Three tales by Óscar Hahn: “El sándwich”, “El centro del dormitorio” and “El viejo y el joven”. A new perspective on his work

Abstract

Óscar Hahn's three short stories ‘El sándwich’ (1959), ‘El centro del dormitorio’ (1959) and ‘El viejo y el joven’ (2022) are practically unknown. This research relates the fantastic images that appear in these stories by Hahn with his later poetic work in order to observe their evolution and changes. On the one hand, in ‘El sándwich’ and ‘El centro del dormitorio’ there are a desacralisation of certain Catholic rituals, for example, the act of taking communion, which Hahn takes up again in his verses, see ‘Fábula nocturna’ and ‘Monaguillo’. On the other hand, existential concerns are the protagonists in ‘El viejo y el joven’, where he speculates on death as a new place from which one cannot escape or as a closed circle where the previous life ends and another begins, in other words, reincarnation, ideas on which Hahn reflects in several of his poems, such as ‘Fotografía’ or ‘Reloj de pared’.