This dissertation has been 64-13,327 microfilmed exactly as received HYDE, Jeannine Elizabeth, 1933- THE FUNCTION OF SYMBOL IN THE NOVELS OF ROMULO GALLEGOS. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1964 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright By Jeannine Elizabeth Hyde 1964 THE UNIVERSITY OP OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE FUNCTION OP SYMBOL IN THE NOVELS OP RÔMULO GALLEGOS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY BY JEANNINE ELIZABETH HYDE Normanj Oklahoma 1964 THE FUNCTION OF SYMBOL IN THE NOVELS OF RÔMULO GALLEGOS APPROVED BY œ: DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Professor Lowell Dunham, who directed this dissertation. He has given generously of his time and attention, and his encouragement and valuable comments have made possible its completion. He has also facilitated access to several works currently out of print and opened to me his extensive collection of criti­ cal articles on Gallegos. I also wish to thank the members of the reading com­ mittee, Professors Besse A. Clement, Antonio M. de la Torre, Lloyd P. Williams and Dominique Penot, for their many help­ ful suggestions. A special vote of thanks goes to Professors Dunham, Clement and de la Torre, on whose recommendations I was awarded a Smith-Mundt Grant for a year's study in Venezuela, and to Sr. Ricardo Montilla, who introduced me to Rdmulo Gallegos and who graciously allowed me the use of his private collection of critical works on the author. To Andrew Talton I am deeply indebted for his con­ stant help in the preparation and typing of the manuscript. iii TABLE OP CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................. Ill Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 1 PART I. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD II. THE EARLY N O V E L S ............................. 21 Relnaldo Solar ............................... 21 La trepadora ................................. 50 PART II. THE MASTER WORKS III. DONA BARBARA ........................... 69 IV. CANTACLARO................................... 117 V. C A N A I M A ..................................... 157 PART III. VARIATIONS ON THEMES VI. THE LAST N O V E L S ............................. 195 Pobre n e g r o ................................. 195 Ë1 forastero................................. 220 Sobre la mlsma t l e r r a ........................ 244 La brizna de paja en el v l e n t o ................ 265 VII. CONCLUSION................................... 280 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................... 292 Iv THE FUNCTION OF SYMBOL IN THE NOVELS OF RÔMULO GALLEGOS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The critics and theorists, no matter how diverse their definitions of symbol, agree that symbol-making Is our natu­ ral activity and our condition. Cassirer, In his The Philos­ ophy of Symbolic Forms, tells us that man Is a symbolic animal whose languages, myths, religions, sciences, and arts are symbolic forms by which he projects his reality and comes to know It. The concept of symbol Is Inextricably bound to reality, yet, "the symbol remains, calling for explanation and resisting It. Though definite In Itself and generally containing a sign that may be Identified, the symbol carries something Indeterminate and, however we try, there Is a residual mystery that escapes our Intellects."^ If symbol, reduced to Its simplest terms, may be any object which sug­ gests a larger meaning than Itself, all literary works, whether In whole or In part, are literary symbols In the %llllam York Tindall, The Literary Symbol (Blooming- ton : Indiana University Press, p. 11. 2 sense that they are an embodiment. The very function of lan­ guage, the most basic of symbolic forms, is the assignment of meaning to those factors and concepts about us. There is, however, even in this one-to-one correspondence that factor which is basic in symbol : the overtones or suggestions of meaning, that composite image of concrete and abstract which forms "the meaning beyond" implicit in every symbol. Hence the inevitability of interpretation; indeed the literary sym­ bol may be considered a formula by which the author is given more freedom (released from the concrete) in the interpreta­ tion of his reality. It is this aspect of the literary symbol that is most relevant with regard to the works of Rdmulo Gallegos. The Latin American novel, perhaps more than any other, has always been closely bound to its own geographic, ethnic and cultural reality. Its social nature has more often than not resulted in the employment of the novel to diffuse the ideals of the author. For better or worse, this is the tra­ dition of the Latin American novelist: "En una vida colec- tiva que casi no ha sido otra cosa que transicidn violenta y crisis, el novelista no ha podido ser sino un partidario. Êstâ contra esto o contra aquello, y quiere que su novela sirva para esa lucha." This pattern of the escritor respon­ sable acting within the novelistic framework of a "literatura ^Arturo Uslar-Pietri, Letras y hombres de Venezuela (México: Pondo de Culture EconOmica,194üj, p. 135. 3 comprometIda en su conjunto"^ was established with the Peri- qulllo sarnlento and continues to the present day in the novels of Icaza, Alegrla, Azuela and Gallegos. It is not by chance that the first American novelist turned his view in­ ward and took as his theme the immediate factors of his envi­ ronment. The drama of the discovery and conquest was con­ tagious. The conquerers and early colonists were drawn close to their own sphere by the immediacy of the daring exploits of their time and the daily drama being lived in the New World. The fantasy of the chivalric and pastoral novels so popular in Spain found no public in this hemisphere; the new Americans were daily displacing such fiction with their own reality. The view of the novelist, too, has remained fixed on the authenticity and reality of his own continent. How, then, does the Latin American novelist, and the Venezuelan novelist in particular, interpret this reality to which he is inextricably bound in the role of the escritor responsable? His environment is one of extremes, especially in the caser of Venezuela, where chaos has been one of the most constant characteristics of the country's social, polit­ ical and economic structure. Despite (or even because of) this national instability, "la novela venezolana refleja mâs que muchas, quizâs mâs que ninguna de las de América, el O medio en que se desenvuelven sus dramas." ^Angel S.J. Damboriena, Rdmulo Gallegos y la proble- màtica venezolana (Caracas: Universldad Catôlica Andrés Bello. jgmrrrrw.— ^Luis Alberto Sânchez, Proceso y contenido de la nove- la hispanoamericana (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 19531, p. bb. 4 Perhaps this is a result of the violent intensity of the Venezuelan milieu, where compromise and arbitration have never found a place: La oposicidn polltica no era entre nosotros un juego de partidos y dé sutiles conceptos, un desaffo de ideas que se resuelve y .rbitra en las tribunas del Parlamento ... sino un combate cruel y rencoroso en que estaba comprometida la vida.l The Venezuelan writer is allowed to be no less accountable than any of his compatriots. In his art as in his life he is expected to take sides; indifference is a luxury he cannot afford, because "el novelista, el poeta, son ademâs, hombres. Como hombres, y como escritores, tienen una responsabilidad. La indiferencia es mal slntoma."^ His is a serious role bound to the responsibility of the treatment and interpreta­ tion of his reality. Whatever form he may choose or however he may disguise it, more is expected of him than mere litera­ ture; for good or bad this is the tradition to which he is bound: "El novelista puede estar, aparentemente, escribien- do pura ficcidn. En realidad estâ tocando entraRas."3 As a direct consequence of this tradition of the writer responsible to more than his art alone, a Venezuelan critic has pointed out the preponderance of the personaje- ^Marlano Plcdn Salas, Formacldn y proceso de la literatura venezolana (Caracas: Editorial ceciiio Àcosta, iy40), p. 11. ^Qermân Arclnlegas, "Novela y verdad en Rdmulo Gallegos," Cuadernos Americanos, Afio XIII, No. 4 (julio- agosto, 1954J, 39. 3lbid., p. 38. 5 slmbolo, whose nature lends Itself to the exploitation of ideals: "Casi siempre el héroe tiene mucho de ser abstracto, de personaje de una epopeya moral que personifica el bien, el progreso o la Justioia contra el atraso y la barbarie. This tendency toward the symbolic protagonist is, for the same critic, "uno de los caractères que mejor revelan el in- dudable primitivisme, que es uno de los aspectos mâs curiosos y atractivos de la novela hispanoamericana de los ültimos tiempos."^ What is "attractive primitivism" for one critic is a defect for many others, who see in the works of Icaza, for example, an abuse of symbolic protagonists with little merit other than as tools for the author's social propaganda. If the latter tendency has been a general criticism of the Latin American novel as a whole, Gallegos has not escaped un­ scathed. One of the most constant criticisms of his work has been that his symbols are too elemental. According to a con­ temporary critic: "Los slmbolos— exagerados hasta por el nombre de los personajes: la barbarie de Doha Bârbara; la santa luz, el santo ardor del civilizador Santos Luzardo, etc.— son demasiado é v i d e n t e s . This critic continues to say that the symmetry of certain incidents (the taming of the mare and Marisela in parallel processes, for example) is ^Uslar-Pietri, op. cit., p. 135. 2lbid. SEnrique Anderson Imbert, Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (México.: Pondo de cultura Ëconomica, lyoi), II/«5 . 6 too elemental, that many scenes are too violent and deliber­ ately sensational, yet, "con todo, Dofia Bârbara es una gran novela."^ A great novel, yes, because the symbols are not constructed by merely applying symbolic names to characters and chapter headings.