At the beginning of the poem, it can be seen that an important concept, or sign from a semiotic viewpoint, is the notion of a house in the memory o...

At the beginning of the poem, it can be seen that an important concept, or sign from a semiotic viewpoint, is the notion of a house in the memory of the poet. It symbolises his childhood and where he grew up. The first incongruent pattern of time, or incongruent in the cognitive sense of the term, can be found in the first verse in which it becomes fused between the past and the future: …where my father will be born… the wall my hands have not yet built. The observer’s position is thus placed before future events which, in reality, have already taken place. Furthermore, the perspective is one of the child building a wall for his father when he is born at a later date. The intermingling of past and future continues in the second verse with the father’s footsteps which have still not reached the observer. The existence of the father contrasts with the timing of his birth which has not yet taken place. A second incongruent pattern is the reference to the observer’s death in the line: my bones are not in that tomb…, suggesting that his death has already occurred. In that respect, the observer’s position in his memories constrasts with the postulated point in time in the past, when he still has to build a wall of the house, with that of the future. The latter is a long way into the future, as in …but those of Zacarias, the great-grandson (…) my own remains have long been lost. The long period of time, or the notion of eternity, is extended further by the description of the past in the last verse: This poem was written in another century. This is emphasized by the personification of Time consumed the flame and lingered in my darkened hands… Events continue to switch backwards and forwards between the past and future at the end of the poem: When the candle returns with its light, I’ll already be gone. The Spanish original reflects the anterior and posterior cognitive grammar outlined above, as in: va a nacer, ‘will be born’; no han hecho, ‘have not yet built’, etc. However, the deictic reference point constantly switches between anterior and posterior within the past, present and future time frames by using the same memories. This mechanism operates in the form of signs which appear in the poet’s mind such as la casa ‘house’ and other related objects and events. Different descriptions of the house −the wall, the door, the portraits, the mirror− are subordinate signs to the superordinate concept of the house. The latter forms an umbrella term for the memories and events in the place where the poet lived during his childhood. References to the future, although fixed in past memory, are related to the unbuilt wall, the street in which the house is located, the mirror which cannot yet reflect unborn faces. One form of perception of past time is therefore in the portraits of people who are deceased. From a cognitive point of view, time perception in this poem is reflected, to a certain extent, by an ego-centered, and therefore deictic, model since the observer recounts memories according to his position in time. Even the image of time consuming the flame of the candle is linked to the observer since the description of the ‘flame lingering in my darkened hands’ relates to the ego. However, the fundamental difference concerns the linear order of temporal sequences: the continual switching backwards and forwards between anterior and posterior postions in the past, present and future. In addition, objects and events keep eternally re-appearing. Furthermore, there appear to be no borders between temporal units of existence, such as the threshold between life and death. There is no point in time in the poet’s memories in which his existence changes from life to death. This form of time conceptualization, in turn, has an impact on the time-space relationship. 5. Personalisation of time, space and symbols Various reasons have been suggested by literary critics regarding the poet’s approach to time, including the application of space. One particular critic, Gutiérrez Plaza (2007: 13-50), puts forward a number of explanations regarding Montejo’s view of existence. He claims, first of all, that Montejo’s memories are reflected above all in deceased persons. Montejo does not live in the past but in the present point of time within a particular memory, as if a memory is actually the present for him. In this way, memories and the present are juxtaposed to create time which is not weakened by the influence of what might be termed “reality” or the “real world” as it stands. Deceased members of the family thereby live in a present dimension of time recreated by memory so that death provides a convenient meeting-place for Montejo and his family. It could be argued that this becomes the “real world” of existence for Montejo. Plaza also suggests that the fusion of time implies another notion of space. The signs and symbols of memory, such as walls, windows, and so on, establish a new spatial form whereby perception mingles with mental projection. The original sign, which is fixed in memory, becomes a different projection of thoughts on the part of the observer, and recreates new human forms. All objects and events become a network of relationships that are continually recreated in memory to produce new scenarios. The locations of original signs are thus conceptually changed. The outcome of this conceptualisation is that Montejo constructs a symbolic universe in which each sign, intermingled with an infinite multiplication of forms, forges one basic unit: the search for the origins and destiny of his own personal existence. According to Plaza, this perception of time in memory represents Montejo’s search to come to terms with the mystery of death, and likewise his quest for a form of spirituality which is born from the world of memories. In his poems, and particularly in Tiempo transfigurado, the concepts of time and place thereby become mixed and are turned upside down. The border between life and death is erased, the predominantly unidirectional notion of time and existence appears to become obsolete. His ancestors constantly change between life and death. The transformations of familiar objects and events in his memories are linked to Montejo’s general feelings that changes in the environment create continual temporal, spatial, physical and emotional upheavals in an individual’s existence. This stems from the fact that he was indeed often perturbed by familiar towns, or districts of towns in his memory, being demolished to build new types of unfamiliar urban landscape. The result is that the personal reaction of the poet to the conceptualization of the environment leads to personalised notions of concepts and signs, as opposed to the more universal theories of time conceptualization put forward in cognitive science. This argument is supported by the fact that Montejo grew up in an environment in which he was personally very sensitive to objects and sounds around him – forms of perception which were even more important than words. This was particularly the case with signs portrayed by nature: “Montejo, who spent his childhood in touch with the countryside, preferred the sounds of nature –the croaking of frogs, the singing of cicadas, crickets or birds, the sounds of the wind or two bodies in love– to words” (Noguerol 2011: 301). The familiar sounds and objects in his childhood, found in many of his poems, represent a form of loss which Montejo attempts to come to terms with or even avoid in his poetry (Roberts 2009). It may therefore be assumed that the portraits on the walls of the house, symbolic of his childhood, are memories whose presence and existence he attempts to retrieve. The past is brought forward to the present. In this light, his poetic art indeed embodies an autofictional component in his approach to time. 6. Conclusions In an approach such as the cognitive linguistic model of time, it can be seen that there are a number of variants in primarily linear structures which involve shifting paradigms according to the deictic position of the observer. These are strongly reflected in the syntax of European languages. The research which has been carried out on such time models provide a substantial and adequate account of everyday language in the real world. They all suggest that time and space tend to have conceptual limits with unidirectional starting and finishing points. Poetic language, however, tends to introduce new features in time trajectories. An analysis of a poet such as Eugenio Montejo, who had a profound interest in time, used the feature to explore the mysteries of life, death and existence. This becomes apparent in his poem Tiempo transfigurado. In order to come to terms with deceased members of the family, different signs in his childhood, such as the family home and its related objects, emerge in his memories. They are thus linked to personal experience and appear autobiographical. The deictic temporal position of his observations switches backwards and forwards between past and present verb tenses, as well as between anterior and posterior mental frames. The result is that a new spatial form develops in his mind which has no borders in time. It may be concluded that time trajectories have different constructs according to whether everyday language or poetic discourse is involved. The distinction between the two is indeed based on the notion of time limits. The cognitive approach tends to propose limits in time within the field of everyday language. In poetic discourse, direction and duration of time appears to be unlimited. References AHRENS, Kathleen, & Chu-Ren HUANG. 2002. Time is passing motion. Lan- guage and Linguistics 3(3), 491-519. https://www.researchgate.net/publica- tion/235758127_Time_Passing_is_Motion (accessed 13 February 2020). BORODITSKY, Lera. 2000. Metaphoric structuring: understanding time through spatial metaphors. Cognition