Mester

MESTER

XXXV

2006

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. LOS ANGELES

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editors

Jasmina Arsova

Leah Kemp

Carolyn Kendrick-Alcántara

Laura Lee

Allison Li

Kenneth V. Luna

Nadia Sanko

Chris Shaw

Carolina Sitnisky

Editor-in-Chief
Lizy Moromisato

Editorial Assistants

Argelia Andrade
Catherine Fountain
Angela Helmer
Felicitas Ibarra
Nick Kramer
Peter Lehman
Elena Snopenko
Polina Vasiliev

Faculty Advisors
John Dagenais
Maite Zubiaurre

Layout

William Morosi

Mester (ISSN 0160-2764) is the gradúate student journal ot the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese, University of California, Los Angeles. It is published annually with the generous
assistance of the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Del Amo Foundation, and
the UCLA Gradúate Students Association.

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Copyright © 2006 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. ISSN
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Association of America, 1998.

CONTENTS

VOLUME XXXV 2006

INTRODUCTION v

ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS

Alrick C. Knight, Jr. Is Nothing Sacred? Spain Performs

the Death of God 1

Maribel San Juan. Eros en una isla maldita: alegoria,

poder y sexualidad en Casa de juegos de Daína Chaviano 22

Leah Kemp. Mirando su entorno: el cine de Gonzalo Justiniano 36

Vanina Eisenhart. Primeira-Dama Tropical: A cidade

e o corpo feminino na ficção de Júlia Lopes de Almeida 46

Inés Sahagún-Bahena. The City as Labyrinth or Sanctuary

in Mexican Women's Contemporary Writing 64

Jasmina Arsova, Carolyn Kendrick-Alcántara, Allison Li.

Una conversación con Ana Rossetti 83

Haley O'Neil. The Dehumanization of the Feminine Figure

in Bécquer's Rimas 98

Guillermo Giuccl Internacionalismo y nacionalismo:

el aeroplano 111

Sarah Harris. Who Is in the Back Room?: The Intertextuality

of Don Quixote and El cuarto de atrás 128

Jasmina Arsova, Chak Han Laura Lee, Carolina Sitnisky.

An interview with Jo Labanyi 147

A. Carlos Quícoli. The Portuguese Infinitive and the

Nature of Linguistic Explanation 162

REVIEWS

Bruña Bragado, María José. Delmira Agustini:

Dandismo, género y reescritura del imaginario modernista.
(Carolina Sitnisky) 187

Kristal, Efraín. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to the

Latin American Novel. (Felicitas Ibarra) 189

MiGNOLO, Walter D. The Idea of Latin America. (Chris Shaw) 194

Ottoni, Paulo. Tradução Manifesta: double bind e

acontecimento. (Débora Racy Soares) 200

CONTRIBUTORS 207

Introduction

As we proudly present this 35th anniversary issue of Mester, we reflect
on the significance of releasing a gradúate student journal. In times
when academic publishing is seen as an ever-increasing challenge,
Mester has been produced uninterruptedly for the past thirty-five
years. Among the longest-running publications of its kind on the
UCLA campus, Mester is entirely run by gradúate students who, year
after year since 1970, demónstrate their commitment to the academic
community in the promotion and dissemination of scholarship among
fellow colleagues and professors alike.

Mestefs offerings this year are proof once again that research
in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian studies is as strong as ever. In "Is
Nothing Sacred? Spain Performs the Death of God," Alrick C. Knight,
Jr. explores the presence of the "sacred" at the turn of the twentieth
century in the works of agnostic/atheistic writers such as Miguel de
Unamuno, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Benito Pérez
Galdós. Vanina Eisenhart challenges traditional interpretations of Júlia
Lopes de Almeida's novéis by looking at the author's representations
of the city and the femaie body. Similar themes are discussed in other
arricies on the works by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, as well as Rosa
Nissan, Josefina Estrada, and Mónica de Neymet. Also featured are
engaging interviews with Ana Rossetti and Jo Labanyi, who graced
us with their visits this past year. Rossetti shares her thoughts on
artistic creation and poetry, while Labanyi discusses, among other
things, her contributions to the "memorialization of the Spanish
Civil War," and what it means to work in the middle of what must
be exciting times for Spanish society as it recovers from the forced
amnesia generated in the aftermath of the conflict. Sarah Harris
argües that Carmen Martín Gaite's El cuarto de atrás is yet another
text in which the literary echoes of Don Quijote can be heard loud
and clear. Finally, Carlos Quicoli's examination of phenomena in
Portuguese inflected infinitives demonstrates that "the facts that are
part of the Particular Grammar of Portuguese can be deduced from
the principies of Universal Grammar," thus bridging the illusory gap
between linguistic theory and traditional descriptive grammars. These
and other arricies illustrate the broad range of perspectives included
in this volume of Mester.

MESTER, YOL. XXXV (2006) v

INTRODUCTION

As conclusión, we would like express our gratitude and apprecia-
tion to the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Del
Amo Foundation, and the UCLA Gradúate Students Association for
their support in publishing this issue of Mester. Our thanks also to
faculty advisor Prof. Maite Zubiaurre for her generous assistance this
year. Special recognition goes to Prof. John Dagenais, chair of the
UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Mester's faculty
advisor as well, for his invaluable advice and constant encouragement.
Thanks also to Marisol Castillo and Iliana Alcántar for leading the
way, and most importantly, to this year's entire Editorial Board, whose
dedication and professionalism you will see reflected in this issue of
Mester. A todos, gracias de corazón.

Lizy Moromisato

Editor-in-Chief 2005-2006

Mester Literary Journal

Articles, Interviews

Is Nothing Sacred? Spain Performs the
Death of God

Alrick C. Knight, Jr.
Loyola University Chicago

We are not talking about the absence of the experience of
God, but about the experience of the absence of God.

W. Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God

¡Teresa, alma de fuego,

Juan de la Cruz, espíritu de llama,

por aquí hay mucho frío, padres, nuestros

corazoncillos de Jesús se apagan!

Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla, CXXXVI, XX

The art of the last two centuries appears to have become significant at
the expense of reHgion. The progressive secularization of the modern
world has had an indisputable influence on social institutions, and
has generated significant shifts in the valúes and beliefs that underlie
modern life, in many cases leading to outbursts such as Baroja's dec-
laration that "tenemos que inmortalizarnos" (27). Nietzsche's famed
assertion of the death of God signaled a change in the ways in which
we think about the world, a shift in where we seek answers, and
where we claim to find them. Herein lies an intriguing paradox: that
despite the marginalized role and importance of religión in social insti-
tutions, collective and individual practices and so forth, the specter of
religión continues to bear in important ways on the cultural identity
of modern Westerners.

This arricie will argüe that much of circa-1900 Spanish literature
gestures in a common direction, animated largely by the suspicion that
God's presence can no longer be recognized or seen as significant. And
yet, as many of the works of Miguel de Unamuno (San Manuel Bueno,
mártir and Niebla), Antonio Machado {Campos de Castilla), Benito
Pérez Caldos {Miau), and Juan Ramón Jiménez {Diario de un poeta

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

reciencasado) suggest, perhaps the (re)birth of God can be achieved by
other means. Although other authors and works of the decades sur-
rounding the turn of the twentieth century fit this characterization, it
is my contention that in the above works, a heightened awareness of
and engagement with the sacred — and its presumed retreat — figure as
a striking and recurrent tensión. That is, they can be seen to question
aesthetically — through both prose and poetry — what many would
view as a common, basic assumption: since refigion was essentially
constituted by the experience of the sacred, it would seem that a secu-
lar world would therefore be a world in which no experience of the
divine would be possible. Yet, if as Bataille argües, "[t]he intention
to gain eternal life is connected with sanctity" (390), then perhaps
metaphorically, God slumbers on in much modern art.

The key value that is lost with the collapse of the transcen-
dent guarantee is the sense of a unified purposefulness, a totalizing
worldview governing both universe and self. The value systems mul-
tiply — politics, science, religión, aesthetics — ali marshaling their own
sepárate goals and criteria. Otherness becomes an especially important
term during this period: the discontented tone of many works of late
nineteenth-century Spain evolves, in large part, from the broader
trend toward fragmentariness characteristic of (European) modernism,
from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first decades of
the twentieth. At stake in the experience of otherness is the modern
strategy of self-coherence, and the suspicion that such a "project of
the self" is ultimately impossible. The unitary other that was a prod-
uct of religión is lost when this structure of opposites breaks down,
a discontinuity in the world that is memorably embodied by Baroja's
priest in El cura de Monleón^ who abandons the ministry when his
faith wanes. The creation of a secular other, or a new "sacred," is of
course a variation on the theme of otherness.' So while the religious-
secular opposition is a useful means of discussing these authors, we
are actually addressing otherness as the perceived object of power,
knowledge and desire. It is an illusion constructed out of differences,
an eternally morphing alibi that serves to confer a sense of stability
and wholeness.

In Spain, the general mood of this period's literature is in many
ways consistent with that of the rest of Europe and the West — turn-of-
the-century literature must be understood in relation to a deepening of
uncertainty and alienation in the contemporary period. By reference

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

to the philosophical assumptions characteristic of the age, and to the
writer's way of understanding the function of art, one sees that the
disintegration of optimism — tentative though it may have been previ-
ously — is attributable to the failed promises of scientific rationahsm,
as much as to the spiritual crisis mentioned in the first paragraph. But
rehgious doubt bears in unique ways on Spanish writers:

In spite of religious yearnings like Unamuno's, ali the best
literature of this age is the work of agnostics or atheists.
In the [1880s and 1890s] agnosticism did not have to
be pessimistic. Thinking men who could not accept the
spiritual comfort offered by the Church had often been
able to find alternative grounds for a kind of hope in the
rational conquest of knowledge, and in the widely appHed
and applauded concept of evolutionary progress. But in
the twentieth century the findings of reason only added an
extra dimensión to despair, and the idea of progress became
a bitter mockery. (Brown 6, my emphasis)

If Brown's remarks are correct, then the twin themes of rehgion and
hterature gain in importance in the Spain of this period. While it is
crucial to understand the religious stance of the period's writers, their
feelings on religion might be viewed strictly as a starting point. Build-
ing on Brown's comments, it is impossible to overlook the ironic fact
that the issue of religion is addressed constantly, urgently and tirelessly
in that "work of agnostics or atheists." However, in an age when
religious hope exceeded religious expectation, the relevant question,
simply put, is how do they address the problem of religion? What is to
count as "sacred" in irretrievably agnostic or atheistic Spanish authors
active in the years surrounding the turn of the century?

It would seem profitable, therefore, to seek out a distinctive aes-
thetic impulse in these authors that might symbolically compénsate
for the lack of "authentic" religious experience. Terms like "crisis,"
"anguish" and "pessimism" are commonly (and justifiably) applied to
Unamuno and Machado, but they do not go far enough. By the last
decade of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth
century, innovative aesthetic practices were emerging in response to
what Donald Shaw describes as "an increasingly desperate search
for ideas madres, for a satisfying pattern of ideas, ideais, and beliefs

ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

with which to solve the threefold pattern of truth, duty, and finality"
(159). Referring to early twentieth-century fiction, Roberta Johnson
describes its tendency towards "innovative ways of conveying a more
subjective reality" (128). The combined emphasis on the individual
(who must find his or her own way) and on art (which serves as a
retaining wall for identity) arguably allows the individual — the art-
ist — more creativity and range than other spheres. It can be fairly
stated that the self, by turn-of-the-century Spain, becomes increasingly
self-interested and self-reflexive. At stake is an intriguing question:
how does the presumable loss of the divine bear on the literary activity
of the period? With regard to the authors under discussion, what is to
count as "sacred"? Departing from the role it played in its formerly
religious incarnation, what has it become in the agnostic-atheistic
minds of Pérez Galdós, Unamuno, Machado, Jiménez and other turn-
of-the-century Spanish authors?

In modern literature, there appear to be numerous vehicles that
smuggle notions of the sacred back into modernity.- Likewise, for
the reasons described above, it seems at least arguable that many
literary trends — including the flood of "isms" that begin most vis-
ibly with romanticism — are simply "post-sacred" manifestations that
travei under another name. These observations position us to raise
an intriguing question: has there been, rather than a total retreat,
a new paradigm in which an experience of the religious is, in some
sense, still possible.-* No doubt the sacred in modernity is — according
to many — withered on the vine; but do fragments of it remain alive,
although heaving and fitful, yet still retrievable, in flashes such as
Pérez Galdós's Count of Albrit and the "verdades incontrovertibles"
he experiences while in a state of "sopor" during mass; Unamuno's
Manuel Bueno; or Machado's eternally flowing waters? To summarize,
the central tensión is the following: there appears to be a close con-
nection between aesthetics on the one hand, and the need for some
sort of reléase and relief for those who are no longer persuaded by the
possibility of a transcendent entity. Art becomes the quest par excel-
lence for new forms of an experience of the sacred.^

In modern Hispanic literature, Unamuno is the writer who
perhaps most explicitly addresses God's absence. This notion is memo-
rably illustrated in San Manuel Bueno, mártir (5MB), when Saint
Manuel says, "La verdad, Lázaro, es acaso algo terrible, algo intole-
rable, algo mortal" (605). The "truth" ("la verdad") is that death is

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

likely the end of existence, and Manuel's response to this assumption
is to find identitary completion by other means — through a sustained
"perderme en la vida del pueblo," a "sumergir[me] en el alma de la
montaña" (607). If the reader, like Manuel, accepts the "terrible"
truth, then, also like the embattled priest, he or she must seek altérnate
ways to experience transcendence symbolically rather than conven-
tionally, spiritually. In nearly all of Unamuno's works there is recourse
to the act of creation as a means of reaching beyond the self, and
thereby managing a continuation of the ritual process whereby one's
own death will not mean utter annihilation. Through Augusto Pérez,
in Niebla, Unamuno shows that there is a sense in which he himself,
as author, achieves transcendence; he can be said to perform the role
of God, playing the "fictive" creator of Augusto. It is particularly
ironic that immortality could be achieved through the likes of this
protagonist: Augusto is seemingly without any perceptible identity;
he lacks both future goals and past achievements. The irony emerges
when we recall that Unamuno is a firm believer in Cervantes's maxim
that every man is the product of his life's deeds (hijo de sus obras),
and, like his literary ancestor, was a practitioner of both invention and
self-invention. When Augusto is of marrying age, he resolves to find
a wife. But his aspirations fall short when his love is unrequited, at
which point he decides to end his life. His famed encounter with his
creator, Unamuno, leads the latter to inform Augusto that he cannot
commit suicide because he is a fictional creation. Augusto argües that
he is more real than Unamuno precisely because of his fictional qual-
ity, an observation that angers Unamuno and leads him to promise
to kill Augusto himself. He evidently carries out his promise, though
it is by no means clear that any true "death" has taken place. Most
importantly, it is his fictional status that seems to have saved Augusto,
and seemingly assures his claims of immortality.

In this way Niebla can be taken as a restaging and reconfiguration
of the sacred, an observation that is perfectly consistent with Susan
Sontag's remarks on religión and art: "[Wjithin the last century art
conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an
unprecedented stature — the nearest thing to a sacramental human activ-
ity acknowledged by secular society" (212). Intrigued with the notions
of creation and destruction, presence and absence, life and death, Una-
muno is keenly attuned to art's unique potential for providing a means
of embodying and giving reléase to such preoccupations.

ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

As we have seen, Unamuno, as well or better than anyone else,
was aware of the human being's need to engender and perpetúate,
whether through religión, art, science, sexual reproduction, the
erecting of tombstones and crypts, and so forth/ The human being
perpetuates and multiplies itself as a guarantee of the only possible
form of personal immortality. One critic accurately points out that the
Spanish finisecular zeal of the creation and care of the self "es ahora
la suprema tarea," and that "[e]l culto dei yo es el culto de héroe"
(Cerezo Galán 64-5). Clearly, exceptions exist. In Pardo Bazán, for
example, this sort of emphasis on the self is absent, a fact that is per-
haps largely attributable to her religious tranquility, a stance which
in many cases seems to permeate her works, lending them a serene
confidence that in other (and in most cases later) writers flags or disap-
pears altogether, Conversely, Unamuno and Pérez Galdós, Machado
and Jiménez find themselves bereft of the traditional sources of sup-
port and comfort that Pardo Bazán frequently finds, particularly in
religious institutions. And so we see in Unamuno an impulse that is
constantly reworked: the attempt to cover up mortality, to symboli-
cally remedy the descent into existentialist despair that accompanies
the contemplation of one's death.

Participating in the same larger dialogue, Antonio Machado, like
Unamuno, points up a crucial irony that inheres in the relationship
between religión and modern existence: that even avowed atheists can-
not resist undertaking the pursuit of a new "sacred."^ The Machado
of Campos de Castilla {CC) lacks the robust optimism conferred by
religión (with its claims of unity, stability and teleology) and Enlight-
enment thought (with its pretensions of a progressive control over
nature). In most cases Machado's musings express a sort of dual
sentiment: since we are unable to particípate in God (at least not in
any conventional sense), then it is our own creative impulses that
move center stage. Typical of the period's literature, Machado's liter-
ary activity inevitably reveáis both an adopting and adapting of the
sacred. When Machado speaks of "el Dios que todos hacemos" (CC,
"Profesión de fe" 2),^ it is the human being who now assumes the role
of power. In a gesture reminiscent of Niebla (a work that resonated
deeply with Machado), the speaker of Machado's feted "Profesión de
fe," alluded to above, declares that:

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

Yo he de hacerte, mi Dios, cual tú me hiciste,

y para darte el alma que me diste

en mí te he de crear. Que el puro río

de caridad que fluye eternamente,

fluya en mi corazón. ¡Seca, Dios mío,

de una fe sin amor la turbia fuente! (9-14)

These verses address the speaker's perception of God, and suggest
a stance toward the divine that presumabiy at one point held God
to be inscrutable ("la turbia fuente"). The once ambiguous feelings,
however, have now been replaced by a complete absence ("seca") of
both faith and therefore love. The entire poem, as well as the fragment
quoted above, strongly supports this interpretation. However, if this
reading is correct, a number of other questions follow in its wake. If
God is taken to be absent, then why does he figure not only as the
object, but as the apostrophe of the poem? The first verse quoted
contains a possible answer: if God created the speaker — that is, if
the speaker once "believed" in God the Creator, then now, given the
disappearance of faith, the speaker becomes the creator, the giver,
the agent. In effect, the poetic voice explicitly states that from the
soul God gave him, he intends to créate God — in a reversal-into-the-
opposite, the created now becomes the creator. The "sacred" in this
poem must evidently be understood symbolically: the work of art
amounts to a (symbolic) representation of our beliefs. Contrary to
the meaning some critics have drawn from the poem (namely, that it
is a testament to the speaker's [and/or Machado's] religious outlook),
Machado's descriptive declaration of his faith would seem to be a
confession of his lack of faith. That is, according to one reading, the
entire poem can be seen as a considered articulation of what he does
believe (his own creative powers, all described in the present tense)
as well as what he disavows (divine existence or agency, formulated
in the past tense).

Perhaps the sacred is the self transformed and constructed sym-
bolically, a means of coming to know ourselves and affixing ourselves
to ourselves. Most paradoxical and fascinating in Machado is that he,
just like Unamuno, cannot seem to be able to do without God, and
therefore goes about "creating" him in various ways (the allusions to
concepts like creation, construction and so forth is a constant in his

ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

works)/ It is impossible to provide a satisfactory account of the ways
in which the conventional self-image of rationality and control is,
throughout Machado's works, both parodied and subverted. However,
põem "CXXXVI, XVI" of CC expresses what many other poems and
writings more covertly gesture towards: "Ya estamos en el secreto: /
todo es nada" (4).

The most distinguishing features of Machado's visión underlie this
sort of poetry, with its broad reHgious resonances. But the tenor of
poems such as those above is certainly more than a simple lamenta-
tion. Poetry provides him with a means of negotiating issues — both
literary and metaphysical — that are inseparably linked in his mind
(this becomes especially evident in the musings of his apocryphal
philosophers, Juan de Mairena and Abel Martin). For Machado, as
for Unamuno, the transcendent is meant to be approached rather than
attained: any intellectually honest view must emphasize the construc-
tive and temporal dimensión inherent in life and art. The Parábolas
(which form part of CC and to which the majority of the above poems
belong) evidence the increasing impact of Unamuno on Machado,
and are perhaps the most revealing of fundamental questions of faith,
knowledge and art. Thus, as we saw in "Profesión de fe," there is a
sense in which God is the creation of man as much as the opposite is
true. In verses such as these, there is a sense in which we might view
Machado as responding to the necessity of reconstituting the sacred in
a modernity that is insistently secular. Art's role, it seems, is compensa-
tory, offsetting the lack of "authentic" religious experience. Taking a
broader view, it becomes easy to see the issue of the sacred as includ-
ing but not being exhausted by religious questions. With Unamuno
and Machado, their writings should be seen not just as tools through
which to reproduce the tensions that arise from religion's "failure"
in modern times. There is something of this in Sontag's remarks that
"[t]he need of human beings to transcend 'the personal' is no less
profound than the need to be a person" (231). Art allows the artist to
problematize religión and ali its promises, permitting the individual
to both feature and extend itself beyond the "biological" boundaries
that circumscribe it.

Yet Machado anticipates Sontag's comments when he makes the
rather grim realization that a project of the self is possible only in the
sense that such a strategy is constantly unfolding, and ends not with
a sort of telos or pre-established goal, but with the death of the indi-

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

vidual that interrupts that unfolding. The leitmotif of water and its
various manifestations ("Suena el agua en la fuente de mármol" [Del
Camino, "XXIV" 8]), exemplify this self-in-progress notion, while
also representing his personal need for expressive, concrete images of
identity, a need that is connected simultaneously with a rejection of
transcendence. In other words. Machado here finds himself in an intel-
lectual-aesthetic double-bind: he expresses the modem subject's desire
to represent and foregroud one's identity, to grasp and shape "real"
dimensions of experience, despite his suspicion that such a project is
ultimately utopic or, at best, reductive.

If it is true that the literature of this period attempts to compén-
sate for the perceived lack of "authentic" religious experience, then it
may be useful to invoke the example of Juan Ramón Jiménez. Accord-
ing to Cardwell, for Jiménez artistic creation provides "a means to
sustain some form of faith in the face of Romantic lost ideais and illu-
sions" (507). One of the fundamental differences between Machado
and Jiménez is that the former is at pains to capture the fluidity of
experience and relationship rather than the illusory fixity of identity.
Jiménez, particularly in Diario de un poeta reciencasado [Diario),
rebels against this notion; many of his poems express his desire to
triumph over and against identitary diffusion or decomposition. In
Diario — ^Jiménez's best collection, in his own estimation — assimilation
or unity is most often won. This sort of vague belief in the power of
poetry would lead Luis Cernuda (Spanish poet, critic and member of
the so-called Generation of 1927) to acense Jiménez of a "subjetivismo
egotista." Before responding to this indictment, we might first note
that poetry for Jiménez implies a sort of personal salvation, prompt-
ing exuberant outbursts such as the following: "¡Oh!, ¡qué dulce, qué
dulce / verdad sin realidad aún, qué dulce!" {Diario "I" 15-16). This
is not to say that Jiménez takes an unproblematized view^ of life — as
Sánchez-Barbudo notes in reference to this poem:

ILja maravilla a veces [. . .] es poder constatar que lo
lejano, sin dejar de ser tal, está ya próximo; que lo fan-
tástico, sin dejar de ser tal, es ya casi realidad. Por eso el
poema empieza y acaba destacando, entre admiraciones,
con sorpresa y alegría, lo contradictorio que resulta tanto
el objeto deseado como su propio sentimiento. {66)

10 ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

These remarks point to an inherent irony: subject and object (desire
and its fulfillment) correspond only on a symbolic (aesthetic) levei.
That is to say, Jiménez appears every bit as besieged by religious
doubt and existential fear as Unamuno and Machado (see Eternidades
"CXXII"); also similar is his aim: to pursue an aesthetics that provides
him with a cohesive identity. In this way he is, aesthetically, no more
"egotistical" — as Luis Cernuda charges — than any of the other deeply
disquieted Spanish writers of his time.

The irony of the "maravillas" signaled by Sánchez-Barbudo puts
us on the path of another interesting issue: the poet's obvious delight
in the unexplainable and the contradictory, a pleasure reminiscent of
Baroja's musings about Poe's compositional method of "The Raven."
The strategy at play seems to be a kind of mystification (in the face
of scientific demystification?), a construction of some sort of hazy
otherness that seduces by its very distance and indeterminacy. These
instances of spontaneous, almost carnival-like effervescence reinforce
the duality of human nature, and underscore the experience of being
both self and other.

Quite unlike many of the verses of Diario, Machado's emphasis
is on poetry's failure to attain puré reflexive self-sufficiency — it bears
the signs of a (vain) struggle to escape the world in which it is nec-
essarily inscribed (CC "CXIX"). It is in this sense that it becomes
sacred, unknowable to itself except through its own otherness: art
removes us from ourselves, allowing us to overeóme alienation and
powerlessness. Yet, at the same time, it is never more than a symbolic,
representational gesture — a fact of which Machado is always fully
cognizant. Images such as time and water symbolically register these
paradoxes inherent in Machado's visión. In põem "CXLI," the waters
heard flowing within point to the poet's existential dilemma, always
in a State of flux, while they also point to the epistemological interde-
pendency to which he finds himself constrained, recalling notions of
permanence and fixity: "Como otra vez, mi atención / está dei agua
cautiva; / pero del agua en la viva / roca de mi corazón" (CC "CLXI,
XI" 1-4). For ali his sympathy and admiration for the mystic poets.
Machado can endorse neither the Platonic visión ñor mysticism due to
their esponsal of a harmonious and intelligible reality. Both outlooks,
like religión itself, afford an individual and social plenitude whose
effects are powerfully seductive. And yet Machado was too enam-
oured of logic to allow similar "utopic" notions to console him.

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 1 1

For ali their differences, both Machado and Jiménez figure among
the twentieth century's most emblematic representatives of the mod-
em process of secularization as well as modernity's response to it.
Cardwell makes the point that, in a 1905 review of Unamuno's La
vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, "Machado expressed the view that
the cries of anguish and the inward search for a spiritual goal were
just as important in the search for a national regeneration as active
campaigns" (508). Secularization, at least with regard to much Span-
ish literature, did not mean simply a demystification of the sacred in
the ñame of more "material" valúes. It made necessary a remapping
of the world, a sacralization of the world through aesthetics.

We mentioned earlier, in the context of Unamuno, that artistic
creation seems in many ways a symbolic means to personal salvation.
Indeed, it is not difficult to see a protagonist (Augusto) or an image
(a river) as the articulation of otherness that aids in rounding out the
writer's identity. It would seem that religious doubt induces this activ-
ity: most paradoxical and fascinating in Machado is that he, just like
Unamuno, cannot seem to be able to do without God, and therefore
goes about "creating" him in various ways.

So far we have seen examples of how certain writers, confronting
the apparent absence of God, have gone about continuing an experi-
ence of the sacred. Arguing that "there are no immortal gospels,"
Durkheim held humanity to be capable of "conceiving new ones"
(323). The question posed at the outset of this article bears repeat-
ing: what is to count as sacred? When Proust speaks of bis taste of
cake (the "petite madeleine"); when Woolf refers to "this day, this
moment," when Alejo Carpentier chronicles "las maravillas" of Latin
America, it seems at least arguable that they, along with Unamuno
and Machado, are managing a secular recasting of a sacred paradigm,
a symbolic bid for personal or collective "salvation" — after all, the
sacred responds to our urgent desire for authority, for order and orga-
nization. Through these events and experiences, the above authors
are intent on making the object of desire — a past event, a future goal,
knowledge of oneself, etc. — more "real," more genuine than other
resources make possible.

In the context of literature, one major difference between "canoni-
cal" modernist texts and the Spanish works discussed here should
again be stressed: nearly every major Spanish writer of the time explic-
itly addresses the status of God. This observation makes a study of the

12 ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

sacred, as we have defined it, both more intriguing and more complex.
In Pérez Galdós's Miau, Ramón declares to his sister-in-law, "Es que
yo no me alegro de ser incrédulo, fíjate bien; yo lo deploro, y me
harías un favor si me convencieras de que estoy equivocado" (262).
The importance of the father's attitude is augmented by Ramón's com-
ments, a few pages later, concerning similar issues. In short, Ramón
describes two theories of knowledge:

Lo previsto no ocurre jamás [. . .1. [Ljos españoles viven
al día, sorprendidos de los sucesos y sin ningún dominio
sobre ellos. Conforme a esta teoría del fracaso de toda
provisión, ¿qué debe hacerse para que suceda una cosa.-*
Prever la contraria, compenetrarse bien de la idea opuesta
a su realización. ¿Y para que una cosa no pase.-* Figurarse
que pasará, llegar a convencerse, en virtud de una sostenida
obstinación espiritual, de la evidencia de aquél supuesto.
(284)

The logic of the illogical, he argües, is the paradoxical law governing
life. However, when Ramón is finally offered a long awaited job, he
debates the validity of his personal "illogical" theory, comparing it to
the doctrine of Christianity, which states: "Pedid y se os dará" (284),
He then describes his own theory as "diabolical," and the Christian
one as consoling. He reasons that it is perhaps best to leave his fate
up to God, "renunciando a la previsión de los acontecimientos,"
which, he claims, amounts to little more than the "resabio pecador
del orgullo del hombre" (284-5). Ramón seems engaged in an ironic
yearning for fixity of any sort, and vacillates between the divine and
the absurd as potential sources.

It would be misleading to view this search for divine fixity as
absent in earlier nineteenth-century fiction writers, including Pérez
Caldos himself. Such anxieties — and responses to them — had argu-
ably been underway for centuries;^ not simply important for their
own times, turn-of-the-century Spanish writers inherited and passed
on problems, not always inspiring or aspiring. However, one does
wonder to what extent Pérez Galdós's disappointment in the failed
rise in the middle classes — a point made clear in his 1897 speech on
reception to the Real Academia Española, in which he also states his
consequent intention to change his "principios literarios" — inform his

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 13

literary project.'' It seems clear that Pérez Galdós's confidence in the
possibility of a coherent strategy was faltering, producing in him a
sensation not unlike the one Ramón experiences above: the disappear-
ance of unified purposefulness governing both universe and self, and
the logical consequence that this loss must be offset. Ramón resorts
to his grandson's "visions" that seem to be a direct channel to God,
suggesting that the cultural construction of the sacred experience, and
its relation to religión, have undergone significant shifts.

Many of the major Spanish writers of this period therefore occupy
an interstitial position regarding orthodox faith: God is regularly
addressed but frequently seen as not sufficiently guaranteeing the
self. Tradition is stretched and morphs in the writer's attempt to forge
myths appropriate to his or her times, ali as a means of understanding
and dignifying the contemporary world. Like the younger genera-
tion of Spanish writers, Pérez Galdós is operating both inside and
outside of the traditional conception of the sacred, namely, the God
of Christianity; in many cases (e.g. Pérez Galdós's Miau, Unamuno's
SMB, and Machado's "Profesión de fe"), the writer ultimately intro-
duces a highly individualized religión (this is perhaps what Machado
means when, through Juan de Mairena, he states that "los dioses
cambian por sí mismos, sin que nosotros podamos evitarlo, y se
introducen solos [. . .]") (Juan de Mairena 230). Particularly in the
case of Machado, Unamuno and Pérez Galdós, a thorough knowledge
of Christianity prevailed among contemporary Spanish writers, a
fact that clearly informs their work. Furthermore, this points up the
perils of seeking traces of the sacred within their texts, drawing as
they do upon inherited forms and yet refashioning them, secularizing
them. But in many ways the "quest for the sacred" they stage forms
part of the broader, modern strategy of self-coherence, an ideal that,
though impossible without a transcendem other can, in their case, be
approached by means of art.

In a sense, then, the new sacred is in many ways a dialectical inter-
change between traditional sources and present demands, between
the past and the ever modernizing present. From this perspective
SMB stands as both paradigm and rupture since it appropriates as
well as recasts the Christian myth. In fact, this very same "sacral-
izing" impulse is at play in nearly all of Unamuno's fictional works.
Of course, art's claim of endurance — its reification of sentiments — is
not of recent coinage. Examples abound in Shakespeare ("Not marble

14 ALRICK C. KNIGHTJR.

nor the guilded monuments of princes / shall outlive this powerful
rime" ["LV" 1-2]) and Cervantes's Dulcinea (herself a seemingly
transcendem value in the eyes of Don Quijote); in modern writers,
a similar gesture appears, such as when, in "Borges y yo," Borges
writes: "[EJstoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún
instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el otro [Borges]" (351). In Una-
muno, as well, we see the desire to reinstate fiction as a means of
embodying valúes in a world without essential forms. This is at the
heart of Unamuno's reading of Don Quijote, whose status he wishes
to privilege (just as Don Quijote elevates Dulcinea) and incorpórate
within the experience of modernity.

Most provocatively, the plain but curious fact again surfaces:
irrespective of the author's stance on religious belief, the "sacred" can
be enlisted to examine ostensibly non-religious matters such as com-
munity, authority and identity. In connection with this, a point made
eariier bears repeating: if SMB refashions the story of Christianity,
then this is so in the sense that Unamuno continues it under another,
secular ñame. SMB is not the story of humankind's salvation, but
rather about the power of belief and its ability to shore up identity by
insisting on the existence of some positive "truth" — regardless of how
we might choose to define the term.

Unamuno's pervasive skepticism, coupled with his unabated
desire to believe in a divine being and achieve immortality, has led
many critics to examine his works almost exclusively in the light of
his religious preoccupations. However, it is important to recognize
the recurrent theme of otherness Unamuno addresses as a means of
staving off the destructive effects of loneliness and doubt. An "enfer-
medad de conciencia," as he called it, the knowledge that one's death
is the end of everything forces an intensification of experience and
expresses the sadistic creativity and theatricality of selfhood. The
secular dimensión can be seen in his zeal to perform the role of creator
as a strategy meant to mirror himself and draw power from his own
lamentable condition.

In SMB, Angela functions as chronicler and narrator as well as
symbolic daughter and mother to Manuel. As her retrospective narra-
tion conciudes, she poses a question to which she provides no answer:
"¿Y yo, creo.-* [. . .] ¿Es que sé algo?, ¿es que creo algo?" (624). A
few lines later she enlarges the question: "¿Y éstos, los otros, los que
me rodean, creen? ¿Qué es eso de creer? Por lo menos, viven" (626).

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 15

Her ambivalence is also sustained by a statement that comes in an
earlier paragraph:

Así le ganó [a mi hermano Lázaro], en efecto, para su pia-
doso fraude; así le ganó con la verdad de muerte a la razón
de vida. Y así me ganó a mí, que nunca dejé trasparentar a
los otros su divino, su santísimo juego. Y es que creía y creo
que Dios Nuestro Señor, por no sé qué sagrados y no escu-
driñaderos designios, les hizo creer [a Manuel y Lázaro],
les hizo creerse incrédulos. Y que acaso en el acabamiento
de su tránsito se les cayó la venda. (625)

Angela recognizes JVlanuel's religious work to be a "piadoso fraude"
to which she, too, has been won over. But she also explains Manuel's
and Lázaro 's lack of faith in theological terms, reasoning that their
non-belief, imposed (as she states) by God, made them ideally suited
to guide the town. Unamuno's intervention — as the person now in pos-
session of Angela's chronicle — contributes to the discussion, thereby
enlarging the meaning of "belief." If the reader is aware of Unamuno's
stance on religión,^" it comes as no surprise that, as externai narra-
tor in SMB, he avoids mentioning the agnosticism that characterizes
Manuel. Instead, he affirms the "truth" of San Manuel:

De la realidad de este San Manuel Bueno, mártir, tal como
me le ha revelado su discípula e hija espiritual Angela
Carballino, de esta realidad no se me ocurre dudar. Creo
en ella más que creía el mismo santo; creo en ella más que
creo en mi propia realidad. (627)

Unamuno, Angela and Augusto Pérez all attest to Durkheim's firm
belief that "there are no false religions" (4): they stand as invitations
to think about the various forms of belief (in its broadest sense), and
how they shape self-consciousness. All three live uneasily due to the
ambiguity of existence, and all three question radically the taken-for-
granted assumptions about the coherence of identity. Here, perhaps, we
can establish a key point of articulation with certain modernist works
that point to a "second life," life lived and perpetuated in its "other"
aspects, despite their status as literary texts.^' That is, Unamuno's
short story nostalgically yearns for a great truth, a Lyotardian "grand

Í6 ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

narrative"'- (any totalizing or unified discourse — Marxism, capitalism,
Christianity — which attempts an all-encompassing account of history,
to the exclusión of "little" narratives. According to the French phi-
losopher, such explanatory theories ought to be met with suspicion or
"incredulity"). Angela describes Manuel's life work as both "piadoso"
and "fraudulento." A conventional reading of her remarks points
to the agnostic's dilemma. Interpreted more broadly, however, every
primary character — including Unamuno — has, for varying reasons,
redirected his or her attention from God to the mythical Manuel
(the notable exception, of course, is Manuel himself). The definition
of faith is thereby enlarged, allowing even liberal secularists such as
Lázaro to be classified as faithful believers. Each has been seduced by
the temptations of myth, yielding to the urge to kneel before some-
thing more powerful than oneself.

Along with Spain's politicai, economic and social institutions, the
country's cultural activity was itself being transformed by a seculariz-
ing orientation that, in the arts, dates most visibly from the Romantic
era. The metaphors have their own historicity: the search for God;
the "Logos"; a stable grounding; the "search for the sacred." I have
tried to demónstrate that much of circa-1900 fiction can be seen as
an intensified versión of this reconfiguration of some sort of lost
guarantor. Simply put, although religión and other valué systems serve
as constructive and stabilizing enterprises, the artistic process — aes-
thetics — perhaps most successfully satisfies the basic human need to
constantly reestablish a means of security and self-knowledge. Par-
ticularly in the age of technology and science, it is art — and the very
materiality of the médium — that therefore becomes intrinsically valu-
able because something is reaHzed through the process of creation that
cannot be achieved by any other means (divine, mechanical, etc.). Sim-
ilarly, Pérez Galdós, Unamuno, Machado and Jiménez exemplify their
period by embracing reality and accepting the tragedy of human life,
while at the same time attempting to transcend that reality. Crucially,
they do this at a time when ultimate truths — traditionally anchored in
the transcendent — stage a steady retreat. Whether manifesting an indi-
vidual or collective will, art works to remove us from ourselves, just
as the fictional Augusto allows Unamuno to move beyond himself — an
aesthetics drawn from a theological idiom, so to speak.

The conclusions of many of the above authors are, it seems
clear, in tensión with their desires. Since early nineteenth-century

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 1 7

Romanticism, many have argued along with Coleridge that "[n]o man
was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound
philosopher" (179). Art stands as evidence that, as human beings, we
are dependent on symbohsm, on representation; art is also symptom-
atic of the fact that humanity always seeks to overeóme ahenation.
The above authors were well aware that to be able to make important
decisions humankind must have a purpose, a visión of an ultimate
goal. The age of faith had a purpose — that of serving God, appeal-
ing to him as a source for questions of truth. The comfort of truth
claims completes individual and coUective human identity, a fact that
is attested to by the history of Western civilization and its subsequent
search for a non-transcendent ground for authority — a search depen-
dent on the hope that history might still have a telos. In this article I
have pursued the (to my mind) indisputable relationship between the
privileged status of art and the search for transcendence in a secular
and materialist age. In this sense, artistic creation (and aesthetics as a
category generally) might be viewed largely as an outlet for grief and
anxiery that is, at its roots, metaphysical. Particularly by the late nine-
teenth century, a period characterized by the twin "failures" of religión
and science, the role of literature seemingly becomes even more com-
pensatory, symbolically enacting the absence of some absolute, the
lack of fixity amidst an increasingly inscrutable world. I have also
suggested that many works of the period frequently gravitare toward
religious themes, while at the same time abusing their conventions and
original significance. In any event, it is clear that many of the works
of this period are inspired by more than mere "escapism," in which
the author strives to turn an intolerable, boorish or incoherent real-
ity into something more meaningful or more pleasant. Above ali, the
literature of the decades surrounding the year 1900 bears the marks
of both an intense questing and a wearisome struggle. The privileged
role of aesthetics in a world in which God has presumably retreated
suggests that the artist is ideally suited to seek viable substitutes. Or,
as Unamuno's unbelieving priest asserts: "¿Religión verdadera? Todas
las religiones son verdaderas, en cuanto hacen vivir espiritualmente
a los pueblos que las profesan" (SMB 245). Unamuno and many of
his contemporaries display an astute awareness of this dilemma, both
staging their own "quest for the sacred" while also inviting the reader
to reopen the possibilities created by a world in which God's absence
is, in a sense, still overwhelmingly present.

1 8 ALRICK C. KNIGHT, JR.

Notes

1. Other forms and contexts, for example, raise the issue of reason and
its relation to the irrational and madness; gender; the poUtics of the nature-
culture boundary, and so on.

2. The concept of the subHme, particularly Lyotard's rehabilitation of
the term, comes to mind.

3. Offering a different perspective on this same issue, David Jasper
follows the theologian Thomas Altizer, and persuasively argües for "the
apocalypse of the death of God" (98). That is, the death of God is in modern
times parlayed into a tireless recreation of and conversation with God (91).

4. Unamuno expHcitly addresses this urge in Del sentimiento trágico
de la vida (155).

5. Only the twin failures of reason and religión could prompt in
Machado the foUowing exasperating verses:

El hombre es por natura una bestia paradójica,
un animal absurdo que necesita lógica.
Creó de nada un mundo y, su obra terminada,
"Ya estoy en el secreto — se dijo — , todo es nada."
{CC "CXXXVI, XVI" 1-4).

6. These verses present a more complex and fractured view of a world,
one with no fixed moorings, and remind us that, despite the unmatched
authority that both religión and science have possessed, such messianic think-
ing is ultimately illusory.

7. For Machado, poetry cannot (and ought not) emancipate itself from
effects of time; the poet's task is to convey the experience of time, and for this
reason the poet is uniquely positioned to reproduce the sensation of reality.
Thus we find Machado implicitly shunning the notion of poetry as "immo-
bilizing" ("Ni mármol duro eterno / ni música ni pintura / sino palabra en el
tiempo" [CC "CLXIV" 1-3].)

8. Many scholars have argued that the story of modern art begins in
the eighteenth century, as both an extensión of and a reaction against the
Enlightenment disenchantment of the world. Most significantly, the (Roman-
tic) sublime and Gothic fiction, with all the latter's supernatural entailments,
reflected the necessity of fiUing a void created by God's absence. Roberts
offers a succinct summary: "Modern art is the continuation of the sacred by
other means" (173).

9. In an apocalyptic tone, he states: "Podría decirse que la sociedad
llega a un punto de su camino en que se ve rodeada de ingentes rocas que

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 19

le cierran el paso [. . .]. Contábamos, sin duda, los incansables viajeros con
que una voz sobrenatural nos dijera desde lo alto: por aquí se va, y nada
más que por aquí. Pero la voz sobrenatural no hiere aún nuestros oídos, y
los más sabios de entre nosotros se enredan en interminables controversias
sobre cuál pueda o deba ser la hendidura o pasadizo por el cual podremos
salir de este hoyo pantanoso en que nos revolvemos y asfixiamos" ("Sociedad
presente" 475).

10. 5MB was pubUshed in 1931, nearly thirty years after El sentimiento
trágico de la vida, which sets forth the theme of religious crisis that would
run through most of his subsequent works.

11. This observation is further corroborated by Unamuno's refusal
to divulge how he happened upon the "document." The Bahktinian-like
cacophony of voices and perspectives is a pointed inheritance from the lost
manuscript the author of Dort Quijote claims to find in a Toledo market.

12. One may take this a bit further and make a bid for the text's post-
modernist qualities: in many ways it liberates itself from the requirement of
great truths and avowedly engages in the play of forms (particularly when
Unamuno himself appears and proclaims his belief in "la realidad de este
San Manuel Bueno" (627)). In other words, perhaps this is Unamuno's way
of foregrounding and intensifying the work's complexities — where meaning
and "truth" are contested and fragmented — or, conversely, of simply sidestep-
ping them. After all, precisely what is the "reaUdad" of "este San Manuel
Bueno"?

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Eros en una isla maldita: alegoría, poder
y sexualidad en Casa de juegos de Daína
Chaviano

Maribel San Juan

Florida International University

Casa de juegos es una de las cuatro novelas reunidas en el ciclo La
Habana oculta que la escritora cubana Daína Chaviano dedica a su
ciudad, donde se muestra el drama psicosocial que envuelve a sus
personajes en la Cuba de finales de los 80 y durante toda la década de
los 90. Estos momentos fueron de gran significación dentro del ámbito
cultural y político de la isla debido a la crisis mundial del sistema
comunista y a su repercusión en Cuba. A finales de la década de los
80, ante la apertura política ocurrida en las naciones socialistas del
este de Europa, el gobierno de Cuba asumió una política de rigidez,
intolerancia y aislamiento, junto a medidas económicas muy austeras
debidas a la pérdida de subsidio del campo socialista. Esta reacción
tuvo consecuencias psicológicas y sociales devastadoras para toda una
generación de jóvenes, cuyas edades oscilaban entre los 20 y 30 años,
y provocó un exilio masivo de intelectuales, artistas y profesionales
en la década de los 90. Entre estos jóvenes que escapan de la isla se
encuentra la autora de esta novela.

En esta novela, la segunda del ciclo, que la autora escribe tras su
salida al exilio, se percibe una fuerte dosis de erotismo combinada con
elementos fantásticos, simbólicos y mitológicos. Estos elementos a su
vez se mezclan con situaciones de la vida cotidiana donde se refleja
una realidad social. La autora establece una dinámica entre lo real y
lo irreal para diseñar un cuadro surrealista del cubano y su cultura,
donde se sientan las pautas para una tesis política.

Gaia es una estudiante universitaria que se involucra en una rela-
ción sexual que le proporciona gran placer. Después de la muerte de
su amante — lo que la hace caer en un estado transitorio de frigidez —
busca la ayuda de una santera. Las recomendaciones de ésta la llevan
a encontrarse con personajes que representan a los dioses de la religión

22 MESTER, VOL. XXXY (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 23

afrocubana, quienes la introducen en el ambiente onírico de una mis-
teriosa casa de La Habana. Los seres mitológicos que habitan dicha
casa juegan a un exacerbado erotismo que trasciende las barreras de
los sentidos: la experiencia sexual alcanza matices sadomasoquistas
que llevan al cuerpo y la mente de Gaia a explorar niveles sensitivos
e imágenes desconocidas. Su encuentro y relación con Eri — hombre y
dios afrocubano a la vez — definen la trama de la historia. A partir de
la dinámica entre el poder y el sexo se alcanza a proyectar el plano
personal de Gaia dentro de un plano más amplio, que abarca todo el
drama social cubano.

Los objetivos de este trabajo son, por un lado, interpretar la tesis
de Chaviano, que consiste en la denuncia al sistema represivo impe-
rante en Cuba, sus métodos de poder y el consecuente caos psicológico
y social que ha provocado en las últimas décadas; y por otro, explicar
la dinámica que se establece entre la creación literaria y la sexualidad,
así como el papel que entra a jugar, dentro del proceso creativo del
autor, el mundo extra-textual. Abordaremos estas ideas usando como
base teórica a Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud y las perspectivas teó-
ricas postmodernistas de Silvia Nagy-Zekmi y Eric S. Rabkin.

Teoría foucaultiana del poder y la sexualidad
Michel Foucault sostiene que el poder, para ejercer su disciplina,
requiere de "enclosure": un lugar aparte de los demás y encerrado en
sí mismo, que provea un espacio protegido de disciplinaria monotonía
{Discipline 141). Este espacio en la novela es la misteriosa casa adonde
Gaia llega conducida por Oshún, diosa del amor y del placer de la
religión afrocubana, "Algo o alguien había prohibido la comunicación
con el exterior." Por eso el narrador se pregunta:

¿Y cómo sabría el mundo que ella deseaba ser rescatada si
ni siquiera le permitían hacer una señal? Jardines exube-
rantes bloqueaban el acceso visual a la calle. Había lápices
y papeles sobre algunas mesas, pero ningún sobre o buzón
donde colocarlos. Los teléfonos eran meros objetos de
adorno. Gaia descolgó varios, y la línea arrojó en su oído el
soplo del vacío 1. . .1 ¿a quién pedir ayuda si el dueño o los
dueños del recinto controlaban cada puerta, cada ventana,
cada balcón} (Chaviano 80; énfasis mío)

24 MARIBEL SAN JUAN

La casa, protegida por sus jardines y paredes, es la metáfora de la
isla, que a su vez está rodeada de mar, produciendo esa sensación de
lejanía y encierro en sí misma que la hace "nodriza de una pequeña
civilización, como un asteroide que contuviera todo lo necesario para
la supervivencia de una especie distinta que viviera a espaldas del uni-
verso" (Chaviano 79). Foucault insiste en que la disciplina impuesta
a un determinado conglomerado humano (en este caso, la impuesta
por parte del Estado cubano a los habitantes de la isla para que per-
manezcan en el país y obedezcan sus leyes) requiere de vigilancia: por
medio de ésta se consigue que el poder disciplinario se convierta en un
sistema "integrado" {Discipline 176). Al intentar acercarse a balcones
o puertas de la casa "alguien se lo impedía siempre: jóvenes que juga-
ban a su alrededor, o atletas que montaban guardia'^ (Chaviano 80;
énfasis mío). En esta casa-isla, la realidad adquiere un matiz surreal
y pesadillesco; Gaia sentía "alucinar sin tregua, confundir el rumbo,
perder para siempre la certeza de lo que es verdadero [. . .] y todo ello,
con la angustia de quien desea escapar y no puede" (82).

En la realidad que sirve de inspiración para esta novela, el Estado
cubano siempre ha instrumentado diversas medidas de vigilancia
generalizada. Desde los niveles mínimos de la estructura social (fami-
lia, vecindario, centro de trabajo o de estudio) hasta los niveles más
abarcadores de la misma (comunicaciones, guardacostas, control de
las salidas y entradas del país) se establece un sistema casi perfecto
de control a nivel nacional. Gaia también percibe la asfixiante sen-
sación que experimentan tantos cubanos de estar enterrados vivos:
"[l]a idea de estar muerta se alojó en su ánimo consecuentemente."
No obstante, ella se aferra "a la esperanza de hallarse en un infierno
transitorio" (93).

Sin embargo, a nadie parece molestarle, porque en aquel lugar
se crean las condiciones propicias para otro tipo de escape: el sexual.
"Allí vegetaba una realidad tentadora^ capaz de sumir a sus habitantes
en una orgía que les hacía olvidar los rigores de ese encierro" (80;
énfasis mío). Los dioses afrocubanos, bellos y sensuales, son los guías
de la joven y los anfitriones de esta alegórica casa de juegos eróticos,
donde Inle, el orisha que representa la figura jerárquica del poder en
la mansión, efectúa un ritual para mostrar su potencia sexual. Esta
potencia sexual exhibida por el orisha frente a sus obedientes espec-
tadores es la forma alegórica de presentar un poder político que,
mediante muestras de superioridad y fuerza — tanto en manifestaciones

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 25

públicas como en operaciones internas de los agentes de la seguridad
del Estado — impone sumisión y rendición al sacrificio de parte de la
mayoría del pueblo.

Majestuoso como un espectro, se acercó a uno de los
lechos, abrió su capa y mostró un cuerpo tan maravilloso
como el fúlgido miembro que ofreció a una mujer 1. . .] iba
derramando su preciosa esperma en los receptáculos que
con gusto se rendían al sacrificio; [quienes le ven el rostro]
quedan atados a su voluntad y ya no pueden negarle nada.
(79, 89-90)

Foucault afirma que el papel de la ceremonia política ha sido el
de hacer ver una excesiva aunque regulada manifestación de poder:
"a spectacular expression of potency, an 'expenditure', exaggerated
and coded, in which power renewed its vigouf {Discipline 187-88;
énfasis mío). La disciplina lleva su propio tipo de ceremonia ostentosa
en forma de "parade," donde los sujetos se presentan como objetos
que muestran su poder en la medida en que son observados por las
multitudes {Discipline 187-88). En Casa de juegos, la espectacular
expresión de potencia (sexual) de Inle simboliza el poder del Estado,
el cual manipula (sexualmente) a aquella "tierra de nadie que parecía
gobernada por la voluntad de algún dios caprichoso y febril" (79).
La principal víctima de este "dios caprichoso y febril" es Gaia: mujer,
joven, de aspecto infantil, alegórica imagen de la inocencia y vulnera-
bilidad de un pueblo donde, al parecer, el sexo se ha convertido en la
"raison de tout" {Histoire 103). De esta forma explica Foucault cómo
en la cultura occidental se crea una lógica del sexo, donde a éste se le
confiere una relevancia social que nos somete enteramente — "nous,
notre corps, notre ame, notre individualité, notre histoire" — a una
lógica de la concupiscencia y del deseo (103). Se exacerba entonces el
apetito sexual y la lujuria a partir de la existencia de un instrumento
represivo que forma parte del aparato de poder llamado "dispositif
de sexualité" (110). En el texto, se describe la cultura de un pueblo
caribeño, cuya natural sensualidad se convierte en una vía para cana-
lizar frustraciones espirituales y materiales. La Rampa es "el ardiente
corazón" de la ciudad:

26 MARIBEL SAN JUAN

Y en esa ruta, la más concurrida del país, las miradas de los
cubanos ""normalmente provocativas — adquirían un brío
inusitado. El soplo de los alisios azotaba los cuerpos, levan-
tando oleadas de vapor y sudores almibarados. Multitud de
ojos resbalaban sobre pieles ajenas, como una lluvia ácida
que desgarrara las ropas en plena vía pública. Expuestos a
la inclemencia de tales elementos, deambulaban cazadores
y víctimas por esa calle lúbrica y siempre húmeda de deseo.
(Chaviano 119-20; énfasis mío)

Se crea una dependencia psicológica hacia todo lo que conduzca a
saciar un voraz e "inusitado" apetito sexual, que en vez de reprimirse,
como suele ocurrir en Occidente, se exacerba, haciendo disparar el
"dispositivo de la sexualidad" en un sentido opuesto al de la repre-
sión. Al liberarse este tabú por medio de la apertura sexual, se puede
caer en el error de pensar que se consiguió transgredir las normas esta-
blecidas por el Estado. Foucault advierte que "c'est cette désirabilité
que nous fait croire que nous affirmons contre tout pouvoir les droits
de notre sexe [...]. Ne pas croire qu'en disant oui au sexe, on dit non
au pouvoir; on suit au contraire le fil du dispositif general de sexua-
lité" {Histoire 207-08; énfasis mío). Lo que nos dice Foucault es que
esta supuesta liberación no constituye un desafío a la represión insti-
tucionalizada. Gaia se percata de esto al decirle a Eri: "[s]igo sin creer
que la cama sea la única solución para este desbarajuste" (Chaviano
169). Para Foucault, este "dispositivo de la sexualidad" es un instru-
mento que trabaja en ambas direcciones, siempre a favor del poder,
y por lo tanto no representa un verdadero desafío a la institución
del Estado. Este problema se resolvería, según Foucault, rompiendo
con los patrones establecidos,^ o sea mediante un giro táctico y total
(retournement) de los diversos mecanismos de la sexualidad que vayan
en contra del poder y que a su vez permitan reafirmar otros valores
éticos que el establishment no reconoce:

C'est de l'instance du sexe qu'il faut s'affranchir si, par
un retournement tactique des divers mécanismes de la
sexualité, on veut faire valoir contre les prises du pouvoir,
les corps, les plaisirs, les savoirs, dans leur multiplicité et
leur possibilite de résistance. Contre le dispositif de sexua-
lité, le point d'appui de la contre-attaque ne doit pas être

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 27

le sexe-désir, mais les corps et les plaisirs. (Histoire 208;
énfasis mío)

Foucault se declara a favor de una liberación sexual dei "cuerpo" y los
"placeres," pero en contra de "le sexe-désir" o "dispositivo sexual"
como instrumento regulador. Éste es precisamente el instrumento
del que se vale "la misteriosa organización de Eri," que no acude
al "enfrentamiento" y cuya "herramienta conspirativa era bastante
extraña":

Toda la energía empleada en cuestionar órdenes absurdas
había sido moldeada — sin que ella se diera cuenta — por sus
peculiares experiencias sexuales. Primero, la condicionaron
a obedecer; después, tras hacerle saltar las barreras de su
libido, fue liberada de esas ataduras que suelen originar
mayores represiones. (Chaviano 167-68; énfasis mío)

En la solución foucaultiana, no se produce una ruptura con el
instrumento manipulativo del poder, pues lo que propone Foucault
es desprenderse de las ataduras y convenciones del Estado. En la
novela, el Estado es quien manipula a la organización de Eri y usa
ese "dispositivo sexual" como instrumento regulador a favor de sus
propios intereses. Para Gaia, sin embargo, ese mecanismo funcionaba
al lograr liberarla de sus ataduras: "forzar los límites de su erotismo
se convertía en un mecanismo de cordura porque se estaba rebelando
contra algo que sí podía vencer" (167). Este "mecanismo de cordura"
representa un arma perfecta al servicio del poder "y en una prisión
social podía adquirir trascendencia catártica" al purificar (o expulsar)
los deseos sexuales y aceptar una libertad ilusoria, que únicamente
conseguía aplazar el instinto de resistencia.

Teoría freudiana de los instintos

Como el propio Foucault plantea: "les innombrables théoriciens et
practiciens de la chair avaient deja fait de l'homme l'enfant d'un sexe
impérieux et intelligible" {Histoire 103). Se refiere a la trayectoria
teórica y práctica de Sigmund Freud, quien ya había enfatizado la
presencia de instintos sexuales desde las edades más tempranas del
desarrollo del individuo. En Casa de juegos vemos cómo el placer que
se experimenta a partir de la satisfacción de los instintos "salvajes" o

28 MARI BEL SAN JUAN

"no domesticados" es mucho mayor que la de los instintos del ego,
determinados por patrones de conducta sociales. Esto, según Freud,
viene dado por la irresistibilidad de los instintos "perversos" y la
atracción que sienten los individuos hacia lo prohibido (29).

En el texto observamos cómo en una sociedad en crisis, donde pri-
man las carencias materiales — "en su vecindario no había electricidad,
es decir, no había radio, ni televisión, ni ventilador, ni posibilidades de
leer" (Chaviano 122) — y donde pesan aún más las espirituales — "[la]
claridad invitaba al estatismo, a la inacción, al estancamiento de las
posibilidades. Era como si la llegada del sol paralizara las volunta-
des" (122) — esta forma permitida de liberación sexual funciona como
válvula de escape. Se subliman los deseos de rebelarse políticamente a
través de un proceso de "satisfacciones sustitutivas" (Freud 23).

Mientras que en la sociedad descrita por Freud se disminuye
el sufrimiento humano por medio de la sustitución del Eros por
actividades que producen placer intelectual y artístico, o que con-
llevan a pensar y actuar (23-24), en el contexto de Casa de juegos,
se sustituyen la acción y el pensamiento — instintos del ego que irre-
mediablemente traerían una convulsión social — por el placer erótico
desordenado y promiscuo. Este último tiene la ventaja de ser aplicable
a la mayor parte de los individuos; en cambio, los placeres "finos" y
"elevados" inspirados por el ego poseen una moderada intensidad y
no son directamente sensoriales, por eso Freud afirma que "the weak
point of this method is that it is not applicable generally: it is accessi-
ble to only a few people" (30).

En la sociedad cubana de las últimas décadas, tanto la necesidad
de evasión como de reafirmación psicológica a través de la sexualidad,
dan paso a una tendencia a probarlo todo. Gaia se siente seducida
por Oshún, de cuya atracción trata de escapar, aunque todos sus
esfuerzos resultan inútiles. Al otro día parece confusa: "[u]n cosquilleo
le apretaba la garganta: tenía la sensación de flotar, pero al mismo
tiempo una náusea le ahogaba. Sabía que aquello era resultado de un
condicionamiento: la sospecha de haber hecho algo prohibido [. . .].
Y, no obstante, siempre llegaba la euforia de la fiberación" (99). Una
relación homoerótica, sin embargo, no pasaba de ser, en un mundo
orgiástico, una variante más de la diversión. Gaia no estaba en la
casa del amor o de la pasión, sino simplemente en una casa de juegos.
Además, todo era parte de un plan concebido por Inle y Oshún, ésta
sabía que aquél haría el papel de "voyeur voluntario" al responderle

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 29

a Gaia: es "Inle [. . .]. Le gusta mirar" (93). Las dos mujeres han sido
observadas durante todo el acto: "[e]l clímax la sacudió hasta hacerle
perder la noción de lo que la rodeaba. Ni siquiera advirtió el baño de
leche azul que caía sobre ella, desde el borde de la cama, donde Inle
había observado el final del juego sáfico" (95). El erotismo lésbico en
Casa de juegos ayuda a completar el proyecto de liberación ilusoria
mediante la concesión de una "completa satisfacción,"- mientras que
en la sociedad a partir de la cual Freud basa su argumento, el indi-
viduo sexualmente maduro encuentra restringida su elección al sexo
opuesto,^ satisfaciéndose así sólo una mitad de la "doble demanda"
en virtud de una intrínseca bisexualidad humana (61-62).

Las relaciones de Gaia se caracterizan por una dependencia de
dominación: "a ella siempre le habían gustado los hombres altos; de
esos que la obligaban a doblar el cuello hasta casi fracturarse una
vértebra, como si estuviera frente a un altar donde hay que elevar la
mirada para ver a Cristo en su lejana cruz" (Chaviano 18). El texto
nos presenta una constante: la relación dominador-sumiso, que se
observa en las descripciones de las aventuras sadomasoquistas de la
protagonista con sus amantes. El instinto de destrucción y la agresi-
vidad implícitos en toda relación sadomasoquista está acompañado,
asegura Freud, por un alto grado de disfrute narcisista por parte del
sujeto sádico, cuya aspiración es la de satisfacer deseos de omnipoten-
cia y de control sobre el medio (81). No es entonces una coincidencia
que tanto los deseos de los amantes de Gaia como las aspiraciones del
Estado totalitario sean los mismos.

La actitud del Pintor, primer amante de Gaia en la novela, es otro
ejemplo de relación dominador-sumiso. Por eso ella, "obediente — ¿qué
otra opción tenía sino rendirse a los impulsos de su instinto? — abrió
las piernas para sentarse a horcajadas. Ahí estaba la bestezuela morti-
ficante, la sádica que se movía gozosa después de haber sido liberada"
(Chaviano 24; énfasis mío). Gaia se deja "conducir como una virgen
rota y alucinada" (25) porque, a pesar de todo, su conflicto se había
resuelto; había experimentado lo que, según Freud, constituye el
"prototipo de toda felicidad" (56). Todas sus vivencias eróticas pos-
teriores— su primer encuentro con Eri, sus recuerdos de la experiencia
con el bailarín cuando era niña, la escena erótico-surrealista con el
contorsionista en la casa de juegos, las escenas eróticas con Oshún e
Inle — son ejemplos de sadomasoquismo, en los cuales Gaia se resiste,
sin conseguir éxito alguno, al placer del Eros: "[djolor y caricias.

30 MARIBEL SAN JUAN

suavidad y espinas: de eso estaba hecho el placer" (Chaviano 75). Por
medio de la manipulación del instinto libidinal se ejerce un dominio
sin "consentimiento genuino,"'' donde predomina el control del sujeto
masculino sobre otro más débil: el femenino, sin importar, para esta
definición, cuan "sutiles" o "estilizadas" hayan sido dichas relacio-
nes (Fortune 47, 77). Este contexto personal alcanza en el texto una
dimensión social, y Oshún se lo explica a Gaia: "[l]o que ves es un
reflejo de lo que ocurre allá afuera, al otro lado de la reja. Sólo que
a otro nivel [. . .]. O una alegoría. Tómalo como quieras" (Chaviano
87). La protagonista intuye que la clave para entender lo que le
sucedía en la casa mutante se encontraba en aquellos dos conceptos:
''parodia y reflejo"" (88; énfasis mío).

Las escenas eróticas en la casa de juegos se vuelven cada vez
más macabras, fantasmagóricas y grotescas (güijes, espectro, esque-
leto), sugiriéndole al lector un proceso involutivo de degeneración,
decadencia y desintegración, asociado con el sistema represivo que
impera en la isla. Esta decadencia manifestada por los seres que pro-
tagonizan las acciones en el contexto de la casa es usada por la autora
para mostrar la propia decadencia del régimen cubano. Gaia — como
Cuba — emite "alaridos mentales" al sentir una "frialdad ósea que
pugnaba por penetrarla" y unos "dientes helados que picoteaban sus
pechos [. . .] su inconsciencia la trasladó a mil años luz del horror que
luchaba por poseerla" (Chaviano 145). Era el asco de mucha gente,
una mezcla de dolor punzante en el centro del cuerpo y de vergüenza
por el atropello.

El amante-orisha (Eri-Inle) se presta a "salvar" y "proteger" a
Gaia mediante el proceso de libertad ilusoria, usando el "dispositivo
de sexualidad" descrito por Foucault, y explica: "aquí la rebelión no
sirve de nada. Hay que ser cuidadoso [. . .] es el único modo de sobre-
vivir: mintiendo y fingiendo las veinticuatro horas" (Chaviano 164).
Quienes apelaban al sexo para liberarse se salvaban — de esta forma
se salvó Gaia de no ser expulsada de la universidad," quienes, por el
contrario, se valían de "métodos más convencionales [. . .] sufrían
golpizas y encierros interminables" (167). Entonces, ¿era Eri un orisha
protector o un agente de la Seguridad del Estado? ¿Sus intenciones
eran sinceras con Gaia o era un aliado del gobierno?^ Su discurso era
el del dominador que intenta convencer — ahora por medio de pala-
bras— al sujeto pasivo y sumiso que es Gaia: "Debes creerlo todo. La
única manera de tranquilizarte era hacerte sentir libre, y eso es algo

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 31

que aqui sólo se puede conseguir a través de los instintos porque en la
vida real es imposible" (Chaviano 169; énfasis mío). Además, el efecto
catártico que Eri-Inle usaba, como afirma Adorno, había sido, desde
la época de Aristóteles, un aliado de la represión.^

Teorías posmodernistas. La creación literaria, la sexualidad y
el espacio extra-textual

Cuba es un "espacio políticamente sofocado y sexualmente sobree-
rotizado," afirma Silvia Nagy-Zekmi (216). A partir de su análisis
de la relación entre la creación literaria y la sexualidad en Antes que
anochezca de Reinaldo Arenas, y que Nagy-Zekmi clasifica como un
discurso homotextual, podemos definir el de Chaviano como un dis-
curso erotextual, es decir, la representación de Cuba mediante un filtro
de experiencias eróticas, donde la creación literaria y la sexualidad se
encuentran estrechamente unidas. Si para Reinaldo Arenas esa unión
significa "su posición contra la censura de la orientación sexual y la de
la disidencia política" (Nagy-Zekmi 216), para Chaviano la relación
entre el Eros y la creación literaria sirve para rebelarse y desafiar al
régimen social y político imperante en la isla. Su insistencia en descrip-
ciones sexuales, con lujo de detalles estéticamente elaborados, pero
que suministran al texto fuertes sensaciones y representaciones eróti-
cas, ponen de manifiesto un discurso que se rebela con las armas del
Eros ante la frustración, la represión y la censura. De igual manera,
se encuentra presente en el texto el concepto de la recodificación,^ es
decir "la manifestación de una actitud subversiva y la deliberada des-
consideración de normas sociales" (Nagy-Zekmi 216-17). En Casa de
juegos, Chaviano plantea una relación entre deseo y poder que refleja
su preocupación por una "identidad sexual y nacional," donde se
representa una Cuba "políticamente reprimida" y "liberada sexual-
mente" a partir de la construcción de mitos y símbolos que dibujan
"la sexualidad tropical en un medio paradisíaco" (Nagy-Zekmi 218).
El espacio utópico creado por la autora, dada su condición de exi-
liada, nos lleva a formular la posibilidad de un elemento nostálgico
dentro de la construcción narrativa (Nagy-Zekmi 218), que podemos
corroborar con las propias palabras de Chaviano:

La Habana es un mito, un sueño lejano [. . .] es otra vida,
una ciudad que nunca recuperaré. Es el lugar donde nací y
crecí, un mundo perdido para siempre. Aunque algún día

32 MARIBEL SAN JUAN

vuelva a caminar por sus calles, La Habana que conocí
habrá muerto [. . .] sólo existirá en mi recuerdo [. . .]. Yo
vivía en una ciudad maravillosa — pese a sus problemas — ,
y no lo supe hasta que la abandoné. (Badajoz)**

La autora ofrece una "visión del escape'"' (Rabkin 42), que no se
basa en una interpretación convencional del término "escape" como
sinónimo de frivolo. Esta nueva definición del término se refiere a
que del mismo modo que lo fantástico presupone la reversión total
de las normas en el universo narrado, éste también puede ofrecer
un giro total de las normas establecidas en el mundo extra-textual.
Si es cierto que tales normas — el caos, la degradación del hombre y
la falta de motivaciones para vivir — representan impedimentos para
el crecimiento del espíritu humano, entonces podemos decir que la
reversión fantástica que crea un mundo narrativo donde las normas
se subvierten sirve como forma de escape psicológico. Por tanto, la
literatura fantástica es una forma de consuelo ante la incapacidad del
autor para cambiar el mundo (Rabkin 42). Chaviano nos muestra su
habilidad para sustituir las normas que rigen el mundo extra-textual
por un grupo de normas totalmente opuestas, que son las que definen
el mundo fantástico descrito en Casa de juegos. Su escape no es una
fuga de la realidad; representa, por el contrario, un potente instru-
mento subversivo que se basa precisamente en la reconfiguración
fantástica de las leyes que rigen el mundo extra-textual. El universo
de fantasía de la autora responde así a una necesidad psicológica de
actuar y de rebelarse (Rabkin 44).

Conclusiones

En este estudio hemos establecido un diálogo entre Casa de juegos
y algunas de las más importantes teorías crítico-literarias, lo cual
nos ha permitido redefinir la tesis de Chaviano, así como establecer
fundamentales relaciones entre la creación literaria, la sexualidad y
el ámbito social en que se desenvuelve el autor. A partir de dichos
objetivos concluimos que la casa de juegos se puede ver como una
alegoría, o parodia, de la isla, representándose así la degeneración
y el caos sociopolítico existente en Cuba en las últimas décadas,
donde el erotismo — lidereado en el texto por los dioses de la religión
afrocubana — se convierte en una forma de liberación catártica que,
además de ser una falsa libertad, funciona como aliado del poder y

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 33

mecanismo perfecto de control en el marco de la sociedad, al sustituir
los deseos de rebelarse por la satisfacción de los instintos sexuales. Sin
embargo, Casa de juegos también nos ofrece la posibilidad de escoger
otros caminos menos arriesgados, mediante un final abierto que no da
ninguna respuesta, pero que sí deja encendida una luz de esperanza en
medio de tanta miseria humana, a través de la llegada del amor.

Por otra parte, se establece una relación entre poder y deseo a
dos niveles: a partir de esta premisa observamos la dicotomía domi-
nador-sumiso, tanto en el plano personal de la protagonista con sus
amantes, como en el plano sociopolítico. El sujeto dominante se vale
de intensas sensaciones eróticas y artes sadomasoquistas, así como del
alucinante mundo onírico, mitológico y surreal de la casa de juegos
para manipular a su víctima, lo que provoca en ella un deseado senti-
miento de evasión ante la cruda realidad del día a día a la que, como
cada habitante de la isla, se tiene que enfrentar.

Podemos identificar el texto de Chaviano con tres elementos aso-
ciados entre sí. En primer lugar, el discurso erotextual, que ofrece la
imagen de la sociedad mediante experiencias eróticas, siendo esta ima-
gen un fiel reflejo de la realidad actual que vive la isla y sugiriendo a la
vez la estrecha relación que entre la creación literaria y la sexualidad
se establece. En segundo lugar, el concepto de decodificación, donde
Chaviano desafía las normas establecidas por el Estado represivo a
través de una actitud disidente, que se basa en un discurso erótica-
mente transgresivo. Y en tercer lugar, la visión de escape, la cual no
presupone evasión por parte de la autora ni de los lectores, sino una
negación, a partir de la literatura fantástica, de las normas que rigen
el mundo extra-textual. De esta forma la autora desafía la realidad
social en virtud de una necesidad de expresarse, dada su imposibilidad
de objetivamente cambiar el caos psicológico y social que la circunda.
Si para Daína Chaviano escribir literatura fantástica representa un
consuelo espiritual, para Gaia el único consuelo posible es un tipo
de rebelión que por el momento tiene que ser secreta y que se lleva
a cabo con la colaboración de Eros, "el dios secreto de nuestra isla"
(Chaviano 170).

34 MARIBEL SAN JUAN

Notas

1. Me refiero al artículo "Nietzsche, la Généalogie, L'Histoire," donde
Michel Foucault critica y niega los códigos éticos tradicionales establecidos
por el poder centralizado del establishment, que se manifiestan en el discurso
moral y científico de la historia.

2. En las palabras de Freud: "Sometimes one seems to perceive that
it is not only the pressure or civilization but something in the nature of the
function itself which denles us fiill satisfaction and urges us along other paths
[. . .]. Man is an animal organism with (like others) an unmistakably bisexual
disposition. The individual corresponds to a fusión of two symmetrical
halves, of which, according to some investigators, one is purely male and
the other female [. . .] if we assume [the theory of bisexuality] as a fact that
each individual seeks to satisfy both male and female wishes in his sexual
life, we are prepared for the possibility that those (two sets of) demands are
not fulfilled by the same object, and that they interfere with each other unless
they can be kept apart and each impulse guided into a particular channel that
is suited to it" (61-62).

3. No debemos olvidar que estas teorías surgen durante las primeras
décadas del siglo XX. Hoy en día, aunque la homosexualidad y la bisexua-
lidad no se consideran enfermedades psicológicas, y dichas relaciones pueden
llegar a ser más o menos aceptadas, todavía la heterosexualidad es el patrón
cultural predominante.

4. "Genuine consent," explica Marie M. Fortune, "is not to be
confused with acquiescence, submission, or going along in order to avoid an
argument" (47).

5. La manipulación de la religión afrocubana en la isla no es un fenó-
meno desconocido. El hecho de que un gran número de cubanos practiquen
alguna forma de religión afrocubana da a algunos de sus representantes una
imagen de poder que hace que el Estado se vea de cierta manera obligado a
pactar con ellos. Para profundizar en este tema, ver Ayorinde 159-160.

6. "The purging of the affects in Aristotle's Poetics no longer makes
equally frank admission of its devotion to ruling interests, yet it supports
them all the same in that his ideal of sublimation entrusts art with the task
of providing aesthetic semblance as a substitute satisfaction for the bodily
satisfaction of the targeted public's instincts and needs: Catharsis is a purging
action directed against the affects and an ally of repression" (Adorno 238).

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 35

7. Según el concepto desarrollado por la crítica feminista (Guerra,
Felman, entre otros) para enfatizar la necesidad de cambiar las normas esté-
ticas de la representación del sujeto. Ver Nagy-Zekmi 216.

8. Tomado de la entrevista concedida a Joaquín Badajoz y del artículo
escrito por Michelle Herrera MuUigan. Ver Obras citadas.

9. "Conventionally, escape, when used of 'escape literature,' implies
a general evasión of responsibilities on the part of the reader who should,
after all, spend his time on 'serious literature.' This is a pernicious dichotomy
that derives from two misconceptions: first, that 'seriousness' is better than
'escape;' second, that escape is an indiscriminate rejection of orden Both
these misconceptions owe something to the Protestant work ethic" (Rabkin
43^4).

Obras citadas

Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1997.
Ayorinde, Christine. Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Iden-

tity. Gamesville: UP of Florida, 2004.
Badajoz, Joaquín. "Los mundos de Daína Chaviano: donde todas las

posibilidades son reales." 1 Dic 2005 <http://www.dainachaviano.com/

entrevista_revista_glamour.html>.
Chaviano, Daína. Casa de juegos. Barcelona: Planeta, 1999.
Fortune, Marie M. Love Does No Harm. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York:

Pantheon, 1977.
. Histoire de la sexualité: la volonté de savoir. París: Gallimard,

1976.
. "Nietzsche, La Généalogie, L'Histoire." Hoinmage a Jean Hyppolite.

París: PUF, 1971. 145-172.
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton,

1989.
Herrera Mulligan, Michelle. "Cuando la ciencia-ficción se une con el gla-

mour." 1 Dic 2005 <http://www.dainachaviano.com/articulo_criticas

.html>.
Nagy-Zekmi, Silvia. "La Cuba homotextual de Arenas: deseo y poder en

Antes que anochezca." Sexualidad y nación. Ed. Daniel Balderston.

Pittsburgh: Biblioteca América, 2000. 213-23.
Rabkin, Eric. The Fantastic in Literature. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1976.

Mirando su entorno: el cine de Gonzalo
Justiniano

Leah Kemp

University of California, Los Angeles

El cineasta chileno Gonzalo Justiniano nació en 1955 y estudió en
la escuela Lumière en Francia. Su filmografía incluye los siguientes
largometrajes: B-Happy (2004); El Leyton (2002); Tuve un sueño
contigo (1999); Anmesia (1994); Caluga o menta (1990); Sussi (1988);
e Hijos de la guerra fría (1985). En esta entrevista hecha en octubre
del 2005 en Santa Mónica, California, Justiniano habla de su carrera
profesional, que comenzó durante el régimen militar y continúa hasta
el presente.

Aunque Justiniano niega la posibilidad de definir un cine especí-
ficamente "chileno," la historia del país surge una y otra vez en esta
discusión de sus proyectos pasados y presentes, situando su cine en el
Chile que ha vivido.

Mester: Quería empezar con su trayectoria. ¿En qué año empezó a
hacer cine en Chile después de llegar de Francia? Fue Francia, ¿no?

Gonzalo Justiniano: Sí, bueno, yo fui, salí de Chile en el año '76.
Estuve en Europa, en París viviendo hasta el año '82-'83. Estudié cine
en la escuela de Lumière de París. Después hice unos trabajos para
la televisión francesa, y también cosas como semi-clandestinas en el
año '82-'83.

M: ¿Clandestinas en Chile?

GJ: Volvía a Chile, filmaba y salía. Y después hice varias cosas
con la televisión americana. Después me echaron de Chile de nuevo
en el año '84 y duró seis meses y cuando pude volver hice mi primera
película, a fines del '84: Hijos de la guerra fría.

36 MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 37

M: ¿Después siguió ahí en Chile?

GJ: Sí, entrando y saHendo.

M: ¿Sahendo para Francia?

GJ: Para Francia principalmente. Europa. Hice Hijos de la gue-
rra fría y después hice Sussi, como una producción de la televisión
alemana y de Francia. Hijos de la guerra fría la filmé en Chile, saqué
todo el material y la monté en Francia.

M: ¿Pero se considera una película chilena?

GJ: Chilena, todo chileno.

M: ¿Ud. considera que su cine es político?

GJ: Yo creo, como decía Carlos Saura, [que] todo cine es político.
Saura decía que hasta la filmación de los monos en el zoológico era
política, y yo creo que de una forma u otra tiene razón. Mis películas
se puede decir que tratan sobre una época, una sociedad, sobre una
gente, son hechas a partir de un punto de vista que yo tengo en fun-
ción de una realidad que me ha tocado vivir. Entonces de una forma
u otra ha sido siempre una forma de mirar mi entorno. Me ha tocado
vivir mi lugar histórico y mi época.

M: ¿Sussi salió en el '87?

GJ: No, salió en el '88. Justo antes del plebiscito.

M: ¿No le dijeron nada?

GJ: Siempre me han molestado con amenazas. Incluso con Sussi
pasó una paradoja: que el distribuidor recibió una llamada de la oficina
de la presidencia, la mismísima del general [Pinochet], que estaban
muy enojados, querían hacer algo porque la película empezó a tener
mucho éxito. Una película que se presentó como una fotonovela y que
después se transformaba de una fotonovela rosa se pasaba un poco a
negra, con muchos reflejos de una sociedad enfermiza, arribista, con

38 LEAH KEMP

falsos valores, falsos ídolos y con toda esa pre-campaña que había para
el "Sí" con ciertos rasgos "fascistoides," nacionalistas, positivistas,
que recuperaba muy bien ciertas partes de la película, que reflejaba la
película. Entonces cuando la película tuvo un éxito, recibimos estas
quejas que la querían sacar y según lo que me comentó un periodista,
de que decidieron bajarle el perfil. Y por un proceso de que el público
manda, pensaban que si decían algo iba a ser más famoso. Son cosas
que cuando uno vivía allá se abstraía porque obviamente es compli-
cado hacer una película y es más complicado hacer una película cuando
en cualquier momento pueden destruirla e incluso te puedes correr un
riesgo físico tú, como de hecho muchos cineastas, me incluyo, pasamos
malos momentos. Cuando no hay un estado de derecho, hay amenazas,
hay un miedo permanente que en cualquier momento te pueden hacer
algo y cuando no hay estado de derecho es complicado, en cualquier
momento te pueden hacer algo desagradable.

M: ¿Y ese miedo siguió después del plebiscito?

GJ: Sí, pero se va transformando. Lo que pasa es que uno vive
en un país donde el plebiscito se ganó, hay un nuevo presidente pero
sigue siendo un país tomado, los medios de comunicación están toma-
dos, donde existía, ahora menos, una mentalidad muy anti-cineasta
chilena, nos encontraban "comunistoides" y en el fondo es engomado,
porque como te decía, hacer cine es complicado económicamente,
emotivamente, y más encima hacerlo en un lugar en que el terreno te
es adverso, y no solamente adverso pasivo, sino activo, no es fácil.

M: Volviendo al tema de la moralidad en Sussi, yo también veía
eso en El Leyton, una cierta ironía acerca de la moralidad, no sé si
la moralidad chilena o la moralidad en general. ¿Ud. ve este tema
recurrente en su obra?

GJ: Sí, como digo, siempre he tenido como punto de referencia el
lugar donde me tocó nacer. Hay una frase en B-Happy: uno no elige
ni a sus padres ni el lugar en donde nació, uno puede elegir un perro,
un pescadito, pero lo otro no, hay que asumirlo. Y como tú dices, de
una u otra forma siempre lo he tenido como referencia. El Eeyton es
otra etapa de mi trabajo. Es una película que hice mientras estaba
esperando hacer otra película y juntamos un poco de dinero que nos

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 39

ofrecieron, muy poco dinero, un total de unos 100,000 dólares y yo
agarré un relato popular como quien agarra una ranchera. Entonces
me interesaba contar ese relato porque era muy entretenido y refle-
jaba una psicología muy fuerte. En ese sentido esto pasaba como a
200 kms. de Santiago, pero es como si pasara en otro planeta, otro
universo. Ese universo reflejaba el universo en el cual vivimos, donde
estamos nosotros, y en ese sentido la película tiene como otro nombre
Hasta que la muerte nos separe y para mí muestra la animalidad, el
dogmatismo de cierta gente, el miedo a ser un poco más libre y romper
un dogma impuesto principalmente por la iglesia católica. Entonces yo
lo tomé con un poco de humor, trato de decir cosas con un poco de
humor. Me acuerdo de la anécdota que sale en la película del sacerdote
que mira amenazante a la pareja que se casa, y dice que estarán juntos
hasta que la muerte los separe. Me acuerdo de un comentario que me
hizo un amigo mío que se casó en Chile: el cura lo miraba tan raro
que lo primero que le nació decir cuando le dijo esa frase, le dijo a su
señora, "Ojalá no te tenga que matar, mi amor." Era como si estuviera
condenado. Hay ciertos guiños que invitan a una lectura de la socie-
dad que por un lado es arcaica y por otro es híper-pagana.

M: Quería hablar un poco del humor chileno, si Ud. lo ve como
un humor chileno.

GJ: Para uno analizar eso es como los futbolistas pensar por qué
jugar fútbol. Uno tiene códigos que conoce y piensa que los comparte.
Como me ha tocado vivir en muchos países con gente que capta cier-
tas cosas o reinterpreta ciertas cosas, hay gente que tiene abiertamente
otro sentido del humor. Es difícil saber cuál es la característica. Sí, hay
dos cosas: es una cosa tragicómica. Quizás cierta tendencia a cosas
semi-dramáticas que se transforman casi para la risa. Es como un
escapismo, no sé, una ironía permanente, de ternura y maldad, una
mezcla también de brutalidad, entonces son códigos. En todo caso, a
mí me gusta bastante el humor chileno, encuentro mucho más grave
la carencia de humor en ciertos pueblos.

M: ^Como cuáles?

GJ: No me gusta hablar en general. En todas partes hay de todo.
Como en Alemania, Suécia y Europa, hay gente y gente.

40 LEAH KEMP

M: Una de las críticas que lei decia que El Leyton era un cuento
de inmoralidad, un tema trágico que se tomaba a lo ligero, y ellos lo
veían como dos cosas separadas.

GJ: El New York Times hizo la misma crítica de El Leyton. De
que en el fondo la película estaba súper, súper bien, pero se caía al
final. Cuando para mí lo mejor es el final. Ellos pensaban que era una
tragedia, no tragicómica. Cada uno con sus gustos. Yo podría haber
hecho El Leyton como tragedia, pero no me hubiera nacido. Siempre
he visto esa cosa un poco malvada, un poco tierna. Ahora me acuerdo
un poco del contexto. En Chile cuando hice la película era uno de los
pocos países donde no existía el divorcio, que existe hace muy poco,
pero existía otra manera de divorciarse que era la nulidad. Era una
forma trágico-cómica de solucionar el problema. Entonces yo creo que
hay una tendencia en mí quizás, no sé si en los chilenos, de desvirtuar
los dramas mezclando con un toque de humor, una invitación de reírse
de nosotros mismos, de reírse quizás de nuestra condición humana.

M: ¿\Já. cree que el cine chileno está definido por quien lo hace,
o por las características que tiene?

GJ: Siempre repito cuando hago entrevistas: no creo en el cine
chileno. Creo que hay cineastas. Uno sabe lo que no es, pero no sabe
mucho lo que es. Sé que no soy ni argentino, ni sueco, ni americano,
pero no sé lo que es ser chileno. Existe una gran gama de chilenos
también. En ese sentido sé que no soy americano. Tienen una identi-
dad mucho más aplastante. Yo creo que son pinceladas que a veces
arman un gran concepto que se puede definir como cine chileno, pero
a mí no me interesa hacer cine chileno. No lo hago de por sí. Y hay
diversidad. Está bien la diversidad.

M: ¿Qué le parece la nueva ola de cine que se supone está sur-
giendo en Chile?

GJ: A mí me parece que lo que está pasando es bastante positivo,
no es como nosotros soñábamos hace muchos años; hay más diversi-
dad, más directores, más estilos, más temáticos y como en todo hay
cosas que a uno le gustan más y cosas que le gustan menos.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 41

M: ¿Por qué cree que hay más cine ahora?

GJ: Porque cuando yo empecé a hacer cine, se hacía cine con cero.
No había ningún apoyo, incluso había la actitud negativa del cineasta.
Ahora existen unos pequeños fondos concursables, una mayor aper-
tura a los medios de comunicación, ha habido películas que han sido
éxito de público, como en todas las épocas. Sussi también fue una de
las más vistas del año. Entonces de una forma u otra es hija de esta
transición que hemos tenido. Hacer cine es difícil, pero no tan, tan
difícil. Existe nueva tecnología, nuevas escuelas de cine. Yo soy direc-
tor de la escuela de cine de la UNIACC y veo mucho interés, muchos
alumnos que parten de una situación completamente distinta a la de
hace veinte años. Otra tecnología, otro país, otro público. Entonces
está pasando lo que para mi gusto era normal que pasara y que era
anormal lo que pasaba en una dictadura. Donde había un control y
un miedo a la creación.

M: Claro, no se hacía. ¿Cuál es el cambio que ha visto en el
público?

GJ: El cambio en el público... Lo que pasa es que lo que hubo fue
un control enorme en los medios de comunicación por ciertos sectores
que son muy conservadores, muy temerarios a la cultura; hay una
apertura. El cambio principal es lo que el público percibe a través de
los medios. Pero sigue habiendo los mismos márgenes, cuando hay
películas más comerciales que tratan ciertos temas, y películas más
independientes, pero la proporción de espectadores para las películas
se mantiene: todo ha aumentado. Si iban 5,000 ai cine arte, ahora
hay 10,000. El concepto del cine chileno ya no es una cosa negativa,
porque siempre se hablaba de lo negativo: que el sonido, los actores,
que son políticos. En ese sentido creo que el público ha cambiado, que
ya no tiene tanta información en contra.

M: El viejo en Sussi, Agustín, ¿no habrá sido uno de esos de los
medios de comunicación?

GJ: Don Augusto [Pinochet] era, po. Don Augusto era. Que no es
lo mismo pero es igual.

42 LEAH KEMP

M: Una cosa parecida.

GJ: La idea era esa, hacer un pequeño juego. Sobre todo con él,
no me acuerdo mucho, pero con el tema que habla con respecto al
miedo. Que lo que es importante es mantener el miedo. Son secretos
de un tirano.

M: Hablamos un poco de los fondos que hay ahora. ;Hay sufi-
ciente apoyo estatal y privado en Chile, o igual hay que buscarlo
afuera.-*

GJ: Hay que buscarlo afuera, pero está bien. A mí no me gusta el
cine subvencionado, menos al 100%. Creo que tiene que haber cier-
tos momentos, pero hacer un cine que aparte esté financiado [por el
gobierno], no le daría una dinámica muy positiva. Lo que sí, existen
ciertos fondos, que para nosotros son muchos porque antes no había
nada. Ahora hay fondos para desarrollo de guiones, fondos para la dis-
tribución, existen fondos para la producción que en el fondo se lo ganan
5 o 6 películas y financian 20% o 30% del presupuesto. La mayor
parte del fenómeno de hacer cine en Chile parte por la iniciativa de los
cineastas, la locura y la pasión del cineasta. No es todavía y espero que
se logre pero no es económicamente muy lógico hacer cine en un país
con un mercado tan pequeño. O hay que hacer un cine muy barato o
tiene que tener algún potencial de exportación, pero sobre todo hacer
un cine que a uno le guste y que lo pase bien, y lo otro, chao.

M: ¿Y cuál ha sido su película que ha tenido mas éxito en el
exterior?

GJ: B-Happy, Amnesia.

M: ¿No hizo esas películas pensando en la exportación?

GJ: No. Al contrario, B-Happy es una película... Es que bueno, me
tocó vivir en Francia, y vivo en Chile pero no me interesa quedarme
enclaustrado entre la cordillera y el mar. Tendría que ser guerrillero.
Hay muchas cosas indignantes. No, la película yo sentía que existía
una situación personal. Yo estaba filmando Caluga o menta en el norte
y conocí en un lugar a una chica que atendía una mesa y que tenía

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 43

Ia cara muy infantil, me empezó a contar pedacitos de su vida en los
dos dias que estuve en esa zona, yo iba a tomarme una cerveza ahí. Y
yo estaba trabajando en un guión para un productor de la televisión
inglesa, tratando de hacer un guión entretenido, cinematográficamente
con acción, y me di cuenta, ¿qué quiero estar contando estas cosas para
el gusto del productor cuando aquí hay una vida que es real y súper
interesante y quizás amerita contarla y tratar de contarla de otra forma?
La forma en que me contaba la historia era intermitente porque ella
venía, me atendía en la mañana y en la tarde y me contaba pedazos de
anécdotas que eran increíbles para una niña de catorce años. Y dije,
¿por qué no contarlas así también? ¿Por qué estar limitados en esa cosa
dramatúrgica que las películas se cuentan de cierta forma? Entonces dije
la voy a contar como si estuviéramos viendo diapositivas sobre la vida
de una persona. Cada una de esas imágenes evoca todo un mundo. En
un sentido ese fue el origen. El origen no fue ni por encargo ni por una
tincada muy comercial. Si las películas son buenas y honestas tienen su
espacio. En menor o mayor grado, pero tienen su espacio.

M: ¿Qué es una película honesta?

GJ: No sé... lo que yo podría decir por mí, es una película que
no parta por la idea de manipular al espectador, sino tirar elementos
sobre la mesa que uno siente que quizás no lo entiende al 100% pero
piensa que ahí hay un elemento humano, de vida, a transmitir una
sensación, o una duda que uno tiene que comunicar. Me gusta grabar
las películas como la música, se puede decir. Uno escucha una melodía
pero uno no sabe por qué te emociona. Si uno fuera muy racional, uno
podría decir por qué, pero no. Hay otra magia. En ese sentido yo creo
que para mí es honesta cuando uno intenta expresar un sentimiento
que considera que es humano. Y eso no quiere decir que las otras
películas sean deshonestas, porque también el cine puede ser un nego-
cio. Está bien, es coherente. Es honesto decir que estoy haciendo esta
película para ganar dinero, que voy a tratar de fascinar y adormecer
al espectador, es coherente.

M: ¿Cómo elige las historias?

GJ: Por tincada, como diríamos. Hay historias que son hechos que
he observado, como B-Happy. Amnesia obviamente era una temática

44 LE AH KEMP

que estaba muy latente, que era una espina que tenía adentro. Era
increíble que después de años de la supuesta vuelta a la democracia,
los mismos que estaban, unos tiranos anti-democráticos, se hacían
pasar por democráticos y esa obsesión que tenían por borrar el
pasado, como si en Chile nunca hubiera pasado nada. Entonces era
una cosa enfermiza, una cosa delirante. Como si la amnesia se impone.
De hecho, trataron... Después, lo de El Ley ton, fue un cuento, un
cuento popular, que eran seis o siete páginas que cuando leí la primera
frase, me sorprendió. Decía algo como "Nunca debí haberle contado
al Modesto lo que le conté esa noche. Es que me olvidé que hay gente
en este mundo que se toma las cosas muy en serio." Y le había con-
tado que se había acostado con su mujer. Lo encontré muy divertido.
Encontré que era una forma popular muy hermosa de transgredir cier-
tas conductas que son humanas también. La infidelidad tan anormal
no es. No es lo políticamente correcto...

M: Su nuevo proyecto, Lupita, va a ser un esfuerzo internacionaL
¿Han reaccionado en Chile a que trabaje así?

GJ: Seguro, pero no escucho mucho. Hay un nivel tan rasca a
veces de copuchas, como decimos, de rumores, de análisis. No me
interesa. [. . .] Yo sé lo que quiero hacer, creo que mi patria es Chile
obviamente, pero mi patria también son miles de cineastas que quieren
hacer sus películas, cineastas independientes americanos, europeos,
gente que tiene una pasión por el cine, que quieren hacer filme que
transmitan sensaciones e historias que uno tiene.

M: Pero es una de las cosas que la gente toma en serio también. La
gente percibe esto como una representación de Chile hacia afuera.

GJ: Ah, claro. He estado en San Sebastián y había unas señoras
chilenas y me dijeron, "¿Por qué mostraste un Chile tan feo?"

M: ¿Entonces Ud. no siente que su cine tiene ese rol de representar
el país?

GJ: El cine quiera o no quiera representa una parte del país. No es
que mi finalidad sea hacer un cine que muestre lo que es ser chileno.
Sería como un perro persiguiéndose la cola. Yo creo que lo hace de por

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 45

SÍ. Pensando con más distancia, ahora que me siento más viejo, más o
menos mi trayectoria ha ido reflejando ciertos momentos de lo que me
ha tocado vivir, y de lo que ha pasado en Chile. Hijos de la guerra fría
es una película filmada bajo dictadura, bajo un país que vive en toque
de queda y que estaba acostumbrado a que eso fuera normal. La gente
estaba acostumbrada a acostarse a las 11 de la noche. Había mujeres
que defendían eso, comandadas por la primera dama Lucía Hiriart.
Era como una historia de personajes que eran como feos, se sentían
incómodos, y que se enamoraban. Y como eran feos, como lo que se
refleja en un "love story," pensaban que el amor no era para ellos,
como gente que tiene un malestar. Sabían que algo estaba pasando que
estaba mal, pero no sabían qué era. Como la guerra fría, una guerra
que no se ve, pero está en todas partes. De una u otra forma, Chile era
víctima de esa famosa guerra fría — la guerra que tenían nuestros ami-
gos americanos con los soviéticos. Por eso decidieron aniquilar todo
un proyecto social y controlar de una forma dramáticamente drástica
a un pueblo. Hay gente que no sabía qué, pero que algo estaba mal. La
Siissi reflejó un falso exhibismo (sic), un arribismo máximo de parte de
la sociedad chilena. Amnesia para qué decir. Caluga o menta es reflejo
de toda mi experiencia como reportero, cuando filmaba las protestas.
Me encontraba con gente joven que era muy similar a la gente joven
en otros países del mundo, de una época que era pos-utopía. Esa
gente que no pudo, no tuvo acceso a soñar, porque los sueños de la
generación anterior costaron muy caros.

Primeir a-Danta Tropical: A cidade e o
corpo feminino na ficção de Júlia Lopes
de Almeida

Vanina Eisenhart

University of California, Los Angeles

A instauração da República no Brasil na segunda metade do século
XIX proporcionou uma abertura de mercados que consolidou as
bases para a formação de uma classe burguesa. Através da riqueza
trazida por esta abertura de capitais, o fenómeno urbano se materia-
liza através da cidade moderna que, por sua vez, produz a figura do
burguês e do fláneur. Dentro deste contexto urbano, Julia Valentina da
Silveira Lopes de Almeida, mais conhecida por Júlia Lopes de Almeida
(1862-1934), publica A viúva Simões (1897) e A falência (1901), dois
romances que, além de oferecerem um panorama urbano, mostram
os diferentes papéis da mulher neste período de conturbações e trans-
formações, tanto políticas quanto sociais. Considerada por muitos
críticos como uma das primeiras feministas do país,' Júlia Lopes de
Almeida deixa um vasto legado literário e jornalístico, ainda a ser
explorado, que tem por enfoque principal a temática da educação
feminina e a importante função da maternidade. Porém, uma leitura
mais atenta demonstra uma autora voltada para outras temáticas,
como a urbe e o corpo feminino. Estes temas foram pouco discutidos
nos estudos da sua obra até o presente momento. Aliás, por muito
tempo a autora foi pouco explorada pela crítica literária brasileira por
ter sido catalogada como autora de "epopeias domésticas" destinadas
à uma leitura feminina.'

Os primeiros comentários críticos enfocavam-se em elogiar e
exaltar a qualidade artística da autora. Poucos comentários eram mais
específicos, e quando eram, destacavam temas como a educação, o
papel da mulher dentro da sociedade, e a maternidade.^ Isto se deve
aos artigos publicados pela autora em revistas, como A Mensageira,
e também ao sucesso de seus livros. Livro das noivas (1896), Livro
das damas e donzelas (1906), e do ensaio Maternidade (1925). Estes

46 MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 47

livros foram, na época, verdadeiros guias de orientação para a futura
esposa e mãe dentro do microcosmo familiar/ O cronista carioca
Paulo Barreto (1881-1921), conhecido pelo pseudónimo de João do
Rio, exalta a vocação da autora como mãe exemplar, e criadora de
livros sobre o amor multiforme, tema que, sem dúvida, foi uma fonte
inesgotável em sua produção literária (Rio 34). Apesar destes temas
estarem presentes nos dois livros a serem analisados no presente
ensaio, não são os únicos aspectos importantes nestas obras. Portanto,
o objetivo deste ensaio é ampliar o estudo das temáticas da autora,
explorando os discursos da cidade e do corpo encontrados em A viúva
Simões e A falência.

Com a publicação de ^4 falência^ o influente historiador e crítico
José Veríssimo (1857-1916) consagra Almeida no mesmo patamar de
Guy de Maupassant, Machado de Assis, Aluísio Azevedo, e Coelho
Neto, outro escritor pré-modernista e contemporâneo de Almeida,^
devido ao fato da obra apresentar aspectos que exploram o contexto
social da época. ^ Esta observação de Veríssimo foi fundamental, pois
além de se diferenciar da grande maioria da crítica, também foi capaz
de detectar a profundidade da obra de Almeida. Podemos observar
que nas décadas de 30, 40 e 50, críticos consagrados como Lúcia
Miguel Pereira voltam a exaltar a autora dentro da mesma linha ins-
titucionalizada do início do século XX. Por exemplo, em 1957, Lúcia
Miguel Pereira publica o seguinte comentário:

Júlia Lopes de Almeida, na verdade, é a maior figura entre
as mulheres escritoras de sua época, não só pela extensão
da obra, pela continuidade do esforço, pela longa vida
literária de mais de quarenta anos, como pelo êxito que
conseguiu com os críticos e com o público. (Pereira 270)

Somente nos últimos dez anos, através da re-impressão de alguns
de seus romances que se encontravam esgotados, os críticos literá-
rios tiveram a oportunidade de re-avaliar a obra de Júlia Lopes de
Almeida. Este material vem suscitando um novo interesse e gerando
uma série de debates onde outros aspectos temáticos de sua obra vêm
sendo explorados através de grupos académicos, como é o caso do
grupo brasileiro Mulher e Literatura vinculado à ANPOLL - Associa-
ção Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Letras e Lingüística.
Há também, outras críticas em instituições norte-americanas, como

48 VANINA EISENHART

Peggy Sharpe e Darlene J. Sadlier, que vêm resgatando e apresentando
novas perspectivas nos debates sobre a obra de Almeida (Sadlier 22),
Estudos como estes suscitaram os dois temas do presente trabalho.

Pertencente à classe burguesa, Almeida transitou entre o universo
intelectual do final do século XIX e início do século XX, período
conhecido como a Belle Époque, que no Brasil se caracteriza pela
influência de estéticas europeias (principalmente francesas). Desta
forma, Almeida torna-se uma verdadeira "primeira-dama" dos tró-
picos, por incorporar estas estéticas dentro de sua obra.'' Mas ao
contrário da maioria da elite literária da época, Almeida foi, como
seus contemporâneos Lima Barreto e Euclides da Cunha, um dos
poucos escritores a retratar não só a classe burguesa mas também os
pobres e marginalizados, e inclusive mulheres de diferentes estratos
sociais. As duas obras aqui analisadas apresentam conflitos sociais
revelados através da cidade e do corpo feminino, dentro de uma
estética pré-modernista. Esta estética se caracteriza por influências do
naturalismo, do realismo burguês e, em certo grau, de um romantismo
ao estilo de José de Alencar. Portanto, a escritura de Almeida é um
produto das incoerências e influências sociais, científicas, económicas
e políticas de sua época, como analisarei a seguir.

A descrição dos vários espaços urbanos dentro da obra de Júlia
Lopes de Almeida é apresentada através do olhar flâneur dos seus
personagens. Este olhar muitas vezes revela uma influência natura-
lista. Segundo Jeffrey Needell, as obras de Júlia Lopes de Almeida,
sugerem um naturalismo decorrente das escolas literárias francesas
que foram muito influentes entre os intelectuais cariocas da época
(Needell 213). A circulação de ideias e correntes europeias entre a
elite carioca vinha ocorrendo desde os tempos da colonização. Na
época da República, esta circulação torna-se ainda mais constante
culminando com as teorias positivistas e darwinistas que propicia-
ram a Revolução Sanitária e Industrial da Belle Époque brasileira
(Sevcenko 81). Em uma entrevista dada a João do Rio por volta de
1910, Júlia Lopes de Almeida revela ter sido influenciada por Zola,
Flaubert e Maupassant. A falência apresenta vários trechos no estilo
naturalista,*^ onde o subúrbio apresenta, "Uma pobreza avarenta,"
que formiga entre "ratazanas e aguas servidas" (104). A realidade
é transplantada sensorialmente para a ficção, caracterizando o meio
social, onde a cidade reproduz todas as sensações e emoções humanas
constituindo um personagem próprio, como analisaremos no decorrer

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 49

deste trabalho. O naturalismo se revela, também, na representação
racial dos personagens. Contudo, a autora utiliza-se das diferenças
raciais para enfatizar a construção de género.

Portanto, a raça é utilizada como um elemento que determina
o comportamento moral de alguns personagens, mas como ressalta
Darlene Sadlier, o naturalismo de Almeida não inclui o determinismo
biológico para explicar a diferença sexual feminina (2). Almeida rejeita
implicitamente estas diferenças biológicas, e enfoca a construção
social do género ao desenvolver seus personagens femininos burgue-
ses. Para ilustrar esta característica importante do estilo de Almeida,
podemos ver um exemplo na descrição da viúva Ernestina: "O seu
temperamento, aparentemente frio, dava-lhe por vezes, momentane-
amente, um ar de rija autoridade, muito em contradição com o seu
tipo moreno, de brasileira" {A viúva Simões 37). Desta maneira, uma
análise exclusivamente naturalista da obra de Júlia Lopes de Almeida
seria incompleta, pois é necessário entender todas as correntes em
conjunto que influenciaram a autora ao todo, incluindo as influências
do movimento crítico conhecido como a "Escola do Recife.'"^

Para Roberto Ventura, o naturalismo no Brasil sofre de uma
migração profunda, onde a recepção de modelos europeus se ajusta às
condições brasileiras obtendo uma "interpretação da natureza tropical
e das raças e culturas brasileiras" (12). Outra característica dos estilos
europeus adaptados no Brasil é a incorporação de elementos eróticos
dentro da narrativa, que segundo alguns críticos, teria sido provocada
pelo clima tropical, constituindo o meio ambiente e a mistura étnica
as fontes para o surgimento de um estilo literário nacional próprio.
A própria viúva Ernestina é um exemplo. Ao começo é descrita pelo
seu temperamento frio, e mais tarde aparece em bailes e saraus exi-
bindo seus dotes físicos com muito erotismo. Uma análise de Antonio
Candido acrescenta que a existência do erótico e sensual se deve em
função das diferentes condições no meio intelectual brasileiro daquele
tempo, onde o meio e a raça eram conceitos que correspondiam aos
problemas reais e às obsessões profundas, em virtude das teorias
científicas do momento, tão questionáveis na perspectiva atual (152).
Roberto Ventura denomina "obnubilação" o ajuste de estilos esté-
ticos ao meio local e ainda: "O estilo individual de um escritor ou
obra se formaria desse encontro entre o estilo nacional e as formas
de expressão de uma escola ou grupo" (37), o que no caso de Júlia
Lopes de Almeida é detectado na representação do caráter de certos

50 VAN IN A EISENHART

personagens. Ademais desta adaptação de estilos, convém aqui adi-
cionar ainda o dilema da escritora feminista.

Maria Angélica Lopes define a ideologia de Almeida como sendo
um "feminismo patriarcal," onde o chefe da família é o homem e a
mulher deve se conservar nos bastidores (Lopes 45-57). Discordo
desta ideia dos "bastidores," pois o mundo privado representado
pela "casa," que seria considerado o bastidor, é na realidade o pró-
prio palco onde são tomadas as principais decisões, e é comandado
pelo mundo feminino. A autora revela personagens capazes de tomar
iniciativas e ações próprias, como no caso de Catharina, a irmã
do Capitão Rino que afirma: "Nós não nos escondemos atraz do
homem que procura defender-nos. Este é que é o nosso caracter" (sic)
{A falência 150).

Em "The Madwoman in the Attic" Sandra Gilbert e Susan Gubar
utilizam a teoria da "ansiedade de influência" de Harold Bloom para
interpretar o problema específico da criação literária feminina. Para
Gilbert e Gubar a "ansiedade de influência" corresponde, no caso
feminino, a uma "ansiedade de autoria" já que as escritoras enfren-
tam modelos literários e cânones masculinos, criando uma tensão
criativa que difere da ansiedade dos escritores (Gilbert 49). Estes
modelos literários pré-concebidos por escritores masculinos apresen-
tam estereótipos femininos mitológicos, difíceis de serem combatidos.
Surge, então, no século XIX uma maneira subversiva de escrever
como observa outra crítica literária, Joan Torres-Pou, na qual escri-
toras fingem adotar modelos do cânone, essencialmente masculino
neste período histórico, para lançarem o seu lado criativo, adotando
inclusive subterfúgios, como um tom de modéstia para não serem
consideradas uma "ameaça." Também escolhem géneros que tradi-
cionalmente eram considerados de segunda categoria, como a poesia
amorosa, a novela e o conto, evitando géneros mais tradicionais e
"sérios" (Torres-Pou 2-73). Eis o estilo de Júlia Lopes de Almeida,
que, utilizando os modelos convencionais masculinos, apresenta uma
ficção feminina que reúne os movimentos literários e ideologias sociais
e científicas de sua época adaptando-as a um feminismo que não é
confrontante com os padrões vigentes, mas também certamente não
se enquadra nos "bastidores" do patriarcado brasileiro.

A época em que as obras A viúva Simões e A falência foram escri-
tas e publicadas abrange precisamente uma década de transformações
e turbulências no âmbito social, político e económico, o qual culmina

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 51

com a passagem do século XX, uma fase de expansão, relativo pro-
gresso e acumulação de riqueza. Porém, como esclarecem Sidney
Sérgio F. Solis e Marcus V. T. Ribeiro, esta transição não foi capaz
de gerar um processo político e económico que incluísse os trabalha-
dores, e inclusive gerou uma miséria absoluta (46). A primeira vista,
pergunta-se porque existe uma ausência de quaisquer referências ou
passagens que retratem as insurgências políticas ou conflitos nos dois
romances. Uma análise mais minuciosa revela a sutileza com que a
autora apresenta estes conflitos sociais e culturais ao estabelecer um
paralelo entre o mundo público, representado pela cidade e o seu
ritmo frenético, decorrente do capital gerado pelo comércio local; e
o mundo privado, representado pela vida privada de seus habitantes
e, em particular, a vida doméstica e os costumes femininos do século
XIX. Este paralelo, que analiso a seguir, enfatiza a construção social
do género na obra de Almeida. "^'

O mundo público de Júlia Lopes de Almeida nos traz a cidade
não como pano de fundo mas como um verdadeiro personagem que
"cheira," "sua" e "pulsa" como a autora retrata a cidade nos dois
romances. Já no início de A Falência, o leitor recebe o impacto sen-
sorial desta cidade: "O Rio de Janeiro ardia sob o sol de dezembro,
[. . .] bafejando um ar de fornalha na atmosphera. [. . .] a rua de S.
Bento, [. . .] cheirava a café crú. Era a hora de trabalho" (sic) (5).
Em A viúva Simões, a cidade reproduz todas as sensações e emoções
humanas constituindo um personagem próprio, onde o Rio de Janeiro
"arfa" e sente a "dor da luta pela vida," onde se encontram expostos
"a felicidade, o luxo, a miséria, o dinheiro, o gozo, a raiva, o esplen-
dor, a fé, a mentira, a paz e a desordem" (110-11).

O mundo público que se define pela cidade do Rio de Janeiro é
essencialmente masculino, representado pelo trabalho, lucro, e com-
petição, constituindo-se um microcosmo do sistema capitalista. Este
microcosmo urbano é produto de uma burguesia preocupada em
definir um novo estilo de vida, e para isto a cidade deve passar por
uma transformação estrutural e urbanística para, segundo José Luis
Romero, expressar os signos de riqueza (285). Dentro dos signos de
riqueza presentes nos romances de Júlia Lopes de Almeida encon-
tramos o burguês, e o trabalho mercantil que lhe gera a riqueza. No
romance A falência, o comerciante português Francisco Theodoro
luta muito para conseguir um padrão económico elevado que lhe pro-
porcione a oportunidade de disfrutar juntamente com sua família de

S2 VANINA EISENHART

todas as comodidades materiais. Torna-se assim o exemplo da classe
burguesa ascendente, dentro de um sistema hierárquico, que conseguiu
uma mobilidade social flexível."

Esta mobilidade social captada pela autora, e que constitui um
elemento essencial dentro do sistema capitalista, somente é possível
a partir do desenvolvimento desta nova burguesia no final do século
XIX que proporciona, "nuevas perspectivas ocupacionales" (Romero
259) para comerciantes, artesãos, operários, e empregados dedicados
ao seu trabalho para abrirem novos espaços dentro da intrincada rede
social. Nas duas obras, Almeida se utiliza da figura do flâneur para
detectar estes signos.

Fruto de uma sociedade em transformação e observador do
mundo moderno, o flâneur, ou também chamado de dandy, penetra
os espaços urbanos e capta as mudanças que revelam elementos da
sociedade moderna junto com elementos que justificam seu "atraso."
Consagrado pela literatura inglesa e francesa do século XIX, a figura
do flâneur se personifica em Rosas e Luciano de A viúva Simões, e
no doutor Gervasio e capitão Rino de A falência. Estes personagens
são capazes de cruzar todos os espaços sociais, frequentando desde os
salões burgueses até o submundo dos subúrbios. Luciano, por exemplo,
"prestava atenção às mínimas coisas, querendo em vão comparar o
aspecto dessa rua de então, com o do tempo em que aí tinha morado,
havia largos anos!... A diferença estaria na sua maneira de olhar?" (A
viúva Simões 68) enquanto o capitão Rino observa, "marinheiros,
soldados, vadios e trabalhadores braçaes, negros ou portugueses, uma
população de homens apressados" (sic) {A falência 229). O personagem
Rosas, "conhecia meio mundo" (A viúva Simões 68), pois frequentava
todos os níveis sociais cariocas. O doutor Gervasio detecta e observa
os contrastes entre o submundo e o mundo burguês: "a atmosphera
alli era mais fria, de uma humidade penetrante, cheirando a velhice e
a hortaliças esmagadas. Mal concebia que se pudesse dormir e amar
naquelle canto sinistro da cidade, mais propicio ás minhocas do que á
natureza humana" (sic) (A falência 102). Ou seja, "flanar" pela cidade é
sentir a mudança que os espaços oferecem de acordo com as categorias
sociais de seus habitantes. É através do olhar destes personagens, que
o leitor vai identificando os espaços, a conduta social, os costumes e os
habitantes desta urbe em transição. Cabe ressaltar que o personagem
flâneur de Almeida é masculino, pois pelos padrões vigentes, é ele que
tem o direito de cruzar diferentes universos na esfera pública.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 53

Portanto, dentro do padrão moral vigente, definir a rua como
universo masculino é enfatizar a ideia de que é na rua que o homem
caminha, atravessa, explora, trabalha, sendo que uma mulher per-
tencente a certo nível social não deve ser vista circulando por estas
ruas: "A não serem as africanas do café e uma ou outra italiana que
se atrevia a sahir de alguma fabrica de saceos com dúzias d'elles á
cabeça, nenhuma outra mulher pisava aquellas pedras, só afeitas ao
peso bruto" (sic) (A falência 7-8). O trabalho é uma atividade con-
siderada masculina: "Trabalhar! Trabalhar é com para os homens,
de pelle enrudecida e alma feita de coragem" (sic) [A falência 34).
Através destas duas citações, podemos ver como a autora enfatiza os
códigos de conduta existentes no Rio de Janeiro do século XIX, onde
a presença de mulheres em ambientes públicos masculinos somente se
justifica ao tratar-se de mulheres de cor, ou estrangeiras, e pertencerem
às camadas marginalizadas. A estratégia de Almeida é exemplificar a
limitação social feminina, estratificando socialmente o género femi-
nino dentro do universo masculino vigente. Associando o trabalho
com o universo masculino, Almeida enfatiza as poucas opções encon-
tradas por mulheres pertencentes à classe burguesa para prover o seu
sustento, como no caso do personagem Camila.

Os signos de riqueza e pobreza também apresentam seus espaços
delimitados, e estão contrastados nas descrições feitas a partir do
momento em que os personagens, que personificam o flâneun intercru-
zam os espaços urbanos. Estes personagens observam a transformação
das zonas nobres da cidade, como por exemplo, "Todo o bairro do
Catete, com as suas ruas elegantes, parecia imerso numa grande paz.
A esguia chaminé da City Improvements não sujava o ar com o seu
fumo, denegrigo e infecto" {A viúva Simões 40); mas à medida em
que os personagens saem dos limites burgueses, e passam a freqiJen-
tar zonas menos nobres, a paisagem já se modifica, apresentando
"casas apertadas," onde o ar puro é substituído pelo cheiro de "fruta
apodrecida" [A viúva Simões 67-68). Isto é uma alegoria referente à
sujeira encontrada nas ruas destes bairros pobres. Portanto, as ruas
podem oferecer uma sensação de elegância e paz para certos habitan-
tes de um determinado bairro, como também, desarmonia, falta de
espaço e mau cheiro para habitantes dos bairros menos favorecidos
economicamente.

Este mundo de contrastes também se encontra nas crónicas
de Luiz Edmundo (1878-1961), um dos cronistas cariocas mais

54 VANINA EISENHART

populares da época, que comprova e retrata a cidade como um mundo
caótico, de contrastes e transições, com a existência de ruas estreitas e
sujas ao lado de ruas nobres: "Nesse trecho, com pouco mais de cem
metros de extensão, é que palpita a vida elegante da cidade, trânsito
obrigatório dos que chegam dos arrabaldes à parte central da cidade"
(Edmundo 9). Da mesma maneira, Almeida descreve o espaço de suas
narrativas, utilizando-se de um realismo objetivo para delimitar os
espaços sociais. Segundo Rachel Soihet, é somente no centro da cidade
que existe uma porosidade entre as camadas sociais e a existência
de um espaço eclético, onde as relações sociais entre pobres e ricos
se estreitam devido aos fatores económicos, criando um verdadeiro
espaço caótico (39). O armazém do personagem Francisco Theodoro
tem o centro como localização estratégica para inclusive "espiar"
os seus competidores. Eis como o universo relatado por Júlia Lopes
de Almeida tem como fonte de inspiração a verdadeira cidade que
palpitava naquela época. Do mesmo modo, a autora registra o que
acontece nos bastidores deste mundo fervilhante ao revelar o mundo
feminino que domina a esfera privada.

Assim como o mundo público, representado pela cidade e suas ruas,
caracteriza-se por ser um espaço masculino, o mundo privado é o reduto
feminino por excelência. O mundo privado, como define George Duby,
forma uma zona de imunidade onde as defesas encontram-se diluídas
e o doméstico convida à familiaridade de um lugar seguro que não se
expõe ao confronto diário da luta pela sobrevivência, como ocorre no
mundo público (10). O mundo privado em A viúva Simões representa,
inicialmente, um mundo recluso, onde Ernestina Simões, consciente da
sua condição social de viúva, raramente sai às ruas, dedicando-se exclu-
sivamente às tarefas domésticas. Por outro lado, a autora enfatiza já no
primeiro capítulo que a casa da viúva corresponde a um microcosmo do
Rio de Janeiro devido à mistura de raças e classes que ali trabalham e
vivem: "a Benedita, cozinheira preta, ex-escrava da família: o Augusto,
copeiro francês habituado a servir só gente de luxo; a lavadeira Ana,
alemã de rosto largo e olhos deslavados; o jardineiro João, português
[. . .] e uma mulatinha de quinze anos, cria da casa, a Simplicia" (35).
Deste modo, é neste mundo privado, que apresenta todos os elementos
do mundo público, onde se desenrolam dramas pessoais decorrentes
dos conflitos sociais da época. A medida que estes conflitos vão se
desenvolvendo, o mundo privado se intercala com o mundo público,
e, por exemplo, Ernestina, depois de assumir sua paixão pelo antigo

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 55

namorado Luciano, começa a frequentar todos os espaços públicos des-
tinados à sua classe com o intuito de conquistá-lo: "pensava em toilettes
de teatro, de baile, de recepção, de passeio" (8). Assim, Ernestina passa
a intercruzar-se entre o mundo público e privado.

O palacete onde mora a família do comerciante Francisco Theo-
doro apresenta todos os signos de opulência: "era um dos mais lindos
do Botafogo" {A falência 39) em contraste com a casa das tias Rodri-
gues, descrita como um casarão praticamente em ruínas. Desta forma,
a autora enfatiza a difícil condição das mulheres que vivem sozinhas.
Neste caso, as tias Rodrigues são duas irmãs idosas, uma solteira e
a outra viúva, ambas pertencentes originalmente a uma classe social
mais elevada, mas lutam para manter um status social e ao mesmo
tempo não trabalhar, porque o trabalho representaria denegrir sua
imagem perante a sociedade local.

Desta maneira, o mundo privado também encontra-se delimitado
pelas imposições sociais, morais e económicas do mundo público.
A cidade cria zonas de mapeamento, que confinam e dividem as
classes sociais economicamente, mas dentro de cada espaço privado
encontra-se um mundo regido por mulheres. Em sua análise sobre os
personagens femininos de Machado de Assis e perfeitamente aplicável
nos de Almeida, Ingrid Stein comenta que a casa é o espaço onde a
mulher burguesa torna-se uma "administradora do lar," ocupando-se
com todos os tipos de atividades, desde a educação dos filhos à gerên-
cia dos afazeres domésticos, bem como organização de eventos sociais
(23). Portanto, esta mulher burguesa, esposa e mãe é, além de guardiã
do lar, uma espécie de anfitriã dos bons costumes e conduta social,
oscilando permanentemente entre este papel privado e público, como
no caso das personagens de Almeida. Assim, o caráter fragmentário do
cotidiano dá a impressão de estar fora dos acontecimentos históricos,
mas ao contrário, a "vida cotidiana está no centro" determinando
toda a trama (Massi 129-130). Por exemplo, Francisco Theodoro se
suicida dentro de sua casa no final de A falência por não ter condições
de proporcionar à sua família uma estrutura económica à altura de
sua condição social. Elas conseguem sobreviver a esta adversidade
somente através da união e força das mulheres da casa. Sendo assim,
Almeida demonstra que este mundo privado, representado pelas
mulheres, é capaz de sobrepór-se às adversidades do mundo público.
Esta constante negociação é feita, muitas vezes, com a principal arma
que a mulher do século XIX dispõe: seu corpo.

56 VANINA EISENHART

Assim como os objetos têm por finalidade sedução do consumo, a
mulher tem o poder da sedução sexual. Não só detentora do poder de
sedução sobre o homem, ela se torna o próprio objeto desta sedução
através da representação do seu corpo. Almeida apresenta a percepção
masculina sobre esta sedução erótica da mulher, que pode acabar por
transformá-la em "mulher objeto," como por exemplo, na declara-
ção do personagem Rosas: "Nós damos às nossas esposas o luxo que
podemos, mas não as associamos aos nossos empreendimentos, não as
fazemos entrar em nosso espírito. Compreende você? São objetos de
luxo e de comodidade" (A viúva Simões 73). No caso de A falência,
Francisco Theodoro, um negociante em plena ascensão social, casa-se
com Camila, uma moça proveniente de uma família pobre, exclusiva-
mente pela sua beleza. Para consegui-la, é obrigado a dar um grande
dote à família de Camila. Como observa Magali Mendes de Menezes,
as mulheres do século XIX aprendem a negociar o seu corpo em rela-
ção ao elemento masculino como uma espécie de "olhar do outro"
(15). Isto ocorre em todos os níveis sociais e também psicológicos,
como um meio de sobrevivência.

Este "olhar do outro" cria um imaginário e idealiza o corpo femi-
nino onde a mulher se confronta consigo mesma como uma imagem
refletida no espelho. Desta maneira, a mulher encontra-se presa dentro
do espelho pelo ideal imposto pela sociedade patriarcal (Torres-Pou
166). A imagem feminina refletida no espelho aparece literalmente em
A viúva Simões^ no momento em que Ernestina, ao observar-se diante
do espelho, reconhece ser dotada de atributos físicos fundamentais e
capazes de conquistar o sexo masculino:

Sentou-se em frente ao espelho e ensaiou penteados novos,
pacientemente, a ver se algum lhe ficaria melhor que o
habitual 1. . .]. A viúva curvou-se, observou de perto
os dentes, perfumou-se muito, sorrindo para o espelho,
achando bonito o seu rosto oval, onde as pestanas faziam
sombra. (80)

A imagem de Ernestina refletida no espelho deseja uma beleza voltada
para a sedução. O mesmo acontece com a personagem Camila em
A falência: "A noite (. . .], Milla despia-se em frente do seu psyqué,
namorando a própria imagem, milagre da juventude, sentindo em
um frémito a delicia de bem merecer um grande amor" (329). Aqui,

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 57

explicitamente, a autora confronta a personagem com sua imagem que
é um "milagre da juventude" e portanto merecedor de um "grande
amor." A motivação desta sedução é diretamente ligada ao papel da
mulher na sociedade, e por isso, a atenção dedicada ao corpo é tão
importante.

O corpo que seduz no século XIX é, segundo Mary Del Priore
em seu livro Corpo a corpo com a mulher: pequena história das
transformações do corpo feminino no Brasil, um corpo-ampulheta,
uma verdadeira construção trabalhada por espartilhos e anquinhas
capazes de comprimir ventres e costas, projetando seios e nádegas.
A mão era coberta por luvas, os cabelos, com véus e chapéus, os pés
com sapatos finos, o corpo, submerso por toneladas de tecidos, só
se revelava por ocasião de bailes. Nestas ocasiões sociais, a mulher
burguesa, deliberadamente, mostrava pescoços e ombros, revelados
através dos decotes. A roupa teve um papel fundamental, pois regulou
o código social e proporcionou a distinção de hierarquias. As mulheres
burguesas se destacavam pela qualidade dos tecidos que vestiam em
uma tentativa de distinguir-se das mulheres de estratos sociais mais
baixos e de suas escravas.

Seguindo este padrão de beleza para a mulher burguesa, Júlia
Lopes de Almeida descreve seus personagens dentro de um âmbito
erótico, onde seduzem e provocam os desejos mais ardentes nos
homens através do "Moreno quente da sua pele rosada" que desperta
no coração masculino, "não o amor puro e casto que o homem deve
dedicar à companheira eternal, mas o fogo sensual de uma paixão
violenta e transitória" {A viúva Simões 18). Outro exemplo é o caso
da personagem Camila de A falência, cujo corpo é descrito pelo seu
aroma sensual, e é associado a uma "fructa polpuda e delicada" (sic)
(398), o qual é evidencia do caráter erótico da mulher. É importante
observar que a autora enfatiza a distinção entre o amor carnal e o
amor casto e platónico: "Se Ernestina era para ele a mulher de fogo
que lhe queimava a carne, a filha era a mulher da luz benéfica que lhe
iluminava o futuro, e ele amava a ambas, a uma com os sentidos, a
outra com o coração" [A viúva Simões 161).

A vida privada e o cotidiano dos afazeres domésticos não são
espaços para sedução. É no contato com a vida pública que o jogo
sedutor acontece. É no baile, no sarau, no teatro que a mulher se veste
provocativamente, mostrando partes do seu corpo que permanecem
cobertas na vida diária. A moda do século XIX desempenha um

58 VANINA EISENHART

papel fundamental na arte da sedução, pois segundo Gilda de Mello
e Souza, acentua as características sexuais, aumentando quadris com
muitas anáguas, ou ainda, contraindo a cintura com espartilhos. O
ritmo erótico consiste em chamar atenção, sucessivamente, para cada
parte do corpo, mantendo o instinto sexual sempre aceso (Mello e
Souza 92).

Outro elemento integrante do jogo de sedução, e explorado por
Almeida, é a representação da moça solteira como casta e pura, tendo
por objetivo atrair pretendentes. Para alcançar este objetivo, o vestido
de baile da moça era, via de regra, mais recatado. Já a mulher casada
tinha uma permissão implícita de exibir-se, pois como a própria
autora ressaltou no comentário do personagem de Rosas, a mulher
burguesa, nestas ocasiões, não deixava de ser uma "mulher-objeto"
que representava o status social do marido. É através deste status,
conseguido pelo matrimónio, que a mulher casada tinha o direito
de exibir certas partes do seu corpo. Aqui podemos detectar a ironia
utilizada pela autora, ao inverter estes papéis sociais pré-estabeleci-
dos, pois por ocasião do baile masqué em A viúva Simões, os papéis
encontram-se invertidos. Ernestina, viúva e mãe, tem o desejo de ir
ao baile com um traje "decotado," "farfalhante," "claro" abstendo-
se da escolha por causa do comentário alheio que poderia causar
este comportamento, pelo fato de ser uma viúva. Porém, sua filha
Sara estava vestida como "uma verdadeira boémia de opereta com
pandeiro, cabelo solto, braços nus, saia redonda tilintante de moe-
das" (146). O papel da viúva por si só já constituía um potencial de
ameaça social. Ernestina representa esta ameaça quando começa o seu
jogo sedutor para conquistar Luciano. Em A falência, a personagem
Camila "reclamara da modista um vestido com bordaduras lumino-
sas, flores e azas espalmadas sobre tules, que dessem ao seu corpo o
fulgor de um astro" (264). Este jogo de sedução e contrastes entre a
severidade do traje de dia e o provocante traje da noite possibilitou o
cultivo do eroticismo permitido dentro dos padrões morais, e segundo
Mello e Souza, foi "um dos mais poderosos elementos de equilíbrio da
sociedade daquele tempo" (93). Afinal das contas, o jogo de sedução
tinha por objetivo a consagração do matrimónio e a manutenção de
um status social proporcionado por esta instituição.

Com o casamento, a mulher adquire um status económico e social,
além de certo prestígio, por não pertencer à categoria de mulher sol-
teira (Mello e Souza 90). No século XIX, ascensão social, status

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 59

económico e social dentro de uma sociedade patriarcal eram somente
obtidos através da instituição do matrimónio que representava para
a mulher burguesa a única alternativa, além da vida religiosa. O
trabalho, como vimos, era reservado ao homem. As mulheres que
trabalhavam pertenciam aos estratos sociais mais baixos.

O corpo feminino na obra de Júlia Lopes de Almeida apresenta
uma representação social muito marcante, pois revela uma descrição
totalmente distinta para cada classe social. A mulher burguesa é des-
crita como possuidora de atributos corporais atrativos como "peito
farto," "pescoço alvo e redondo," ou ainda "pulsos delicados," atri-
butos que descrevem uma mulher que não se encontra deformada pelo
trabalho árduo. Ao contrário, a mulher trabalhadora, marginalizada
pela raça ou cor é descrita de outra forma:

E tudo d'ella repuganava a Ruth: a estupidez, a humildade,
a côr, a forma, o cheiro; mas percebera que também alli
havia uma alma e soffrimento, e então, com lagrimas nos
olhos, perguntava a Deus, ao grande Pae misericordioso,
porque a criara, a ella, tão branca e tão bonita, e fizera
como o mesmo sopro aquella carne de trevas, aquelle corpo
feio da Sancha immunda? (sic) {A falência 290)

Estes exemplos demonstram como Almeida enfatiza a diferença entre
a representação do corpo feminino burguês e o das classes baixas.
Portanto, o discurso sobre a representação do corpo feminino durante
o período da Belle Époque é, para Almeida, uma construção social. A
estratégia da autora é proporcionar várias representações femininas
de acordo com a sua estratificação social e económica.

Esta análise de A viúva Simões e A falência teve por objetivo
ampliar a percepção sobre o legado literário de Júlia Lopes de
Almeida, que por muito tempo estava limitado às temáticas da edu-
cação e maternidade. Através destas duas obras, podemos perceber
uma autora determinada a retratar a condição feminina durante a
Belle Époque brasileira. A análise das duas temáticas discutidas neste
ensaio, a cidade e o corpo feminino, demonstra de que forma a autora
retrata esta condição feminina: através de uma dicotomia representada
pelo mundo público, como elemento masculino, e pelo privado, como
elemento feminino. O burguês, o flâneur, os objetos de desejo, o ritmo
febril do trabalho e da cidade, compõem este universo masculino, com

60 VANINA EISENHART

O objetivo de confrontar e definir o universo feminino, representado
pela esfera privada.

Este mundo privado, que em primeiro plano parece constituir o
bastidor da ação principal, é na realidade o palco onde se desenvol-
vem as principais questões, e onde Almeida apresenta, de maneira
sutil, uma abordagem feminista sobre o papel das mulheres diante
de uma sociedade extremamente patriarcal. Através das diferentes
personagens femininas que representam as várias camadas sociais,
Almeida vai compondo um retrato de época, e revelando verdadeiras
estratégias de sobrevivência femininas. Assim, o corpo, a moda, e a
arte da sedução para a mulher burguesa tornam-se vitais para garantir
um status social. Almeida proporciona aos leitores diferentes repre-
sentações sociais do corpo feminino, não se restringindo somente à
mulher burguesa.

Isto nos leva a outro ponto importante abordado nesta análise: o
estilo de Almeida. A autora é o resultado das incoerências e influên-
cias sociais, científicas, económicas e políticas de sua época. Apesar
de adotar, até certo ponto, características dos movimentos literários
e estéticos em voga na sua época, Almeida rejeita implicitamente o
determinismo social, e se enfoca na construção social do género ao
desenvolver seus personagens femininos.

Desta maneira, o estilo de Júlia Lopes de Almeida apresenta uma
ficção feminina que reúne algumas características dos movimentos
literários e ideologias sociais e científicas de sua época, porém adap-
tando-as com um feminismo que não confronta as normas vigentes,
mas revela-se sutilmente em uma segunda leitura. Eis porque a obra
de Júlia Lopes de Almeida revela uma autora produto da soma dos
movimentos vigentes à sua época e que apresenta temáticas que reve-
lam mais profundamente as tensões entre o mundo público e privado,
fornecendo um amplo panorama da situação feminina do fin de- siècle
carioca.

Notas

1. Júlia Lopes de Almeida é considerada uma escritora feminista pela
publicação de seus artigos em vários periódicos, entre eles, o jornal O Paiz, e
a revista A Mensageira, onde escreveu sobre os mais variados assuntos, como
a defesa da cidade, o divórcio, e a educação da mulher. Para mais informação

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 61

veja Telles. A autora também participou nas primeiras organizações feministas
no Brasil segundo Bárbara Heller.

2. Ver o comentário em Moreira.

3. Ver João do Rio e Brito Broca.

4. Peggy Sharpe publicou um interessante artigo a respeito do ensaio
"Maternidade." Veja "Maternidade: uma visão política de Júlia Lopes de
Almeida."

5. Segundo Alfredo Bosi, Coelho Neto (1864-1934) apresenta um
realismo burguês que difere do realismo alencariano, pois incorpora o
Naturalismo, propondo fórmulas descritivas e narrativas até o advento do
Modernismo. Os elementos naturalistas incorporam sua estética literária,
como por exemplo, o determinismo biológico de certas personagens, através
de elaboradas fichas clínicas que traçam aspectos mórbidos da psique capaz
de gerar a loucura e amores incestuosos (Bosi 200-201).

6. Ver comentário em One Hundred Years After Tomorrow e no tra-
balho publicado por Nadilza Martins de Barros Moreira.

7. Esta denominação "primeira-dama tropical" aparece no ensaio de
abertura da edição de 1999 de A viúva Simões, editada pela EDUNISC - Edi-
tora da Universidade de Santa Catarina, e de autoria de Peggy Sharpe.

8. Sobre o naturalismo, ver estudo publicado por Claude Lyle Hulet em
Brazilian Literature - History and criticism.

9. De acordo com Alfredo Bosi, a "Escola de Recife" teve como men-
tor Tobias Barreto e seus discípulos Sílvio Romero, Graça Aranha e Artur
Orlando. Fomentado na década de 70 do século XIX, a "Escola de Recife"
foi um movimento que integrou no nível ideológico o determinismo e suas
correntes, como o positivismo; no nível estético um liberalismo da forma, com
a inclusão do realismo, parnasianismo, e naturalismo (Bosi 188).

10. Ver o comentário de Sadlier, p. 2.

1 1 . Saffioti em A mulher na sociedade de classes: mito e realidade.

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Terra, 1984.
Telles, Norma. "Escritoras, escritas, escrituras." Histórias das mulheres no

Brasil. São Paulo: Contexto, 1997. 401-442.
Torres-Pou, Joan. El e[x]terno femenino: aspectos de la representación de la

mujer en la literatura latinoamericana del siglo XIX. Barcelona: PPU,

1998.
Ventura, Roberto. Estilo tropical: história cultural e polémicas literarias no

Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1991.

The City as Labyrinth in Mexican
Women's Contemporary Writing

Inés Sahagún-Bahena
University of Illinois, Chicago

México City, with its complex and gritty urbanism typical of Latin
American megalopolis, has been the subject of numerous academic
and Creative inquiries. The city has inspired such classic works as Luis
Buñuel's Los olvidados, Oscar Lewis's The Children of Sánchez and
Carlos Fuentes's La región más transpareiíte. Contemporary Mexican
films such as Amores Perros (González Iñárritu) and Ciudades oscuras
(Sariñana) are also evidence that the city continues to be fertile ground
for exploration and analysis. The challenges of city life have many
manifestations and the works mentioned above are attempts to explore
the myriad experiences of the city. Rosa Nissán's Hisho que te nazca,
Josefina Estrada's Desde que Dios amanece and Mónica de Neymet's
Las horas vivas have been selected for analysis because these novéis
contribute to this dialogue on México City, as they build upon the
urban motif by adding the voice of women and the subject of woman
and the city. These novéis reveal the different ways women relate to or
particípate in the urban environment. In Hisho que te nazca, the main
protagonist learns to make use of the city's resources when she decides
to abandon the role of housewife, while in Desde que Dios amanece,
the city serves as the background of the housewife 's daily domestic life,
reinforcing this role and limiting other possibilities. Lastly, Las horas
vivas presents a withdrawal from city life due to the fear of a precari-
ous urbanization, which becomes challenged by the introduction of a
connector space. The order and discussion of these novéis will reveal
the different leveis of participation in city life and the female protago-
nists' strategies and approaches to an unwelcoming environment.

CiTY AS Gendered Labyrinth

These narrative works expose an urban environment that is configured

according to gender hierarchical relations in which the male subject

M MESTER, VOL. XXXV (1006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 65

occupies an advantageous positioning over the female subject. Alejan-
dra Massolo, an urban sociologist whose research focuses on gender
and the urban environment in the Latin American context, explains
México City's gendered spatial configuration to include the cultural
significance of the domestic space:

La ciudad Ide México] no es un espacio neutralmente
genérico, es decir, donde son inexistentes las relaciones y
divisiones sociales entre los géneros femenino y masculino.
[. . .] Así como los hombres, las mujeres también produ-
cen y modifican el espacio urbano marcándolo con las
diferencias de género que forman parte de la diversidad,
pluralidad, heterogeneidad y conflictualidad de la ciudad
moderna. Diferencias de género que resultan de las posicio-
nes y roles asignados a la mujer en la esfera privada de la
sociedad, determinando relaciones, percepciones, accesos,
usos y experiencias específicas y desiguales respecto a la
ciudad y a la vida social urbana. (Massolo 427)

This "prívate sphere" involves the historical relationship between the
woman and the home as an integral factor in the structuring of the
gendered city. The process of socialization that occurs within the home
teaches the notion of femininity as a valué to be housed. As a result,
the home is construed as a place of belonging and sanctuary for the
woman and the family. The female protagonists, Oshinica in Hisho
que te nazca and Ángeles in Desde que Dios amanece, are culturally
anchored to the domestic space because of their roles as mother and
housewife, which are reinforced by family traditions and rituais.

While the prívate domestic space of the house is configured as
feminine and as sanctuary, the public space of the city, on the other
hand, is structured as the place for the masculine subject. Often
the public space is conceptualized as a labyrinth, as it is the setting
for business and politics. The externai environment is volatile and
expansive. Even when the prívate and public model is perceived as
artificial and illusory, movement and participation in the public realm
can be challenging and requires a complex system of strategies and
negotiations. It is an untamed and open terrain that is receptive to
masculine agency, yet it is problematic for the feminine subject. In
the novéis, some women are unprepared to enter the public space in

66 INÉS SAHAGÚN-BAHENA

other capacities not defined by their domestic roles. Since they have
identified exclusively with the domestic realm, the space beyond it is
perceived as uncharted and tricky. Yet this anxiety of the city is not
exclusive to women who identify with their socialized gender roles.
Even Matilde in Las horas vivas, who is neither wife ñor mother and
does not carry out traditional domestic roles, is fearful of the mascu-
line space of urban México City which in turn causes her to retreat
within the confines of the home.

The geographer Doreen Massey offers a vivid, personal example
of this common fear women have of the city through a young girl's
'sense' of not belonging in a public space. At nine or ten years oíd,
Massey was already aware of the relationship between people and
places, where she describes how "this huge stretch of Mersey flood
plain had been entirely given to boys. I did not go to those playing
fields — they seemed barred, another world (though today, with more
nerve and some consciousness of being a space-invader, I do stand on
football terraces — and love it)" (185). What is most interesting about
Massey's example is the signifying power of the physicality displayed
on the football field. The acts of playing, running and manipulating
the externai environment allow these boys or men to establish them-
selves as subjects and owners of the field. This behavior of agency
delimits the configuration of this área and establishes who enters or
belongs in this space. A young girl who does not display this masculine
pattern of behavior is made to feel foreign in this área. This childhood
experience illustrates the effects of the gendered externai environment
on a young girl. It is also indicative of the rite of passage undertaken
by the female 'invader' who wishes to access this terrain.

As a result, women's presence in the city is highly impacted by
the gender roles that have been prescribed within the private space.
Anthropologist Shirley Ardener explains this by showing how 'social
maps' determine the positionality of individuais to reflect structural
or hierarchical relationships, while the 'ground rules' díctate the
behavior of these individuais within a given space (11). Ardener's
theories map out the spatial politics of the private and public para-
digm. In the urban space, the male subject displays a 'strong' physical
and social presence to demónstrate dominance over the environment
and over the other inhabitants. As mother, (house)wife or daughter,
the Mexican woman must decipher and heed the 'social maps' and
'ground rules' of the city. Consequently, women decipher these bodily

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 67

and social mechanisms and take on the appropriate behavior in which
they display a 'weak' presence in the urban landscape.

An interesting interpretation of these bodily spatial politics is
offered in Marianne Wex's photographic work, which exposes wom-
en's gendered experience of the pubHc environment. Wex's work serves
as a visual example of how the sense of belonging in public spaces
is established and negotiated through the body and its movements.
Her photographic investigation of 'female' and 'male' 'involuntary'
or 'unconscious' body language in public spaces was based on the
premise that men and women are socialized to use public spaces differ-
ently as a result of gender identities and roles. According to Wex, this
socialization serves to establish and reinforce gendered hierarchy and
categories of 'weak' and 'strong.' The more than 5,000 photographs
led Wex to conclude that compared to men, women appear to be less
physically 'present' in public spaces. Their bodies are restricted to
minimize their presence, as depicted in the foUowing description:

The general characteristics of women's body posture are:
legs held close together, feet either srraight or turned
slightly inward, arms held close to the body. In short, the
woman makes herself small and narrow, and takes up little
space. The general characteristics of male body postures
are: legs far apart, feet turned outwards, the arms held at
a distance from the body. In short, the man takes up space
and generally takes up significantly more space than the
woman. (7)

This dominating male physical presence displayed in public spaces
sends a telling message about hierarchy and power relations. In
general, Wex explains that men have great physical freedom and
this translates into advantageous positions over women. Moreover,
women's body movement depends on the presence of men. In their
absence, a woman's posture appears more relaxed, yet at the moment
a man is present, there is noticeable change, her body language
becomes strained. These 'involuntary' body postures displayed in the
public space are, so argües Wex, very effective means of communicat-
ing "patriarchal power structures" (8).

Wex also offers the following very personal and revealing account
of a woman's experience using public transportation. This example

68 INÉS SAHAGUN-BAHENA

sheds some light on the gendered power struggles carried out in public
spaces. The tensión and anxiety are accentuated by the physicahty
of being endosad and in cióse proximity to the male subject. Again,
the feehngs experienced by this woman are of not belonging in this
highly contested site and of being undermined by the ground rules that
expect her to limit her physical presence when a male subject is near.
And as in the example given by the geographer Doreen Massey, the
physical dominance displayed in the public space is a strong identifier
of the 'master' of this domain:

The master of the world sits opposite me in the subway.
Four men on a seat which has room for five, legs sprawled,
padded shoulders, hands resting on their knees, fingers
spread apart. [. . . ] I am sitting cióse up to myself, knees
pressed tightly together...The appropriate muscles are to
be held tensed all day long. I cióse my eyes. To cast off this
repressive posture! To act as though I could sit unhassled
with legs relaxed. (8)

This woman's restricted behavior in the city space, especially in the
presence of a male subject, is the result of the spatial politics that dic-
tate women's movement throughout public spaces and render them
in a subaltern position.

In this arricie, I examine the varied ways in which the female
protagonists utilize strategies to depart from a restrictive domestic
space and negotiate their participation in a gendered urban landscape
where cultural mechanisms inhibir women's participation. Ardener's
concept of spatial configurations is instrumental in my approach to
the novéis because I explore the positionality of the women as they
move from the domestic space to the city environment. Also, I draw
on the theories elaborated by Massey and Wex on the woman's sense
of not belonging in public spaces. Wex's photographic approach to the
body language displayed in public is utilized in this analysis to look at
specific scenes in a similar fashion. As a result, I present "snap shots"
of scenes to reveal the bodily composition of the women in the city
space. Finally, Massolo's insight about the cultural implications of the
domestic space in the Mexican urban context is especially pertinent
to my analysis of the novéis, as I am mindful of the pervasiveness of
a masculine ideology that places a low social valué on the feminine.

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 69

In the novéis, Oshinca, Angeles and Matilde must contend with a
social structure where gender inequality is a cultural ideology and
an accepted practice. It begins with the 'feminine' space of the home,
which holds low social value, and is carried out into the public sphere
where women are confronted with an unwelcoming urban environ-
ment. While some female protagonists experience stress and difficulty
when moving about the city, others do manage to learn the ways of
the streets to become skillful urban navigators. My discussion begins
with Hisho que te nazca, in which Oshinica develops a strategy of
utilizing the city's resources when she abandons her domestic role of
housewife. By being able to identify valuable mechanisms, such as con-
nector spaces, Oshinica becomes successful in negotiating her presence
in the urban environment. Desde que Dios amajíece represents a par-
tially successful female urban navigator. Angeles is skillful in trekking
the city when running her errands to complete her role as housewife.
She negotiates her presence by performing the feminine, whether it
is through the role of housewife or of lover. Yet these strategies fali
short when she steps beyond the boundaries of the ground rules and
she is forced to contend with the gendered city environment. Angeles
is made to see that not ali public spaces are accessible and she has
limited mobility. Lastly, Las horas vivas presents a failed relationship
with the city. Matilde is unable to cope with the intimidating urban
environment and therefore chooses self-exile as an initial way to deal
with living in contemporary México City. By denying herself agency,
Matilde demonstrares an extreme fear of the city. Despite the different
strategies and outcomes, these women embody different approaches to
an urban environment that is problematic for women. These narrative
works represent a gendered perspective of the urban experience and
by positing these microhistories within the dominant narrative space,
they contribute to creating a more comprehensive contemplation of
life in contemporary México City.

Skillfully Navigating the Labyrinth

Oshinica is a Jewish-Mexican housewife in Rosa Nissán's novel, Hisho
que te nazca, who breaks from the domestic ideal in order to pursue
her own space where her artistic expression is allowed to flourish. In
this journey to self-actualization, Oshinica will need to abandon the
domestic paradigm that has stringently defined her identity and enter
the city environment, which represents an unknown territory. While

70 INÉS SAHAGÚN-BAHENA

this process is difíicult and painful, Oshinica will discover and maké
use of the strategies necessary to survive on her own in México City.
The highly structured domestic space has been instrumental in
shaping Oshinica's sense of place in her Jewish home and community.
The parental and marital homes mark her identity and define her par-
ticipation in the public spaces of México City. Oshinica's rearing has
been based on the sepárate gendered spaces paradigm. Initially, she
foUows the basic societal rule that women belong in the home and not
out in the street. As a result, Oshinica contends with the strong feeling
of not belonging in the public realm, as theorized by the geographer
Doreen Massey. Furthermore, Oshinca senses she is only being permit-
ted a temporary pass to reach a particular destination. She has been
socialized to understand femininity as a valué to be contained within a
respectable domestic environment. As a seasoned housewife, she follows
the unwritten rules for the married woman when moving about the city.
She is expected to safeguard her highly valued marital identity. As a
result, Oshinica develops personal tactics that will enable her to comply
with these expectations, which she explains in the following manner:

Cuando voy sola por la calle, si me llaman o me tocan el
claxon no volteo, a menos que me vayan a atropellar. Si
nada más es para vacilarme, pongo la cara más seria del
mundo y apuro el paso, no me pica la curiosidad por saber
quién es. A lo mejor es mi marido que lo hace para calarme,
por eso no pelo. Una señora casada no tiene que andar
volteando a ver a cualquiera. (65)

This scene reveáis the thought process and strategies Oshinica uses
when navigating the city. According to Ardener's spatial theories,
Oshinica is using a social map in which women of her Jewish com-
munity are generally absent in the city, while men dominate this space.
Moreover, she understands and follows the ground rules that guide
her behavior as a married middle-class woman. She also knows that
when she is unaccompanied, she must use body language to fend off
the objectification of the male gaze. Lastly, Oshinica must also con-
tend with an overbearing husband who has instilled in her the sense
of being watched even when out of his sight. At this phase in her life,
the city represents a volatile labyrinth that is clearly not an appropri-
ate environment for her.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 71

Oshinica experiences a rift with the domestic paradigm with the
introduction of a connector space, or a space similar to what the social
anthropologist Teresa dei Valle terms "un espacio puente" (164). This
space bridges together the private and public spaces and allows for a
fluid movement between them. Most importantly, this space acts as
a catalyst for change and transformation, as it blurs the boundaries
of the private and public paradigm (164-165). For Teresa Del Valle,
a woman's group best exemplifies this connector space because it
brings women together outside the private space, while retaining the
essential identifier of these women: the daily domestic life (166). In
Oshinica's case, the "espacio puente" is the Instituto de Cultura Supe-
rior, a school for women. At first Oshinica experiences feelings of not
belonging, but gradually this space is perceived as non-threatening as
she meets other students who are housewives. She begins to incorpó-
rate the school into her weekly routine and here begins the coUapse
of the domestic paradigm.

When Oshinica decides to sepárate from her husband and move
beyond ali that constitutes the domestic identity, she confronts the first
step required to make the transition from the private space to the pub-
lic sector: she needs to become economically independent. However,
the notion of working to earn a living is challenging and daunting.
Again, Oshinica discovers another valuable connector space through
the network of divorced women who have entered the world of paid
work. These women serve as a tangible example of living outside the
domestic ideal. One divorced woman in particular, Oshinica's cousin,
challenges her to remove the veil of homemaker, an identity that had
been instilled in her from childhood and which had granted her social
status as a married middle-class woman. She encourages her to move
toward that moment of epiphany when the notions of domesticity and
paid work have been demystified. "¡Quítate esas arañas de la cabeza!,
todos tenemos las mismas necesidades de casa, comida, etcétera. Con
orgullo trabajas para mantenerte y ya!, Esto te ennoblece, prima
boba [. . .]" (Nissan 160). Oshinica reaches the decisive moment to
embrace her passion and earn a living as a photographer. She is now
determined to succeed in the world of paid work.

Oshinica's success in the public space will depend greatly on her
ability to access various city spaces, which will be challenging when
she lives in the distant middle-class suburb, Ciudad Satélite. In order
to be able to negotiate her participation in the city, Oshinica will need

71 INÉS SAHAGUN-BAHENA

to employ many strategies and make use of connector spaces. To best
move from the domestic space to the various sites of work, she will
rely heavüy on her car, and learn to navigate efficiently through the
city's congested traffic. Oshinica adapts quickly by making her Galaxie
"una casa ambulante," a mobile home that allows her to maximize
her day out in the city:

Apenas salgo de la casa y me topo con el primer obstáculo:
un montón de coches. El tiempo que tenía se me va de
las manos, no hay posibilidad de avanzar. ..Opté por no
regresar a Satélite hasta la noche, si vuelvo en la tarde, ni de
relajo me lanzo a la aventura de cruzar otra vez esta ciudad.
Lo bueno es que la cajuela del Galaxie es tan grande que
caben miles de cosas. Es mi casa ambulante. Me cambio
de ropa donde puedo, llevo artículos de tocador, sudadera,
tenis, zapatos de tacón. (161)

This description highlights how the car is not merely her mode of
transportation through intimidating public traffic, but is also the
connector space that allows her to go back to the prívate space
when needed.

With the divorce in process, Oshinica is forced to move her house-
hold into an apartment on a busy commercial street. And while the
children are horrified by their fali from social grace, this move to the
city means that Oshinica will have improved her chances for economic
independence by adopting an alternative lifestyle:

1. . .1 aquí en La Condesa se me facilita la vida: se ponchó
la llanta, a la vuelta está la vulcanizadora; que no dejó bien
el coche el mecánico, hay otro; ¿no hay nada de comer?,
¿que me aburrí en la noche?, salgo a caminar, a comerme
una quesadilla, una hamburguesa, que son buenísimas en
la esquina, al cine. El cerrajero, el plomero, el eléctrico, con
todos platico, uno me recomienda con el otro. (208)

Oshinica's description shows that there are many nearby resources
that she is eager to utilize, as she embraces her new identity as a
working single parent. Life in the city also means that her children
will need to learn to use public transportation and get around on their

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 73

own, thus freeing Oshinica from many activities related to mother-
hood. Her challenge now is to unlearn the domestic ideal and with it
the middle-class notions of femininity and the home. Oshinica begins
to see that she can survive on her own and that the boundaries of the
private and public spaces can be collapsed. The city has ceased to be
an intimidating environment. It is now a valuable setting for the new
life she is forging.

Performing the Feminine IN THE Labyrinth

In Josefina Estrada's novel, Desde que Dios amanece, the female
protagonist will learn that while she has been allowed to trek the city
under the guise of the housewife, she is not in any authoritative posi-
tion to alter the integrity of the highly valued and guarded masculine
spaces. Ángeles's use of city spaces is defined by her status and role
as a middle-class housewife. Her mark of identity is that of a domes-
tic manager and her sole reason for being out in the public realm is
to carry out related responsibilities. Based on Arderner's concept of
space, Angeles follows a social map that gives limited access and par-
ticipation to women. Each morning, Angeles faces a day that is based
on the tasks to be done for her children or for her husband. When she
first steps out into the city streets she transforms into a skillful navi-
gator. Upon leaving her house she sheds the protection of the marital
home and yet is still able to dominate the externai environment to
complete her errands. However, one day in particular is different from
others since she is to meet with her lover. The encounter with her lover
in a public space will reveal to Ángeles the true nature of the city as
labyrinth. Her navigational skills fali short when facing her lover in
the 'masculine' space of the business office. This is a highly revered
and protected space that proves to be off limits to Angeles when she
wishes to access it by performing her role as lover.

Ángeles adopts a bold and almost reckless attitude toward her role
as lover. Without reservations she incorporales extramarital activities
into her domestic responsibilities. As she runs errands she will select
and purchase condoms as if she were choosing a food item for the
family's meai, "¡Los condones! Me voy a amarrar un hilito para que
no se me vayan a olvidar... Tendré que pasar rápidito a Sanborns; hay
mejor surtido. Los dei super son muy furris; les falta imaginación, col-
orido, sabor" (12). This gesture subverts her role as dutiful housewife
and adds a comical note to a serious matter. Ángeles is disillusioned

74 INÉS SAHA G UN-BAHENA

with her domestic Ufe because it has become devoid of meaning, as
she lacks authority and autonomy. Unlike Oshinica who questions the
imposed domestic identity and abandons it when it becomes oppres-
sive, Angeles is not able to take on this difficult examination. Instead,
she embraces humor as a mechanism to cope with her domestic Hfe
and with her extramarital activities. By making Hght of the situation
she is able to evade the identity of Angeles the housewife and take on
the persona of Angeles the lover, which is based on skillfully perform-
ing the feminine.

Angeles moves confidently throughout the city by negotiating her
feminine presence. Rather than shy away from her sexual identity she
exhibits it cautiously. She adorns her body with colorful clothing yet
masks her identity with protective sunglasses that serve as a barrier
to the intrusive gaze. She purposely attracts male attention in order to
control it. In this manner she performs the role of the skillful seduc-
tress. Yet, she also sets limits to the gaze and to potential interaction
by not allowing eye contact. Angeles recognizes the strong sexual
undertone of the city and demónstrales a risque attitude by playfully
challenging this aspect of the city. As an unaccompanied woman in
the public space, she is vulnerable to sexual objectification, yet she is
literally quite capable of holding her ground. The following scene is
suggestive of an urban environment that is primal and animalistic:
"Angeles sale protegida tras sus enormes anteojos oscuros... Camina
de prisa, dejando tras de sí una estela de perfume ácido y penetrante,
de hierba fermentada... En la calle de Amado Nervo, un automovilista,
a pesar de tener el siga, no avanza; la mira con insistencia" (19).

While Angeles is very comfortable with running her errands
during the day, she does recognize that the city takes on a different
dimensión at night. She knows very well that navigating the city alone
at night time is particularly tricky. However, Angeles falsely believes
she understands the spatial politics of the city. Thus, she is not afraid
or intimidated by the implications of the night, as she has developed
effective strategies that give her the confidence to pay a visit to her
lover at his office in the evening. However, when she transgresses the
closely guarded boundaries of her lover's work place, Angeles con-
fronts the hierarchical gender nature of this environment.

The risky visit to her lover's office involves an elabórate logistical
approach to a complex spatial situation. As a married, unaccompanied
woman and non-employee, Angeles faces the difficult task of entering

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 75

an accounting firm outside business hours to encounter employees
who are working late into the night due to an audit. The accounting
firm represents a masculine space par excellence, while the evening
audit heightens the seriousness of the business setting. Once in her
lover's office, Angeles becomes involved in a tug of war vvith her lover,
as her attempt to carry out a surprise romantic encounter is rejected
by her lover who is resolved in maintaining a serious business environ-
ment. He 'performs' his role of the busy executive and disregards her
visit. Ángeles's presence threatens the integrity and respectability of his
workplace and he succeeds in denying her wish of displaying their love
affair in an inappropriate space. The final humiliation for Angeles is
being forced to leave through the emergency exit so as not to be seen
by his wife w^ho is about to enter through the main entrance.

Prior to this encounter, Angeles was guided by the false impres-
sion that her femininity was an effective mechanism that enabled her
to move throughout the urban labyrinth regardless of time of day or
type of public space. She derived great pleasure from the attention she
received when displaying a coquet image, yet knew to be careful in
concealing her respecta ble identity. While she had been encouraged to
perform the role of seductress in restaurants, city streets, hotel rooms,
and other public spaces, she has now been denied this role in her
lover's place of business. She has been taught a lesson on the ways of
the city. The role of lover does not grant her any power with which to
negotiate her presence in the masculine space of the business setting.
It has been made clear to Ángeles that she cannot take the initiative
to enter 'his' space as she pleases, nor can she gain entry through flir-
tation or other seductive gestures. Essentially, Angeles as lover must
abide by the social map drafted by her lover and which indicates the
spaces that are accessible or restricted.

This disastrous ending is completely contrary to the daytime sce-
nario. During the day Ángeles finds the city to be easily navigable as
she carries out her domestic related errands. With a firm and confident
stride she covers many streets, takes cabs and enters public spaces
such as the supermarket, the department store Sanborns, and her son's
school. However, the city does present some challenges at night, spe-
cifically when she attempts to enter her lover's office. In this space and
time, Ángeles is reminded of the ground rules that dictate her roles as
housewife and as lover. The city at night is no place for the unaccom-
panied housewife. However, when Ángeles skillfully performs the role

76 INÉS SAHAGUN-BAHENA

oí lover, the city becomes more receptive to her presence. The conflict
arises when Ángeles boldly takes her performance to her lover's work
place. As the guardián of this respectable 'masculine' space, he rejects
her presence and shows her the true master of the extramarital domain
by putting her back in her place. As a result, Angeles will give up her
role as lover and conform to her Ufe as housewife. This mark of iden-
tity will inform the way she occupies city spaces and she will again
face an unfulfilled existence in both the domestic and public spaces.
Unlike Oshinica who sees the city as a resourceful environment that
allows her to move beyond the domestic role, Ángeles's relationship
to the urban environment is defined specifically by her role of house-
wife. She looks to the city to achieve her domestic tasks and is quite
skillful in this regard. Yet, Angeles is only partially utilizing the city's
resources, and she does so to fulfiU the needs of others.

EVADING THE LaBYRINTH AND DeNYING FeMALE AgENCY

In Mónica de Neymet's Las horas vivas, the city environment is deci-
sive in shaping the women's relationship to the domestic space. The
novel presents a diverse group of women who Uve in the same middle
class apartment building and who employ the obligatory maid. For
some women, city Ufe has granted them the opportunity to reconfigure
the middle class home and its notions of femininity and the home.
The woman is now the breadwinner and exercises authority over the
others who Uve in this space, or she undomesticates it by doing away
with the hierarchical structure of the familial and marital paradigm.
The latter is the home environment for the main protagonist Matilde,
a young economically independent, unmarried woman, who shares
the apartment with her maid, María Diosdado, a shy and anxious
young mother who is a recent newcomer to México City. However,
Maltilde's alternative domestic space fails to bridge the gap between
the prívate and public spaces and she is not able to experience an
enriched and fulfilling Ufe in contemporary México City. Instead, the
apartment becomes a protective shelter in which to find comfort and
isolation from an intimidating urban environment. Matilde's anxiety
is the result of not having a social map with which to read the city
and her place in it.

Unlike Oshinica and Angeles who navigate the city, Matilde is
an awkward presence in the urban space. She has a strong aversión
toward the externai environment and is crippled by this phobia,

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 77

which is an extreme versión of Massey's theory about the feeling of
not belonging in the public space. Her fear may be a consequence of
the void left by the death of her parents; however, the details of her
family hfe are unknown to the reader. Matilde shows no emotional
connection to the family home. The only reference to her past is the
pink coverlet from her childhood that she uses as a security blanket.
By sleeping with this childhood remnant, Matilde demonstrares a
longing and need to regress to her past, to a time and space where she
felt safe and protected. It is evident that Matilde's traumatic experi-
ence has impacted her adult identity.

It is also important to note that the pink coverlet is the only gen-
der identifier. While Matilde clearly recognizes the gender signifiers
of the women who live in the apartment building, she chooses to
ignore her ow^n gender identity. She is acutely aware of the beautifying
measures used by her neighbors to cope with the issues they face as
women. Such is the situation of the middle-aged career woman who
is anxious about her age and fading beauty in light of having mar-
ried a young aspiring actor. Similarly, the quiet and withdrawn young
woman who makes a living as a cali girl, hides behind her beauty so
as not to see the damaging effect of selling her body. Matilde knows
that these women give in to the beautifying myth because it allows
them to conceal their despairing realities.

Matilde, on the other hand, seeks to avoid her gender identity and
to be invisible to others to deter any social contact and to be pres-
ent only as an observer of others' lives. In the following description,
Matilde explains her vulnerabilities in which as an outsider, she occu-
pies such a small and insignificant presence that she goes unnoticed:

Vuelve a mi esa sensación de estar fuera de la escena,
mirando a las cosas desde una ventana. La ventana es la
de mi cuarto de niña. 1...] Yo no rengo rostro al que los
demás puedan mirar: soy el hueco de la ventana. Puedo
poner atención y observar lo que pasa, y oír lo que hablan
los demás. Pero no me ven. Vuelve la sensación angustiosa
de que es peligroso vivir allí en las calles, mostrando un
cuerpo y unas facciones [. . .1. (25)

Matilde will constantly refer to the window motif, which serves as a
protective looking glass through which she safely observes others, yet

78 INÉS SAHAGUN-BAHENA

is not seen by them. It is clear in this passage that she struggles with
her anxiety about the dangers of displaying the gendered body when
out in the city streets.

Matilde's need to avoid social contact and the impHcations of her
presence in the city leads her to take on a tedious thesis project that
serves the purpose of evasión. For the past two years, Matilde has
been working on a Spanish translation of a nun's coUection of letters
written in the fourth or sixth century. This project allows her to evade
reality and life in contemporary México City, as she is transported to
a distant past where she loses herself in the life of this medieval nun.
At times, Matilde detects the moment when she slips into this myste-
rious persona, blurring the boundaries of both realities, as described
in the following passage, "Estoy inquieta en este inhóspito enero.
¿La soledad? Una isla helada en la que la monja está sola, vestida de
blanco. Pero no, soy yo a la que el frío paraliza y encoge. La monja
no está sola" (31). Matilde draws a parallel between the nun's life of
solitude and her own self-exile from contemporary life in México City.
She easily identifies with the nun and finds comfort in her letters. It is
telling that Matilde becomes attached to this woman whose vow of
celibacy identifies her as an asexual being. Again, Matilde's avoidance
of a gendered or sexual identity is manifested through her identifica-
tion with this nun. Ardener's social map would prove to be a valuable
resourcc for her, as it would provide her with the codes for guiding her
own behavior and that of others, thus being able to intégrate herself
in city life. Instead, Matilde allows herself to become consumed by her
thesis project as a way to avoid life beyond her apartment.

Matilde withdraws from the city because she fears it and lacks
the skills to face an intimidating environment. Indeed, the trauma
of losing her parents has also severed her confidence in life beyond
the domestic space. Without this foundation, Matilde is unable to
decipher the various mechanisms at work or the nonverbal language
of other city dwellers. She knows she does not belong in this urban
jungle where she is vulnerable. Matilde expresses this alienation in
the following passage:

Temo, cuando estoy allá fuera, perdida en ese seco torbe-
llino de ruidos, no saber leer la clave de las voces, de las
señas, como no descubro, porque no estoy en el secreto, los
insultos lanzados por ios claxons de los coches. Extraña en

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 79

la calle, en mi propia ciudad, no reconozco los refugios, los
contactos, pero ¿los demás los conocen? (81)

Matilde acknowledges the peculiarity of her situation and senses that
there is a missing link that would have provided her with the ground
rules to guide her behavior, as explained by anthropologist Shirley
Ardener. Therefore the female protagonist lacks the skills to carry
out a normal urban life. She manages by living on the periphery, by
looking down at the city through her window and avoiding direct
contact with others.

This deficiency in survival strategies has been fostered by her
complete attachment to an undomesticated private space. To avoid
stressful urban situations Matilde becomes a recluse in her protective
apartment. She is most at ease alone at home where she has created
an alternative domestic environment, as there is no gender or familial
hierarchy represented by a husband or father figure. Rather, she ere-
ates a soothing atmosphere based on classical music, academic books
and her translation project. However, by enclosing herself in her "isla
departamento," (9) or "departamento de cristal," (40) Matilde is dem-
onstrating behavior symptomatic of a person suffering from the fear
of open spaces. By giving into her fear she is denying herself agency
and participation in city life. She is living in a metaphysical dead space
where gender and contemporary cultural references are nonexistent.
Matilde is unable and unwilling to leave the sanctuary of her home.

However, Matilde's attempts to shun city life are gradually chal-
lenged by María, her maid, who serves as a connector space to the
outside world. María is instrumental in bringing about a change in
Matilde's hermit-like state. María engages Matilde in life beyond her
apartment through conversation about her new neighbors. As she
goes about her chores, María subtlely incorporates the exterior into
Matilde's secluded hfe, as described in this passage, "Entonces habían
aparecido los extraños, los invasores que ya entraban con la avanzada
de los comentarios de María, que puntual con el jugo de naranja, el
pan tostado y el café, me preguntaba: Ahora en la mañana llegaron los
vecinos. ¿Los oyó?" (17). In this interaction Matilde takes on a pas-
sive role while María is the active story teller who is timidly bringing
Matilde out of her indifference and self-exile. Surprisingly, Matilde
responds well to María 's stories and begins to listen attentively to the
maid's narration and to the others who live in the building.

80 INÉS SAHAGUN-BAHENA

Indeed, in the brief time that María worked as a maid, Matilde's
reclusive attitude was challenged by her presence in the apartment.
María was effective in sparking Matilde's interest in the building's
activities, and consequently, was able to detach Matilde's grip on
the thesis project that had become her reason for self-exile. While
Matilde's experience with this connector space does not reach its
fuU actuaiization, as is the case with Oshinica who makes drastic
changes with her lifestyle, there is a positive result. As Matilde begins
to actively observe the lives of the women in the apartment building,
she learns of the many ways women inhabit México City, whether the
woman is the middle class 'patrona' or the humble woman who serves
her. This interest in the activities immediately outside her apartment
door represents a step closer to the contemporary life of a chaotic
urban environment she had been avoiding, Even though she is not
ready to actively take part in city life, Matilde has made a significam
break from the phobia that has led her to a sheltered existence. A tell-
ing scene near the end of the novel is when Matilde buys a notebook
in which to write down her observations. These observations will
constitute Matilde's first novel and represent an effort to bridge her
prívate space to the public spaces of México City. As the novel closes,
the reader is assured that Matilde will now move closer to city life and
possibly learn to become part of it.

CONCLUSIONS

The women in these novéis represent the different ways of experi-
encing life in contemporary México City. Gender and social class
mark their use of domestic and public spaces. The spatial theories of
'social maps' and 'ground rules,' elaborated by anthropologist Shir-
ley Ardener, highlight how spatial politics informs the domestic and
city spaces these women inhabit. According to Ardener, spaces are
configured to reinforce hierarchical relationships. While the domestic
realm has been constructed to house the feminine, the female pro-
tagonists do not feel 'at home' here, as they must contend with gender
and class power struggles. The home, then, may be experienced as a
safe or oppressive environment. For women like María, who works
as a maid, the middle class home in the city is indeed a sanctuary
from an abusive marital relationship found in some homes of rural
México. For Matilde and other women unskilled at navigating the
city, the domestic space represents shelter from the objectification

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

and harassment of an intimidating and chaotic urban environment.
On the other hand, some women view the city as a liberating space.
For the newly divorced Oshinica, the urban environment is the best
setting to ensure her survival as a single working parent. Her success
in the city depends on her abiHty to maximize the resources not easily
accessible to women. An effective strategy for Oshinica is identifying
those connector spaces that allow her to move beyond the domestic.
Angeles looks to the city to carry out the necessary tasks as dictated
by her domestic role, but she also looks to it to perform her role of
lover. However, when she fails to follow the ground rules, she is firmly
reminded of her place and role as housewife. She is also schooled in
the urban spatial politics. The 'masculine' spaces of the city will not
be undermined, nor its integrity threatened.

Regardless of the various w^ays each female protagonist relates
to the city, this space is not neutral terrain. On the contrary, it has
been configured by gender, social and cultural ideologies. This envi-
ronment acts upon its inhabitants, and is also acted upon by them.
Through socialization male agency is encouraged and reinforced in
city spaces. Male social and physical dominance is displayed as part
of the ground rules that configure this environment. Consequently,
some women react to this 'performance' and modify their behavior
to assume a subaltern role in the city. They succumb to the obstacles
that discourage their active participation as citizens of this mega-
lopolis. As a result, they either become entrapped in the labyrinth or
choose to avoid exposure to the city as they are unable to leave the
familiarity of the domestic paradigm. For these women, the gendered
hierarchical environment undermines female agency and reinforces
the private-public paradigm. However, other women are skillful in
reading the spatial politics of the city and in identifying and creating
connector spaces, which facilitare movement from the domestic realm
to the urban space. Arming themselves with these strategies, they are
able to maneuver around cultural mechanisms or turn them into useful
resources. These women succeed in negotiating their presence in the
city and mark the feminine onto the urban landscape, thus gaining
some ground in the tug of war that is characteristic of contemporary
México City.

82 INÉS SAHAGUN-BAHENA

Works Cited

Ardener, Shirley. Women and Space: Ground Rules and Social Maps. London:

CroomHelm, 1981.
Amores perros. Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Perf. Emilio Echevarría,

Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero. Altavista Films,

Studio Home Entertainment, Zeta Film, 2000.
Ciudades oscuras. Dir. Fernando Sariñana. Perf. Alejandro Tommasi, Alonso

Echánove, Diego Luna, Héctor Suárez. Altavista Films, IMCINE [mx].

Veneno Producciones [mx], 2002.
Estrada, Josefina. Desde que Dios amanece. México: Joaquín Mortiz, 1995.
Fuentes, Carlos. La región más transparente. México: Fondo de Cultura

Económica, 1958.
Lewis, Osear. The Children of Sánchez: Autobiography ofa Mexican Family.

New York: Vintage Books, 1961.
Massey, Doreen. Space, Place & Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.
Massolo, Alejandra. "La marca de género. Mujeres protagonistas de la

ciudad." Gestión metropolitana y política. Eds. Augusto Bolívar Espi-

noza, Rene Coulomb, Carmen Muñoz Bohlken, México: Universidad

Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco, 1994. 419-444.
Neymet, Mónica de. Las horas vivas. México: Grijalbo, 1985.
Nissan, Rosa. Hisho que te nazca. México: Plaza & Janes, 1996.
Olvidados, Los. Dir. Luis Buñuel. Perf. Alfonso Mejía, Estela Inda, Miguel

Inclán, Roberto Cobo, Alma Delia Fuentes, Francisco Jambrina. Con-

noisseur Video Collection, Image Entertainment, Ultramar Films, 1950.
Valle, Teresa del. Arzdamios para una nueva ciudad: Lecturas desde la antro-
pología. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, Universitat de Valencia, Instituto

de la Mujer, 1997.
Wex, Marianne. Lefs Take Back Our Space: 'Female' and 'Male' Body

Language as a Result of Patriar chai Structures. West Berlín: Frauenliter-

aturverlag Hermine Press, 1979.

Una conversación con Ana Rossetti

Jasmina Arsova, Carolyn Kendrick- Alcántara y Allison Li
University of California, Los Angeles

Ana Rossetti, una de las voces más importantes de la literatura espa-
ñola contemporánea, es una escritora prolífica que domina varios
géneros literarios, tales como la poesía, la ficción, e incluso la lite-
ratura juvenil. Rossetti nació en San Fernando, Cádiz, en 1950. En
1980 ganó el premio de poesía Gules por su poemario Los devaneos
de Erato publicado ese mismo año. Asimismo, obtuvo el prestigioso
premio de poesía Rey Juan Carlos con su libro Devocionario en
1986. En La Ordenación se reúne su poesía desde 1974 al 2004 y en
Recuento se compilan la totalidad de sus cuentos. Ha escrito novelas,
entre otras, la famosa Plumas de España, publicada en 1988.

En la primavera del 2006, el Departamento de Español y Portu-
gués tuvo el gran placer de recibir a Rossetti, quien generosamente
enseñó dos clases de escritura creativa sobre cómo escribir ficción,
una para estudiantes subgraduados y otra para graduados. Además,
durante su estancia, el departamento de español y portugués organizó
un concurso de cuento creativo ofreciendo dos premios, tanto para
estudiantes subgraduados como para graduados. Ana Rossetti honró
al concurso siendo miembro del jurado.

El 19 de mayo Rossetti nos concedió amablemente una entrevista
en la cual hablamos sobre una gran variedad de temas, empezando por
sus primeros recuerdos como escritora y terminando con los proyectos
que le gustaría desarrollar en el futuro. Hablamos sobre el proceso
de la creación artística y las posibles definiciones de la poesía. Nos
comentó también sobre su experiencia de enseñar el arte de escribir
ficción, tanto aquí en la UCLA como en otras universidades donde
ha impartido clases similares. Además, compartió con nosotras las
influencias artísticas que ha recibido a través de los años, y su opi-
nión sobre la compleja relación que existe entre el/la lector/a y el/la
escritor/a.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 83

JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

Mester: ¿Desde qué edad empezó a escribir? ¿Recuerda cuándo o
por qué empezó a escribir su primer poema o cuerno?

Ana Rossetti: No recuerdo cuándo empecé a escribir, pero sí mi
entrada en el mundo literario, quiero decir, cuando mi escritura tuvo
presencia para los demás. Fue a los ocho años, bueno, no sé bien si fue
a los siete o a los ocho, pero alrededor de esta edad, y se me ocurrió
hacer una obra de teatro. Y no se me ocurrió simplemente escribirla,
sino que — no sé de qué manera — le comí la cabeza a mis compañeras
para que se aprendieran los papeles y a no sé quiénes para que nos
dejara el escenario del colegio y que vinieran todas las clases a vernos.
Y digo que "no sé cómo" porque cuando era pequeña en el colegio
pasé por una niña rara. No era muy abierta, no tenía amigas y me
tenía que esforzar por parecerme a las otras. Por eso, no sé cómo
planteé la cuestión para que, además de aceptarme como autora,
consintieran que yo repartiera los papeles y dirigiera el cotarro. Me
encargué también de traer de mi casa toda la ropa para los personajes.
Debió salir bien la cosa porque la experiencia no resultó en absoluto
negativa. Seguí haciendo teatro y escribiendo, señal de que no ocurrió
nada traumático.

Mucho antes de atreverme a eso, yo debería haber escrito bas-
tante. Uno de mis juegos favoritos consistía en dividir una pizarra
con mi hermana para escribir palabras con las mismas consonantes a
ver quién sabía más. Esto le aburría enormemente a mi hermana que
prefería jugar a las casitas, lo que motivaba continuas peleas, aunque
al final, como hermana mayor, yo imponía mi voluntad.

M: ¿Cómo cree que ha cambiado su voz poética a través de los
años? ¿Y como escritora de prosa, cómo ha cambiado su visión y
estilo?

AR: También cambian los años. No me refiero a la edad, que
también cambia, sino a la Historia. Por ejemplo, la última cosa que he
escrito es con relación a los asesinatos de las mujeres en Ciudad Juá-
rez. Cierto que siempre ha habido problemas e injusticias en el mundo,
pero a veces hay otras preocupaciones, o momentos personales que
ocupan el primer plano de la creación literaria. En estos últimos años,
ha ocurrido la sobrecogedora destrucción de Bagdad. Yo he estado
comprometida en la protesta contra esta guerra participando activa-

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 85

mente en plataformas y manifestaciones. Sin embargo, fui incapaz de
escribir una sola línea sobre eso. Fue más tarde, cuando me pidieron
un artículo para una revista de arquitectura — sobre arquitectura, por
supuesto — cuando tomó forma en mí el sentimiento de la profana-
ción de una ciudad y la devastación de la geografía de la memoria.
Naturalmente, cuando hablo de escritura me refiero a después de Los
devaneos de Erato, es decir, cuando tengo conciencia de que el escribir
va unido con el publicar. Los poemas de Los devaneos de Erato no
fueron escritos para ser publicados. Eran cartas.

M: ¿Y entonces por qué los publicó?

AR: Por necesidad financiera. Pero esto es otra historia. Mis
hermanos y yo vivimos una situación muy particular. Yo, la mayor
de cuatro hermanos, tenía quince años y el pequeño siete, cuando
empezamos a vivir en la casa al lado de la de mis padres. A partir
de entonces se desarrolló un estilo de vida especial que nos llevó a
inventar un lenguaje propio. Para mí, establecer una intimidad con
alguien significa crear unos códigos de comunicación intransferibles.
No atañe sólo a las palabras, sino a objetos, imágenes, melodías: todos
son símbolos, todo es un emblema.... Esta manera de vivir atraía a
una serie de jóvenes que encontraba más divertido ir a nuestra casa
que pasear por la calle principal de San Fernando. Entre nosotros nos
comunicábamos mediante luces desde las azoteas, flores y notas. Pero
estas notas participaban también del lenguaje poético que utilizába-
mos en todas nuestras acciones. Nunca escribíamos una nota tal como
se entiende una nota normal, para eso teníamos el teléfono. Nuestro
lenguaje nunca era denotativo, era siempre connotativo, metafórico,
pleno de significados que sólo para nosotros tenían sentido.

Realmente yo no pensaba en ser escritora, a lo que me estaba
dedicando era teatro pero no por nada — la verdad es que escribía lo
que representábamos — sino que no lo consideraba como fin. Tampoco
sabía por dónde se empezaba para dedicarse a eso. Pero, en unas
navidades, el teatro donde estaba trabajando se incendió. Me quedé
sin trabajo y sin posibilidad para encontrar otro enseguida, porque
era una época muy mala. Los teatros estaban funcionando con los
espectáculos que se habían estrenado para la navidad y no se empe-
zarían a montar otros hasta unas semanas antes de Pascua. Entonces
en una revista vi un concurso de poesía. Pedían pocos versos, creo que

86 JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

ochocientos, o sea poco. Yo tenía al menos ochocientos versos decen-
tes, aunque tuve que llamar a mucha gente para que me enviaran los
que yo les había mandado. Traté de estructurar todo lo que recibí en
cuanto a tema, forma y tono para que tuviera un poco de coherencia.
Así nació Los devaneos de erato. Aunque tiene una primera lectura
que es comprensible para todo el mundo, existe otro mensaje que
siempre permanecerá secreto, hagan los análisis que hagan. Pero esa
es la grandeza del lenguaje poético.

M: Díganos una cosa, en el momento que está escribiendo la
poesía, ¿piensa en la reacción que el lector puede tener o sólo en las
sensaciones, emociones, e imágenes que quiere transmitir?

AR: Yo no pienso en el lector. En el momento que realmente está
creando, no sólo escribiendo, sino creando, uno se entrega al propio
proceso y es el texto el que te pide, el que se te rebela, el que se te
revela. A veces me levanto de la cama durante la noche y enciendo la
computadora sólo para cambiar una palabra. Una sola palabra puede
significar un mundo.

M: ¿Cómo definiría Ud. el papel de la poesía dentro de la litera-
tura hoy en día?

AR: Mira, es que la gente se cree que la poesía es otra cosa. La
poesía es más común de lo que uno piensa. La poesía no es sólo lo que
está en los libros canónicos. La poesía puede estar en una consigna
o en una pintada en la pared. Y algunos de los textos que cantan los
cantantes también son poesía. Está en muchos sitios. El error es creer
que sólo está en lo que te mandan estudiar porque no te enseñan a
descubrirla con tu propia receptividad, y no te atreves a fiarte de
tu criterio.

Una vez, yo estaba en un colegio dando un curso de verano y de
pronto veo una pintada en el patio del recreo. Era un poema fantás-
tico. Yo diría que unos versos estaban mal encajados pero tenían fácil
arreglo. Era un poema muy original y con mucha fuerza. Entonces,
llamé a un profesor del instituto y le dije: "Oye, ven para acá. ¡Aquí
tienen un poeta fantástico!" El profesor me miró como si estuviese mal
de la cabeza y me dijo, con bastante desprecio, que era la letra de un
grupo de rock. ¡Y qué! ¿Por qué tiene que ser incompatible un poema

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 87

con el rock, con el heavy metal o con lo que sea? Pero mucha gente
prefiere que le digan qué es lo que tienen que admirar.

M: Ya ha respondido a una parte de esta pregunta, pero ¿qué es
la poesía para Ud.? ¿Cómo la definiría? ¿Qué significa en su trayec-
toria personal e intelectual? ¿Y la ficción? ¿Tiene la misma función o
representa otra cosa para Ud.?

AR: La poesía puede tener muchas definiciones según de qué
manera la determina cada época, pero yo diría que simplemente la
poesía es lo que, de pronto, te da una visión de la realidad distinta y
te hace ver las cosas de una manera diferente. Anoche, no recuerdo
lo que estaba leyendo cuando por una extraña asociación se me ocu-
rrió esta idea: que la muerte no es libre. Hay personas que obligan
a la muerte a ejercer su oficio. Todos los asesinos, todos los gober-
nantes, toda esa gente está forzando a la muerte para que actúe. Este
texto que me indujo a reflexionar sobre la muerte en ese sentido, es
poesía, pues aunque yo todavía no lo haya resuelto como poema, yo
lo he reelaborado en mi interior hasta concebir algo completamente
ajeno a la idea previa que tuviera de ello. También, la poesía puede
originarse de una sensación. Una sensación de extrañamiento que
de repente te hace dar un vuelco a la realidad y ya te es imposible
volverla a considerar como antes. Aunque, claro, estoy hablando de
los efectos de la poesía, no de la poesía. Insisto en que para mí la
poesía no es sólo la escrita.

Tengo otra definición que se puede aplicar a una novela o a una
película. Cuando puedes resumir una novela y transmitir su esencia sin
que se tenga que leer, puede ser una buena novela, pero no es poesía.
Pero cuando hay que leer la novela para saber en qué consiste porque
lo importante no es de lo que trata, sino cómo se trata, es poesía. La
poesía no se explica. La poesía, es. Cuanto más indisoluble sea la
forma con el fondo, más se acercará al hecho poético.

M: Se puede decir que una gran parte de su poesía está dominada
por un cierto sensualismo y tal vez hasta un cierto erotismo. ¿De
dónde viene este sensualismo y por qué se repite tanto en su poesía?
¿Piensa que este sensualismo define su poesía y permanecerá a lo largo
de su carrera poética?

JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

AR: Es verdad en una parte de mi obra, pero no la define por
entero. Es perjudicial hacer juicios definitivos sobre una obra que
está en proceso, porque se convierte en un prejuicio. Obliga a que
las personas se acerquen a una obra esperando algo determinado y
que se frustren si no es eso lo que se les ofrece. Por ejemplo, mi libro
Punto umbrío desconcertó a mucha gente porque no le encontraban
el "morbo" que ellos esperaban. Un libro con ese título, firmado por
mí, sólo podía tener implicaciones sexuales. Seguro que si mi libro se
titulase "Platero y yo," pensarían que trataba de cualquier aberración
con el burro. Es por eso que Agatha Christie tenía que firmar con otro
nombre si escribía otras cosas que no fueran de crímenes. La mejor
manera de leer a alguien es no saber quién es este alguien. Para mí,
los libros deberían publicarse todos anónimos para que el texto se
defendiera por sí solo. Yo también escribo libros infantiles y lo que
aprecio de ese público es que ni saben ni les importa quién escribió los
libros. Muchas veces cuando voy a un colegio, si les divierte el cuento
que les conté, enseguida me atribuyen todos los demás cuentos que
les han gustado. Aunque sea contradictorio, esa falta del concepto de
autoría me hace sentir que lo que escribo es más de verdad.

M: ¿Ud., por acaso, ha escrito un diario en algún momento de su
vida? Si escribe un diario, ¿qué representa ese diario para Ud.? ¿Hay
alguna relación entre el diario y la poesía que produce, o sea, salen la
inspiración o algunas líneas de su poesía directamente del diario?

AR: Me habían dicho que para ser escritora, lo mejor era llevar
un diario. Yo procuré escribirlo en varias ocasiones pero me desespe-
raba. Si empezaba a escribir el diario anotando algo alegre, después
me sentía incapaz de cambiar el tono para contar algo desagradable.
Sentía entonces que no contaba toda la verdad. Pero incluso, a veces,
al hacer la transcripción la realidad se modificaba: no era exactamente
así. Eso me contrariaba mucho. Una vez mi madre me dijo que me
iba a llevar al ballet. En realidad era a un espectáculo de ballet, pero
yo entendí que iba a apuntarme en una academia. Así lo escribí en mi
diario completamente entusiasmada. Si esas efusiones en vez de tener-
las con el diario las hubiera tenido con mi madre, se hubiera aclarado
la cosa. Después me sentí completamente ridicula por lo que había
escrito. Sobre todo porque puse en boca de mi madre: El lunes vas
a ir a estudiar ballet, y ya no sabía como deshacer el malentendido.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 89

Yo hubiera querido consignar las cosas como un notario, pero la
escritura podía y me llevaba no a consignar sino a interpretar. Más
frecuentemente, a malinterpretar. Entonces me desesperé y admití que
no podía ser escritora porque no podía contar la verdad en el diario y
dejé de escribir el diario. Lo que sí, he hecho anotaciones en algunos
momentos de mi vida, no contando los hechos, sino las percepciones,
las sensaciones, pensamientos, imágenes que fijo para que no se me
escapen... De estas notas, en algún momento determinado, puede
surgir un poema, o me sirven para apoyar algún escrito. A veces me
tropiezo con ellas y no puedo recordar la situación que las provocó,
pero pueden sugerirme nuevas cosas. Otras, me doy cuenta de que no
significan nada y las olvido.

M: Actualmente Ud. está dando dos clases de escritura creativa
en nuestro departamento en UCLA, una para estudiantes subgra-
duados y otra para graduados. ¿Es la primera vez que ha dado este
tipo de clase? ¿Qué es lo que más le conmueve o le inspira a enseñar
tales clases?

AR: Es la primera vez que hago un curso tan largo. Yo he dado
muchos cursos de escritura creativa. De poesía jamás, porque nunca
he tenido el tiempo que yo estimo necesario. Los que me han ofrecido
son de pocas semanas y en ese tiempo para mí es imposible enseñar
nada, sobre todo si son principiantes. Pero sí, he dado clases de per-
cepción poética. Saber leer poesía es el primer paso para aprender a
escribir. Di unos talleres para extranjeros residentes que dominaban
el español pero no la literatura española. Hacerles leer a ellos poemas
muy conocidos era como descubrirlos de nuevo, puesto que ellos no
leían a los autores, leían puramente la poesía.

Lo que me importa es el lenguaje en la forma que sea y, cuando
hablo del lenguaje, no me refiero a la escritura sino a cualquier código
de comunicación. Lo que pasa es que no estoy preparada para enseñar
otras cosas: sólo escritura, aunque me gustaría dominar las posibili-
dades digitales, por ejemplo, para poder expresarme de otro modo.
Sin embargo, estar en relación con otros creadores me sirve para
mi propia creación. Aunque no pueda incorporar su técnica, puedo
aprender de otra forma de ver el mundo. También, he colaborado con
otros escritores. Eso es estupendo porque te esfuerzas en producir.
Si estás sola puedes inventarte mil excusas para no hacer nada, pero

90 JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

si estás con otras personas no te queda otro remedio. Ahí no vale si
estás o no en vena, o si te impone o no la página en blanco. Lo que
es cierto es que la escritura llama a la escritura y nada te inspira más
que dejar que las palabras sigan su rumbo. Eso es lo que trato en
mis clases: quitarles el miedo a escribir. Yo utilizo el material que se
origina en clase para nuevas propuestas, con lo cual me baso en los
estímulos que el taller me proporciona. Procuro además al leer sus
textos, señalarles las posibilidades de ese texto y tratar de orientarles
desde lo que ellos quieren decir, no desde la historia que yo quisiera
contar. Esa pluralidad de puntos de vista me resulta muy sugestivo,
pues no siempre se tiene la oportunidad de disponer de tanta materia
prima y asistir al proceso de formación.

M: ¿Ud. cree que es posible enseñar a alguien a ser un/a buen/a
escritor/a o poeta, o apenas guía y orienta a los estudiantes a cómo
descubrir su propio talento y sus propias voces?

AR: Desde luego, antes que hacerse debe nacerse. Pero hay que
hacerse. Todo arte se tiene que aprender y dominar por medio de
una práctica. Se puede tener mucha imaginación y muchas cosas que
contar, pero hay que saber cómo funciona el lenguaje para potenciar
sus experiencias. Después puedes escribir como quieres olvidándote de
las reglas, porque ya sabes cómo manejar las herramientas. En verdad
se tiene que aprender. Pero además de talento, es importante la voca-
ción. La vocación es la que no te va a hacer desistir. Si te gusta tocar
la guitarra, vas a repetir una y otra vez los ejercicios aunque tengas
las yemas de los dedos despellejados. Tengo una estudiante que tiene
mucho talento y no le gusta escribir. Tiene unas ideas muy claras y las
sabe consignar; lo hace inmediatamente, no se despista en el objetivo
y da la impresión de que escribe lo que quiere escribir. Esa persona
podría escribir muchas cosas, este tipo de novelas de reportaje o cosas
así, pero si no le gusta escribir, no se puede hacer nada. Luego hay per-
sonas que tienen mucha imaginación pero que no dominan la técnica,
ni la sintaxis, pero si tienen vocación, eso no importa, la técnica y la
sintaxis se aprende, el vocabulario se adquiere. Lo que nunca se puede
aprender es el talento, ni la imaginación, ni la creatividad.

M: Se ha dicho de su poesía que "cuestiona la posibilidad de
significados fijos detrás del lenguaje" (Laffollete). ¿Cuál es su opinión

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 91

con respecto a la naturaleza doble del lenguaje como verdad y como
mentira?

AR: Mira, tengo una suerte porque mi idioma, el español, no tiene
demasiados sinónimos y por el contrario, la mayoría de las palabras
que significan muchas cosas. Esto permite jugar con los dobles y tri-
ples sentidos. Lo siento por los traductores de mi obra. La realidad
también es múltiple y no la percibimos todos del mismo modo. Cada
cual tiene un recuerdo, cada cual una experiencia distinta de una
misma cosa que determinan una significación propia para cada cual.
Una palabra tiene infinitas posibilidades, y cuando se está creando no
podemos abarcar ni la mitad de lo que puede suscitar en otras men-
tes con otras referencias personales y otros códigos culturales. Voy
a poner un ejemplo. En un ejercicio para mi alumnado extranjero,
utilicé una rima de Bécquer: "Por una mirada, un mundo / por una
sonrisa, un cielo; por un beso... yo no sé/ qué te diera por un beso."
Los estudiantes empezaron a trabajar y miren las conclusiones que
se dieron en una sola clase. Un estudiante se puso blanco, blanco, y
contó que se había acordado del momento cuando recibió un mensaje
que su madre estaba muy grave. Tenía muy mala relación con ella,
y de hecho vivía en España por ese motivo. Tomó el avión y cuando
llegó a Alemania, la madre ya estaba en coma irreversible. Para él,
este poema reflejaba esa situación en que fue consciente de que nunca
se reconciliaría con su madre. Evidentemente, eso no es lo que que-
rría decir Bécquer. Pero no se trata de Bécquer, sino de lo que dice
el poema y el poema también puede decir eso. Sin embargo, a otra
alumna, el poema le produjo regocijo. Ella, como extranjera, debía
acudir continuamente a la policía. Detrás de la ventanilla siempre
estaba la misma funcionaria que la recibía con muy malos modales y
casi ni le dirigía la mirada cuando le presentaba los papeles, y se los
devolvía gruñéndole que estaban mal o que faltaba cualquier cosa. Mi
estudiante pensó en plastificar el poema y alargárselo junto con los
documentos por si así se ablandaba. Y, por mi parte, escogí este poema
porque cuando estaba embarazada y el bebé se movía, me venía al
pensamiento casi instantáneamente. El mismo poema sirve para la
muerte, para el nacimiento o ante un conflicto con la residencia.

Nadie puede meterse en la mente de un poeta, pero a partir del
poema uno puede sentirlo como quiera. Pero no se puede decir que
esto es lo que estaba pensando el poeta en el momento que estaba

91 JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

escribiendo y en realidad, ¿qué importa la biografía del poeta? Lo
que importa es buscarse una misma en el poema. Es entonces cuando
un poema se convierte en poesía, de la misma manera que un jero-
glífico descifrado se convierte en mensaje. Entonces, el autor y el
lector trabajan juntos para otorgarle sentido al texto. Sin lector, el
texto está mudo. El tú, igual que para el amor, es indispensable para
la poesía: "¿Qué es poesía?, dices mientras clavas / en mi pupila tu
pupila azul. / ¿Qué es poesía?, Y tú me lo preguntas? / Poesía. ..eres
tú." (Bécquer).

M: En la conferencia que Ud. dio en nuestra universidad al
comienzo del trimestre, presentada por el Cónsul General de España,
Ud. mencionó que lo que le importa más es no parecerse a sí misma
cada vez que escribe un poema, un cuento o una novela. ¿Por qué
valora esa imposibilidad de clasificarla estilísticamente como Ana
Rossetti o, digamos sobre lo que se puede esperar cuando se abre un
libro escrito por Ana Rossetti?

AR: No tengo la intención de hacer cosas raras porque sí. Si
pruebo otras formas es al servicio de lo que quiero contar. Ahora bien,
¿qué quiero contar? Lo que ya he explorado y de algún modo lo he
resuelto, no tengo por qué repetirlo. La artesanía consiste en aprender
a hacer bien una cosa y ya reproducirla mil veces sin preocuparse. El
arte consiste en que, porque hayas escrito el Quijote, eso no te asegura
que ya sólo vas a hacer obras maestras. Por eso es mejor equivocarse
que intentar repetirse, porque en la indagación ya está la ganancia.

M: Relacionado con esta pregunta, ¿cómo concibe Ud. el papel
del artista hoy en día?

AR: Creo que el papel del artista es tan importante como en cual-
quier otra sociedad, pero ahora el artista puede tener muchísima más
presencia porque cuenta con más soportes, más canales de difusión, el
manejo de muchos materiales y el manipularlos de manera insólita. El
concepto del arte instantáneo, además, facilita el estar creando conti-
nuamente utilizando el tiempo como parte de la obra, pero el poder
reproducirlos por ejemplo en Internet, significa hacer que simultá-
neamente se muestre en todo el mundo, anulando el espacio. Desligar
el arte de la permanencia significa otra manera de entender no sólo

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 93

el hecho creativo, sino al artista que no busca la inmortalidad sino
intervenir en el presente. El valorar una obra sólo por su antigüedad es
una superstición, si no significa nada, no subvierte nada, no propone
ni revela nada en la actualidad, es un jeroglífico o un ornamento, no
un lenguaje. En definitiva, todo arte es inmediato, dure esa inmedia-
tez instantes, como un gesto de Sarah Bernhardt, o siglos como una
tragedia de Sófocles.

M: Muchos de los críticos de su obra han notado una fuerte afi-
ción hacia la transgresión del género femenino, de los roles entre los
sexos, de la sexualidad. ¿Podría Ud. comentar más sobre el papel de
la poetisa dentro del panorama literario español contemporáneo y su
propia contribución?

AR: Es una carga el que por ser mujer se tenga que escribir
como mujer, signifique eso lo que signifique. A ningún hombre se le
exige que cumpla con su papel de hombre, sino con su condición de
artista. Eso prueba que seguimos siendo la particularidad, la excep-
ción, "la otra cosa" y no se nos deja salir de allí. Un hombre puede
escribir desde el punto de vista que elija, sea el de un cartaginés o el
de Madame Bovary, pero se considera una traición si una mujer no
escribe desde su género y no da testimonio de "sus cosas," como en el
siglo XIX, que a las pintoras sólo se les permitía pintar flores. Es más,
cuando se nos analiza es siempre desde ese condicionamiento. Por
ejemplo, en la mayoría de mis poemas es imposible saber cuál es la voz
poética, pero hay algunos que se hacen explícitas citando claramente
quién es el hablante. Sin embargo, como en la portada del libro ven
Ana Rossetti, se llega hasta la aberración de poner como ejemplo de
sensibilidad femenina "Las inconfesiones de Gilíes de Rais." Aunque
no se sepa quién es este depravado sujeto, en el poema se habla cla-
ramente de violar y matar a niños, pero lo pasan por alto ofuscados
con el tema de que una "mujer" hable de desvirgar a un muchacho.
Nos estudian porque somos mujeres, no para discutir sobre una obra.
Quiero decir que se nos admira arguyendo lo de "siendo una mujer"
como si se fuese un fenómeno de feria para que cualquier cosa resulte
más procaz o más morboso. Y el valor de una obra está en cómo se
dice lo que se dice, no en quién lo dice, si es que hablamos de lite-
ratura y no de ciencias sociales. Si una mujer escribiese hoy Hamlet
no tendría ningún valor excepto si lo escribiese de otra manera, pero

94 JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

entonces se hablaría de trasgresión, lo que equivale a osadía. Pero
ese valor lo tendría también si lo escribiese un hombre — hay que ver
cuántas versiones hay de Don Juan — no se contemplan las trasgre-
siones de Moliere respecto a Tirso de Molina, sino las aportaciones.
Cuando Goethe escribe "Werther," a pesar de que Diego San Pedro
había escrito siglos atrás "Cárcel de Amor," se olvidan de la trasgre-
sión para convertirlo en el paradigma romántico. En una escritora, sin
embargo, no cuentan tanto los ingredientes como los trasgredientes, y
eso es muy peligroso porque nos mantienen en el margen y así jamás
entraremos en el canon.

M: ¿Cuáles autores españoles incluiría Ud. como más influyentes
para su pensamiento literario y creación artística?

AR: Hay muchos que me gustan, pero eso no quiere decir que me
hayan influido. Suelen decir que soy gongorina y en realidad he leído
mucho a Góngora, pero también leo mucho a otros que deberían
haberme influido pero que a nadie se le ocurre, porque se cree que los
poetas solamente tienen que ser inspirados por otros poetas. Yo creo
que algo ha tenido que ver Rosa Chacel con mi poesía, pero nadie se
lo plantea. El mundo de Rosa Chacel ha sido muy importante para
mí por todas las afinidades que hay — salvando las distancias — con
esa niña-adulta que ambas fuimos. Niñas herméticas que no sopor-
tábamos ni el mundo infantil ni el mundo adulto. Estas experiencias
paralelas se rastrean en la escritura. Por ejemplo, en Memorias de
Leticia Valle se dice: "...un hilo de llanto corría por un lugar que era
como un escondrijo del alma..." y así dicen los versos de mi poema
"Santifícame": "debía ser el alma, sí era el alma la congoja aquella
que anegaba mi llanto...". En un episodio de la Estación. Ida y vuelta
se describe al Cristo yacente como el Bello Durmiente. Yo tengo un
poema a un joven muerto que se titula "El durmiente." Evito decir que
se ha muerto. Sólo lo describo entre las sábanas durmiendo en espera
del beso de la resurrección, pero sin saber cómo aparecieron en esas
sábanas pasionarias que son las flores que solían esparcir por el suda-
rio del Cristo del Santo Entierro. Sin darme cuenta estaba haciendo
la misma operación de Rosa Chacel, ella compara al Cristo en la urna
con un Bello Durmiente. Yo estaba comparando al Bello Durmiente
con Cristo. Yo no sólo leo poesía, yo leo lo mismo un ensayo que una
novela policíaca. Esto último también se me nota, porque me gusta

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 95

crear una expectativa que resuelvo, contrariándola al final. Toda esa
obsesión de que al poeta solamente le tiene que influir la poesía, es
falsa. Influyen todos los lenguajes: el cine, la pintura, el comic, las
ciencias... porque en todas partes está la poesía.

M: ¿Cuáles son los escritores y poetas mundiales que más le han
influido a través de los años?

AR: Ay, por Dios, podría dar una lista sin parar... y además de
gente muy variada. Tengo libros que en un momento me impactaron y
ahora no me dicen nada, otros que me costó entrar en ellos y ahora no
me explico qué había en ellos de difícil, y otros que puedo estar leyén-
dolos continuamente y parecen que son distintos hbros porque cada
vez me dicen una cosa diferente. Yo nunca me atrevería decir "éste es
mi libro favorito" categóricamente, sino en esta temporada o en este
momento. Sin embargo, tengo unas recurrencias bastante curiosas; por
ejemplo, yo no sé por qué pero termino leyendo Barrio de Maravillas,
una vez al año por lo menos — aunque creo sinceramente que prefiero
Memorias de Leticia Valle o Desde el amanecer... — no sé por qué
razón, pero siempre encuentro algún motivo para agarrar el libro.
Bueno, yo vivo en el Barrio de Maravillas y a lo mejor es una forma de
compartir algo con esa mujer extraordinaria. Me ha fascinado desde
antes de saber quién era. Me explico. Mi abuela tenía encuadernada la
revista "La esfera" del año 1916. Me gustaba mucho ojearla. Era una
revista bastante completa, porque incluía dibujos, pintura, fotografía,
cuentos, poemas... y entrevistas de El Caballero Audaz a personalida-
des como Caldos, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Margarita Xirgu, el maestro
Serrano... unas personas que me producían bastante emoción al verlas
retratadas. Y de pronto, hay una entrevista a una señora que se llama
Melchora y que regenta una Escuela de hogar. El Caballero Audaz
interroga a una alumna que se llama Rosa Chacel y que le confiesa que
está harta, que no le gusta ese colegio y que se va a "liar la manta a la
cabeza" — esa expresión me llamó mucho la atención — porque lo que
ella quería era estudiar Arte. A mí me impresionaba que se expresara
de ese modo porque, ¿qué iba a pasar en su casa cuando sus padres
leyeran eso? La niña de la entrevista me causó mucha más sensación
que cualquiera de los otros famosos personajes. Cuando me enteré
que había una escritora que se llamaba Rosa Chacel, pensé en si no
sería aquella niña, pero en la contraportada decía que había nacido

96 JASMINA ARSOVA, CAROLYN KENDRICK-ALCÁNTARA Y ALLISON LI

en Valladolid y la descarté aunque encontré muchos de sus personajes
parecidos a esa criatura indomable. Sea como fuere, esta Rosa Chacel
escritora me subyugó tanto como la Rosa Chacel colegiala. Sólo más
tarde supe que de pequeña se había trasladado a Madrid, al Barrio de
Maravillas y que, por tanto, eran la misma persona.

M: ¿Qué o quién ha sido una influencia en su escritura (especí-
ficamente la poesía)? Por ejemplo, los poetas del Siglo de Oro, Juan
Boscán y Garcilaso de la Vega, querían emular la poesía de Petrarca.
¿Puede Ud. atribuir la manera en que escribe a una persona o un
evento específico?

AR: Lo que sí que puedo decir es porqué he escrito muchas cosas
y es porque se me ha incitado a hacerlo. Por ejemplo, yo nunca había
escrito un cuento hasta que Laura Freixas me encargó un cuento y eró-
tico además. Entonces pensé que no debía desaprovechar esa ocasión
de saber si era capaz. Muchas cosas me han salido en mi vida porque
alguien me ha lanzado allí... y me ha animado con su confianza. Escribí
el libretto de opera porque me lo propuso el compositor Manuel
Balboa, y he escrito cuentos infantiles porque se empeñó Juan Cruz,
responsable de Alfaguara, que yo debía escribir una colección para
un público de seis años. Con la novela policíaca, lo mismo: fue una
propuesta de Rosa María Pereda. Muchas cosas me han venido sin
que yo las buscara y las he recibido con mucha ilusión pero también
con gran responsabilidad, porque si se han arriesgado a encargarme
algo, es porque han creído en mi trabajo. He colaborado mucho con
cantantes, fotógrafos, pintores e ilustradores. Con estos últimos tengo
una forma de trabajar muy especial. A veces me muestran el material
y yo lo ordeno de manera que siga un hilo narrativo. Debe ser que
cuando yo era niña, tenía muchos libros ilustrados en todos los idio-
mas imaginables. Yo los miraba continuamente hasta que los dibujos
me hablaban y entonces yo podía "leer" la historia.

M: ¿Existe una obra, un cuento, un poema o una novela de todas
sus obras publicadas hasta ahora que Ud. consideraría su mejor
autorretrato?

AR: Es que yo no sé cuál sería mi mejor autorretrato aunque en
todas cosas mías hay algo de mí, claro, pero de cómo yo era en ese

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 97

momento preciso. Primero, porque los acontecimientos cambian,
después porque yo no soy la misma que he sido en los ochenta, o los
noventa. Existe la transformación, la toma de conciencia, los retos que
debes superar. He estado varias veces a punto de morir y aunque no sé
para qué destino se me está preservando, no tengo más remedio que
considerar la vida como un regalo muy frágil y esto no es una frase
hecha, sino una constatación. También me he dado cuenta de que si
en algunas de esas veces hubiera llegado a morir, mi muerte hubiera
sido lo más trivial del mundo. Mis últimos pensamientos no hubieran
tenido nada de solemnidad, de reflexión profunda ni de poesía. Por
eso sé que a partir de entonces va a ser muy difícil que no separe la
muerte como motivo literario del hecho de morirse. Y es que las expe-
riencias que no te obligan a plantearte tu vida o la visión de las cosas
de otro modo, no son experiencias, son experimentos.

M: ¿Cuáles son los proyectos que pretende desarrollar en cuanto
a la literatura y la poesía en el futuro? ¿Está trabajando en algún
proyecto específico actualmente?

AR: Me parece que tengo proyecto para rato con las instrucciones
de Yoko Ono. Son álbumes que realizo con el ilustrador Jorge Artajo.
Mi manera de trabajar con Artajo se basa en interrelacionar ambos
trabajos de forma que el texto y los dibujos se apoyan recíproca-
mente y no importa de quién ha sido la idea inicial. De momento sólo
hemos publicado uno y tenemos otro entregado a la editorial, pero
hay hechos varios. Las instrucciones de Yoko Ono son un motivo
constante de inspiración. El arte conceptual se basa en la premisa
becqueriana "Poesía eres tú," pues pretende estimular para que el
receptor indague en su imaginación y proponga sus propias conclusio-
nes. Pues bien, nuestras conclusiones han dado origen a estos álbumes.
De los últimos que hemos hecho uno parte de la instrucción: "Pinta
un mapa para perderte" y está dedicado a los refugiados que no viven
en sus territorios; el otro que habla del poder que tiene nuestra mente
para crear realidades termina con la instrucción: "Imagina la paz."

The Dehumanization of the Feminine
Figure in Bécquer's Rimas

HaleyO'Neil

University of California, Santa Barbara

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Rimas, famous for their exuberant ex-
pression of new love and the agonizing laments over its loss, have
traditionally been understood within the context of his tragic biogra-
phy. Throughout Rimas, Bécquer speaks to and about a woman, or
women, whom critics have attempted to identify as representations of
real women in his life. The desire to créate a biographical link between
the female figure in the poems and a real woman has allowed critics
to qualify his representation of women as a reflection of his personal
life, instead of a literary creation. As Susan Kirkpatrick notes in Las
Románticas: Women Writers and Subjectivity in Spain, 1835-1850,
Romantic literature, such as Rimas, "encourages the reader to confuse
the writer as a person with the text-centered subject of writing or
fiction — the lyrical T or the protagonist" (12). The Romantic lyrical
voice, therefore, becomes conflated with the voice of the author as an
individual; thereby allowing for an interpretation that stems from the
personal, and not the literary, elements of the text. In addition, the
lack of details about Bécquer's life and the uncertainty regarding the
chronology of Rimas contribute to the desire to somehow "unlock"
the mysterious code of the poems by identifying the female figure.
In his essay "Poesia. ..eres tú, or the Construction of Bécquer and
the Sign of Woman," James Mandrell points to the fallacy in this
criticai focus: "scholars and critics have asked the wrong questions
of Bécquer and his poetry, and have literally sought to determine
the identity of the 'tú' of 'Poesia. ..eres tú' without carefuUy con-
sidering the various implications of the texts they are discussing."
For Mandrell, these implications include "furthering the hegemony
of patriarchal ideologies" through the traditional discussion of the
woman in Bécquer's texts (55). Therefore, both Bécquer's Rimas
and the majority of the texts pertaining to his poetry are implied in

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006)

the creation and maintenance of a patriarchal ideological system.
A contemporary reading of these texts must remove itself from a
biographical understanding and question the sexist ideology that the
poems simultaneously créate and reflect.

Mandrell concludes his article by stating that "we must begin to
read Bécquer in a much more complex manner, not only as the author of
the divinely spiritual Rimas, but as someone whose Ufe and work have
become part of a hegemonic cuhural discourse that reformulares and
restates its aims in almost every new discussion" (71). While a complete
re-reading of Bécquer's texts would be impossibie within the confines of
this article, I propose a reading of a selection of Bécquer's poems that
challenges their traditional criticism and confronts the representation
of women as a tool for creating and maintaining masculine ideologies.
While women are represented in a variety of ways throughout Rimas,
I will focus on what I see as the dehumanization of the female figure in
several of the poems. Drawing on feminist theory, specifically the work
of Luce Irigaray and Susan Kirkpatrick, I will attempt to demónstrate
how Bécquer reinforces an ideological masculine hegemony by creating
a feminine figure being whose intellectual, moral, physical and emo-
tional deficiencies define her as a being that is inferior to human.

As Luce Irigarary states in The Sex Which Is Not One, the cre-
ation of feminine imagery within literature has been the result of a
univocally masculine voice: "the feminine occurs only within models
and laws devised by male subjects" (86). For Irigaray, texts, and the
literary models they have created, must be re-examined in order to
uncover the sexist ideologies they have, and continue to, perpetúate:
"I am trying, as I have already indicated, to go back through the mas-
culine imaginary, to interpret the way it has reduced us to silence, to
muteness or mimicry, and I am attempting, from that starting point
and at the same time, to (re)discover a possible space for the feminine
imaginary" (/ Love 164). An examination of the masculine imaginary
found in Rimas uncovers a series of depictions of women as inhuman
characters. Such a portrayal reflects the cultural and politicai realities
of nineteenth-century Spain in which women were classified as inferior
subjects who lacked qualities ascribed to the male gender.

Rimas, published as a book for the first time in 1871, was written
during a historical moment in Spain when women had no politicai or
social power. As Jesús Cruz points out in his article "De cortejadas a
ángeles del hogar," the emergence of European liberalism during the

100 HALEYO'NEIL

nineteenth century had no positive effect on the politicai and social
status of women in Spain:

El liberalismo español, como el de otros países europeos,
continuó relegando a la mujer en materia de derechos
políticos y jurídicos. Ante la propiedad, una de las piedras
de toque del nuevo sistema, la mujer continuó subyugada
a la autoridad masculina del padre, y, sobre todo, del
marido. (141)

A patriarchal society in which women are the "natural property"
(Irigaray, I Love 44) of men functions to oppress women into a
secondary status in which they are denied rights in the politicai
and domestic spheres. It classifies women as lesser beings, that is,
beings not qualified to hold the same rights as men because they do
not possess equal intellectual capacities. Politically, the subordina-
tion of women did not allow for them to be classified as citizens in
nineteenth-century Spain, and with the exception of the years of the
Second Republic (1931-1936), women were not considered formal
citizens of Spain until 1975, after the end of the Franco dictatorship.
This politicai classification authorized gender stratification: "The
gendering of the politicai sphere was codified by the Constitutional
exclusión of women from the universal principais of citizenship
espoused by nineteenth-century liberal regimes" (Enders and Radcliff
227). Therefore, under law, women were not only denied many of
the rights given to men, they were not recognized as being citizens.
Women were not considered among the humans that constituted the
nation under Spanish law. The politics of the epoch point directly
to the ideology of the masculine hegemony which understood and
defined women as beings that were not only inferior to men, but a
deficient form of a human being. In her article "Un/Contested Identi-
ties," Mary Nash quotes a passage by Federal Republican Pompeyo
Gener published in 1889 in La Vanguardia, one of Spain's major
newspapers. It highlights the dominant mentality regarding gender
during the nineteenth century: "In herself, a woman, unlike a man,
is not a complete being; she is only the instrument of reproduction,
destined to perpetúate the species; while man is charged with making
progress, he is the generator of intelligence, and the same creator...of
the social world" (27). The characterization of women as incomplete,

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 101

less than human and inherently inferior together with the glorification
of the mascuUne intellect justified the social and politicai stratification
of the genders within nineteenth-century Spain. Neither the liberais
nor the Romantics included in their program of cultural change a
questioning of gender inequality; rather, as Kirkpatrick has suggested,
"they preserved traditional gender hierarchy as carefully as they did
the hierarchy of class" (60). According to her, within this hierarchy,
women were considered both mentally and physically deficient; the
belief that women were intellectually inferior translated to the depre-
ciation of their physical form: "the female body was regarded as an
inferior versión of the male model of perfect humanity; women's phys-
ical inferiority mirrored their moral and intellectual déficits" (6). The
fact that women were not considered independent subjects, but rather
a degraded form of the male subject, created a space within Spanish
culture in which the literary imagery of women included the depiction
of women as less than, or something other than, human. I believe that
the imagery of women as dehumanized beings exemplifies the ideol-
ogy of masculine domination and feminine subordination prevalent in
Spain during the time period in which Bécquer composed Rimas.

Bécquer's Cartas literarias a una mujer allows for insight into how
Bécquer perceived the role of gender in poetry. For Bécquer, men and
women do not have the same relationship with poetry; while the man
is the poet, the person who intellectualizes his surroundings, emotions,
and thoughts, giving them poetic form, the woman is the physical
incarnation of poetry:

La poesia es en el hombre una cualidad puramente dei
espíritu; reside en su alma, vive con la vida incorpórea de
la idea, y para revelaria necesita darle una forma. Por eso
la escribe.

En la mujer, por el contrario, la poesía está como encar-
nada en su ser, su aspiración, sus presentimientos, sus
pasiones y sus destinos son poesía; vive, respira, se mueve
con una indefinible atmósfera de idealismo que se des-
prende de ella, como un fluido luminoso y magnético; es,
en una palabra, el verbo poético hecho carne. (426)

The cultural belief system that gave voice to Pompeyo Gener, which
defines man by his intellect and woman by her body, is clearly the

102 HALEYO'NEIL

basis for Bécquer's understanding of gender roles within literary dis-
course. For Bécquer, a woman's body is an expression without literary
form; due to her biology, she inherently embodies poetic ideais, but is
incapable of intellectualizing poetry and producing a literary creation.
On the other hand, ideas and intelligence are exclusively part of the
masculine realm, they are an inherent part of the masculine nature,
and they reside in the souls of men. Men are the only creators; their
intellect gives them the ability to créate poetry, capturing that which
women inherently possess in their bodies. Such a gender based dis-
tinction reduces women to their physicality, their bodies, and denles
them the role of an active, creative, subject. As Judith Butler states,
the distinction between men/women as described in terms of mind/
body formulares an "implicit gender hierarchy" that "ought to be
rethought" (12). It also reinforces the notion of the incompleteness of
the female form; they possess a natural beauty that may be pleasing
to men, but they are not equal to men: they are a deficient form of
a human being. Kirkpatrick points to how this common description
of women used within Romantic texts serves to créate an image of
women as incomplete beings: "[Romantic texts] tacitly acknowledge
the undeniably gendered character of Romantic paradigms of self-
hood by identifying almost exclusively with male figures and coding
as feminine those entities that did not represent full, conscious, inde-
pendem subjects — the beloved, nature, or the poetic creation" (23). In
an analysis of nineteenth-century poetry, it is therefore important to
consider how the literary ideal of women as the inspiration for poetry
is part of an ideology that subordinares women and labels them as
incomplete human beings.

The first set of Rimas, including poems I-XI as defined by José
Pedro Díaz, embraces the Neoplatonic ideal of women as an object of
beauty in which the divine spirit is reflected. However, there is noth-
ing corporal, or human, about the woman that Bécquer lauds; she is
intangible and unreal. In "Rima XI," the realistic images of women
that possess human characteristics are contrasted with the image of
the ideal woman as created by the masculine poetic voice:

"Yo soy ardiente, yo soy morena,
yo soy el símbolo de la pasión;
de ansia de goces mi alma está llena.
¿A mí me buscas?" "No es a ti, no."

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 103

"Mi frente es pálida; mis trenzas de oro;
puedo brindarte dichas sin fin;
yo de ternura guardo un tesoro.
¿A mí me llamas?" "No; no es a ti."

"Yo soy un sueño, un imposible,

vano fantasma de niebla y luz;

soy incorpórea, soy intangible;

no puedo amarte." "¡Oh, ven; ven tú!" (1-12)

Bécquer presents the reader with three women who have been reduced
to their ability to please the masculine voice; the first offers sex, the
second love, and the third irremediable desire. Bécquer systematically
rejects the notion of a 'real' woman. Neither the passionate "morena"
from the first stanza, ñor the reliable woman with "trenzas" from
the second are satisfactory images in that they are contaminated by
their corporality and reduced by the possibility of their representa-
tion. He, in turn, creares his own image of a woman who lacks all
essential human characteristics, but who is presented as the expression
of ideal femininity. The idealized muse is devoid of any humanizing
qualities; she lacks physicai form and emotion and appeals to the
poetic voice by the very impossibility of her existence. Bécquer's ide-
alized love is in no way a woman, but rather a nebulous image that
he creates to represent something superior to a woman. He defines
femininity as something that exists exclusively within the male mind
and imagination. Bécquer adopts the role as the creator of the ideal
woman, placing himself as the Adam from which Eve is created. The
implications of the creator-created dichotomy reject the possibility of
autonomous feminine figure and reinforce the idea of inherent male
dominance. Irigaray points to how the common utilization of this
metaphor throughout Western literature and thought has served to
negate the possibility of an independem feminine identity:

More often than not, these women, or rather this female
identity, still apparently originates in man. As our tradition
dictates, man originates from God, and woman from man.
As long as the female generic- woman- is not determined as
such, this will be true. Women wiil remain men's or Man's
creatures. (/ Love 84)

104 HALEYO'NEIL

Kirkpatrick highlights the distinction in Spanish Romanticism between
the subjectivity of men and women; while a man is a subject, a thinker
and creator, a woman is the "object rather than a subject of conscious-
ness" (60). "Rima XI" clearly conjures the woman that is created
by man, and that only exists in the mascuUne imaginary, as the true
feminina figure; whereas the other women are mere degradations of
this ideahzed form. The dehumanized figure is indeed the most attrac-
tive to the mascuHne voice because it expficitly marks the difference
between men and women: men are the creative subjects while women
are objects of their creation. The images of women within Bécquer's
work demónstrate the creation of ideahzed feminine form based on
a patriarchal ideological system that understands women as both a
degradation of the mascuhne, human form, and as entities that are
incapable of self-expression.

The dehumanized image of women is also prevalent in Bécquer's
Leyendas. While for the purpose of the article I have chosen to focus
on the Rimas, I believe that a passage from "Los ojos verdes" serves as
another clear indicator of the contrast between human women and the
ideahzed feminine form that is created within the masculine imaginary
that Bécquer presents. In the story, Bécquer gives voice to the fantasti-
cal woman: "No soy una mujer como las que existen en la Tierra; soy
una mujer digna de ti, que eres superior a los demás hombres. Yo vivo
en el fondo de esta agua, incorpórea como ella, fugaz y transparente:
hablo con sus rumores y ondulo con sus pliegues" (Rimas 174). The
woman created by the writer is superior to any human woman in
that she is worthy of the man she loves. Within this imagery, Bécquer
creares and defines femininity as a quality that is devoid of all human
characteristics, both physical and emotional, thereby removing femi-
ninity from a possible feminine identity. Women of the "earth" are
degradations of the ideahzed feminine form; beings who are incapable
of pleasing the masculine figure.

The similarities between the women in "Los ojos verdes" and in
"Rima XV" give insight into the feminine image that Bécquer sees as
his muse. As in "Rima XI" and "Los ojos verdes," the image of the
woman in "Rima XV" that drives the love of the masculine voice is
transparent, fleeting, mysterious, and intangible:

Cendal flotante de leve bruma,
rizada cinta de blanca espuma,

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 105

rumor sonoro
de arpa de oro
beso del aura, onda de luz,
eso eres tú. (1-6)

Within Bécquer's imagery, the ideal feminine figure is incorporeal and
ethereal; she can neither be touched ñor clearly seen. She is described
through the use of metaphors of nature; while she is not an earthly
woman, she possesses the qualities of the elements of nature that are
impossible to capture by humans.

The feminine image changes radically in the last poems of Rimas,
a fact that has traditionally been attributed to Bécquer's abandonment
by his wife in what Díaz calis "la referencia autobiográfica más directa"
(249). The women in Bécquer's life have been blamed for the shift of
tone in the poems; they have been faulted for causing his irremediable
suffering, or in the words of one critic: "En el alma de Gustavo Adolfo
permanecía aún la huella de la traición de una mujer" (Cubero Sanz
352). Although it is clearly possible that personal events affected his
literary creation, his personal experience should not overshadow how
his portrayal of women is implicated in the hegemonic system of gender
relations. While in the first set of Rimas the female figure is dehuman-
ized by the image of a woman as a creation of the male mind, in the
third and fourth series, she is depicted as a body without a conscience.
The women of these poems are composed of their exteriors; while the
idealized woman from "Rima XI" is incorporeal and devoid of form,
the women in the later poems are bodies without intelligence, emotion,
or spirit. Bécquer eliminares any humanizing qualities from the femi-
nine figure and creares an image that is puré artífice. "Rima XXXIX"
exemplifies the reduction of the woman to a mere form:

Sé que en su corazón, nido de sierpes,
no hay una fibra que al amor responda
que es una estatua inanimada; pero . . .
¡Es tan hermosa! (5-8)

The feminine figure, viewed through the masculine subject's perspec-
tive, has a human form, but is otherwise completely devoid of any
other positive human qualities. Her inability to feel is described as
physical malfunction; she is depicted as a body whose parts do not

106 HALEYO'NEIL

have the capability of reacting to emotion. The woman has been
reduced to a shell, an exterior, whose function Ues solely in creat-
ing pleasure for men. The woman's beauty and its abüity to créate
pleasure for the poetic, masculine voice, supersedes her emotional defi-
ciencies. She is categorized as an aesthetically pleasing object; she is
beauty and nothing more. The image of the heart, the part of the body
most closely related to Ufe, which has been grotesquely degenerated,
is the central metaphor used in creating a woman who is physically
and emotionally deficient. The female figure that results is a Hterary
exaggeration of the cuhural understanding of women as inferior forms
of the male model of humanity.

According to Irigaray, a patriarchal society in which women are
"equated with something other than human and spfit between the
human and the inhuman (half- woman, half animal)" denles women an
autonomous identity and reinforces their oppression (Sexes 64). The
metaphor of the degraded heart that appears in the previous poem,
as well as several others, defines the woman as a being that holds a
human form, but that cannot function as a complete human being.
"Rima XLV" extends the metaphor of the malfunctioning heart as the
central image in the depiction of the feminine figure:

¡Ay!, es verdad lo que me dijo entonces:

verdad que el corazón
lo llevará en la mano..., en cualquier parte...,

pero en el pecho, no. (13-16)

The image of the heart, which represents both life and love, is degen-
erated in "Rima XXXIX" and removed in "Rima XLV." While the
woman in "Rima XXXIX" has a deformed heart that cannot serve
its function as the receptor of human emotion, the woman in "Rima
XLV" has removed her heart from her chest altogether, therefore
removing any possibility of life or of love. The feminine figure
depicted here is defined by her lack of humanity; she is so degraded
that she is biologically incapable of feeling emotion. "Rima LXXVII"
presents an even more extreme variation of this metaphor:

Dices que tienes corazón, y sólo

lo dices porque sientes sus latidos.

Eso no es corazón...; es una máquina

que al compás que se mueve hace ruido. (1^)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 107

The degradation of the feminine figure is extended to the point where
the feminine body is described as a machine; her body is not described
solely by the lack of human functionality; rather, she is something else
that is in no way human. The woman presented mimics the human
form, but is not a complete human being.

Contrary to the idealized muses that promise to bring the mascu-
hne figure closer to the divine, the degraded forms of the later poems
threaten to cause suffering and pain for the mascuHne voice. Mandrell
discusses the impHcations of the creation of the anti-muse:

As for the portrait of woman that emerges, ali of the nega-
tive attributes associated with women in the nineteenth
century come to mind: she is vulgar, arrogant, stupid and
foolish, hopelessly earthbound in her desires and aspira-
tions, and fully capable of plunging any man in love with
her into despair, or worse, dragging him to his death. (62)

The traditional attributes to which Mandrell refers have been so
ingrained in the cultural knowledge that traditional readings of the
Rimas have ascribed these qualities to the women in Bécquer's life.
The attempt to transíate poetry to biographical history strengthens
the sexist implications that they suggest; the poems present feminine
figures as dehumanized and degraded forms of human beings, and his
critics then ascribe these qualities to women from Bécquer's life. Sexist
literary tropes are therefore translated into traits that are placed upon
human women. As Mandrell proposes, I believe that the discussions
regarding the texts must also be analyzed as perpetuators of a patri-
archal and sexist ideology.

While Bécquer's Rimas present a particular ideology that creates
and maintains cultural concepts of gender, the discussions regarding
the texts are often implicated in furthering these ideas. In their read-
ings of Bécquer's poems, several critics have not only failed to question
the portrayal of gender within them, but have included their inher-
ently sexist elements as part of their analysis. In his essay "La mujer
inalcanzable como tema en ciertas leyendas de Bécquer," Wallace
Woolsey explains his understanding of how the unattainable women,
as described in "Rima XI," served as the inspiration for Bécquer's
poetry and prose. I believe that Woolsey 's closing paragraph exempli-
fies the way in which criticism of the work that does not take into

108 HALEYO'NEIL

account the ideologies it represents, in turn, becomes a part of them.
Woolsey states:

Expliqúese de cualquier modo el tema de la mujer inal-
canzable, no es posible negar su importancia en toda la obra
de Bécquer. Da oportunidad al autor de indicar lo inexpres-
able, de evocar lo inefable, de sugerir los sufrimientos, las
esperanzas, los sueños que existen en el fondo del alma del
hombre lo mismo que en la fantasía del poeta. ¿Cómo se
puede calcular la belleza que se encuentre en la prosa y en
la poesía de Bécquer que no existiera sin el motivo de amor
imposible, de la mujer que siempre nos escapa? (281)

Woolsey 's closing line indicates the patriarchal gender relations that it
perpetuates; he is writing the article for "nosotros," men, and men as
a category desire an unattainable woman, a woman that solely exists
in their mind. For Woolsey, there is a universal desire among men for
a woman, a desire that comes from the depths of a man, from his soul.
The woman that is the universal object of desire creates pain for ali
men in that she can never be. For Bécquer, this translates into poetry,
his muse is the universal; his poems capture the common experience
for ali men. Woolsey's reading of Bécquer assumes a male solidarity.
For Woolsey, men are the group, the power, and women are the other.
As in the poem, this analysis assumes that true femininity is possible
only within the realm of the collective mascuiine imagination. Within
this framework the only woman that is worthy of praise and desire
is the one that is created by the male mind and the suffering that her
impossibility brings becomes the inspiration for artistic creation. For
another critic, Manuela Cubero Sanz, the feminine image that Bécquer
creates promises a profound love, a love that the women in Bécquer's
life were incapable of providing:

El amor al que aspiraba Bécquer no se fundaba en una
mera atracción física, sino en algo mucho más profundo,
en una unión espiritual de dos almas que se compenetran
en lo más íntimo de su ser. Eso era lo que Gustavo Adolfo
esperaba encontrar en el amor de su esposa. Pero Casta
Esteban no supo ser la compañera ideal que su marido
había soñado. (358)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 109

Woolsey's reading of Bécquer perpetuares a belief system in which the
feminine exists solely in the masculine imaginary; therefore marking
ali women as degraded forms of this idealized image. Cubero Sanz
explicitly translates this degradation as part of the inability of women
to be truly feminine and please men in the correct way. In both cases,
women are culpable of disappointing the man and causing his suf-
fering because they are unable to possess the qualities that define
femininity within the masculine imaginary.

While I have highlighted only a few of the poems from Bécquer's
collection, and have discussed only one of the various ways in which
he creates the image of the woman, I believe that an analysis of this
type points to the ways in which feminist thought can be used to
reinterpret classic literary texts. During the nineteenth century, women
were seen as biologically inferior to men, leading to their oppression in
ali aspects of life. The belief system in which women are understood
as degraded forms of men creates a space in the masculine imaginary
where the image of women is equated with an incomplete human
form. It is within this space that Bécquer is capable of dehumanizing
the feminine figure through both Neoplatonic idealization and physical
and emotional degradation. Representations such as these constitute a
system of oppression in that they justify the notion of male superiority
and dominance over the inferior form that is the woman.

Although Rimas was published over a century ago, the assumptions
regarding gender in the text are still a part of our cultural knowledge. In
order to break down the sexist ideologies that these assumptions consti-
tute, we must analyze the implications of the representations of women
within literary texts. A reading of much of the criticism regarding the
feminine image in Bécquer proves that the ideologies that constituted
the Romantic conception of gender are still prevalent in contemporary
literary discourse; the creator-created dichotomy of "Rima XI" reap-
pears in Woolsey's criticai essay, for example, while the insufficiency
of human women as presented in "Los ojos verdes" is attributed by
Cubero Sanz to the women in Bécquer's life. While the personal subjec-
tivity of a Romantic text such as Rimas invites the reader to confíate the
poetic voice with the person, and therefore literary creations with real-
ity, they must be removed from a biographical context to be analyzed
as literary texts. One cannot conclude that in the case of the feminine
figure, the various representations of women must be understood as
refíections of human women, rather they should be regarded as literary

no HALEYO'NEIL

tropes that stem from cultural and social perceptions of gender inequal-
ity. Although I believe that use of the dehumanized feminine figure is
just one of the many representations of women in Rimas, it highüghts
how many Romantic texts, despite their liberal affiliations, perpetuated
a hegemony that subordinated women by defining them as inferior ver-
sions of the male model of humanity.

Works Cited

Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo. Cartas literarias a una mujer. 1860. Introd. Enrique

Rull Fernández. Barcelona: Plaza ÔC Janes, 1984.
. Rimas, leyendas y narraciones. 1881. Introd. Juana de Ontañón.

México: Porrúa, 2003.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge, 1990.
Cruz, Jesús. "De cortejadas a ángeles del hogar." Historia silenciada de la

mujer. Ed. Alain Saint-Saens. Madrid: Complutense, 1996. 135-60.
Cubero Sanz, Manuela. "La mujer en las leyendas de Bécquer." Revista de

filología española 53.4 (1969): 348-70.
Díaz, José Pedro. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: vida y poesía. Madrid: Credos,

1958.
Enders, Victoria Lorée and Pamela Beth Radcliff. Constructing Spanish

Womanhood. Albany: State U of New York P, 1999.

. Introduction. Enders and Radcliff 19-24.

Irigaray, Luce. / Love to You. Trans. Alison Martin. New York: Routledge,

1996.
. Sexes and Genealogies. Trans. Cillian C. Cill. New York: Columbia

UP, 1993.
. The Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porten Ithaca: Cornell,

1985.
Kirkpatrick, Susan. Las Románticas: Women Writers and Subjectivity in

Spain, 1835-1850. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.
Mandrell, James. "Poesía... eres tú, or the Construction of Bécquer and the

Sign of Woman." Culture and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Spain.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 53-73.
Nash, Mary. "Un/Contested Identities: Motherhood, Sex Reform and the

Modernization of Gender Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Spain."

Enders and Radcliff 25-49.
Woolsey, Wallace. "La mujer inalcanzable como tema en ciertas leyendas de

Bécquer." Hispânia 27.2 (1964): 277-81.

Internacionalismo y nacionalismo:
el aeroplano

Guillermo Giucci

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

A partir de la Revolución Industrial, y acompañando la expansión
del capitalismo, se multiplican las referencias textuales que señalan
la cambiante relación con el ambiente técnico. Marx y Engels son los
profetas de la circulación global de los objetos a mediados del siglo
XIX. Décadas después, diversos viajeros ya se refieren a la circulación
de los productos en términos de objetos "fuera de lugar": a Lafcadio
Hearn le disgusta la presencia de una máquina de música occidental
en Japón, mientras el aviador alemán Günther Pluschow se sorprende
con una antigua lira europea en manos de un indio desnudo de la
Tierra del Fuego.

Cada vez resultaba más improbable el descubrimiento de grupos
humanos aislados del proceso de occidentalización. El "mundo
perdido" que el antropólogo Claude Lévi-Strauss descubrió entre los
indios Nambiquara del interior de Brasil y narró en Tristes trópicos,
estaba constituido por minúsculos grupos semi-nómades que vivían
en la indigencia (271). Desnudos, sin canoas ni hamacas, el problema
central de la vida nambiquara era el alimento. Comenzaban sin
embargo los aborígenes a recibir artefactos indicativos de procesos de
transculturación. No sólo Lévi-Strauss era consciente de que el éxito
de la expedición etnográfica dependía en parte de los regalos y del
intercambio de mercaderías, sino que con anterioridad la Comisión
Rondón les había proporcionado hachas de piedras y machetes
de metal (además de las enfermedades del hombre blanco). Estos
"mundos perdidos," que a Lévi-Strauss aún le sugería la "expresión
más conmovedora y más verídica de la ternura humana" (317),
estaban en vertiginosa desaparición.

Del barco al tren, automóvil y avión, la internacionalización de
los transportes e intereses mercantiles propició variadas respuestas
regionales y nacionales. Dado que la evolución de los transportes

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 1 1 1

112 GUILLERMO GIÜCCI

aparecía como el propio progreso de la humanidad, las naciones
no debían quedar desvinculadas de tal evolución. Ningún objeto
mecánico generó tanta discusión sobre el binomio nacionalismo-
internacionalismo, en la primera mitad del siglo XX, como el
aeroplano (en la segunda mitad del siglo, lo será la computadora). La
conquista del aire, antiguo sueño humano, se tornaba una realidad
con la aparición de una máquina de volar más pesada que el aire,
con capacidad de autopropulsión y posible de ser controlada por
un piloto. Significaba el fin de la dependencia terrestre y del reinado
oceánico. "Que los océanos, los mares del mundo, son los soportes
de los asuntos globales y, con ello, los medios naturales de los flujos
sin límites de capital: ese es el mensaje de todos los mensajes en
la era entre Colón, el héroe del medio marítimo, y Lindbergh, el
pionero de la era del medio aéreo," escribe el filósofo Peter Sloterdijk
(735). En efecto, el aeroplano y la conquista del aire eran las grandes
promesas del nuevo siglo, que pronto celebraría ruidosamente a sus
héroes aéreos.

El aeronauta Alberto Santos-Dumont fue inicialmente un defensor
apasionado del internacionalismo del aeroplano. Cuando en 1918 se
publicó O que en vi. O que nós veremos, la aviación había pasado su
"fase heroica." La Primera Guerra Mundial intensificó su desarrollo, y
la aviación se reveló potencialmente eficaz como arma de guerra tanto
ofensiva como defensiva. Santos-Dumont reconoce que los conflictos
bélicos contribuyen a perfeccionar la tecnología aérea. Mejoran los
aparatos, que aumentan en dimensiones y algunos son hechos de
acero. Evolucionan también los motores, si bien el evento más signi-
ficativo es el desarrollo de los cañones para aeroplanos. Los nuevos
cañones se convierten en armas mortíferas que lanzan proyectiles de
alturas inaccesibles al enemigo. Con ello la aviación revoluciona el
arte de la guerra y decreta la extinción de la caballería.

La guerra comenzaba a ser para Santos-Dumont una mancha
en su imagen idealizada de la comunicación planetaria. En 1918 se
fabrican aparatos que pueden transportar 30 pasajeros, capaces de
viajar en el aire durante horas, de recorrer más de mil kilómetros sin
tocar en tierra, movidos por motores de más de mil caballos de fuerza.
Santos-Dumont se enorgullece que un aeroplano alcance la altura de
26,200 pies y se mantenga en el aire durante 24 horas y 12 minutos.
Es el instrumento privilegiado de la movilidad:

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 1 13

Por meio do aeroplano, estamos hoje habilitados a viajar
com velocidade superior a 130 milhas por hora. Para fins
comerciais e comunicações internacionais, tanto as estradas
de ferro como os automóveis chegaram a um ponto em que
a sua utilidade termina. Montanhas, florestas, rios e mares
entravam o seu progresso. Mas o ar fornece um caminho
livre e rápido para o aeroplano; para ele não há empecilhos.
A atmosfera é o nosso oceano e temos portos em toda a
parte! (56)

Está convencido que los obstáculos temporales y espaciales serán
eliminados y anticipa que las ciudades "exiliadas" en América del Sur
entrarán en contacto directo con el mundo:

Anulados o tempo e a distância, as relações comerciais,
por tanto tempo retardadas, se desenvolverão espontanea-
mente. Teremos facilidades para as comunicações rápidas.
Chegaremos a um contacto mais íntimo. Seremos mais
fortes, nos nossos laços de compreensão e amizade. Tudo
isso, Srs., será realizado pelo aeroplano. (50)

Hay en Santos-Dumont un poderoso aunque ingenuo canto al
internacionalismo. Sus previsiones fueron acertadas: pronto habrá
líneas aéreas funcionando entre las ciudades de Estados Unidos y
América del Sur. El aeroplano estaba de hecho destinado a figurar
como uno de los factores más importantes en el desarrollo del
comercio y en la aproximación de las naciones. Pero quien se suici-
daría años después en Brasil, ahorcándose con dos corbatas amarradas
al caño de la ducha, posiblemente presagiaba que el avión también
estaba a camino de tornarse el arma más mortífera de la historia
humana.

En 1927, la persona más famosa del mundo es un aviador, el
norteamericano Charles Lindbergh. Miguel Ángel Asturias vivía en
la capital francesa cuando llegó el joven piloto y escribió la crónica
"De Nueva York a París a golpe de ala," en la cual certifica que los
versos de los poetas épicos se hacían realidad, "de los poetas que nos
hablaban de rayos luminosos desprendidos del celeste emporio para
alumbrar la ruta de los héroes, de los vencedores, de los grandes por
sus acciones" (Asturias 186).

114 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

Para muchos, el vuelo transatlántico de Lindbergh anuncia otra
vez el fin de las fronteras y la desaparición de las naciones. El poeta
chileno Vicente Huidobro redacta "Canto a Lindbergh," donde alaba
al "domador de horizontes y destinos, / pionero de rutas nuevas."
(19-20), y señala que

Las olas se levantan para verte pasar, y te deslizas
a lo lejos, como la luz cuando rompe el alba.
Las montañas se acercan y giran,
las naciones se alejan en filas, camino del ayer. (5-8)

Al mismo tiempo, la tecnología de los transportes alimenta una
disputa de carácter nacionalista. Examinaré a continuación ejemplos
iberoamericanos.

Iberoamérica y la máquina de volar

Las historias de la aviación suelen presentar los ejemplos más visibles
del éxito. En tales historias, los nombres tienden a ser de aviadores
norteamericanos y europeos. No de todos los países europeos: espe-
cialmente Francia, Alemania, Inglaterra e Italia. Pero la aviación es un
fenómeno internacional, y hasta países con escaso desarrollo tecno-
lógico se empeñan por el reconocimiento de sus méritos o por poseer
una escuadra propia. Fascinante es el caso de Iberoamérica, donde un
reducido grupo de españoles, portugueses y latinoamericanos realiza
un esfuerzo notorio para participar de la modernización del trans-
porte. El desplazamiento aéreo es el futuro del mundo, y no se puede
ser moderno sin participar del impulso cinético.

Después de la Primera Guerra Mundial, las energías militarizadas
están libres para proseguir el impulso aéreo como avance civilizador.
Por ello la aviación militar se constituyó en el instrumento privilegiado
de unificación del globo terráqueo. Primero será el contacto de las
naciones de historia imperial con sus antiguas colonias, luego la trans-
formación del mundo en un espacio a ser atravesado en su totalidad.
La modernidad cinética sintetiza su fuerza avasalladora desplegando
el mapamundi y examinando la posibilidad de raids. El objetivo de la
unificación del planeta significa que ni siquiera las persistentes trage-
dias son capaces de detener el avance aéreo. Es la época en que, por
etapas, se une Francia y Dakar; Londres y Australia; Roma y Tokio;
se cruza el Atlántico Norte. En 1924 la aviación norteamericana da

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 1 1 5

la vuelta al mundo y pocos años después el dirigible gigante Graff
Zeppelin repite la hazaña.

A fines del siglo XV, dos poderes imperiales, Portugal y España, se
habían dividido el mundo en el Tratado de Tordesillas. Pero no figu-
raban entre los países más modernos cuando, el 30 de marzo de 1922,
dos miembros de la Armada de Portugal, el Capitán de Fragata Artur
de Sacadura Cabral (piloto) y el Contra-Almirante Carlos Viegas
Gago Coutinho (navegador), iniciaron la primera travesía aérea del
Atlántico Sur en el Lusitânia, un hidroavión Fairey 3 D, equipado con
un motor Rolls Royce de 350 HP. Pretendían unir, por etapas, Lisboa
y Río de Janeiro. En el relatório expuesto un año antes al Gobierno
sobre la viabilidad del proyecto, Sacadura Cabral enfatizo que la
realización del viaje llamaría la atención mundial, contribuiría para
el prestigio de Portugal en Brasil y serviría para estrechar los lazos de
amistad entre ambos países, "porque atos desta natureza afirmam a
vitalidade de uma raça" (citado en Pinheiro Corrêa 110).

El viaje fue extremamente difícil, ai punto que los aeronautas
contaron con tres aviones distintos del mismo modelo. Recalaron en
Las Palmas (Islas Canarias) y en Cabo Verde, antes de proseguir viaje
para la isla Fernando de Noronha, pero se vieron forzados a perma-
necer en el islote San Pedro, en medio del océano, a causa del viento
y los desperfectos mecánicos. El segundo hidroavión fue rápidamente
deshechado debido a una avería en el motor y sólo con el tercero se
completó con éxito las etapas Fernando de Noronha-Pernambuco y
Pernambuco-Río de Janeiro.

Pese a los sucesivos cambios de avión, el viaje oceánico fue conside-
rado una proeza nacional. Sacadura Cabral, en conferencia proferida en
la Sociedad de Geografía de Lisboa, a fines de 1922, resaltó que ya no
era posible ignorar el nombre de Portugal: "Quisemos dizer ao mundo
que não somos uma Raça decadente. E, ainda que o Brasil bem o ateste,
o Mundo faz-se, propositadamente, cego, e é preciso meter-lhe as coisas
pelos olhos adentro" (citado en Pinheiro Corrêa 10).

El ejemplo del raid portugués estimuló a españoles como Ramón
Franco, hermano menor de Francisco y un militar apasionado por la
aviación, a la cual consideraba un aliado fundamental en las guerras
modernas. Famoso como pocos en España en los años '20, Ramón
moriría en 1938, en un accidente aéreo mientras cumplía una misión
de guerra, tras fracasar en dos ocasiones en su intento de dar la vuelta
al mundo.

116 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

A fines de 1924, Ramón Franco vislumbró la posibilidad de un
raid que extendiera el valor de la aviación española fuera de sus
fronteras y otorgara prestigio a la nación. Conocemos los detalles del
viaje transoceánico, llevado a cabo en 1926, gracias al libro del propio
Franco y del Capitán Ruiz de Alda, De Palos al Plata. Se trataba de
unir España con Uruguay y Argentina, a través de un vuelo en varias
etapas, en un hidroavión Dornier Wal de 450 HP, denominado Plus
Ultra. El orgullo de la patria aparece vinculado con la movilidad aérea.
España es percibida como la nación pionera que abrió la puerta hacia
el mundo moderno con la conquista de América y ahora debe renovar
su destino histórico atravesando el aire. El raid sería de ese modo una
continuación de la gesta marítima iniciada en el Renacimiento. Queda
claro, sin embargo, que el proyecto expresa la actualización técnica
apoyada únicamente en individuos, no en tendencias sociales amplias
de la modernización nacional. Ramón Franco constituye el testimonio
más fervoroso de una voluntad individual de actualización tecnoló-
gica, que no coincide con la capacidad de producción de la nación.

En palabras de Ramón Franco, el viaje del Plus Ultra serviría para
"estrechar los lazos de unión entre España y las jóvenes naciones de
habla castellana del continente descubierto por Colón" (6). Todo un
sofisticado sistema de organización es necesario para llevar a cabo con
éxito un raid. Hay que disponer el aprovisionamiento de repuestos,
lubrificantes y gasolina en escalas estratégicas. Por otra parte, Franco
tiene un temible rival en el representante de otra nación europea, el
italiano Casagrande, quien había solicitado autorización para pasar
por España rumbo a la Argentina (es conocido que Mussolini esti-
mulaba el patriotismo del pueblo italiano a través de la aviación, así
como en la década de los '30 lo haría Stalin en la Unión Soviética).
Como únicamente la prioridad asegura el prestigio individual y
nacional, estamos también ante una disputa simbólica que obliga a
acelerar la realización del raid.

Franco reunió a sus compañeros de viaje, el capitán Ruiz de Alda,
el teniente de navio Duran y el mecánico soldado Rada. El 20 de enero
de 1926 los aviadores visitaron el monasterio de La Rábida, repitiendo
el ritual del marino Cristóbal Colón antes de su travesía atlántica
en busca de metales preciosos y especierías. Si el raid posee un claro
sentido de prueba técnica y deportiva, también lo tiene de significación
política, a causa del afán de aproximación con la América hispánica.
Sintomáticamente, el hidroavión es llamado Plus Ultra (emblema de

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 1 1 7

la España imperial), señalando el vínculo doble con la tradición y la
modernidad. Santaló Sors nos ofrece información sobre el modelo
de hidroavión: tipo de canoa voladora, con el fuselaje como órgano
flotador y una única ala sustentadora; dos motores de 450 HP, colo-
cados en tándem en la parte más alta del Plus Ultra (200).

La aventura comenzó oficialmente en Palos de Moguer, donde
los aviadores comulgaron ante el altar de la Milagrosa, repitiendo
teatralmente la trayectoria colombina. Por la mañana del 22 de enero
partió el Plus Ultra rumbo a Las Palmas, ante la ovación de miles de
personas. Los tripulantes llevaban cinco kilos de higos secos, dos kilos
de jamón, dos kilos de azúcar, un kilo de café, un kilo de cacao y tres
de galletas. Además, un termo, un destilador de agua, una botella de
coñac y una de vino de Jerez. En las diferentes escalas, se repite la
escena de la bienvenida: en Las Palmas, Porto Praia y Pernambuco
son recibidos con gritos y aplausos.

Por su longitud, la etapa más difícil era Porto Praia-Pernambuco,
ya que implicaba la travesía de 2,850 kilómetros del Atlántico Sur.
No obstante, el momento de mayor dificultad en estos viajes de larga
duración, era el despegue. Los aviones no podían levantar vuelo con
mucha carga. Y el Plus Ultra tendría que despegar con 3,940 litros
de gasolina y benzol, 220 litros de aceite, agua, tres pasajeros, una
radio completa, repuestos, herramientas, equipajes y víveres. Informa
Garriga que Franco restó el máximo posible de carga al aparato: se
cambiaron las hélices, se redujeron los equipajes hasta cinco kilos y
se retiró la brújula de popa con sus correspondientes montantes (85).
También el teniente de navio Duran pasó a bordo del Alsedo (dos
buques de guerra acompañaban el vuelo, Don Blas de Leso y Alsedo)
y sólo se reintegraría a la expedición aérea en tierra brasilera. De
todos modos, el Plus Ultra cargaba un peso total de 3,625 kilos, o sea,
1,625 kilos más de lo indicado por la casa constructora del Dornier
como límite para ese modelo de hidroavión.

El Plus Ultra despegó en el segundo intento, atravesó con difi-
cultad el Atlántico, mantuvo una comunicación radial intermitente
con el Don Blas de Leso y, al entrar la noche, acuatizó a 45 kilóme-
tros de la isla Fernando de Noronha. Había recorrido 2,260 kms.
en 12 horas y 25 minutos, a una velocidad media de 181 kms./hora.
Días después prosiguió viaje para Recife (Pernambuco), con muchos
problemas, pues la tripulación tuvo que trasponer los 540 kms. con
una fuerte lluvia, remolinos de aire y desperfectos mecánicos.

118 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

La etapa Pernambuco-Río de Janeiro, de 2,100 kms., se llevó a
cabo sin grandes inconvenientes. Como corresponde en general a los
representantes de la movilidad aérea, escritores por derivación más que
por vocación, las observaciones de Ramón Franco referentes a Río de
Janeiro son convencionales. No aportan ningún dato interesante. En
compensación, reaparece un elemento que, presente en la recepción en
Pernambuco, marca el éxito de la modernidad cinética: la multitud.

En Río de Janeiro, los aviadores son recibidos con gran entu-
siasmo por parte del público y reciben telegramas de felicitaciones.
Uno es de la fábrica italiana del avión. La lectura del telegrama, señala
Franco, parecía tener por objeto hacer constar que la fabricación del
avión era italiana, "espina que teníamos clavada en el corazón desde
nuestra salida, por no emprender el raid con avión de fabricación
española y que este señor clavaba todavía más" (202).

Nada se compara a la recepción en Montevideo y Buenos Aires.
La multitud que el 9 de febrero se agolpa y prorrumpe en estruendosas
aclamaciones en el puerto de Montevideo, celebra una hazaña técnica
y humana. Quiere festejar, ser parte y testigo de la historia. Franco
describe la entrada en Montevideo de "apoteosis monumental"
(231). Lo mismo sucede el día siguiente en Buenos Aires, cuando los
aviadores son acosados por la muchedumbre. Esta se esfuerza por
aproximarse a los protagonistas y abrazarlos, mientras el Ministro
de Marina, con un bastón en la mano, se encarga de la defensa de
los 'mensajeros de la raza.' Nacionalismo e internacionalismo se
combinan de modo tenso pero indisociable. Fueron 10,270 kms. de
un viaje 'español,' que empleó con éxito la navegación radiogoniomé-
trica y que anticipaba el establecimiento de una línea área comercial
bicontinental. En palabras de Franco y Ruiz de Alda:

En el Plus Ultra todas las naciones quieren tener una
representación efectiva. Una reclama la paternidad de sus
motores; otra, la patente secreta de su construcción; otra,
la realización de ésta; pero ninguna puede reclamar lo que
pertenece a esta vieja raza que dominó el mar y arrancó
tierras vírgenes a sus ondas para abrir ahora sendas del
progreso en la inmensidad del espacio. Lo que ha sido
esencial fue la idea y su realización, idea española, voluntad
de corazones españoles, para realizarla a través de todos
los peligros y de todas las dificultades. Es por ello que la

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 119

raza entera siente la satisfacción de la victoria, y se muestra
orgullosa de presenciar el fin de este vuelo maravilloso.

(238)

Ramón Franco no menciona ningún incidente político en
Montevideo. Sabemos sin embargo que antes de partir de Río de
Janeiro, Franco recibió la orden de volar directamente a Buenos Aires.
Primo de Rivera, dictador de España, estaba molesto con las críticas
de algunos políticos uruguayos a su régimen dictatorial y prohibió que
el Plus Ultra se detuviera en la capital. El comandante no obedeció
este mandato, argumentando que luchaba contra el cronómetro y
que resultaba técnicamente imposible continuar hasta Buenos Aires
por falta de luz. Afirma Garriga que el amerrizaje del Plus Ultra en
Montevideo fue interpretado por Primo de Rivera como un acto de
desobediencia, y que el enojo del dictador aumentó con la información
del entusiasmo de los uruguayos (93).

Sea por motivos tecnológicos o políticos, o por una combina-
ción de ambos, el hecho es que en 1926 se publicó La emoción de
Montevideo ante el raid del Comandante Franco, un conjunto de
testimonios de la intelectualidad uruguaya, recogidos por Mercedes
Pinto. Sin duda, se trata de un canto de alabanza a la Ciencia y a los
héroes latinos, que subraya la importancia del viaje para la historia de
la aviación y el amor a España, la madre patria. Hay mucho de melan-
cólico en esta voluntad de reactivar la tradición española en Uruguay
a partir de la tecnología y la heroicidad latina, llegándose al absurdo
de proyectar la devolución de la visita a España, dando la vuelta al
mundo, lo que "hará resonar el nombre del Uruguay en toda la tierra
donde haya civilización y se ame el progreso" (Pinto).

Del homenaje a los aviadores españoles participan el Presidente de
la República, el Presidente del Consejo Nacional de Administración,
el Ministro de Hacienda, el Ministro de Industrias y otros destacados
intelectuales uruguayos. En muchos de los artículos se hace alusión
a la continuidad histórica, donde el viaje de Franco retoma las viejas
jornadas de la conquista. Para Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, los nave-
gantes españoles que llegaron por el cielo son estrellas nuevas que
entran triunfantes en la vieja constelación (Pinto). En palabras de
Ildefonso Pereda Valdês en su poema "A Franco," con los tripulantes
en el Plus Ultra venían "las sombras protectoras / de Cortés y Pizarro"
(10-11).

120 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

En lugar de la codicia y el fanatismo antiguos, el viajero aparece en
ocasiones como el agente desinteresado de la Ciencia. Importa señalar
este pasaje de lo religioso a lo científico, como lo coloca Eugenio Petit
Muñoz: "Él (Franco) cree haber llegado por la cruz de sus amores
teologales, pero se me ha revelado, bajo el enigma de su símbolo
aéreo, como el enviado de una nueva cruz, de la que acaso no tiene,
todavía, la conciencia cabal: cruz mecánica, cruz industriosa, cruz de
razón y de ciencia, cruz de la España nueva" (Pinto). Para otros, en
cambio, será "el avión de Cristo" (Pinto); Juana de Ibarbourou se
refiere a Franco como "el elegido de Dios" (Pinto).

La metáfora más común es la del domador. Franco es el perso-
naje heroico que atraviesa el cielo en su pájaro mecánico, especie de
Quijote del aire y vencedor del destino. ¡Que el idioma castellano
suprima la palabra 'imposible'! Mientras para Roberto Ibáñez en su
poema "A Franco," "[. . .] lo Imposible / murió crucificado en la cruz
de tu avión!" (34-35), Mario Castellanos sostiene en "¡Franco!" que
"¡Para el genio de Iberia no hay límite infranqueable!" (22). El crítico
Alberto Zum Felde es más moderado. Afirma que la aviación es un
problema técnico subordinado a la ciencia, y que mientras los grandes
vuelos dependan del heroísmo personal de los aviadores, sólo se verá
un espectáculo de alto valor estético y moral. Destaca sin embargo la
proeza "que levanta de todos los pechos un grito de admiración por
la España" y aprovecha para denunciar la situación política española,
que "yace opresa bajo uno de los más torpes despotismos" (Pinto).

La emoción de Montevideo ante el raid del Comandante Franco
es un libro inusual por su mezcla de testimonio histórico y cultura
de la aviación en un país periférico. Se incluyen poemas de autores
uruguayos que son independientes de la travesía de Franco, pero no
de la temática aeronáutica. "El viaje con alas" de Emilio Frugoni es
uno de estos poemas, que celebra la aventura del vuelo, para "Que
los astros absortos nos miren / por entre el enjambre de fuego vagar"
(71-72). José Irureta Goyena había escrito "Nube" un año antes
y lo convierte en un poema de homenaje a Franco: "Abandono mi
autómata cuerpo de barro impotente / y me embarco en la nube
imprecisa / a vagar por el éter" (1-3). También Fernán Silva Valdês
adapta "Pampa y Viento" al viaje de Franco, pues el Plus Ultra, en su
vuelo de España a la Pampa, pasa a corporificar el gran pájaro de su
poema. De Juan Parra del Riego, el poeta peruano que había muerto
un año antes en Montevideo, se incluye "El motor maravilloso." Por

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 121

SU parte, en 1926 José María Delgado publica Metal, y dedica uno
de sus poemas "A Franco," el "[. . .] saltarín oceánico, / Inverosímil
gimnasta del circo del mundo" (33-34).

América Latina no escapó al deseo de la escuadrilla aérea propia.
Países distantes de los centros de investigación e invención en Europa y
Estados Unidos — como Argentina y Uruguay — rápidamente fundaron
sus clubes aéreos y se preocuparon con la aviación militar, naval y civil
(oficial y privada).

El ejemplo de los pilotos extranjeros y los avances tecnológicos
estimuló a los aviadores latinoamericanos. En 1924 el Mayor Pedro
Zanni sometió a estudio del Aeroclub Argentino el proyecto de
vuelo alrededor del mundo, que fue aprobado. Partió a mediados de
año de Shiphol (Holanda), y realizó con éxito las escalas previstas
hasta la India. En Hanoi tuvo problemas: el 19 de agosto, a las 6:30
de la mañana, iniciaba el decolaje cuando las ruedas del avión se
hundieron en el terreno fangoso, impidiendo que adquiriese la velo-
cidad necesaria para desprenderse del suelo. En consecuencia, salió de
los límites del terreno y entró en una plantación de arroz, donde las
ruedas chocaron contra un obstáculo. El aeroplano quedó totalmente
destruido. Zanni solicitó el envío del hidroavión que tenía de reserva,
con el cual prosiguió su viaje mundial hasta Tokio. Pero cuando inició
el decolaje, con mar picado, para atravesar el Pacífico, golpes de ola
provocaron el hundimiento del hidroavión. Aunque Zanni abandonó
definitivamente la prueba, a bordo de su aeronave "había surcado
victorioso en 1924 los cielos de medio mundo con los colores de la
patria prendidos en sus alas" (Zuloaga 193). Progresivamente las
mujeres argentinas pasaron a participar de las actividades aeronáu-
ticas y se fundaron aeródromos, tanto militares como civiles, tornando
más seguros los vuelos.

El ejemplo de Uruguay sigue el de Argentina, siempre a menor
escala. En el despoblado Uruguay, pilotos nativos se esforzaron por
ingresar en la era de la movilidad aérea. En 1926 el Mayor Tydeo
Larre Borges proyectó un raid alrededor del mundo. Vale la pena visua-
lizar el alcance mundial de la modernidad cinética, reproduciendo
el itinerario del proyectado viaje de Larre Borges (especie de Phileas
Fogg rioplatense):

Montevideo-Rio de Janeiro-Pernambuco-Dakar-Casablanca-
Puerto Moguer-Marsella-Génova-Atenas-Constantinopla-

122 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

Bouchou-Bombay-Calcuta-Bangkok-Saigón-Annoi-Tietsin-Pekín-
Corea-Kagosina-Tokio-Aleutianas-Alaska-Canadá-EE.UU. de
América-México-Guatemala-San Salvador-Nicaragua-Costa Rica-
Panamá-Venezuela-Colombia-Ecuador-Perú-Santiago-Cabo de
Hornos-Bahía Blanca-Buenos Aires-Montevideo. (Meregalli 195)

Eran 52,700 kms., pero el proyectado raid no salió de los planes.
En su lugar, el Mayor Larre Borges y otros tres tripulantes inten-
taron la travesía aérea del Atlántico Sur. Partieron de Montevideo y
recorrieron varias etapas, hasta que el hidroavión tuvo que realizar
un aterrizaje forzoso en la costa africana, quedando prisioneros de
la tribu Salem Barca. Luego de largas negociaciones con los Moros,
el representante español logró concretar el rescate y en Uruguay los
pilotos fueron recibidos como héroes (Meregalli 210). Dos años
después, en 1929, Larre Borges finalmente llevaría a cabo con éxito el
raid, siendo el primer latinoamericano que atravesó el Atlántico Sur.

Otro raid ambicioso fue Montevideo-Nueva York, iniciado en
marzo de 1929 por tres aviadores uruguayos, el Teniente Coronel
Cesáreo Berisso, el Mayor Rogelio Otero y el mecánico Dagoberto
Molí, en un Breguet 14. Ya durante la primera etapa, llegaron con
un desperfecto a Buenos Aires, y milagrosamente se llevó a cabo la
peligrosa segunda etapa, Buenos Aires-Santiago. Pasaron después por
Antofagasta, Arica, Lima y Tumbes, con la idea de arribar a Cali.
Pero cuando una bomba de aceite del pequeño y frágil "Montevideo"
dejó de funcionar, haciendo que el motor se recalentase y amenazando
con el incendio del avión, tuvieron que aterrizar como pudieron en
la selva, en las proximidades de una choza de indios, estrellándose
contra un árbol y accidentándose el mecánico Molí. El relato de los
tres tripulantes resume el dramatismo:

Inmediatamente Berisso y Otero trataron de salvar algunas
cosas del avión antes de que se incendiara. Corrieron hacia el
avión para rescatar aunque fueran las armas que tanto nece-
sitarían en medio de la selva. Pero antes de llegar al avión
estalló. Tenía más de mil litros de gasolina y una llamarada
gigantesca se eleva por encima de la arbolada. Molí comenzó

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 123

a gritar. Las balas de las armas estaban estallando y algunas
picaban cerca de dónde él estaba caído. (Meregalli 141)

En Montevideo los daban por muertos, cuando más de un mes
después — tras una odisea en la selva colombiana — volvieron a comu-
nicarse por radio.

Era difícil destacarse en el contexto de los ídolos internacionales.
Por un lado, vale la pena señalar la participación de mujeres en la
aviación civil, como Tereza de Marzo, Anésia Pinheiro Machado
y Ada Rogato en Brasil; Amalia Figueredo y Adela Guffanti, en
Argentina. Por otra parte, Latinoamérica tiene sus ídolos locales de la
aeronáutica: Jorge Newbery en Argentina, Florencio Gómez Núñez en
Venezuela, Roberto Fierro Villalobos en México, Francisco Eduardo
Bonilla en Uruguay. Es innegable que se dedicaron de cuerpo y alma
a la gesta del espacio aéreo, pero las condiciones materiales en que
operaban eran precarias.

El ejemplo de Bonilla es ilustrativo al respecto. Viviendo en Monte-
video, se inspira en los vuelos parisinos de Santos Dumont y nortea-
mericanos de los hermanos Wright. Son el elemento disparador de su
búsqueda febril de diarios, revistas y documentaciones, así como de un
piloto que le enseñe la forma de volar. El joven se traslada a Buenos
Aires para recabar la máxima información posible en publicaciones
nacionales y extranjeras. De ese modo autodidacta se va formando el
aviador y constructor de sus aparatos aéreos (conviene recordar que en
esa época todavía era posible construir un aeroplano propio). El primer
aparato que construye y prueba se llama "Uruguay I".

En su biografía de Bonilla, José Benicio Suárez nos presenta un
cuadro de dificultades técnicas y económicas que únicamente el idea-
hsmo de la juventud era capaz de superar. Bonilla aprovechaba todos
los momentos libres para reunir los accesorios necesarios:

soportes para el motor, para los tanques de nafta y aceite,
para las alas, tren de aterrizaje, tubos amortiguadores,
ruedas, cubiertas, asientos, cables para las alas — tensores —
alambres, maderas curvadas, varillas especiales para formar
las escotillas de las alas, los patines, los arcos delanteros del
tren de aterrizaje, tela, pintura, juego de pedales, comando
del timón de dirección, etc. (38)

124 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

Añade Suárez que todos los elementos que estuvieron al alcance
de Bonilla los obtuvo, pero que el motor, la hélice, los tanques de
nafta y aceite, que debían ser de cobre reforzado, no se hallaban en el
Uruguay. Hacia 1910, Bonilla comienza a delinear su aeroplano, con
la cooperación de "ayudantes curiosos," y en febrero de 1911 compra
en Buenos Aires el material que le faltaba. Todo de una precariedad
tremenda, que lleva al fracaso del "Uruguay I" y a la fabricación del
"Uruguay II," que cae ante los corresponsales de prensa el 22 de enero
de 1913, junto con el joven piloto suizo-francés Monnard. Mientras
tanto se constituye el "Centro Nacional de Aviación," que intenta
prohibir los ensayos de Bonilla, exigiendo que no se permitan ascen-
siones ni ensayos públicos a quienes no tengan un certificado oficial.

La modernidad cinética premia, pero también exige permisos y
titulaciones. Bonilla sigue un curso de pilotaje en la Escuela Civil
de Villa Lugano, Argentina, consiguiendo el codiciado título de
piloto-aviador en 1914. Tenía 27 años cuando comienza la Primera
Guerra Mundial y el avión se perfila como un arma de espionaje y
de batalla. Son pocos los aviadores en el Río de la Plata, y Bonilla se
dedica a realizar exhibiciones en el interior del Uruguay. Lleva a cabo
el primer vuelo nocturno en Uruguay y Enrique Delfino compone el
tango-milonga "Bonilla" en su homenaje. Vuela por todo el territorio
nacional, ayuda a sus amigos a vender aviones, los repara, coopera
con la aviación civil, cobra entrada en sus exhibiciones, visita el sur
del Brasil, le gana una apuesta al aviador inglés John Barron y en
Paraná se encuentra con Carlos Gardel. Era una figura localmente
muy conocida cuando en 1916 se accidenta y abandona los vuelos.

Más famoso fue Jorge Newbery, precursor de la aviación civil y
militar argentina. Su vocación por la mecánica es común a los represen-
tantes de la modernidad cinética, pero en su caso lo condujo a estudiar
ingeniería en centros universitarios de los Estados Unidos. Quien regresa
en 1895 a Buenos Aires con el título de ingeniero electricista no es única-
mente un excelente profesional, sino un deportista que practica boxeo,
natación, automovilismo, esgrima, vuelo en globo y en aeroplano. Su
descubrimiento de la aerostación, a inicios del siglo XX, es la revelación
de muchos individuos en distintos países del planeta. Newbery escribe
artículos a favor de la aerostación y pronostica que pronto se conquis-
tará el espacio. Es un visionario del transporte aéreo.

Newbery describe la conmoción que lo embarga durante la
primera ascensión en el globo El Huracán, a fines de 1909:

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 125

Es la emoción más intensa que puede experimentar un
ser humano. El rio hervía abajo, lleno de malos presagios
y amenazando con su salvaje y extraño idioma, pero la
luna plena que rielaba las aguas hacía de cada onda un
cambiante, y parecía la superficie del majestuoso río un
campo de nácar y lentejuelas. Una impresión inmensa,
dominadora, subyugante, se posesionaba de mí y en el
ascenso se sentía algo como una dulce embriaguez que
acariciaba los sentidos y el espíritu, (citado en Larra 77)

Raúl Larra ofrece interesantes detalles sobre el vuelo. Afirma
que Newbery batió el record sudamericano de duración y distancia
al salvar 550 kms. en trece horas, que el Aero Club le entregó una
medalla de oro y que un club de fútbol adoptó el nombre y la insignia
de su globo: Huracán. Pero la conquista del espacio no tiene límites y
requiere el aeroplano. La modernidad cinética se justifica por medio
del movimiento constante, mientras los "guapos" del aire se trans-
forman en ídolos populares. Larra sostiene que Jorge Newbery llegó a
ser el primer ídolo de la multitud porteña sin proponérselo y que pasó
a competir con los ídolos políticos (112). Su actividad en beneficio de
la aviación civil y militar será incansable, aunque su fama depende
en gran parte de haber sido el primer piloto que cruzó de ida y vuelta
el Río de la Plata y por haber alcanzado los 6,225 metros de altura,
récord mundial (este récord no fue homologado por la comisión inter-
nacional, ya que se debía superar la marca anterior por lo menos en
150 metros, y Newbery sobrepasó la de Legagneux en 75 metros). Se
afirma que Newbery desconocía el miedo y ello seguramente contri-
buyó a su muerte en un accidente de avión en 1914.

El cruce doble del Río de la Plata se tornó un desafío para los
pioneros de la aviación. Donde hubiese bastante agua, había que
atravesar, y ganar premios. Blériot debía su fama y riqueza al cruce del
Canal de la Mancha; Lindbergh a su viaje transatlántico. El Río de la
Plata suponía un desafío mayor que el cruce del Canal de la Mancha,
50 kilómetros contra los 38 europeos. Pero el premio de 100,000
pesos atrajo al milanês Bartolomeo Cattaneo, quien desembarcó en
el puerto de Buenos Aires dispuesto a "saltar el charco" en 1910 con
dos aviones Blériot. La tarde del 16 de diciembre, Cattaneo despegó
del campo de la Sociedad Sportiva Argentina rumbo a Colonia. Se
extravió durante el camino y sólo arribó a destino dos horas después

126 GUILLERMO GIUCCI

del horario previsto. Cuenta Lascano que al bajar de su Blériot,
Cattaneo fue suspendido en brazos por el público (24).

Todo récord es un estímulo para la superación. Si Cattaneo había
cruzado el Río de la Plata, Jorge Newbery se arriesgaría a fines de
1912 a ser el primer piloto de la travesía doble. Aprovechando la
invitación a un asado, Newbery salió por la madrugada, almorzó,
conversó con los amigos y retornó a la Argentina por la tarde. Fue
una demostración inequívoca de las posibilidades de la aviación y una
hazaña que parecía intimidar a cualquiera (Lascano 28). Una semana
después, sin embargo, el joven Pablo Teodoro Fels se arriesgó a unir
en vuelo directo Buenos Aires y Montevideo. Argentina y Uruguay
eran desde este momento dos integrantes más de la audaz modernidad
cinética en vías de globalización. Y no podía faltar la promesa de la
aviación civil: el alemán Heinrich Lübbe transporta el primer pasa-
jero sobre el estuario. El resto siguió el padrón conocido, pese a sus
peculiaridades: aviadores del ejército argentino y uruguayo realizan
demostraciones públicas en busca de récords; el correo aéreo entre
Buenos Aires y Montevideo se inaugura en 1917; misiones aero-
náuticas extranjeras visitan el Río de la Plata después de la guerra;
la Compañía Río Platense de Aviación inaugura el servicio aéreo de
pasajeros entre Argentina y Uruguay en 1922,

Obras citadas

Asturias, Miguel Ángel. "De Nueva York a París a golpe de ala." París

1924-1933: Periodismo y creación literaria. Madrid: Archivos, 1997.

185-188.
Castellanos, Mario. "¡Franco!" Pinto N. pag.
Delgado, José María. "A Franco." Metal. Montevideo: Agencia General de

Librería y Publicaciones, 1926. 39-43.
Franco, Ramón y J. Ruiz de Alda. De Palos al Plata. Madrid: Espasa Calpe,

1926.
Frugoni, Emilio. "El viaje con alas." Pinto N. pag.
Garriga, Ramón. Ramón Franco, el hermano maldito. Barcelona: Planeta,

1978.
Huidobro, Vicente. "Canto a Lindbergh." Poesía. 30-32 (1989): 256-258.
Ibáñez, Roberto. "A Franco." Pinto N. pag.
Irureta Goyena, José. "Nube." Pinto N. pag.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 127

Larra, Raúl. Jorge Newbery, el conquistador del espado. Buenos Aires:

Aerolíneas Argentinas, 1975.
Lascano, Diego M. Saltando el charco: Imágenes y crónicas del cruce aéreo

del Río de la Plata entre 1907 y 1940. Montevideo: Librei, 1999.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Tristes trópicos. Trad. Noelia Bastard. Buenos Aires:

Paidós, 1988.
Meregalli, Jaime. Aportes para la historia de la fuerza aérea uruguaya.

Montevideo: Imprenta Nacional, 1974.
Pereda Valdês, Ildefonso. "A Franco." Pinto N. pag.
Pinheiro Corrêa, José Pedro. Sacadura Cabral, homem e aviador. Rio de

Janeiro: O Cruzeiro, 1966.
Pinto, Mercedes. La emoción de Montevideo ante el raid del Comandante

Franco. Montevideo: Agencia General de Librería y Publicaciones, 1926.

N. pag.
Santaló Sors, Luis. Historia de la Aeronáutica. Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe,

1946.
Santos-Dumont, Alberto. O que eu vi. O que nós veremos. 1918. Guanabara:

Tribunal de Contas do Estado da Guanabara, 1973.
Sloterdijk, Peter. Esferas II. Globos. Trad. Isidoro Reguera. Madrid: Ediciones

Siruela, 2004.
Suárez, José Benicio. Bonilla en la epopeya de la aviación heroica. Montevideo:

Imprenta Rosgal, 1979.
Zuloaga, Ángel María. La victoria de las alas: Historia de la aviación argen-
tina. Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1948.

Who Is in the Back Room?: The
Intertextuality of Don Quixote and
El cuarto de atrás

Sarah H ar ris

University of California, Los Angeles

Miguel de Cervantes's El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
(1605, 1615) contributes to the literary canon in at least three major
ways. First, it recapitulates and borrows from nearly all literatures
of its own time. Second, it reworks these literatures into something
entirely new that strikes even contemporary readers as remarkably
modern. Third, the resulting novel is a nearly omnipresent subtext
in the canon of Spanish (if not world) literature from 1605 on. One
example of this subtext lies in Carmen Martín Gaite's El cuarto de
atrás (1978), which exhibits a clear intertextual dialogue with the
seventeenth-century masterpiece. As this article will demónstrate,
reading each novel in terms of the other provides a rich opportu-
nity for re-examining the inner needs of each protagonist, especially
with regards to the role of literature in his or her life. In each novel,
literature allows for the protagonist's posterity, offers him or her a
necessary escape from "real" life, provides a model for behavior, and
inspires serious discussions of literary theory and criticism.

Before embarking upon this argument, a few caveats and clari-
fications may be necessary. First, given the three hundred-odd years
between the publication dates of the two novéis, Martín Gaite not
only writes from within an entirely different politicai and social con-
text, but also makes use of technological advances in the production
and consumption of "literature." Whereas books are literature for
both protagonists, for the protagonist of the 1978 novel, C, literature
also includes magazines, films, and televisión. Second, in my reading,
El cuarto de atrás is not by any means an imitation, but rather an
emulation, paying homage to one of the fundamental literary works
in the world. As I read her, Carmen Martín Gaite, either as a con-
scious nod to the Quixote, or simply in another demonstration of its

128 MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 129

far-reaching influence, uses the figure of Don Quixote as a springboard
for the development of her own character. Third, El cuarto de atrás
exhibits a number of topical similarities to Don Quixote {Quixote),
which, although they are peripheral to the argument of the present
article, deserve mention. Among these similarities are Cs need to
burn her writings (34), her consumption of books hke food (51-52),
the imaginary island/ínsula (58), her possible "locura" in the eyes of
society (102), her age (136), and the trope of the found manuscript
(210). These similarities aside, a much more extensive parallel between
the two novéis is that each is considered a "book about books."

El cuarto de atrás {El cuarto) is a largely autobiographical novel
that Carmen Martín Gaite calis "la única novela en la que hablo un
poco de mí" (Carón 1). Among other labels, critics have called the
work a memoir, an autobiographical fiction, a fantastic novel, and a
reflection on literary theory (Uxó). In El cuarto, C, a fifty-year oíd
female author, suffers a night of insomnia and w^riter's block in her
Madrid apartment. The telephone rings and a man's voice informs
her that she has scheduled an interview at that time. Throughout, the
narrator simply calis this man "el hombre de negro" or "el hombre
vestido de negro." C. invites him up to the apartment, and the two
spend the night talking about C.'s career as an author, her childhood,
and her reaction to the recent death of the dictator. All the while a
storm rages outside. During the night, a stack of papers grows on
the table beneath the man's black hat, and we later discover that
these papers constitute the manuscript for El cuarto de atrás itself.
Eventually, C. falls asleep, the man in black leaves, and it remains
somewhat unclear whether his visit has been a dream or reality. When
C.'s daughter awakens her in the morning, however, there is physical
evidence of the man's earlier presence: two teacups, a gold pillbox,
and the finished manuscript.

Stephanie Sieburth argües in Inventing High and Low that "While
canonical writers such as Cervantes, Machado, and Darío are [. . .]
quoted in the novel, their works take a back seat to the mass cultural
genres" (188). On the other hand, while the narrator of El cuarto
does spill more ink in explicit reference to such genres as the novela
rosa, much of the intertextual presence of the Quixote rests more in
thematic resonance than in ñame. Sieburth does concede, albeit in
parentheses, that ''{Don Quixote [is] another subtext for the plot)"
but insists that the seventeenth-century novel "is not mentioned" by

130 SARAM HARRIS

ñame (210). In fact, at various moments through the night, the narra-
tor mentions several works by Cervantes including La Gitanilla (37,
101, 176), the Entremeses [66), and the Quixote itself (125). As I will
discuss, El cuarto^s narrator names the protagonist Don Quixote as a
potential hterary model to imítate (125).

In addition to its intertextuai presence in El cuarto de atrás, Car-
men Martín Gaíte's other wrítíngs also reveal her to be an attentive
reader of the Quixote. She appears ín her wrítíng and interviews a
thoughtful critic of many works, both Spanish and foreign. Clearly,
Carmen Martín Gaite benefited from an extensive education ín Htera-
ture; born in Salamanca in 1925, she received her degree ín Romance
Philosophy and Letters from the Uníversity of Salamanca ín 1949,
and her doctórate from the Complutense ín 1987. She lectured on
literature at the UNAM several times between 1976 and 1979, and
served as a vísiting literature professor at Colombia, Virgínia, Yale,
and Idaho Uníversíties.

Among the many works that interest her, Martin Gaite professes
a great admiration for the Quixote. For example, she observes that
because "el regodeo y goce de quien lo escribió es casi palpable, llega
a darnos envidia" ("Charlar" 30). In fact, she dedícates a large part
of her essay "Charlar y dialogar" to drawing a direct comparíson
between Don Quixote and El cuarto de atrás. In her essay, Martín
Gaite notes that though she had not planned to wríte Cuarto in such a
way, dialogue ís as central to ít as to Don Quixote. In her words, she
had planned to make the man ín black an "interlocutor silencioso y
sin personalidad definida, un ser abstracto que visita a la narradora en
una noche de tormenta" ("Charlar" 216). However, as she developed
the novel, the male character did not remain silent, but rather through
hís commentary and questíoning seemed to develop a personality of
hís own, an identity of hís own. Likewíse, ín Martín Gaite's analysís,
the characters and message of Don Quixote develop through the
constant conversatíons between Sancho and hís master. According to
her, ín both El cuarto de atrás and Don Quixote, conversation comes
to take the prímary focus, overshadowíng the very plot.

In "Charlar y dialogar," Martín Gaite compares the ínteraction
between Don Quixote and the other characters to the relationshíp
between a reader and a work of literature. She notes, "Cuando Don
Quijote presta oído atento a ellas (que es en muchas ocasiones) se
convierte en lector de una novela que le desvía de la suya y se la hace

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 131

olvidar" ("Charlar" 217). As we will see, her metaphor between
listening and reading is particularly poignant because of the strong
association in El cuarto between speaking and writing. To complete
Carmen Martín Gaite's analogy, listening is to reading as speaking is
to writing. For C, ali four are inextricably intertwined, especially in
her attempt to créate a lasting legacy.

Both C. and Don Quixote see literature as a means to eternal life.
Don Quixote considers participating in the literature of chivalry as
an author before he changes his mind and sets out to live the life of
a character instead. The narrator notes that while the pre-quixotized
Alonso Quixano read from his library, "muchas veces le vino deseo
de tomar la pluma, y dalle fin al pie de la letra, como allí se promete;
y sin duda alguna lo hiciera, y aun saliera con ello, si otros mayores
y continuos pensamientos no se lo estorbaran" (I, 1, 35). Then, when
Quixote finally sets out on his first sally, having chosen adequate
costumes and ñames, he continues to think of his life in terms of
preservation by the pen. He fantasizes:

¿Quién duda sino que en los venideros tiempos, cuando
salga a luz la verdadera historia de mis famosos hechos, que
el sabio que los escribiere no ponga, cuando llegue a contar
esta mi primera salida tan de mañana, desta manera?:
'Apenas había el rubicundo Apolo tendido por la faz de la
ancha y espaciosa tierra las doradas hebras de sus hermosos
cabellos [. . .]. (I, 2, 42)

His thoughts tell us that Don Quixote, having only recently assumed
such a moniker, is already quite conscious of the importance of his
lasting reputation. He knows that the way in which he will be remem-
bered depends on how a narrator tells his story. Of course, the irony
lies in that the tone the real-world narrator of Don Quixote employs
is far from the respectful and admiring one that Don Quixote imagines
(Johnson 44).

In Part II, Sancho, Don Quixote, and Sansón Carrasco discuss Part
Fs portrayal of the adventurers. Their conversation further clarifies the
importance that Don Quixote attributes to literature in creating his
legacy, as the protagonist expresses deep concern about his reputa-
tion. He knows that the written word (the already published Part
I, and presumably the pending publication of later adventures) will

132 SARAHHARRIS

broadcast his life's work to coming generations of readers. Therefore,
he awaits Sansón Carrasco "de quien esperaba oír las nuevas de sí
mismo puestas en el libro" (II, 3, 580), and worries that the author:

algún sabio, o ya amigo o enemigo, por arte de encantamento
las habrá dado a la estampa, si amigo, para engrandecerlas
y levantarlas sobre las más señaladas de caballero andante;
si enemigo, para aniquilarlas y ponerlas debajo de las más
viles que de algún vil escudero se hubiesen escrito [. . .] ly]
[. . .1 desconsolóse pensar que su autor era moro, según
aquel nombre de Cide, y de los moros no se podía esperar
verdad alguna [. . .]. (II, 3, 580)

Don Quixote's reputation as a knight is of supreme importance to
him. Confirming this, he notes to Sansón, "Una de las cosas [. . .]
que más debe de dar contento a un hombre virtuoso y eminente es
verse, viviendo, andar con buen nombre por las lenguas de las gentes,
impreso y en estampa" (II, 3, 581). As Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
head towards El Toboso, Don Quixote again confesses, "temo que en
aquella historia que dicen que anda impresa de mis hazañas, si por
ventura ha sido su autor algún sabio mi enemigo, habrá puesto unas
cosas por otras, mezclando con una verdad mil mentiras, divirtiéndose
a contar otras acciones fuera de los que requiere la continuación de
una verdadera historia" (II, 8, 614). In these concerns, as in his fan-
tasized narration of his first sally, Don Quixote shows himself to be
extremely conscious of the weight of the written word. As we readers
can see, literature does in fact solidify the character's reputation as it
has for the fictional and historical knights he admires. Don Quixote
would likely be dismayed to know that his reputation as a madman,
though it endears him to fictional and real readers alike, supersedes
his legacy as a valiant knight.

Whereas Don Quixote wants to establish his reputation through
w^ritten text, C. possesses the much more drastic Unamunian recogni-
tion that w^ithout writing she does not exist at all. If there were no
risk of loss, she observes aloud, "si no se perdiera nada, la literatura
no tendría razón de ser. [. . .] lo importante es saber contar la historia
de lo que se ha perdido" (196). C. sees her memories like butterflies
and fleeting images from dreams. She must write these memories
down in order to preserve them (121-122). For her, then, the written

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 133

word carries the weight not just of her reputation, but of her own
life experience. That is, she worries that if she does not both speak
about her memories and turn that conversation into hterature, she
will lose the experiences themselves. Of the conversations with the
man in black, Stephanie Sieburth notes, "C. has succeeded in saving
the past from obhvion" (205). For instance, C. notes that a room she
remembers exists only "mientras yo viva" (169). Therefore, writing
is the only way to save these memories from a death simultaneous to
that of the author.

Perhaps C. wishes only to save her experiences from oblivion,
but in so doing, she aiso establishes a public legacy of the sort that
so concerned Don Quixote. As her visitor notes, "la conozco por lo
que escribe. Lo que pasa es que entiendo de literatura y sé leer entre
líneas" (196). In fact, he knows her well enough from reading her
publications to have become her ideal reader. The man fulfiUs Cs
every conversational and literary need, asking, for instance, "que no
se fugue sola, me gusta más que lo haga en voz alta [. . .] o, por lo
menos, si se fuga sola, cuéntame luego lo que ha visto" (126-127).
He seems to intuit her need to commit her memories to paper, which,
in the case of this particular magicai night, happens naturally as the
two characters converse. The danger of this phenomenon, of course,
is that C.'s writings do not save her memories only for herself, but
they also publish them to the reading public, who reads what she has
previously kept secret.

How exactly this process works is unclear. The man suggests
that he is recording their conversation not with a tape recorder, ñor
with a pad and pen, but rather with an unnamed "sistema que estoy
ensayando ahora" (186), or, as we discover throughout the novel, the
book that writes itself and records their conversation on the page.
This phenomenon, difficult as it may be to explain rationally, also
finds resonance in another Cervantine work: the double novellas "El
casamiento engañoso" and "El coloquio de los perros." In the first
of these two novellas, Campuzano overhears, transcribes, and thus
preserves, a nighttime conversation between two dogs. The second
novella is the transcript of the conversation, which regards the life
stories of the animais and a debate of theoretical literary questions.
Campuzano tells Peralta:

134 SARAH HARRIS

yo oí y casi vi con mis ojos a estos dos perros, que el uno se
llama Cipión y el otro Berganza, estar una noche, que fue la
penúltima que acabé de sudar, echados, detrás de mi cama,
en unas esteras viejas [. . .] oí, escuché, noté y finalmente
escribí, sin faltar palabra, por su concierto; de donde se
puede tomar indicio bastante que mueva y persuada a creer
esta verdad que digo. (535-36)

Here it is a human hand that records the conversation, while, despite
Campuzano's insistence on its veracity, the conversation itself seems
suspiciously fantastic. In El cuarto de atrás the reader is in a position
more to Campuzano's, an unseen "fly on the wall" who hears the life
story and literary discussion of C. and her mysterious guest.

In El cuarto^ both the hand that writes and the conversation
itself are fantastical. What we do know is that C. needs to write her
life in order to save it. These memories depict C. as a lifelong reader
of books, magazines, and movie stars' images. She is yet another
example of characters for whom, in the words of CarroU B. Johnson,
"literature provides a means of coping with the otherw^ise intolerable
pressures of their personal situations" (88). She and Don Quixote
both use literature as an escape from their real lives. In examining this
phenomenon it is necessary to ask 1 ) from what does the protagonist
need an outlet?, and 2) how does this particular genre of literature
fulfill bis or her needs?

Throughout nearly all of Don Quixote, the protagonist confronts
the material world around him in terms of escapist literary models.
He seems to use diversionary literature to distract bis attention from
his biand day-to-day existence, if not for a deeper darker reason. The
narrator is able to sum up Don Quixote's pre-sally life in just a few
Unes. He is "gran madrugador y amigo de la caza," "un hidalgo de
los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor"
(I, 1, 32-33). In fact, his routine meáis and dressing habits merit more
ink than do most of his activities. In short, "His lifestyle, described
on the memorable opening page, conforms to that of a familiar type,
associated with threadbare frugality, hunting, the relies of honour-
able ancestry, parochial seclusion" (Glose 1). It seems the only thing
that gives his existence any noteworthiness at all is that "los ratos
que estaba ocioso, que eran los más del año, se daba a leer libros de
caballerías, con tanta afición y gusto, que olvidó casi de todo punto

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 135

el ejercicio de la caza, y aun la administración de su hacienda" (I, 1,
34). Due to his overwhelming interest in books, Don Quixote buys
"todos cuantos pudo haber dellos" (I, 1, 34). This obsession with lit-
erature is an obvious social deviancy, and it certainly seems to provide
the Manchegan gentleman with his only diversión from an otherwise
unremarkabie daily existence.

In agreement with this reading, Edward Baker notes how unusual
it is that Quesada/Quejana would have an entire "room set aside
exciusively for his books," and concludes that "the hidalgo 's library
is the site of a breach of an otherwise harmonious, albeit modest,
domestic order" (13-14). Don Quixote 's relationship with literature
diverges, for example, from that of Don Diego de Miranda, who
exhibits a life in perfect accord with the established norms of his
social class and position (II, 16). Don Diego has a wife and children
and spends the bulk of his time hunting and fishing, not reading. He
also has a library, but he keeps his books strictly arranged according
to language and theme, and doesn't spend excessive amounts of time
or money on them. Of particular note, the books of chivalry that so
occupy Don Quixote's time and mind have not yet, Don Diego states,
"entrado por los umbrales de mis puertas" (II, 16, 671).

In stark contrast to Don Diego 's mesura, Don Quixote is so taken
by his books of chivalry that he sells off most of his possessions in
order to feed his addiction, and ultimately decides to imitate their
model. Several hundred years later, C. lives in a Madrid apartment
similarly overflowing with texts, and experiences something akin to
what Don Quixote experienced; she reads, writes, and discusses litera-
ture as a means to divert her attention from the intolerable world of
war and violence, and later conformity, dictatorship, restriction, and
censorship. Her social deviancy lies in her rejection of the image of
the orderly and restrained woman prometed by the official doctrine.
Reading (or re-reading) Don Quixote in light of the politicai and
cultural climate of El cuarto illuminates possible reasons behind Don
Quixote's literary obsession. It seems that he, too, needs an escape
from an otherwise unbearable cultural and/or politicai reality.

In their arricie "£/ cuarto de atrás: Metafiction and the Actualiza-
tion of Literary Theory," Joanne Lipman Brown and Elaine M. Smith
explain that "literature may function as an escape from reality" for
Martín Gaite, who has called it "'una evasión de la rutina, como
rechazo de un mundo agobiante, obligatorio, y consabido'" (64).

136 SARAH HARRIS

Brown and Smith go on to affirm that literature must, to provide an
escape, include ambiguity (65). In Carmen Martín Gaite's experience,
as evidenced in her interviews, as well as in C.'s case, ambiguity,
imagination, and literary exploits provide an alternative to the rigid-
ity and monotony of Franco's legacy. Emma Martinell agrees with
this interpretation as well, noting that "La autora reconoce haber
padecido desde pequeña la esclavitud de vivir en un recinto ordenado,
y sin novedad ni trasgresión posibles de la limpieza y orden" (146).
Finally, Mercedes Carbayo Abengózar also notes that Martín Gaite
inserts subversive elements into El cuarto de atrás "mediante su único
refugio: la literatura" (5). These assertions all hold up well when we
examine the text of El cuarto.

Of all that C. suffers, she complains that "lo más grave era la
falta de libertad" (80). She rebels against the restrictions placed upon
her by surrounding herself with piles of written text, delighting in the
"aglomeración de letreros, de fotografías, de cachivaches, de libros...!,
libros que, para enredar más la cosa, guardan dentro fechas, pape-
htos, telegramas, dibujos, texto sobre texto: docenas de libros que
podían abrir y volver a cerrar, y que luego quedarían descolocados,
apilados unos sobre otros, proliferando como la mala yerba" (16).
C. notes further that "Yo siempre soñaba con vivir en una buhardilla
donde siempre estuvieran los trajes sin colgar y los libros en el suelo"
(89). From her delight in disorder, we gather that C. deeply needs to
rebel against the strict order that the dictatorship imposes. However,
because she lives within the dictatorship for the majority of her life,
her rebellion must be within closed doors.

C.'s only escape is into her own disordered apartment and her
ambiguous reading and writing. Due to her surroundings, C. does
not sally forth, but rather uses her mind to travei. She thinks about
her potential escape only "a solas y a escondidas," and explains to
her visitor that books are akin to traveling because they allow her to
lea ve the unwanted and uninteresting behind (41). Thus, she manages
to set US a dual existence, secretly maintaining what Sieburth calis the
"reading, escape, madness" of the Republic within Franco's imposed
"activity, sanity" (205). In fact, like Don Quixote, C. believes that
some of the best escapism is found in a "novela caballeresca o de
cuento de hadas" (43). In her own life, however, she relies primarily
on romance novéis and fantasy. These works not only provide her with
an escape from her daily existence, but also serve as "literatura como

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 137

refugio," like the back room itself, protection from such unpleasant-
ness as "el frio" and "los bombardeos" (59).

At various moments in her life, C. uses literature as an escape and
a refuge from rejection, suffering, boredom, and war. For instance,
when the young men who spark her interest do not reciprócate her
affections, she "aprendia a convertir aquella derrota en literatura, otra
vez será, a intensificar mis sueños" (182). She picks up this technique
from a childhood friend who "me inició en la literatura de evasión"
(183), collaborating with C. in planning a romance novel along the
same Unes as those they frequently read. Her friend needed literature
more than she, because "lo pasaba peor" (183), an observation that
demonstrates that literature was indeed a response to and salve for
suffering. C. interprets her current situation in terms of these same
romance novéis, wishing she could cali her (now dead) girlhood friend
to tell her that she has finally met their oft-imagined male character
"en carne y hueso" (184). In him, her secret and imaginary love life
seems to be taking on a solid form, perhaps suggesting that with the
transition to democracy in full swing, she can finally begin to live an
enjoyable and fulfilling life. Alternatively, perhaps he is simply another
imaginary lover like those of her girlhood.

C. discusses Don Quixote in a similarly confusing light. He is
simultaneously a role model for escapism and a national symbol:

quedarse, conformarse y aguantar era lo bueno; salir,
escapar y fugarse era lo malo. Y sin embargo, también
lo heroico, porque don Quijote y Cristo y Santa Teresa
se habían fugado, habían abandonado casa y familia,
ahí estaba la contradicción, nos contestaban que ellos
lo hicieron en nombre de un alto ideal y que era la suya
una locura noble [. . .]. Yo pensaba que también podía
ser heroico escaparse por gusto, sin más, por amor a la
libertad y a la alegría — no a la alegría impuesta oficial y
mesurada, sino a la carcajada y la canción que brotan de
una fuente cuyas aguas nadie canaliza — , lo pensaba a solas
y a escondidas. (125)

Here, C. considers Don Quixote in the same vein as Santa Teresa and
Christ, all upstanding cultural models that nonetheless contradict the
official doctrine of Franco's regime. Santa Teresa and Christ do not

138 SARAM HARRIS

fit into traditional family roles, yet they are héroes within Franco's
dictatorship. They have fulfilled Cs fantasy, have escaped their reali-
ties according to their "alto ideal" and because of "locura noble." As
much as she admires these rebellious iconoclasts, however, she does
not foUow their path of literal escape. The figures whose paths she
does follow come from a variety of other genres.

Both C. and Don Quixote use literary figures as paradigms for
their own behavior. This trait has been well documented with regards
to Don Quixote.' In just one of many examples, Don Quixote "pro-
puso de hacerse armar caballero del primero que topase, a imitación
de otros muchos que así lo hicieron, según él había leído en los libros
que tal le tenían" (I, 2, 42). He chooses his ñame, his love interest, his
squire, and his clothing based on what he has read. In short, he builds
his entire plan upon the scaffolding established by chivalric literature.
Don Quixote also resists doing anything that he has not already read
about in his books. For example, he tells the first innkeeper that "no
traía blanca, porque él nunca había leído en las historias de los caba-
lleros andantes que ninguno los hubiese traído" (I, 3, 51). During the
famous incident with the windmills, Don Quixote tells Sancho that he
does not complain about his pain because "no es dado a los caballeros
andantes quejarse de herida alguna, aunque se le salgan las tripas por
ella," a rule that Sancho hopes does not apply to squires as well (I,
8, 91). Hearing this, Don Quixote laughs and explains that Sancho
"podía muy bien quejarse como y cuando quisiese, sin gana o con
ella; que hasta entonces no había leído cosa en contrario en la orden
de caballería" (I, 8, 91). These few examples are representative of the
constant effort by Don Quixote to keep his behavior in line with that
of the fictional knights after whom his entire plan is modeled.- This
approach is possible because the chivalric works follow consistent and
predictable patterns, thus allowing Don Quixote to imítate them in a
way that subsequently becomes predictable to his companions. For C.
this phenomenon is not quite as pronounced, but nonetheless, literary
figures do exert a marked influence on her behavior.

C.'s escape into literature causes her to lose touch with the
Aristotelian divide between Poetry and History, and even with the
difference between reality and fiction. In "De lo (neo)fantástico al
Caos," Antonio Pineda notes that for C, "La irrealidad de la litera-
tura (entendida como contradicción, multiplicidad de la identidad y
concepción histórica no cronológica) configura [. . .] la realidad,

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 139

además de invadirla y suplantarla. La vida se ficcionaliza (y se vive a
través del discurso literario) mientras la ficción se hace más real que
nunca" (14). When her visitor hands C. a lit cigarette, for example,
she thinks "muy de novela rosa este detalle" (190). Sieburth notes
that these details make it "impossible to sepárate a level of the 'real'
out of fiction" (206). Much like in Don Quixote, this confusión and
interplay between the Aristotelian categories comes from the fact that
C. interprets and acts upon her reality with an eye to literary models,
especially romance novéis.

As noted by Sieburth, the novelas rosa are the most present of
named intertexts. This genre is effective in C.'s life because its works
are idealized love stories that portray a variety of female protago-
nists and excite C.'s erotic imagination while allowing her to avoid
consummating her desires. The novelas rosa also provide particularly
effective literary models because they follow set patterns. C. notes,
"En las novelas rosa, cuando se llegaba a una escena de clima parecido
a ésta, se podía apostar doble contra sencillo a que el desconocido
iba a revelar su identidad [. . .] eran esquemas invariables, así ocurría
también en la primera novela por entregas que escribí con mi amiga
del Instituto y que no llegamos a terminar" (140). On the night nar-
rated in El cuarto, the bet C. mentions would be a winner. Not only
does she discover the ñame of the man in black, but according to
a voice on the phone, his ñame is precisely the one C. would have
expected: Alejandro (144). As with the books of chivalry that Don
Quixote reads, romance novéis are imitable because of this same
predictability. Additionally, both romance novéis and chivalric lit-
erature are considered "low" or "pop" fiction, not only because they
follow set formulae, but also because they attract a broad audience
and appeal to "coarser," less intellectual sides of the human psyche.
If chivalric literature is all about fighting and romance, novelas rosa
are all about passion and physical attraction.

The impact of romance novéis on C.'s life is evident at several
moments throughout the night. For instance, shortly after the man
in black arrives, he asks whether C. is afraid of the thunder, and C.
smiles with her eyes closed. Suddenly, the narrator jumps to the text
of a romance novel: "Oh, Raimundo — exclamó Esperanza, mientras
brotaban las lágrimas de sus párpados cerrados" (38). C.'s mind
also jumps to the words and themes of the novelas rosa each time
she feels the pulí of sexual tensión between her and her visitor. For

140 SARAH BARRIS

instance, she notes "Nos estamos mirando a los ojos ya sin paliativos,
el corazón se me echa a latir como un caballo desbocado, esto del
caballo desbocado lo decían también con frecuencia aquellos libros"
(141). She recalls that as a child, she "Leía tantas novelas rosa, de
Eugenia Marlitt, de Berta Ruck [...]. Luego vino Carmen de Icaza y
desplazó a los demás, ella era el ídolo de la postguerra, introdujo en
el género la 'modernidad moderada', la protagonista podía no ser tan
joven, incluso peinar canas, era valiente y trabajadora" (141). That C.
mentions this older protagonist justifies her ow^n tendency to interpret
her adult life in terms of a romance novel; the protagonists of Carmen
De Icaza's works are older professional women like C.

Unlike Don Quixote, C. is fuUy aware of the fact that the novelas
rosa are — at least in their printed versions — fictional. She recognizes her
own tendency to adopt the novéis' phraseology, but chalks this up to a
generalized phenomenon among girls of her generation. She notes, "es
muy importante el papel que jugaron las novelas rosas en la formación
de las chicas de los años cuarenta" (138) and that "es difícil escapar
a los esquemas literarios de la primera juventud, por mucho que más
se reniegue de ellos" (141). C. explicitly acknowledges the role that
these novéis have played both in her youth and in her current potential
romance with her visitón At one point, she even notes, "me está habi-
tando la literatura" (49). That C. metacognitively comments on her
tendency to imítate literature further underscores the extremeness of
Don Quixote's mental state. C. accepts her situation and comments "lo
que importa es tener en cuenta los modelos literarios que influyen en
las conductas, ¿no?, no tiene más que echar una mirada a la literatura
universal, no encontrará una sola obra donde los grandes amores no
se asienten sobre la carencia de satisfacciones reales" (181). C. allows
that her interpretations, here regarding love relationships, depend on
the models she takes from romance novéis. She even generalizes further,
thinking to herself, "Siempre hay un texto soñado, indeciso y fugaz,
anterior al que de verdad se recita, barrido por él" (40). Further, not
only does C. interpret her interaction with the man in black in line
with the patterns of romance novéis, but these literary patterns seem
to have reached even her subconscious "decorando nuestros sueños
con el material que nos suministraban" (153).

The literature that inhabits C.'s consciousness includes not just
romance novéis, but also magazines, films, and televisión programs.
C. remembers years back "estaba sola, imitando la postura de aquellas

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) Í41

mujeres, inexistentes de puro lejanas, que aparecían en las ilustraciones
de la revista 'Lecturas', creadas por Emilio Freixas para novelas cortas
de Elisabeth Mulder" (13). She also decorares her room based on what
she sees in the same magazine. As an adult, C. adopts the manner
of an advice column, suggesting to the woman'who calis the house
"todos hemos pasado por momentos malos, pero hay que procurar
reaccionar," after which she immediately regrets "la esterilidad de mi
consejo, formulando en términos de consultorio sentimental, en aquel
tono aséptico y escapista de la revista 'Y'" (151). Incidentally, this
scene sets up an even more subtle play on the Aristotelian categories,
as the magazine takes its ñame from a historical figure (Ysabel), and
then provides advice for "real" letter writers. C. imitates the style of
a real but stylized advice columnist, and then regrets the apparent
falseness of her imitation.

Along with magazines, films present paradigms of behavior for
C. as well. In fact, the young C. thinks being an actress would be
wonderful in its possibility to "desdoblarme en cientos de vidas"
(85). C. also finds herself inadvertently imitating the artificial tone
of a "comedia mala" (123) as she has done with advice columns. In
another cinematic imitation, C. literally trips over her Todorov book,
and interprets her movement in terms of film:

Ha sido una caída de película de Buster Keaton. Cuánto
me hacían reír esas calamidades del cine mudo que luego
he protagonizado cientos de veces: tropezar, confundirse
de puerta, darse de brices contra la pared 1. . .] accidentes
reiterados que, siempre que vuelven a producirse, descargan
de tensiones y devuelven la propia identidad más que
cualquier esfuerzo deliberado, torpezas que revelan la
inseguridad del antihéroe. (20)

In this instance, C. establishes yet another level to the theme of imi-
tating literature. First, having seen the films as a child she chooses to
copy their slapstick humor. Then, having imitated Buster Keaton's
movements consciously, years later she relates an accidental fall to her
own imitations of the film star's planned but fictional falls.

In a third example of the influence of film, C. tries to foUow
Diana Durbin as she "subministraba modelos americanos de com-
portamiento" (64). She collects chromes of her along with Claudette

142 SARAM HARRIS

Colbert, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, and others (65).
She calis these figures "ídolos" and "dioses" (85) and imagines that
Franco's daughter, being of the same age and gender, must collect them
as well. As Don Quixote 's interest in popular chivalric literature aligns
him with characters in the novel, such as those in Palomeque's Inn (I,
32), as well as to contemporary readers of the Quixote, the mention of
collecting movie stars' chromes builds a bridge between C. and readers
who may also have collected them. As a consequence, three "people"
in El cuarto are placed on a similar playing field: the historical figure
of Carmencita Franco (as constructed in a fictional character's mind),
the protagonist C, and the real-life readers of the fiction. Real-life
details such as these elévate Cs status, making her more realistic.'* In
a final cinematic example, Cs behavior mimics that of someone not
acting in, but watching a film. She describes, "Me quedo paralizada,
con los ojos fijos en la pared de enfrente, esperando que se dibuje allí
la siguiente escena, como si estuviera en el cine viendo una película de
suspense" (sic) (147). Here she sees not herself, but the space around
her in terms of movies.

Meanwhile, other characters in El cuarto accept the imitation
of literary figures, but opine that C. has simply chosen the wrong
role models. For instance, Cs mother would also have liked to be
allowed to "leer y jugar a juegos de chicos" and even "estudiar una
carrera, como sus dos hermanos varones" (91). Despite these dreams,
however, Cs mother directs her daughter away from a literary or
other Professional careen Her mother presents C. with an alternative
literary paradigm to imítate: a novel called El amor catedrático (92).
This book tells the story of a girl who makes a mistake in studying for
a Professional careen She chooses the right path in the end, though,
falling in love with her professor and marrying him instead of pursu-
ing her own careen Ultimately her story is meant to model for C. the
correct Ufe of a young Spanish woman.

Certain characters around Don Quixote also try to re-direct his
impulse to imítate chivalric literature. For instance, the canónigo and
the priest suggest that it would be better if Don Quixote would read
Byzantine romances instead (I, 47-48). The Byzantine romances of the
Early Modern era presented alternative, more productive and contem-
porary models that Don Quixote could follow rather than aspiring to
be an outdated knight errant. In the seventeenth century, "Guardians
of literary taste and public morais prized the Byzantine romances and

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) Í43

opposed them to the nefarious romances of chivalry, holding them up
to be imitated" (Johnson 79). In the end, though, having been defeated
by the Knight of the White Moon, Don Quixote chooses to divert his
own impulse to imítate chivalric literature not towards Byzantine, but
towards pastoral literature.

In practice, much of the novel's discussion about pastoral, Byzan-
tine, and chivalric literature has less to do with madness and more to
do with pressing themes of literary theory. Literature inspires a great
deal of theoretical discussion among the characters of Don Quixote
and El cuarto de atrás. For instance, in Don Quixote (Part I), such
episodes as the scrutiny of books (I, 6), the adventure with Marcela
and Gristónomo (I, 12-14), Sancho's story about Lope Ruíz (I, 20), the
conversation in Palomeque's inn (I, 32), and especially the caging of
Don Quixote (I, 47-50) inspire characters to discuss narrative theory
and practice. In Part II, Sansón Carrasco arrives and engages Don
Quixote and Sancho in a discussion about Part I (II, 4). Later, Cide
Hamete Benengeli responds to criticism about having included "El
curioso impertinente" and "Capitán cautivo" in Part I (II, 72), and
Álvaro Tarfe, a character from Avellaneda's sequei to the Quixote,
shows up to pronounce the superiority of Cervantes's versión (II,
72). Throughout both volumes of Don Quixote, the play on autho-
rial voices allows the narrator to criticize or praise what the various
"authors" and "translator" have included or omitted. For example,
Cide Hamete Benengeli includes details about Maritornes's lover
because he is a friend or even a relative ("el autor desta historia que
desse arriero hace particular mención, porque le conocía muy bien, y
aun quieren decir que era algo pariente suyo") (I, 16, 158). Clearly,
the second author praises this detall ironically, as another critique of
inclusión of material for the wrong reason.

For C. and the man in black, their allegorical discussion represents
the process of writing and creation. As do the conversations in Don
Quixote, Cs conversations with her vísitor frequently revolve around
questions of literary theory and criticism. For example, the vísitor asks
that C. "[le cuente] cómo se le ocurrió el libro" (129). They discuss
C.'s earlier works, particularly so that the man can assess C.'s lack of
commitment to the fantasy genre (31, 48, 105). C. also criticizes the
tendency of other writers to end their love stories with weddings. C.
disapproves because she imagines there is more to tell about love than
just the courtship (92). C.'s overarching view on literature is that "lo

144 SARAM HARRIS

más excitante son las versiones contradictorias, constituyen la base de
la literatura, no somos un solo ser, sino muchos, de la misma manera
que tampoco la historia es esa que se escribe poniendo en orden las
fechas y se nos presenta como inamovible" (167). C. beUeves that the
best literature is that which (like El cuarto de atrás and Don Quixote)
forces readers to grapple with complex characterization.

In a final example of the blurred line between Poetry and History,
because of her belief in the importance of complexity, C. has more
trouble believing in simplified historical figures than in complex fic-
tional ones. Historical figures, she states, "me parecen tan fantásticos
como Wilfredo el Velloso o la sota de bastos, personajes de una baraja
con la que se podían hacer toda clase de combinaciones" (132). Her
ow^n inventions also seem more real to her than do historical person-
ages like Isabel la Católica. For example, the island Bergai that she
dreams up with her girlhood friend "tenía la fuerza y la consistencia
de los sueños [. . .] todo podía convertirse en otra cosa, dependía de la
imaginación" (195). In a final literary critique, when C. confesses her
difficulty in distinguishing between fiction and nonfiction, the man in
black encourages, "Pues atrévase a contarla, partiendo justamente de
esa sensación. Que no sepa si lo que cuenta lo ha vivido o no, que no
lo sepa usted misma. Resultaría una gran novela" (197). The theoreti-
cal discussion that ensues about the importance of a title reads much
like a conversation Don Quixote and Sancho could have had along
the road. Of course, all of C.'s comments lend a positive spin to the
resulting novel.

In the end, although C. and Don Quixote foUow similar routes,
using literature for posterity, escape, imitation, and discussion, they
arrive at very different places. Whereas Don Quixote hopes to return
to a social order based on chivalry, C. hopes to free herself from the
ordered but constricting rules of her past. Unfortunately, in the end
Don Quixote's defeat and death signal the impossibility of his dream,
the victory of social pressure to conform over individual creativity and
quirkiness. Carmen Martín Gaite calis Don Quixote's death "la desem-
bocadura final y no deseada por nadie: la cordura de Don Quijote en
su lecho de muerte. 'En los nidos de antaño no hay pájaros hogaño.'"
("Charlar" 217). Perhaps in protest, she writes quite a different end for
C, who awakes in her apartment and maintains her belief that fantasy
and chaos are superior to order and reality. In E! cuarto de atrás itself,
C.'s dream of chaos and ambiguity has come true.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 145

Notes

1. Incidentally, Don Quixote himself is not the only character to do
so. Such characters as Anselmo and Eugenio, who live out a pastoral novel
(I, 51), and Ginés de Pasamente, who lives out a picaresque one (I, 22), also
take literary models for their life works.

2. Oí course, chivalric literature is not the only genre Don Quixote
imitates. In the end, the protagonist decides to follow the life of a literary
pastor, and finally, an exemplary Christian (perhaps equally fictionalized).
Don Quixote recreates other literary models as well, including pastoral,
picaresque, and Byzantine romance (See Johnson, Chapter 6).

3. Of course, we should also remember that there are critics who argue
that C. and Carmen Martín Gaite, the author, are one in the same.

Works Cited

Baker, Edward. "Breaking the Frame: Don Quixote's Entertaining Books."

Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 16.1 (1996):

12-31.
Brown, Joan Lipman and Elaine M. Smith. "£/ cuarto de atrás: Metafic-

tion and the Actualization of Literary Theory." Hispanófila 90 (1987):

63-70.
Carbayo Abengózar, Mercedes. "A manera de subversión: Carmen Martín

Gaite." Espéculo: Revista de estudios literarios. Universidad Complutense

de Madrid, 1998. 16 June 2006 <http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/

cmgaite/carbayo.htm>.
Carón, Alexandre. "Le monde de Carmen Martín Gaite." 16 June 2006

<http://martin. gaite. free.fr/modules/icontent/index.php?page=32>.
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote de la Mancha. Barcelona:

Planeta, 1996.
. "El casamiento engañoso." Novelas ejemplares. Ed. José García

López. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg: Círculo de Lectores, 2005.

521-537.
Glose, Anthony J. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 1990.
Johnson, Carroll B. Don Quixote: The Quest for Modem Fiction. Prospect

Heights: Waveland Press, 1990.

146 SARAH HARRIS

Martinell, Emma. "£/ cuarto de atrás, un mundo de objetos." Revista de
Literatura 89.45 (1983): 143-153.

Martin Gaite, Carmen. El cuarto de atrás. Barcelona: Destino, 1996.

. "Charlar y dialogar." La búsqueda de interlocutor. Barcelona: Ana-
grama, 2000. 205-222.

Pineda Cachero, Antonio. "Comunicación e intertextualidad en El cuarto de
atrás, de Carmen Martín Gaite: de lo (neo)fantástico al Caos." Espéculo:
Revista de estudios literarios. Universidad Complutense de Madrid,
1998. 16 June 2006 <http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numerol7/
apineda2.html>.

Sieburth, Stephanie. Inventing High and Low: Literature, Mass Culture, and
Uneven Modernity in Spain. Raleigh: Duke University Press, 1994.

Uxó, Carlos. "Revisión crítica de los estudios sobre su obra." Espéculo: Revista
de estudios literarios. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1998. 16 June
2006 <http://wAvw.ucm.es/info/especulo/cmgaite/c_uxol .htm>.

An Interview with Jo Labanyi

Jasmina Arsova, Laura Lee, and Carolina Sitnisky
University of California, Los Angeles

Professor Jo Labanyi visited UCLA in the month of May to conduct
a seminar titled "Film Magazines, Female Subjectivity, and Cultural
Memory in Early Franco Dictatorship," sponsored by the Depart-
ment of Spanish and Portuguese. During this visit, Mester had the
pleasure to interview the pioneer and the leading figure in the study
of cultural studies in a Spanish context. Professor Labanyi was
formerly a Professor of Spanish Cultural Studies at the University
of London and Southampton, UK. Currently she is Professor in the
Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University.
She specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish culture
with a particular interest in popular culture and gender studies. Her
recent publications include (ed.) Constructing Identity in Contem-
porary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice, Gender
and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel, and also co-edited
Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction. The Struggle for Moder-
nity. In this interview, she discusses her career trajectory, her current
and future research projects, as well as some of her insights on Span-
ish Cultural History.

Mester: We are interested in learning more about your profes-
sional trajectory. You started by focusing on the nineteenth-, later
moving to twentieth-century Spanish literature, where you began
studying the post-Franco era, and then went back to the 1940s and
'50s. What specifically influenced these choices?

Jo Labanyi: I don't think that my trajectory was so tidy, actu-
ally. The first work I published was about fiction of the late Franco
period. At the time I started in the academy in the VOs, that was
contemporary. I've been around for some time. I was trained in New
Criticism — where you don't have to deal with the world outside the
text, there's only the text and nothing but the text; you learnt how

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 147

148 JASMINA ARSOVA, LAVRA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

to dissect a text and look for meaning beneath and in between the
words and not just on the surface. Actually, I have always taught both
the twentieth and nineteenth century. It's a bit hard to say why my
research moved from the late Franco period to the nineteenth century.
I think it was probably because of some wonderful work written on
the nineteenth century by feminist critics in the States, Britain, and
also Latin America, starting in the VOs and '80s. I found this work
very interesting and kept thinking about these ideas in relation to the
Spanish novel. Perhaps it was unconscious but I think this is how I
became interested in the nineteenth century. I was lucky enough to get
a really nice research fellowship, which paid for me to be free from
teaching for two years. I was able to conduct historical research, doing
archival work in Spain that I could have not done without having that
amount of time. I think that this is what got me away from just doing
textual studies. The minute that you get into archives, you get hooked
and you realize that your material relates to ali the pubiic debates of
the time and you start to understand its significance for contempo-
rary readers. You need to be familiar with the pubiic debates going
on at the time in the press, and the kind of books that were coming
out; also, what kind of intellectual figures were read and the politi-
cai theorists, for example, that were circulating in Spain at that time.
Then you notice a common fund of images that keeps surfacing in ali
these different texts. You start to see a related pattern of imagery in
the novéis. It was a luxury to have two years off, which changed the
way I was working.

This time off was, in fact, to do a book on 1940s cinema, which
I haven't yet finished because I have obtained other awards for sub-
sequent projects. Now I have a big backlog, which I have to clear.
Although I had the fellowship to write the book on 1940s cinema, I
spent most of the time researching and writing the book that became
Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel ' because I
found such interesting stuff in the archives. The funding body, the Brit-
ish Academy, was actually very nice when I confessed at the end, when
I had to write my report, that I had used the time not only to research
1940s cinema but also to complete the nineteenth-century book; they
said they were delighted to have funded two books instead of one.

Now, with my current project funded by the British Arts and
Humanities Research Board — 'An Oral History of Cinema-going in
1940s and '50s Spain' — I am very much into the 1940s and '50s,

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 149

Tve always been interested in the early Franco period, particularly
the '40s — less so the '50s. But we chose for the oral history project
to look at the '50s too because we thought it would be good to have
two decades during which there was massive change: youVe got the
beginnings of a new, more consumerist-driven discourse aheady enter-
ing Spain in the 1950s, before the Opus Dei technocrats of the 1960s.
So just doing the '40s was going to be less interesting. But I still feel
incredibly moved by the politicai and economic hardship that people
had to deal with in the 1940s. Also, I feel that the way that early
Francoism has been talked about in Spain often produces a simplified
picture — although there has been some wonderful work done here by
historians. There tends to be a belief that there was a monolithic thing
called Francoism which dominated ali culture produced at the time.
I was interested in trying to pull out some of the cultural complexity
and get away from the idea that a particular regime, no matter how
brutal it is, can control everything that is going on. Fm convinced
that Spanish readers and spectators — Fm sure that was the case too
in Latin America under dictatorship — were incredibly sophisticated
because they had to learn to decode everything since they knew it was
censored. Even if they were not sure that it was censored, they would
often decode and read things into the text that perhaps were not there.
Whereas in a democratic country, people tend to take everything at
face value and not question what they read and see.

M: Also, there seems to be a shift in your work from a more gen-
der-driven study to the recent focus on identity politics. Could you
comment more about this?

JL: I don't think that you can sepárate gender from identity. Gender
carne into my work with the Gender and Modernization book, which
I was researching in the mid '90s, and that was published in the year
2000. 1 now find feminist theory a bit constricting, particularly because
there has been such an emphasis on psychoanalytical approaches,
although many feminist critics using a psychoanalytical approach have
tried to rework Freud, recognizing that some aspects of Freudian theory
were creating real problems for theorizing women. It's interesting now
to think about how it happened that Gender Studies started off within a
psychoanalytic framework, and I don't have an answer to that; it seems
that it reflected what was going on at the time.

250 JASMINA ARSOVA, LAURA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

What I have just said ties it up with what I was saying before about
doing the archival work for the Gender and Modernization book.
I found that I was getting less interested in the psychoanalytically-
oriented criticism because it often operated in a historical vacuum,
which really worries me. In this context, I should say that I am not
too keen on the phrase "Cultural Studies" but I have become associ-
ated with it because of the Cultural Studies book that I did with Helen
Graham- — and I could have not done it without her as a historian. I
prefer the term "Cultural History" because I believe historical context
is really important and I feel that archival research, even when work-
ing on the contemporary period, is hugely enriching (though of course
not ali projects need it). It was looking at historical debates outside of
the texts I was studying, and that also took me outside of the psycho-
analytically-driven Feminist Criticism of the time. I came to feel that
gender was part of a whole lot of other things that were going on.
This was at least partly recognized when Feminist Studies broadened
to become Gender Studies. But it was necessary to start by looking at
women because they had been ignored; it was only after having filled
that gap that we could go back and look at the bigger picture.

With regard to identity politics, I don't think that's something
Fve ever been interested in, if one defines "identity politics" in the
strict sense of particular groups making politicai claims to legitímate
their rights on the grounds that they occupy a particular subject posi-
tion — for example, that of Black British or Women. The essentialism
involved here is problematic, though there is such a thing as a strategic
use of essentialism, which can be valuable, as has been argued in the
Social Sciences. That is, it can be strategically useful to argue that you
are part of a bigger group, which has some kind of monolithic or tidy
identity, because that allows you to put your claims forward in the
politicai arena. However, it needs recognizing that this is a strategic
move, and it is not a move that I am personally interested in mak-
ing. I am much more interested in a fluid concept of identity that is
unstable and in every respect strategic, because in everyday life you
adapt according to the particular circumstances and choose from the
available repertoire of ways of behaving, depending on what posi-
tion you are in at any given time. In this respect it is interesting to
recount something that happened during the European-wide project
"Europe: Emotions, Identities, Politics" I was involved in, based in
Germany and directed by Italian historian Luisa Passerini. About six

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 151

months into the project, the research team decided to abandon the
word "identity" and to replace it with the word "identification." It
was an interesting decisión, because we were finding that the word
"identity" reified things — "identity" is a thing you have or own and
that you can label and put boundaries on — whereas "identification"
is a process. "Identification" is not about something inside you, Hke
an "identity;" an "identification" is intersubjective, it's about relation-
ships between you and what's out there. I really like that term and it
aiso helps to use it in the plural: "identifications." One can talk about
"múltiple identities" but that still refers to things that are inside you. I
am interested in inter-subjectivity and how that operates at the levei of
everyday life. I think this is a much broader arena than an originally
psychoanalyticaliy-oriented feminist frame.

With regard to my intellectual trajectory, it is worth mentioning
that much of it has happened as a result of networking, which has
not only allowed me to set up and particípate in coUaborative proj-
ects, but has also introduced me to new ideas and approaches that
have changed my own work. You not only have a great time work-
ing together as part of a research team, but it's intellectually very
stimulating working with people coming from different countries. One
important network that has done much to shape my current inter-
est in intersubjectivity is the Memory Studies group that developed
around the Gradúate Program in Memory Studies which I set up at
the University of London's Institute of Romance Studies, when I was
the Director there. Memory has proved a particularly productive área
for intellectual networking because it brings together people from a
whole range of different disciplines. So the moral of the story is that
networking leads to ali sorts of opportunities, which are unpredict-
able, and one's work develops in unanticipated ways if one says "yes"
to the opportunities that come from making new contacts.

M: Given that you are the pioneer of Spanish Cultural Studies,
we are curious to know the direction of your current research in the
field?

JL: I think I actually do Cultural History and not Cultural Studies.
But if you say you do Cultural History, people often think that you are
a historian working for a History Department and that you are doing
empirical work finding facts, rather than doing cultural readings. I

152 JASMINA ARSOVA, LAURA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

think a lot of people understand by Cultural Studies something purely
contemporary or, even more narrowly, studies of the contemporary
mass-media. Whereas I would define Cultural Studies as being the
analysis of culture as a system or process. I don't think Cultural Stud-
ies is defined by one's object of study, but by using a certain kind of
methodology that sets particular cultural products in a wider cultural
system. That is something that can be done with reference to any
time period. In practice there are lots of different kinds of Cultural
Studies — for example, there is sophisticated Cultural Studies work
coming from Communication Studies and from the Social Sciences.
If you go to Cultural Studies conferences, it is actually quite interest-
ing to realize that the majority of people there come from the Social
Sciences rather than Humanities. A lot of that work will be on, let's
say, how do multinational organizations function, using sophisticated
theorizations from Communication Studies or Social Theory, but often
without any history or any historical context. Some of that work,
which was originally grounded in historical context (at least in Brit-
ish Cultural Studies), is what gave Cultural Studies its name. A lot of
people think, also, that if you are doing Cultural Studies then you are
only working on what they would consider trivial aspects of culture,
like telenovelas or comics. But you can do wonderful cultural analysis
of canonical texts — that is what I was trying to do in my work on gen-
der and modernization in the Spanish realist novel, for example. Yet,
what comes to mind for a lot of people when you mention Cultural
Studies is actually very limited. Fve become very interested in looking
not only at cultural products, but also at what people do with them,
at how culture gets enmeshed with everyday life. There is now a whole
body of theory about everyday life. I think Fve become interested in
that because I want to look at the interface between cultural consump-
tion and what else is going on in people's lives.

Of the collaborative projects Tm involved in now, the first is the
Oral History of Cinema-Going. We are writing two books on that
project: the first in English, which is supposed to be ready in October.
We had to fight really hard to get a publishing contraer for what I
thought was the most interesting project that I have been involved in
during my careen We are ali co-authoring the book, so that we have
equal status in the project. Co-authoring means that every chapter is
assigned to two people to do the first draft and then everything cir-
culares around the whole team and we ali input our suggestions. It is

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 153

not quick but it is productive. Then we are going to do a bigger book
in Spanish. For this versión, for a Spanish audience, we will go into
much more detail about the historical context.

The second project is on Film Magazines, Fashion and Pho-
tography, again in 1940s and '50s Spain, which comes out of the
previously-mentioned oral history project and is funded by the British
Academy. We are looking at popular magazines. We are interested
not only in the magazines as cultural products but also in how they
influenced people's construction of a self-image by shaping tastes in
fashion and photographic portraiture.

There are two other book projects that Fve been commissioned
to do that I did not choose but they were too good opportunities
to turn down. One is a book for Polity Press, which has a Cultural
History of Literature series. I will do the one on Modem Literatures
in Spanish (meaning from the eighteenth century on), together with
Elena Delgado at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and
Josep-Anton Fernández at the University of London, again working
as co-authors. My colleague at NYU, Georgina Dopico-Black, is doing
the volume on Early Modem Literatures in Spanish, so we are work-
ing together on the two volumes. There are two main things we want
to do. Firstly, we want to rethink the literary periodization. We've
designed the chapters so that they move forward chronologically over-
all, but in overlapping blocks of time so that there are continuities as
well as breaks. The other main thing we want to do is to approximate
to what books people have actually read in Spain, rather than stick
to the usual list of authors which tends to get perpetuated from one
history of literature to the next. It's a great opportunity because we
can help to shape the discipline or at least make suggestions for new
ways of conceptualizing it.

In addition to that, I am writing the volume on Spanish literature
for Penguin's Very Short Introduction series, for which Helen Graham
has written a wonderful volume on the Spanish Civil War. The books
in this series are just 35,000 words long, something you can really
carry in your pocket, and are intended for a wider public. This is also
a great opportunity to help to shape the ways people think about
Spanish literature, as well as getting more people to see how interest-
ing Spain is culturally.

I should also mention that the Memory Studies networks that Fve
been involved in have, apart from feeding into the Oral History of

154 JASMIM A ARSOVA, LAURA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

Cinema-Going project, also led me to a growing interest in the current
debates in Spain on "historical memory," This is a research área that
I am only just starting to develop.

M: How would you compare and contrast the Spanish Cultural
Studies approach to British and American Cultural Studies?

JL: Assuming that by "Spanish Cultural Studies" you mean here
the cultural studies work that is done in Spain, I don't think that there
is a criticai mass of work being done in Spain that allows one to talk
about a "Spanish Cultural Studies." One reason for this is that a lot
of cultural theory is written in English and you can't do Cultural Stud-
ies without some theoretical understanding of how culture works as
a process. I know isolated people in Spain, who largely by going to
international conferences and because they can read English, are doing
really interesting things, but they often don't have support from other
coUeagues to do this kind of work and it can affect their prospects of
promotion. It's also very hard to develop new ideas and ways of work-
ing when young Spanish scholars who have been trained elsewhere
are not coming back, because if you do your doctoral studies outside
of Spain it is very hard to get a job in the Spanish university system
which is very sad. For example, the historian Paul Prestou negotiated
a deal with the Felipe González government to set up a Centre for the
Study of Contemporary Spain at the University of London; the idea
was that especially promising young Spanish postdoctoral scholars
would be trained there, under Paul's direction, and then they would
feed back their training to renovare the teaching of history in Spain.
To my knowledge, only one of the people who trained there got back
into the Spanish system.

If we understand "Spanish Cultural Studies" in the sense that it
is used, for example, in the title of the Journal of Spanish Cultural
Studies^ which I helped to set up, it's not pushing a particular brand
of Cultural Studies in Spain (or anywhere else for that matter),
but it's just trying to develop interesting work on culture in Spain,
wherever it is done. When we take decisions on the publication
of arricies, we don't mind what kind of cultural theory is used or
where it comes from, as long as the article is informed by cultural
theory of some kind, from whatever discipline and from whatever
geographical región.

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 155

In Latin America, there is wonderful Cultural Studies work, which
appreciates the importance of historical context. But I don't think that
in Spain, on the whole, they've learnt from the cultural theory that's
being developed in Latin America — or by Latin Americans working in
the US, like, for instance, Julio Ramos. There is also a lot of wonder-
ful work from (and on) Latin America in the área of Gender Studies.
When it comes to Latin American Cultural Studies, a whole string of
names could be mentioned...It's curious that Latin American Studies is
not very present in Spanish universities, though things are better than
they were a few decades ago; it's quite surprising, I think.

With regard to British and American Cultural Studies, I would not
like to say that they are two totally sepárate things. They come from
different academic systems, but not everybody in Britain is going to
conform to the model of what British cultural theory is known for,
and the same goes for America and what's practiced in the American
system. As it is well known, British Cultural Studies came out of
the work in the late '50s by Raymond Williams in particular. Ray-
mond Williams has also been important for Latin American cultural
theory — and I don't mean at ali by this to imply that British Cultural
Studies is the origin of Latin American cultural theory, which in fact
developed way before British Cultural Studies came on the scene.
The other source of British Cultural Studies in the late '50's, apart
from Raymond Williams, was the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies at the University of Birmingham. When Stuart Hall, a won-
derful cultural theorist, became the Director of the Centre, as a black
Jamaican he had a huge impact in Britain, making postcolonial studies
a central focus of British cultural critique. What's common to ali of
these people working in Britain, starting in the late '50s and continu-
ing since then, is that they are working within a Marxist tradition but
breaking with the orthodox Marxist notion that culture is superstruc-
ture, determined by an economic infrastructure. This notion supposes
that culture is a result of other things, and that mass culture is merely
a form of propaganda, a tool of capitalism in particular. Both Ray-
mond Williams and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
took their inspiration from Gramsci, as an unorthodox Marxist theo-
rist of culture. Although Gramsci's writings are fragmented, his very
pragmatic ideas on hegemony and counter-hegemony are very useful.
He provided a model for Raymond Williams and other people who
developed Cultural Studies in Britain from the late '50s on, because

156 JASMINA ARSOVA, LAURA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

they were looking for a more interactive model of culture than the
orthodox Marxist model. Gramsci saw culture as the process through
which different groups negotiate their relations of power. And he saw
both subaltern groups and dominant groups — to use his terminol-
ogy — as having agency and being heterogeneous. For Gramsci, there is
a constant, mobile and interactive negotiation going on between these
various groups. Culture is thus understood in a broad sense, including
ali sorts of discourses and not just cultural production in the form of
texts. Rather, culture is understood as the sum of the ways in which
people are adjusting to or looking for some sort of status and position
within a power system. This interactive model of culture, as theorized
by Gramsci, was the key influence on British Cultural Studies.

As for American Cultural Studies, I don't really know if there is
a monolithic thing that one can cali American Cultural Studies. It is
often associated with a much less politicized reading than British Cul-
tural Studies, looking at mass culture as the product of a consumerist
society but not necessarily within the Marxist perspective that, in its
Gramscian form, has been so important in Britain.

M: As you have described earlier, you have conducted a very
interesting project, "An Oral History of Cinema-Going in 1940s and
195 Os Spain," and now you are writing a book on it. With respect to
this project, could you please describe the empirical method you have
used in this delicate survey? What factors influenced your methodo-
logical choices?

JL: Our research is about audience response — including emo-
tional and subjective factors like pleasure — rather than about
empirical data. We audio-recorded the interviews. I'm now sorry that
we didn't videotape the interviews when we started the project in
1999. But we thought it would be intrusive to bring a video camera
and that audio-recording would be better. We did video-tape just a
few interviews, in the case of a number of people introduced to us
by the Anarchist Cultural Foundation in Valencia which wanted to
make its own video copies. As you know, Spaniards love talking and
they were very happy to talk to us, it made them feel important to
have someone listen to their memories. In 1999, new large research
grants for the humanities were introduced in Britain for the first time,
and we were lucky enough to get one of these awards. Most of the

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 157

money paid the salaries of two research assistants on the ground,
who located and interviewed the interviewees. We couldn't have
done it without researchers based in Spain, because you need to build
relationships with people — especially elderly people — and you can't
expect to show up and start at precisely 11 o'clock that morning.
In addition to these two research assistants, we also have a team
of researchers from Britain, Spain and the US, who are responsible
for analyzing the interviews. We started off by getting the research
assistants to develop a questionnaire for the interviews, and in the
meantime I asked some anthropologist colleagues at the University
of London (including some foreign visiting scholars) how they did
things. The general consensus that emerged from these discussions
was that unstructured interviews give you much richer data. Whereas,
if you have even a minimal list of questions, you are going to affect
the answers and they will produce a certain type of an answer. So
we scrapped the questionnaire. It was especially important to us to
avoid skewing the interviewees' responses because our project is
about memory-work and we are interested in how the memory pro-
cess functions. We are not claiming to be reconstructing what it was
really like for audiences at the time. We are asking people about their
memories now, and memory is not reliable. For example, one of the
interviewees talked about a film, which he said he saw in the 1940s
and suddenly he remembered, you know I actually saw this film for
the first time on televisión a few years ago... So, you have to be really
careful about interpreting this data. Ali the research assistants did
was just say to people, we are interested in your memories of going to
the cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, and let them talk. The interview-
ers intervened only if it was necessary to bring them back to the topic
or, if they mentioned something really interesting, by asking them to
say a bit more about it. I did have a problem with getting both of the
research assistants to conduct their interviews in the same way. One
of them, who had previous experience of oral history work, used a
life-history methodology, which took the interviewees chronologically
through the different stages of their life. For instance, asking what
was going on in their lives in 1939 and to tell us about that, and then
the mid 1940s, etc. I couldn't persuade her to stop doing that, and
to allow the interviewees to remember the past in whatever order
occurred to them, as was done by the other interviewer. But both sets
of interviews have produced very rich data.

158 JASMINA ARSOVA, LAURA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

What was really good about the unstructured interviews was that
people wander off the point (cinema-going) and start to talk about
what was going on in their lives at that moment; and then something
would act as a trigger that would take them back to talking about
going to the movies. This is actually the real key to interpreting how
cinema mattered to people, because you can see how a lot of what
was going on in their cinema-going practices was related to something
that was going on in their lives at the time; or, how something going
on in their lives is what informed the next thing they remembered
about the cinema. So, the bits when they wander off the point and
back again have actually been the real key to interpreting the emo-
tional importance of cinema for them. That's why what started as a
cinematographic project has actually become an ethnographic project;
a study of everyday life as mediated through the cinema. This required
us to change our original focus. We had originally conceived of the
interviews as providing Information that confirmed (or not) what we,
from our knowledge of Spanish cinema, thought were the important
issues. Then we realized it did not work like that and we had to struc-
ture our analysis around the issues that our interviewees themselves
found important, which were not necessarily the same as the issues we
had thought were important. In our conclusión we will think about
the significance of this discrepancy between what the people being
interviewed thought was important, and what we as film historians
had expected to be important.

One thing that I think really comes through in both this project
and the later project on film magazines is a view of the Franco dic-
tatorship as a kind of conservative modernity. This is like the work
being done on Fascist Italy (by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, for example), seeing
fascism — even in its Southern European versions — not as a whole-
scale rejection of modernity but as a rejection of certain aspects of
modernity. In the case of Spain, Francoism — despite its archaizing
rhetoric — was about defending capitalism, and one can see how cin-
ema-going stimulated consumerist desire right from the start of the
regime. There are a lot of contradictions here.

M: In connection with the 1940s, what is your opinión about
CM. Hardt's personal project, the documentary titled Muerte en El
Valle (Death in El Valle)}

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 159

JL: I am really interested in film documentaries as well as written
testimonies about the Francoist repression. The memorialization of the
Civil War and its aftermath seems to have become quite a fashionable
dissertation topic in the U.S.A. — I know this because I sometimes get
to evalúate these works when they come to publishers. They tend
to focus on the representation of the war and repression in novéis
or sometimes in both novéis and fiction films; some are quite good,
some are less good. But they are ali doing something that's starting
to worry me. They discuss in great detail what is going on inside the
texts, with no discussion w^hatsoever about the historical context and
the debates circulating in Spain over the memory of the repression.
It worries me because I think there is something unethical here about
looking at literary or film representations, w^ithout taking into account
the very urgent politicai debates on this issue going on in Spain, which
the writers and film-makers are part of.

I actually used CM. Hardt's film as the first text in my current
gradúate course at NYU on the memorialization of the Spanish War,
since I think she shows very well the incredibly strong feelings pro-
duced in her family by her unearthing of this suppressed past (her
grandfather's shooting by the Civil Guard in the 1940s) — I mean, peo-
ple start to get really angry. It is evident that they don't want to deal
with this. It is really good that she focuses on showing these incredibly
violent feelings. One could criticize this as intrusive; but I think it is
very important to show how strong the emotions still are. This is a
personal project, which CM. Hardt got the British independem TV.
Company Channel 4 — unfortunately, it no longer exists — to sponsor
and broadcast. Now it is being shown in Spain, although at the time it
carne out it was not. She did this project, to her credit, before people
in Spain started to make documentaries on this subject, as has been
happening since 2002.

However, I do find some problems with the film. A problem that
my students commented on is that it very much focuses on her as the
investigator, portraying her as the hero. However, one could read
this positively in the light of theoretical work that has been done on
New Documentary, which has wanted to get away from the pretence
in the earlier documentaries that the film gives the real facts. It has
been argued that the most ethical approach is to place the camera
and the investigator, not outside, but inside the film, so that you can
see this is somebody's documentation, and how the camera and the

160 JASMINA ARSOVA, LAURA LEE, CAROLINA SITNISKY

investigator's presence affects what is shown. So the same thing that
could be criticized as a weakness in Muerte en El Valle could also be
seen as a strength.

One thing I would have liked in the film is more historical
contextualization. The film is presented just as the story of "my grand-
father," as if such executions had not happened to anyone else, and as
if this were an astonishing event. This lack of historical information
about the repression that was taking place all over Spain gives the
impression of some naiveté on her part. I don't want to make it sound
any less terrible, but anybody involved with the maquis, the Spanish
guerrilla-fighters at the time, knew what they were risking. That, of
course, does not justify someone being shot through the ley de fugas.
But the reality is that this is one of tens of thousands of deaths. I think
a bit more contextualization would have been important.

M: We have noticed that throughout your work you have estab-
lished connections between Spanish and Latín American literature,
history and criticism. Where do you see the future of Transatlantic
Studies as well as Spanish Cultural Studies?

JL: As already mentioned, there is excellent work done in, and
also on, Latin America. I think people who do peninsular literature
can learn a lot from this work. Spain is not Latin America, of course,
and you have to be careful to read Spain within its cultural context.
I don't want to erase difference. The North vs. South configuration
operares in the case of both Latin America and Spain, but not in the
same ways since we are talking about a different "North" as the
model against which a particular "South" has been found deficient.
Of course, the "North" for Spain now is at least as much the United
States as Europe, which makes the concept of the Transatlantic espe-
cially interesting — though no doubt the most important contribution
that can be made by Transatlantic Studies in a Hispanic context is to
remind scholars that Transatlantic cultural traffic includes the South-
ern Atlantic as well as the Northern Atlantic. There is a limit on what
can be included under the rubric of the Transatlantic, but, for instance,
certain kinds of cinema made in Spain have also been popular in Latin
America; not all of it, but particularly musicais. And even in the autar-
kic period of Francoism there was two-way cultural traffic between
Spanish and particularly Mexican stars and film directors. Another

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 161

interesting example of this transatlantic cultural traffic is the way the
discourse on dictatorship from the Southern Cone has triggered the
current debates in Spain on the need to remember the repression of
the Franco dictatorship. The studies on memory and repression in
Latin America can enrich the study of how Spain has dealt with, or
not dealt with, its legacy of dictatorship. We should try to get away
from looking at Spain solely from within a national framework as it
prevents us from seeing so many things. This is a particular problem
in Spanish Studies since much scholarship on Spanish literature and
history has been very nationalistic, though we should remember that
other countries are not free from this.

A more radical approach would be not only to look at the Hís-
panle Transatlantic but to think in terms of Transnational Studies in a
broader geographical sense, looking at cultural flows across national
borders of ali kinds. Because, even in the late nineteenth century at
the height of modern nation-formation, if you look at what people
actually read, at the levei of both elite and mass culture, it is clear that
people were reading large numbers of translations. People's librarles
were diverse; they owned ali sorts of stuff, French, English, and not
only literary works but also politicai and economic studies. We should
try to get away from this model of national literature, which bears
no resemblance to how culture operates in practice, whether now or
in the past.

Notes

1 . Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000.

2. She's referring to: Spanish Cultural Studies: an íntroduction: The
Struggle for Modernity. Ed. by Helen Graham and Jo Labanyi. Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

The Portuguese Infinitive and the Nature
of Linguistic Explanation

A. Carlos Quícoli

University of California, Los Angeles

1 . Introduction

The central problem of linguistic theory is to explain, in scientific
terms, how human beings develop Grammar. In the process of Gram-
mar development ("language acquisition process"), children are
exposed only to a small, finite number of utterances. Yet ali over
the world, children 'instinctively' develop a recursive Grammar that
allows them to produce and understand an infinite number of sen-
tences of their language. Now, this 'instinct' that guides children to
develop recursive Grammars, rather than some other kind of system,
shows that the human mind must have an innate notion of the form
of Grammar; that is, human beings are biologically endowed with
specific mental structures for developing Grammar. Or, to put it in
psychological terms, the human mind-brain must possess an innate
language faculty, which determines the general form of Grammars
that human languages must have.

Thus, the development of Grammar must involve an essential
innate component — which is commonly referred to (after Descartes)
as the "language faculty." At the same time, it is quite evident also
that in order for the child to develop a Grammar appropriate to Por-
tuguese, the child must be exposed to a sample of linguistic data of
Portuguese. So experience with the data of a specific language is also
necessary. Henee, in addition to the innate component, the develop-
ment of Grammar must also involve a learned component, which is
also essential, although it appears to play only a secondary role to
that of the innate component in the process of Grammar development.
These are the basic assumptions underlying much of current work in
linguistics since Chomsky (1965).

More generally, the investigation of the contribution of the genetic
endowment and of experience in the development of linguistic abilities

162 MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 163

provides a framework for the investigation of the development of
human cognitive abilities (i.e. "mind faculties") in general, and can
be regarded as a step toward understanding the nature of the human
mind — a point that is summarized in the following statement by Nobel
Prize biologist Salvador Luria:

From thinking of language as a dual entity consisting of a
genetically determined component inscribed in the struc-
ture of the brain and a learned component derived from
experience it is an easy step to a more general conception
of the human mind [. . .1. To the biologist it makes eminent
sense to think that, as for language structures, so also for
lógica! structures there exist in the brain network some
patterns of connection that are genetically determined and
have been selected by evolution as effective Instruments
for dealing with the events of life [. . .]. Perfecting of these
cerebral structures must have depended on their becoming
progressively more useful in terms of reproductive success.
For language this must have meant becoming a better
instrument in formulation and communication of meaning
through a usable grammar and syntax. (1973: 140-1; qtd.
in Lightfoot 1982: 12)

Viewed in these terms, the study of Grammar constitutes an inte-
gral part of modern scientific investigation, and is best understood
when cast in this context. The Grammar developed by the individual
speaker represents a real object present in some form in the individu-
al's mind-brain. The linguist wants to scientifically understand, at the
psychological level, the basic structural properties and the principies
of organization of this real object. Within this general context, we
can recast the problem of explaining Grammar development (i.e.
"language acquisition") as follows:

164 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

(1) (Genetic Endowment) (System of Knowledge)

Language Faculty Grammarp^^.^

{ innate + learned }
properties properties

T T

Linguistic Datap^,_.j I I

(Experience) I I

Real objects I I

I I

Theories: UG PG

According to (1), the Grammar internalized by a Portuguese
speaker can be regarded a dual entity that contains: a) innate proper-
ties, representing the contribution of the innate language faculty — i.e.
the genetically determined component Grammar; and b) learned
properties that reflect the contribution of the learned component of
Grammar, which is derived from the speaker's experience with the lin-
guistic data of Portuguese. Accordingly, we must develop two theories:
a Universal Grammar (UG) to account for the innate properties of
Grammar; and a Particular Grammar (PG) to account for the learned
properties that reflect the language specific features that distinguish
Portuguese from all other languages.

A linguistic explanation consists in demonstrating how the facts
that are part of the Particular Grammar of Portuguese can be deduced
from the principies of Universal Grammar. In the remaining of this
article, we attempt to exemplify by a few concrete examples how
this can be accomplished. We will examine a range of facts involving
Portuguese inflected infinitives — clearly a language specific phenom-
enon. We then proceed to show how this range of facts of Portuguese
inflected infinitives can be deduced from some specific principies that
have been proposed as part of a substantive theory of Universal Gram-
mar— the principies of the theories of Binding and Case.

2. Theory of Universal Grammar: Binding and Case
While there is no consensus among linguist about the exact form of
Grammar that human languages may have, there is some evidence
from recent studies related to the concept of "syntactic phase"
(Chomsky 2001, and related work) that the form of grammar deter-
mined by UG has the following general design:

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 165

(2)

Lexicón

i
Lexical Array

i
Move/Merge

i

Phase 1

Move/Merge

i

^ Phase 2 l

PF 2 i LF2

Move/Merge

i

^ Phase n ^

PF n LF n

The basic idea of the Phase model above is that the rules of Syntax
(Merge and Move) organize a set of lexical items (Lexical Array) into
clause-like structures ("Phases"), which are then processed in parallel
by the phonological component ("Phonetic Form," or PF-component)
and by the semantic component ("Logical Form," or LF-component),
as each Phase is completed by the syntax and submitted to the two
interpretive components. In other words, the Phonetic Form or PF (i.e.
"sound representation") of a sentence, and the Logical Form or LF
(i.e. "meaning representation") of a sentence are built incrementally
"phase by phase," as the syntax completes each Phase, and submits
it to the Phonology and to the Semantics. The Phase-level substitutes
with advantage the two previous leveis of D-Structure and S-Structure
of earlier theories (cf. Chomsky 2001; Quícoli 2002; 2005).

In addition, each component of the Grammar in (2), and the rep-
resentations that they produce are regulated by general principies that
are assumed to be part of UG. The main principies of UG that are of
concern here are the principies of Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981,
and related work), and the principies of Vergnaud's Case Theory (cf.
Chomsky and Lasnik 1977).

The principies of Binding Theory regúlate the range of anaphoric
relations among nominal phrases (NP's) in a sentence. The standard

166 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

formulation of this theory (Chomsky 1981, 1982, 1986, 1995; Chom-
sky and Lasnik 1993) is summarized in (3) and (4) below:

(3) Binding Theory^

Principie A: An anaphor must be bound in a Local Domain
Principie B: A pronominal must be free in a Local Domain
Principie C: An R-expression is free.

(4) Local Domain

P is a Local Domain for a, if and only if, (3 is the minimal
category containing a and a SUBJECT accessible to a.
(SUBJECT is: a) an NP in subject position; b) the

Agreement ('AGR')
element of inflected verbs)

The Binding principie that is of more relevance here is Principie A.
Essentially, 'anaphors' are elements such as English "himself" and
Portuguese reflexive pronouns such as "se," which do not ha ve refer-
ence of their own and, henee, must be associated with a referential
NP (i.e. an 'antecedent") in order to be semantically interpreted. The
effects of Principie A can be illustrated by the grammatical contrasts
observed in (5):

(5) a. Nós nos barbeamos. ('We shaved ourselves.')
b.''Nós se barbeamos. ('""'We shaved himself.')

In (5a) the reflexive anaphor nos 'ourselves' is interpreted as coref-
erential with the subject NP — nós 'we.' Thus, the anaphor is "bound"
as required by Principie A. Since no principie (or "law") is violated,
the resulting sentence is predicted to be well-formed. By contrast, in
(5b), the anaphor se 'himself cannot be interpreted as coreferential
with nós 'we' because of number mismatch. Henee, the anaphor in
(5b) is not bound, which is a violation of Principie A. Since a gram-
matical principie (or "law") is violated, the ungrammaticality of (5b)
is predicted.

However, anaphors cannot be bound by an antecedent just
anywhere in the sentence. Rather, they must be bound within the
Local Domain in which they occur. The Local Domain for an ana-
phor is essentially the minimal clause containing the anaphor and a

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 167

SUBJECT — i.e. an explicit syntactic Subject, or the Agreement mor-
phology ('AGR') expressing the syntactic subject (e.g. the agreement
marker -mos in cantamos 'sing-Ist pl.,' which acts as a "proxy" for the
subject it expresses). The role of Local Domain is illustrated below:

(6) a. Pedro viu [nós nos barbearmos],
b. ''"Pedro viu [nós se barbearmos].

In (6), the Local Domain for the anaphor is the embedded clause,
which contains a syntactic subject. In the well-formed (6a) the
reflexive anaphor nos 'ourselves' is bound by its antecedent nós 'we'
within its Local Domain, as required by Principie A. However, in the
ill-formed (6b) the anaphor se is "free" within its Local Domain. It
cannot be bound by nós 'we' inside the Local domain, and Pedro is
outside the Local Domain. Thus (6b) is in violation of Principie A,
which explains why it is ungrammatical.

Moreover, Binding Theory is not restricted to "lexical" anaphors
such as the Portuguese or English reflexives. It is known that "traces"
of certain moved items function like anaphors. Such "trace-anaphors"
pattern like "lexical anaphors," and their distribution can also be
explained by Principie A of Binding Theory. Thus consider the English
facts below:

(7) a. Joe believes [himself to be rich].

b. '"Joe believes [himself is-AGR rich].

(8) a. Joe seems [ t to like Los Angeles].

b. ''Joe seems [that t likes-AGR Los Angeles].

As we can see, the trace "t" left by NP-movement in (7) behaves in the
same way as the lexical anaphor himselfin (7). In the well-formed (7a)
and (8a), the lexical anaphor himself and the trace-anaphor "t" are
bound in their respective Local Domains (the full sentence structure).
Since these structures are in compliance with Principie A, the result-
ing sentences (7a) and (8a) are grammatical, as predicted. However,
in (7b) and in (8b) the lexical anaphor and the trace-anaphor are not
bound in their respective embedded clauses — each a Local Domain
created by the AGR element of the inflected verb. Since this violates
Principie A, the resulting sentences (7b) and (8b) are ill-formed,
as predicted.

168 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

This brings us to the problem of determining the precise level of
representation at which Binding principies apply. Consider in this
regard the EngHsh examples below:

(9) a. The ambassadors appeared to each other [ t to contradict the

secretary ].

b. The ambassadors appeared [ t to contradict each other ].

c. The ambassadors appeared to each other [ t to contradict
themselves ].

All three examples in (9) involve application of NP-movement (an
instance of "Move") that raises the ambassadors to the main clause,
leaving a trace in its original position. One might think based on (9a),
that Principie A must apply after the NP-movement (i.e. at the S-struc-
ture level). However, the evidence of (9b) may suggest that Principie
A must apply before NP-movement (i.e. at the level of D-structure),
while (9c) seems to suggest that Principie A must apply both before
and after NP-movement — i.e. both at D-structure and S-structure, a
seemingly paradoxical result. Under previous theories, such facts were
problematic. However, none of these problems arise if we assume the
Phase Model (2), and that Principie A applies at the Phase-level. The
derivation of (9c) by "phase" is as follows:

(10) a. [The ambassadors^ to contradict themselvesj.

b. [The ambassadors, appeared to each other [ t_ to contradict
themselvesj].

The Merge rules of the Syntax produce (10a). Since this is a Phase, it
is submitted to the semantics (LF-component), where Binding applies.
Application of Principie A at this Phase binds the anaphor themselves
to the ambassadors. The structure goes into its second syntactic Phase.
Move (i.e. NP-movement) moves the ambassadors to the main clause,
and Merge embeds (10a) to form (10b). The second Phase is complete
and (10b) is submitted to the semantics (LF-component). Principie A
applies in the second Phase and binds the anaphor each other to the
ambassador (which also binds the trace-anaphor "t"). No principie
is violated and the result is the grammatical (9c). A similar analysis
can be extended in a straightforward manner to (9a) and (9b). There
is no need for D-structure or S-structure, which appear to be reflexes

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 169

of the more basic levei of the Phase — application of Principie A in
the first phase gives the impression of D-structure application, while
application of Principie A in the second phase gives the impression of
S-structure application (Quícoli 2002; 2005).

Similarly, the Phase hypothesis also resolves a problem noted
with respect to the interpretation of "trace-anaphors" in examples
such as (11):

(11) a. John is likely [ t to win].

b. [çp [How likely t to win] is [John ]]?

The problem here is that normally an anaphor must be "lower" — i.e.
"c-commanded" by its antecedent for the sentence to be grammatical
(cf. *himself shaved John). This happens in (Ha), where the trace-
anaphor in the lower clause is "c-commanded" by its antecedent
John. However, in (11b), after NP-movement has applied, leaving
a trace-anaphor in the embedded clause, Wh-movement moves the
adjectival phrase and the subordinare clause with the trace-anaphor
to the CP-position of the main clause, so that the trace-anaphor is
actually 'higher' that its antecedent. Yet, surprisingly (11b) is also
well-formed — a serious problem for previous theories, since neither
application of Principie A at D-structure or at S-structure (or at LF-
structure) seem to plausibly account for such facts.

However, the problem posed by (llb) can be resolved if we
assume that Principie A applies at the Phase levei. The derivation of
(llb) is then as foUows:

(12) a. [^p John to win] Phase 1 (vP Phase): Binding (inapplicable)

b. [^p Joha is [^p how Hkely [ t to win]]] Phase 2 (vP Phase)
= Binding

c. [cp [.^p how likely [ t, to win] [is]] [Joha [^p ]]]

Phase 3 (CP phase)

In the first vP phase (see Chomsky 2001; QuícoH 2005), Principie A
is not applicable. But in the second vP phase (12b) after Move/Merge,
Principie A applies (after NP-movement) and correctly binds the trace-
anaphor to John. In the third phase (12c), a CP-phase, Wh-movement
moves the adjectival expression (AP) into the Spec-CP position, while
Aux-movement moves the auxiliary ;5 into the Head-position of CP.

170 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

However, since the trace-anaphor was already bound to an anteced-
ent ("John") in a previous Phase, structure (12c) is in compliance with
Principie A, which explains the grammaticaUty of (11b). Thus, we have
now two pieces of evidence to show that Binding Theory must apply at
the Phase level, which supports the Phase Model given in (2).

Let US now turn to Vergnaud's Case Theory (cf. Chomsky and
Lasnik 1977). According to this theory, certain NPs must be marked
for (abstract) Case. This requirement is guaranteed by the Case Filter,
which requires that NPs that have "phonetic contení" (i.e. are pro-
nounced) must have Case. However, there is evidence that the original
Case Filter must be extended to include also the "phonetically nuil"
pronominal pro- (Quícoli 1996). Accordingly, we revise the Case Filter
as foUows:

(13) Extended Case Filter (ECF)

Noun Phrases containing personal features must have Case.

The class of NP's containing 'personal features' (e.g. first person,
second person, etc.) includes "Referential expressions" (e.g. Maria, os
médicos 'the doctors,' etc.), overt pronominais (e.g. ele 'he,' me 'me'),
and their corresponding nuil counterparts (i.e. the nuil pronominais
represented by "little pro"). The Extended Case Filter (ECF) interacts
with the principies of Case Marking, which assign Abstract Case
(i.e. Case which may or may not be overtly expressed by the noun
morphology). With a great deal of simplification we may assume the
following rules of Case Marking:

(14) Case Marking^:

Rule 1: NP head-governed by AGR is marked Nominative.
Rule 2: NP head-governed by a Verb is marked Accusative.
Rule 3: NP head-governed by a Preposition is marked Oblique.

In simple words, the principies as stated in (14) will ensure that an
NP in a Subject-Verb relation with an inflected verb (i.e. with the
element AGR) is head-governed by AGR, and receives Nominative
Case. On the other hand, an NP inside a VP-node is head-governed
by the Verb and it is assigned Accusative Case, while an NP inside
a PP-node is head-governed by the Preposition and is, thus, assigned
Oblique Case.

MESTER, VOE. XXXV (2006) 1 71

Restricting the discussion to essentials, normally the subject posi-
tion of a finite verb will be marked Nominative by the AGR element
of the verb. But the subject position of a regular infinitive (i.e. the
"non-inflected infinitive" of most languages) normally cannot receive
any Case at ali — which raises the potential for the structure to be
found in violation of the ECF. This can be best illustrated by the facts
of languages such as Spanish/English, which have only non-inflected
infinitives, compare:

(15) a. Este muchacho-xoM parece [ t odiar Las Vegas],
b. This guy-xoM seems-AGR 1 1 to hate Las Vegas].

(16) a. ''Parece leste muchacho odiar Las Vegas].

b. '•■ It-NOM seems-AGR [this guy to hate Las Vegas].

In the grammatical (15), the (non-inflected) infinitive cannot give
Case to this guy/este muchacho. How^ever, since NP movement raised
the embedded subject to the subject position under seems/parece, the
raised NP receives Case from the AGR element of the main verb, so
as to satisfy the ECF. However, in the ill-formed (16), this guy/este
muchacho remained in subject position of the infinitive. Since in Eng-
lish/Spanish, infinitives do not have AGR, this guy/este muchacho are
not Case marked. But this is a violation of the ECF, so the examples
in (16) are ill-formed, as predicted by the ECF.

3. Some Consequences of Case Theory

In this section we examine some predictions of the Extended Case
Filter (ECF), the central principie of Case Theory, for the data of Por-
tuguese infinitives. In Portuguese, infinitives may occur without AGR
(non-inflected infinitive), or with AGR (inflected infinitive). Thus, Case
Theory predicts that when the inflected infinitive occurs, its AGR ele-
ment should give Case to its subject, allowing the structure to satisfy
ECF, which should result in a different pattern than that found in
languages that only have non-inflected infinitives. The first pattern to
consider in this regard is represented by cases where the infinitive has
an overt NP as its subject, and the predícate of the main clause cannot
assign Case to it. In such cases, the inflected infinitive must occur:

(17) a. É bom os estudantes/eles estudarem latin.
b. '•■£ bom os estudantes/eles estudar latin.

172 A. CARLOS Q UÍCOLI

But in Spanish, no grammatical sentence is possible:

(18) ''"Es bueno los estudiantes estudiar latín.

The facts are as predicted by Case Theory. In (17a) the AGR of the
inflected infinitive gives Case to its subject. Since the ECF is satisfied,
(17a) is predictably grammatical. However, in (17b) (like Spanish (18),
the infinitive has no AGR, and the structure is ruled out by the ECF,
just like Spanish (18)).

To account for such facts, many traditional pedagogical, and
descriptive grammars give an informal rule, or descriptive generaliza-
tion, like(19)^:

(19) The inflected infinitive is used "whenever the infinitive is
accompanied by a nominative subject, noun or pronoun."
(AH 1964: 175)

The rule in (19) would account for the differences in grammaticality
observed in (17). In fact, one fruitful way to advance linguistic theory
is to take descriptive statements like (19) seriously, and then attempt
to derive their effects from independently motivated principies of
UG. Thus, given (19), we may ask a further question: "Why must the
inflected infinitive occur when it is "accompanied by a nominative
subject"?" Someone interested in language teaching might simply say:
"Because that is the way it is," or something to this effect. This may be
fine, if the goal is the practical teaching of the language. But from the
point of view of understanding how human language works — the goal
of linguistics as a scientific discipline — we must strive to find principled
explanations for the facts. Ideally, the facts of Portuguese — even the
facts of an idiosyncratic construction as the inflected infinitive — ought
to be explained by general principies of UG. In this case, as shown
above, the generalization (19) follows from the ECF — an indepen-
dently motivated principie of UG, a desirable result.

Consider now a second pattern, represented by examples where the
infinitive has an overt NP subject and the main clause contains an ECM
Verb ('exceptional case-marking' verbs such as ver 'to see,' ouvif 'to
hear,' and causatives such as fazer 'to make/to cause,' mandar 'to order,'
deixar 'to allow/to let'). With such verbs, either the non-inflected, or the
inflected infinitive may occur (cf. Maurer 1968: 239):

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 173

(20) a. Lula via os problemas crescer à sua volta.

b. Lula via [os problemas-ACC crescer à sua volta].
'Lula saw the problems grow^ around him.'

(21) a. Lula via os problemas crescerem à sua volta.

b. Lula via [ os problemas-xoM crescerem- AGR à sua volta].
'Lula saw the problems grow-S"" pl. around him.'

These results are as predicted. They foUow from the way the ECF
interacts with ECM verbs and with inflected infinitives. Accordingly,
there are in Portuguese two ways in which the embedded subject os
problemas 'the problems' may be Case-marked to satisfy the ECF. If
the infinitive is inflected, its AGR will assign Nominative Case to its
subject. This would satisfy the ECF (and, at the same time, block Case
assignment by the main verb, since inflected infinitive is the "closest"
Case-marker), so that (21a) can be derived. Alternatively, in (20a) the
infinitive is not inflected, so it cannot assign Case to its subject, but the
ECM Verb in the main clause can. So it will assign Accusative Case to
os problemas 'the problems.' This would allow the structure to also
satisfy the ECF (just like in its Spanish counterpart), so that (21a) is
also grammatical, as expected.

As a third situation, consider now the problem posed by the facts
in (22):

(22) a. É melhor dizer sempre a verdade

('It is better to always tell the truth.')
b. E melhor dizermos sempre a verdade.
('It is better to always tell-1'' pl. the truth.')

The Portuguese sentences in (22) are not synonymous (cf. also Maurer
1968: 148). In sentence (22a), the covert subject of the infinitive is
an impersonal, or unspecified human subject, with no specific ref-
erence — (22a) means something like "It is better for people to tell
the truth," (just like in Spanish and English). However, in (22b) the
inflected infinitive refers to a nuil, personal subject, corresponding
to nós "we;" so the sentence means "It is better for us to always tell
the truth."

Traditional grammars state that in such cases "the infinitive will
agree with the subject that we have in mind." (Ali 1964: 175). Again,
this may be justified in a pedagogical grammar. However, in a formal

174 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

grammar the goal is precisely to make explicit what kind of "subject
we have in mind" that causes the infinitive to behave differently in
such examples. That is, under a formal (i.e. "generative") approach,
it is necessary to provide theoretical assumptions about the types of
nuil subjects that the speaker "has in mind," and to show how the dif-
ferent cholee of subjects correlate with the occurrence of the inflected
vs. the non-inflected infinitive in such examples.

Under standard generative analyses, the 'unspecified subject' that
occurs in Portuguese examples such as (22a) (and its counterpart in
other languages) is theoretically represented by PRO-arb (Chomsky
1981) — a phonetically nuil element that is "arbitrary" in reference in
the sense that it does not refer to any specific individual. In the theory
advanced here, PRO is 'non-personal.' That is, PRO is assumed to
contain only features that identify it as an anímate pro-element. But
unlike personal pronouns, PRO does not contain 'personal features'
(e.g. first person, second person, etc) (cf. Quícoli 1996, but see Safir
1996 for discussion). Henee, PRO is not subject to the ECF. In fact,
PRO cannot occur in a Local Domain (which imphes that it cannot
occur in a Case-marked position) for independent reasons, having
to do with Chomsky 's (1981) 'PRO-Theorem.'^ So the occurrence of
PRO is strictly limited to the subject position of (non-inflected) infini-
tives — the only position that is normally not a Local Domain. Thus,
the structure underlying (22a) is essentially (23), where the subject of
the non-inflected infinitive is PRO-arb:

(23) E melhor [PRO-arb - dizer sempre a verdade].

By contrast, the pronominal 'little pro' is simply the phoneti-
cally nuil variant of a personal pronoun. Therefore, it has features
for person and, henee, it requires Case in order to satisfy the ECF
(just like overt pronouns). Thus, when pro occurs, the infinitive must
be inflected to give Case to it. Thus, the structure underlying (22b)
is (24):

(24) E melhor [( pro- T' pl.)-nom dizermos- AGR sempre a verdade].

Under these assumptions, we can provide a principled explanation
for the facts above in terms of the ECF. When the subject is pro, the
infinitive must be inflected in order to assign Nominative Case to

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 175

it (just like in (17a) with an overt pronoun). By contrast, when the
subject is PRO-arb, the infinitive must always be non-inflected. First,
because PRO's are not 'personal' and, henee, are not subject to the
ECF, Second, because PRO's cannot occur in a Case-marked position
due to Chomsky's (1981) "PRO-Theorem."

The explanation above can be extended also to infinitives embed-
ded under "control verbs" — i.e. structures where the subject of the
infinitive is a 'controlled' PRO which is obligatorily interpreted
as coreferential with a NP in the main clause. This is the case, for
example, of infinitival clauses embedded under verbs such as preferir
'to prefer,' tentar 'to try,' among others. In such structures, only the
common non-inflected infinitive is possible (cf. Cegalla 2000: 551).
This is evidenced by the examples in (25), which are associated with
their respective dcrivation in (26):

(25) a. Os prisioneiros tentaram escapar.

b. ''Os prisioneiros tentaram escaparem.
'The prisoners tried to escape.'

(26) a. Os prisioneiros-NOM, tentaram-AGR [PRO, escapar],
b. Os prisioneiros-NOM, tentaram-AGR [(PRO-nom)^

escaparem- AGRl .

As is clear from the above, only sentence (25a) with structure (26a),
which has a non-inflected infinitive, is well-formed. Sentence (25b),
associated with (26b), which has an inflected infinitive, is ill-formed.
This is as expected. Under the present analysis, PRO does not have
'personal features' of its own, and it is exempt from the ECF. Thus,
no principie is violated in (25a), which is a well-formed sentence.
However, in the derivation of sentence (25b) the infinitive is inflected,
causing the controlled PRO to be in a Local Domain. But PRO can-
not be in a Local Domain because of the PRO-Theorem. Henee (25b)
is excluded by Binding Theory, under the assumptions related to the
PRO-Theorem, which explains its ungrammaticality.

Consider now the problem posed by the class of "semi-control"
verbs (Quícoli 1996). Such verbs allow two constructions with infini-
tives: one in which the subject of the infinitive is a controlled PRO^
and another in which the subject of the infinitive is a 'personal' noun
phrase. This is the case for example of verbs like afirtjíar 'to assert,'
dizer 'to say,' crer 'to believe.' Compare:

176 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

(27) a. Os guardas afirmam terem eles visto o ladrão.

b. Os guardas afirmam terem visto o ladrão.

c. Os guardas afirmam ter visto o ladrão.
'The guards assert (they) saw the thief.'

According to the present analysis, their respective underlying struc-
tures are as foUows:

(28) a. Os guardas afirmam [eles-NOM terem- AGR visto o ladrão].

b. Os guardas afirmam [(pro-3'*" pl.)-nom terem-AGR visto o
ladrão].

c. Os guardas afirmam [PRO ter visto o ladrão].

As shown in structures (28a) and (28b), semences (27a) and (27b)
contain "personal" subjects — the pronominal elements eles 'they,' and
'little pro,' respectively. This is clear since the subject of the infinitive
in both instances is 'free' to refer to os guardas 'the guards,' or to
another individual understood in the discourse, as is typical of pro-
nominais. Thus, they are 'personal' NPs, and they need Case. Since
the infinitive is inflected in these structures, it assigns Case to their
respective subjects. This satisfies the ECF, so that the grammaticality
of (27a) and (27b) is explained. However, as shown in structure (28c),
in (27c), the subject is a controlled PRO, which cannot be in a Local
Domain (because of the PRO-Theorem) and, henee, cannot occur
with an inflected verb. Since in (28c) the infinitive is not inflected, the
embedded PRO is not in a Local Domain. Therefore, neither Principie
A ñor the ECF is violated, and (27c) can surface as a grammatical
sentence. Thus, as we can see, the facts in (28) foUow from both the
theories of Case and Binding.

4. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BlNDING ThEORY

In this section, we examine some of the predictions of Binding Theory
for the data pertaining to the Portuguese inflected vs. non-inflected
infinitive. The Binding effects that are of relevance here are those
involving 'trace-anaphors' that are created by Movement rules. Essen-
tially, such trace-anaphors are subject to Principie A of Binding Theory,
and must be 'bound' by an antecedent within the Local Domain in
which they occur. Since AGR creares Local Domains, the theory pre-
dicts that inflected infinitives (unlike non-inflected infinitives) should

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 177

créate Local Domains. We should then expect different results related
to movement of the subject of an inflected infinitive vs. movement of
the subject of a non-inflected infinitive. We shall examine this ques-
tion with respect to four types of movement rules: Clitic movement,
NP-movement, Wh-movement, and Topicalization.

Consider first Clitic movement. A well-known fact about Portu-
guese infinitives is that cliticization of the subject is possible with a
non-inflected infinitive but not with an inflected infinitive. The follow-
ing example is typical:

(29) a. Não nos deixeis cair em tentação.

b. *Não nos deixeis cairmos em tentação.
'Do not let us fali into temptation.'

Because of this, many traditional grammars (Cegalla 2000: 551; Lima
1972: 382) must assume a specific 'rule' for cases where the subject of
the infinitive is a clitic. Compare:

(30) [I]f the infinitive has as its subject an oblique pronoun with
which it constitutes the object of the verbs deixar 'let,' fazer 'to
make,' mandar 'to order,' ver 'to see,' and sentir 'to feel,' it is
not inflected. (Cegalla 2000:551)

Of course, a great deal of generality can be gained if the facts
pertaining to clitic subjects did not require a special rule just for clitics
such as (30). Ideally, such facts should, rather, be deduced from inde-
pendently motivated principies. In fact, we see that the facts in (29)
can be explained in a straightforward manner under Binding Theory.
Thus, the respective structures corresponding to (29) are essentially
as shown in (31):

(31) a. [pro não nos, deixeis [ t, cair em tentação]].

b. [pro não nos, deixeis [ t, cairmos-AGR em tentação]].

In both structures, Clitic movement left a trace-anaphor. In (31a), with
the non-inflected infinitive, the Local Domain for the trace-anaphor
movement is the whole structure. Since in this configuration the trace-
anaphor is bound by the clitic nos 'us,' Principie A is satisfied. This
explains the grammaticality of (29a). However, in (31b), the AGR

178 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

of the inflected infinitive narrows the Local Domain to the embedded
clause. Since the trace-anaphor is not bound by an antecedent in this
domain, the structure violates Principie A of Binding Theory. This
explains the ungrammaticality of (29b). Thus, the Portuguese facts in
(29) can be explained in terms of Principie A, a general principie of
UG. No special statement like (30) is needed in the Particular Gram-
mar of Portuguese — a significant theoretical result.

As a second set of data, consider now NP-movement. As shown
below, NP movement is possible with non-inflected infinitives but
not with inflected infinitives (cf. Maurer 1968: 109 fn; Quícoli 1976,
1982):

(32) a. Os rapazes pareciam odiar o filme.

b [Os rapazeSj-NOM pareciam-AGR [ t, odiar o filme]].
'The guys seem to hate the movie.'

(33) a. ''Os rapazes pareciam odiarem o filme.

b. [Os rapazeSj-NOM pareciam-AGR [ t^ odiarem-AGR]].
'The guys seem-agr to hate-AGR the movie.'

These facts can also be explained in a straightforward manner by
Principie A of Binding Theory. In both instance, the embedded subject
os rapazes 'the guys' is raised by NP-movement to the position of sub-
ject under parecer. This movement leaves a trace-anaphor, as before.
In structure (32b), the infinitive is not inflected, so the Local Domain
for the trace-anaphor is the whole structure. Since the trace is bound
by os rapazes in this domain, the structure satisfies Principie A, and
the resulting sentence (32a) is predictably grammatical. In structure
(33b), however, the presence of the inflected infinitive narrows the
Local Domain to the subordínate clause. Since the trace-anaphor is not
bound by an antecedent in this Local Domain, the structure violates
Principie A, which explains why the resulting sentence (33a) is ungram-
matical. Also, here we have a situation where the inflected infinitive
gives Case to its subject, so that the derivation of (33a) satisfies Case
Theory. However, the inflected infinitive also creates Local Domains,
and since the movement of the subject in (33a) left a trace-anaphor
'free' in the Local Domain created by the inflected infinitive, the struc-
ture violates Binding Theory, which correctly exeludes the sentence as
ungrammatical. In other words, both Case Theory and Binding Theory
must be satisfied if the sentence is to be grammatically well-formed.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 1 79

As a third set, let us now examine the pattern involving Wh-move-
ment. We see now that when the subject is moved by Wh-movement
the pattern is just the opposite of that when the subject is moved by
NP movement discussed above. Now the sentences with inflected
infinitive are well-formed, while the sentences with non-inflected
infinitive are ill-formed (cf. Raposo 1987; Quícoh 1996):

(34) a. Que jogadores ele afirma terem abandonado o time?

b. [çp. Que jogadoreSj-NOM [ele afirma [^^p, tj [ t , AGR-terem
abandonado o time]]]]?

'Which players does he affirm (that they) have abandoned
the team?'

(35) a. *Que jogadores ele afirma ter abandonado o time?

b. ''■[(^p. Que jogadores, [ele afirma [^p, t, [ t, ter abandonado
o time]]]]?
'* Which players does he affirm to have abandoned the team?'

Wh-movement invoives movement of a wh-phrase (i.e. an interroga-
tive phrase or a relative pronoun) into a position under the CP-node — the
phrasal category at the beginning of a clause. Thus, in both derivations
(34b) and (35b) Wh-movement moved the wh-phrase que jogadores
"which players" first under the CPI of the subordinate clause, and then
to the CP2 of the main clause. In both structures, the trace of the moved
subject is properly bound by the trace under CPI, and the trace under
CPI, in turn, is bound by que jogadores 'which players' under CP2 — so
Binding Theory is satisfied. However, the difference here is due to Case
Theory, In (34a) the infinitive is inflected, while in (35a) the infinitive is
not inflected. In the grammatical (34a) the inflected infinitive gives Case
to the moved subject, so that the Case Theory (i.e. ECF) is satisfied.
However, in the ungrammatical (35a), the infinitive is not inflected and
cannot give Case to its subject. Since Wh-movement moves the embed-
ded subject into CP's, which are not Case-marking positions either, the
moved subject is not assigned Case. As a result, (35a) is in violation of
Case Theory, which explains its ungrammaticality. Again, as we see, it
is not sufficient for structures to satisfy only Binding Theory but not
Case Theory. Rather, both Binding Theory and Case Theory must be
satisfied for the result to be well-formed.

As a fourth, and final case, consider the pattern involving Topical-
ization. It is known since Chomsky (1977) that Topicalization behaves

180 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

much in the same way as Wh-movement. So we would expect Topi-
calization to display the same pattern with the Portuguese inflected
vs. non-inflected infinitives as that observed with Wh-movement. That
is, due the interaction of Binding Theory and Case Theory above,
we would expect the resulting sentences to be grammatical with the
inflected infinitive and ungrammatical with the non-inflected infinitive.
As shown by the facts below, these predictions hold:

(36) a. Estes jogadores, o técnico afirma terem chegado tarde,
b. [ç-p-, Estes jogadores j-NOM [o técnico afirma [¡-.pi tj [ t,

AGR-terem chegado tarde]]]].

'These players, the coach asserts (that they) have arrived late.'

(37) a. ''Estes jogadores, o técnico afirma ter chegado tarde.

b. '''[(^p-. Estes jogadoreSj [ele afirma [^p, t¡ [ t¡ ter chegado
tarde]]]].
'"'These players, the coach asserts to have arrived late.'

Topicalization, like Wh-movement, moves the topicalized noun
phrase into CP's. This would satisfy Binding Theory, since the traces
left by Topicalization in both structures would be properly bound, as
required by this theory. However, since CP is not a position where an
NP can receive Case, the moved subject must receive Case elsewhere
in the derivation. In the case of (36a) the infinitive is inflected and its
AGR gives Case to its subject, so the resulting sentence satisfies also
Case Theory. No principie is violated and the resulting sentence (36a)
is grammatical. However, in (37a) the infinitive is non-inflected and
cannot give Case to its subject. Since the subject of the infinitive is
moved into CP by Topicalization, it cannot receive Case in this posi-
tion either. As a result, structure (37a) is in violation of Case Theory,
which explains its ungrammaticality. Thus, the pattern produced by
Topicalization is identical to that produced by Wh-movement, and
both can be explained from the interaction of the principies of the
theories of Case and Binding.

5. Conclusión

In the course of the discussion above, we have examined a range of
empirical facts related to the Portuguese inflected vs. non-inflected
infinitives. We have argued that the facts of Portuguese infinitives —
particularly the facts of the idiosyncratic inflected infinitives — can be

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 181

explained in a natural manner by some proposed principies of Uni-
versal Grammar — the principies of Binding Theory and Case Theory.
If this were on the right tract, we would have here an illustration of
how the facts of Particular Grammars can be deduced — and, henee,
explained — from general principies of Universal Grammar. Thus,
we would have a desirable interaction. The proposed principies of
Universal Grammar can be relied upon to explain the particular facts
of the Portuguese infinitive. At the same time, the explained facts of
Portuguese infinitives can be taken as empirical evidence attesting
to the general character of the propose principies, further justifying
their inclusión as part of a substantial theory of Universal Grammar.
If these results could be confirmed, they would provide a concrete
example of how the facts of particular languages can be deduced and,
henee, explained by general principies of language and, at the same
time, how the range of explained data of particular languages can
provide empirical support in favor of the explanatory power of the
linguistic theory that incorporates them.

Notes

1. Chomsky and Lasnik (1993) (reproduced in Chomsky 1995) re-
stated the Binding principies as "interpretativa rules." However, both the
standard versión of Binding Theory given in the text, and the interpretative
versión of Binding given by Chomsky and Lasnik require the concept of Local
Domain. So, for the facts discussed in this article, it does not seem to matter
which versión of Binding Theory we adopt, although they may yield different
empirical results with respects to other facts. For presentation purposes, I
have adopted the more familiar standard versión.

2. This is the 'little pro' subject that appears in Portuguese sentences
such as cantamos '(we) sing-L^ pl,' which, according to current theory, is to
be analyzed as [pro-l" pl. -cantamos] (cf. Chomsky 1981; 1982).

3. The precise relation required for Case Assignment is somewhat
unclear. I have assumed, for presentation purposes, that Case Assignment is
assigned under the notion "head-government," which involves the relation
of "m-command" (Aun and Sportiche 1983; Chomsky 1986). But this is
a controversial move (see Chomsky 1995 for a different approach to Case
marking based on the concept of "Spec-Head Agreement"). The notion "m-
command" says essentially that the "head," or nucleus of a phrasal category

182 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

"m-commands" ali categories inside the phrase category labeled after it. Thus,
an NP in 'direct object' position in a Verb Phrase (VP) is m-commanded by the
Verb, which is the "head" of the VP; an NP inside a Prepositional Phrase (PP)
is m-commanded by the Preposition, which is the head of the PP. Likewise,
as it is widely assumed (since Pollock 1989), inflectional morphemes such as
Tense and Agreement are the heads of their own Phrasal Categories. Thus, an
NP said to be 'in subject position' of a Verb containing the AGR element (i.e.
the Verb-Agreement morphology) is assumed to be in the Specifier-position
of an AGR Phrase, and henee, it would be m-commanded by AGR, which
would assign Nominative Case to it by Rule 1 of (14).

4. A similar rule is given in Maurer (1968: 145): "[W]hen the infinitive
has its own subject — explicit or not — it is always inflected." See also Cegalla
(2000: 552), Bechara (1968: 346), Lima 1972: 382) for similar statements.

5. The argument based on the PRO-Theorem is as foUows. According
to Chomsky (1981), PRO has the features [+pronominal/+anaphor]. Thus, if
PRO occurred with an inflected infinitive, the AGR of the infinitival clause
would constitute a Local Domain for it. But this would cause a conflict
between Principies A and B of Binding Theory; since PRO is, in part, an
anaphor. Principie A would require it be bound. However, since PRO is also
a pronominal, the resulting structure would viólate Principie B, which requires
pronominais to be free. Conversely, if PRO is free, the structure would satisfy
Principie B, but now it would viólate Principie A, since the anaphor must be
bound in a Local Domain. This conflict can only be avoided if PRO does
not occur in a Local Domain. It follows then that PRO cannot occur with
inflected infinitives, since inflected infinitives créate Local Domains.

Works Cited

Ali, Manuel Said. Gramática secundaria da língua portuguesa. Rio de Janeiro:
Livraria Académica, 1964.

Aoun, Yusef and Dominique Sportiche. "On the Formal Theory of Govern-
ment." The Linguistic Review 2.3 (1983): 211-36.

Bechara, Evanildo. Moderna gramática portuguesa. São Paulo: Nacional,
1968.

Cegalla, Domingos P. Novíssima gramática da língua portuguesa. São Paulo:
Nacional, 2000.

Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT,
1965.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 183

— . "Derivation by Phase." Kefi Hale: A Life in Language. Ed. Michael

Kentowicz. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001.
— . Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use. New York:

Praeger, 1986.
. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht, Netherlands:

Foris, 1981.
. "On Wh-Movement." Formal Syntax. Ed. Peter W. Culicover,

Thomas Wasow, and Adrián Akmajian. New York: Academic, 1997.

71-132.
— . Some Concepts and Consequences of tbe Theory of Government and

Binding. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982.
— . The Minimalist Frogram. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1995.

Chomsky, Noam and Howard Lasnik. "Filters and Control." Linguistic

Inquiry8 (1977): 425-504.
. "The Theory of Principies and Parameters." Syntax: An International

Handbook of Contemporary Research. Ed. Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von

Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, and Theo Vennemann. Vol. 1. Berlin:

Walter de Gruyter. 506-69.
Lightfoot, David. The Language Lottery: Towards a Biology of Grammars.

Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982.
Luria, Salvador. Life: The Unfinished Experiment. New York: Scribner,

1973.
Maurer Jr., Theodoro H. O infinitivo flexionado português. São Paulo:

Nacional, 1968.
Pollock, Jean-Yves. "Verb-Movement, UG and the Structure of IP." Linguistic

Inquiry 20 (1989): 365-424.
Quícoli, A. Carlos. "Anaphora by Phase." Unpublished article, Department

of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA. Los Angeles, 2002.
. "A Phase Approach to Anaphoric Relations." Unpublished article,

Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA. Los Angeles, 2005.
. "Inflection and Parametric Variation: Portuguese vs. Spanish." Cur-

rent Issues in Comparative Grammar. Ed. Robert Freidin. Dordrecht,

Netherlands: Kluwer, 1996. 46-80.
. "On Portuguese Impersonal Verbs." Readings in Fortuguese Lin-

guistics. Ed. Jürgen Schmidt-Radefedt. Dordrecht, Netherlands: North

Holland, 1976. 63-91.
. The Structure of Complementation. Ghent, Belgium: Story-Scientia,

1982.

184 A. CARLOS QUÍCOLI

Raposo, Eduardo. "Case Theory and Infl-to-Comp: The Inflected Infinitive in
European Portuguese." Linguistic Inquiry 18 (1987): 85-100.

Rocha Lima, Carlos E. Gramática normativa da língua portuguesa. Rio de
Janeiro: José Olympio, 1972.

Rouveret, Alain. "Sur la notion de proposition finie: gouvernement et inver-
sión." Recherches Linguistiques 9 (1980): 76-140.

Safir, Ken. "PRO and pro: Comments on Quícoli." Current Issues in Com-
parative Grammar. Ed. Robert Freidin. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer,
1996. 81-90.

Reviews

BRUÑA BRAGADO, MARÍA JOSÉ. Belmira Agustini: Dandismo,
género y reescritura del imaginario modernista. Bern: Peter Lang,
2005. 246 pp.

La doctora en Literatura Hispanoamericana, María José Bruña
Bragado, contribuye al campo de los estudios de poesía modernista y
de género con una excelente investigación histórica y crítica sobre la
figura y creación poética de la escritora uruguaya Delmira Agustini
(1886-1914). La lectura de Delmira Agustini: Dandismo, género
y reescritura del imaginario modernista revisará satisfactoriamente
muchas de las lecturas críticas hasta ahora realizadas sobre la poeta
incorporando a la vez nuevas e innovadoras herramientas analíticas.

Para estudiar y comprender la construcción del sujeto literario
femenino, como bien señala Bruña Bragado es necesario realizar
una investigación histórica que "permita documentar y situar en su
momento concreto no sólo los diálogos con la tradición, sino también
la gama de modelos femeninos de la época" (17). En su texto Bruña
Bragado invitará al lector a recorrer un análisis que partirá desde lo
histórico e irá hacia lo literario. Para ello reprochará el que la crítica
literaria solamente haya considerado a Agustini como un fetiche no
ocupándose por ello de su obra.

La primera parte del libro, "Contradicciones de la modernidad en
el Uruguay: Delmira Agustini y la 'sensibilidad' del Novecientos," sitúa
críticamente a la poeta en una estructura histórico-social. Incluye tam-
bién una biografía de Agustini pero no entra en suposiciones sobre su
muerte; simplemente sugiere al lector curioso de este debate la existencia
de algunas lecturas que estudian el tema. Considera importante el que
Agustini haya participado de la "Generación del Novecientos" junto a
conocidas personalidades como Carlos Vaz Ferreira, Horacio Quiroga,
Carlos Reyles, Julio Herrera Reissig, Ma. Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Flo-
rencio Sánchez y José Enrique Rodó. En esta sección Bruña Bragado
también sostiene que no se puede desvincular al género del contexto.
Sumada a la melancolía asociada al mal du siècle y siguiendo a Judith
Butler, comenta que Agustini posee una melancolía propia del género
"que muestra la dificultad para una mujer de alcanzar una identidad
artística y, al mismo tiempo, se conecta con estrategias de sentido
(poder), encaminadas a alcanzar un significado fuerte y un lugar en
el canon" (49). De esta forma Bruña Bragado afirma que si bien nada
diferencia a la poeta de sus contemporáneos en cuanto forma, léxico,

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 187

REVIEWS

referentes y contexto de crisis, aquello que la distingue es el uso que ella
hace de los mismos elementos mediados por la categoría del género.

La segunda parte del libro, "El dandismo como creación del/a
artista," logra positivamente aclarar el error común en el que muchos
críticos caen al considerar que solamente los hombres pueden ser
dandis. Bruña Bragado sostiene que todas aquellas características
que hacen al dandi (su postura, fachada, carácter rebelde, insolencia
e impertinencia de gestos) son también aquellas que definen el dan-
dismo en Delmira Agustini; particularmente en dos estadios, su faceta
como actriz y la creación de su imagen a través de la fotografía. Es
el dandismo femenino según Bruña Bragado el que provoca un des-
plazamiento de roles que luego se manifiesta conflictivamente en la
escritura. Opina que esta característica en Agustini es "actitud vital
disidente, como complemento de la subversión en el arte" (88). Com-
bina en este apartado un análisis fotográfico de Agustini así como de
su poesía. A partir de las fotografías encuentra el deseo compulsivo
de la poeta por representarse de forma polifacética.

La tercera parte del libro, "Luces y sombras de la 'estrella dormida',"
incluye un exhaustivo análisis de cada una de las obras de Agustini.
Comenta primero aquellos poemas publicados en diarios y revistas,
analiza El libro blanco (Frágil) publicado en 1907, luego Cantos de la
mañana de 1910, la recopilación y reedición hecha por la poeta en Los
cálices vacíos de 1913 así como el libro póstumo El rosario de Eros,
publicado en 1924, a diez años de su muerte. Bruña Bragado examina los
ardides desplegados por la poeta en pos de conseguir un lugar propio.

La conclusión reitera la importancia de un estudio que inserte
a Agustini en un contexto socio-político y que analice su obra de
manera abierta, a través de los mecanismos, situaciones y lógicas que
desencadenan sus símbolos y concepciones. Bruña Bragado cumple
con los objetivos trazados ya desde la Introducción, pues su libro
constituye un análisis que contempla "los desvíos, las variaciones, y
las asincronías" (221) de la poeta.

Delmira Agustini: Dandismo, género y reescritura del imaginario
modernista ofrece a los lectores una profunda investigación crítica que
posibilita nuevos horizontes de comprensión sobre la vida y obra de
Agustini. Esperamos que, tal como sugiere al final de su libro. Bruña
Bragado continúe esta labor con un estudio futuro que se ocupe tanto
de la recepción de la obra de Agustini como de la forma en que ésta
afectó a la poeta.

Carolina Sitnisky
University of California, Los Angeles

KRISTAL, EFRAÍN, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Latin
American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. 336pp.

The Latin American novel includes a wide corpus of texts written
in Spanish and Portuguese. Compiling the important contributions
and development of the Latin American novel genre is quite a chal-
lenge. The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel offers
"an overview of the novel's history and criticai analyses in several rep-
resentative works" (i) in many regions of Latin America, giving special
attention to Brazil, the Caribbean, the Andes and Central America.
This compilation in English is the first to offer the contributions to
the novel genre and the impact of these novéis' translations abroad.
Besides being a remarkable resource for students and teachers of the
Latin American novel, the Companion conveys an introduction to the
heterogeneity of Latin American literature in the various regions and
an introduction to gender and queer approaches to the novel. This
Companion offers a great overview of the Latin American panorama
beginning with the nineteenth century to the present. In addition, it
summarizes the cultural, historical, literary and sociopolitical chronol-
ogy of events that have impacted the novel from 1810 to 2004.

This 336-page compilation offers a collection of essays divided in
four parts, beginning with an extraordinary introduction by the editor,
Efraín Kristal. Kristal opens the Companion with a new approach to
defining Latin America as a term in the twenty-first century and how it
has impacted the approaches to Latin American Literature. It was not
until the twenty-first century that Latin American intellectuals have
accepted the Latin American label. Once the label was accepted, Latin
American scholars began capturing and recovering literary expressions
that define their heritage. Kristal explains how, in this compilation,
it was important to include the different approaches and novéis not
often discussed in traditional literary history, such as cultural and
racial studies, gender and queer studies and the development and
impact of the translations abroad.

Part I offers the traditional literary history of the novel's develop-
ments and landmark moments in the evolution of the Latin American
novel from the nineteenth century to the present. Donald L. Shaw's A
Companion to Modem Spanish American Fiction (2002) includes a
similar discussion of the four important turning points of the novel:
the nineteenth-century novel; the regionalist novel; the boom novel;

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 189

190 REVIEWS

and the post-boom novel. However, the Companion has more to offer
the student and teacher of the Latin American novel: a discussion of
the main historical events and changes of the novel and the main con-
tributions to the genre. Other literary history discussions include too
many examples of novéis without fully describing their importance.
On the other hand, the Companion chooses the novéis that caused
a change in the genre and describes the reason for their importance
using scholarly support.

Part II describes the "heterogeneity" of the Latin American novel
through the important problematizations of race and culture: the
African in Brazil, the Caribbean and Central America; and indigen-
ism in Brazil, the Andes and Central America. This section is divided
into four selections: "The Brazilian Novel," "The Caribbean Novel,"
"The Andean Novel" and "The Central American Novel" — not com-
mon in traditional literary history books, such as Shaw's. This section
also presents the non-Western and multicultural contributions to the
novel, literary production and current anthropological scholarship of
indigenous and African cultures in these four countries. For example,
in the chapter titled "The Brazilian Novel," Piers Armstrong discusses
how the five regions of Brazil portray the "miscegenation of Euro-
pean, indigenous, and African populations in five distinct regions"
(105): Northeast; Southeast; North; South; and the frontierlands of
Center-West. The chapter discusses the history of the novel in Brazil
beginning with the nineteenth-century novel A moreninha by Joaquim
Manuel de Macedo to Cidade de Deus by Paulo Lins (1958), which
inspired the film City of God in 2002.

Particularly important is the chapter on "The Caribbean Novel,"
due to its complete discussion of novéis and their politicai, social,
and economic context in each Caribbean country — not often dis-
cussed in traditional literary history books. William Luis discusses the
novel's trajectory in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Jamaica. Luis
describes this trajectory beginning with nineteenth-century novéis,
which describe the moment for development of a national conscious-
ness and unique historical circumstances unfolding in each country
up to the twentieth-century novel. The most influential novéis of the
nineteenth century in Cuba were Autobiografia (1835), Cecilia Valdês
(1839) and Sab (1841), ali which include questions of race and cul-
ture. At the same time, Ramón de Palma defines "ciboneyismo" with
Matanza y el Yumurí {1837). Antonio Zambrana's El negro Francisco
(1873), among others, continue the antislavery theme which persists

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 191

today. In the twentieth century, two themes persist in Cuba: the decay
of Cuban society and slavery. The two novelists that inaugurated the
twentieth century are Miguel dei Carrión and Carlos Loveira. How-
ever, the most important writers of Cuba are Alejo Carpentier, José
Lezama Lima and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. On the other hand,
during the nineteenth century, Puerto Rican literature emerges from
individuais and not movements. Furthermore, Luis recognizes Eugenio
María de Hosto's La peregrinación de Bayoán (1863) as one of the
earliest novéis, which discussed Bayoán's traveis, the Amerindian past
and the current colonialization process. However, Manuel Alonso's
El gíbaro (1882) is accepted as the first major work because of its
description and definition of Puerto Rican identity. Luis recognizes
Manuel Zeno Gandía 's acceptance of naturalism over Romanticism
as one of the major turning points in Puerto Rican literature, which
influenced later authors. In the twentieth century, Puerto Rican nov-
éis focused mostly on their relationship with the United States. The
most influenciai writers were Pedro Juan Soto, Luis Rafael Sánchez,
Edgardo Rodríguez and Rosario Ferré. On the other hand, the novel
of the Dominican Republic begins with Manuel de Jesús Galvan's
Enriquillo (1877), where it traces Dominican identity back to Spanish
rule. The novel in the Dominican Republic recognizes their heritage
back to the Amerindian past, not African. Other novéis however,
did not abandon the historical past and introduced the historical
novel, such as Francisco G. Billini's Engracia y Antoñita (1892). In
the twentieth century, novelists from the Dominican Republic were
inspired by three historical turning points: the U.S. occupation of the
country, the Trujillo Dictatorship, and the U.S. invasión of 1965. The
task of the twentieth century's novelists was to comment and question
the authority of the country. At the same time, novelists were also
writing in experimental techniques like "the boom" novelists, such
as Mareio Veloz Maggiolo. William Luis offers novéis that foUow a
similar technique as the Boom novelists in Caribbean novéis. Even in
the history of Latín American novéis in Spanish, such as Ángel Rama's
or John Brushwood's, the contribution of these important novelists to
the Caribbean and the Latín American novel is not included.

Part III includes a summary of gender and queer studies and a dis-
cussion of the way by which they have introduced a new approach to
reading the novel in Latín America. This section in particular díscusses
the novéis written by women and the novéis that describe "queer"
scenes and discussions — the taboos — throughout Latín America. Part FV

192 REVIEWS

includes six of the greatest contributions and turning points of the novel
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Machado de Asis's Dom
Casmurro (1899), Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, Clarice Lispector's The
Passion According to G.H., Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred
Yeas ofSolitude, Isabel AUende's The House ofSpirits and Mario Vargas
Llosas's War of the End of the World. It is important to note however,
that these essays offer a reading or understanding of the text for the
student of the Latin American novel; the scholar may need to refer to
the "Further Reading" section for a deeper understanding and criticism
of these novéis. For example, Claire Williams's '"The Passion According
to G.H. by Clarice Lispector" attempts to guide a basic reading of the
book, but fails to mention the author's importance in Brazil's feminist
thought. She does mention briefly a comment made by Hélène Cixous,
a leading feminist, but does not, until later in a footnote, elabórate more
on how^ Lispector was a leader of feminist writing in Brazil.

Finally, the "Epilogue" defines the position of the Latin American
novel in Europe and North America and how it has successfuUy entered
the American and British literary production and readership. Suzanne
Jill Levine notes that "the context that accounted for the literary revolu-
tion taking place in Latin America was impossible to appreciate, until
the late 1960s, in the United States and Britain where Latin American
local-color-type novéis w^ere the only kind being translated" (300). The
type of novéis being translated were Mariano Azuela's Los de abajo (The
Underdogs), Ricardo Güiraldes's Don Segundo Sombra (Don Segundo
Sombra: Shadows of the Pampas) and Eduardo Mallea's La bahía de
silencio (The Bay ofSilence). Even Jorge Luis Borges's short stories were
rejected because "Borges, who was a presence in the Argentine literary
world at the time, did not 'represent' the image of the Latin American
writer that would entice American publishers" (299). With the novéis
that were translated there were problems that Levine cites. For example,
by 1941, Harriet de Onís was considered the leading translator of Span-
ish and Portuguese; however, her translations were not accurate. Levine
States that "she was not terribly accurate and tended to normalize (with
flowery language) both the regionalisms of some novéis and the original
experimental language of others" (301). The beginning of transla-
tions of other writers such as Borges began with Borges's Formentor
Prize in 1961. Besides the translations, Levine also discusses the term
"Latin American" and how writers and critics challenged the notion.
However, this term was most important to the United States since "it

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 193

was a designation of a geopolitical área which was also convenient for
the business of teaching courses and selling books" (302). In addition,
it was the Cuban Revolution in 1959 that struck interest in the Latin
American novel in the United States. As a resuh, the Association of
American University Presses (AAUP) was given a grant of $225,000
to transíate Latin American novéis. It is important to note, however,
that no boom novel was translated through this translation program;
instead, they were published directly by pocket book publishers such as
Harper and Row, Farrar, Straus, Pantheon and Grove. Some of the lead-
ing translators were Gregory Rabassa, Helen Lane, Margaret Peden,
Alfred MacAdam, Hardie St. Martin, Edith Grossman and Gerald
Martin. By the 1970s, North American and European readers wanted
to read more of the magicai realist novéis produced in Latin America.
By the 1980s, the role of the translator changed with the new interest
of the Latino experience in English. Levine notes that "there is now a
large bilingual readership (the Hispanic majority is by far the largest in
the United States), which was not the case in 1970" (311).

The Companion of the Latin American Novel gives the student
and teacher of the Latin American novel a comprehensive discus-
sion of the novel, and the ruptures and changes that arose out of its
many turning points. Each selection also offers reading and criticai
approaches that propose a different interpretation, including the ques-
tions of race and cultural, gender and queer studies. This Companion
presents a literary history of the Latin American novel and how writ-
ers continue to warp new experimental approaches to discuss their
politicai, social, racial, cultural, gender and historical agendas. From
the "Introduction" of the Companion, Kristal clearly states that this
book includes an overview of the genre as well as analyses of six clas-
sic texts. The selected essays attempt to "offer several entryways into
the understanding and appreciation of the Latin American novel in
both the Spanish- and the Portuguese-speaking realms" (16). There-
fore, for historical and contextual knowledge, the Companion is an
asset. In addition, the Companion offers a five-page comprehensive
bibliography of suggested resources for those seeking further research.
Also, at the end of every section, there is a bibliography entitled "Fur-
ther Reading" which is helpful for those students and scholars of the
Latin American novel that seek further scholarship.

Felicitas Ibarra
University of California, Los Angeles

Mignolo's Idea of Latin America: Race, Place, and the
Pluriverse

MIGNOLO, WALTER D. The Idea of Latin America. Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2005. 198 pp.

In his recent book, The Idea of Latin America., Walter Mignolo offers
an unearthing or what he calis an "archeology" of the layered histories
and discourses which have coUuded in producing the "idea" of Latin
America. He is primarily intent on a systematic debunking of what he
sees as an undue confidence in the "ontology of continental divides"
which has historically created the illusion of Latin America as a real
entity rather than a constructed idea, an ontological mirage which has
superimposed its own self-serving, Europeanized and racialized image
of Latin America onto the continent. As an idea, Latin America is not
so much descriptive as it is prescriptive: the very categories it uses to
explain, describe, and circumscribe Latin America créate the conditions
iinder which we understand and imagine Latin American reality. But in
order for the idea of Latin America to carry the force that it does, that
prescriptive dimensión must be overlooked, discounted, or otherwise
"forgottén"; this is how the idea of Latin America becomes confused with
the reality of Latin America, what Mignolo understands as its ontology.

Mignolo offers an extensive treatment of America's invention —
rather than discovery — and the gradually hardening historical
distinction between the putatively Anglo-Saxon America, embodied
by the United States, and the other America, the Latin America.
Here there is also a progressively hardening racial difference which
subtends this geographical distinction as the idea of Latinity strays
from its associations with Europe toward its more recent groundings
in the New World and an unspoken understanding of Amerindian
racial mixing or indigenizatiom " 'Latin' America became darker and
darker in relation to the increasing discourse of White supremacy,"
which cast Latin America as "'Mestizo/a'; that is, darker skinned"
(Mignolo 90). The racial logic and politics driving the split between
the two Américas reflects the convergence of geo-politics and body-
politics central to Mignolo's analysis.

Although the term Latin America did not surface until the con-
tinent's independence movements of the nineteenth century, the idea

194 MESTER, YOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 195

of Latin America bears the weight of a much longer, often discounted
colonial history of racial violence, which includes religious persecu-
tion, slavery, and genocida. Even in its contemporary applications, the
"idea" still bears the painful and oppressive legacy of five centuries
of colonialism in the New World, a legacy from which modernity
has not yet been able to disentangle itself. As Mignolo argües con-
vincingly throughout the book, modernity, both in its contemporary
and historical moments, is inescapably conjoined to a history and
reality of what he terms "coloniality." Coloniality speaks not just to
overt colonial occupation but also to the overbearing West's ongoing
economic, politicai, and epistemological force throughout the world.
The term gathers the varied moments and locations of European
colonialism along with what are for Mignolo the merely superficially
distinguishable kinds of (economic) imperialism mostly attributed
to the US as the epicenter of late, global capitalism after World War
II. It also underscores the logics of racial división and subordination
which the cultures of colonialism and imperialism share with those of
modernity and global capitalism even in its contemporary moment. In
Mignolo's vernacular, this means not only that geo-politics continue
to be mapped onto body-politics, blending a politics of place — nation,
región, continent — with that of race, but that these are also the politics
which govern and ensure the skewed distribution of wealth, knowl-
edge, and power. According to Mignolo, Latin American countries'
"consistent descent in the world economy" following independence
coincides with the progressively more insistent designation of Latin
America as racially other, where "to be 'Latin' American was still to
be not White enough" (Mignolo 90). The rhetorical indigenizing of
Latin America following independence simply extended the colonialist
logic whereby Latin America was understood strictly in terms of the
raw materiais it could provide the West. As Mignolo understands it,
an indigenized Latin America connoted not only exploitable natural
resources but also exploitable labor for the West of the twentieth
century whose imperialism now speaks through the language of capi-
talism. Certainly the "idea" of Latin America has for the West a racial
charge to it, but more importantly for Mignolo it is a racial charge
produced and maintained by the manipulative Western oriented dis-
courses which overwrite any attempts by Latin America to represent
"itself" under its own terms and designs outside the West's commodi-
fying gaze. In other words, if the racial schema of Western discourse

196 REVIEWS

corresponds to contemporary flows of global capital and the uneven
relations of power and knowledge imposed by those flows, it leaves
little doubt that late capitalism is directly taking up the mantle from
colonialism, matching capitalism's economic hierarchies and divisions
with colonialism's racial ones.

The connections Mignolo draws here between race and the global
economy underscore the politicai significance of race beyond the
trumpeting of racial difference and the celebration of ethnic identity
that he finds often miss the point. For Mignolo, Latin America is
best understood simply as a wildly successful "politicai project,"
which inscribes the reality it claims to describe, precisely through its
manipulative association of race, place, and difference. And Mignolo
charts the progression of that politicai project from its incipient stages
in the cultures of European colonialist expansión into the Américas
starting in the late fifteenth century and extending into capitalism's
contemporary geography. He divides this project into three distinct
"nodes" of analysis, corresponding to the three chapters of the book.
While the use of node is meant to emphasize the achronological bent
of his analysis, that analysis can be nonetheless roughly divided into
three successive but overlapping phases detailed below.

The first chapter, "The Américas, Christian Expansión, and the
Modern/Colonial Foundation of Racism," explores the invention of
America by and for Europe. The main concern of the first chapter lies
in detailing an archealogy of the "idea" of America coming out of the
mechanisms of what he terms an occidentalist, universalizing Christian
cosmology: Eurocentrism, for short. Occidentalism here speaks to the
"epistemic location from where the world was classified and ranked,"
where so-called objective assessments of race, religión, and civilization
were mired in the European viewpoint from which they were writ-
ten and for whose interests they served. As Mignolo emphasizes, this
Eurocentric "locus of enunciation" was a deeply racialized perspective:
early European maps of the globe correlated discrete racial types with
each of the "four continents," inaugurating a "logic of continental
racialization."' On most (European) world maps even through the
seventeenth century, the racial types embodying each of the four con-
tinents were "usually represented by naked or semi-naked women"
(Mignolo 27). These indigenous women served as the literal embodi-
ment of their respective race and place, which in turn coincided with a
religious difference/otherness that was itself so thoroughly fused with

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 197

racial difference at the time. After ali, Europe was not only white, but
also Christian, and the rest of the world was cast as barbarian terri-
tory populated by the various races of barbarians, ali of whom were
judged inferior regardless of the extent to which they were understood
as "civilized." Of course, Europe itself had its own internai religious
differences, which were themselves supported by racial differences.

Mignolo devotes the second chapter to an exploration of the ways
in which Europe exported those differences to the New World, in the
process creating two distinct continents and two distinct races. This
part of the project really began taking shape in the independence move-
ments of the nineteenth century when former Portuguese and Spanish
colonies in the Américas looked to France as a politicai and cultural
model in order to distance themselves from their former colonial
attachments. As he tells it, Europe at this time in the nineteenth century
typically understood itself as composed of two races, the Germanics
and the Latins — a binary which reflects not just a racial división, but
also a religious one; at this time, culture and cultural difference were
really understood in terms of religious difference. This racial/religious
binary was in turn superimposed on the continents of the New World,
where North America was understood racially and culturally as Anglo-
Saxon and Protestant, while "Latin" America was understood as Latin
and Catholic. Of course, as Mignolo details, such a stark división
and totalizing basis for identity and difference "erased" the religious,
cultural, and racial heterogeneity of Indigenous populations, as well
as those of African or Asian descent, most of whom the term Latin
ill-reflected their reality, experience, or identity. The failure to account
for the heterogeneity of the New World reflects the abidingly Euro-
centric logic of "Latinity" — originally used in France in reference to
so-called Latin countries with colonial and/or imperial interests in the
Américas: Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France and in contradistinction
and opposition to the expansion-minded Anglo-Saxons, the United
States (Mignolo 58). Many of the newly independent nations in South
American and the Caribbean, looking to get away from the colonial
legacy of Spain and Portugal, looked to France as a politicai and cul-
tural model, embracing the oppositional "Latinity'V'Latinidad" that
colonialist France and its "Latin" European allies had taken up against
the imperializing United States threatening their interests. And so Latin
American nations themselves took on the term as a self-descriptive,
albeit an ill-fitting one. As Mignolo puts it, "'Latin' America is not so

REVI E ws

much a subcontinent as it is the politicai project of Creole-Mestizo/a
elites" (59). The mistake here was in the overlooking of European
colonialism as a part of this model. And so these nascent nations never
undertook any attempt to decolonize: "Coloniality is the underlying
matrix of colonial power that was maintained, in the US and in South
America and the Caribbean, after independence. The colonial matrix
of power remained in place; it only changed hands" (69). We can see
this coloniality at work in the ethnic exclusivity or homogenization
connoted by "Latin" in Latin America and Latinidad.

The problem with the idea of Latin America is two-fold. On
the one hand, it is reflected in the Eurocentric legacy of the term,
which poorly suits the racial and cultural heterogeneity of Latin
America. On the other hand, the racialized logic of global capitalism
renders Latin American heterogeneity a moot point as occidentalist
discourses merely impose their own racially and culturally homog-
enizing "descriptions" — i.e. inscriptions — of Latin America. The
question of how to contend with these occidentalist discourses is
the subject of the third and final chapter, which explores the way in
which the frightening monolith of Occidentalism has been taken on
and the accompanying "epistemic geo-/body-political shift" that has
enacted. Though he opens the chapter with a discussion of the ways
in which the (Euro/American) logic of global capital tends to focus
on the reduction of Latin America to a summation of its resources,
raw materiais and labor, Mignolo is primarily concerned here with
the movements to destabilize the Eurocentric idea of "Latinidad"
beyond this problem of Latin America's commodification. Specifically,
his focus is on Afro-Caribbean and Amerindian philosophies, cultural
discourses, and historical memories, ali of which are working to tear
the universalizing fabric of Latin America. But "isn't that puré and
simple essentialism?" Mignolo asks, to which he answers in the nega-
tive: "I am endorsing, joining, promoting, and supporting the project
of the Caribbean Philosophical Association or the Afro-Ecuadorian
social movement not because I am Black but because I see it as a proj-
ect of liberation and epistemic decolonization" (Mignolo 114). For
Mignolo, race is to be understood in strictly politicai terms; but this
touches on the trickiest aspect of his study: the nature of the relation-
ship between the politicai and the ontological. The very point of the
book lies in the idea that what was essentially a politicai project — the
idea of Latin America — seemed to take on an ontological consistency.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 199

But even if we can establish through some empirical means that the
"real" Latin America does not correspond to the idea of it propagated
by the West, that does not change the reaHty that the West's idea of
Latin America was so wildly successful because of, rather than despite,
the fact that it was a pohtical project masking itself as an ontological
reahty. Indeed, pointing out the idea of Latin America as an ontologi-
cal fallacy does nothing to defuse its representational power — a fact
corroborated by Mignolo's focus on politicai (rather than sociological
or empirical) projects designed to combat the idea of Latin America.
To bring us back to Mignolo's question as to whether his endorse-
ment of say Afro-Caribbean politicai projects were "puré and simple
essentialism," the answer must be "yes, in practice," simply because
they cali on and inhabit the essentialist, racialized categories set by
occidentalist discourse. After ali, if we are to understand essentialism
as confusing the ontological with the politicai, is that in practice any
different from confusing the politicai with the ontological, which
Mignolo attributes to the idea of Latin America? Certainly Mignolo
is at pains to demónstrate that the politicai projects he espouses are
merely strategic and thus anti-essentialist; but for as much as they
question the content and reductive make-up of racial categories, they
nonetheless leave the categories in place. Thus it is not clear how
that will prevent an occidentalist/capitalist, essentialist co-optation of
those projects as they reinforce the racial and racializing categories
of modernity and coloniality. The more pressing problem seems to be
occidentalism's power of representation itself, its power to overwrite
any and ali politicai projects. What do we do about that?

Christopher Shaw
JJniversity of California, Los Angeles

Note

1. As the book duly chronicles, Christianiry itself already laid the
groundwork for modern-day racial divisions through the Bible's treatment of
Noah's three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham. Mignolo cites an early — from
the ninth century — Christian map consisting simply of a circle divided into
three sections corresponding to the positioning of the three biblical brothers
in Europe, Africa, and Asia, respectively. This model was revised with the
"discovery" of the Américas, which not only necessitated an acknowledgement
of the existence of another continent but also of another race.

o equilibrista de (in)certezas'

OTTONI, PAULO. Tradução Manifesta: double bind e aconteci-
mento. Campinas, SP: Editora da UNICAMP, 2005. 198 pp.

Tradução Manifesta: double bind e acontecimento é o mais recente
livro de Paulo Ottoni. Professor titular do Instituto de Estudos da Lin-
guagem (lEL) da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP),
Ottoni, além de atuar nas áreas de teoria, prática e ensino de tradução,
também coordena o grupo de pesquisa Traduzir Derrida — Políticas e
Desconstruções. Tradução Manifesta: double bind e acontecimento
apresenta pressupostos que permitem afirmar que Ottoni filia-se à
perspectiva pós-estruturalista. O compromisso do autor advém da
urgência de refletir sobre a tradução e seus desdobramentos (teoria,
prática), sob uma nova visada. Como os pensadores que aderem à
proposta pós-estruturalista, Ottoni é severo ao manifestar sua crítica à
postura estritamente estruturalista e descritiva da ciência lingüística.

Este livro divide-se em duas partes. Na primeira, encontramos dez
artigos sobre tradução que foram escritos em diferentes momentos do
percurso académico do autor. Os quatro primeiros artigos resultam
de conferências ministradas por Ottoni na Alemanha, no Institut fíir
Übersezen und Dolmetchen da Universidade de Heidelberg, entre
janeiro de 1996 e fevereiro de 1997. Estes escritos introdutórios ques-
tionam os pressupostos da lingüística tradicional e assinalam a relação
conflituosa que ela estabelece com a tradução, além de apontarem
para a necessidade de considerar a multiplicidade de línguas envol-
vidas no processo tradutório. Os quinto e sexto artigos são inéditos
e encaram a tradução sob a ótica da psicanálise. O sétimo texto é o
mais antigo e, juntamente com o oitavo, foi escrito para integrar esta
coletânea. Neles Ottoni ressalta o papel corrosivo que as teorias da
tradução de base lingüística têm na formação dos alunos. Os dois últi-
mos artigos, que encerram a primeira parte do livro, tratam do papel
dos tradutores da escritura de Derrida. Foram reescritos, após terem
sido apresentados como comunicações, em congressos no Canadá e
no Japão, em 1999.

A segunda parte desta coletânea consiste na apresentação e na
tradução de um texto de Derrida, "Eidelidade a mais de um — merecer
herdar onde a genealogia falta," realizada por Ottoni. Trata-se da
reunião dos comentários finais, acrescido das intervenções de Derrida

200 MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006)

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 201

em oito comunicações realizadas no Encontro de Rabat, Marrocos,
em junho de 1996. Como adverte Ottoni em nota introdutória de Tra-
dução Manifesta, os textos da primeira parte não impõem uma ordem
de leitura. Eles foram concebidos como "um só texto dividido em dez
partes" (11). Nesse sentido, costurados por uma mesma concepção
de tradução, é possível que se parta, sem prejuízo para a leitura, de
qualquer um deles. Todos os textos conduzem a uma discussão apro-
fundada sobre as relações entre tradução e desconstrução.

Os artigos ganham corpo a partir de uma perspectiva inovadora
que se distancia bastante da ideia normativa sobre tradução e, por-
tanto, dos pressupostos da abordagem lingüística. Esta abordagem
tradicional minimiza a participação do tradutor na transformação e
produção de significados e concebe a tradução como forma de trans-
porte de sentidos estáveis entre as línguas de partida e de chegada.
A proposta desconstrutivista, ao incorporar os jogos de sentido na
própria tradução, encara o tradutor como um produtor ativo de sig-
nificados, deflagrador das línguas envolvidas na tradução. A tradução
concebida sob o viés da desconstrução é um acontecimento que, além
de promover uma reflexão sobre as línguas, desestabiliza as bases nas
quais se assentam as teorias tradicionais da tradução. Estabelece-se,
dessa forma, o double bind que intitula o livro e que está associado
à concepção de tradução como acontecimento. O double bind é uma
maneira de desmontar as dicotomias que sustentam as teorias tradi-
cionais da tradução. Se o acontecimento aponta para "a possibilidade
de conceber a tradução fora de qualquer aprisionamento teórico," o
double bind é o imperativo categórico que reflete o paradoxo cons-
titutivo do processo de tradução (15). Em outras palavras, o double
bind demarca a impossibilidade e, ao mesmo tempo, a necessidade da
tradução. Este paradoxo sustenta o processo de leitura e de tradução
promovidos pela desconstrução. A difícil tarefa (Aufgabe)- do tradu-
tor/leitor é aprender a "sofrer e suportar" o double bind ciente de que,
sem ele, não há leitura, tampouco tradução (12).

Nos dois primeiros textos, "O papel da lingüística e a relação teo-
ria e prática no ensino da tradução" e "Compreensão e interpretação
no ato de traduzir: reflexões sobre o enunciado e a significação" pro-
blematizam-se os pressupostos teóricos das abordagens lingüísticas da
linguagem. Partindo de Jakobson e de Mounin, passando por Saussure
e Bakhtin, Haroldo de Campos e Walter Benjamin, entre outros, mas
sempre iluminado por Derrida, Ottoni esclarece e exemplifica certos

202 REVIEWS

conflitos, como as dicotomias teoria-prática, sujeito-objeto que ainda
permeiam o ensino da tradução no Brasil. Uma de suas importantes
conclusões é que a "lingüística não dá conta da tradução enquanto um
acontecimento que emerge do funcionamento da linguagem" (23). Em
outras palavras, a lingüística, nas sendas abertas por Saussure, ao se
constituir como uma ciência positiva, com bases logocêntricas, funda-
menta-se na manutenção das dicotomias sujeito-objeto, teoria-prática.
Na opinião de Ottoni, a lingüística tradicional só faz "domesticar,"
"dominar" e "aprisionar" o fenómeno da tradução (23). Nesse sen-
tido, Mounin e Jakobson, ao atentarem para a "possibilidade da
impossibilidade" da tradução, subordinaram a tradução à lingüística
(23). Da perspectiva da lingüística tradicional, a tradução configura-
se, na opinião de Ottoni, como uma impossibilidade teórica e prática.
No âmbito brasileiro, Ottoni e Arrojo foram pioneiros em pensar a
tradução sob a perspectiva pós-estruturalista. Ambos são unânimes
em afirmar que é preciso escapar dos pressupostos da lingüística tra-
dicional, ou como diz Arrojo, do "preconceito da inferioridade ou da
impossibilidade" da tradução (25-28).

Os dois textos seguintes, "Tradução recíproca e double bind:
transbordamento e multiplicidade de línguas" e "A tradução é desde
sempre resistência: reflexões sobre teoria e história da tradução" con-
sistem na discussão sobre o papel dos tradutores quando confrontados
com a multiplicidade de línguas mobilizadas pela tradução. O tradu-
tor, na perspectiva da desconstrução, é concebido como sujeito ativo
que interfere nas línguas envolvidas na tradução, transformando-as
e produzindo novos significados. Ele é um verdadeiro produtor de
"impurezas" que faz transbordar significados de uma língua para
outra (51). Na abordagem estrutural e formal tenta-se evitar, ao
máximo, este transbordamento, em favor de uma suposta fidelidade,
já que a tradução é encarada como perda, traição. A essa altura é pre-
ciso introduzir a concepção de tradução de um dos mais importantes
tradutores literários brasileiros: Haroldo de Campos. Suas traduções,
embora possam ser aproximadas do criticism by translation de Ezra
Pound, não deixam de iluminar os caminhos de Ottoni e de Lages que,
além de tradutora, é docente na Universidade Federal Fluminense.
Crítico mordaz das traduções na linha da tradição das belles infideles,
que elegem textos onde a função semântica é preponderante. Campos
parte de textos considerados (por aquela tradição) "menos passíveis
de serem traduzidos" (qtd. in Seligmann-Silva 198). Nesse sentido.

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 203

tomo Walter Benjamin, Campos aposta que os textos semanticamente
menos densos servem melhor à tradução. Para ele, a tradução deve ser
encarada como uma missão "luciferina" que inverte a tarefa do tradu-
tor, transformando o original na tradução de sua tradução (179).

O conceito de fidelidade deve ser encarado, na abordagem des-
construtivista, sob a perspectiva filosófica e ideológica e fora do
âmbito estritamente lingüístico. A fidelidade, se pode ser atingida, será
alcançada na dimensão da própria leitura e interpretação. A tradução,
entendida como recriação, é experimentada quando Ottoni se propõe
a traduzir, no quarto texto da primeira parte, alguns "excertos-pro-
blema," como o trecho final de Grande Sertão: Veredas de Guimarães
Rosa. No evidenciar constante da existência de línguas dentro da
língua, a tradução (re)criadora promove o cruzamento e a articula-
ção entre as línguas, "contaminando-as" e sendo "contaminada por
elas" (63). Ottoni toma Paul De Man como ponto de partida, porém
inova ao propor uma "teoria-resistência" da tradução encarada como
double bind (74). Esta "teoria-resistência," ao manter as semelhanças
e as diferenças das línguas envolvidas na tradução, impossibilitaria
qualquer tentativa de apagamento das mesmas. Além de apontar para
um "resto" de língua que não se deixa traduzir, o que nos leva aos
artigos seguintes (90).

"Tradução: reflexões sobre desconstrução e psicanálise" e "Tra-
dução e inconsciente: a resistência à análise como mecanismo de
imposição da língua," abordam a desconstrução à luz da psicanálise.
Nos últimos 30 anos, as discussões sobre tradução a partir da descons-
trução e da psicanálise, têm sido frequentes, pois ambas encaram a
tradução de modo diverso da teoria lingüística tradicional. A descons-
trução, ao examinar ou analisar Freud sob novas lentes, questiona a
tradução a partir dos textos do "pai da psicanálise." A desconstrução
possibilita que a tradução e a psicanálise, ao procurarem desvendar
as semelhanças e as diferenças entre as línguas, se encontrem em suas
"estranhezas" (89). A tradução, encarada como escritura a partir de
Derrida, permite pensar a "assimetria," o "excesso" e o "resto" de
significação que há nas línguas. O "resto," impureza essencial das
línguas, é o que "não se deixa traduzir" (90). Este "resto," o "excesso
de significação" que constitui as línguas, torna a tradução um aconte-
cimento (91). O "resto," resíduo intraduzível, pode ser lido no registro
da melancolia ou da perda. Steiner, em seu amplo e pioneiro estudo
sobre a tradução, identifica a melancolia como efeito histórico da

204 REVIEWS

impossibilidade vivida pelo tradutor de fazer com que seu texto cor-
responda fielmente ao original (269). Lages, ao retomar Steiner para
se distanciar dele, propõe uma alternativa, digamos, mais festiva e
menos traumática para a tradução. Ao tentar fugir da impossibilidade
desconstrutivista e da ideia de perda, Lages retoma os escritos dos
primeiros românticos de lena, deles resgatando o conceito-chave de
traduzibilidade. Nesse sentido, via Benjamin, sua proposta tradutória
toma o rumo da anulação de Babel, multiplicadora de línguas. Dife-
rindo da proposta desconstrutivista que, a priori, evidencia as línguas
envolvidas na tradução, Lages talvez caminhe em busca da utópica e
absoluta "língua pura" benjaminiana, conciliadora de todas as outras
(9-21). Nesse sentido, sua proposta não deixa de ser um contraponto
interessante à abordagem desconstrutivista, adotada por Ottoni.

Retomando Ottoni, no sétimo artigo cujo título é "Teoria polifó-
nica, escritura e tradução: algumas considerações," a teoria polifónica
da enunciação de Oswald Ducrot é posta em xeque. Através da com-
paração de um enunciado em inglês, alemão, francês e português,
retirado da peça Édipo Rei de Sófocles, constata-se a instabilidade
dos significados. Ao responder se a teoria polifónica da enunciação
funcionaria da mesma forma em todas as línguas, Ottoni conclui que
esta teoria não dá conta de explicar o funcionamento da tradução e do
jogo infinito da disseminação de significados. Apesar do que desejaria
Ducrot, o jogo de vozes não garante um sentido estável e controlado.
Se a teoria polifónica funcionasse de maneira idêntica em, pelo menos,
uma língua, ainda assim não poderíamos afirmar a existência de várias
línguas numa mesma língua ou como diz Ottoni, que "uma língua é
desde sempre línguas" (115).

No oitavo texto, "A formação do tradutor científico e técnico:
necessária e impossível," Ottoni demonstra como as teorias da tradu-
ção de base lingüística dificultam o envolvimento dos aprendizes com
a língua, reforçando dicotomias discutíveis que, no limite, incapaci-
tariam os futuros tradutores a conviver com o double bind. Os dois
últimos artigos, "A tradução da différance: dupla tradução e double
bind" e "Tradução manifesta e double bind: a escritura de Jacques
Derrida e suas traduções" abordam, particularmente, os que estão
nos bastidores, nesse caso os tradutores de Derrida. A discussão gira
em torno da polémica tradução do neografismo différance suscitada
através de prefácios, notas e posfácios escritos por seus tradutores.
Ottoni considera esta polémica, não sem certa perspicácia, "uma das

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 205

mais fortes encenações do próprio jogo da différance" (14). A impor-
tante relação entre as línguas francesa e inglesa para a desconstrução
não deixa de ser enfatizada, bem como a participação decisiva dos
tradutores de Derrida para o inglês.

Na segunda parte da coletánea encontramos a tradução, realizada
por Ottoni, do texto de Derrida: "Fidelidade a mais de um — merecer
herdar onde a genealogia falta." O autor autorizou a forma como o
texto está organizado e a introdução de sua tradução nesta coletánea.
Ottoni realizou seu pós-doutorado na École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales, em Paris, tendo, naquela ocasião, a oportunidade de
participar dos seminários de Derrida. O fato de Ottoni tê-lo conhecido
facilitou o intercâmbio de informações necessárias para a transcrição
das fitas.

Tradução Manifesta: double bind e acontecimento revela os impas-
ses do paradoxo que deve ser enfrentado e suportado pelos tradutores
que adotam uma perspectiva desconstrutivista. Como diz Seligmann-
Silva, não há tradução perfeita, já que ela capta sempre um momento
de reflexão, devendo, portanto, ser encarada como "essai" (187). Em
meio a todos os desvios e diante do double bind, aposta necessária e
impossível, o tradutor torna-se um (in)certo equilibrista. Mas é fora
das amarras das teorias totalitárias que "eternizam um saber absoluto"
sobre a linguagem que a tradução, "lá onde ela é um acontecimento
considerável do pensamento, tem lugar de ter lugar" (15).

Débora Racy Soares
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

Notas

1. Agradeço aos editores pelas generosas sugestões.

2. A dificuldade da tarefa do tradutor inscreve-se na própria palavra
Aufgabe que aponta, ao mesmo tempo, para a tarefa [Aufgabe] e para a
renúncia ou abandono {Aufgeben) da tradução.

Trabalhos Citados

Arrojo, Rosemary. Oficina de tradução: a teoria na prática. São Paulo: Ática,
1986.

206 REVIEWS

Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 4. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972.

9-21.
Campos, H. "Post-scriptum: transluciferação mefistofáustica." Deus e o

Diabo no Fausto de Goethe. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1981. 179-209.
Seligmann-Silva, Márcio. O local da diferença: ensaios sobre memória, arte,

literatura e tradução. São Paulo: 34, 2005.
Steiner, George. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. New

York: Oxford UP, 1976.

Contributors

Jasmina Arsova is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Spanish
and Portuguese at UCLA, with a concentration in Women's Studies.
Her research interests include: Gender and Cultural Studies, Poetry,
Art and Literature, Film, Self in Literature, Criticai Theory, War and
Trauma Studies, Testimonial Literature and Transatlantic Studies. Her
dissertation explores the intersections of the poetic self-portraiture by
Gloria Fuertes and writing under oppression.

Vanina Eisenhart is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish
and Portuguese at UCLA. She focuses on twentieth-century Brazil-
ian literature, with a concentration in popular culture, gender, and
space. Her latest research includes a comparative study between Rio
de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Paris in early twentieth-century, as well
as Literatura de Cordel.

Guillermo Grjcci is Professor of Literature in the Department of Brazil-
ian Literature at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. He is
the author of Viajantes do maravilhoso: o Novo Mundo (Compañía
das Letras, 1992), Sem fé, lei ou rei: Brasil 1500-1532 (Rocco, 1993),
Fiera de amor (Vintén, 1995), and A vida cultural do automóvel
(Civilização Brasileira, 2004). He also coordinated the criticai edition
of Gilberto Freyre's Casa-grande & senzala (Paris: Archives, 2002),

Sarah Harris is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese at UCLA, where her dissertation will focus on the symptoms
of emotional trauma in narrative works of Spain's transition to democ-
racy. Harris received her B.A. in Spanish and International Studies from
Yale University and her M.A. in Spanish from UCLA. Her research
interests include twentieth- and twenty-first century peninsular fiction,
memory and history, trauma, testimony, remembering and forgetting,
autobiography and memoir, and gender and identity studies.

Felícitas Ibarra received her M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Litera-
tures from the University of California, Berkeley and is a doctoral
student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA. Her

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 207

208 CONTRIBUTORS

research interests include Hispanic folklore, Mexican and Chicano Lit-
eratura, and nineteenth-century and contemporary Spanish-American
narrative.

Leah Kemp is in her second year of doctoral studies at UCLA, where she
focuses on contemporary literature and film of the Southern Cone.

Carolyn Kendrick-Alcántara received her B.A. and M.A. at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently finishing her disser-
tation at UCLA on the Latin American Gothic, with a heavy emphasis
on contemporary Brazilian literature. She has published numerous
arricies on a variety of topics.

Alrick C. Knight, Jr. is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and
Literatures at Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches Spanish
literature and language. His primary field of research is nineteenth-
and early twentieth-century Peninsular literature, with an emphasis
on philosophical approaches. He is currently working on a book
manuscript that situates the so-called Generation of '98 within the
larger discourse of cultural studies. He received his Ph.D. from the
University of Minnesota in 2006.

Chak Han Laura Lee received an M.A. in Hispanic Languages and
Literatures from UCLA, where she is currently a doctoral student in
the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She specializes in Golden
Age literature and culture.

Allison a. Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese at UCLA, with an emphasis on Golden Age literature.
She is currently writing her dissertation on the myth of don Rodrigo
and its role in the formation of the Spanish identity and national
consciousness. She received her M.A. in Hispanic Languages and Lit-
eratures from Columbia University. Her research interests include the
role of collective memory and trauma in Peninsular literature as well
as twentieth-century Latin American literature.

Haley O'Neil is a doctoral student at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. Haley received her B.A. from Skidmore CoUege in
Spanish and Anthropology and her M.A. in Spanish from UCSB. Her

MESTER, VOL. XXXV (2006) 209

research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Peninsular
literature as well as performance and gender studies.

A. Carlos Quícoli is Professor of Portuguese and Romance Linguistics
at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA. He specializes
in Portuguese and Romance linguistics, and theory of syntax. His most
recent publications include Aspects of Romance Linguistics (1996,
co-edited with C. Parodi, M. Saltarelli and M. Zubizarreta) a chapter
entitled "Inflection and Parametric Variation: Portuguese vs. Span-
ish," in Current Issues in Comparative Grammar (1996), and a joint
chapter with C. Parodi entitled "On Agreement and Case", included
in Grammatical Analyses in Basque and Romance Linguistics (1999).
He is currently working on agreement and anaphoric relations under
Phase Theory.

Débora Racy Soares is a Ph.D. student at the Universidade Estadual
de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her primary field of research is
Brazilian literature, especially the poets from the 70s and the so-called
"marginal generation." She is currently working on her dissertation,
which situates Cacaso's poetries within the larger discourse of sociol-
ogy and philosophy.

Inés Sahagún-Bahena is a doctoral candidate in the department of
Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Illinois,
Chicago. Her emphasis is on Latin American literature and Women's
Studies. She is currently writing her dissertation on women's identity
as shaped through inhabiting the myriad spaces of México City in
Mexican women's novéis, 1 980-1 990s. She has presented academic
papers on gendered power struggles in domestic and public spaces in
contemporary women's novéis. Her research interests are women's
writing and gender issues and theory.

Maribel San Juan is a doctoral student in Spanish-American litera-
ture at Florida International University in the Department of Modern
Languages. Her research focuses on Spanish-American literature
and includes mid-twentienth century Brazilian literature. In her
dissertation she conducts a comparative analysis of the sung poetry
from the artistic and cultural movements which emerged during the
60s and 70s in Cuba and Brazil.

210 CONTRIBUTORS

Christopher Shaw is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Compara-
tive Literature at UCLA. He is currently working on his dissertation,
Literary Modernism and the "Extended" Caribbean: Turning the
Creóle Inside-Out.

Carolina Sitnisky is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish
and Portuguese at UCLA. She holds an M.A. in Hispanic Languages
and Literatures from UCLA and a B.A. in Literature from Universi-
dad de Buenos Aires. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and
include twentieth-century Literary and Cinematic Representations of
Latin America. She speciahzes in Andean hterature and cinema.

MESTER

XXXVl

Call for Papers

Mester, the yearly gradúate student academic joumal of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at
UCLA, invites academic articles for its Special Issue (2007) devoted to:

MEMORY AND HISTORY: REMEMBERING,
EORGETTING AND EORGIVING

We welcome ali submissions that address questions or ideas related but not limited to the following
concepts in language, literature and visual expressions:

Amnesia, Melancholia, Nostalgia, Survival, Repression, Nairatives of Commemoration, Authorities,

Temporalities and Places, Cultural Memory and the 'Other,' Language Contact, Diglossia, Historical

Linguistics, Individual and National Policies

Mester publishes scholarly articles. interviews, and book reviews in the fields of Spanish, Portuguese, Spanish-
Anierican, Brazilian. Chicano/a, and Latino/a literatures and linguistics. Afo/f/also welcomes interdisciplinar)'
dialogues with fields such as. Comparative Literature. Criticai Theor\-. Gender Studies and Cultural Studies.
Articles may be written in Spanish, Portuguese, or English. Publication decisions are based solely on the
qualit)' of manuscripts, which undergo triple-blind review.

Mester is dedicated to pubhshing work that demónstrales a high levei of scholarship. Since 1970, vve have
built a reputation as one of the best student-run joumals in North America, publishing articles by estabhshed
scholars alongside the best work of gradúate students. The joumal is indexed in the MLA International
Bibliography of Books and .4rticles under Modem Languages and Literatures.

To be considered for publication, manuscripts should follow closely these guideUnes:

♦ Have no fewer than 15 pages (3750 words) and no more than 25 double-spaced pages (8000 vvords),
including endnotes and Works Cited (the bibliography should start on a new page)

*t* Use Times New Roman font, size 12 point and number ali pages. including the bibliography.

♦♦♦ Must follow the conventions of the most current edition of the MLA Style Manual*

♦!♦ Please do not write your name on the manuscripts but include it in your cover letter, along with: the tide of

your article, your institutional affiliation, e-mail, work and/or home address.
♦♦♦ Reviews for works published within the past year are accepted for the following categories: academic books,

linguistics, film and fiction. Reviews should be between 500 and 1 ,200 words in length. Publishers and

authors are welcome to submit books for possible selection.
♦J* Please send complete submissions electronically (via e-mail) and only use Microsoft Word 95 or higher.
♦♦• Submissions that are being considered by another joumal or any other publisher are not accepted.

The deadline is January 15th, 2007, but early submissions are encouraged.

Please forward ali required materiais or questions to:

mester@ucla.edu

Attn: Jasmina Arsova, Editor-in-Chief

* Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing. 2nd ed. New York: The Modem Language Association of .America, 1 998.

; >

MESTER

XXXVI

Convocatória 2007

Mester, a revista de investigação editada pelos alunos de pós-graduação do Departamento de Espanliol e
Português da Universidade de California, Los Angeles, solicita trabalhos para o próximo volume especial (2007):

MEMÓRIA E HISTÓRIA:
LEMBRAR ESQUECER E PERDOAR

Aceitamos artigos que discorram estes temas ou assuntos relacionados a questões de língua,
literatura e expressões visuais, mas sem excluir outras possibilidades:

Amnésia, melancolia, nostalgia, sobrevivência, repressão, narrativa de comemoração, autoridades,

temporalidades e espaços, memória cultural e "Outro", línguas em contato, diglossia,

lingüística histórica, políticas individuais e nacionais

Mester publica artigos académicos, entrevistas e resenhas de livros nas áreas de literatura e Hngiiística espanholas,
portuguesa, hispano-americaiias. brasileiras e chicano/as e latino/as. Mester também aceita artigos que dialoguem no
interdisciplinar em literatura comparada, teoria e crítica literária, estudos de género e estudos culturais. Os artigos
podem estar escritos em espanhol, portugués ou inglês. As decisões finais de publicação se baseiam exclusivamente
na qualidade dos trabalhos recebidos; cada manuscrito é avaliado anonimamente por três leitores.

Mester publica textos que demonstram um alto nível académico, e desde 1970. tem a reputação de ser uma
das melhores revistas de investigação na América do Norte, e também de ter publicado artigos de renomados
académicos e de alunos de pós-graduação. Mester está incluído no MLA International Bibliography dentro da
categoria de Línguas e Literaturas Modernas.

Para serem publicados, os artigos devem cumprir com os seguintes requisitos:

♦♦♦ Ter não menos de 15 páginas em duplo espaço (3750 palavras) e não exceder as 25 páginas (8000 palavras),

incluindo as notas e a bibliografia (esta deverá começar numa nova página)
♦♦♦ Usar a letra Times Neiu Roman. tamanho 12. e solicita-se a enumeração de todas as páginas incluindo a

bibliografia.
♦♦♦ Devem seguir as normas da última edição do MLA StyU Manual*
♦♦♦ Favor de não incluir o seu nome no manuscrito, senão em uma folha separada que deverá conter o título do artigo,

a sua afihação académica, correio eletrônico, e endereço do trabalho ou residência.
♦♦♦ Aceitam-se as seguintes categorias para resenhas: textos críticos, de Ungüística, filme e ficção, publicados no último

ano. As resenhas devem ter um limite de 500 a 1200 palavras. Os editoriais e os autores estão convidados a

submeter li\Tos para a sua possível seleção.
♦♦♦ Favor desubmeter os seus artigos por correio eletrônico. Use somente Microsoft Word 95 ou uma versão mais

recente.

O prazo para submissão de trabalhos é até 15 de janeiro, 2007.

Emiar todos os materiais necessários a:

mester@ucla.edu

Jasmina Arsova, Mester. Diretora de redação

Departmento de Espanhol e Português, UCLA

* Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA StyU Manual and Guide to Sdwlúrly Publishing. 2nd ed. New York: The Modem Language Association of .\merica, 1998.

MESTER

XXXVI

Convocatoria 2007

Mester, la revista de investigación editada por los estudiantes graduados del Departamento de

Español y Portugués de la Universidad de California, Los Angeles, solicita artículos académicos para

el próximo volumen especial (2007) titulado:

MEMORIA E HISTORIA:
RECORDAR OLVIDAR Y PERDONAR

Aceptamos artículos que traten los siguientes temas o asuntos en relación a cuestiones de
lengua, literatura y expresiones visuales, sin excluir otras posibilidades:

Amnesia, Melancolía, Nostalgia, Supervivencia, Represión, Narrativas de Conmemoración, Autoridad/es,

Temporalidad/es y Espacio/s, Memoria Cultural y el "Otro", Lenguas en contacto, Diglosia,

Lingüística Histórica, Políticas Individuales y Nacionales

Mester publica artículos académicos, entrevistas y reseñas de libros en las áreas de literatura y lingüística españolas,
portuguesas, hispanoamericanas, brasileñas, chicano/as y latino/as. Mester también acepta artículos que dialoguen
en lo interdisciplinario en literatura comparada, teoría y crítica literaria, estudios de género y estudios culturales.
Los artículos pueden estar escritos en español, portugués o inglés. Las decisiones finales de publicación se basan
exclusivamente en la calidad de los trabajos recibidos: cada manuscrito es evaluado anónimamente por tres editores.

Mester publica textos que demuestran un alto nivel académico, y desde 1970. tiene reputación como una de las
mejores revistas de investigación en Norteamérica; habiendo publicado artículos de renombrados académicos y
de estudiantes graduados. Mester está incluido en el MLA International Bihliography bajo la categoría de Lenguas
y Literaturas Modernas.

Para ser publicados, los artíciüos deben cumplir con los siguientes requisitos:

♦ Poseer no menos de 15 páginas a doble espacio (3750 palabras) y no más de 25 páginas (8000 palabras),
incluyendo las notas y la bibliografía (ésta deberá comenzar en una nueva página).

♦♦* Usar letra Times New Rojnan de tamaño 12 y numerar todas las páginas incluyendo la bibliografía.

♦J* Seguir las normas de la última edición del MLA Style Manual. *

♦♦♦ Favor de no incluir su nombre en el manuscrito, sino en una hoja separada que además deberá contener el título

del artículo, su afiliación académica, correo electrónico, y dirección de trabajo o residencia.
*♦* Las siguientes categorías se aceptan para reseñas: textos críticos, de lingüística, cine y ficción, pubhcados en el

último año 2006. Las reseñas deben tener un límite entre 500 y 1200 palabras. Las editoriales y los autores están

invitados a enviar libros para su posible selección.
♦♦♦ Favor de enviar sus artículos por correo electrónico y usar Microsoft Word 95 o más reciente.

♦ No se aceptan las propuestas que estén siendo evaluadas por otras revistas académicas o editoriales.

La extensión del plazo para emiar trabajos es hasta el 15 de enero de 2007.

Enviar todos los materiales necesarios electrónicamente a:

mester@ucla.edu

Jasmina Arsova, Jefa de redacción

Mester^ Departamento de Español y Portugués, UCLA

♦ Gibaldi.Joseph. MLi Stylt Manual and Guidr lo Scholarly Publishing. 2nd ed. New York: The Modem Language Association of America, 1 998.

CONTENTS

VOLUME XXXV 2006

INTRODUCTION

ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS

Alrick C. Knight, Jr. Is Nothing Sacred? Spain Performs the Death of God

Maribel San Juan. Eros en una isla maldita: alegoria, poder y sexualidad en
Casa de juegos de Daína Chaviano

Leah Kemp. Mirando su entorno: el cine de Gonzalo Justiniano

Vanina Eisenhart. Primeira-Dama Tropical: A cidade e o corpo feminino na ficção
de Júlia Lopes de Almeida

Inés Sahagún-Bahena. The City as Labyrinth or Sanctuary in Mexican Women's
Contemporary Writing

Jasmina Arsova, Carolyn Kendrick-Alcántara, Allison Li. Una conversación con
Ana Rossetti

Haley O'Neil. The Dehumanization of the Feminine Figure in Bécquer's Rimas

Guillermo Giuccl Internacionalismo y nacionalismo: el aeroplano

Sarah Harris. Who Is in the Back Room?: The Intertextuality of Doií Quixote and
El cuarto de atrás

Jasmina Arsova, Chak Han Laura Lee, Carolina Sitnisky. An interview with
Jo Labanyi

A. Carlos Quícoli. The Portuguese Infinitive and the Nature of Linguistic
Explanation

REVIEWS

Bruña Bragado, María José. Delmira Agustini: Dandismo, género y reescritura del
imaginario modernista. (Carolina Sitnisky)

Kristal, Efraín. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel.
(Felicitas Ibarra)

MiGNOLO, Walter D. The Idea of Latin America. (Chris Shaw)

Ottoni, Paulo. Tradução Manifesta: dou ble bind e acontecimento.
(Débora Racy Soares)