant adaptation.
The point is to escape, and for that there are reflection, culture, communion… but those who take the shortcut of redrawing reality and pick up the palette loaded with LSD, magic powders, laughing cigarettes, bar potions… they may find it hard to leave the island.
I won’t go on to reveal anything, but I recommend reading this original work of bittersweet beauty, told with vividness, though without ostentation.
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Author: Javier Puebla. Title: The Son of Peter Pan. Publisher: Haz Milagros.