He amado también a mujeres muertas
La piel del tambor“He amado también a mujeres muertas” is a chapter epigraph attributed to Enrique Heine’s Noches florentinas. Placed beneath the heading “Las veinte perlas del capitán Xaloc,” it introduces the chapter through a brief statement about love and the dead, joining the chapter’s focus on Captain Xaloc’s pearls to a tone of loss and remembrance.
Placement and Attribution
The phrase appears after the marker “V” and the heading “Las veinte perlas del capitán Xaloc.” Its attribution identifies Enrique Heine’s Noches florentinas as its source; the book presents it as an epigraph rather than as dialogue or narration within the scene.
Meaning and Function
The epigraph’s reference to loving women who are dead places attachment in the register of memory and absence. Its position before the chapter invites that association without specifying an individual woman or explaining the circumstances behind the words. The juxtaposition with the heading about Captain Xaloc’s twenty pearls gives the chapter an elegiac frame, while leaving the connection suggestive rather than explicit.
