En torno al arte

We are used to talking about the world of fiction as if a text or an image corresponded to one and only one world, as if a novel represented all the states of affairs and facts of that world. However, the states of affairs described and the events narrated in a novel do not draw a world in its entirety, they are not even all that we need to understand it. The world overflows the text of the work and the work itself, which would be unreadable without that world on which it makes sense. The reader makes inferences, establishes hypotheses, reaches conclusions and adopts attitudes -more or less deliberately- making use of assumptions and beliefs that are not explicit, but have to do with that background world. The adult characters have had a childhood, the emotions that motivate their actions have a history, when the action stops focusing on them, they continue to exist, the events continue to have consequences, the geographies of the places pre-exist or, in any case, the scenario is assumed. permanent stories, etc.