History in Perspective in Ana Maria Moix's Vals Negro‪.‬

ANA Maria Moix's Vals negro (1994) is a "reality"-based novel that implicitly questions the ability of both the narrators and the readers to apprehend historical "truths." By repeating unreliable information from uninformed characters, the multifaceted narrative voices in this fictionalized biography highlight doubt, negation, lies and contradictions. Knowledge is continually placed into question as facts are routinely distorted and the truth is silenced or ignored. The resulting mosaic of refracted shards of fragmented information brings to mind a kaleidoscope, offering a beautiful yet constantly shifting image of the life of the protagonist. Each of the novel's six chapters--chronological vignettes of the life of the Austro-Hungarian Empress Elizabeth of Bavaria (a.k.a. Sissi)-is focalized with indirect free-style narrations that suggest six different Rashomonian first-person points of view. The variety of these perspectives is expanded even further through the inclusion of seemingly endless opinions about Sissi, ranging from official reports, newspaper articles, eye-witness accounts, legends, rumors and innuendo. As Alice R. Clemente states, the "narrative voice cedes its perspective to a series of witnesses" (329) who distort Sissi's life and history through the lens of their own particular reality. Moix's novel is a study in cubistic perspectivism which considers how the empress's husband, in-laws, servants, subjects, and friends might interpret (or misinterpret) her liberal political beliefs and her tendencies toward lesbianism, anorexia and clinical depression.