El imaginario de la casa en "El obsceno pájaro de la noche" de José Donoso

The topic of the article is the symbolism of house in El obsceno pájaro de la noche, a novel by José Donoso. There are three images of house (home of Humberto Peñaloza, Rinconada and Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales) are discussed in the article, primarily relating to the symbolic meaning of the “house” in the interpretation of Gaston Bachelard and also to opinions of the author himself, drawn from his journals developed by Pilar Donoso. The analysis of these images enables to percieve the strict relationship between the composition of space and the composition of characters. It also shows how the vision of the “house” understood as a space structure, fits into the symbolism of “imbunche” and the symbolism of the mask, both dominant in the novel. The metaphorical conception of space, typical for the “novela del lenguaje”, in “El obsceno pájaro de la noche” becomes the key to the interpretation of the represented world of the text in the sense of apocalypse. The very figure of the house with its symbolical and metaphorical contexts shows in the fullest way the progressive destruction of the main character, the deep crisis of ethical values, social system and also the crisis of the novel as a genre.