1. 6.

Timeless World ( The Chronotope )

The process of assimilating real historical time and space in literature has a complicated history, as does the articulation of actual historical persons in such a time and space. Isolated aspects of time and space, however those available in given historical stage of human development have been assimilated, and corresponding generic techniques have been devised for reflecting and artistically processing such appropriated aspects of reality. The name chronotope ( literally, time space ) was given to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature. This term expresses the inseparability of space and time ( time as the fourth dimension of space ). Bakhtin understands the chronotope as a formally constitutive category of literature; we will not deal with the chronotope in other areas of culture.1 In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becoming artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. The chronotope in literature has an intrinsic generic significance. It can even be said that it is precisely the chronotope that defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary category in the chronotope is time. 2 The chronotope as a formally constitutive category determines to a significant degree the image of man in literature as well. The image of man is always intrinsically chronotopic. Dealing with time in such various ways, Williams intended to create a timeless world in Camino Real, in a masterful attempt to annihilate characters connections to

1 2

Mikhail Bakhtin, Probleme de literatur i estetic, Ed. Univers, Bucuresti, 1982, p. 195 Mikhail Bakhtin , The Chronotope, apud Sean Matthews, Theories A Reader, Ed. Paralela 45, 2003, p. 215

history. Nonetheless, the spatial and temporal inferences are evident any port in South America in the 20th century. To a certain extent, the play seems to be the construction of another world. Consequently, we have to make use of what critics call suspension of disbelief regarding the locale: The plaza belongs to a tropical seaport that bears a confusing, but somehow harmonious, resemblance to such widely scattered ports as Tangiers, Havana, Vera Cruz, Casablanca, Shanghai, New Orleans.3 The variety of resemblances alludes to the idea that this specific location provides world wide features through characters that share archetypal traits. The outline of the plot takes the shape of Don Quixotes dream which is a pageant, a masque in which old meanings will be remembered and possibly new ones discovered ( Camino Real, 752 ) and depicts events which are to be found mostly in dystopias or in Kafkas narratives. Even from the beginning the cockatoos cry introduces us to a world in which characters costumes are generally modern but with vestigial touches of the period to which they were actually related. ( Camino Real, 753 ) Gutmans first line should set the temporal parameters, but it only confuses the audience: Its morning and after morning. Its afternoon, ha, ha; yet we are warned youve got to be realistic on the Camino Real. ( Camino Real, 755 ) However, the whole place seems to have different values, and the mercantile interests ( Jewels, pearls, rings, necklaces, bracelets, diamond ear-drops ) are rejected, as being futile for characters like Casanova ( Signora, all of these things are dreams ) ( Camino Real, 756 ), and looked up to by Gutman and his acolytes. Moreover, the place resembles more or less to No Mans Land and at times it prefigures a totalitarian regime in which questions are passed amongst them like something illicit and shameful, like counterfeit money or drugs or indecent postcards and where a man in the plaza dies like a pariah dog. ( Camino Real, 758 ) All these mean that human emotion is transfigured into the needs of Revolution which calls for good dreamers who remember their dreams. ( Camino Real, 761 ) Nevertheless, this realm seems to gather the different roads of various people. Consequently, there will be a gradual configuration of what one might call the
3

Tennessee Williams, Camino Real in Plays 1937-1955, Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., N Y, 2000, p. 749

chronotope of the road a camino imposed to a wide range of social strata, nationalities, ages, even from different epochs. The metaphor of life seen as a road is envisaged even in the title of the play. The dramatist intended the title to be a hybrid Spanish-American phrase to convey the ideal of a real, actual, road rather than a royal road. Jan Balakian states that like Dantes Inferno, Camino Real is a mythic and poetic allegory about characters who find themselves in the middle of the journeys of their lives where the straight way is lost 4 What are these creatures? Mendicants. Prostitutes. Thieves and petty vendors in a bazaar where the human heart is part of the bargain. ( Camino Real, 762 ) Williams captures his characters in that middle realm between life and death where everyone gathers at the end of their lifes journey. While they are already dead, they have not forgotten their lives, but the way back is barred. The people in my play are romantics confronted by very real situations as they come to the end of the road. It is a real road. ( Williams, New York Times, 1960 ) Moreover, in Camino Real, each character exemplifies the way in which time has betrayed them or that they have betrayed themselves. Quixote is an old desert rat; Byron has lost his integrity as a poet; Kilroy is a former boxing champion, who had to retire because of his failing heart; Casanova is an impoverished, seedy rake, and Gautier, a former prostitute, is a frightened and lonely woman. The decadents, the transients of the expensive tourist hotel are, like the romantics, terrified of time. But they are morally no better than their counterparts across the plaza; although they have more money, they have the same fears, viewing their existence as a series of way stations towards death. In short each has lost his honor. Kilroy, for instance, has to sacrifice his ruby-and-emeraldstudded belt with the word CHAMP in order to survive on the camino: sometimes a man has gottta hock his sweet use to be in order to finance his present situation. ( Camino Real, 752 ) Camino Real also stands for mankinds inquiries when faced with progress: Are you perplexed by something? Are you tired out and confused? Do you have a fever? Do you feel yourself to be spiritually unprepared for the age of exploding atoms? Do you distrust the newspapers? Are you suspicious of governments? Have you arrived at a point
4

Jan Balakian, Camino Real: Williams Allegory about the Fifties, apud Matthew C. Roudan, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 70

on the Camino Real where the walls converge not in the distance but right in front of your nose? Does further progress appear impossible to you? Are you afraid of anything at all? Afraid of your heartbeat? Or the eyes of strangers! Afraid of breathing? Afraid of not breathing? Do you wish that things could be straight and simple again as they were in your childhood? ( Camino Real, 767 ) This whole series of rhetorical questions points out not only the problems of American society in particular, but also mans fears in front of life, with all its ups and downs. The play captures characters in crisis, in frustrated relationships, stranded in a distant port, trying to escape fascism. Moreover, this port of entry and departure ( Camino Real, 793 ) is divided into three metaphoric parts: the luxury side, the Siete Mares, and Skid Row consisting of the Gypsys place, the Loan Sharks, and the fleabag hotel called Ritz Men Only. Terra Incognita, beyond the Archway, is a wasteland between the walled town and the distant mountains, where there is nothing and then more nothing. And then snow covered mountains. ( Camino Real, 750 ) Similarly, the characters who inhabit the camino represent a microcosm of society: the outcasts bums, drunks; the Street People, who dance, sing, prostitute themselves, and steal; the historical romantics Marguerite Gautier, the Lady of the Camellias, Jacques Casanova, Lord Byron, and Baron de Charlus; the wealthy Lady and Lord Mulligan; the impoverished A. Ratt; the tyrannical authorities Gutman, who reports to an absent Generalissimo, and his soldiers, the Street Cleaners, who collect and dispose of the dead, and the Medical Team; the capitalists the Gypsy, her son, and the Loan Shark; the idealists Don Quixote, Kilroy ( and Byron ). Within this microcosm, Williams reviews Western history through a literary glass by recalling Marguerite Gautier, the Lady of the Camellias, Jacques Casanova, the great lover, Lord Byron, the poet, Baron de Charlus, a Proustian character, and Lord Mulligan, a 20th century tycoon. In this place desperation is the price of admission, and everyone is confused and exhausted. On the real road characters must confront the cold-hearted ruler, Gutman, and get stewed, screwed, and tattooed baptized with the contents of a slopjar, ( Camino Real, 749 ) robbed, beaten, turned into a patsy, and have their heart stolen. To put it another way, Williams fugitive characters have arrived at the end of a royal road of imagination to meet with reality in the form of age, disease, cruelty, disillusionment, and

death. No matter what road they choose they all end up in the Laboratory where any individual becomes an undistinguished member of a collectivist state. His chemical components are separated and poured into vats containing the corresponding elements of countless others. If any of his vital organs or parts are at all unique in size or structure, theyre placed on exhibition in bottles containing a very foul-smelling solution called formaldehyde. ( Camino Real, 775 ) Of course, there is a charge of admission to this museum and the money goes to the military police. The government exploits not only those who are poor, but also those who are unique. Kilroy, the ruggedly individual American, refuses to take orders from Gutman, who wants to turn him into a patsy. Here, Williams draws on the commedia dellarte, a sixteenth-century Italian form which used improvised comedy and always had a buffoon called the Pulcinella. The dramatist plays with this genre when Kilroy tosses the patsy dress into Gutmans face and leaps into the aisle of the theatre, exclaiming, Kilroys a free man with equal rights in this world! ( Camino Real, 780 ) While Esmeralda cheers him on, the officers capture and beat him up. Block Six closes ominously as Kilroy is forced to press the button at the end of a cord in order to make his nose go off and on like a firefly. Casanova explains that Kilroy is Gutmans prime target because he has a spark of anarchy in his spirit and nothing wild or honest is tolerated here! ( Camino Real, 784 ) Clearly, Camino Real protests oppressors of the human spirit. Acknowledging the fact that humanity is just a work in progressthat cannot bear very much reality ( Camino Real, 836 ) the focus is laid upon mans redemption. Therefore, Williams concludes his play with a prayer for the return of honor to the world. But the idealists retain symbols of past achievements: Byrons pen, Kilroys gold gloves, and Quixotes blue ribbon. Moreover, each chooses to defy lifes betrayals and start anew. Any hope for redemption from the road of reality lies in the violets breaking the rocks. In other words, beauty, imagination, and love ultimately triumph over cruelty, ugliness, and fascism.