Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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ROBERT C. SPIRES
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author and unifying thread for the disjointed collage.4 Andres in turn
is subject to the narrative presentation of an analytic non-character
narrator.5Yet final textual authority resides in the posited author or
the implicit creator of the strategies outlined.6 In the following
analysis I propose to demonstrate how the posited author manipulates this contrived fictional edifice to underscore, consciously or
otherwise, an equivocal attitude toward gender issues, an attitude that
in effect echoes certain discursive practices of the 1920s.7
The chapters dedicated to "Pueblo de adobes" (20-26) offer a
good example of how the text creator blends gender and genre issues
in El novelista. The dramatized narrator is Andr6s Castilla and the
novel he is writing, the intertext, appears in italics. In short, process
(the narration about Andr6s) and product (his supposed novel) are
seemingly juxtaposed, although the true process, that concerning the
posited author who is creating Andr6s and the non-character or
anonymous narrator, remains hidden.
A significant portion of Andr6s's "novel" involves three characters:
Clemente, an orphaned bachelor, Dona Prepedigna, an aging spinster intent on marrying Clemente, and the young and sensuous
4Rugg, Tasende, and Valis (1989) provide insightful analyses of the distinction
between the dramatized fictional author Andres Castilla and the real author Ram6n
G6mez de la Serna. Richmond also addresses this aspect and provides a useful
summar) of most of the stories of the novel.
I am trying to incorporate the terminology of the famous Brooks and Warren
paradigm, "Focus of Narration" (588-94). As we know, Genette (NarrativeDiscourse)
refined their model and labeled what they call a non-character analytic narrator as
extra-heterodiagetic (see chapter 5, "Voice,"212-62). Without trying to detract from
the value of Genette's contribution, I think the Brooks and Warren categories sound
lessjargonistic.
' For convenience sake the
posited author can be called G6mez de la Serna. But
when I speak of Gomez de la Serna or Salinas, I will not be referring to the biographical
person but to the image of the author created by his own text-hence the term posited
or implied author (Bakhtin and Booth, respectively). For example, Ramon Gomez de
la Serna had a friendship and love affair with Carmen de Burgos, both of which ended
when he allegedly seduced her daughter (Ugarte makes passing reference to this
apparent betrayal, 86). This episode in his life could be cited as evidence of his
negative attitude toward women, yet to leap to that conclusion strikes me as dangerous
without knowing all the details and motives involved in the alleged seduction (an
impossibility of course). In fact countering the misogynist implications of that scandal
are the words of praise Don Ramon directs to Carmen de Burgos in his autobiography.
7In her book Highfill discusses the "woman question" that was a favorite theme for
many of the tertuliashosted by Ortega y Gasset and frequented by G6mez de la Serna,
as well as the subject of several essays appearing in Revistade Occidenteduring the 1920s.
As Highfill documents in her chapter onJarnes, in spite of an attempt at a more liberal
attitude toward women, in the final analysis the discussions and the essays published in
the journal tend to reaffirm male superiority.
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Engracia, nicknamed the Giant. Engracia is marginalized from society not only because of her size, but because of her manifest
sensuality and above all because she intimidates men, indeed "tenfa
una misi6n como de encanijar al mas cumplido don Juan del pueblo,
estrujandole en sus garras, dandole una muerte peor que la muerte
en garrote vil" (164).8 Clemente is more captivated than intimidated
by this sensual outcast, and one evening pays her an amorous visit. At
this point the focus switches from the product to the process: "Erael
peniltimo capftulo, y en su desenlace daba a dos capitulos posibles, a
cual mas violentos pero contradictorios" (165). Andres faces the
choice of having Clemente kill Dona Prepedigna, or having the older
woman follow Clemente to the rendezvous and murder the impetuous youngsters while they are making love. He opts for the latter
solution, after which "respir6 el novelista liberado de una nueva
novela" (165).
This enigmatic story seems to point in opposite directions in
reference to gender issues. By opting to make Doiia Prepedigna the
assassin and victor, a woman earlier characterized by the very familiar
discursive phrase, "la causa reptilica de todo . . ." (148), the posited
author hiding behind Andres may convey the misogynist attitude that
women are indeed the devil incarnate. But by shifting the focus from
the narrated story to the act of narrating, and stating that Andres
decided the ending, the implication changes. The idea of an inexorable denouement is completely negated. Dona Prepedigna is not
necessarily some innate evil force, some symbol of corrupting womanhood that implacably punishes expressions of raw passion, but a
product of Andres's artistic instinct, and above all a pragmatic means
for him to draw to a speedy conclusion a long project. Certainly
Andres's decision suggests certain sexist attitudes, but because of the
textual strategy employed those attitudes can be attributed to him
El novelista was published originally in 1923. I am citing from the Espasa-Calpe
edition, and will note the page number of quotes in parentheses. G6mez de la Serna
was exceedingly prolific as a writer, and his works include autobiographies, biographies, fiction, drama, essays, and poetic word plays for which he coined the term
greguerias.Fidel L6pez Criado attributes 50 novels to Don Ramon, while Antonio del
Rey Briones lists 74. Apparently the eclectic and nonconventional nature of G6mez de
la Serna's writing, along with the clouded distinction between story and novel, explain
the discrepancy. His professional writing career began in 1910 and continued up to his
death in 1963. In addition to the articles by Rugg, Richmond, Tasende, and Valis
already mentioned, for representative studies of G6mez de la Serna and his fiction see:
Cam6n Aznar, Cardona, Gaspar G6mez de la Serna, Gonzalez-Gerth, Granjel, Lopez
Criado, Nigel, Rey Briones, Serrano, Soldevila-Durante, Spires, Umbral, and Valis
(1992, 1993).
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"1JudithButler seems to make a similar point when she says: "insofar as it operates at
the site of anatomy, the phallus re-produces the spectre of the penis only to enact its
vanishing as the very occasion of the phallus" (89). If I read her correctly here, Butler
is suggesting that the combination of anatomical and gender specificity of the penis
underscores its precarious role as phallus. It lacks the maneuverability to engage in a
power struggle with something as free from spatial and gender restraints as a
detachable eye.
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mas rapidos a sus pesquisas. Corpus ante eso se ensanaba . ." (239)."
As Corpus's fear and frustration increase over the enigma of Beatriz
and her disembodied body part, there is a switch of narrative voice
and the anonymous narrator announces that Andres the fictitious
author is going to perform an autopsy of this "mujer desdenosa"
(240). The dissection consists first of textualizing Beatriz, and then
placing her wayward eye under the microscope.
With Andres the dramatized author and Corpus the protagonist
serving as dual surgical instruments, Beatriz's frigid exterior is
dissected to reveal some recognizable traits: "Tenia envuelto en sigilos
atroces su engano de mujer. Su seducci6n era rec6ndita y encubierta"
(242). In addition to this very familiar discursive construct of the
seductress lurking behind a seemingly impenetrable exterior, the
mysterious visual organ serves to screen an equally common text:
En el ojo aquel habia desde luego esa desviaci6nnegra que se encuentra
tantoen los ojos de mujer,como antiguapropensi6nde los ojos reojadores
y desconfiadosde la selvaprimeracuyo recuerdogravitaen su perezay en
su haber pasado de inervacionesen inervacionesa traveslos siglos. (244)
The passage conjures forth the timeless norm of the defenseless
female. The narrator makes clear that this woman who initially
seemed so different is really just a generic reprint of a model that
emerged with the beginning of human life. The discursive familiarity
of the design in turn points to the logical conclusion that her
disquietingly nonconforming visual organ actually is only another
manifestation of the seductive essence of all women's eyes. The
hermeneutic process of familiarizing through textuality the initially
unfamiliar diminishes the character's enigmatic nature and leads to
the supposition that "la desviaci6n, pues, de su mirar podia ser muy
bien ese algo primitivo que recuerda el antecedente selvatico de la
mujer vestida de lentejuelas y seda" (244). This supposedly "new"
woman turns out to be nothing more than a very old construct
clothed in modern garb. His control of the discourse has allowed the
anonymous narrator, with Andres and Corpus serving as mediums, to
classify and thereby tame Beatriz. As far as they are concerned she is
1 Commenting on a scene from another vanguard novel, Rosa Chacel's Estaci6n.Ida
y vuelta (1930), Elizabeth Scarlett says of a description of young girls running with their
breasts bouncing up and down: "These disturbingly active and trapped breasts defy the
usual rendering of a passive female body for the male gaze, a convention that male
avant-garde writers were not concerned with subverting" (65). Apparently Scarlett had
not read El novelistawhen she made this statement.
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a mere iteration of the very first verbal and plastic renditions of the
female gender.
But textual deconstruction does not suffice. It becomes obvious
that the narrator and his accomplices feel they cannot impose closure
on Beatriz until they subject her eye to a physical postmortem.
Assuming the role of Deus ex machina,the narrator exercises his poetic
(and gender?) license by having her die, just as Andres deposed of
Engracia (and Clemente who dared to allow himself to be attracted to
this man hater) and the twins. Yet in this case the solution of one
riddle creates another. First confirming that the eye was glass, the
nurse then introduces the new enigma with her explanation that the
organ escaped from its constraint with such force that "it shattered
against its own image in the mirror" (250). This polysemic statement
serves to reopen the text at the very point where it seemed to be
closing. Among the options suggested, the shattered-mirror image
could point to a splintering of the pictorial tradition of women
viewing themselves as object.12But the image could also signal an end
to the illusion that representation faithfully reflects reality. It could
also indicate an assault on the image of woman as the speculum for
male identity. Or it could suggest that the construct of woman itself is
an illusion destined to be shattered by the very object it supposedly
reflects. Above all, this glass phallic symbol that shatters its own image
may say more than the author himself intended about the matter that
determines sexual roles."'
If initially G6mez de la Serna set out to represent a "new woman,"
the text suggests that he found himself enslaved by the convention
12This tradition, often labeled
Vanitas,refers to paintings of women, usually in the
nude, observing themselves in a mirror (see Berger). Pointon discusses this type of
pictorial representation as a discursive practice in which woman is trapped in a cycle of
perpetual imitation or "re-presentation outside which she has no existence" (29).
According to Pointon, the female figure staring into a mirror views the image
conceived by men and imposed on women. Considered within this pictorial tradition,
the shattering of the mirror in Gomez de la Serna's text can be interpreted as an
expression of female liberation from the prison house of male discursive practices.
13At best Ram6n G6mez de la Serna was ambivalent about women and their role in
society, and at times he can be accused of outright sexism. As an example of the latter,
he published a book of drawings and word plays exclusively about women's breasts
(Senos). On the other hand, in his essay "Lo cursi," a term that conveys very generally
the idea of bourgeois materialistic bad taste, the author criticizes early twentiethcentury Spanish society for, according to Valis, transforming this word into "a
feminized, domestic object of desire" (1992, 388). I believe that the narrative just
analyzed conveys Gomez de la Serna's vacillation between traditional male views of
women and a criticism and rejection of such attitudes, the same type of vacillation
expressed in the "woman question" debated in Revistade Occidenteat the time.
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of the three years that have passed since they last saw one another, in
effect time has stood still. If indeed she is totally physical matter for
him, then his statement about static time may apply to the very male
practice he has just demonstrated. Women in this sense are timeless
because their anatomy rather than their personality defines them.
Apparently Priscilla has not physically deteriorated in the three years,
and since the story ends at this point there is no way of knowing if she
has changed in other ways. But of course that is the point. The
protagonist relies on a vulgarized geometrical figure to reduce her to
a purely physical being, and never allows her to express herself
beyond that material level.17
Perhaps the most interesting treatment of gender issues occurs in
"Aurora de verdad." The story concerns Jorge, who awakens at 8:30
a.m. to discover that his lover Aurora, with whom he dreamed he
spent the night, is absent. He then discovers in his notebook that he
had made a date with Aurora for 10:00 a.m., and thus begins what
Peter Brooks seems to have in mind when he speaks of the "eroticization of time" (20). On his way to their rendezvous, Jorge semiotically
constructs his lover from glimpses of shadowy forms, the flash of a
parasol, the glint of the posture of young women on a streetcar, and
the caress of a sea breeze, all familiar gender-specific images. In
effect, Jorge begins what Peter Brooks defines as a semioticization of
the body and a somatization of the story (i-27). To complete the
representation all the protagonist needs is Aurora's presence to
supply the gaze, smile, and voice. Yet when he arrives at the art
museum where they are to meet he finds a whole collection of female
models, ancient and modern, that allows him to complete the mental
picture without her physical presence. When she finally comes up
behind him unperceived, and he turns to face her, he finds that this
Aurora in the flesh is not at all the one he expected, and "la figura
inventada y esperada se venia abajo de un golpe" (69).18
In this story no extradiegetic narrator or dramatized author
intrudes with his surgical hand to perform a clarifying autopsy of the
17In another story from the collection, "Mundo cerrado," the male protagonist is on
a train en route to visit an old girl friend, Alice Chesterfield. Yet as he remembers their
moments together the protagonist's thoughts are disturbed by reference to a Lady
Gurney, which turns out to be Alice's new married name. Torn by a desire to live in the
past of Alice Chesterfield yet unable to erase the present reality of Lady Gurney, his
dilemma is resolved when he arrives at his destination to find a letter informing him
that Alice has died. The timely death of the female character as a solution to the
protagonist's quandary echoes somewhat G6mez de la Serna's strategies.
18 For other critical
readings of this story see Feal, Gertz, Newman, Pino, and Spires.
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readers will want to distinguish between Jorge as the focalizer, and the
posited creator who stands apart from his creation. Jorge characterizes
himself as a person unable to transcend discursive practices and
therefore a slave to past constructs, while implicitly the author recognizes his character's limitations and utilizes the text to signal the need
to accept and even encourage a play of differences. In his narrative,
G6mez de la Serna seems to concede the discursive force that strivesfor
order and familiarityand consequently he inserts an authorial voice to
effect artistic conformity, even though he undermines that authority in
the end. Salinas in his fiction, on the other hand, deflects the blame for
imitation onto Jorge. Yet there may be something contradictory in a
message of change and liberation conveyed by a style that celebrates a
conventional expression of femininity. To represent Aurora's essence
the text relies on gender-associated images: she is "fluida, preciosa"
(64), like an "imagen en el fondo del estanque" (63), like an
"ondulaci6n suave del Mediterrineo" (65), like elements "sueltos,
incoherentes" (65), and like "unablusilla azul y levisima que temblaba"
(65).19 One of the more concrete descriptive nouns, "el descote de
Aurora" (65), tends to reduce her to her sexual identity, a status
reinforced by the adjective "desaprovechada" (64). Although this
vocabulary is designed to convey Jorge's focalization, there is nothing
to counteract or correct his vision. For example, never is there an
opportunity in Visperadel gozo to look through the woman's eyes. In
short, this collection of stories, which Valis so aptly characterizes as
"one of the most libidinized texts to come out of the vanguard period"
(1993, 12), celebrates woman as iconic construct even as it pretends to
protest against that practice.
Visperadel gozo and El novelista continue to present women as
objects of desire rather than as desiring subjects. Aurora may strike
Jorge as "novisima,"but Salinas does not afford her the opportunity
to assert her new being.2" Her representation echoes what Peter
1'It seems to be more than coincidental that the meetings occur in the Turner Room
of the museum. Turner's paintings tend to fuse air, land, and water,just as in Jorge's
mental pictures of Aurora the fusion of these basic elements blur her image to the
point that it becomes insubstantial, fluid, one might argue prototypically feminine.
Also, she is wearing gray, the most characteristic color of Turner's paintings. Again, this
may represent more evidence thatJorge's supposed creations are really imitations of
discursive models from the past.
20Feal offers an alternative
reading for the ending: "The final Aurora-woman,
world-has been liberated from the self that thinks her, that turns her into an
extension of his mind" (95). Again, since Jorge is the sole focalizer, it is not clear to me
how she expresses her liberation from him, let alone from the posited author.
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