SOURCE: "The Motifs of the Homunculus and the Shrinking Man in Two Versions of a Short Story by Adolfo Bioy Casares," in Hispanofila, Vol. 28, No. 83, January, 1985, pp. 79-87.

Very little is known about the extensive literary production of Bioy Casares prior to the resounding success of his now almost classical fantastic novel, La invención de Morel (1940), because the author has consistently repudiated those early works and consigned them, perhaps justifiably, to oblivion. However, among the numerous stories he wrote from 1929 to 1937, Bioy apparently believed that two of them possessed some redeeming esthetic value, for he reworked and republished them much later under different titles. The purpose of the remainder of this study is to examine and compare briefly one of those narratives. The first rendition of the tale, titled "Cómo perdíla vista," picks up the traditional motif of the homunculus or created human being, and...