Memory and Montage in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s <i>Sefarad</i> (2001)

This article argues that Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Sefarad (2001) presents not simply an in-depth engagement with memory but also with novelistic form, to which montage is central. While the novel has widely been read through the lens of memory, the narrator’s comparison of the episodes that make up the plot to ‘fotogramas’ suggests that montage is key to the creative process. The technique of montage emerged from cinema, which, in its inception had strong links to the railway, and allusions to both frequently feature in Muñoz Molina’s work. The creation of movement through montage leads to tension, in accordance with Walter Benjamin’s view of literary montage and its application in Max Silvermann’s concept of ‘palimpsestic memory’. However, the focus on the Hispanic Society of America at the heart of the novel’s final chapter dissolves the tension and cancels the disruptive potential of montage, since the museum acts as a lieu de mémoire. By placing Velázquez’s Portrait of a Little Girl at the end of the novel as a vanishing point upon which all movement converges, the novel draws a parallel to Borges’s Aleph. Muñoz Molina consequently foregoes the shock value of montage for a vision of literature as reconciliatory and totalizing.