Lola and the Poet's Relationship

Lola and the Poet’s Relationship takes shape around Lola’s effort to reach the Poet in the Mondragón asylum and persuade him to leave with her. She casts their imagined future as an act of love and escape, but the Poet does not clearly consent to her plan. Their relationship therefore remains suspended between intimacy and projection: Lola speaks for a shared life, while his replies and actions leave its prospect unresolved.

Visits and Recognition

Lola and Imma make repeated attempts to see the Poet. On an earlier visit they are turned away, and on another they study the asylum from outside, watching its grounds and the movements of its residents. For their third attempt, they arrange an appointment: Imma presents herself as a newspaper reporter, while Lola claims to be a poet. They are admitted and escorted through long blue-and-white corridors to a plain room where the Poet is waiting.

Lola sees him as changed by his institutional life: older, with sunken eyes and thinning hair. She tells him she has missed him, explains that she watched the philosopher’s apartment for a time, and says she kept trying to find him. The Poet asks for a cigarette. When Lola repeats that she had persevered, he echoes the word, a small exchange that acknowledges what she has said without telling her what he feels about it. Imma stands nearby and offers him the cigarette; her quiet presence makes the meeting a three-person scene rather than a private reunion.

Lola’s Plan for a Shared Life

After recounting their travels and the two unsuccessful visits, Lola discloses why she has come: she believes the Poet is a prisoner who wants to escape, and she wants him to leave the asylum with her for France. Her proposal joins an interpretation of his situation to an elaborate future she has already imagined. She tells him that Imma conceived the plan and will help them cross the mountains into France, reach Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and continue by train to Paris.

In Lola’s account, the practical details make the projected relationship seem almost settled. She and Imma would find work cleaning or caring for children in wealthy Parisian neighborhoods; the Poet would write; in the evenings, he would read his poems to them. Lola anticipates becoming pregnant after several months and presents that possibility as proof against the belief that he cannot have children. She imagines their return to Spain when she is six months pregnant, crossing back not at Irun but through La Jonquera or Port Bou. This itinerary reveals the scale of her commitment, but it remains Lola’s proposal rather than a mutually confirmed decision.

The Poet’s response is a question about Imma. He is taking sixteen pills a day and recording his visions, details that place his reception of Lola’s ambitious future within the constraints of his present life. Lola answers that Imma will help and emphasizes that the plan was Imma’s. The Poet then asks the women to read one of his poems. Imma reads a poem involving Ariadne lost in a labyrinth and a young Spaniard in a Paris garret. The reading brings poetry into the meeting, but it does not resolve whether the Poet intends to escape or share the life Lola describes.

Distance, Watching, and Uncertainty

Lola’s later watching from outside the asylum shows how little access she has to the Poet’s life. She spots him in the grounds with other inmates and waves, first shyly and then with increasingly deliberate signals. The distance between them turns a gesture of greeting into an attempted communication whose meaning she cannot verify. She sees him in an altercation with another inmate, after which he returns to the bench and sits between two men. Lola cannot hear what he says. She watches his gestures and observes him sitting with the others, but the scene does not disclose his private thoughts or connect his behavior to her escape plan.

Her account preserves that uncertainty rather than resolving it. In a letter to Amalfitano, Lola wonders whether the Poet was laughing or whether what she heard was her own madness. The uncertainty makes the scene a measure of the limits of her witness: she can describe what she sees across the grounds, yet she cannot securely interpret his expression or know what passes between him and the other inmates. The relationship is thus narrated not only through direct conversation, but through distance, observation, and Lola’s uncertain reading of signs.

The Final Letter and the Relationship’s Limits

In her final letter to Amalfitano, Lola recounts her conversation with Larrazabal, who helps her by offering a place to stay, money, and regular rides to the asylum. She describes him as a good person, but says his kindness affected her differently from what he hoped. Their relationship does not displace her concern for the Poet: she continues visiting the asylum, though eventually less often, and searches the grounds for some sign of him while admitting that she may never understand what she is looking for.

The change in the frequency of her visits—from daily visits to one every three days—marks a shift from active pursuit toward a more uncertain vigil. Lola sometimes disappears from Larrazabal’s apartment without telling him where she is going; he finds her in places including the cemetery, the asylum, the old boardinghouse, and the train station. She eats little during the day and spends her time roaming. When she tells Larrazabal she plans to leave and asks for train money, he offers what he has but cannot give her money to go away. The letter supplies no later confirmation that Lola and the Poet escape together. Their relationship remains defined by her sustained attachment and detailed hopes, set against his guarded responses, institutional confinement, and the unresolved distance between what she plans and what he chooses.