LUIS MARTIN-SANTOS:

PH~OSOPHER, PSYCHIATRIST AND NOVEUST.

Catherine J aniaud

A thesis submitted in partial completion of the requirements for the Award of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Spanish and Latin American Studies in the University of New South Wales Sydney 1989. Except where otherwise acknowledged in the text, this thesis represents my original research. No part of this work has been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution.

e~~~~ Catherine J aniaud ABSTRACT

This work investigates the multi-dimensional role of Luis Martfn­ Santos (1924-1964), best known as the author ofTiempo de silencio. It attempts to reconcile his professional outlook as a psychiatrist with his fictional account of the alienated society of post-war Spain.

Our first task is to interlink the Socialist ethos of Martfn-Santos with the Existentialist model of thought adopted by him after Sartre. This methodology, as a rule, dominates the writings of the philosopher/psychiatrist/novelist.

We examine the dialectical insight of the philosopher who has attempted to broaden the views of medical psychology by adding new dimensions to the meaning of madness. Following this, we relate his novelistic portrayal of neurosis and psychosis to his overall view of the mental problems encountered in a socially diseased world. By establishing a correspondence between madness in the individuals treated by Martfn-Santos in his medical practice and social alienation among the inhabitants of his war-tom country as depicted in his two novels, we arrive at a synthesis of the existential and Socialist vision of the author's world.

If the society described in the two novels studied - Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n - is a sick and decadent society living in the most profound ignorance of its ailment, it is nonetheless a human group endowed with a potential for growth and development. Through Martin-Santos' philosophical and psychological ethics of regeneration, we perceive, in this group, the eventual possibility of a cure from its alienation. The essay concludes on a note of reconciliation between an estranged humanity and its world, thereby highlighting the dialectical vision of the author of the two novels. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The main argument of this thesis originated in my reading of Martin-Santos' treatise on existential phenomenology, Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoamilisis existencial. After a detailed study of Tiempo de silencio as a philosophical novel, my interest grew in the social concerns of its author. During a stay at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, I became acquainted with Martin-Santos' initial thesis, Dilthey. Jaspers y la comprensi6n del enfermo mental. It was then that I decided to embark on drawing a substantial analogy between his psychiatric outlook on the methods of understanding mental patients, and his novelistic description of a sick society whose psychological problems called for a better comprehension of the cultural background of its people. My interest in the topic was further stimulated by a study of the Existentialist movement of the 1950s, and in particular, of the Sartrean model which could be related to the philosophy of Martin-Santos in its totality.

I am indebted to the School of Spanish and Latin American Studies, especially to Dr Jane Morrison and Dr John Brotherton for their invaluable support in my research, and for their constant guidance in my progressive writing of this essay. I also appreciate the assistance I have received from the staff at the library of the University of New South Wales, who facilitated the arrival of many documents and manuscripts from overseas universities.

I obtained a certain amount of help from tutors in Spanish literature at the University of Madrid, most particularly from Professor Santos Sanz Villanueva, who directed me to the more recent sources of criticism regarding the works of Martin-Santos. Jose Maria Guelbenzu, chief editor of the Taurus publications, supplied me with more information on the subject. Finally, I express my gratitude to the staff of the library of "Filosofia y Letras" and the Archives Department of the Complutense, for their steady help over the few weeks I spent with them. TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. PP. 1-15.

PART ONE - MARTIN-SANI'OS AS PHILOSOPHER

- Chapter 1: Social Alienation. 16-52.

- Chapter 2: Existential Alienation; The Ethics of Existentialism in Martin-Santos. 53-94.

PART TWO- MARTIN-SANTOS AS PSXCHIATRIST. - Chapter 1: Individual Madness. 95-141.

- Chapter 2: Social Madness. 142-188.

- Chapter 3: The Role of the Doctor/Surgeon. Basic Imagery of Social Cancer and its Cure. 189-209.

PART THBEE • MABTIN-SANTQS AS NOVELIST­ CREATIVE ARTIST.

-Chapter 1: Metaphorical Imagery of the Social Disease. 212-244.

- Chapter 2: Dramatic Metamorphosis; The Kafkaesque in Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n. 245-272.

PART FOUR- TIEMPODE DESTBUCCION: AN END AND A NEW BEGINNING. 273-300.

GENERAL CONCLusiON. 301-305.

APPENDIX. 306-308.

BWUOGRA.PHY. 309-328. ABBREVIATIONS.

1S Tiempo de silencio.

1D Tiempo de destrucci6n.

LTr Libertad, temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoanalisis existencial.

RCDJ Reivindicaci6n del conde don Julian. 1

Introduction.

The framework of this thesis is the integrated role of Martin-Santos as philosopher, psychiatrist and novelist. The key concept is the analysis of alienation at two levels: at the individual level by the psychiatrist; and as an extension, at the social level by the novelist preoccupied with the decadence of post-war society. It is as a philosopher-psychiatrist concerned with alienation that Martin­ Santos examines the degradation of socio-cultural values in a fictional society which represents that of post-war Spain. The sick society he depicts in Tiempo de silencio, and more particularly in Tiempo de destrucci6n, is prone to a great spiritual emptiness, thus reflecting a world of negative values. Our analysis focuses on the diagnosis/identification of the social problems, their development across the two novels, and finally the hope for a possible regeneration of Spanish culture.

In the same way as Sartrean existentialism has influenced the psychological thinking of Martin-Santos as the author of Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoanalisis existencial 1, the ideas of the German phenomenologists of the 1950s have guided his writing of various medical articles on the socially determined diseases of the psyche. Throughout the thesis we relate Martin­ Santos' philosophical and psychological theories to a literature which he views as engagee and which answers to the need for a radical social transformation. The novelist expounds his considerations on literature in these terms:

La literatura tiene dos funciones bien definidas frente a la sociedad. Una primera funci6n relativamente pasiva: la descripci6n de la realidad 2

social. Otra funci6n especialmente activa: la creaci6n de una Mitologia para uso de la sociedad. En ambas funciones la literatura ejerce su capacidad para llegar a ser una tecnica de transformaci6n social. En cuanto que descripci6n pone el dedo en las llagas sociales y suscita tomas de conciencia de las mismas. En cuanto Mitologia, puede actuar de dos modos opuestos: si se trata de una Mitologia enajenada, como encubrimiento de lo injusto; si se trata de una Mitologia progresiva, como pauta ejemplar de realizaci6n2.

Aiming for a transformation of the social reality in line with his social commitment, Martin-Santos strives to eradicate the stale myths of the past before proceeding to create the values of the future. As he views it, it is only once the past has been totally desacralized and emptied of its alienated contents that a new freedom to create will emerge; the Spanish reality will then be transformed in a positive sense. Once asked about his favourite themes in literature, he replied:

Aquellos temas en que se muestran las leyes modificadoras de la existencia humana. Donde se advierte el condicionamiento social, las contradicciones fecundas y el brillo de la libertad 3

As a reformist of social laws and ethics, Martin-Santos refutes absolute notions such as those elaborated by the long-standing myths of the past. His whole way of life and thinking is revealed through an ever-recurrent dialectic of transcendence of imposed ideas and beliefs. If Tiempo de silencio exposes a framework of total alienation, in which the society at large is estranged from authentic existence, Tiempo de destrucci6n illustrates the dramatic consequences of this fundamental problem. 3

The authoritarian society depicted in Tiempo de silencio lives in the grip of silence. Resigned to their fate, the characters deny all possibility of changing their world. It is by attuning to an imposed set of values that they feel safe, and most of all, acceptable to a society which condemns those who do not conform. The deterministic attitude adopted by those characters who have relinquished their power to act means a total denial of freedom; not only in the individual, but also in the social body of the nation. Denying freedom means denying one's initiative to act, be it as a person or as a group; it means, in the case of Martin-Santos' characters, surrendering all creative potentialities to the irrational power of established myths and authority. In the light of the Sartrean existential ethics adopted by the novelist, loss of freedom in Tiempo de silencio gives way to a neurosis of adaptation of individuals to their environment; a neurosis assuming the dimensions of a psychosis in Tiempo de destrucci6n, where the decadent social body is placed in a situation of collective madness.

Although an incomplete novel, Tiempo de destrucci6n will be referred to as Martin-Santos' second novel throughout this thesis. It has not yet been the object of a detailed analysis and interpretation by literary criticism so far; a summary will be provided in the Appendix at the end of this work, in order to guide the reader through its main complexities. Three stages mark the evolution of the novel: the birth and childhood of Agustin in a deeply alienated provincial society, his adult life and the vicissitudes of the legal profession (to which he belongs) in a world which rejects truth and justice, and finally his possible death after a vital awakening of consciousness. In his prologue to the text, Jose Carlos Mainer proposes a detailed 4

explanation of the chronological order of events, as the material contained in the manuscript does not always follow an apparently logical sequence.

The theme of alienation emerges as the main current running through the narrative. Two divergent plots reveal themselves to the reader of Tiempo de destrucci6n: on the one hand the progressive decadence of a society bound by the oppressive forces of its indoctrination; on the other hand, the reverse process of development in the hero who, in spite of his ambiguous final defeat, has overcome his socio-cultural conditioning.

Our task is to follow the evolution of the social disease across the two novels, extending the description of social neurosis to that of social psychosis as the alienated lives of the characters unfold in a final climax of human degradation. The reverse process of development - that is, towards disalienation - will be based, as well as on the text itself, on hypotheses gathered from various interpretations of the ending of Tiempo de destrucci6n. Different theses and articles published on the topic of alienation in Martin-Santos' novels relate to the theme of the hero's mythological quest for authenticity, delving into the Freudian or Jungian realm of the unconscious. We shall not probe the archetypal domain in depth, but rather attempt to stay on firm social ground and cover the consequences of alienation at the level of the dialectical relationship between individual and society. To our knowledge, very little critical work so far has focused on the course of the existential neurosis of society across the two novels. 5

Three critics have dealt at some length with the topic of neurosis at the societal level in Tiempo de silencio; only a brief account was given of the ailment in Tiempo de destrucci6n by one of them.

In her thesis Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio 4, J o Labanyi stresses the role of history in Martfn-Santos' first novel. It is bad faith 5, she says, adopting the Sartrean viewpoint, that has led Spaniards to take refuge in the past in order to escape from their miserable living conditions. History is invaded by myths which have impeded its natural course. The characters of Tiempo de silencio live in bad faith, not least of all Pedro, who has surrendered to his fate and abandoned all effort to transcend his predicament. Labanyi identifies neurosis with the evading of social responsibility. It is fear of responsibility- and initially the fear of freedom to exert it - that has, according to her, led Martin-Santos' characters to abandon themselves to the oppressive authorities of their nation, to conform blindly in other words. The authoritarian society depicted in the novel, she says, lives an inauthentic existence in the clutches of a rigid conformity to established myths. With regard to the dialectical thinking of the author of Tiempo de silencio, Labanyi has described the novel as an attempt, along the lines of Libertad. temporalidad x transferencia ... , to reconcile Sartre with Freud. It is in her section on the psychoanalysis of society that she refers to the neurotic dependence of the individual on the group as an Oedipus complex as well as a disease of the dialectic. The Freudian-Sartrean dialogue, we could say, permeates her entire analysis. We shall use her critical input as a sound basis for our evaluation of social neurosis in the first novel, placing the emphasis on the Sartrean concept of alienation. However, since our theme extends to the ascension of the 6

social problems into Tiempo de destrucci6n, her assessment remains for us short of a dynamic progression.

Another major work dealing with bad faith in Tienmo de silencio is Gemma Roberts' treatise, Temas existenciales en la novela espa:iiola de postguerra 6. The focus of Roberts' treatment of alienation is on failure; more precisely, the failure of the hero to transcend a world devoid of all meaning. Rooted in nothingness, freedom fails; and along with it Pedro's vital project is annihilated. Within a primarily Kierkegaardian analysis of existence, Roberts sees failure as almost inevitable, the failure to live a limited life without the anguish of finitude. A sense of loss pervades her analysis, through the themes of estrangement, solitude and anguish pertinent to the post-war novel in general. Roberts' emphasis is on the existential despair of the individual overwhelmed by isolation from a society which, on the whole, fails to understand differences of personality among its members. She attempts to demonstrate that pessimism, the correlate of a finite human condition, is a main characteristic of the Spanish post-war novel. Some aspects of her thinking will be alluded to in the course of this thesis, although we diverge from what we tend to see in her work as the Unamunian perspective of the tragic meaning of life.

Esperanza Saludes, in her perceptive work entitled La narrativa de

Luis Mart:fn-Santos a la luz de la psi colo fda 7, sees the alienating society of Tiempo de silencio as "el ambiente de desarticulaci6n y vacio emocional en el cual se desenvuelven los personajes"8. The theme of freedom is at the centre of her evaluation of individuals, groups and situations. According to her, Martin-Santos' characters 7

are no longer real human beings: they have been reified through their loss of identity as social beings, within the realm of their alienating society. The theme of bad faith plays a major role in her analysis, as in the case of the preceding two critics. However, what distinguishes Saludes' outlook from theirs is the hope she places on the future of the downtrodden, among them Pedro who, she says, in line with the author's psychoanalytical ideas expressed in Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia ... , is in the process of changing his life project. The path she traces in her appraisal of the two novels is as follows: a diagnosis of the social ailment in Tiempo de silencio, followed by a search for truth and a remedy in Tiempo de destrucci6n. In her account of the second novel, she has developed the theme of social neurosis to a more profitable extent than the other two previous critics have done. Our purpose being the evaluation of the social disease in terms of a psychosis, we part with her at this point to follow a different path.

Part One of this thesis introduces the role of Martin-Santos as a philosopher; a politically committed writer, opposed to the repressive Franquist regime and concerned with the regeneration of Spain in a near future. The socio-political conditions under which the author lived are strongly reflected in his fiction which forms part of the mid­ century phenomenon of litterature engagee. At the root of the social problem, as illustrated in Tiempo de silencio, is poverty bred of a bad distribution of the already scarce resources for development and progress. Alienation in the socio-economic field has bred indifference among the members of a proletariat submitted to oppressive working conditions, when not to unemployment and 8

extreme poverty. At the other end of the social spectrum, the bourgeoisie lives in boredom and idleness, largely ignorant of the plight of the destitute. This society is dominated by a despotic political minority, whose rules are enforced by the need to conform and obey.

Martin-Santos' attitude in the face of socio-political repression and fascism is one of opposition, of anarchism at times. His overall anarchistic spirit finds a concrete expression in his abandonment of the conventional medical profession in favour of the unorthodox existential psychiatry of Sartrean character; a psychiatry imbued with the social concerns of its practitioner. To explain mental illness in social terms means, for the reformer, to inculpate the social order as the propagator of neurosis, even psychosis.

In his condemnation of the authoritarian society, Martin-Santos describes the world of his fiction as an inauthentic world, steeped in the bad faith induced by a total absence of freedom to act autonomously. The fear of freedom is, in this context, the fear of being different, lost in the world; in brief, the fear of having to harmonize one's life with that of the world. The failure of the dialectical relationship between the individual and the world is here narrowly linked with the failure to live in the present, as opposed to living in a past ridden with myths and traditions.

As a philosopher, Martin-Santos has no doubt been inspired by various schools of thought. Among the most important influences upon his thinking, we have distinguished four main antecedents in 9

the existential field; namely, Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Referring to the theme of being in history, Dilthey brought to light the notion that human life should be observed within its socio-historical context, and that true life should be free from the dogmas and prejudices of the past. Only when based on an awareness of meaning, can life realize itself in the future. Also anti-deterministic in his rejection of bad faith as regards the past, Jaspers advocated reason as the basis for integrity and meaningfulness. It is in his theories on existential conversion based on will and decision that he most substantially enriched the philosophy of the author of Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia... . Of a slightly different nature, Heidegger's thinking alluded to time as the prime object of evaluation of all human life. His assessment of temporality, with an emphasis upon the need for a dialectical relationship between past and present, found an echo in this same treatise on existential psychoanalysis.

Individuals can only exist within a given world, Sartre said, and more specifically through the contribution they make towards it. Freedom is the fundamental characteristic of all human existence; in other words, freedom is imposed on us from the time of birth to the end of life. Sartre's freedom seems contradictory in itself, for it basically means responsibility rather than free choice. The person of good faith seeks to be free, as opposed to the one of bad faith who surrenders to the alienating forces of determinism. It is Sartre's emphasis on the project as the sum of man's acts - project represented by the future in which self-realization should be effected - which most inspired Martin-Santos in his endeavour to find a true 10

identity for Spain as a redeemable nation. With a change of project, then, comes conversion, meaning an awakening to freedom.

Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia ... is subsequently introduced as a major treatise on freedom, in which the author's debate on the philosophies of Freud and Sartre uncovers a strong inclination towards Sartre's existential values and the adoption of his anthropological views for the edification of a medical treatise on psychoanalysis.

Part Two establishes the link between the work ofMartin-Santos as a psychiatrist and his aspirations as a novelist. Alienation is defined in medical terms, according to the theories elaborated by the author in the course of his research and his clinical work at the San Sebastian sanatorium.

Through a phenomenological approach to neurosis, Martin-Santos has concerned himself with the way in which his patients lived their illness. Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia, highlights the pathological aspects of neurosis in the existential sense, stressing the role of freedom in the treatment of alienation of the being-in-the­ world (a Sartrean notion). It also promotes the role of the transference in the psychoanalytical cure, through which the discovery and comprehension of the other's freedom heralds the reconciliation of being with its world 9 •

Our section entitled "A Medical Theory of Alienation" contains a debate on the modes of defining and understanding madness. 1 1

Through the phenomenological method, mental illness comes to assume new dimensions in the psychotherapist's understanding; we further explore Martin-Santos' philosophical outlook and his anti­ dogmatic attitude to medical psychology.

The phenomenological method, Martin-Santos tells us throughout his medical writings, recommends a close observation of life, and is the best way of looking into psychotic symptoms: it is only once the lived experiences of sick individuals have been deciphered and interpreted, that an empathetic understanding of their psyche will explain their symptoms. Case studies of alcoholics and epileptics are provided by the psychiatrist in his attempt to prove the efficacy of his method. In both alcoholic and epileptic psychoses, he observes, the being-in-the-world is diseased; in other words, the person is estranged from both self and world. Bondage to illness is obsessive, and freedom is consequently non-existent.

In our transition from individual psychosis to social madness, we propose to extend the medical thinking of the psychiatrist to the social preoccupations of the author of Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n . The society described in these two novels is an apathetic society, whose lack of courage and motivation has given way to a loss of vital defence. The nation, as he sees it, lives in a time of anaesthesia and silence. A sick society, whose members display the overall symptomatology of the reified consciousness, is here portrayed by the psychiatrist-novelist.

The Spain depicted in both novels presents the image of a decadent culture, with its barbaric customs displayed at bullfights, in violent 12

street crimes and often through a savage euphoria in drunkenness during festivities. When instincts triumph over reason, humanity is degraded; and this is precisely what happens as the neurotic society of Tiempo de silencio evolves into the psychotic world of Tiempo de destrucci6n, with its frequent manifestations of blind brutality and beastliness.

A picture of collective madness is conveyed through the vision of the mob guided by the herd instinct and further stimulated by mass hysteria. Tiempo de destrucci6n is rendered as a world of psychopathy presenting the very image of social madness.

The Spanish disease is seen by the novelist as a social cancer, being a self-destructive illness, metaphorically linked to the degeneration of cells through cancerous growth. It is by figuratively performing the biopsy of the organism of Spain that Martin-Santos diagnoses this pernicious, all-invading ailment. Cancer is, in Tiempo de silencio, the metaphor of misery; in Tiempo de destrucci6n the disease evolves until a catharsis of its symptoms leaves the organism destroyed yet at the same time purified.

The sick society described by Martin-Santos, we are led to understand, is to be treated culturally. All established values must be reassessed, and new ones created. The ethics of Existentialism are recommended as a major part of the treatment. The outcome should be the development of creative ethics for the life of the nation, and an harmonious relationship between its citizens and their world. 13

Part Three outlines the role of Martin-Santos as a novelist-creative artist, an extension of his philosophical and psychiatric vision. In his caricature of the sick society, the social disease finds itself grossly amplified, the use of metaphorical language serving to transform reality into an extravagant presentation of facts. The object of this caricature is the same alienation as previously described. In order to make the reader more conscious of the magnitude of the problem, the author has recourse to irony, thus emphasizing what he sees as monstrous in the reality which surrounds him.

Within the metaphorical imagery of the social disease, the concept of the monster-city is introduced, the City of Madrid - symbol of all centralized power - being seen not only as a madhouse, but also a huge zoological park. The life of the human herd becomes animal life through the fusion of individuals with the crowd and the institutions. The monster-city is the end product of a deformed relationship between the City and its inhabitants; at the phenomenological level, between being and the world.

This grotesque deformation of reality finds its origins in the baroque; and, as regards this particular context, in the esperpento. The pessimistic vision of the esperpento itself has its roots in Goya, whose vitriolic caricature of society denounced the monstrousness which he saw as prevalent in human nature. Black humour in Goya has become potent irony in Martin-Santos, with a zesty parody of the Hispanic world adapted to the needs of his times.

The comic metamorphosis of a human society into an animal species nonetheless bears in itself the seeds of a more dramatic one. The 14

novelist's irony is thus transformed into black humour, with his perception of an alienated world in the light of a Kafkaesque metamorphosis of human beings into despicable creatures. The devastation of a people is tied up to that of the environment in which it lives; and this point will be the focus of the final scene of a destroyed humanity in Tiempo de destrucci6n.

In Part Four of the thesis, a debate takes place as to the controversial ending of the second novel: did Martin-Santos aim to destroy altogether, or was he in the process of re-building from the ruins of destruction? Part Four concludes the thesis, shifting the focus to the philosopher whose task is to instigate the regeneration of Spain. What remains to be achieved is the liberation of the Spanish people from its mythical past; a liberation the author has initiated within the existential dynamic vision relevant to his professional outlook on life. 15

Notes to Introduction.

1 Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia.,, Barcelona, 1964&1975.

2 Letter of Martfn-Santos to J.M. Castellet, in Literatura. ideologia y polftica, Barcelona, c. 1976, P. 145.

3 Answer to a questionnaire sent by Janet Winecoff Dfaz ("Luis Martfn-Santos and the Contemporary Spanish Novel", in Hispania, vol. 51,1968, P. 237.

4 Jo Labanyi., Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio , Madrid, 1983.

5 Bad faith , in the existential sense, means inauthenticity, in other words self-deception and avoidance of the truth.

6 Gemma Roberts, "El fracaso", PP.129-203 in Temas existenciales en la novela espanola de postguerra, Madrid, 1973.

7 Esperanza Saludes, La narrativa de Luis Martfn-Santos ala luz de la psicologia, Miami, 1981.

8 Ibid., P.l2.

9 The Existentialists have stressed the importance of others in the life of the individual. No one can live as an isolated being, they have said: all human beings depend on their world, and their response to life is narrowly linked to the way they assume their relationships with others. 16

PART ONE- MARTIN-SANTOS AS PHILOSOPHER.

These first two chapter'S expound the role of Martin-Santos as a Philosopher. They both relate to his concern with the alienation of the individual from the world. In the first chapter, we describe Martin-Santos as a social critic committed to changing, through political action and literature, the conditions that have alienated the Spanish society of which he is a member. In the second chapter, we introduce the ethics of Existentialism which will be linked to the author's Socialist viewpoint. These two chapters are to be seen as an introduction to the dual role of the author as a psychiatrist and as a novelist. 17

Chapter One: Social Alienation.

In his reminiscences of past times and old friends, Juan Benet describes Martin-Santos as a socially minded, politically involved writer whose concern with the bleak socio-political situation of his country motivated him to incite change; radical change at times, yet nonetheless positive, with a view to remedying the disastrous living conditions of his co-citizens. Benet affirms that Martin-Santos brought a sudden change to his life:

. . . de la noche a la manana paso Luis de ser un estudiante cat6lico modelo a ser un medico librepensador; y que todo lo que le habian ense:iiado durante una decada a aborrecer vino a constituir el pasto de su avidez intelectual; y que abandon6 las filas de la tradici6n ortodoxa para formar parte de la heterodoxa, con el desparpajo de un profesional que al cambiar de estandarte o camiseta ni lo piensa dos veces ni abriga la menor reserva moral a la hora de combatir sus antiguos colores 1.

Like his protagonist Agustin in Tiempo de destrucci6n, the author himself became a renegade, dismissing the rigid education he had received at the University of Salamanca, where obedience and respect of tradition were inculcated in the minds of scholars. Relinquishing the tenets of orthodoxy, he eventually left his position as a medical practitioner and took up psychiatry, a profession through which he could exert and further develop his philosophical creativity.

In 1955 Martin-Santos came into contact with the P.S.O.E. (Spanish Socialist Party) through Mugica and Amat, then active members 2. In 1957 he was detained for allegedly conducting subversive activities against the Franquist regime. The following year he spent four 18

months in Carabanchel (the main prison in Madrid) for the same reason, and was arrested again on two different occasions, in 1959 and in 1962 3. Furthermore, four years of his life were spent in confinement to the city of San Sebastian, "en prisi6n atenuada"4. These experiences are apparently those upon which his fictional descriptions of imprisonment and dealings with repressive institutions are based.

After suffering the reprisals of the Franquist regime, Martin-Santos turned to radicalism in his views on political reform. According to Tierno Galvan, his attitude towards established conventions subsequently became one of "repulsa y renovaci6n" 5. His radical vision of the alienation of Spanish society is reflected most vividly in his two novels, and the treatment he advocates in order to cleanse his nation of its socio-cultural ailment no doubt relates to this same protest against conformity to long-established values. Repression is the key word in his interpretation of the Spanish reality; more precisely, institutional repression, which has dramatically impeded the recovery of Spain's economy in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Socio-Political Conditions in Post-War Spain. and as perceived by the Philosopher-Novelist.

From the Civil War emerged, under Franco's military ruling elite, Nationalist Spain, a political monolith. In the 1940s, the regime was supported by three main pillars: the Nationalist army, the Falange and the Church. 19

The army's task was to defend the institutional order, thereby neutralizing all opposition to it. The patriotic ethos of the military ruling elite generated a new social awareness in a population submitted to obedience, and also to respect of hierarchy. Under ideological conditioning, the nation at large could accept the irrational tenets of its fascist rulers. Opposition meant detention and, in extreme cases, torture or execution at the hands of the justice system.

Alluding to Franquism as a peculiar fascismo , Raul Morodo further described it as "la objetivizaci6n predominante del tradicionalismo cat61ico-corporativo" 6. In order to promote that ideology, Franco used anti-Communist slogans and propaganda, thus alarming Spaniards to the dangers of an imminent take-over by the forces of Communism. Franquism was, in this sense, a vivid example of reactionary despotism.

The Falange advocated traditional patriotism, and at the same time modern authoritarianism. Its founder, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, preached unreserved obedience to the State. True human dignity, he said, could only be achieved by those who became totally immersed in the national creed 7. The Falange was, at first, the only political movement which presented an apparently coherent ideology, and which could offer (or so it seemed) a modern solution to the problems of Spain.

Still more powerful than the Falange, and certainly more enduring, the Catholic Church, by supporting Franco's regime, progressively 20

gained control over the intellectual life of the nation. Known as the Church of the cruzada , it came to enjoy a vast dominion in political life. Its vehicle in this field of activity, the Opus Dei, was prominently influential in selecting persons of its choice to participate in the Franquist government; it also had a major influence upon the decisions made by universities as regards education programmes.

During the 1940s and 1950s, censorship and conformism emanated chiefly from the religious and restrictive ideology of the Opus Dei. University examinations required not thinking, but rote learning. As seen by Max Gallo, that period was characterized by a general state of intellectual asphyxia 8.

Defined as the State religion, Catholicism was the only faith which could be practised publicly under the Spain of the Crusade. The apology of Franquism (as imposed by the Church) was based on a return to the theological values of the sixteenth century, seen as the Golden Age of Western civilization, but also, of course, as the age of the Spanish Inquisition. The Hispanic ideal - the patriarchal notion of the caballero cristiano - became a main ideological support for fascism in an era when the myth of Hispanicity had to be revived in order to promote traditional Spanish values.

This Catholic nationalization of culture led to a rejection of the European movements of the age, considered anti-Spanish by the advocates of a conservative Spain. Opposed to the tolerant, progressive Spain which appealed to intellectuals (most of them exiles) and which yearned to see an infiltration of new philosophical ideas into the Peninsula, the Spain of rigid Catholic conservatism 21

dominated the lives of the great majority of Spaniards. As the capital of Castile, heart of Hispanic culture and of central government, Madrid belonged to the retrograde Spain, steeped in the despotism of fascist ideology.

As described in Tiempo de silencio, the City of Madrid of the 1940s is a perpetuator of fascist and authoritarian myths. In that urban society of the post-war era, deeply affected by poverty and an ideological sense of loss, the spirit of fascism dominates the social scene. Censorship reigns in the political arena, reducing all opposition to the most profound silence. Indeed,

Las ruedas de la maquina giran solas (TS236). Es un tiempo de silencio. La mejor maquina eficaz es la que no hace ruido (TS292).

Martin-Santos' caricature of the fascist outlook will extend to the concept of a metaphorical castration of individuals, in other words, their martyrdom at the hands of the system. In Tiem:po de destrucci6n, it is in the section entitled "Lamentos" that the narrator expatiates on the wretched life of those born under the weight of a history burdened by oppressive myths. Assuming the aspect of a Kierkegaardian lamentation on human finitude, this outpouring of consciousness in reality deplores the ignorance of a child too young to understand what life has in store for him, too young to know how absolute authority and the belief in divine condemnation are to have their destructive effects on his absurd existence; "que comprenda que ... la palabra muerte es nada y nada es lo que el puede esperar de la vida puesto que en la muerte concluye" (TD486). 22

At the same time as he condemns the political framework of his nation, Martin-Santos denounces the state of primitivism reflected in the living conditions of the poor. Along with Pedro and Amador in Tiempo de silencio, the reader is taken on a tour of the Madrid slums, where the poor are lodged in squalid tenements, the chabolas, lacking in air and hygiene; habitats nicknamed by the author "soberbios alcazares de la miseria" (TS50), built out of cardboard boxes and corrugated iron. To enter Muecas' shack, Pedro has to make his way through various obstacles - barking dogs, naked children and heaps of manure (TS57); a picture of human degradation within a context of economic under-development. Migrants from a countryside depleted by the war, those chaboleros are indirectly assimilated to the "infrahombres" from distant lands, "menguado pasto para los gusanos a traves de cualquiera de las complicadas formas del morir hambriento" (TS70); all marginal groups being, in the end, linked through the same ordeal of the fight for survival.

In order to feed himself and his family, Muecas hunts for food: "Ea goza cogiendo un gato aqui, un perro por alla" (TS40). His main associate is his pocket knife, with which he slaughters his prey when not injuring his enemies. In this the slum dwellers detach themselves as a self-contained community, estranged from and ignoring all the civil mandates vigorously enforced by their government. Steeped in their own primitive culture, the chaboleros do in fact constitute by themselves some kind of a hunting tribe often ironized by the author. The law of the jungle befits the way of life in the settlements made of black holes resembling caves, in which 23

individuals like Cartucho walk with knife in hand. The latter's habitat is described as "una chabola avinagrada, emprecariante y casi cueva ... agujero maloliente" (TS143); a narrow, evil-smelling cave where he and his mother reside, their only furniture being stones on which they sit or rest their heads. Whereas the less aggressive slum dwellers as a rule live out of mendicity, Cartucho lives off plunder and violent theft. On the watch for his prey, each day he collects enough booty to share with his mother, a dilapidated, cynical-looking woman who knows only the most violent means of appropriation and revenge (TS148).

Such images of social primitivism highlight the author's critique of an emerging capitalism which greatly contributes to widen the gap between rich and poor. In the second novel, Martin-Santos' attack upon the capitalist system focuses on the ascent of the industrial society and its proletariat, on a par with the decadence of the big towns and administrative centres (TD305). The emergence of capitalism in the Northern province of Guipuzcoa is seen as a major problem, for aggravating living conditions, and alienating people from nature with its industries and the pollution resulting from them. There the rejects of industry are thrown into the rivers, with the immediate disastrous effect of polluting the countryside. Ironically stated,

El valle se ha convertido en una fuente de riqueza. Estamos orgullosos de lo mal que huele. Nuestro rio huele; pero cada aiio vienen miles de hombres, desde las tierras de lqs rios limpios, a ayudarnos a seguir ensuciandolo. Esta es la tierra mas pobre de la Peninsula. No da nada: ni minas, ni agricultura, ni electricidad. La tierra mas pobre de Espana. Mas pobre que Badajoz o que Orense. No tenemos mas que estos 24

rios peque:iios que nos sirven para convertirlos en alcantarillas. (TD335)

After lamenting the emergence of the "ciudad-cloaca" (TD304), the narrator shows his concern with squalid poverty, the pollution of nature having brought in its trail a decline in standards of hygiene among the population of the provinces already affected by a scarcity of crops and natural resources.

A symbol of squalor in Tiempo de destrucci6n, in the first novel the big city is decried as an embodiment of social inequality and fascist repression. Martfn-Santos' irony as regards the "lugar natural" of human beings could not be more caustic than in his allusion to the City, made up of such urban institutions as the prison, the orphanage, the police station, the psychiatric hospital and the emergency ward (TS19). The City of Madrid, as it appears, thwarts the lives of its inhabitants:

.•. que un hombre encuentra en su ciudad no s6lo su determinaciOn como persona y su raz6n de ser, sino tambien los impedimentos multiples y los obstaculos invencibles que le impiden llegar a ser... (TS18)

In other words, the social structures have crippled the life of the city dwellers, severing all possibility of proper interaction between people and their environment. In the face of this dilemma, the disadvantaged groups have given up fighting for freedom from hunger and restraint, having opted for a passive attitude of apathetic resentment. Their surrender to poverty and repression forms part of the social alienation of beings caught in the grip of forces greater than themselves. 25

Social Alienation.

The Spain described by Martfn-Santos is plunged into a catastrophic state of apathy. To make it worse, it does not possess the means to remedy its pathological condition, be it financially, technically, or intellectually. There seems to be no motivation left in the country living in the aftermath of the war: silence alone reigns over the souls of an apathetic nation. Mutism, used as a means of defence against oppression, allows the Santosian Spaniards to live through suffering, to actually distance themselves from the clutches of misery and eventually pretend that nothing is wrong despite all evidence to the contrary. However, this attitude only serves, in the end, to sever all links with reality.

In the two novels the alienation of the lower classes is made obvious, at the financial and at the socio-political level. As for the upper classes, they too suffer symptoms of estrangement; namely, an overwhelming state of boredom and idleness, translated into futile vanity in the case of Matfas' family and friends in Tiempo de silencio, and into bourgeois imbecility as regards Constanza's family in Tiempo de destrucci6n.

Indeed, as we meet the relatives of Constanza, we come to feel the spiritual emptiness of a class that lives in luxury; a class strongly ironized by the author who speaks of the "dulce imbecilidad" (TD438) pertinent to all bourgeois environments. In the futile world of the bourgeoisie, we are told, the life of the idle rich is "una vida cuyo 26

soporte econ6mico ha hecho imitil el trabajo desde la infancia" (TD435). This egotistic world imprisons its victims in a conventional life of appearances and pretensions, at the same time blinding them to the needs of the rest of the community. In this sense money - or rather its distribution through the capitalist system-, so the socially minded author indicates with his illustrations of extreme wealth or poverty, is the main alienating factor among the social classes.

Pursuing his attack on the capitalist system, Martin-Santos diagnoses estrangement and loss of self among people working within the narrow confines of an over-specialization of labour. In this focusing on the alienation of the worker, he closely follows the writings of his compatriot, the Spanish Marxist philosopher Carlos Castilla del Pino, who sees the worker conditioned, under a capitalist system of production, to work and think only in terms of his own job - itself a minimal part of the totality of a specific enterprise -, thus eventually losing touch with his co-workers to the point of total incommunication 9.

In Tiempo de silencio, the funeral employees have specialized in their task to the point of ultimately losing contact with the purpose of their work, that is, the burial of human beings. The motto is: each one to his specific job, and each one for himself. Each brigade has a well defined duty, itself totally estranged from the other brigades' work (TS174-78). Should anyone deviate from his attributed task and dare show even a glimmer of solidarity by taking an interest in the other's work, he would disturb the order, thus becoming an offender, a dissident against the well regulated system known by the name of taylorism-bedoism ; for, La esencia y fundamento del taylobedoismo - como es sabido - consiste en que cada obrero no deje pasar ni un solo instante improductivo (ya en espera de la llegada de las herramientast ya por necesidad de disponer de un modo adecuado la pieza en que deba trabajart ya por negligente encendido de un pitillo) yen que durante el trabajot cada uno de los movimientos constituyentes de esta actividad ininterrumpida tenga un rendimiento preciso modificando la situaci6n de la materia en el espacio, refiriendonos aqui a la que forma parte del objeto manufacturado. (TS175)

By proceeding to bury the dead in the same way as they would contribute to the manufacture of mere objects, the workers have come to the point of stripping humanity of its basic essence. They have, unconsciously yet surelyt left part of their humanity in the grip of their production system. They have, in other wordst become alienated, not only from their task, but also from their human essence.

Alienation as "una forma parcial y distorsionada de la actividad humana"l 0, according to Castilla del Pinot becomes reification in its most evolved formt that ist loss of being. In his major treatise History and Class Consciousness (1922), Georg Lukacs defined the phenomenon of reification in terms of destruction of life. According to himt reification is the process of transformation of human beings into res t thing-like beings emptied of all essencet of all live meaning. Reification (Verdinglichung), insisted Lukacs, turns human activity into frozen objects, mere economic commodities. Martin-Santos illustrates this process with the example of the painfully earned salary of the prostitutes working under dona Luisa's iron fist- "cifra de una explotaci6n y esperanza de un futuro nunca redimible" (TS103) -t thus confirming the destructive effects of a profession upon a person considered more like an object- "objeto alquilado" (TS103)­ than a human being.

Reification as a being's loss of essence can also occur in more subtle ways; which makes it all the more pernicious, as the affected person (or society) might not easily become aware of this state of estrangement. To illustrate this point: Pedro, the doctor/scientist, is so engulfed in his investigations on a particular species of mice that he actually comes to view human beings not as persons but as various species of homo sapiens; among them Amador, with his gross figure and his thick lips (TS7), or Muecas' daughters, seen as potential guinea-pigs to work on: "muchachas no rubias, que entre cuidados medicos poco habiles y falta de una operaci6n precoz por error diagn6stico perezcan, dando origen a una autopsia... " (TS12).

Limited in his views of life as a totality, Pedro falls back into his medical role in all sectors of his life, be they public or private. In the Sartrean view, which we shall consider in the next chapter, Pedro lives in bad faith, playing the role of the scientist instead of assuming his true self and his sense of responsibility as a member of humanity. His reification of others denotes his own reified behaviour.

Pedro, in the end, has let his work take over his humanity; he has thus become part of the machinery of his workplace. As Martin­ Santos demonstrates, alienation, in the case of the professional scientist, is separation from real life and adherence to old established teaching found in books. "Y lea, lea us ted, estudie ... , de verdad le digo que todo esta en los libros" (TS259), says the Professor of the Institute, admonishing Pedro over his past mistakes and advocating 29

reading as the only way to become wise and learnt. Totally remote from the low life - the "masa sucia" (TS257) - he disdains, this scholar does represent the Establishment to which the medical corps duly conforms, even at the price of alienated minds and depersonalized lives.

It is in the midst of conventional repressiOn that bureaucrats emerge; that is, citizens conditioned to conform to the internal ideology of the country they serve. Cogs in the machinery of government through their confinement to one particular sector of the public service, bureaucrats do not know their real masters: they simply execute orders from above, and in turn distribute orders to those under their own domination. Puppet-like, the detective Similiano does not argue with alleged criminals (TS201); his lack of enthusiasm reflects the exercise of a mechanical process of detention, devoid of all personal initiative. Another vivid example of rigid conformity to professional mannerism is that of the police officer who questions Pedro, not through a system of personal communication, but essentially through the use of established formulas, as follows:

- Asi que us ted... - Pero no querra usted hacerme creer que ... - U sted sabe perfectamente ... - Tiene que reconocer usted que .. . - Quiero que usted comprenda.. . - De todos modos es inutil que usted... - Claro que si usted se empefi.a .. . - Asi que estamos de acuerdo .. . - Perfectamente. Entonces usted... (TS207 -8) 30

The climax of this interrogation is the candid statement by the officer - "jjYa me estoy cansando!!" (TS208) -, summing up his state of utter boredom and estrangement from his professional duties.

The reification of the proletariat is further lamented in Tiempo de destrucci6n, more especially in the section entitled "Aquelarre", where a tenebrous dialogue takes place between the fervent Socialist Mujikoff and the scientifically minded Amigoff, both voicing their author in a language disguised by doctrinal technicalities. What the protagonists of the dialogue are deploring is, roughly speaking, the complete alienation of the ignorant poor, followed by their final degeneration through experiencing the world passively, without reacting to the misery inflicted upon them by the indoctrinating forces of the past. Reification means, in this extreme case, their transformation "de sujetos en objetos de la historia" (TD459).

The need to obey, to conform socially, to become part of one's surroundings merely in order to survive, is characteristic of the life of the herd. In the context of post-war Spain, the herd instinct is a serious distortion of human relations and the outcome of apathetic resentment in the face of extreme repression. Being estranged from humanity is a result of social alienation, as stressed by Martin­ Santos; and in the context of his fiction, alienation further breeds an attitude of revenge. Powerless to react against their oppressor, the victims of the system will shift their stifled hatred onto the appropriate scapegoats, as befits the situation. This transference of the most destructive human feeling has given way to the institutionalization of hatred, as explained in these lines: 31

Si este odio ha podido ser institucionalizado de un modo tan perfecto ... sera debido a que aqui tenga una especial importancia para el hombre y a que asustados por la fuerza de este odio ... se busque un cauce simb6lico en el que la realizaci6n del santo sacrificio se haga suficientemente a lo vivo para exorcizar la maldici6n y paralizar el continuo deseo que a todos oprime la garganta... (TS224)

The fact that Spain includes more bullrings than Gothic cathedrals (TS223), we are told, must have a meaning. If the phenomenon of mass hysteria assumes dramatic proportions at bullfights, the obvious underlying fact is that the apathy of alienation has become sheer rebellion among the masses. The frustration of the mobs in fury is seen at its worst in the identification of the oppressed with their oppressors.

It is the mass in rebellion, the mob guided by its blind will in the search for a scapegoat, that Martin-Santos as a philosopher aims to reform, ridding it of its base mentality, thus converting it into a nation peopled with autonomous, responsible individuals. Behind the scenes, it is his own people, whose values have been perverted by the forces of alienation, that he earnestly intends to redeem; and the first task he assigns to himself in the process of redemption is the destruction of the old myths of the past which, by leading their followers to irrational obedience when not to blind violence, have paralyzed the life of an entire culture.

Destruction of Mvths.

By advocating the need to make a clean sweep of the past, Martin­ Santos' protagonist condemns the omnipotent role of history in the life of his nation. It is through the episode of Agustin's investigation 32

of a crime that the author chooses to communicate his vision of a distorted history which rules the thoughts and acts of his compatriots:

Revolver el pasado es un empeiio idiota. i,N o es mejor dejar que los muertos se acostumbren a estar muertos? Restaurar el pasado, hacerlo otra vez presente, modificarlo. Ponerse a pensar intensamente en lo que pas6, revivirlo, unificarlo, darle un sentido. jComo si la realidad de las cosas que han pasado se agotara en su sentido! (TD343)

This radical denial of history, although befitting the emotional involvement of the narrator, does not agree with the dialectical thinking of Martin-Santos the philosophical theorist. However, by exacerbating the truth he presents to his readers, Martin-Santos aims to reinforce the point that history lived again and again in the minds of people eventually becomes myth. An outcome of personal experiences of past reality, myths are eternalized in time, with the effect of further enhancing - often to the point of gross deformation - that reality and making it universal. The myth of Hell and eternal suffering is one instance of the perpetuation of personal feelings throughout the history of mankind:

La idea del infierno, que tan continuamente ha acompaiiado a la humanidad a lo largo de sus indescriptibles avatares, toma evidentemente su origen del simple espectaculo que cada dia la realidad le ofrece. (TD468)

Furthermore,

La idea esencial, la idea del sufrimiento sin consuelo, sin justificaci6n y sin fin previsible, ha nacido de la mas intima experiencia del hombre en su propio transcurrir cotidiano. (TD469) 33

If human beings are faithful to their beliefs, says Konrad Lorenz, it is essentially because they are afraid of breaking the laws emanating from them. The power of a myth or doctrine, moreover, grows with the number of its followers 11; which reiterates Martin-Santos' plea for the suppression of irrational myths, in particular, in the context of his fictional writings, the bearers of holy sacrifices and destruction of life.

In the "Aquelarre" of Tiempo de destrucci6n, various narrators deride Catholicism as a breeder of myths. As a propagator of irrational myths in a setting of fear and hatred, the Spanish Inquisition comes under attack with an illustration of the religious cruelty it has developed in the faithful members of the Catholic doctrine. With its ethics based on myths as opposed to human reason and autonomy, the Inquisition, by forcefully imposing blind obedience to a deity, has regenerated Stoicism with a view to advocating the abandonment of all vital defences 12. It is mostly through the Inquisition that myths have been institutionalized in Spain, most particularly the myths deriving from the Catholic doctrine. "La familia es una instituci6n" (TD353), declares a supporter of the sacred myth of the family; a myth evolved from the concept of the Primal Father of mankind, which has given birth to the patriarchal system of domination.

An offshoot of Catholicism, the myth of the omnipotent Father, as developed throughout centuries of Hispanic culture, is placed under attack on various occasions; sometimes directly, as in the case of the long line of Popes - "ocupantes de sillas gestatorias mas trabajosamente conquistadas a lo largo de los siglos" (TS85) - whose 34

infallibility seems to be highly questionable; and at other times indirectly, with the outstanding example of the institutional authorities who have converted themselves into deities ruling over a multitude of gullible people 13. Male supremacy, according to the philosopher-novelist concerned with the destructive effects of myths, has finally led to the elaboration of a fascist ideology in a country where repression and fear of reprisals dominate the life of the population.

Interlinked with the omnipotent father-figure is the concept of the virgin-mother (offshoot of the Virgin myth), the female subjected to male domination. It is through Agueda's sacrilegious verses 14 that the author uncovers the subservient role of the woman in his society. The demon-possessed female emerging out of Agueda's song is nothing but a victim of male authority, metamorphosed into a freak of humanity through ill-treatment by the dominating sex (TD461). By wanting to abolish the myth of male prepotency, Martin-Santos aims to see sado-masochism disappear from the relationship between the two sexes. The novels seem to indicate that machismo-conditioning is the main cause of victimization of women who are converted into scapegoats by their oppressors.

The destructive effects and implications of machismo are more than obvious in Martfn-Santos' novelistic account. In Tiempo de silencio, the prostitutes of doiia Luisa's house are abused and exploited not only by their clients, but also by the brothel keeper herself who, for economic reasons, is prepared to support the masculine myth at the expense of their self-worth and dignity. The perpetuation of male violence is further advocated by the aged Dora, who deplores the lack 35

of aggressiveness in the new generation of so-called inoffensive young men like Pedro:

Un hombre se tiene que foguear como los soldados y mas este que nunca ha ido a la guerra. Es lo que les pasa a los hombres de ahora. No llegaron a tiempo a la ultima guerra y ... esbin poco seguros de lo que es una mujer y creen que es como un diamante que hay que coger con pinzas... Si hubieran estado en avances, conquistas y violaciones y aprendieran asi bien lo del botin y el sagrado derecho a la rapi:iia de los pueblos conquistados ... otro gallo les cantara. (TS98)

A strong advocate of brutality and violent rape is Muecas, who beats his defenceless wife and conducts incestuous relations with his elder daughter, whose death by abortion at his own hands makes her a sacrificial victim of machismo. However, the ultimate sacrifice is not Florita's death but rather Dorita's premeditated murder carried out by Cartucho in the heat of revenge. The metaphor of the Hispanic woman "amanoladamente raptada" (TS273) 15 thus fits into the picture of the feminine condition in the context of a repressed and angry nation.

In a society where the fear of the father may be a resonance of many centuries of Catholic teaching, women have learnt to suffer in silence under the domination of men: "Calla, hija ... Mira tu madre que callada esta y que poco molesta" (TS63), says Muecas to his impudent daughter who dares answer him back, thus echoing the precepts of his cultural indoctrination. Narrowly linked with a blind obedience to the political authorities within the patriarchal system of domination, the submission of women to men reflects the surrender of human beings to the threatening deities who hold in their power the bodies and souls of their subjects. Through his caricature of the ceremonies and rituals of Spanish provincial life, Martin-Santos deplores the fact that myths have made of Spain a dogmatic nation. Although defying all human understanding, the pilgrimages and holy processions that endlessly renew mythical life do not seem to be on the decline; and the mere fact of attending them further serves to universalize myths, as indicated in Tiempo de destrucci6n:

Existen lugares elegidos en los que la historia que nunca se detiene se complace en conservar racionalizadas ceremonias del preterito de un modo en absoluto incomprensible. (TD4 79)

In this domain Spain is not alone; and by wanting to rid his nation of its religious neurosis, Martin-Santos is also aiming to cure a more widespread neurotic state which has invaded the world, that state described by Castilla del Pino as "la neurosis obsesiva de la colectividad humana" .16

In an interior monologue called "Destrucci6n", Agustin condemns the myths which, he believes, have enslaved his compatriots for many ,generations. He sees himself as having been passively destroyed by his ideology; in other words, as having served, among others, as a ready victim to be sacrificed at the altar of absolute authority, just like Pedro who admitted having been shattered by forces beyond himself without the slightest resistance on his part. In both cases, the hegemony of myths over the life of a nation is decried. 37

Myths have invaded history and paralyzed the development of humanity, a point that is stressed throughout the two novels. Martin-Santos' categorical attitude towards the eradication of past myths and values is voiced in his description of the role of the novelist in society:

Su funci6n es la que llamo desacralizadora­ sacrogenetica. Desacralizadora - destruye mediante una crftica aguda de lo injusto. Sacrogenetica - al mismo tiempo colabora a la edificaci6n de los nuevos mitos que pasan a formar las Sagradas Escrituras del maii.ana. 1 7

Again contradictory to the philosopher's dialectical perspective, this statement discloses the radical vision of the novelist who uses literature to express feelings rather than rationality. The fact that Martfn-Santos speaks of creating new myths does not deter him from his real purpose, that is, the restoration of history through the selection of creative - as opposed to destructive - ethical concepts. As in Biblical Revelation, the new creation announced in his statement can only take place once the old system of values has been completely overturned; it is through the desacralization of their old myths that Spaniards, as he sees it, will know the truth that will set them free.

In the case of post-war Spain, and in line with the author's social and existential ethics, salvation will mean a general awareness of reality starting with an awakening of consciousness. It will mean, in the first place, the destruction of the idols of Catholicism (as of myths of the past in general), and their replacement by a collective effort of renewal, itself the offspring of enlightenment. The Spain of Martfn-Santos cannot be liberated until it comes to view the past in a new light, that is, as an instrument of service to the present. 38

Changing the world, for Martin-Santos, and not just pondering over its wretchedness, is the only path to liberation; liberation meaning, in the first instance, the abolition of slavery to myths. Spain will not be redeemed of its social ills until its citizens have actually taken their fate in hand; not through violent means, but through an effort of solidarity towards eliminating their old values and traditions - mere products of myths-, thus proceeding to the incessant creation of a constructive code of ethics.

The utopic ambitions of the philosopher-novelist are reflected in the anarchistic idealism of his protagonist, Agustin, who is the object of a severe reprimand by his tutor at the University of Salamanca:

jEspiritu destructor, anarquista! ... No hay que reirse de lo mas sagrado. (TD278)

These words are used by Padre Julian to reprove Agustin who, like his author, delights in profaning the most sacred tenets of his cultural inheritance, here Plato's moral treatises which have greatly enriched the spirit of Catholicism. Like his author, Agustin is the renegade son of a traditional Catholic, brought up in the faith and world of the spirit. The young scholar's ambitions of reform will later give way to greater designs, thereby reflecting the aspirations of the novelist himself, who had once expressed his wish to change the world in a grand way by fighting for his people's freedom:

Siento el deseo de algo muy grande: de luchar, veneer y amar. 18

This anarchistic idealism, pertinent to the Promethean ideal of human regeneration, pervades the ethical vision of Martin-Santos in 39

his role as a philosopher concerned with the building of new values for the future. If Spanish culture can be cured of its ills through the destruction of its old myths, then, according to the socially oriented psychiatrist, the medical profession can also be regenerated through the elimination of its myths, that is, the old conservative values which have impaired its progression towards a humanistic treatment of mental illness. In professional ethics, Martin-Santos' visions of reform have come to assume a major importance.

Anti-Psychiatry.

In his endeavour to rid psychiatry of its conservative precepts, Martin-Santos adopts an attitude of social commitment in line with that of the anti-psychiatry movement initiated in the aftermath of the Second World War. For him as for those labelled anti-psychiatrists­ prominent among them R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz -, mental illness is, as a rule, of social origin, and most often bound up with a particular culture. The main issue, for Martin-Santos as for the anti-psychiatrists, is the need to change the medical Establishment; a need emerging out of their profound discontent with institutional psychiatry. Their initial question is no longer what makes a person mad, but rather, what makes a society sick.

In his fictional writings, Martin-Santos displays his antagonism to the traditional definition of madness, viewing it not merely as a malfunctioning of the psychic mechanism, but essentially as a difficulty in coping with the environment, and sometimes even as a 40

way of escaping an unlivable predicament. In Tiempo de silencio the psychopathic scenes of abundant drinking, violence, rape and incest in the daily life of the chaboleros thus take the form of an evasion from the squalid misery that surrounds their dwellings. In the same way, the rowdy euphoria of the crowd in search of violent amusement emanates from a need to unleash instincts bound up by social and political repression. The latter manifestation of breaking loose becomes collective madness in Tiempo de destrucci6n, with the complete fusion of the crowd in drunken revelry; and in a paroxysm of violence, the nightmare of the Witches' Sabbath unfolds, revealing the sheer insanity of a people submitted to fear and repression for centuries of Hispanic culture.

Psychosocial disabilities develop with the socio-economic, religious and political order, says Thomas Szasz; psychology is therefore interlinked with sociology, and their laws should not be formulated independently of each other. Mental illness, according to Szasz, is a myth, a scapegoat ideology; psychiatrists, he stresses, "are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social, and ethical problems in living" 19 . This radical psychology, although stretching beyond the limits of Martin-Santos' vision, does reflect his fictional account of mistrust and condemnation of the institutional urban scene, with the psychiatric hospital being used as a "recogeperdidos" (TS19), just like the gaol and the police station. For both reformers psychiatry and law are two aspects of the same political machine, since they serve to define the socially legitimate roles as well as enforce conformity to these roles. 41

By emphasizing that society models the individual for a life of conformity, R.D. Laing defines sanity as adaptation to the external world. Madness, Laing says, is sometimes sought as a way out, as a path to freedom from the oppression of conformism. Psychosis, moreover, can be part (if not the whole) of a process of healing:

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough. It is potentially liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death. 20

In line with this somewhat radical view of madness is a catharsis of the social disease in Tiempo de destrucci6n: in a truculent demonstration of bestiality and profanation of the doctrine that has enslaved her culture for many generations, Agueda expiates the myths of oppression through her song of blasphemy 21, thus liberating herself, in the might of her insanity, from all bondage to religious belief. Similarly, it is with an exaltation bordering on madness that Agustin frees himself from the chains of oppression, thus expelling from his mind what he views as the sin of ignorance - "que se acab6la ingenuidad" (TD501) 22. With these examples of self­ generated elusion from reality, Martfn-Santos echoes the anti­ psychiatrists' notion that the experience and behaviour labelled schizophrenic is often "a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation" 23.

In Martfn-Santos' fictional world, lack of freedom due to socio- political repression, when not leading to violence and expiation, generates apathy as resignation to fate and a suspension of commitment to the world. Apathy, according to the theories of Rollo May - still within the bounds of the anti-psychiatry movement -, leads 42

to loss of self and, in the end, to dehumanization. Within the context of freedom deprivation, May describes insanity as paranoia, the breeder of an incessantly more distorted encounter between the affected individual become apathetic and the repressive environment24. In Tiempo de silencio the prisoners of the system have resorted to extreme apathy through their diet of fear and perpetual threats of further punishment; they have, as the author dramatically explains, lost their human substance and grown totally alienated from their world (TS205-7).

The social model of psychiatry implies the malfunctioning of a society, hence the mental illness of its human component. Throughout his medical articles - more particularly those on alcoholism and epilepsy -, Martin-Santos communicates the notion that the lower the social class, the higher the incidence of mental disorders among its population; a notion further reflected in his first novel, with psychopathy rampant among the slum dwellers who, after migrating from the country in search of employment, end up living in extreme poverty in the tenements of the big city. It is through his fiction that he is actually able to express stronger views, such as the opinion that, the more socially oppressed the group or class, the more prone to mental disturbances, if not to downright insanity.

As a reformer of social ethics, Martin-Santos upholds the need to change the socio-political environment and improve living conditions in a country where people are, according to him, malnourished and ill-treated. The psychopaths and the insane, so his fiction reveals, are those most directly affected by unjust political powers, as in 43

Tiempo de silencio the lower classes in general; and the uneducated classes as a whole are those who suffer from the overwhelmingly repressive effects of their indoctrination in Tiempo de destrucci6n, their suffering assuming the shape of collective madness during the celebration of their myths. Accordingly, if conventional psychiatry is reformed along the social model advocated by the philosopher- novelist, it will gain a humanistic dimension, actually coming to view society as an extension of each of its individual components. Here the aim of the reformer is the development of a sane society, purified of its ailment, and the bearer of new ethical values opposed to those which breed madness and insanity.

The Sane Society.

The sane society Martin-Santos conceives for his people is totally opposed to the picture of alienation conveyed in his two novels. The sane society, for him, does away with restrictions on love and freedom; in fact, it advocates love as the condition sine qua non of all harmonious social integration 25.

Generally speaking, as we shall set forth in the next chapter, this imaginary sane society is imbued with the humanistic ethics that permeate the writings of Erich Fromm, most particularly as regards the development of human potential as opposed to its impairment through ideological constraint 26. "A sane society", says Fromm,

is one which permits man to operate within manageable and observable dimensions, and to be an active and responsible participant in the life of society, as well as the master of his own life. It is one which 44

furthers human solidarity and not only permits, but stimulates, its members to relate themselves to each other lovingly... 27

This idealistic vision, which recommends each individual as an active participant in the continuous elaboration of the collective ethos, defies all omnipotent authority that breeds fear and hatred on the social scene, as is the situation described in Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n. "El hombre es la medida de todas las cosas" (TS286), so Pedro reflects in the first novel, ironically invoking the humanistic Renaissance concept of man as the measure of all things in order to further decry the alienation of human beings from their real essence; in this particular context of cruelty and debasement, to expose the picture of destruction of a humanity reduced to a beastly

state, that of the hombre~lobo, through denying its basic potential for growth.

For Martin-Santos as a dialectical philosopher, humanity is essentially dynamic; it is therefore its role - and duty - to transform itself through the use of its potential. Reason, which enables human beings to maintain their integrity, should allow them to preserve the use of their own ideas, as opposed to absorbing the authoritarian tenets which permeate their world. In this sense automatic conformity is to be abolished, and replaced by a newly won autonomy. A sane society, in the end, would be one that enables the individual to develop independently of any original ties with the clan or group, though at the same time gaining full membership of the human society. In the society Martin-Santos envisages for the future, people, then, will have learnt to trust and love one another:

Finalmente, existe un pueblo, cuyo nombre no se recuerda con precision, cuyos subditos se sonrien mutuamente al cruzarse por las calles y - mirandose en los ojos - se fian los unos de los otros. 28

As an extension of love and friendship in an atmosphere of freedom and plenitude, the author of such lines visualizes the development of erotism, that aspect of love which, according to him, will take over the dogmatic cultural atmosphere that has so far obstructed the freedom of the individual29.

For Martin-Santos, love at all levels can only prosper in a society freed from all bonds of oppression; and a liberated society will come to embody the free expression and satisfaction of the basically good natural instincts of humanity.

Exaltation versus Defeatism.

It is interesting to note that, despite his idealistic vision of the regeneration of Spain, Martin-Santos nurtures ambivalent feelings about this eventual possibility. The tone of his first novel is one of despair, if we take into account the sarcasm he is displaying all along, together with the failure of his main protagonist. In the second novel he reiterates his lack of confidence in humanity through Agustin, with all the irony of the cynic who has given up on mankind: 46

Es maravillosa la abundancia del amor humano. Solo el amor del estafado al estafador hace posible que la estafa exista. (TD196)

Exaltation versus defeatj.sm: such is the attitude of the cynic who treats as madness all belief in the possibility of changing the world for the better:

Sigue sabiendo que este mundo es malo. Su locura (si bien se mira) solo consiste en creer en la posibilidad de mejorarlo. (TS75)

Alluding to Cervantes' defeated hero who failed to change what he saw as a world replete with pettiness and injustice, Martin-Santos comes to show as futile all belief in the redemption of his country and, by extension, of the world at large. It is out of nostalgic melancholy that the narrator assimilates himself to Cervantes, debating on the possibility of ever discovering a true humanity. In his imitation of the celebrated writer, the author depicts his hero, Pedro, as a laughable character vanquished in his grandiose ambition to discover a remedy for the ailment that plagues humanity; namely, cancer, symbolic of the social illness in his fictional world.

In all this disillusionment, what sort of reaction did Martin-Santos anticipate to his story of a failing hero? Was Pedro's odyssey to provoke laughter among the readers, just as the adventures of Don Quijote had done, much to the dismay of their misunderstood author?

l,Por que hubo de hacer reir el hombre que mas melancolicamente haya llevado una cabeza serena sobre unos hombros vencidos? l,Que es lo que realmente el queria hacer? l,Renovar la forma de la novela, penetrar el alma mezquina de sus semejantes, burlarse del monstruoso pais... ? (TS7 4) 47

Assuming the role of Quijote in modern times, Agustin will also be defeated in his Promethean mission; he too is a visionary, a dreamer to some extent, until the moment of his final downfall. Don Quijote failed in his journey through life because his ideals were too high, and because he could not come to terms with reality. Agustin, the idealistic reformer in search of perfection, fails to communicate his message of redemption, dying at the hands of those who misunderstood him. For Martin-Santos as for Cervantes, ironically, all fictional characters of good faith are doomed; and what is left behind them is a meaningless world filled with indifference and selfish ignorance. The essence of Spain reflected in the legendary egoism of the Spaniard has, it seems, not changed since the epoch of Cervantes, if we consider the words of a modern critic of Spanish society:

Preocupados por su supervivencia, los espaiioles estan atentos a su propio medro personal y se les importa un comino la recuperaci6n nacional, el bien comtin y el rendimiento de unas empresas que no les pertenecen y a las que se sienten ajenos. 30

It is this very indifference that Martin-Santos indirectly condemns in his compatriots; indifference linked with apathy, no doubt, which prevents any effort towards reconstruction, and, worst of all, any attempt at understanding the world in a new light. The society described throughout his two novels is a petrified society, bogged down in its cultural marasmus; a selfish society, whose members know no better than living uniquely for themselves, pursuing their own interests while ignoring the needs of others. It is a sick society, which the novelist considers at this stage unredeemable, even though his main objective may be to transform it in the distant future. 48

Conclusion.

As a philosopher motivated by a Socialist ethic, Martin-Santos denounces the repressive socio-political conditions of the post-war era that have made of Spain, as portrayed in his two novels, a backward country barely surviving in the midst of under-development and stagnation. Linked with the disastrous socio-economic situation of the country is the apathy of his protagonists who, through much suffering and oppression, have become indifferent to change and steadily resigned to their fate. Alienation on the work scene, stresses the author, results in an alienated life style, with a final loss of humanity in those who have lost all purpose and meaning of life. In the Spain described in both novels, conformity to established values is the keynote, and in order to avoid persecution, the citizens are forced to obey the myths which paralyze the socio-cultural life of their nation.

It is in his fight against myths and conformism that Martin-Santos undertakes to modernize the field of psychiatry, thus making this part of medicine a socially oriented discipline which would strive for the autonomy of individuals within their society. The philosopher's idealistic vision of a sane society is, however, counterchecked by that of his lack of confidence in his fellow human beings who, according to him, are not concerned at all with ideas of regeneration. Here his radical views - oscillating between exalted optimism and a pessimism of total defeat - uncover his myopic vision as an idealist; a 49

v1s1on inconsistent with his dialectical views of the relationship between the individual and the world.

If the characters depicted in both novels fail as social beings, it is in part due to their unfavourable circumstances and the crushing power of their indoctrination. However, their total lack of motivation to survive as authentic beings, in other words their bad faith, does contribute to their failure. Where Martin-Santos stands in his judgment of this passive society, alienated from all will to act against oppression, is quite clear. 50

Notes to Chapter One.

1 Juan Benet, Otofto en Madrid hacia 1950, Madrid, 1987, P.117.

2 Ibid., P.138.

3 See J. C. Mainer's account in his prologue to Tiempo de destrucci6n.

4 See J. Winecoff Dfaz, "Luis Martfn-Santos and the Contemporary Spanish Novel".

5 Enrique Tierno Galvan, Cabos sueltos, Barcelona, 1982, P.281.

6 R. Morodo, Los orfgenes ideol6gicos del franquismo: Acci6n Espanola, Madrid, 1985, P.17.

7 Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, P.32 in Stanley G. Payne, Falange: A Historv of Spanish Fascism, Stanford, 1961.

8 Max Gallo, Historia de la Espana franquista, Ruedo Iberico (Madrid), 1971.

9 C. Castilla del Pino, El humanismo imposible, Madrid, 1975.

10 Castilla del Pino, Psicoanalisis y marxismo, Madrid, 1971, P.174.

11 Konrad Lorenz on doctrine, in La chute des idoles (J. Fursay-Fusswerk, Toulouse, 1986).

12 Stoicism is a philosophy Martfn-Santos rejects, because of its perpetuation of the need for resignation to fate, the need to accept and endure all misery and injustice inflicted from above. Born of Seneca's doctrine of quiet virtue, modem Spanish Stoicism is a gross deformation of the original precepts, moreover used at the service of the oppressor. It has led to a fatalistic view of existence, an over-consciousness of death and suffering, perhaps best illustrated by the notion of the tragic sense of life as developed by U namuno at the turn of the century. Once permeated by Catholicism and the U namunian outlook on life, the Spanish design has become one of inevitable destiny, with its total absence of dynamism and confidence in the possibility of transcending social and ideological conditions.

13See Part 3, Chapter 1 of this essay for the author's metaphorical interpretation of the impact of institutional authority on Spanish life. 51

, 14 "Canci6n de Agueda", PP.447-454 1n Tiempo de destrucci6n.

15 The word "amanoladamente" originates from Manolete, the name of the bullfighter viciously gored by a bull who took his life in the ring.

16 Psicoamilisis y marxismo, P.44.

17 WinecoffDiaz, op. cit.

18 Luis Martin-Santos, Grana Gris, Madrid, 1945.

19 Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, London, 1962, P.296.

20 R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, New York, 1967, P.llO.

21 "Canci6n de Agueda", TD447-454.

22 "At6nitamente victorioso", TD501-506.

23 Laing, op. cit., P.79.

24 Rollo May, "Freedom and Responsibility", in Psycholo~y and the Human Dilemma, Princeton, 1967.

25 See L. Martin-Santos, "El plus sexual del hombre, el amory el erotismo", in Tiempo de Espafia, III, Insula, Madrid, 1965, PP.117-130.

26 Although there is no evidence Martin-Santos had read Erich Fromm's treatises, the idealism prevalent in both philosophers as regards their views on social redemption will make the object of a study of Frommian ethics in Martin-Santos in Chapter 2, as it had been initiated bythe literary critic Jo Labanyi in her essay Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio.

27 Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, New York, 1985, P.242.

28 L. Martin-Santos, "Costumbres extrafias de algunos pueblos primitivos", P.44 in Ap6lows, Barcelona, 1970. This Quixotic quote further reveals Martin-Santos' Quixotic/idealistic vision of a redeemed society. It is indeed not by sheer coincidence that the author of this short fable imitates Cervantes' introduction to Don Quijote de la Mancha. ("En un Iugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme ... ")

29 "El plus sexual del hombre... " . 52

30 Luis Carandell, Los espafioles, Barcelona, 1971, P.52. 53

Chapter Two: Existential Alienation; The Ethics of Existentialism in Martin-Santos.

It is as a philosopher of alienation that Martin-Santos is brought to analyze the dialectical relationship individual-society; a relationship based on a negative interaction as regards the characters of his novels, but nonetheless bound to be improved, if we now consider his existential outlook. As a Socialist, he has comprehended the framework within which the individual is deprived of freedom, that is, of the basic human right to act. As an existential psychologist, he explores the neurotic state of beings deprived of their authenticity, suggesting the possibility of a remedy for this problem in the future.

The articles Martin-Santos dedicated to existential psychiatry on the theme of neurosis will be analyzed in Part Two of this thesis. The purpose of this chapter is to relate the ethics of Existentialism to his philosophical ideas. Following our encounter with the near­ pathological state of alienation characteristic of the protagonists of the two novels, we shall consider the philosophers who have most influenced the author in his existential thinking, prominent among them Sartre, who, in his opposition to deterministic teaching, became the initiator of a philosophy of freedom and participation of being in the world. We shall finally situate the main psychoanalytical concepts of Martin-Santos within his ethical view of existence. 54

The Fear of Freedom.

The core of Existentialism as a philosophy is human alienation; in other words, the precarious condition of human beings as strangers in their world. Along these lines, alienation can be broadly defined as:

the loss of freedom and selfhood involved in seeing human acts and capacities as alien forces, as attributes of things other than the self and in opposition to it. 1

Alienation basically means experiencing the world and oneself passively. It means absorbing ideas, pleasure or punishment in the case of the fictional society of which Pedro and Agustin are part. Effectively conditioned to think in one specific way, this society rejects any innovation or fantasy, not tolerating individuals who step out of bounds by being different in their thinking and acting. Alienation means, according to Erich Fromm, the fear of confronting one's isolation as a human being; in this sense it comes to mean the fear of freedom in front of the obligation to liberate oneself from the yoke of the oppressive conformism that binds people together. Although not acknowledged as a direct influence on Martin-Santos, Fromm, in our view, is the philosopher who has come closest to describing the basic mentality upon which Tiempo de silencio is modelled, mainly as regards the compulsive bondage of the individual to an authoritarian society, a society which offers security to those who conform and punishes those who dissent. Erich Fromm's major writings are used as a central point of reference throughout this section. 55

Man makes himself in the course of the historical process which begins with the first act of freedom to say no, according to Fromm 2, who evaluates the whole life of an individual as "nothing but the process of giving birth to himself' 3. To be alive is to grow, develop, respond to life. To be dead means to stop growing, deny life and humanity; in a word, to become a thing. Erich Fromm's humanistic psychology emphasizes the need for independence, starting with the necessity to abolish all irrational authority from above, in particular the authority derived from the mythical notion of the primal Father who creates and annihilates at his will and whims, as adopted by our Western religious tradition. It is out of solitude and disorientation that human beings have recourse to obeying those anonymous authorities which, according to Fromm, provide them with security and freedom from anguish in exchange for the gift of their integrity. In the authoritarian system described by Martin-Santos, individuals coerced into complying with oppressive laws will truly find security in obedience, and a full dependence upon the State as father-figure. It is their frustration, as well as resentment and a strong sense of insecurity, that have aroused in them the need to belong to a family in which they can lose themselves, letting themselves be fully absorbed into the system which stifles them but in spite of this becomes part of their own being.

"Guilt feelings have proved to be the most effective means of forming and increasing dependency" 4, Fromm says, "and herein lies one of the social functions of authoritarian ethics throughout history" 5. The guilt generated by an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness in front of oneself and the world, indeed only serves to enhance the need of alienated individuals for comfort from their anguish; comfort they 56

will find at their finger-tips, so to speak, since everywhere around them are the forces of authoritarianism, represented by the State, the Church, traditions, customs, or myths. The prime offender is anguish itself, more precisely, anguish in the face of the existential freedom advocated by Martin-Santos as freedom to act in order to transcend precarious circumstances.

Miedo a la libertad could be an alternative title to Tiempo de silencio, according to the literary critic Jo Labanyi who, following the main lines of Erich Fromm and the neo-Freudians, sees this specific problem of the dependence of Spain on its fascist regime as emanating from the Oedipus complex, itself based on the fear and apprehension of the father-image, notwithstanding, of course, a neurotic attachment to it; a sickly dependence resulting in the final incorporation of the alienated individual to the doctrinaire society 6. Labanyi justifies her choice for this alternative title by developing Fromm's argument that, since fascism foments the regressive instincts of humanity by creating an atmosphere of chaos and, following this, by offering its tenets to reestablish order, in the end people will have learnt to fear authority yet at the same time long for it 7 ·The society described in Tiempo de silencio is an authoritarian society whose main problem is inertia, says Labanyi along Sartrean lines. It is a society which has been petrified by its inordinate fear of freedom - of responsibility, to put it in existential terms; a society in which the principle of adhesion to the group has led to the impotence of the individual; a society which, consequently, does not make history but rather undoes it by taking refuge in the past, and reverting to the authority of established tradition. 57

People are slaves of their origins, as has been seen with the example of Spain in the context of both novels under study. Martin-Santos condemns the popular attitude of appealing to myth out of fear of confronting the present which, for the Spaniard, represents sheer emptiness and apprehension. An original cause is a necessary explanation for the human condition, according to those who live in fear when left alone with the presence of their own freedom. The need for paternal protection which drives the citizens of a nation to seek refuge in the unlimited authority of their government and adhere to the group - a notion developed in Part Three of this work, with the image of the octopus -, is attributed by Martin-Santos to the state of dilated infancy (LTT215) characteristic of the neurotic patient submitted by the psychiatrist to a long-term psychoanalytical treatment. The fear of growing links up with the fear of freedom, and only serves to denounce the absence of motivation to grow out of a general state of bad faith. Let us now analyze this near-neurotic state by extending the thoughts of the main critics of the two novels concerned with the alienation of Martin-Santos' characters.

Bad Faith.

In her evaluation of the bad faith generated by the situation of determinism versus freedom, Labanyi sees Tienmo de silencio as demonstrating that the problem of Franquist Spain, in existential terms, consists in its tendency to deny the disastrous living conditions by pretending "que no esta tan mal todo lo que verdaderamente esta muy mal" (TS20). Here it becomes obvious that 58

Spain is living a lie; a lie which motivates its citizens to constantly refer to their nation in the light of their search for a better past.

It is in her reference to Martin-Santos as a psychiatrist that Labanyi comes to view Spain as symbolic of the neurotic patient who takes refuge in the past; more specifically, in past glories that need to be questioned today. Spain as depicted in Tiempo de silencio indeed lives in bad faith, if we consider the false beliefs displayed by its people who are refusing to confront the facts of poverty and backwardness of their nation. The most vivid illustrations of this bad faith can be found, following the narrator, in the delusions of grandeur of the degenerate Dora, a hero's wife (TS25) as she sees herself, and of Muecas who acts like a high-class landowner (TS58), seemingly oblivious of the squalid poverty his family lives in. This same bad faith will only serve to blind the moral judgment of the Santosian Spaniards, preventing them from assuming responsibility for their own vices, as in the case of drug addiction for instance: "Los moros habian introducido este vicio, toxicomania de paises subdesarrollados" (TS235).

As a member of this deluded society which refuses to acknowledge its moral problems, Pedro denies his participation in Florita's fatal abortion. Since he was not qualified to perform the operation, he feels he could not be held responsible for its outcome; moreover, it was already too late: "To do lo has hecho queriendo hacerlo bien... Lo hiciste lo mejor que supiste" (TS219). Just like the neurotic patient at the start of the treatment, Pedro is admitting defeat, nonetheless considering himself a poor wretch, "un pobre hombre" (TS112) as he said right from the start. He has not yet woken up to his faults; 59

therefore there is no cure in sight for him at this stage. Like the psychoanalyst's standard patient, he is fleeing from his own freedom of choice, refusing to affirm his will and acknowledge his responsibility as a free agent.

Seen in the Sartrean perspective, the characters of Martin-Santos' fiction are on the whole a flagrant incarnation of bad faith, fleeing from their freedom - and duty - to act as responsible beings. Prisoners of their traditions and social conventions, they do not evolve as authentic beings, and will in fact regress to a brutish state, as we shall see when analyzing the destiny of the characters of TiemJ)o de destrucci6n.

"La libertad es condici6n fundamental del ser del hombre" (LTT38), states Martin-Santos in his Sartrean analysis of freedom versus bad faith. In the philosopher of Existentialism as a rule, there is little mercy for those who deny their freedom and let themselves be absorbed, even destroyed, by their established values and traditions. Sartre's salauds - swine - objectify the mentality of the anti-heroes figuring in both novels; weakly beings laden down with some kind of inferiority complex; hombres-masa of Ortega y Gasset 8, who let themselves be tugged away by the current of social conformism. In Tiempo de silencio, they form part of the "alma colectiva de las muchedumbres" (TS273); in Tiempo de destrucci6n, they incarnate "el estupor ciudadano" of the carnival (TD318).

In Tiempo de silencio- as in Tiempo de destrucci6n -, the person of bad faith is indeed the hombre-masa, representative of the individuals who, through a lack of courage to act against their miserable living conditions, make themselves one with the moral and social corruption of their country by adopting it as their own way of life, thereby becoming accomplices of this corruption which will to some extent benefit them.

Regarding the complicity inherent in the relations between individual and authority in the first novel, Labanyi sees it as a gross deformation of the otherwise necessary dialectical relation between individual and society. Starting from the obvious example of Pedro's complicity with the enforced silence of the nation, she alludes to the agreed relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed; a relationship that will further perpetuate the alienation of the latter. At the national level, we shall thus witness a close association of the victims of fascism with their authoritarian rulers; an association carried to the point of mimesis in both novels, and originally bred through conformity to the oppressive laws of the institutions.

"l,No te has fijado en que, precisamente, los que a primera vista parecen mas opuestos, son los mas c6mplices?" (TD195), asks Agustin, perplexed at the lack of judgment in his compatriots who, instead of rebelling against injustice, will go so far as to lose their integrity by accepting it, thereby assuming the guilt of the culprit persecuted by a corrupt institution. The prisoners purging the misdeeds of their faulty system in Tiempo de silencio, and also the penitents expiating the sins of their community in Tiempo de destrucci6n, illustrate this point. Agustin says:

La complicidad es la maxima f6rmula social y por horror de la complicidad estoy dispuesto a ponerme fuera de ella: esto es, a ser juez. (TD196) 6l

In his search for truth generated by an imperious need to reestablish - or perhaps just establish - justice in the legal system of his nation, Agustin is determined to become a judge. A neat improvement on Pedro, Agustin takes a giant leap forward in order to eliminate all aspects of bad faith. Through his attack on complicities, he wants to gain a sense of authenticity, not only for himself, but also for his compatriots imbued with the lies of their stale myths and traditions. His task will be an arduous one, but with perseverance he thinks he might accomplish it in the long run:

La complicidad es el cemento social, pero quiza no sea la Ultima base en que la sociedad se consolida. Quizas haya ciertas armaduras mas rigidas contra las que la espada de la Ley quedara mellada. Pero si doy suficientes golpes sobre su cemento ... (TD196-7)

In spite of his grandiose ambitions, Agustin, until his mature years, remains prey to those complicities he so vehemently condemns; for he - although much against his will - finds himself in the Kleinian position of the child depending on the maternal protection of a castrating mother-figure 9; indeed, the relationship he has with his mother is one of mutual discord in a context of dependency.

Intensely preoccupied with the burden of his infantile ego, Agustin aims first of all at crushing his obsessive fear of adulthood. After ascertaining his own inability to transcend his dilemma, he will nonetheless decide to assume his duties as a judge, thus aiming to eliminate the complicities that bind his co-citizens in a senseless relationship with their oppressor, that is, one in which all authority is imposed from above. His vital project of conversion from infancy 62

to adulthood will only be realized after he has finally broken the link that keeps him living as an accomplice of enforced obedience to parental figures. As he dramatically anticipates:

Es la ruptura del vinculo, la defenestraci6n. Salgo por la ventana de la casa paterna. (TD188)

This project of independence will only lead Agustin to fail in the end. Nevertheless, as we have already mentioned, Agustin is well ahead of his predecessor Pedro in his ambitions of attaining his goal; for Pedro's intentions of growing as an authentic being are never carried beyond his imagination:

Imitare en esto al sol que permite a las viles nubes ponzoiiosas ocultar su belleza al mundo para (cuando le place ser otra vez el mismo) hacerse admirar mas abriendose paso a traves de las sucias nieblas que parectan asfixiarlo. As!, cuando ya abandone esta vida y pague mi deuda, rebasare las esperanzas que pudieran haber sido puestas en mt. Pero no parece comprensible que las cosas hayan tenido que ocurrir de esa manera, esta misma noche ya, sin esperar un poco. (TS286) Like Prince Hal, Pedro intended to change his ways; and also like Prince Hal, he was not yet ready for the big step forward. Now he blames a dramatic change in his circumstances for his failure to act. The Sartrean condemnation of bad faith is most pertinent in its insistence that is is never too late to act in good will according to the demands of existential ethics. Along with Labanyi, we reaffirm the Sartrean view of Martin-Santos that social disadvantages, whatever their magnitude, do not preclude people from being responsible and acting in good faith; this is illustrated by the sudden decision of Encarna-Ricarda to speak up in defence of Pedro, in her eagerness to 63

see justice fulfilled (TS248-9). By breaking the silence that was surrounding Pedro's conviction, this poor wretch ironically sets the example for others to follow in order to become truly human.

It is in the chapter of her critical work entitled "Antecedentes sartrianos" that Labanyi has most clearly evaluated the importance of Sartre in Martin-Santos' philosophy. What concerns us here is the concept of bad faith seen as a form of neurosis; neurosis meaning, in this context, an evasion of responsibility. In the Sartrean sense, the so-called neurotic is, before everything else, a person of bad faith, living the lie of inauthenticity within inertia, that is, a self-generated condition of static repression.

Tiempo de silencio is, we could say with Labanyi, an expression of neurosis at the societal level. Esperanza Saludes, in a psychological analysis of the two novels, has certainly diagnosed the same neurosis which invades the characters to the point of frustration, solitude, and alienation 10 . According to her, it is the lack of solidarity between people which has isolated them from one another, eventually bringing about their state of dehumanization. Indeed, those who lose contact with the rest of humanity end up forfeiting their human essence, thus losing their identity as persons and in the end becoming things.

Out of Tiempo de destrucci6n, Saludes denounces what she sees as complicities - birth, education, social structure, myths, history, archaic customs, under-development, stagnation, and what Martin­ Santos views as "facticidades" (LTT41), the main alienating factors in human life. Facticities - complicities, according to Saludes - are pre-determined conditions, immutable factors and features of a pre-existing world 11. "Una gran parte de mis facticidades afectan ami cuerpo. Mi carne es la primera facticidad que tengo que aceptar... " (LTT40-41), Martin­ Santos states when referring to these basic limitations on freedom 12. In short, facticities answer to the simple definition of alienating factors; inalterable circumstances which form the background of every life.

It is such circumstances, outstanding among them a rigid education, that have alienated Agustin from his own self, making him an inflexible judge as regards not only himself but his society as a whole. Agustin suffers the neurosis of the perfectionist, says Saludes, stressing that the neurotic state is the fundamental aspect of the social illness which pervades the atmosphere of the two novels. The fact is that Agustin, in his search for truth and meaning to life, does not spare himself any hardship, not even the strictest examination of conscience:

Yo no he consentido, padre, porque estoy seguro de que no quiero pecar. Yo aborrezco el pecado, ami me horroriza la idea de pecado. Cuando temo haber pecado, me aterrorizo, sufro. Preferiria haber muerto. Yo no tengo en ese instante completa libertad, padre. Yo en ese momento me siento arrastrado, apenas me day cuenta. Soy otro hombre. (TD126)

By later becoming fully immersed in the legal profession, Agustin will come to identify himself with his role, thus losing his identity as a private person. Here we are reminded of the workers alienated 65

from their own humanity through identifying with the material aspect of their work. In the existential sense, alienation through work derives from a situation of bad faith, in which the workers play their role to the full, pretending to be the work itself13, as we have already seen with Pedro playing his role as a doctor/scientist. Agustin "empez6 a jugar a ser juez sin precisamente actuar como juez" (TD369), states the narrator, deploring the bad faith and false pretensions of a society whose members have become what their occupation demanded of them, as is also the case of Matilde, a bored upper-class housewife: "Su resignaci6n diurna le impuls6 a identificarse con su papel de esposa, a ser esposa muy perfectamente" (TD367).

In her appraisal of Tiempo de silencio, Gemma Roberts sees bad faith as leading not only to the alienation of the main protagonist, but also - a point she particularly stresses - to his total failure 14. Although her analysis is existential in the Kierkegaardian sense, referring to the predicament of the individual doomed to the despair of temporal finitude, it does nevertheless appeal to the possibility of the defeated protagonist's transcending his problematic conditions of existence through the realization of his vital project. In these terms, bad faith will assume the meaning of a refusal to exert one's will and freedom in order to fight against time and achieve one's goals. The case of Pedro illustrates that of the nation which fails to get ahead and is subsequently bound to regress; a nation in the process of destroying itself, but which nonetheless knows how to dissimulate its pitfalls and embarrassments. 66

The theme of inauthenticity deriving from an overbearing attitude of bad faith and regression has been captured by Martfn-Santos in the image of the fish biting its own tail; the fish which assumes the fate of the Spaniards by destroying itself, unconsciously and in the same noxious manner:

La pescadilla mordiendose la cola apareci6 sabre su plato, tan perfecta en sf misma, tan emblematica, que Pedro no pudo dejar de sonrefr al verla. Comiendo esa pescadilla comulgaba mas fntimamente con la existencia pensional... El ur6voros domestico tenia una apariencia ir6nica, sonriente. No se mordfa la cola con verdaderas ganas, sino delicadamente, solo lo necesario para que no se le escapara y volviera a estirar toda su larga estatura de pez innoblemente marino, atin no del todo corrompido, blanco de carne pero con rubores amoratados donde la corrupci6n comienza. (TS72-3)

By being in communion with his surroundings, Pedro makes himself an accomplice of them, in the end adopting as his life style the silence of the nation, as well as its immobility in time and space, as symbolized by the fish he is eating. It will be in his examination of conscience, within the four walls of his prison cell, that his bad faith shows itself at its worst: by conditioning himself to believe he has chosen to be incarcerated, Pedro effectively manages to evade a sinister reality; yet at the same time he will only alienate himself further from the truth. Not to think, not to exist: to feel well; such is his aim:

El destino fatal. La resignaci6n. Estar aquf el tiempo que sea necesario. No moverse. Aprender a estar mirando un punta de la pared hasta ir, poco a poco, concentrandose en un vacfo sin pensamiento. (TS215) 67

By trying to convince himself that the temporal and spatial immobility of silence is the key attitude in maintaining his sanity, Pedro has defied all ethical norms of good faith and truthfulness. For the immediate future, the defeated hero will advocate a time of silence and resignation: "Todo consiste en estar callado" (TS293). "Es c6modo ser eunuco, es tranquilo" (TS293): annihilated by the final turn of events, and extensively destroyed in himself, he has decided to keep floating in the current of a cruel existence, thus abandoning all vital defence. He had, paradoxically, won his freedom within the limited horizon of a miniature cell; or so he thought, feeling free from all pain and worry:

Vivo. Vivo. Fuera de tantas preocupaciones ... (TS220) Eres un ser libre ... (TS221)

The ultimate distortion of reality is in his statement: "Llegar a hacer como si fuera un deseo propio estar quieto" (TS215). By pretending all is well when things are at their worst, and by shunning all responsibility to change his fate, Pedro has indeed made himself an accomplice of the national silence; he is now well and truly part of Sartre's immense family of swine, les salauds, blinded by their subordination to the conditioning agents of their facticities. He is, in short, the very epitome of the bad faith that will only lead its docile victims to their final failure as existential beings. 68

The Failure of Freedom and Non-Dialectical Being.

In her development of the theme of failure, Gemma Roberts sees Tiempo de silencio as a tale of despair in which all human ideals remain unachieved within a world of inauthenticity: En todo el libro se percibe una profunda desesperaci6n que pone de manifiesto el fracaso, el naufragio de la existencia. Fracasan la amistad y el amor en su aspiraci6n a la permanencia... 15

As an individual living in such a world, Pedro has failed because he did not transcend his instincts for gaining love and friendship, says Roberts, nor his precarious social conditions for reaching freedom of action. Pedro has failed totally, as he realizes when on his way to the country; but worse than this: as a sane individual, h'e has been destroyed, castrated as he sees it. In other words, he has been stripped of his freedom, the main attribute of a person's integrity, according to existential ethics.

Pedro, anti-hero of Martin-Santos' first novel, fades into mediocrity. As opposed to Don Quijote, the legendary figure he was trying to imitate in his search for truth, he has become, rather, a representation of the petty J oycean hero whose odyssey only leads him to his final disgrace. It is Agustin who next assumes his role as an adventurer through life; in his specific case, as a seeker of philosophical truth.

As the antithesis of Pedro in his ruthless fight for freedom - mainly through his continual attacks on complicities -, Agustin comes to play a role somewhat akin to that of Cervantes' hero; the role of an intended redeemer of humanity. Like Don Quijote, he has to fight against human error and the hostility of the world around him. By trying to free humanity from oppression in the course of his life, like Quijote he in truth aims at liberating his country - and to some extent the world - from the myths that are enslaving it. As a judge, Agustin attempts to rid the nation of its corruption and false values, and to elaborate new laws which would comply with the need for truth and respect of freedom. However, such ambitions will not be realized in a world dominated by injustice and repression; and Agustin, although gaining freedom for himself as an existential being, will be met with defeat in his endeavour to change the world.

The relationship between the self and the world is continuously emphasized in the work of Martin-Santos. According to Socialist ideology, it is in relation to society that the individual realizes his true self. According to Existentialism, it is also in relation to others - starting with the Other as a private person - that he exerts his humanity. In Martin-Santos and among the Existentialists as a rule, the concept of the Other, be it at the individual or at the collective level, will determine the existence of the being-in-the-world ; in other words, it is this very concept of the Other which will make or break the person as an identified part of mankind. As regards Pedro, his relationship with a dehumanized world he has not been able to transcend has come to bring his ultimate downfall; as regards Agustin, his newly won freedom has not profited him because he could not share it with the hostile world which came to reject him. 70

At this stage it is essential to stress the importance of the social milieu on the development of the individual. Originally Marx: saw social being as the unique determinant of human consciousness, the latter starting as consciousness of the herd. As a Marxist Existentialist, Castilla del Pino sees human reality as the social milieu, developing his psychological principles along the lines of the relationship between human being and milieu, in other words by placing the person in situation: El hombre esta siempre en una situaci6n. La realidad tiene constantemente una peculiar estructura. La realidad del hombre es su medio social. La situaci6n del hombre viene determinada por la estructura del medio social en que habita. 16

Less deterministic in his views on the development of human existence, Sartre rejects the dogmatism of Marxist theory through his insistence on praxis as the main component of his later philosophy. By opposing praxis as human activity to the state of inertia it has suffered throughout history, he comes to denounce and condemn the bad faith of those who cannot overcome their predicament as prisoners of their social milieu. Emphasizing the need for a dialectical relationship between people and their socio­ historical circumstances, Sartre only means to put the stress on the eventual triumph of humanity over the deterministic forces of the past17.

By searching the alienated being of humanity within a world of institutional exploitation, Martin-Santos is, like Sartre, led to develop a philosophy of social commitment within the bounds of his existential thinking. Like Sartre, he rebels against the writers of the 71

1950s for their tendency to classify human beings as mere products of their socio-historical circumstances thereby denying their self­ awareness in the process of building their world. To this end the hero of his second novel, Agustin, becomes his ideological representative, transcending the cultural conditioning of a society that lives totally under the yoke of history.

If Martfn-Santos wants to change the world, he therefore wants to change the individual in a dialectical relationship with it. Non­ dialectical being, for him, is inauthentic being, living in an egotistic world of its own where no conscious relationship with humanity can be perceived. Non-dialectical being is characteristic of the mass; more precisely, of the individuals whose interaction with their society denotes a gross deformation of the dialectical relationship. Non­ diale'Ctical being leads to the fusion of the individual with the social to the point of mimesis in the two novels. Indeed, in Tiempo de silencio as in Tiempo de destrucci6n, human alienation results from this very state of total immobility of being; in Sartrean terms, from mimesis as the practico-inert 18.

With the revista and the carnival as examples of inertia, the author illustrates the immobilization not only of human praxis, but also of dialectical thinking. In such situations, petrified thinking results in a general state of false consciousness, whereby each social class comes to see the whole world as a macrocosm of its own universe of values and ideas. By recommending an initial dialogue between the classes alienated from each other as well as from their own members, the dialectician would have in mind, in the remote future 72

perhaps, their liberation from all false values bred of their social conditioning.

"A la enajenaci6n caracteriza una cierta ignorancia de la coacci6n", Martfn-Santos states in his article Dialectica. totalizaci6n y concienciaci6nl9. Advocating the dialectical process of assimilation of human beings to their society within their specific historical context, the philosopher of alienation already foresees the new totality emerging from a conflict of opposites; totality born of a dynamic- as opposed to mechanical - synthesis which will in its turn generate a new overall vision of being within the past, present and future. "La historia se ha hecho a golpes de toma de conciencia" 20, he stresses, confirming his point that each intake of consciousness is a step towards assuming authenticity within the socio-historical process, and also a step towards the final goal of disalienation. The knowledge of one's situation will be revealed by the power to change it:

El movimiento hist6rico dialectico reline en un solo acto el saber y el poder : el hombre, el grupo, el pueblo saben lo que son en el momento en que, gracias a Ia toma de conciencia, llegan a poderlo ser. 21

To conclude on the need for a dialectic, we refer back, in the more concrete realm of literature, to the failure of Martfn-Santos' protagonists, Pedro and Agustin. If Pedro failed, it was because he had renounced his freedom to act against his circumstances. It was, generally speaking, because of his lack of motivation to rebel against the forces of oppression assailing him; forces which he failed to grasp, and therefore to reckon with. Pedro, in other words, lacked 73

the motivation to develop a positive awareness of his situation, and consequently did not transcend it. In Agustin this awareness was present, and also with it the incentive to make history by overcoming his socio-cultural circumstances. Why this second hero failed is the question we shall raise at the very end of this work, when conducting the debate on whether Martfn-Santos intended to bring the triumph of a freedom-filled dialectical hero - and world - in his projected third novel.

Philosophical Antecedents of Martfn-Santos.

We now introduce the forebears of Martfn-Santos as an existential thinker; forebears to whom he dedicated many pages of non-fictional writing in his analysis and criticism of their contribution to philosophy.

As all philosophers have been inspired by their predecessors in some school (or schools) of thought, Martfn-Santos, along with other thinkers of his epoch prescribing change, has rallied to the Existentialist movement of the 1950s whose main representatives were Sartre in France and the Phenomenologists of the School of Heidelberg in Germany, the latter basing their doctrines on such philosophers as Dilthey, Jaspers and Heidegger, to mention only the most prominent ones. We shall refer to these four in chronological order, starting with Dilthey whose ideas gave rise to a new philosophical method as elaborated by Jaspers, then proceeding to describe Heidegger's ontological precepts which in turn led to the development of Sartre's philosophy of being and nothingness. In the context of the evolution of the Existentialist movement, we shall 74

attempt to fit the personal views and innovations of Martin-Santos as a philosopher.

Human life should be observed within its socio-historical context, according to Dilthey whose main philosophical purpose was to free history from prejudice and metaphysical dogma, thereby advocating an awareness of meaning in the past in order to understand the present. "Man knows himself only in history, never through introspection" 22, stated Dilthey who sought to understand the mechanisms and vicissitudes of mental life through empirical analysis, that is, according to his school of thought, through observation of human behaviour within historical time. Man is what has happened to him, indeed, what he has become: such is the Diltheyan view later adopted by Ortega y Gasset in his writings on the concept of life; a view that will further extend to the field of Existentialism, when adopted and developed by Jaspers and his followers. Seen on the whole as a Critique of Historical Reason, Dilthey's work has benefited the field of exploration of the notion of temporality, as we shall describe it later with the influence of Heidegger on Martin-Santos. One major aspect of Dilthey's work is the psychology of Erlebnis - lived experience - which has given way to the phenomenological interpretation of psychic life in the new psychiatry of the 1950s and 1960s; a psychology stressing the point that it is in immediate experience alone that the whole of psychic life belongs. On the other hand, according to Dilthey, it is not in a whole and complete abstract reality, but rather in the link of individuals, that a general experience of life originates23. 75

Following in the footsteps of Dilthey, Jaspers proclaimed the link of individuals as existential communication, the meeting of human being with other existences. Rejecting dogmatic communication as adverse to openness, Jaspers invoked transcendence, meaning the going beyond24, as the means to enlarge one's possibilities of realizing oneself within a given community. Such tenets as I am as I am, or I cannot change, when relevant to socio-historical circumstances apparently beyond one's control, were for Jaspers signs of bad faith which eventually led one to become objectified, or, say, converted into an object- as opposed to a dialectical subject- of history. The silent negation of bearers of this bad faith will thus yield their alienation not only from themselves, but from others as well, their mute inertness preceding a total loss of communication between existences. (It is necessary to stress the importance of the communication with the Other, as we shall be concerned with it on several occasions when analyzing its immediate aspects in the phenomenological psychiatry of Martin-Santos.) For his part, Jaspers did extend the philosophical ideas of Dilthey by introducing into psychiatry a psychology of meaningful connections, as well as a descriptive phenomenology; and although his philosophy has not had a primordial influence on the thinking of Martin-Santos, it has nonetheless served as a stepping stone to the more elaborate doctrines of others in the field under study.

In his doctoral thesis: La influencia del pensamiento de Guillermo

Dilthey sobre la psicopatologia ~neral de Carlos Jaspers y sobre la posterior evoluci6n del metodo de la comprensi6n en psicopatologia (1953) 2 5, Martfn-Santos traces the origins of Jaspers' psychopathology in Dilthey's philosophy of life, starting with the 76

notion of Erlebnis as the immediate reality of lived experience. Since Dilthey referred essentially to empirical consciousness when relating to the observation of life, there must always remain a certain element of irrationality in life, so the writer tells us; nothing can be explained dogmatically. Life itself is psychology, and its comprehension will always bear a need for conjecture, as it does not provide us with any demonstrative certainty. As for the psychic life that cannot be understood, say, the absolute other, in other words alienated life, it spells madness in its most basic form.

At another level of analysis, Martin·Santos insists on the point that the discovery of life as pure facticity was a major aim of Dilthey, who came to see life as a perpetual movement in time, with its meaning appearing in the past, more precisely in the memory of past events. As indicated in Martin-Santos' thesis, meaning becomes the basis of a whole medical psychology. Dilthey designed the notion in the first place, and Jaspers transcended it, so to speak, extending it to cover the field of comprehensive psychology, in which his main contribution to psychiatry is found. One of the conclusions of that thesis is that Dilthey's philosophy of meaning in history has influenced Jaspers as a philosopher of transcendence, if we omit the major differences coming to the fore as the latter came to develop his existential philosophy of the encompassing.

Whereas Dilthey started with life, Jaspers started with the encompassing, that is, a combination of the world we are part of and transcendence as the being that surrounds us. Through his appeal to transcendence in the search for a meaning to life, Jaspers proved to be more thorough than Dilthey in his vision of existence. Exalting 77

the freedom of humanity in its search for truth as well as in the election of itself as being, Jaspers sought this freedom and its possibilities beyond all psychology.

At the basis of the encompassing is reason, seen by Jaspers as the primordial requirement for achieving integrity and meaningfulness. Characterized basically by the will to unity, reason was further considered by him as the total will to communication. Communication itself is an endless struggle, and part of the process of becoming; its pathological form is, as we have seen, silence, "a form of inaction, the suspension of communication in mere existence" 26.

A major aspect of this perpetual struggle, and the groundwork of all search for transcendence, is indeed freedom; freedom used here as volition, as the will to perfect oneself and find meaning in life. As a Christian Existentialist, Jaspers saw each act of existential freedom as leading human beings a step further towards conversion, towards their meeting with the God beyond their reach. Although his spiritual aspirations have had little impact on Martfn-Santos, they have nonetheless influenced his theories on existential conversion; theories we shall draw on when explaining the ethics of his psychoanalytical principles. Jaspers himself said about all medical goals in the field of psychoanalysis:

The highest aim of psychotherapy is said to be the self-realization of the patient, the developing and shaping of the full human status, that of harmonious freedom. 27 78

Furthermore, it is the duty of the psychiatrist as a paternalistic counsellor to ensure the success of this enterprise, by guiding his patient along the various steps to take towards the cure. With Jaspers the concept of authority remains in the relationship analyst­ patient; however, most of the conventional principles observed by Freud and his disciples have been abolished, giving way to a more flexible relationship moulded by the spontaneity of both persons in interaction in the course of time.

In his medical article Jaspers y Freud 28, Martin-Santos pinpoints many divergences between the schools of thought of the two philosophers; divergences bred mostly of the evolutionistic versus deterministic notions of the two main currents they represent, respectively. For a start, Jaspers' influence was doctrinal, meaning that his thinking derived from philosophy instead of medicine in its origins -although he was a physician to start with-, hence his flexible views as regards the evolution of the psychoanalytical treatment, as opposed to Freud's dogmatic formation and, later, his rigid practice of psychotherapy along the lines of established medical tenets. Appealing to the moral sense of the neurotic or alienated person under his care, thus invoking the function of reason - as Martin­ Santos will try to do throughout his writings -, Jaspers addressed himself to the superior mind, to the one that could elevate itself to existence and transcend its condition of ordinary being, including its facticities in general. On the other hand, by putting the emphasis on historical archetypes such as the Oedipal situation, Freud tended to reject facticities like social and immediate circumstances, and to subsequently make universal diagnoses corresponding to certain specific symptoms. In this sense he was accused of over- 79

generalizing by Jaspers who condemned all interpretative excesses. In order to compromise with both thinkers, Mart!n-Santos, in this same article, speaks of attempting a phenomenological reading of Freud; a compromise involving two different possibilities of analysis, and running along the lines of an interpretation from the concrete to the abstract in phenomenology, versus the abstract to the concrete in Freudianism, as befits the situation 29 . This need to extend philosophy to the medical profession was raised by his predecessors, of importance among them Jaspers, as we have just seen, and of even greater prominence, Heidegger and Sartre.

To Heidegger, alienation is a disease of the being-with-others ; it is, in other words, estrangement from the world. Its curation can only be effected in time, since human being is made of duration, time, movement and change. We exist as time, as is explained in detail across the pages of Heidegger's major treatise, Being- and Time; and within time there are two possibilities of existence, namely, authenticity and inauthenticity.

As regards inauthenticity (bad faith), Heidegger saw it as the disowning of itself by humanity in its falling captive to the world (Verfallen); a state we can relate, in general terms, to the falling prey to facticities. As a primordial constituent of human existence, worldliness surrounds being; more than that, it determines its inherent state of being-there, Da-sein, being-in-the-world (in space and in situation); hence the necessity for human being to transcend its facticities and live an autonomous life, as opposed to falling into the collective life of the world. The psychoanalytical cure occurs in time. Being is treated as temporality, meaning, in the Heideggerian sense, as time existing between life and death. From this concept the theme of anguish before death emerges, first developed by Kierkegaard and now treated as an essential component of a philosophy of being. In anguish the world loses its meaning, said Heidegger, and what results is the being-in-the-world as such, prey to its facticities and perpetually threatened to be estranged from itself. For what concerns us (the alienation of being through inauthenticity), these precepts suffice to give us a concise view of a very abstract philosophy eventually leading to the more concrete philosophical approach of Sartre, who developed more fully the concept of being-in-the-world in the midst of nothingness.

Throughout his clinical writings Martfn-Santos refers to Sartre as a major influence on his thinking, mainly as regards the being of humanity within its world. As for Heidegger, for Sartre human beings exist in situation, within the whole of their facticities. A main difference between the two thinkers arises in the redefinition of time, the past still presenting itself for Sartre as facticity, but the future representing the project of the individual, the not yet realized self. For in the Sartrean view human beings are not already made, and there is no essential pre-determined human nature: existence precedes essence. Subsequently the core of conscious being is not essence but nothingness. The most obvious expression of this nothingness invading the being for-itself (pour-soi ) is freedom; more precisely, the freedom to make ourselves through our choices. This freedom is very contradictory, for instead of acting as a liberating agent, it tends to confound us, in the end leading us to search for our 81.

intrinsic self,our in-itself (en-soi ). It is this nostalgic search for a state devoid of all nothingness - a fascinating yet regressive state - which reveals the inauthenticity of being, and by the same token its alienation from itself and its world 30.

As human beings we are condemned to be free, according to Sartre; and this enforced freedom can only mean anguish, a fear of the abyss which attracts us yet also frightens and constantly threatens us. Instead of anguish before death, Sartre is dealing with a situation of anguish before nothingness: being is invaded by nothingness, since it is separated from its essence by this obsessive state which it cannot transcend. Humanity can only gain authenticity once it has reached the God-like state, God being defined as a being-for-itself which is at the same time fully in-itself, having realized all its potentialities. This leads us to reaffirm the point that, as human beings, we are what we make ourselves; we are our project, the sum total of our acts:

..... l'homme n'est rien d'autre que son projet, il n'existe que dans la mesure au il se realise, il n'est done rien d'autre que !'ensemble de ses actes, rien d'autre que sa vie.31

We are defined by Sartre in relation to our commitment (engagement) to life, that is, by the way we assume our life within a constant search for freedom and responsibility. The authentic human being will answer to this commitment, wanting to live in good faith; however, for Sartre such a being does not exist, for we all live in bad faith, whether consciously or not. 82

Alienation, in the Sartrean sense, is an equivalent of bad faith, the denial of freedom to oneself; in more concrete terms, the refusal to try and change things and the belief that what is, is meant to be. Alienation means, in the end, separation of being from the world.

At the core of the being-for-others is conflict, deriving from a state of enmity in human relations, as perceived by the Sartrean consciousness. In order to survive in a world devoid of affection and love - as Sartre views it -, we cannot let ourselves be objectified by the Other/frightful incarnation of our fellow human being who holds the secret of what we are. In order not to be crushed and become a mere thing, we shall have to get hold of the freedom of this threatening Other. "L'enfer... c'est les autres", Sartre exclaims in his play Huis­

~' not visualizing how people could ever realize themselves in love and friendship. This extreme vision will be tackled by Martin-Santos in his writings on different occasions, being treated as an aspect of the neurosis bred of a feeling of anguish before others.

In an article entitled El psicoamilisis existencial de Jean-Paul Sartre32, Martin-Santos takes up the main Sartrean themes, outstanding among them the anti-Freudian attitude of Existentialism as adopted by the author of Being and Nothingness. A main point he makes in favour of Sartre when evaluating his doctrine is that anthropology should be the very centre of psychoanalysis in our century. Indeed, people are living beings with a personality all their own, and not the human machines treated by the traditional medical model; hence the need, once more, to have recourse to philosophy in the field of psychiatry. To discover the individual project is the aim of psychoanalysis for Sartre, whose 83

method is thus prospectivistic, as opposed to the Freudian model which is retrospectivistic; for contrary to Freud, Sartre does not see the past as fully determining the present. (As for Heidegger, for Sartre being is movement in time.) Instead of rejecting the past of the neurotic as an error to be corrected, the Existentialists will rather seek to illuminate it in order to transcend it in the present; as is the case of Martin-Santos who, influenced by his predecessors, refuses to see the past as negative and alludes to it as part of the process of transcendence.

By refuting the Freudian unconscious which he sees as nonsensical, Sartre affirms that consciousness is aware of itself. If the unconscious exists at all for him, it is not as a psychological process; rather, it relates to a lack of knowledge, to irrational intuitions and so forth. It is in bad faith, says Sartre, that the unconscious is evoked as the perpetuator of neurosis; and in the same way neurotic people will blame their inferiority complex for their lack of action, instead of blaming themselves for the project of inferiority they have chosen in bad faith. It is only with a change of project that the conversion of the patient will take place, therefore, and not through a sudden and passive illumination of the psyche, as advocated by Freud and his School. With Sartre the irrational absolute of orthodox psychoanalysis comes under attack, more specifically, the decisive moment of the dramatic transformation of a psyche as if by magical means; and with it the role of the doctor as a priest is destroyed. As opposed to Freud, then, but also to Jaspers to a certain extent, Sartre believes that conversion is the commitment of the patient who, through the use of an all-pervasive freedom, makes a decision to change; and that all medical intervention in this domain will only 84

result in a violation of freedom in the neurotic who already tends to view the Other as a permanent threat to the Self.

As regards this pessimistic vision of human relationships, Martin­ Santos sees a few limitations in Sartre. Accordingly, the psychoanalyst should be able to guide the patient with respect and friendliness; besides, he says in this same article, human contacts are not always doomed to failure. Indeed, Martin-Santos tends to see the role of the doctor as one of a person who can be trusted and counted upon; an offshoot of the thinking of his mentors in the medical profession, prominent among them Lopez Ibor and Lain Entralgo, both philosophers as well as psychiatrists, and both concerned with the field of human communication. On the other hand, as opposed to Sartre's obsessive considerations on bad faith, Martin-Santos often finds good will in the neurotic person who is seeking treatment. However, he does find that Sartre's precepts are on the whole valid and applicable; naturally, as long as we overlook his misanthropy.

To sum up the overall considerations of Martin-Santos on the being of humanity as perceived by the philosophers who have influenced him most:

Este ser del hombre ha recibido denominaciones diversas en la moderna metafisica: Dilthey y Ortega han hablado de la vida ; Heidegger, del Dasein ; Jaspers, de la existencia ; Sartre habla del ser pour­ soi. . Estas diferentes nomenclaturas incluyen diversas diferencias conceptuales... todas tienen de comun el intentar designar a la misma realidad hum.ana. 33 85

The Ethics of Existentialism.

A human reality of alienation and inauthenticity is what is perceived by the philosopher/psychiatrist/novelist who, in turn, stresses the need for being to transcend its condition in order to achieve true existence. To find values and meaning for life, according to Martin­ Santos, the individual must break with the old defences, confront existential anguish and choose a life project. The poem "Consilium", extracted from his anthology Grana Gris (1945), reflects its author's rebellion against a passive search for meaning outside the conscious self:

No busques la verdad que nadie encuentra. No interrogues sin tregua los abismos. No claves tu mirar en las estrellas pidiendoles raz6n de tu existencia.

Vuelvete a ti y en tu ser penetra. Vive esa vida que, siquiera, es tuya, y, pues que has de morir, sonrie y llora.

It is in his prologue to Tiempo de destrucci6n that Martin-Santos most vigorously attacks the deterministic attitude and contents of Freudian psychoanalysis, thus refusing to acknowledge the over­ stressed importance of the unconscious, and emphasizing the necessity of personal responsibility in human consciousness:

Obra del hombre y matriz esencial de su perfecci6n es el autoconocimiento. Necesidad absoluta hay de que el hombre eleve el nivel de su conciencia. Nunca el hombre superior deja de conocer la violencia y la direcci6n de su instinto. El hombre debe saber que lo que hace es malo o que lo que busca es la voluptuosidad. 34 86

Martin-Santos' only fictional character ambitious to realize himself and transcend his indoctrination is Agustin, the main protagonist of Tiempo de destrucci6n. As a potent voice of the narrator - "entre mi caracter y el de Agustin se establecia una cierta coincidencia, y ya que no almas gemelas puede suponerse que fueramos almas complementarias" (TD221) -, Agustin is here determined to replace the ethics of Catholicism with those of Existentialism, thereby commending the use of reason and mental faculties for finding answers to life's problems.

"Quiero decir que hay que hacer interrogaciones y recibir respuestas dentro de nosotros mismos" (TD281), says Agustin when challenged by a priest to seek God - or the essence of being - in order to find solutions in daily living. The Church as depicted in the second novel, I like most traditional institutions, is opposed to existential ethics, considering essence, and not existence, to be the basis of all human knowledge and values: to return to one's essence, and not to realize one's project, is indeed what it preaches:

. . . cada ser es una figuraci6n imperfecta de su esencia. Y cuando conocemos las esencias, conocemos todo de los seres. ;,Que otro saber quieres ademas de este que es el mas alto? ;,No ves c6mo te eleva y c6mo te hace semejante a Dios? (TD279)

According to this teaching, human beings are already made, and do not create themselves through their acts; and in order to come closer to God, they must seek their God-like character of perfection in their inner being. According to Existentialism, human being does not find itself but rather creates itself; and perfection cannot be attained by searching the past alone but essentially through the creation of a future in which the errors of the past will be overcome.

In his path towards independence and autonomy, Agustin comes to evaluate sin from an existential point of view:

l,No es acaso el pecado sino la consecuencia de un descenso en el nivel de conciencia? (TD125)

For Agustin, redemption is not a matter of asking for forgiveness from the Church, but, rather, a purely intellectual operation which consists in gaining awareness of one's faults thence assuming the charge of one's destiny. Whereas according to Padre Julian the new man emerges from confession and repentance, for Martin-Santos' protagonist he is born of a dynamic mental and intellectual attitude to change.

"Un hombre es lo que sea su proyecto" (LTT43), Martin-Santos insists. The new man, for him, is the person who has reaffirmed his freedom and now lives fully in the light of his project, refusing to brood over past mistakes and shortcomings. The new man has actually become conscious of those mistakes through understanding a faulty past which he will nonetheless reinterpret in order to make it assume a more positive vision of the present.

It is this very aspect of the dialectical nature of the psychoanalytical cure - the assimilation of the past into the present - that Freud and the Freudians have most tended to blot out of their consideration, seeing the past as something to be eradicated in favour of a totally 88

new mode of life in the future. According to the Existentialists, this absolute vision of the cure is more idealistic than practicable, and it is only through the process of totalization, that is, total conscientiation of the past and present, that the curative strength of the analysis is apprehended by the patient. Conscious understanding will result in an immediate assumption of freedom and responsibility within the dialectical movement of the totalization:

En cada totalizaci6n dialectica se dan dos facetas inseparables: un comprender consciente, junto con un hacerse cargo responsabilizador. (LTT234)

For Sartre and his School, the neurotic is the person who, by denying his freedom, remains a slave of his facticities - be they physical, mental, social, or economic; in other words, the neurotic lives in bad faith. In Freudian terms, he flees from an oppressive reality. Rejecting the inferiority complex as the source of most neuroses, Martin-Santos, like Sartre, refers to a project of inferiority which the person in bad faith is realizing at his own expense. However, unlike Sartre who totally denies the Freudian unconscious, Martin-Santos, as Labanyi tells us in her critical work, attempts to develop the concept of an unconscious project in an effort to reconcile the Freudian theory of the instincts to the Sartrean project, thereby seeing the unconscious as the hidden meaning of human actions.

As opposed to techniques such as suggestion through Freudian hypnotism, there is no magic process of over-manipulation of the patient in existential analysis; rather: 89

El analista pretende manejar al hombre, pero manejarlo autenticamente, en cuanto que hombre completo, en la maxima lucidez de su conciencia y en la oscuridad de su instinto simultaneamente. (L'IT184)

Still in disagreement with the Freudians, Martin-Santos stresses the point that the psychoanalytical cure is not a decisive but a successive process; in other words, there is no crucial moment of curation - or revelation, as Jaspers would also have described it. The person is progressively led to an awareness of the situation, thence to the modification of both attitude and behaviour through dialectical conscientiation:

A cada grado de comprensi6n por el neur6tico de su conducta transferencial corresponde correlativamente un grado de comprensi6n de su pasado instintual y de un nuevo nivel de responsabilizaci6n. (LTT211)

The existential cure is, indeed, a successive process - "un acontecer Iento y paulatino" (LTT109); it is a kind of secular conversion, with the awakening of the neurotic to a faulty past which is then transformed into the present mode of living.

For Jaspers and the Existentialists after him, life is becoming, and its constant flux demands of being a parallel getting ahead, a self­ overcoming; which means, in the end, that being will only gain authenticity through transcending itself, thereby assuming the charge of its own destiny. Naturally, as Martin-Santos says, this does not exclude crises; and it is in fact through one of these crises that the old man /infantile ego is destroyed, thus making way for the emergence of the new man, the proselyte: 00

La conversiOn que estructura el proyecto del hombre sana como adulto solo puede ser alcanzada a traves de una crisis, en la que el arden de la infancia queda destruido con grave descarga de ansiedad. (L'IT76)

The change of project determines the conversion. From here on the past assumes a new meaning, and the individual embarks upon a discovery of the possibilities emerging from an awakening to freedom. He now starts perceiving the non-existence of the bindings that were immobilizing and fastening him to his past in a deterministic way, in bad faith in other words.35

This change of project is indeed an important achievement in the psychoanalytical cure; and from a new assumption of freedom will arise a need to discover the unknown and hidden. Here Martin­ Santos sees as an apotheosis of the cure the possibility of enjoying one's freedom within the Other's freedom. Now the unknown is no longer an obstacle to the realization of the self; on the contrary, it has become a link in the discovery of the world that lies beyond; and through an integration to the world and to others, the individual has finally transcended the state of alienation: Mas alla de su neurosis, convertido de esclavo de su destino en inventor de su proyecto, el hombre deviene un ser trascendente. (LTr24 7) 91

Conclusion.

This survey of Martin-Santos as a philosopher of alienation should lay the foundations of an analysis of his work as a psychiatrist on the one hand, concerned with the conversion of his nation from a state of neurotic estrangement into a new state of awareness leading to the taking into consciousness of a past to be transcended; and, on the other hand, of an analysis of his creative writing as a novelist dealing with the metaphorical aspect of these same psychological notions. The paramount ambition of Martin-Santos as a philosopher would be a triumph of Socialism within the ethics of Existentialism, meaning the harmonious integration of disalienated being into a society cured of its bad faith; a society which would eventually come to accept existential freedom as the fundamental requirement for the edification of a positive future. 92

Notes to Chapter Two.

1. Gerald N. Izenberg, The Existentialist Critique of Freud­ The Crisis of Autonomy, Princeton, 1976, P.290.

2 .E. Fromm, You shall be as gods.

3. The Sane Society, P .32.

4. Fromm, Man for Himself, London, 1967, P.155.

5. Ibid.

6. Jo Labanyi, Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio.

7. See Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, London, 1960.

B. See J. Ortega y Gasset, La rebeli6n de las masas, 1930.

9. For a psychoanalytical account of the castrating mother­ figure, see LTT78-79.

10. E. Saludes, La narrativa de Luis Martin-Santos,

11. Facticity is the dominant aspect ofHeidegger's quest for being. In its broad meaning, it is opposed to transcendence. In his pursuing the road from facticity to transcendence, Kisiel relates the situation in the following terms: I live in a world I did not participate in making (the world of my facticities), and I did not ask to be born. Although my life is not, at first, my own, it is up to me to make it such. (Theodore Kisiel, "A Prefatory Guide to Readers of Being and Time", PP.13-20 in Heidegger's Existential Analytic, edited by F. Elliston, The Hague, 1978.)

12. In his account of the facticity of the flesh as defined in LTT40-41, Alfonso Rey announces the physical characteristics which determine the course of the evolution of the characters in Tiempo de silencio: physical decay of the old Dora, gross features in Amador, etc. According to Rey, broadly speaking, the under­ development of science (another facticity) in Martin-Santos' first novel has proved unfavourable to the development of human beings within their world. On the other hand, says Rey, the Hispanic culture of the modern era has emerged from its own cultural facti cities: "La cultura nacional en que vive inmerso Pedro en ese otofio de la decada de los afios cuarenta es el resultado de la vida y el pensamiento de siglos anteriores, cuyo quehacer explica la fisonomia del momento presente. Asi, la cultura que condiciona la vida de Pedro es la consecuencia de c6mo los espaiioles han vivido y reflexionado sobre sus vidas a lo largo de los tiempos, y lo demuestra 93 el hecho de que hasta el mas remoto pasado medieval este actualizado a lo largo de las paginas de Tiempo de silencio." (Alfonso Rey, "La facticidad", P .201 in Construcci6n y sentido de Tiempo de silencio, Madrid, 1977.)

13. See Sartre's famous illustration of the waiter who plays the waiter, thus identifying fully with his role instead of retaining his own identity. (L'Etre et le Neant, 1943.)

14. Gemma Roberts, "El fracaso", PP.129-203 in Temas existenciales en la novela espanola de post~erra.

15. Ibid., P.148.

16. El humanismo imposible. P.35.

17. In The Problem of Method (1960), Sartre deplores the fact that history is made without self-awareness; a serious impediment to surmount if humanity wants to shake off its socio­ historical blindness and subsequently proceed to redress its world with new creative values.

18. Sartre defines the practico-inert as "matter in which past praxis is embodied"; meaning, in the end, a stagnation in continuous action. (Sartre, Critique ofDialectical Reason, 1960, glossary.) The practico-inert is antidialectical, says Sartre; it relates to serial, collective being.

19 Martin-Santos, "Dialectica, totalizaci6n y concienciaci6n", P.l39 in Ap6loiOS.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Wilhelm Dilthey, Meaning- in History, London, 1961, P.138.

23. "From the chain of individuals arises a more generalized life experience. As men live with fellow men and with others before and after them, the regular repetition of particular experiences forms a tradition of terms describing them, which after a while becomes more and more accurate and certain.'' (Dilthey's Philosophy of Existence. London, 1957, P.22.)

24. As a strict empiricist, Dilthey had denied all forms of transcendentalism. He saw nothing behind life, no metaphysical beyond, as opposed to Jaspers who strove to reach for the beyond in all aspects of his philosophy. 25. Thesis published in 1955 under the title Dilthey. Jaspers y la comprensi6n del enfermo mental.

26. Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, Vol.2, Chicago, 1970, P.67. Opposed to communication is force, states Jaspers in this same treatise: "Where force rules there is fear, silence, concealment, coercion, unrest... in the state based on force there is universal mistrust."

27. Jaspers, The Nature of Psychotherapy, Manchester, 1964, P.24.

28. Martin-Santos, "Jaspers y Freud", in Revista de Psiquiatria y Psicologia Medica, vol. 2, No.5, Barcelona, 1956.

29. In the same way, Martin-Santos will compromise between Freud and Sartre in his major treatise (Libertad,.), in an attempt to reach the notion of an unconscious project.

30. See Sartre, L'Etre et le Neant: "Ala recherche de l'etre".

31. II ... man is nothing but his project; he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing but the whole of his acts, nothing but his life. 11 (J.P. Sartre, L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris, 1970, P.55.)

32. Martin-Santos, IIEl psicoan~Hisis existencial de J.P. 11 Sartre , PP .164-178 in Aetas Luso-espafiolas de Neurolo2'fa y Psiquiatria, Vol.9, Madrid, 1950.

33. Ibid., P.165.

11 11 34. Martin-Santos, Pr6logo a Tiempo de destrucci6n , P.148 in Ap6logos.

35. Martin-Santos, by conciliating between Freud and Sartre, will come to see the conversion process as a totalization of awakenings of consciousness, the manifestation described here being one of them and part of a continuous process of becoming. PART TWO- MARTIN-SANTOS AS PSYCHIATRIST.

In this part of the thesis the link between Martin-Santos' work as a psychiatrist and his writing as a novelist is established.

Chapter One: Individual Madness.

This first chapter examines Martin-Santos' treatment of alienation at the level of the individual seeking a cure for a neurotic or psychotic ailment. The analysis of his major treatise, Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoamilisis existencial, will be expounded with a view to uncovering the medical doctrine stemming from the existential ethics discussed in the preceding chapter. It is through this treatise establishing a synthesis of Freudian and Sartrean principles that Martin-Santos can be seen as a dialectician, always prepared to reconcile opposites in order to widen the field of scientific investigation, at the same time trying to come to terms with contradictory aspects of human understanding.

Following this dialectical thread, the concept of madness is defined, both medically and philosophically; stress is thereby placed on the necessity of incorporating the two viewpoints in the context of a synthetic method for the treatment of alienation. In an effort to comprehend the system of the philosopher-psychiatrist in its applied totality, the key concept of alienation will be traced across the broad spectrum of his medical writings relating to various psychoses. 96

Finally, by drawing the main links between the analysis of mental illness at the medical level and the study of socio-cultural issues at the philosophical level, it can be shown that individual madness interlinks with social madness. But first of all, in order to understand how Martin-Santos came to adopt an attitude of mediation in his professional life, it is essential to introduce those forerunners of Existentialism in the field of psychiatry who greatly influenced him, through both his reading of them and personal contact with their Schools during his study periods outside of Spain.

Antecedents of Martin-Santos In the field of Existential Psychiatry.

In his prologue to Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia ... , Carlos Castilla del Pino, a former colleague of Martin-Santos, introduces him as a psychiatrist. Stressing the importance of Martin-Santos' philosophical input into the medical profession, Castilla praises him as a major influence in the modernization of psychiatry in Spain during the 1950s and the early 1960s, until the time of his death.

At the end of the 1940s, after graduating in Spain as a physician, Martin-Santos decided to go to Germany with a view to broadening his knowledge of the most advanced European trends in psychiatric research. As a student at the School of Heidelberg, he first became acquainted with the work of Eugen Bleuler, who, although not particularly preoccupied with existential issues, made a great contribution to the diagnosis and treatment of the various forms of schizophrenia in his treatise on dementia praecox 1; a scholarly work that was to lead others to a deeper study of the phenomena derived from clouded states of consciousness, namely, autistic manifestations such as delusions and hallucinations to which we shall refer as this study progresses.

At Heidelberg, after studying Heidegger's philosophical analysis of Dasein, Martin-Santos was brought to an understanding of Ludwig Binswanger's development of a psychiatric analysis of Dasein as being-in-the-world. From a concrete reality, being became for him the background from which the person arises. It would be much later, through a basically post-Freudian method of analysis known as Daseinsanalyse, that Martin-Santos would make the acquaintance of Freud's writings.

One of the first Existentialists to apply Daseinsanalyse to his psychological method was Karl Jaspers, whose Genera I

Psychopatholo~y (1923) represented a substantial contribution to a Phenomenology of psychiatry. As seen previously, Jaspers was greatly influenced by Dilthey in the development of his doctrine of existential communication; and it was through Dilthey that he came to accept the need for empathy with the Weltanschauung (world­ view) of others as a major stepping-stone towards the achievement of a real human community, itself the main cure for the loneliness and isolation of the human being lost in an alien world. It cannot be denied that Jaspers' anti-dogmatic attitude to life, leading him to refute all absolute notions, thus enhancing his unquenchable thirst for transcendence and the discovery of new dimensions - in philosophy as well as in psychiatry , impressed the dialectical thinking of Martin-Santos. From Jaspers, then, emerged a dialectic of existence leading from conflict in human relations, through to empathetic understanding, to the final integration of being to its world and its subsequent realization as a being-for-others.

At this stage the importance of empathetic understanding cannot be over-emphasized, for it is this very concept which leads to the psychic connection between therapist and patient in the field of phenomenological psychiatry. This connection between two minds - established solely by the therapist in the context of the treatment - will eventually lead to a deeper understanding of the patient's personality, itself made up of a whole complex of meaningful connections 2. These connections, according to Jaspers, serve to disclose the phenomena the therapist will investigate in a quest for the immediate experience of the other's psyche.

The psyche is inner experience; it is also becoming, said Jaspers in this same major treatise, meaning that the psychical processes of the mind are not of a definitive nature. These processes evolve in a constant state of flux, he added; thence the unfolding of the psyche in the various manifestations of the stream of consciousness, later seen by Martin-Santos as the direct expression of feelings and emotions among other psychic experiences 3. Martin-Santos said as regards Jaspers' tendency to base his understanding of the mental patient on intuition derived from a sense of empathy:

En Jaspers hay una ambici6n de ultimidades: aspira a captar esencias en su sentido mas riguroso: la idea delirante primaria, el proceso. Se trata de algo exactamente definido en el mundo limpio de la intuici6n fenomenol6gica. 4 Following in the footsteps of Jaspers when developing his theoretical work on abnormal psychology, Kurt Schneider stressed the importance of what he called the psychic reaction to the meaning of a situation or experience 5. For Schneider as for Jaspers, a diagnosis of abnormality could only be found in the outpouring of the personal experience of the patient; and treatment would depend essentially upon the degree of inadequacy of the lived experience within a specific context. Martin-Santos based some of his clinical views on Schneider's principles 6; however this essay does not stretch beyond the existential treatment of alienation, and we shall thus limit ourselves to the study of the less clinical and more philosophical trends of psychiatry.

To sum up briefly our understanding of Phenomenology so far: it originates in Dilthey's philosophy of lived experience (Erlebnis ), and when applied to psychiatry, aims to grasp - by both isolating and linking - the morbid phenomena found in the consciousness of the mental patient. Jaspers initiated this viewpoint; the School of Heidelberg developed it, almost to the point of making it a method. Martin-Santos' doctoral thesis - published under the title Dilthey. Jaspers y la comprensi6n del enfermo mental - takes its roots in this study of consciousness.

It was Husserl's disciples and followers who formally introduced Phenomenology to psychiatry, by stressing the primordial impact of immediate experience - intuition, to be precise - upon the person's consciousness of the world. A Phenomenology of perception constitutes the very basis of Husserl's major work Ideen (1913). 100

According to Husserl - considered to be the founder of the philosophical method known as Phenomenology-, the world is the correlate of consciousness, itself the realm of absolute being, and the roots of all knowledge must be sought in the consciousness of the subject, in whom the phenomena appear. Husserl's radicalism stretched so far as to make him assert that global immediate vision was at the origin of all rational affirmation; a return to the things themselves (psychical processes) was thereby advocated, meaning, in its most radical form, that all underlying logical interpretations should be discarded in favour of a phenomenological procedure of grasping essences 7. This rejection of all compromise was not acceptable to Martin-Santos who, as a dialectician, strongly condemned all extreme views and absolute notions. Nonetheless, the more moderate tenets of Phenomenology were absorbed into his medical views. Prominent among those tenets was the emphasis on form at the expense of content, the form leading to the content of consciousness, hence to the problem itself 8.

For the Phenomenologists, to understand a behaviour is to perceive it from its original intention. Phenomenology's task thus consists in analyzing the intentional lived experiences of consciousness, in order to apprehend the meaning of the phenomena. Husserl, among other Phenomenologists including Sartre, saw intentionality as the primary characteristic of consciousness, meaning by this that consciousness is always a consciousness of something, being directed to something by the original intention of its bearer 9. This openness to the world, first promoted by Brentano, bears within itself the notion of transcendence of being toward the world 10. lffi

From Husserl to Sartre: such was the trajectory pursued by Martin­ Santos in his more mature years. In other words, after assimilating the ideas of the School of Heidelberg, he went on to explore the beginnings of the Existentialist movement in France, whose founder was to represent his major philosophical influence in the field of a new form of psychiatry. It is in his elaborate treatise on psychotherapy, Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia ... , that Martin-Santos reveals himself to be in favour of a Sartrean concept of alienation within the context of the psychoanalytical cure. In Part One we have analyzed the existential ethics related to this new attitude in psychiatry; in the following pages we are exploring the existential mode of approach to psychopathology, as described in the work its author subtitles "Para una fenomenologia de la cura psicoanalitica".

Libertad., temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoantilisis existencial.

Throughout the text of his most explicit dissertation on psychoanalysis, Martin-Santos strives to develop a phenomenological approach to the understanding of neurosis. What he aims to do, in the first place, is an analysis of the contents of the consciousness of being. The main question to ask here is: how is the neurosis actually lived by the patient? In Heideggerian terms, we should simply ask how being lives its world.

As regards the essential purpose of his treatise, Martin-Santos states: 102

Lo que queremos hacer no es sino un examen y descripci6n existencial de los hechos que facticamente ocurren en el transcurso de una cura psicoanalitica clasica concebida al modo freudiano. (LTT29)

In other words, he aims to reach a better understanding of the notions emerging from the past in the course of the Freudian psychoanalytical method, by making an existential description of them, thereby enabling a new, re-vitalized interpretation of the problem as a whole. We shall leave Freudian analysis aside, and proceed to develop Martin-Santos' existential basis for psychiatry, as a continuation of the ethics examined in Part One.

It is by stressing the role of freedom as the very antidote for alienation that Martin-Santos has revealed himself more Sartrean than Freudian. Although making concessions with the Freudians in his elaboration of a treatment and cure for neurosis, he has acknowledged Sartre as his main teacher, as we have seen when last dealing with this particular work.

To sum up the ethical viewpoint studied previously: For Martin­ Santos as for the existential psychiatrists in general, Freudian determinism spells irresponsibility; for according to them, psychiatric teaching and practice in the deterministic vein has undermined the sense of guilt which healthy individuals should bear within them as part of their existence as responsible beings, and has, instead, given way to a sense of comfort breeding bad faith and irresponsibility. 103

As opposed to all deterministic explanations of existence, freedom does not offer a solace in the past for one's predicament; in fact, all it seems to herald is emptiness, le neant, says Sartre. Freedom, defined by Martin-Santos as "la indeterminaci6n psiquica capaz de ser origen del sentido de la vida" (LTT71), must start with a crisis: the crisis of an often painful awakening to one's alienation from the world, followed by the decision to find one's place and purpose as a fully integrated member of this seemingly hostile world. Those who deny their freedom are, in this existential context of the psychoanalytical cure, neurotic individuals; they are in fact like prisoners who want to escape but are unable to do so, for fear of the unknown.

It is the fear of the Other's freedom - meaning, to be precise, the exercise of this freedom before which the neurotic person feels so vulnerable - that is the main cause of conflict in human relationships, according to the Sartrean school of thought. In his treatment of the various aspects of fear, Martin-Santos alludes to the anguish-breeding situation of the encounter of two freedoms as incarnated by two distinct individuals representing disparate tendencies:

El grupo de terrores del otro se desencadena ante la potencia de la libertad ajena que puede actuar, en un momento dado, como no amorosa respecto del sujeto. Ante el otro desconocido y quiza perfido, el existente se siente vulnerable y destruible. (LTT169)

Although he does not fully reject the Oedipal fear of castration deriving from the neurotic apprehension of the potential enemy, here 104

the psychiatrist would rather transform this enemy figure into the unknown Other, bearer of a freedom which generates a pathological state of anxiety in his patient.

Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia ... deals at length with the pathology of human relationships. We shall limit our exploration of the topic to the two most basic forms of fear of the Other; namely, anguish in situation on the one hand, as partly examined above, and free (floating) anguish on the other.

Anguish in situation is an attribute of neurotic anxiety. It means, in simple terms, an exaggerated fear of danger, obsessional at times, in front of other people, and within a given surrounding world. It leads to a feeling of shame, mostly the shame of being discovered as an object of observation. Anguish results from this very discovery, as expressed by the psychiatrist in the following statement:

El existente, al ser mirado, descubre su propio ser­ para-el-otro. Este ser para el otro se vive como vergfi.enza. En la mirada del otro se descubre un reducto de libertad inasequible, una conciencia en la cual yo tambien soyvivido. (LTr45)

Free anguish, for its part, is a much more serious problem, of a decidedly pathological nature; for it bears no relationship with reality (or with the real situation), and can only emerge out of a very disturbed imagination. Free anguish happens in psychotic cases as a rule, more particularly at the start of a schizophrenic episode. It sometimes manifests itself biologically, as in the case of exogenous 105

psychoses like delirium tremens, epileptic psychosis and senility, among others 11.

A key concept which must be extracted from this diagnosis of alienation is that, should anguish before other people become the only way of relating to them, the therapist will ascertain the presence of psychosis in the sufferer. Indeed, the obsessional fear of others seen as enemies devoid of all good feelings or intentions, cannot help indicating the presence of paranoia in the individual concerned. From such a distortion of encounter, sadism 12 and masochism 13, sometimes under their most violent aspects, will come to be the only means of interaction of the individual with what is perceived as an inimical world.

It is in the context of a dramatic breakdown in human relationships such as above that the author of Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia... defines madness:

Con pleno rigor descriptivo, puede definirse la locura como una situaci6n de plena o parcial ausencia del amor. (LTT190)

Therefore,

Para el hombre, el amor es algo absolutamente imprescindible. Sin amor, el estrato esencial de su existir queda en hueco, incompleto y fallido. Sin el amor, el hombre queda abocado a la angustia y entregado a la locura. (L TT190)

Consequently, 106

El que ama, el que es amado no pueden ser definitivamente malos. El amor llega asf a ser el descubridor de la positividad humana, ilumina al resto de la humanidad y hace practicamente imposible la degeneraci6n paranoide de las relaciones interhumanas. 14

This Sartrean vision no doubt reflects the ideal affective state of the being-for-others, and by extension the accomplished Heideggerian human being as a being-in-the-world, in harmony with its world. As a disease of this very being-in-the-world, psychosis in the existential sense comes to mean the experiencing of a permanent feeling of alienation from others, worse even, the overwhelming impression of being a stranger in a threatening world which offers no escape.

"En el curso de la relaci6n transferencial ha de hacerse posible el vencimiento del primitivo terror del otro" (LTT216), says Martfn­ Santos when explaining the function of the transference in the psychoanalytical cure of neurosis. The transference is the turning­ point in the process of curation: at this point the patient transfers all hostile feelings on to the therapist, thus clearing the way for a realistic discussion of them between the two parties. The being-for­ others will enter its own disalienati~n with the overcoming of this process; in other words, when the transference is assumed by the patient in a conscious manner, then transcended prior to curation.

As regards the neurotic individual, it was a lack of empathy with others, a distrust of them, which had led to the blocking of a positive 107

communication with them. Martin-Santos sums up his definition of the neurotic person in such terms:

Al neur6tico - aunque no tan gravemente como al psic6tico - se le puede definir como el sujeto que tiene obstaculizada su relaci6n afectiva con el otro. (LTr213)

As a rule psychoanalysis does not apply to the psychotic sufferer, who is not free in the existential sense and therefore cannot assume responsibility for either thoughts or acts, let alone for a relationship with other human beings. Indeed, for the psychotic the freedom to act and make decisions does not exist. This predicament can best be described as a disease of the will, illustrated by Martin-Santos in his allusion to Buridan's ass, the Cartesian donkey who keeps oscillating between two haystacks in his incapacity to choose either, even in a crisis situation.

Trapped in a world they cannot cope with, psychotic individuals at times act similarly to animals in distress. According to the same therapist, analysis is practically impossible in the case of the person who lacks the ability to express feelings and ideas, be it logically, linguistically, or through a certain level of knowledge and intelligence. This explains why Martin-Santos advocates a decisive I attitude on the part of the psychoanalyst dealing with psychotic patients:

La psicoterapia de las psicosis exige por parte del terapeuta una actitud activa, puesto que el psic6tico no pide su ayuda, a diferencia del neur6tico, que la pide... (LTr60) 108

Since freedom in psychotic individuals is a totally alienated freedom, the sufferers concerned are not likely to seek help of their own initiative. Contrary to their neurotic counterparts, we understand, they should not be blamed for their bad faith which, after all, cannot be imputed to a lack of the exercise of responsibility. Psychotherapy will not, in the end, set their mind free, as it would do with many neurotic patients; however, it will aim to strengthen their ego, developing in them a progressive awareness of themselves as persons, as entities distinct from others. The success of this procedure will depend entirely upon the skill and understanding of the psychoanalyst; that is, in great part, on how, through empathy with the psychotic mind, the therapist comes to perceive the meaning of the phenomena appearing in the sick consciousness.

In Libertad, temporalidad y transferencia ... , the progress of the psychoanalytical cure is based on the assimilation of the conflicts which occur in the mind of the individual under treatment. A realistic confrontation of these conflicts will, through perseverance, eventually lead to their overcoming, thus fulfilling the need for a dialectic of transcendence in the analytical process:

La fuerza curativa del analisis se ejerce dialecticamente, al ser aprehendida por el paciente en un proceso de totalizaci6n. (LTT234)

Totalization, as already defined, is above all conscientiation, that is, the taking in of a new awareness of the overall totality of the neurotic affection. Let us now turn to the intricacies of Martin-Santos' 109

dialectical insight, and see how he applies his philosophical notions to established psychiatric knowledge.

A Medical Theory of Alienation.

From a conflict of opposites a new totality emerges, as has been concluded from observing the outcome of the psychoanalytical cure. The dialectic is applied not only to the mind processes of the person under therapy, but also to the thinking of the psychiatrist whose purpose is to develop a philosophy of openness when searching for solutions in the medical field. In Martin-Santos we constantly find this yearning for openness, derived from the tension between the scientist who is struggling for a definition and the anti-dogmatic philosopher. His need to abandon such tenets as positivism and ancient logic does not mean that his thinking should give way to the absurd; it does, rather, remind us of his Jasperian vision of truth as a perpetual becoming, a living flux which excludes all dogma thus considered to be pure alienation from truth.

Opposed to dogmatism in all its forms, Martin-Santos expresses the idea, in his article Dialectica. totalizaci6n y concienciaci6n 15, that nothing should be static, least of all thoughts, thus recommending the use of a free-flowing dialectic in order to avoid a vulgarization of new precepts (which would inevitably generate the birth of dogmatic ideas). 110

If constant interaction is required between philosophy and medicine in the field of psychiatry, the dialectician claims in his articles, there is definitely no valid reason for adopting fixed views.

There are loose threads in the concepts elaborated by the author of these writings; however, we ought to see his greatest merit in his daring attempt to experiment with all aspects of his profession, even if this means, in the end, insecurity in not knowing the final outcome of a theory.

In his article La psiguiatria existencial16, Martin-Santos alludes to the constant fight taking place between the two main streams of psychotherapy, namely, Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology. Both have had satisfactory results, he says, in spite of the substantial gaps that separate them.

Psychoanalytical psychiatry has its sources in Freud. It studies the psychic facts of the unconscious, by first concentrating on a search for the contents of consciousness as symbolic expressions of the dynamic situations found in the unconscious mind. Although still of primordial usefulness in the treatment of neurosis, Psychoanalysis has many limitations, according to the author of the article, particularly with regard to establishing deep communication with people who cannot express themselves or are unaware of their underlying problem. When treating such people, among them psychotics, Psychoanalysis, by tending to overlook human behaviour in its more concrete and personal forms, has indeed missed the point. 111

In the phenomenological approach, on the other hand, the psychiatrist moves from the concrete particular to the abstract general; in other words, from the observation and analysis of the morbid phenomena appearing in the sick consciousness, to the medical theory befitting his findings. From there on, not focusing on the happening itself, but rather on how it is perceived and experienced by the patient's consciousness: such is the basic approach to be adopted with most psychotics, so Martin-Santos insists.

Indeed, phenomenological psychiatry, perhaps better known as empirical (or descriptive) psychology, captures what it views as the essential part of the phenomenon, that is, the form - and not the contents themselves - of the lived experience. What matters here, we repeat, is how the contents of the Erlebnis are lived in consciousness. To illustrate this, the author gives the example of a person whose statement "soy un pecador" will be lived by its bearer in different ways, depending first on his ideology, upbringing, culture, and so on, then upon the way he assimilates these facti.cities, within the context of the ailment to be diagnosed.

It was Dilthey's stress on human experience as the origin of all psychic life that gave way to the phenomenological outlook, as we have seen when assessing the impact of that philosopher's ideas on the psychology of Martin-Santos. The necessity to observe life within its socio-historical context has not only served to undermine metaphysical interpretations; it has, most importantly of all, clarified specific manifestations of behaviour and attitudes in the light of an individual's- or of a people's - facticities and surrounding 112

circumstances, thus generating a chain of understanding, a link of empathy between people; in the psychiatric situation, a link between the two parties initiated by the therapist 17.

The phenomenological method also has its limitations; among others less obvious, the superficiality of the analysis of form, which often proves to be irrational and is not likely to lead to a vision of the totality of psychic life. The static character, so to speak, of an analysis of consciousness through Phenomenology raises the need for the emergence of Psychoanalysis, Mart:in-Santos states. His conclusion to this point is brief and simple: both methods need to be considered, depending on the situation.

The philosopher-psychiatrist pursues his article with the application of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (Beinf: and Time) to the treatment of neurosis. An important aspect of the Heideggerian approach to the treatment and cure of neurosis is its concern with Dasein, Martin­ Santos stresses. In Daseinsanalyse, the existential aggregates to be accounted for are: being-there (encontrarse ) - a product of Dasein itself-, comprehension (comprender ), and speech (habla ).

Being-there is being finding itself in a certain world, in a specific space provided for its existence; it reveals the state of having-been­ thrown (estado de arrojado ) of the being-in-the-world. Comprehension means the grasping of the symptom by the patient; the symptom is first understood within an existential context, then progressively reduced and finally eliminated. Speech is the essential prerequisite for the cure of the neurosis, for it relates to the manner in which the neurotic individual expresses all feelings and emotions 113

in the course of the treatment, and it eventually leads to an open communication between therapist and patient.

The three essential aspects of Daseinsanalyse find their place within the two interrelated dimensions of space and time. To start with, space: in the pathology of Dasein, one's vital space has been invaded. "Curarse de algo es desalejarlo" 18, says Martin-Santos, emphasizing the point that, once overcome, the ailment is dislodged, in other words removed from the lived space of its bearer. Secondly, time: the problem is also overcome in time- not necessarily a chronologically ordered time, but rather the personal and insequential time of the individual concerned, that is, the time in which the phenomena are recalled in the affected consciousness, then understood. To sum up, a proper understanding of the ailment in time leads to its elimination, or dislodging; hence the compulsory link of both elements of space and time in the psychoanalytical cure.

The lengthy and somewhat ambiguously conceived article Fundamentos te6ricos del conocer psiguiatrico 19 integrates some basically conflicting views of madness. It then pursues its course with the description of the various modes of understanding mental illness, ending with a synthetic consideration of them. In the analysis of this material, we only include those aspects which do not merely repeat the author's previous theories.

First of all, madness itself: madness is negativity, he insists. To the schizophrenic mind, the world has become practically meaningless; most links with the world of reality are severed, hence the person's loss of selfhood and failure of existential freedom: 114

La locura no es sino ruptura, hiatus, vacio y oscuridad. Ruptura de la comprensibilidad, vacio de lo humano, oscuridad del sentido, fallo de la libertad. al

It is the rupture of meaning of the world in the alienated self (in existential terms), in other words the absence of a psychological sense, that determines madness in the individual, according to this declaration. It is through an eclectic approach that the dialectician considers the origin of madness: all psychical illness may thus be, as well as an organic problem, a disease of the psyche embodied in a rupture of meaning and comprehension.

Strongly opposed to all one-sided explanations of mental illness, Martin-Santos advances two postulates within a somewhat loose dialectic, with a view to reaching a definition of madness in its totality. The postulates - the first one of organicity, the second one of effectuation - are as follows:

1) Toda enfermedad psiquica es una enfermedad del cerebro. 21 2) Todo enfermo psiquico conserva alguna capacidad para la autoproducci6n psiquica. 22

Setting aside the first aspect of psychic illness the meaning of which is obvious, let us pause and concentrate on the second one, which reveals itself as the bearer of an extra dimension, namely, that of creativity within madness. 115

Here the sick mind is seen as still productive of meaning, however obscure this meaning may be. The psychical has therefore transcended the biological; in other words, from a degenerative organic state has emerged a new psychic production. Martin-Santos confirms this view later on in his article, by asserting that:

El ser intencional de la conciencia no puede ser destruido por lo biol6gico. Es asi como, a partir de una materia prima no adecuada, la alucinaci6n es percibida entitativamente mediante el acto intencional, como autentica percepci6n. A la conciencia humana pertenece el no poder vivirse a si misma como otra cosa que como conciencia humana.23

Perception, therefore, is an active phenomenon; in other words, one creates through perceiving. The question to raise from these conclusions is: Could madness actually be creative within all its negativity? If so, an explanation of it could be found in the work of the anti-psychiatrists, among them R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, who, by rejecting all conventional medical views, go so far as to see madness as a creative process of the psyche. This explanation of madness, to a certain extent, fulfills the need for a dialectical view of mental illness as initiated by the author of the article.

When drawing attention to the relevance of the biological interpretation of mental illness, Martfn-Santos reminds us that psychiatry is not an original, but rather a derived, science. Here again the dialectician's purpose is to reconcile conflicting theories. The two following statements, that is, respectively, the rephrased postulates of organicity and effectuation, will now lead us to examine the same double proposal in the light of cause and motive: 116

1) La causa de toda enfermedad psfquica es una alteraci6n cerebral .24 2) En ninguna enfermedad psfquica la causa determina la totalidad de la vida psfquica enferma. 25

Martfn-Santos emphasizes the interdependence of cause and motive in psychic illness, since motive, after all, does have an underlying cause - here the cerebral alteration. However, what he is trying to say is, there is no need to view the cause of the illness as fully determinative of its course, as the more orthodox schools would dogmatically proceed to do. Mental illness is revealing itself once more as creative, the psychic processes of the mind assuming a certain degree of independence from the organic origin of the affliction.

The article goes on to consider the comprehension of mental illness, that is, the different ways of understanding it. The author distinguishes four principal modes of comprehension: static, dynamic (or genetic), existential, and finally deep, understanding.

Static understanding is the phenomenological perception, as described beforehand. It consists in capturing individual lived experiences with their form and content; which distinguishes it from dynamic understanding, the prime purpose of which is to capture the meaningful connection of the inter-lived experience, by reaching further into the psychical processes of the sick consciousness. The precursors of the dynamic mode are Dilthey and Jaspers, within the context of a search for the comprehension of mental illness 26. 117

Existential understanding has already been examined in the light of the Heideggerian and Sartrean philosophies; so we limit ourselves to quoting the words of Martin-Santos in a summing-up of its main objective:

En su intento ambicioso la comprensi6n existencial pretende dar raz6n conceptual de la totalidad del ser de la existencia humana. En su intento mas modesto pretende describir racionalmente algunas estructuras prejudicativas de la vida psiquica. 27

Lastly, deep understanding, as an extension of the dynamic mode, pretends to grasp the meaning of psychic facts the knowledge of which resides in the unconscious and is thus unknown to consciousness. It is, according to the author, the least efficient method, and finds itself at the very bottom of the ladder of his hierarchy of the spheres of comprehension.

In his final synthesis of the comprehension of madness, Martin­ Santos gives first consideration to static understanding, as before stressing its importance in the diagnosis and treatment of the psychoses. It is his ever-increasing need for dialogue and reconciliation in the field of psychiatry that has led him to outline these methods with a view to interlinking them whenever appropriate.

Martin-Santos here acknowledges the School of Heidelberg as the originator of his understanding of Phenomenology and the various medical psychologies he has dealt with in these articles. By adding to traditional psychiatry the existential/phenomenological dimension, 118

he has enriched the Spanish medical field with new philosophical notions contributing to a broader understanding of the human mind. Let us now turn to the application of his eclectic methodology.

The Medical Writin£{s.

On the whole Martfn-Santos' medical writings cover the analysis of the psychoses in the fields of alcoholism and epilepsy. The list of his articles as provided by Castilla del Pino in his prologue to Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia, is by no means exhaustive. The material we have selected for study does away with the more esoteric aspects of medicine, and concentrates on the search for a definition of madness at the more concrete level of social alienation. With this section on the socially oriented aspects of mental illness, we aim to establish a link between the theories and findings of the psychiatrist and his evaluation of a sick society in his two novels.

Throughout his medical writings, Martin-Santos explains, in existential and phenomenological terms, the onset of alcoholism and epilepsy in his patients in the context of their society as well as their particular situations. He describes the manifestations and consequences of the two illnesses treated at the sanatorium of San Sebastian in the 1950s and at the beginning of the 1960s. We are brought to understand that symptoms such as guilt, jealousy, violence, apathy, for instance, can derive from bouts of alcoholic intoxication, and be the harbingers of such illnesses as paranoia and the state of delirium, both pertaining to the broader picture of psychosis. Case studies are summed up and assimilated into a 119

larger framework for establishing medical statistics with regard to the onset and development of the problem.

The article Ideas delirantes primarias. esQuizofrenia y psicosis alcoh6lica aguda (1952) 28 deals with the interaction of alcoholic­ based delirium and schizophrenia. It aims to evaluate the state of alienation of the patient across a range of symptoms common to both illnesses, thereby defining the boundaries between them.

Following the lines of his eclectic approach to psychiatry, Martin­ Santos refers to two methods of evaluation relevant to deliroid 29 ideas: Phenomenology (or descriptive psychopathology) on the one hand, comprehensive (or genetic) psychopathology on the other. With the second method, the patient's past is scrutinized; the symptoms found are then understood in the light of a life history and past problems. With the phenomenological method, the deliroid ideas are extracted from observation, and lead to the diagnosis of the symptoms; once the primary deliroid idea has been captured in itself -through a global intuitive vision-, it proves to contain qualitatively distinct characteristics from those found in the lived experience of the mentally healthy individual.

Altogether the writer of the article advocates a phenomenological search for a diagnosis, being in favour of a more direct and realistic observation of life. He does, nonetheless, mention the irrational aspect of the phenomenological intuition, originally based on the psychiatrist's personal vision and experience of life. liD

A point we note from the ensuing description of the patient's alcoholic delusions is the substantial impact of the cultural milieu on the development of the psyche. The psychiatrist is confronted with the case of a weak-willed middle-aged man who, intoxicated by alcohol, in the long term contracts symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia: this person suffers delusions of persecution by the Civil Guard, for being allegedly considered a sexual deviant (invertido is the original word). The patient's lived experience no doubt reflects a background of repression - here the political repression of the Franquist regime. As for his obsession with being labelled invertido, it is related, on one side, to the fear of being seen as a political dissident (a form of deviance), and on the other, to the dread of becoming sexually impotent under the alcoholic state. The initial anguish-breeding situation of the socially repressed citizen has thus been greatly amplified by the toxic effects of an excessive intake of alcohol; this intake generating in him an obsessional state that has in its turn given way to his delusions of persecution 30.

This particular case serves to illustrate the fact that special circumstances, much more likely than a past history of illness, can induce delirious visions in the patient's mind. Therefore the genetic study of the problem can be inappropriate at such times. By observing what appears in the pathological manifestations, existential phenomenology can follow the illness in its progressive stages. It will strive to understand the sick consciousness, and to evaluate the pathological world of the sufferer as a whole, as an entity in itself; a major step leading to a change of Weltanschauung. 121.

The important question raised in this article is: Can alcoholic intoxication cause schizophrenia? To put it more explicitly: If he had never drunk alcohol, would the patient have developed schizophrenia? Martin-Santos admits that there is no straight answer to give:

Para nosotros todo enfermo que llegue, en el transcurso de su psicosis, a presentar los sintomas de alteraci6n de la personalidad que denominamos defecto esquizofrenico o esquizosis, claramente diferenciable de la reducci6n de la personalidad de origen organico, padece una esquizofrenia y su defecto no puede ser imputado al alcohol, aunque se compruebe la toxicomania. 31-32

Once more sitting on the fence in his summing-up, Martin-Santos brings a loose conclusion to his debate. It seems that on the whole, as he will indicate on different occasions, alcoholic psychosis, considered an acute ailment, can disappear with time and the abstinence of the patient; as long as the acute condition does not yield to a chronic state, in a word, to schizophrenia itself.

In the article El problema de la alucinosis alcoh6lica (1950) 33, he describes alcoholic hallucinosis as: "una psicosis ex6gena que cursa con la sintomatologia propia de las psicosis end6genas" 34; meaning, in simpler terms, that an hallucinating state brought about by alcohol and as an artificial psychosis, still assumes the symptoms of the innate psychoses. Whether this state is to be temporary or permanent will depend largely upon the course of the illness.

In the alcoholic, we learn, feelings of guilt are frequent 35; they can, in many cases, lead to paranoid feelings. Free (floating) anguish - 122

that is, anguish assuming psychotic proportions - aggravates the hallucinating state, its grade depending primarily on the degree of affection of consciousness as well as irregular sleeping patterns. (Regressive sufferers do not get to feel this sort of anguish, having lost contact with the world and themselves.) Along with Bleuler (1908), Martin-Santos narrowly associates the hallucinating state with the deliroid ideas of persecution leading to pathological anguish36.

From a phenomenological observation, the psychiatrist makes a simple yet logical deduction: the more acute the alcoholic hallucinosis, the clearer the alteration of consciousness. As a rule, he finds that visual hallucinations imply a more dramatic lowering of consciousness than auditory ones. (Visions represent a more concrete psychic production, as it were, than distorted sounds; hence the higher degree of alienation revealed by them.)

As for the main difference between the attitude of the deliroid alcoholic and that of the schizophrenic, it is summed up as follows: alcoholic patients - provided their state of delirium is not chronic - wake up from an hallucinating bout, realizing how nonsensical it was, whereas schizophrenics cannot see the irreality of their delusions once they have ceased.

La critica de los recuerdos delirantes (1953) 37 gives a concrete account of the exogenous psychosis, whereby people who suffer an hallucinating bout provoked by the alcoholic state as a rule witness the disappearance of their symptoms in time; symptoms which they 123

are eventually able to criticize in an objective manner. This point is illustrated with the brief analysis of two case studies.

The first case is that of a working-class middle-aged man, single, of low intelligence, athletic build, schizoid temperament, shy and withdrawn, hard-working though disturbed by his alcoholic condition. As we gather from this overall picture, the individual is not very educated, nor particularly sophisticated in his thinking. The fact that he is shy will prompt him to be more on the defensive once affected by his alcoholic delirium; hence an increased risk of paranoia, a symptom that will eventually engulf him. At the time of his admission he was experiencing delusional visions, and feeling totally disorientated in time and space. However, after treatment, he is able to recall his delirium, and admits it was caused by his excessive drinking.

The second case relates to a socially active 35-year-old man, single, a small-business traveller, whose progressively heavy ingestion of alcoholic beverages has led him to suffer an acute state of delirium filled with visual hallucinations assuming a schizophrenic form of paranoia. It seems that this person is capable of a prompt recovery, as once treated- mostly with drugs and through forced abstinence­ his delusions vanish; moreover his physical state is not badly affected, and in the Rorschach test no dementia is found. He too is able to criticize his hallucinations upon his return to normal, after having regained a sense of orientation. As we know from the data collected, he is young and socially active: this seems to act in favour of an easy recovery. 124

What these two cases illustrate is the temporary nature of the exogenous delirium pertinent to an acute psychosis which has not reached the chronic state. Before drawing his conclusions, Martin­ Santos has gathered the data concerning the patients' lives and circumstances, then followed the evolution of their ailments until the disappearance of the symptoms; at which point he has recorded their impressions about their ordeal, thus striving to compare the contents of their psyche during and after the crisis. This is a simple enough procedure in itself, yet it serves to accumulate the information to be used as a basis for forming theories out of observation and rationalization. This method reflects, in the simplest terms, the phenomenological understanding of its author, and we shall study it in greater detail in "La paranoia alcoh6lica".

From the data analyzed so far, it seems that people suffering from alcoholic psychosis are those who have not found their place in life, and are generally blind as to the purpose of existence. A lack of motivation, of a will-to-meaning in other words, favours the development of neurotic problems which come to assume psychotic dimensions in such cases.

The article La paranoia alcoh6lica (1954) 38 sums up six case studies of alcoholic psychosis, and ends by explaining the process of deterioration that takes place in the affected individuals. The six patients are men, whose average age is 49 years; all suffer from paranoia owing to excessive drinking, and present physical signs of intoxication; all are manual workers, some more specialized than others. Symptoms common to all six are, in the first place, an excessive jealousy due to their increased emotionality, in most cases 125

leading to suspicions of adultery in their marriage partners; then hallucinations (visual or auditory, or both) resulting from their obsessive jealousy as well as from a general state of despair and despondency generated by their alcoholic condition. Variable signs of intellectual deterioration are registered in the Rorschach test; hence the patients' incapacity to think abstractly, and a clear tendency to concrete behaviour. A psychopathic personality 39 is perceived in two of them, reflecting their inability to cope with the demands of society. Another drastic effect of alcoholism is noted in one case: the loss of memory 40, indicating a diminution of cerebral activity. The state of ambivalence of mood also appears as a common characteristic 41, meaning a constant swaying between exaltation and paranoid mood. It is interesting to note that, although they suffer all the symptoms of acute or chronic paranoia, most of these patients tend to deny their illness, yet at the same time fear it.

Across the spectrum of these case studies, visual hallucinations, most pertinent to delirium tremens, are not particularly emphasized. However, there is a strong incidence of auditory hallucinations, starting with the vague hearing of noises or words spoken against the patient, and often leading to obsessive pronouncements of murder conspiracies conjured up by a sick imagination run wild. Martin-Santos insists on the fact that paranoia is widespread among people suffering from an acute alcoholic psychosis. An increased feeling of guilt, unconscious at times yet nonetheless present, added to a feeling of inferiority caused by the pathological state, are the two main contributors to this obsessive certainty of being persecuted and conspired against by others. 126

As already mentioned, the role of culture predominates in the evolution of the psychosis; culture being broadly defined as the influence of upbringing, indoctrination and social conditions. For instance, within a culture advocating virile strength (as was still the case with Spanish culture in the 1950s), these patients made sexually impotent by alcohol have developed paranoid obsessions of sexual inadequacy, thence increased suspicions of their partners' unfaithfulness. Moreover, the process of experiencing obsessional states, and from here on seeking comfort in drinking, sets the loop of a vicious circle binding these alcoholic sufferers more tightly to their predicament.

Let us now pass to the actual mechanism operating in the phenomena found in these cases of alcoholic paranoia. An interesting first observation made by Martin-Santos is that, among factory workers - as is the case of the majority described here -, many develop an impairment of their sense of hearing through the constant deafening noise of heavy machinery; which means, in the particular case of these patients, a resulting tendency to experience auditory hallucinations. The social milieu may thus become a begetter of illusions; following this, the imagined noises will actually be lived in the sick consciousness.

The trajectory of the process leading to paranoia in these alcoholic patients starts with a distorted self-judgment, as observed by Martin- Santos. Two main currents have been underlined in the investigation of the phenomena; namely, we repeat, guilt and a feeling of inferiority. The individual feels guilty, hence confesses the 127

need for punishment; from here on he will actually experience punishment, or at least the threat of it. In the same way he feels inferior, thus believing all the more that he is sexually dead; the end result being his experiencing of jealousy followed by delusions of being cheated by his marriage partner. This delusional process has been outlined by Martin-Santos in a statement on the psychomorphy of the abnormal psychic productions found in the lived experiences of his patients:

El humor deliroide hincha estos procesos de autojuicio y los proyecta sobre el mundo exterior, falseando su realidad. Es asi como de un reconocerse culpable el individuo, pasa a reconocerse punible, y de aqui a un vivirse castigado o amenazado de castigo. Paralelamente, de un reconocerse inferior, pasa a un reconocerse virilmente incapaz ... y de aqui a un vivirse engaiiado y celoso. 42

At this stage it is pertinent to describe the alcoholic situation in general terms, in order to reinforce the link between the basic affliction and the production of deliroid ideas. As already stated, excessive drinking is a ready answer to a lack of meaning in life, and will offer the alcoholic a flight from an oppressive reality. If socially generalized to the point of becoming rampant, alcoholism may lead to the decadence of a nation, or of a whole culture and civilization.

To begin with, the most common immediate effect of alcohol abuse is anaesthesia of the mind, that is, a blunting of the emotions that generates a state of apathy, itself scientifically known as alcoholic ataraxia; a state in most cases interlinked with a stimulation of the psyche which can at times spell violence and, in more acute cases, uncontrolled behaviour. The realm of alcoholic psychopathy is 128

characterized, broadly speaking, by the sufferers' extreme difficulty in keeping to social regulations and withstanding frustration. When sensing the presence of obstacles to the realization of their wishes, alcoholic individuals experience fear, sometimes even paranoid fear. It is at this very stage that their thinking becomes autistic 43, and that they lose communication with reality. The designation of alcoholism as a morbid habit by de Mijolla and Shentoub finds a justification in these manifestations of the alcoholic way of life 44.

The conflicting role of alcohol as anaesthetic and stimulant leads to the helpless situation of ambivalence, meaning here ambivalence of mood to the extent that the individual yields to a state of utter confusion. As observed by researchers in the field, some of the outstanding characteristics common to the state of drunkenness are, in the first place, the inability to think clearly owing to an impairment of perception and judgment; then - only in the early stages - the release of sexual or aggressive behaviour, usually followed by feelings of power which give the sufferer a pleasurable effect yet at the same time represent a powerful agent for self­ devastation and obsessional fears. Uncontrollable addicts may later reach the paranoid stage of fearing not only their own reactions, but those of others whom they have come to depend upon emotionally 45.

Most alcoholics deny their problem; a denial that follows the states of dependency and depression. They can become actors in their own way, seeking to hide their condition by telling lies when not finding excuses for it46. Their confabulations, however, will only serve to aggravate the state of confusion; and it is not surprising that, in the end, they will most likely develop the symptoms of anosognosia, a 129

condition in which explicit denial of illness goes hand in hand with unawareness of disabilities 4 7.

Concerned with emphasizing the responsibility of human beings in running their own life, the Existentialists are opposed to the classification of the alcoholic's persistent drinking as a syndrome deriving from "uncontrollable forces inherent in his illness", as given by the Encyclopaedia of Mental Health 48. Following the Sartrean notion that in mental illness there is always a consciousness of illness, Martin-Santos tends to see alcoholism as a malady to be cured in the light of the active participation of the patient in the treatment. This naturally does not apply to the severely regressive cases, for instance, when chronic paranoia has been detected in the diagnosis; for, as already mentioned, the freedom of chronic psychotic people is practically non-existent, most of their thoughts being beyond their control.

Descripci6n fenomenol62ica y analisis existencial de aliunas psicosis epilepticas a~rudas (1961) 49, as its title announces, deals with epilepsy. Four cases have been selected by Martin-Santos among thirty-eight admissions to San Sebastian sanatorium; these cases presenting the most serious symptoms of epileptic psychosis, although no profound dementia had been diagnosed in any. The characteristics of the hallucinatory productions are similar in the four. All are men, around 30 years of age; in all of them, a progressive and rapid deterioration of the psyche is noted. The patients describe their delusional experience after a crisis, since during the actual epileptic episode they were totally incommunicative and remote from the world of reality. 130

The psychiatrist first outlines the patients' delusions in their most essential features. Common to all are visions, in the first place of the body staring at its own reflection as if in a dream. An overall feature is the observation of the body from a distance, naked and exposed to the judgment of God or of the multitudes in a busy street; from this emanates the fear of being either morally punished or physically harmed, as befits the situation 50. The main auditory hallucination is the hearing of the Almighty's voice, conveying a threat in some cases, yet more often a mission to accomplish on earth. Agoraphobia manifests itself through the inability to communicate with the surrounding crowd. Some have the illusion of flying and colliding with other people, while others experience an ecstatic flight through green landscapes at full speed, thus feeling they actually dominate the immensity that stretches below them. With this kind of illusion, the fear of falling is nonetheless generalized.

The interpretation of these delusions by the patients varies to a degree between the four. The first patient, in a post-suicidal mood and thoroughly confused, cannot affirm whether his visions were perceived during sleep, pre-sleep or a conscious state. The second one is still recovering from a stuporous state of total mutism akin to a catatonic stupor, and recalls his vague memories after an actual suicide attempt provoked by his obsessional dreams. The last two cannot communicate fully with the therapist, and their delusions are described after a twilight state 51; their dreams - or pseudo-dreams - are more colourful, and reflect ecstasy rather than anguish, although a mixture of both; delusions of association with the divine 131

have been recorded, which disclose a mystical VISion of their syndrome.

A phenomenological description of the psychosis will aim at an understanding of the lived experience of epilepsy as recalled in these case studies. Martin-Santos divides the analysis into three main stages: 1) analysis of the state of consciousness, 2) description of the state of mind and finally 3) of the intentional lived experiences.

First, the state of consciousness (estado de conciencia ): in all cases consciousness is greatly altered. During their psychotic episode, the individuals are concretely disorientated in both time and space, being unaware of the hour and location of their dreamlike experience. The more affected patients will in fact continue to live in a dreamy state, the state of a purely oniric consciousness, being more or less aware of their whereabouts and of the time of day. In the more psychotic, the lived experience has imposed itself on consciousness without effort, thus blocking all sense of awareness. In general, the body as well as the outside world remain vague and over-simplified in the consciousness of these people; a pathological manifestation at times enhanced by the twisted sense of reality emanating from the twilight state.

Secondly, the state of mind, in other words the mood (estado de animo): it oscillates between two opposite poles, namely, ecstasy and anguish. Ecstatic mood is typical of the oniric consciousness of the epileptic; it is here displayed in the sensation of being all-powerful, and also in that of flying over green landscapes. Nevertheless, this mood is changeable, and in most cases tends to give way to one of 132

anguish, the degree of which depends upon the intensity of the fear stemming from an alienated consciousness. Two of the patients did not feel traumatized by their perception of anguish; the other two, however, became dramatically affected, to the point of considering suicide.

Thirdly, the intentional lived experiences (vivencias intencionales ): their contents are determined by the mood of the person, and transcend it in the sick consciousness. Broadly speaking, a content of terror - such as the fear of falling into a precipice - will result from an anxious state, whereas a content of pleasure - such as dominating the world from above- may spring from ecstatic serenity.

As with alcoholic patients, Martin-Santos has emphasized this situation of ambivalence of feelings in epileptics. It seems that altogether the two psychic illnesses share a few common characteristics, the most striking one being - linked with an extremely changeable mood - a psychic production of delusions, be they visual or auditory, or both. (It must be noted that epileptics, through their colourful dreams of autistic alienation, are as a rule more profoundly affected than their alcoholic counterparts.)

Martin-Santos' existential description of the epileptic psychoses is based on the study of the diseased being-in-the-world ; a study derived from Heidegger's concept of human being , and leading to a Daseinsanalyse of the sick mind and psyche.

The primary feature of these psychoses, says the psychiatrist in the same article, is the estrangement of the body from the will; meaning 133

by this that the body is lived with a loss of its direct dependence upon the patient's will, and is therefore no longer controlled by it. Like the schizophrenic sufferer, the psychotic epileptic individual feels thoroughly dependent on the guidance of others or of surrounding forces. In the epileptic case, a permanent fear of falling ensues, with a further lack of coordination of bodily movements. The oniric existence of the epileptic sufferer is spent in a state of delirium, characterized by a total detachment from what is happening in the world. No longer a part of the world of reality, the affected individual has become a watcher from a distance, thus assuming a pathological state of ataraxia devoid of all possibility of action:

Al perder las cosas del mundo su caracter instrumental - y correlativamente con su especial modo de vivir la propia corporeidad -, el existente se transforma en puro contemplador. Cae asi en una total ataraxia exenta de acci6n y de posibilidades de acci6n. 52-53

In the same way as the world is estranged and deformed in the epileptic consciousness, says Martin-Santos, the who of the person has no identity of its own. Accordingly, a major task for existential therapy will be to discover, or decipher, this alienated who, symbolic of the broken entity of the being whose communication with others has been severed. For this being, others do not represent an extension of the self; they are rather seen as strange forms devoid of all reality, as illustrated by the vague and anonymous aspect of an unknown threatening multitude. The patient is lost in a remote and sometimes hostile world; a situation which has, in two cases as studied above, resulted in suicidal thoughts, out of sheer despair. 134

Thrown into a world of delirium, the sufferer loses all notion of time and space. A fascination for the past - in which experiences of delirium are found - impedes a vision of the future in terms of openness and freedom to act. The moments of ecstatic mood are made up of a confusion of past, present and future, yielding a general picture of intemporality, in appropriate terms, free-floating time. Floating in space as well, epileptics see not themselves but their spatial boundaries, moving, where mentally healthy people would see the contents of space, and not space itself, on the move. Their morbid space has, in the end, invaded their daily space 54, as explained by the author of the article through the use of the above concrete descriptions summing up the Dasein's predicament.

When undertaking the treatment of epileptic psychoses, the therapist, Martin-Santos tells us, must strive to understand the illness from the patient's retelling of the lived experience - in other words, from more or less second-hand information, as it is impossible to enter into communication with the affected mind during the actual episode that severs all links with reality. Epileptics as a rule suffer from an impairment of speech; moreover their thoughts are concrete rather than abstract, as noted in the vivid descriptions of the oniric state; finally, they cannot coordinate their ideas. Martin-Santos refers to the incoherent expression of ideas by the patient in the recalling of an epileptic episode as habladurtas (idle chatter).

Whether the illness is alcoholic psychosis or epilepsy, the course of treatment will be determined mostly by an acUve method including persistent concentration as well as openness of mind in the 135

psychiatrist. The outcome is bound to be unpredictable, but what matters, for Martin-Santos as a dialectician, is the possibility of improved communication between the two parties, and subsequently a better understanding of mental illness by the therapist.

Conclusion.

Freud saw mental illness, in its beginnings, as a regression to the narcissistic level. Martin-Santos sees it as a rupture with the world, a state in which madness reaches its apex of negativity. R.D. Laing sees it not merely as a disease, but as a broken-down relationship whereby the patient has fled the reality of an unlivable environment. The latter consideration introduces the eclectic vision of Martin­ Santos as a philosopher-psychiatrist who searches for definitions beyond the limits of his professional activities.

As a psychiatrist concerned with social issues, Martin-Santos has, in the two novels we are now returning to, linked psychosis to the concept of a social madness, advocating for the latter not only a diagnosis through understanding the situation of his characters, but, in the end, a cure for the ailment that is ravaging their society. In Tienwo de silencio Pedro's odyssey has been seen by a number of critics as a search for meaning in the soul of Spain; no doubt an illustration of the author's intent. As already stated at the beginning of this thesis, both novels reflect the frustration of the individual annihilated by the social milieu; in other words, a pathological state of the being-in-the-world. 136

If Jo Labanyi and Esperanza Saludes have seen the problem of Spain - as described in Tiem.po de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n - as a neurotic ailment, we intend, in the following chapter, to describe it as a metaphor of social neurosis, if not psychosis. We shall attempt to demonstrate that the author of the two novels is that same psychiatrist who developed his own theory of alienation in those medical writings just analyzed. Although we cannot draw the correspondences between his medical science and his novel-writing to a point of close similarity, we may nonetheless find a justification for placing these two facets of his work side by side. By doing so, we aim to uncover another aspect of the same dialectic of compromise in a writer who has, after Sartre, converted the psychoanalysis of people's lives into a true novel 55. 137

Notes to Chapter One.

1 E. Bleuler, Dementia Praecox or The Group of Schizophrenias, 1908.

2. K. Jaspers, General Psychopathology.

3. See the study of the stream of consciousness in Martin­ Santos' fiction in the next chapter.

4 .L. Martfn-Santos, "Jaspers y Freud", P.695.

5. K. Schneider, Clinical Psychopathology, 1950.

6. See Martfn-Santos' article: "Falta de realidad fenomenol6gica de la doble membraci6n de las llamadas percepciones delirantes descritas por K. Schneider", IV Congreso Nacional de Neuropsiguiatria (Madrid, 1954).

7. Phenomenology, be it pure or transcendental, is built upon essences (ideen ): essence of perception, of consciousness, etc. Husser! defined the phenomenon as that which manifests itself, the reality of which means appearance (Ideen zu einer reinen phaenomenologie). The Husserlian phenomenological reduction consisted in putting reality between brackets, and stemmed from the Cartesian notion of the Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am") which placed thought and perception at the apex of existence, thus leading to a total freedom of interpretation by the experiencing subject. The world was thereby defined as it was experienced by the subject. The phenomenological reduction, known under the name of epoche, is destined to illuminate the concrete life of pure consciousness as it manifests itself. It is not a logical procedure, but it introduces a new mode of existence, namely, transcendental existence as absolute existence. In the volume entitled Phenomenologie. Psychiatrie. Psychanalyse (Paris, 1986), Professor A. Tatossian refers to phenomenology as a critique of psychiatric reason. Phenomenology is, in his words, "Ecole de !'experience".

8. See Martin-Santos' medical writings on alcoholic psychosis: Ex. of content: a jealous content in an acute psychosis. Ex. of form: an emotional state, hallucination or delusion relevant to this particular content. 138

9. Consciousness, of itself, is non-substantial, according to the Phenomenologists. What constitutes its substance is intentionality.

10. See the principle of the Sartrean consciousness-for­ itself, as opposed to the Freudian consciousness-in-itself.

11. See "The Medical Writings" in this chapter for details.

12. In sadism, the subject reduces the Other to the state of an object, that is, a state of inertia, of non-life; this is mainly as a defence mechanism against fear.

13. In masochism, the subject passively yields to the Other's freedom, just like an object.

14. L. Martin-Santos, "El plus sexual del hombre, el amory el erotismo", P.127.

15. Ap6logos y otras prosas ineditas, PP.136-140, 1962.

16. Ap6logos, PP.108-135.

17. As an extension of this approach, the European Phenomenologists have stressed the need for the therapist to penetrate the Weltanschauung of the patient, i.e., to see the world through the patient's eyes, in order to understand the problem. (We leave this notion aside for the time being, and shall return to it when assessing the role of the narrator in the two novels under study in Chapter 3.)

18. L. Martin-Santos, "La psiquiatria existencial", P.132 in Ap6logos.

19. Theoria, III, 9 (Oct. 1955).

20. "Fundamentos te6ricos del conocer psiquiatrico", P.53.

21. Ibid., P.54.

22. Ibid., P.55.

23. Ibid., PP.59-60.

24. Ibid., P.56.

25. Ibid.

26. See Martin-Santos: Dilthey. Jaspers y la comprensi6n del enfermo mental. 139

27. "Fundamentos te6ricos del conocer psiquiatrico", PP.61- 62.

28. Aetas Luso-espaiiolas de N euroloitia y Psiquiatria, XI, 4 (1952).

29. The term de liroide, as used by Martin-Santos, is a medical term referring to the state of delirium during a psychotic episode.

30. This kind of hallucinatory delusion can be defined as a state in which the other person assumes the aspect of an obsession. It is a paranoid state, leading to the dramatic enlargement of the effect of the Other on the self, and often to the feeling of persecution by this threatening Other. (See the Sartrean vision.) The anguish suffered by the alcoholic in this situation is the free anguish referred to in the study of Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia....

31. "Ideas delirantes primarias ... ", P .333.

32. It must be remembered that schizophrenia was still seen as madness in the 1950s, when this article - among others - was published. Three years later Martin-Santos considers that the illness is caused by a cerebral alteration (see his postulate of organicity in "Fundamentos te6ricos ... "). Here he seems to see it as exclusively mental, as opposed to psychosis which he differentiates from it.

33. Aetas Luso-espafiolas de NeuroloW:a y Psiquiatria, IX, 2 (1950).

34. "El problema de la alucinosis alcoh6lica", P.136.

35. The guilt felt by alcoholic individuals is related, in its origins, to the social stigma relevant to their illness.

36. In the same way as hallucinations can be defined as perceptions without an object, pathological anguish means fear without an object. (See Bleuler.)

37. Aetas Luso-espaiiolas de NeuroloW:a y Psiguiatria, XII, 4 (1953).

38. Aetas Luso-espaiiolas de Neurologfa y Psiguiatria. XIII, 4 (Nov. 1954).

39. Psychopathy means deviation from the established norm of social behaviour. Here it refers to deviation from social laws, viz., a lack of control sometimes extended to violent behaviour in public, for instance. 140

40. The most common manifestation of a memory loss in alcoholics is the Korsakoffs syndrome, a confusional state in which the amnesia of fixation, fabulation and false memories predominate.

41. As we shall see later, the two principal ways of hallucinating in alcoholism are delusions of grandeur, and, at the opposite pole, paranoia.

42. "La paranoia alcoh6lica", PP.275-276.

43. Autism consists in living in a world of fantasy, remote from the world of reality. It often unveils an hermetic attitude and a fear of the surrounding world.

44. A. de Mijolla and S.A Shentoub, Pour une psychanalyse de l'alcoolisme, Paris, 1973. In morbid existence, there is an abandonment of the world by the patient. The sick person surrenders to events and circumstances, having lost all mastering of thought and feeling.

45. The Encyclopedic Handbook of Alcoholism (New York, 1982) describes in detail the dilemma of ambivalence. On the other hand, it gives a general outlook on the consequences of alcoholism across the life"'\time of an individual. - After 5 to 10 years of drinking, the physical demand for alcohol is pressing. One witnesses in the sufferer obvio\l.S signs of impulsiveness, emotionality and resentment. Moreover, there is a notable reduction of the sexual drive, and a subsequent increase in jealousy in the affected person, often a pathological jealousy. - After 15 to 20 years, a decrease is noted in aggressiveness and emotionality, eventually leading to a dulled, defective state characterized by the inability to think clearly, obsessional fears, and psychomotor inhibition, among other less prominent symptoms. Chronic drinking leads to dependent behaviour, hence to despondent alcoholism; a vicious circle which does not seem to break open. Finally, a fact of substantial importance: 10 to 15% of alcoholics have been diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia.

46. Howard T. Blane, The Personality of the Alcoholic: Guises of Dependency, New York, 1968.

47. E. A. Weinstein & R.L. Kahn, Denial of Illness, Springfield, 1955.

48. Ebbe Curtis Hoff, on Alcoholism, 1963, Vol.1, New York, P.179.

49. Revista de Psiguiatria y Psicologfa Medica, V, 1 (1961).

50. This situation is symptomatic of a religious indoctrination whose effects on disturbed minds prove to be 141 disastrous. The feeling of vulnerability in nakedness expresses the dread of being overpowered, even destroyed.

51. In the twilight state, the real world assumes the appearance of an unreal, phantomatic world.

52. "Descripci6n fenomenol6gica y anal.isis existencial de algunas psicosis epilepticas agudas", P .44.

53. Ataraxia, according to the Dictionary of Philosophy & Reli~on, is basically a state of serene, untroubled pleasure. It was held to be an ideal state of mind by the ancients in their search for peace and tranquility. It can be compared to the state of apathia recommended by the Stoics, and reflecting a blessed detachment from the worries of the world. However, as a psychiatrist of the modern era, Karl Jaspers sees ataraxia as the petrification of freedom. Ataraxy, as he calls it, is non-act, not-sensing, in a word non-being.

54. According to Eugen Minkowski (Le Temps yecu, 1933)­ acknowledged in Martin-Santos' bibliography as a source of information -, time and space depend on our lived experience of them. The psychotic feels that his personality has been invaded by others; this symptom affects his degree of lived distance from others. In schizophrenia, says Minkowski, there is always a distortion of lived time or lived space, or both. In epilepsY,, delusions of grandeur have an immobile character. He gives the example of the person who thinks he is God or Christ, yet only confines this thought to an affirmation since he does not act as such. In order to live, we need expansion and perspective, Minkowski stresses; space and time are thus indispensable to the development of life. In the psychotic individual, both elements are congealed; hence the state of non-life, of non-existence.

55. It is in his autobiographical novel Les mots that Sartre exposes the primordial aim of existential psychoanalysis as the conversion of people's lives into a true novel. 142

Chapter 2: Social Madness.

In this study the role of the psychiatrist is related to that of the novelist. We are concerned less with the specifically literary aspects of the novels, than with their philosophical and psychological content. In Chapters Two and Three, the fictional texts serve to illustrate the main characteristics of mental illness - based on neurosis or madness - as encountered in Martin-Santos' psychiatric writings and reflecting his preoccupations in the field of human behaviour. We are aware of the fact that the novels and the apologues cannot be viewed in the same light as the scientific and medical texts previously analyzed; that, as fictional works, they are mediated by the process and mechanisms of narration, for example. Indeed, they do not contain that same immediate expression of authorial point of view the scientific texts are expected to assume.

In the sections that follow, the shift from the analysis of non-fictional to fictional work necessarily involves acknowledging different levels of narrative - for instance, direct speech, dialogue, interior monologue - and a variety of tones, such as the irony of the author. In Tiempo de silencio, Pedro's vision is mediated through naivete and a lack of awareness: in Tiempo de destrucci6n.Agustin's understanding of the situations he describes or visualizes is at first tinted by immaturity and an exaggerated sense of idealism. The expression of ideas and feelings by the protagonists is subject to inconsistency, tending to follow the mood of the moment as well as 142a

the patterns of evolution which determine the growth of the characters as the story unfolds. All this considered, and having taken into account the fluctuations of the literary context when selecting the material for quotation, we shall not make further reference to the apparent variations which in any case should not deter us from viewing the texts as a whole in the light of their author's philosophical concerns. We are here primordially concerned with a search for a better understanding of the author's considerations on social madness as an extension of a pathological form of mental illness.

Across the pages of Martfn-Santos' two novels, we aim to discover the sickness that permeates a nation whose citizens, reduced to silence, have finally lost themselves in an anonymous crowd displaying the symptomatology of idiotic degeneration. From oppressive silence to mass rebellion: such is the undialectical trajectory pursued by a people which cannot transcend its social plight. We now turn to the analysis of the social ailment as it evolves and is described in the pages of Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n. 143

Ataraxia.

A necessary mechanism of self~defence in situations of extreme repression, apathy has come to be the last hope of a people which has lost all courage and motivation to overcome its social problems. Apathy is, however, only the forerunner of the more acute and degenerative ailment known as ataraxia 1, itself connoting the broader picture of alienation as a frame for the social illness which the psychiatrist has diagnosed in his fictional characters.

Alienation, in Martin~Santos' two novels, derives from loss of freedom, and leads to the perversion of all values. Freedom means freedom to act, as we know, and also freedom to be responsible; in the context of citizenship, it means freedom to participate in the life of the nation. In the world of the two novels, the right and the decision to act have been suppressed, and with them all sense of value as regards solidarity in an effort to transcend the socio~political situation. Martin~Santos' characters, psychastenic beings deprived of all meaningful values, have given up on their selfhood and drowned themselves in the mass. In Adlerian terms, these people express their loss of courage and responsibility through a neurosis of adaptation to their environment. Along the lines of existential psychiatry, at first sight a search for meaning could be the answer to their alienation in the distant future; a quest simple in itself, and somewhat akin to the method known as logotherapy 2. However, the problem is complex, and the outcome of any attempt at treating it is likely to remain uncertain. 144

After giving way to inertia, these same characters are no longer capable of initiative. Lost in a world of imposed conformism, they have left behind all their vital energy; which also means that they have become insensitive to pain and suffering as stimulators of action. Their suffering, as we are about to see, is more bestial than human, and eventually leads them to blind rebellion rather than to positive social action. Coinciding with a loss of vital defence in them is a dramatic lack of impulse, medically known as aboulia and described as the paralysis of all will and wish 3.

Through this pathological state of total indifference, the society of Tiempo de silencio has arrived at a time of anaesthesia and silence:

Pero ahora no, estamos en el tiempo de la anestesia, estamos en el tiempo en que las cosas hacen poco ruido. .. Es un tiempo de silencio... To do consiste en estar callado. (TS291-3)

Once divested of all spirit of initiative, the characters of Tiempo de silencio have abandoned themselves to the fatalism of their bad luck, adopting the resigned attitude of the "pobre hombre" (TS112), a victim of circumstances. It is their prolonged silence which will lead the characters of Tiempo de destrucci6n to their brutish state; for with the absence of words comes the absence of thinking, and from here onwards the loss of human consciousness, in Cartesian terms.

Chantraine de Van Praag sees Martin-Santos' characters as living in a dream, dazzled, up to a point victims of the obscure forces which surround them. They are, she says, the San Lorenzo who is martyrized yet seems to accept his fate as normal 4. With a more 145

dynamically existential outlook, Robert Kent Anderson sees the dialectic between consciousness (selfhood) and unconsciousness (self-alienation) as permeating the entire first novel, unconsciousness prevailing in the end 5. The main feature of the alienation of the Spanish citizens described in Tiempo de silencio is, according to Anderson, anaesthesia; more precisely, self­ anaesthesia as the over-ruling escapist tendency made manifest in drinking and, to a lesser degree, in sexual activities.

Placed under anaesthetic, as it were, the characters of Tiempo de silencio do not live their life: they dream it, or suffer it, or both. Their means of defence against oppression is their "invencible indiferencia" (TS204), a product of the state of ataraxia stemming from the effects of the narcotics they absorb. Indeed, in order to fulfill their need for consolation, the oppressed have recourse to such palliatives as alcohol or drugs, the two concrete substances that lead them to experience an artificial state of euphoria characterized, in the first place, by a weakening of the will and a loss of feeling.

The immediate effects of alcohol on Muecas, for instance, are a blissful state of laziness and indifference doubled with a blind acceptance of his wretched condition:

Alegres, pues, transcurrian los dias del caballero, gozoso de su status confortable, calentado en la cama por varios cuerpos, consolado por ingestiones alcoh6licas ... (TS70)

A false happiness is the main constituent of Muecas' alcoholic ataraxia; this same "alegria ficticia" (TS26) experienced by Dora through drinking heavy quantities of rum. The aboulic indifference 14.6

resulting from alcoholic intoxication leads the members of this society to always seek more, until they develop, like Amador, "la urgente necesidad bebestible" (TS37) that makes them depend on their narcotics and stimulants.

Each class has its own drug. "Pero sino fuera por el extracto tabaico que seria de rni" (TS195), laments Similiano the police officer, dependent on his opiate drugs to keep himself going, and whose indifference to life and lack of motivation for work derive partly from his toxicomania.

With effects closely akin to those of alcohol or drugs, fascist propaganda, once absorbed by the nation in the most profound silence, becomes a deadly poison which annihilates the will of its victims. The opium of the mass is, therefore, a blind faith in the forces of destiny and political leadership; in short, a pathological faith.

"Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking" 6, said Nietzsche, thereby stressing the sovereignty of the will and condemning blind faith as a pathology of belief. The characters of Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n have lost their authentic selves by becoming slaves of their imposed beliefs, and are not endowed with the will necessary to overcome this dilemma. The indoctrination they submit to is pure conditioning on their minds, and as such does not appeal to their common sense. By adhering blindly to their set of beliefs and traditions, they follow their instincts rather than reason; a notion that has led philosophers like Fursay-Fusswerk to define belief as the cancer of reason 7. 147

As a begetter of blind obedience to authoritarian beliefs, the Holy Inquisition has affected Spanish history in the most violent ways, upholding a philosophy of radical law enforcement and disciplinary action. It is at an early age that respect for authority must be inculcated in the young, even at the price of intense suffering, so Demetrios tells us:

Mucho me dol:ia como padre proceder con tal severidad, pero el pensamiento de su futuro me confortaba al advertir las lagrimas que pocas veces llegaba a derramar, pues entero era su coraz6n como luminoso su entendimiento. Recibi6, pues, azotes y palmetazos mas de los que hubieran sido si no fuera hijo mio, pero el deber de dar ejemplo, que yo creo que justamente pense que le correspondia, no me permiti6 excusar esa dureza que, como padre amante, me mortificaba. (TD209)

Like his elder brother, Agustin will be taught to live in obedience and suppress his thoughts against authority; fundamental rules which are likely to hinder him in his future career as a judge, at a time when the use of argumentation is required before all else. In Agustin's family, as a rule, voices are not raised; movements alone serve to express thoughts and feelings. We recall the women's repetitive motions of hair-combing and embroidery (TD176-7), or the brutal hammering of Uncle Bias, all day long (TD173-4). Agueda, Agustin's retarded cousin, can only moan in order to be heard, nonetheless breaking the silence of the house, itself symbolic of the enforced mutism of the nation:

Llega a ser agradable oir el quejido de la nina que no significa que nada le duela, sino que establece su protesta bajo el cielo. (TDl 77) 148

Those less handicapped than .Agueda can express their protest through the wild release of stifled thoughts; in the case of the protagonist of the first novel, through the use of a chaotic stream of consciousness. It is in crisis situations that this technique is most frequently employed, apart from the fact that the author has adopted it as a replacement for a conventional writing style, here an aspect of his own protest. Pedro's monologue in gaol thus illustrates his suppressed despair in the light of his incapacity to rebel against injustice:

Relax. Dominar la angustia. Pensar despacio. Saber que no pasa nada grave, que no hay mas que esperar en silencio, que no puede pasar nada grave, hasta que el nudo se deshaga igual que se ha hecho. Estar tranquilo. Sentirse tranquilo. Llegar a encontrar refugio en la soledad, en la protecci6n de las paredes. En la misma inmovilidad. No se esta mal. No se esta tan mal. Para que pensar. N,o hay mas que estar quieto. No pensar en nada. Llegar a hacer como si fuera un deseo propio estar quieto. Como si el estar aqui quieto, escondido, fuera un deseo o un juego. Estar escondido to do el tiempo que quiera. Estar quieta todo el tiempo necesario. (TS215)

In this passage Pedro stresses the compulsive need to be silent: silence means safety. Here he opposes it to thinking which implies a search for the truth that would bring his guilt to light. If I remain silent, the protagonist insists, no harm will come to me. This wild stream of an oppressed consciousness reflects the autistic thinking of the prisoner alienated from the outside world, and deprived of all contact with reality. The gap between his ataraxic mood and the state of mind of the clinically alienated person is narrower than we may think, as seen by comparing the extract above to the following statement made by a schizophrenic patient in the context of her hospitalization; as recorded in the anthology Locura por locura: 149

Nada que hacer: siento que me voy. Me evaporo. Tengo miedo. Desaparecer sin ruido. Terminar en nub e. Ser desposefda de sf. No existir mas ... Pero sf, hija mfa, todavfa existes... Sostenerse, sostenerse, esperar, no volverse loca. Esperar. Terminara por ocurrir algo. No derrumbarse, no ponerse a gritar. Sostenerse y esperar. Sobre todo, no reventar. 8

What is common to the two cases is a distorted contact with reality, be it through bad faith as a defence mechanism, or through schizophrenic thinking. In both cases the vital impulse is paralyzed; a state which makes the character shun all action or emotion. For both salvation is to be awaited, and will only come from outside forces; more precisely, from the forces which manipulate their alienated selves like puppets.

A pathological fear of guilt, and most of all of responsibility as a free being, is what is finally bringing Pedro to welcome the punishment imposed on his destroyed self:

El castigo es el mas perfecto consuelo para la culpa y su unico posible remedio y corolario. Gracias al castigo el equilibria se restablecerfa en este mundo poco comprensible donde el habia estado dando saltos de tftere con la cabeza llena de humo mentiroso. (TS244)

Mter his prison sojourn Pedro is psychically destroyed, as he admits it to himself:

Yo el destruido, yo el hombre al que no se le dej6 que hiciera lo que tenia que hacer... (TS289)

A total absence of empathy in the relationship between the justice system and the condemned - in other words, between the executioner and the victim - causes further alienation among long-term 150

prisoners submitted to the constant fear of being destroyed, and coerced into maintaining absolute silence in the cells.

What struck Pedro upon his arrival at the gaol, was the uniformity of the environment (TS205); from endless rows of identical cells, to the fusion of the individual with the institution through the wearing of the imposed prison uniform and the adoption of a number instead of a name. Once absorbed by the system, those individuals lose their identity, only to be blended into the anonymous mass of the penitentiary. They become puppets, victims of a transformation into things to be manipulated by the will of their executioners. Once intoxicated by the mimetic atmosphere of the prison, Pedro himself imputes the blame on the justice system which has annihilated the humanity in those people, bearers of "ese mismo terror que deformaba los rostros" (TS206-7).

The stupefied expression on the faces of the prisoners somehow evokes. a catatonic stupor, by which a congealed immobility pervades not only their facial features but also their bodily movements. The guilt they feel is not just neurotic guilt, but rather an animal-like guilt, deriving from a pathological fear of the inimical authorities - "manufactureros de la angustia" (TS206)- always on the look-out for some punishment to inflict on them. Their guilt, in other words, emanates from blind anguish, a floating anguish of the psychotic kind, that is expressed in the deformed features of their facial expressions; a collective anguish from which a compulsion arises to obey the oppressor. In that Kafkaesque setting of terror and totalitarian justice, silence reigns, and with it a total loss of selfhood. 151

Reduced to silence, those victims of the system have become mute; and along with mutism come automatism and lack of command in their movements - "ausencia absoluta de hambre sabre superficie seca de lengua vuelta objeto extrafio" (TS206) -, as opposed to the spontaneity stemming from a personal expression of the self. Confined to a much reduced space, they have become cramped, like animals in a cage; in the end, dehumanized. Their ataraxic condition, made up of enforced silence and a dramatically reduced vital space, correlates with their abandonment of all willing power to the penal authorities, to whom they submit without thinking. As Pedro demonstrates with himself, in such a situation the victims lose all sense of judgment, and may even come to appreciate their false comfort and security in oppression:

Aqui se esta bien. Vuelto a la cuna. A un vientre. Aqui protegido. Nada puede hacerte dafio, nada puede aqui, nada. (TS219)

In his treatise entitled Psychology and the Human Dilemma, the American psychiatrist Rollo May develops a parable alluding to the repercussions of the lack of freedom upon the individual oppressed by a totalitarian political regime - a situation analogous to that portrayed in Tiempo de silencio: a man locked up in a cage progressively becomes mute and resigned to his fate; not, however, without passing through stages of silent hatred, feelings of false security in confinement, loss of conversation leading to stupidity and clumsiness of movement, and the loss of his facial expression indicating his dehumanized state, ultimately his insanity 9.

Both Rollo May and Martin-Santos, as professional psychiatrists, foresee a fatal destruction of humanity as the outcome of resigned 152

silence in the face of oppression. Ataraxia, to them, does not mean freedom from pain; all it means is, on the contrary, bondage to pain and suffering. A deformed dialectic between the individual and the social milieu is a pathway to dehumanization, according to their existential approach to psychology. The Sartrean vision of the world as a prison, with no exit, informs the way Martin-Santos reproduces the institutional world of post-war Spain; this pessimistic account reflects the problems encountered by a society living in the grip of repression.

The Sick Society.

"The individual always experiences, thinks and acts within a historically conditioned communal sphere" 10, Dilthey stressed. In the context of a war-tom country placed under the leadership of a despotic government, the Santosian character appears as a socially diseased, dehumanized individual. Not moving, resigned to obey and conform in silence, most often narcotized in order to cope with the surrounding world: such life conditions cannot but lead to socio­ political apathy, hence to the national aboulic disease illustrated in the novels. Automaton-like in their dealings with other people and above all with life, Martin-Santos' characters seem to have reached the stage of catatonic stupor on the ladder of the national illness. Indeed, their lack of will to think and act has made them develop the obvious symptoms of mutism, automatic behaviour, impulsiveness, and finally stupor. As we shall see when analyzing the attitude of crowds, echolalia and echopraxia, the copying and imitating of the behaviour and actions of others, respectively, have eventually led 153

these characters to become confused with, even absorbed by, the collectivity, to the point of being stifled in both thought and action.

In a social system that discourages all personal initiative, people tend to become inert, completely indifferent to the need for interaction with their community. The society described in Tiempo de silencio bears this characteristic of inertia. It is a society which does not allow the proper development of individuals; it is, in other words, a sick society, suffering from a deformed dialectic between the citizen and the collectivity. In Tiempo de destrucci6n the community devours the individual - "cada uno oblato a la colectividad para que coma de el, canibalisticamente devore su ridiculo ofrecido" (TD310) -, thus preventing all possibility of overcoming the social ailment.

Conventional psychiatry rejects the notion of a sick society, stressing the exclusively individualistic character of mental illness. However, according to the progression of the social disease through Martin­ Santos' novels, madness is not part of human nature, but rather of the social contract. The near-insane behaviour of an individual such as La Lucta (TD375-6) thus expresses, in the end, the rapid degeneration of the national spirit. The lack of humanity so apparent throughout the pages of Tiempo de destrucci6n will in fact reflect no less than a worsening of the ailment described in the preceding novel, and cannot be regarded as an illness to be treated with authoritarian psychiatric methods.

The reified consciousness of the world depicted across the two novels emanates from the conditioning towards uniformity of behaviour. 154

Consciousness is socially conditioned, according to the neo­ Freudians concerned with reinforcing the importance of society in the development of the individual. For his part Erich Fromm sees the repressed person experiencing the world with a false consciousness, an inevitable sequel to the distortion of thought through rallying to a collective ideology. The lack of objectivity and rational judgment noted in the person who has been absorbed by the group is indicative of a more serious symptomatology at the social level; namely, that of collective dehumanization, embodied by the group narcissism of the crowds united in revelry (as we shall see later), when not in idolatry through their blind adherence to the authorities they both fear and worship.

The group narcissism characteristic of the alienated society represented in both novels further manifests itself in the cultural blindness of the various social classes which view events of the world at large through their own sets of values; a feature of that false consciousness which precludes a group from understanding ways of thinking other than its own. The author has emphasized the egotism of the bourgeoisie as regards this attitude of the ethnocentric mind. In Tiempo de silencio, for instance, we witness the purely intellectual concerns of Matias' family and social circle of friends, who see the outside world as an essentially philosophical world dominated by perspectives 11, and not by the repressive laws of a fascist dictatorship. In Tiempo de destrucci6n, we note the boredom of Constanza's family, wealthy people whose main worries are their health and possessions (TD, Part 3, Ch.2), and who do not seem to know of the misery that surrounds them. 155

Egoism is a feature common to the societies depicted in both novels; an egoism derived from the spiritual emptiness experienced by people who live in a world of negative values. In the lack of communication between the various social groups - and in turn within these very groups - originates a rebuff of love and friendship; and the absence of love, as already seen when analyzing the causes of insanity, breeds negative and even destructive feelings. To illustrate this point, we refer to the gesture of affection proffered on Agustin by his friend (TD199), which makes them pass for two homosexuals in the eyes of people in the street; a gross misunderstanding of friendship by the perverted thinking of their fellow human beings.

In Martin-Santos' fictional society, positive social values are lacking, along with the cultural values that would allow people to communicate constructively, at the affective level and with a sense of empathetic understanding. Collective apathy leads to a state of abandonment of life; nevertheless, violence is often the immediate response to impotence and frustration. Ataraxia is a means of self­ defence for an oppressed people which has lost all motivation to transcend its alienated state; and the serious consequences it entails for the life of the nation have already been discussed12. The other side of the coin is social violence, a main contributor to the rapid degeneration of this society. 156

Social Violence.

Interlinked with ataraxia, in Martin-Santos' novelistic world, is social violence. In the same way as alcoholic or conditioned ataraxia discloses the blind will and resignation of a people, alcoholic or conditioned intoxication will awaken in this same people a blind will­ to-power combined with violence. Operating like a drug, violent conditioning leads its victims to enter a sado-masochistic relationship with their world. Indeed, while the victimized let themselves be castrated by powers above them, they in turn strive to annihilate those over whom they exert dominion, be it physical, social or political. The "Grand Bouc" hanging over people's heads (TS155) thus portrays not only the fascist leader dominating his subdued people, but, in the end, the fascism which is present in all the victims assimilated by the system hence fused into the sadistic apparatus of social conditioning.

Sadism is the complement of power, says Tierno Galvan 13; it is the resentment of one's incapacity to dominate life absolutely that leads to sadism, and the consciousness of one's power can only be enhanced by the suffering of those under one's domination. Martin­ Santos illustrates this concept with an incident which occurred in the life of Agustin. Part 1, Chapter 5 of Tiempo de destrucci6n contains a scene of violent abuse of power by the village school master over his charges - more specifically over Agustin, who was then rebelling against his authority: the more fearful and apprehensive the pupil was, the greater the incentive of the teacher to beat him. This kind of mistreatment breeds in the young students 157

a slave mentality, here manifested by their sarcastic mockery of the beaten pupil, a step towards their assuming the role of the oppressor over a chosen victim, a scapegoat who has learnt to play his "papel de martir" (TD272) heroically.

Between sadists and their object there exists a relationship of dependency, says Erich Fromm, who also stresses the fact that the desire for power originates in weakness, in a feeling of vulnerability in front of others. We need only refer to the shy and withdrawn Pedro who, innervated by the alcoholic ingestions that enable him to overcome his weakness of character, becomes exalted after seducing Dorita in a sudden outburst of power. "Una alegria de var6n triunfante le invadi6 un momento" (TS119): without alcohol acting as a stimulant on his psyche, Pedro would probably not have confronted the situation so assertively.

It is his vulnerable social position as a marginalized being, living in filth and poverty, that propels Muecas to act violently, even sadistically, treating the members of his family with extreme brutality. Not only has he always beaten his wife - "ella misma pegada, golpeada, una noche, otra noche, pegada con la mano, con el puiio, con una vara, con un alambre largo, pegada por el cuando su mueca se contraia mas de prisa por efecto del alcohol" (TS246): under the effects of excessive drinking, he has also raped his elder daughter, attributing to himself the rights of a black prince (TS71), the dark power over a tribe of lesser beings - here women.

"Ese Muecas es una fiera" (TS197), so Amador thinks. A typical aftermath of excessive drinking, the release of aggressive behaviour 158

materializes itself at its worst in Muecas' sudden outburst of inhumane brutality towards his younger daughter. Here Muecas cannot contain his impulsive reactions, kicking blindly at the hysterical bundle that lies on the floor in a convulsive fit:

El bofet6n del Muecas la tir6 al suelo donde empez6 a llorar a grandes gritos que luego se convirtieron en lamentos inarticulados, en convulsiones y en un ataque de nervios disparatado, insoportable, mientras araiiaba, mordia, desgarraba su ropa, se orinaba y el Muecas daba ciegas patadas en aquella masa viviente y agitada, sin conseguir cortar el paroxismo(TS139).14

In his comparison of the slum dwellers of Madrid with primitive tribes of remote parts of the world, Martin-Santos sarcastically alludes to the violation of certain taboos such as incest in families like Muecas's, whose living conditions appear to be the main cause of violence among their members. The lowest forms of primitivism can be observed right here, in his own country, the author explains most ironically when linking the phenomenon of incest to a socio­ cultural defect within oppressive life conditions: "Como sino fuera el tabu del incesto tan audazmente violado en estos primitivos talamos ... " (TS52). Everyone seems to know that Muecas himself is in the process of becoming "padre-abuelo" (TS130).

The people whom Martin-Santos exposes as the downgraded component of their society are those who live under the domination of passion, devoid of the restraints of reason and the laws of civilized society. They are, as a rule, the rebellious element of marginal life, those whose precarious existence bears all the negative aspects of the fight for survival, including the need to compete for vital resources and a subsequent enmity among peers 15. 159

Within his condemnation of social primitivism with regard to his own times, the author of Tiempo de silencio relates a fictional evaluation of the Spaniard to that of human nature in its broad context:

Como si el hombre no fuera el mismo, senor, el mismo en todas partes: siempre tan inferior en la precision de sus instintos a los mas brutos animales ... (T853)

For Gemma Roberts, "ese ser lobo del hombre" is what denies the human condition in Tiempo de silencio; and "ese ser medida de todas las cosas" is what, on the contrary, affirms it 16. In her comment on Pedro's monologue about human degeneration versus redemption (TS286), Roberts sees the dualism of the human condition as strongly felt by the main protagonist:

Presente, a lo largo de toda la novela de Martfn­ Santos, nos encontramos un agudo conflicto entre el espfritu y lo que Kierkegaard llamaba el aspecto animal de la humanidad. El personaje principal, Pedro, siente esa dicotomfa de la realidad humana como algo fatal y ominoso. 17

It is in the image of the "hombre-lobo" (TS286) thought out by Pedro following his last defeat and the monstrous injustice committed against him (the brutal murder of Dorita), that human nature is seen at its worst.

"Que la vida es una lucha constante, una cacerfa cruel en que nos vamos devorando los unos a los otros" 18: according to Iturrioz, spokesman for Baroja in El arbol de la ciencia, life is a perpetual struggle in which human beings devour one another for the sake of 160

survival, justice being, in the end, what suits their own circumstances. For the redoubtable Cartucho in Tiempo de silencio, justice is the old dictum an eye for an eye - "que no hay plazo que no se cumpla ni deuda que no se pague" (TS285) - translated into his own inexorable judgment whenever he is cheated by those who do not respect the law of the jungle.

Like a nocturnal animal on the watch for a prey to slaughter, Cartucho prowls around Muecas' abode (TS127), guided by alcohol and the instinct of destruction that calls for revenge following the misdeed he is smelling out. It is his blind will which propels him to act; never his intelligence or perspicacity, concepts totally unknown to this creature bred according to the principle homo homini lupusl9.

In this Darwinistic atmosphere of the fight for survival, the meek are destroyed; in the first place women, from dona Luisa's household of decrepit females over-abused by their clients (when not by their keeper), to Encama-Ricarda, the poor battered reject who has lost the use of speech; and to Florita and Dorita, whose lives are taken away by the forces of machismo. The fight for survival is reflected in Social Darwinism, the system prevailing throughout many scenes of post-war Madrid in Tiempo de silencio; scenes of a society in which the laws of selection, on the other hand, operate in the strangest manner:

u stedes, los inteligentes, son siempre los mas torpes ... han de ser los que mas se dejan enredar. Se defiende mucho mejor un ratero cualquiera, un pobre hombre, un imbecil, el mas rninimo chorizo que no ustedes. (TS249-50) 161

Contrary to all conventional expectations, it is the petty crooks who defend themselves best in this society where the laws of ethics are reversed; so long as those people, among them Amador, know how to cheat the system in their own interest. Pedro, a rather artless individual, is not endowed for survival.

Homo homini lupus as a way of life has infiltrated itself through the culture, to the point of becoming the guiding rule of human relationships in Martin-Santos' novels. In Tiempo de destrucci6n, for instance, the narrator admits that those who administer justice among their peers must have in them a streak of cruelty:

Hay quiza una cierta satisfacci6n instintual en ejercer el derecho a juzgar. Hay quiza una cierta gratificaci6n sadica al infligir con plena legalidad sufrimiento al pr6jimo. Todo eso y otras cosas no claramente comprensibles deben constituir la base de su determinacion. (TD180)

Here Agustin, the young and inexperienced judge of mankind who laments the effects of oppression he witnesses in his co-citizens, joins the oppressive institution, not without visualizing the extent of his power over those he will prosecute in the exercise of his new profession. It is by perceiving the danger of becoming a hanging judge - one in compliance with the institution - that Agustin advocates a constant fight within himself to eliminate bad faith and maintain his integrity 20. He will be playing cat and mouse in his search for the criminal during his murder investigation (TD369); a game he basically repudiates for its sadistic implication of a relationship executioner-victim. In his world of complicity, Agustin sees no love between human beings; all that surrounds him is a 162

world of dishonesty, of exploitation of the weaker ones, "un mundo de engafi.o" (TD196). Human beings are, under such circumstances, wolves to their own species.

The concept of the fight for survival (la lucha par la vida ) implies for Agustin, as for everyone else, the need to satisfy his instincts; in one particular instance, seeing himself as "un cazador de carne cruda" (TD70), the necessity to find a prey (a prostitute) in order to fulfill his sexual destiny. Like Pedro before him, at this stage he has not transcended the dilemma of reifying the object of his quest: for Agustin as for others, instinct still triumphs over reason.

For Labanyi, a main theme of Tiempo de destrucci6n is the contradiction between reason and instinct. She reinforces her argument by citing Agustin's complaint about "la impotencia en que el hijo del hombre nace aherrojado gracias a lo que es superior a tanto protoplasma violento que [a] la sola ley del instinto obedece" (TD501).

Altogether reason does not Win over instinct 1n Martin-Santos' fictional world:

... el reino de la raz6n entr6 en competencia con el de la pasi6n desatada... (TSl 08)

And passion triumphs. Violence reigns in the world he has depicted; a violence of a social order, largely influenced by the insidious effects of a sado-masochistic indoctrination. The resentful mentality of the vanquished assumes paranoid proportions, and the outcome of a vengeful attitude is bound to be destruction, even if the 163

people concerned strongly deny this fact. To pretend that there is nothing wrong in this decadent world would simply be untrue and preposterous; yet Martin-Santos' characters, on the whole, refuse to accept the facts of their social predicament.

Denial of Social Disease.

In this section relating to the denial of social problems by Martin­ Santos' characters, some primary aspects of the symptomatology of alcoholism will re-emerge; most prominent among them, delusions. As will be noted, the manifestations of metaphorical intoxication can be as powerful as those of a real, concrete episode of drunkenness or drug-taking, especially as regards the long-term effects, here summed up in the cultural decadence of a nation.

With extreme bad faith, the aged Dora forcefully rejects her guilt in giving way to frequent bouts of inebriety: blaming the menopause and her subsequent loss of femininity for her addiction to alcohol (TS26), she feels justified in her own eyes. Her bad faith will assume a more delusional character when she actually comes to see herself as a war hero's widow, whose late husband allegedly became one of the honoured soldiers who died bravely in battle (TS20), when in reality he was a rather petty figure devoid of all heroic pursuits.

Dora's denial of a sordid reality reaches extreme proportions with her refusal to acknowledge the state of poverty her household lives in; this, on the very special occasion of the celebration of Pedro's homecoming : 164

No pudieron organizar una comida servida por criados de librea (o al menos por camareros de smoking) en que hubieran ofrecido un menu de huevos, tres principios, caza y asado, ni cena de consome, caviar, foie y langosta con champan frio a causa de que tanto a la hora de comer como a la de cenar, el comedor de la cas a estaba ocupado por los habituales huespedes. Tampoco pudieron organizar un cocktail con bebidas ex6ticas y whisky que aderezaran pequeiias y variadas suculencias picantes, tales como cuadraditos de queso con pimienta, aceitunas enanas calientes y hojaldres en receptaculos de plata, porque encontraban estos alimentos escasamente nutritivos y algo indigestos. (TS263)

As we note, the poor can at times deny the socio-economic differences which exist between themselves and the more privileged layers of society, thus pretending to be equal to their more fortunate counterparts. By wanting to be reassured by Pedro and Amador that they will participate in a conversation with him "a titulo de confirmacion indirecta de la pertenencia a un mismo y honroso estamento social" (TS58), Muecas firmly rejects the idea that he is actually living under the same conditions as those immigrants/"infrahombres" (TS70) he so vehemently despises.

Porque el Muecas se sentia... patriarca biblico al que todas aquellas mujeres pertenecian. (TS66), Gentleman-farmer Muecasthone (TS67), Pastor, que iba hacia su cura de almas (TS68), Principe negro y dignatario Muecas (TS71), El ciudadano Muecas bien establecido, veterano de la frontera ... respetado entre sus pares ... empresario libre (TS70):

The delirious expansion of the self is expressed through ideas of grandeur or megalomania 21. The subject (here Muecas) thinks himself master of the world; he feels all-powerful, divine or exceptionally gifted; his thinking is supposedly inspired, prophetic at 165

times. He feels wonderful in himself, and is persuaded of his peers' admiration for him. As in the case of Dora, with Muecas the narrator's sarcasm is blatant. By elevating the meanest and most insignificant individual to the rank of a noble legendary figure, Martin-Santos gives a vivid illustration of a deluded mind unaware of its own decrepitude; or rather, of a mind which wants to convince itself of the reality of its delusions.

"Mareas del espiritu" (TS81): such is the brief description of the illusions of intellectual grandeur generated by an atmosphere of drugs and alcohol in the minds of the pseudo-intellectuals of the literary cafe visited by Pedro and Matias. Pedro and his two companions will later leave their poky little cafe "ebrios de alcohol y del orgullo que brota de los actos libres" (TS85); in reality, blinded by their newly acquired (and misplaced) confidence in themselves: " ... que ellos eran capaces de todo ... " (TS92); or so they think, within the false freedom which leads them to pretend that the world belongs to them. This same alienated freedom will, later in the night, drive Pedro to a state of sublime exaltation; that is, following his seduction ofDorita.

A temporary euphoria constitutes the inebriated state of Pedro and his friends, just as it does at the national level, with feelings of intoxication nonetheless soon inducing others of sickness or violence: "... la ebriedad alcoh6lica no se satisface en si misma sino que lleva al v6mito o al grito" (TS94), the psyehiatrist concerned with alcoholism reminds us. 166

Unable to distinguish between the reality of the mind and that of the external world, the Spain of Martin-Santos lives in a delusional state. The author of Tiempo de silencio describes a proud nation, intoxicated by its so-called past glories to the point of deluding itself about its actual condition. With a false consciousness leading its citizens to believe that everything is well - "creer que el mundo esta bien asi" (TS71), the nation is acting just like the old woman of the lodging house who blames her ruin on the war and refuses to face the facts of her haggard condition.

The image of decadence across the three generations of Doras (TS42-3) is an illustration of the Orteguian concept of the generation as a personalized entity within the downward process of evolution. Dora, a name common to the three women, is here representative of the nation slowly falling into a state of decay: "... yo en mi nina veia m.i belleza que moria" (TS26), deplores the old woman, preoccupied with her loss of youth and dynamism. This pessimistic perspective of dying youth and vitality is further carried to Pedro's mind with the allusion to the three women as "tres vulgares y derrotadas mujeres" (TS46) who, in spite of their accelerating decrepitude, persist in living in the past of their false family glory.

Pedro himself does not escape the fate of his lodgers, considering the unflattering picture given of his hangover; the very image of degeneration:

... lo que iban aver, que fue las sabanas manchadas de v6mito vinoso y al arcangel yacente envuelto en ronquidos y mancillado por sus mismas deyecciones, lamentable imagen de la condici6n humana y no 167

divina que nuestros primeros padres nos legaron. (TS142)

The only realistic judgment about the situation of decadence of the nation is pronounced by Amador:

... que nos deje a nosotros seguir pudriendonos en nuestra propia mugre. Eso es. (TS200)

The reference to Spain as "un pais que no es Europa" (TS72) is an indirect acknowledgment of Ortega's insistence upon the need for a Europeanization of Spain, reflecting - although somewhat antagonistically- the philosopher's lamentation over the decadence of his country 22.

If the Spaniards as described above deny the spread of decay as a social disease, they are nonetheless affected by it. We shall now follow the path of decadence traced by the author from his first novel to the second, and assess the damage caused by a cultural indoctrination based on barbarism rather than civilization.

The Great Decline.

This section examines the decadence of civilization in Martin- Santos' novels, starting with the neurotic society of Tiempo de silencio and ending with the psychotic world depicted in Tiempo de destrucci6n; a decadence interlinked with a dramatic degeneration of the cultural standards of a whole nation. Although not adopting the elitist thinking of the Nietzschean stream, we first introduce the concept of decadence by referring to Ortega, who attributed the fall of 168

a nation to the dominion of unreason over thought and political concern.

Since the late sixteenth century, according to Ortega, Spain has been in the process of decadence and disintegration. As the philosopher dramatically stated:

La historia de Espaii.a entera, y salvas fugaces jornadas, ha sido la historia de una decadencia. 23

Postdating Spengler's aristocratic outlook which in turn followed Nietzsche, Ortega blamed his nation's decaying state on the emergence of the mass-man (hombre-masa ), a depersonalized figure and the very embodiment of nullity.

The mass-man is the average person, the one who feels like everybody, said Ortega. Collective nonentities, mass individuals are apolitical figures who see in the State an impersonal power, often a reflection of themselves; hence their identification with this anonymous force which they consider a part of their own personality. Intellectual hermetism is what characterizes the collective mind devoid of all incentive to think for itself.

According to Americo Castro, Spaniards carry in them the legendary pride of their nation's imperial days, refusing to acknowledge any suggestion of decline in their habits and customs:

El espaii.ol ha conservado a veces maneras intimas y exteriores propias del tiempo en que se sentia miembro de una casta imperial, consciente de su innato merito y de la virtud operante de su mera presencia. 24 HID

This sense of individual pride in national achievement is turned into a collective feeling of national superiority by Martin-Santos, who refers to "el alma colectiva de las muchedumbres, envueltas en el recuerdo de la historia feudal y fabulosa de las populacheras infantas abanicadoras de si mismas" (TS273), to describe the tawdry nationalism of his characters.

The Spaniards of the post-war era, as described in Tiempo de silencio, live in total disharmony with their world. Surrounded by a diversity of cafes and taverns, they often seek in alcohol a remedy for their spiritual dryness; a dryness metaphorically attributed to the arid landscape of the Meseta, their immediate physical environment.

The ahistorical metropolis built in an arid land is the home of many Spaniards, and also of a motley integration of cultural trends; hence its atmosphere of historical insipidity and decadent pride, depicted in such terms:

Hay ciudades tan descabaladas, tan faltas de sustancia hist6rica, tan traidas y llevadas por gobernantes arbitrarios, tan caprichosamente edificadas en desiertos, tan parcamente pobladas por una continuidad aprehensible de familias, tan lejanas de un mar o de un rio, tan ostentosas en el reparto de su menguada pobreza... tan ingenuamente contentas de si mismas al modo de las mozas quinceiias ... tan desasidas de una autentica nobleza, tan pobladas de un pueblo achulapado ... tan embriagadas de si mismas aunque en verdad ellicor de que estan ahitas no tenga nada de embriagador... tan vueltas de espalda a toda naturaleza... tan abundantes de torpes te6logos y faltas de excelentes misticos, tan llenas de tonadilleras y de autores de comedias de costumbres, de comedias de enredo, de comedias de capa y espada... de comedias del cafe no de co media dell'arte ...... que no tienen catedral. (TS15-16) 170

The attack on a decadent nation is here focused upon the City of Madrid, centre of Spanish high culture, which Martfn-Santos portrays as an insipid metropolis empty of all personality and, according to his idealistic protagonist Pedro, of all great figures:

Cervantes, Cervantes. l,Puede realmente haber existido en semejante pueblo, en tal ciudad como esta, en tales calles insignificantes y vulgares un hombre que tuviera esa vision de lo humano, esa creencia en la libertad, esa melancolfa desengaiiada tan lejana de todo herofsmo como de toda exageraci6n, de todo fanatismo como de toda certeza? (TS7 4)

Linking the criticism of the town with that of the arts, Pedro's mind commutes the great seventeenth-century writer to the petty atmosphere of a literary cafe of post-war Spain:

La imagen de Cervantes volvfa a su imaginaci6n tontamente como se repite una musiquilla sin sentido. Cervantes en medio de ese grumo de humo y grito no parecfa 16gico. (TS82)

The decadence of Spain is, at this stage, felt through the degeneration of high culture, in other words, the arts. The dramatic downfall in creativity since Cervantes is reflected in the vapid atmosphere of the cafe in which the assembled writers clumsily follow the literary tradition of their forebears. Martfn-Santos thus displays the loss of individuality in the thinking of his co-workers in literature, mostly in those who can only produce cheap comedies, "comedias de enredo", "comedias de bajo coturno" (TS16) and so forth.

A blatant allegory of the decadence of art is the masterpiece produced by the German painter, no doubt an outcome of his 171

alcoholic bouts. Viewed as the "secos hijos de su espiritu" (TS86), his paintings denounce the sterility that pervades the Spanish artistic scene within the aridity of its geographical situation.

In his Ap6lo~os, Martin-Santos extends his critical vision of the arts to include the cruelty inherent in certain manifestations of public life. In the art of tauromachy, he condemns the useless violence his compatriots proffer on animals:

Entre los ibericos contemporaneos se acostumbra matar un toro en una plaza redonda mediante instrumentos punzantes introducidos en el animal con diestro arte, en lugar de recurrir a las armas de fuego que poseen. 25

Cruelty as an aspect of Spanish national life originates in oppression, so we are led to understand; more precisely, in the resentful attitude of an oppressed people whose feelings of vengeance have shifted from the original target of the crushing authorities to that of a cult of the scapegoat:

El odio primigenio, desde el primer dia ya, el odio del pueblo contra el igual que se separa, que se alza, que se hace sacerdote de algo ... 26

Barbarism in the arts, in its turn, generates more cruelty and violence in low culture - that is, everyday life -, so we are led to conclude when observing the habits of a nation or group of people through the reading of Tiempo de silencio. With a sadistic smile on his lips, Amador carries out his laboratory experiments, undaunted by his lack of knowledge in the medical field, and with no thought for the suffering of the animals he operates on (TS260). Without qualms about the harm he is inflicting on his family, Muecas beats his wife 172

and commits incest with his elder daughter. The vices which have emerged out of this culture are destructive of life, more concretely so among the marginal classes who live in an environment portrayed by the author as more bestial than human.

The attack on the Castilian culture becomes sharper in the second novel, where the dry land of Spain permeates the whole atmosphere of the provinces; a land of emptiness and utter boredom, in which silence reigns under its most acute form: mutism. This land, so it appears, has given birth to dry spirits suffering from linguistic inertia. In Villaflorida, for example, people do not communicate with words, but rather with corporal movements, as is the case with Agustin's family:

No hablan, sino que peinan; luego bordan o cos en. (TD176-7)

Most often, however, communication does not exist at all, as indicated through this unconscious admission of cultural stupidity by the average citizen of the Northern province:

No hablabamos. Es como los novios. Nos estabamos quietos y no hablabamos. lDe que ibamos a hablar? (TD411)

Agustin deplores the fact that people have given up talking, in the same way as they have given up reading. For him, a world where word and thought are absent soon becomes a brutal world; a decaying world, as it were, in which people can only express themselves through shows of brutal violence, and where the display of physical strength prevails over all heroic ventures. The generation of Agustin does indeed value the use ofbrutality: 173

La falta de inteligencia o la brutalidad se le hacian aparentes en los demas no como tales formas defectivas, sino como atributos de pujanza o de valor. El muchacho que era capaz de pegar a otro mas pequefi.o le parecfa malo, pero al mismo tiempo del rostro del cruel irradiaba una cierta luz, un destello de poderfo que lo hacia en cierta manera envidiable. (TD113)

The image of a mediocre people was already seething in the mind of Agustin's father, the proud Demetrios dominating from the heights what he saw as "el pueblo, alla abajo agazapado, vuelto animal despues del tiro del cazador" (TD91). A limited humanity was what Demetrios could see below; a silent nation that could only produce dry crops and dry minds. Such an environment gave birth to brutes, or so it seems, but also, on the other hand, to a suffering humanity, victimized by its circumstances and its lack of resources; to degenerate beings like La Lucia, a reject of society who has drowned his inhibitions and sexual perversion in heavy quantities of alcohol and is now totally destroyed in himself:

Era un hombre sufriente. Un desgraciado. Una cosa debil. Su deformidad de cadera no era sino la expresi6n visible de una vida retorcida por la maldici6n. (TD37 4)

The most blatant illustration of this degenerate society is Agustin's deaf-mute cousin Agueda, whose animal-like physiognomy reflects the state of her mind. Agueda is the being in whom all the bestial features of her fellow human beings are concentrated, brutishness prevailing in her person seemingly deprived of a soul. Conclusive proof of her backwardness has been supplied by all the tests done on her so far, which all point to the same conclusion: 174

. . . que los rendimientos intelectuales de Agueda eran inferiores a los de un gatito, a los de un perrito, a los de un cordero, a los de una estupida gallina. (TDlll)

A product of its dehumanized world, Agueda's mind is indeed that of a stupid animal. At first thought, Agustin ascribes this lack of mental growth to the biological decadence of his people (meaning by this that each generation gives birth to beings more degraded than itself, ad infinitum) 27. Agueda's father is here referred to as the main culprit of her mental affliction:

... padre, probable responsable de algun modo, biologicamente responsable, de la destruccion prematura de un cerebro que ha brotado de el y de Veronica y se ha ido quedando chico. (TDl 77)

Profoundly autistic, .Agueda cannot communicate with anyone, nor can she relate to her surroundings. She simply lives in an obscure world of her own, totally alienated from others. Her chaotic behaviour worsens as she gets older, and the restrictions of freedom imposed by her family generate in her a sense of blind hatred, in particular towards her mother who ends up hitting her in order to subdue her:

Solo mas tarde empezo a pegarme. Por primera vez mientras la mordia y hecha presa entre mis dientes engatillados en su muslo me obstinaba en arrancar aquel trozo de su cuerpo, me peg6 por fin. ... Fue necesario hacer mi cadena mas corta. Luego ponermela en el cuello, ya no en el tobillo, puesto que la cabeza era la parte peligrosa de mi odio. (TD466)

In Agueda, mental illness assumes the form of a lack of evolution, in other words a lack of hominization - that is, of the process of transformation of the pre-human into the homo sapiens. To conclude this point, Agueda is more a being of the animal realm 175

than a human being. A creature of instincts alienated from the human condition, she does not know how to transcend her impulses, and exerts blind violence upon those around her.

A metaphor of the bestiality overtaking her brutish generation, she is also an image - pitiful as it is - of the schizophrenia treated by Martin-Santos in his psychiatric hospital. Characteristic of her schizophrenic behaviour, in existential terms, is her complete misadaptation to the environment; a connotation of the deformed being-in-the-world . The severely regressed Agueda, totally indifferent to her surroundings, remains speechless and incommunicative. Chained to the wall like a dangerous animal - for fear she will escape and hurt herself as well as others -, she is, figuratively speaking, wearing the straitjacket of the regressive psychopath who can control neither feelings nor behaviour.

An epitome of the enforced silence of the nation, Agueda's mutism does correspond to the torpid state pertinent to the social illness of her co-citizens. A microcosm of her degenerate society, Agueda is also the herald of the stuporous madness which dominates the lives of those people whose adherence to the same collective spirit reflects their loss of authenticity, and subsequently their loss of humanity. Let us now analyze the features of this pathological condition in the characters of Martin-Santos' fictional world.

Collective Madness.

. . . que el hombre puede sufrir o morir pero no perderse en esta ci udad, cada uno de cuyos rincones 176

es un recogeperdidos perfeccionado, donde el hombre no puede perderse aunque lo quiera porque mil, diez mil, cien mil pares de ojos lo clasifican y disponen, lo reconocen y abrazan, lo identifican y salvan, le permiten encontrarse cuando mas perdido se crefa en su Iugar natural: en la carcel, en el orfelinato, en la comisaria, en el manicomio ... (TS19)

The natural environment of human beings is no longer their house and garden, but the institutional world of the prison and the lunatic asylum among other places of captivity. Shown as the metaphor of a gigantic manicomio, the City of Madrid is filled with this anonymous collectivity which, through its hundred thousand pairs of eyes, is forever on the look-out for new strays to absorb into its amorphous mass. In his first novel Martfn-Santos indeed projects Madrid as an embodiment not only of the gaol and the orphanage, but also of the psychiatric hospital; a reflection of his work as a professional psychiatrist 28.

In Tiempo de silencio, frustration yields to a collective mentality of revenge, well illustrated by the example of the tyranny of crowds at the bullfight: here manifestations of cruelty emerge out of an oppressed body of spectators, all of them eager to see blood spilt; in this particular case, the blood of the bullfighter/scapegoat who answers to their need for vengeance:

Acerquemonos un poco al fen6meno e intentemos sentir en nuestra propia carne - que es igual que la de el - lo que este hombre siente cuando ( desde dentro del apretado traje reluciente) adivina que su cuerpo va a ser penetrado por el cuerno y que la gran masa de sus semejantes, igualmente morenos y dolicocefalos, exige que el cuerno entre y que el quede, ante sus ojos, convertido en lo que desean ardientemente que sea: un pelele relleno de trapos rojos. (TS224) 177

If bullrings outnumber all other edifices of leisure, it is because institutionalized hatred requires it, so we are told (TS224). The public screams for the violent death of this chosen victim, "hostia emisaria del odio popular" (TS225), who will expiate its frustrations; the vox populi being, in the end, a paradox of the silence forcefully imposed upon the nation.

The image of the mass deprived of its human content is the theme of the collective unconscious, of the same "alma colectiva de las muchedumbres" (TS273); a theme developed in Tiempo de silencio with the scene of the variety show, describing a multicoloured crowd, an amorphous collectivity made up of a mixture of garish colours and shapes. In this picture of the mass, the facial expressions have disappeared, leaving room only for the monstrous visage of collective ugliness:

jQue rostros deformados por una sonrisa coagulada, que apenas entreabren sus bocas cuando cantan, que apenas entornan sus ojos cuando guiiian, que apenas estan ocupados por el pensamiento cuando maquinalmente provocan... ! (TS270)

In this cheerful mass, it is collective laughter that predominates; "la gran carcajada colectiva" (TS276): everyone is rowdily laughing at the passing show, all at the same time, in wild unison. The need to unleash frustrations is temporarily satisfied in this festive atmosphere calling for the instinct to laugh. The good people, an object of contempt - "el buen pueblo acumulado, sentado, apretado, sudante, oprimiente-oprimido ... " (TS272), is constituted by the various social classes united in a common festive mood for the occasion. This crowd reflects the collective ecstasy pertinent to mass 178

hysteria, and reinforced by numbers; the numbers giving the mass a quantitative - as opposed to qualitative - character.

Another important aspect of the mass in Tiempo de silencio is its less conspicuous, hence perhaps more insidious, character. A more refined collectivity appears through the image of the crowd of aristocrats surrounding the philosopher, a charismatic speaker whose powers of suggestion have an hypnotic effect on the audience he is addressing. The "gran Maestro" (TS162) appears, and immediately the crowd is spellbound, rendered passive by his presence and by his words. This picture of the genteel crowd - "la concurrencia selectfsima" (TS156) - degenerates into that of a mob in a corresponding episode in Tiempo de destrucci6n, with the image of the witches surrounding the he-goat/incarnation of evil. The "gran Maestro" thus becomes the "gran cabr6n" (TD474), an irreverent figure who possesses his crowds through the enforced conditioning of their minds and bodies. In a trance-like state characteristic of mass hysteria, the flagellants will proceed to execute their religious rituals, thus responding to their own need for communion as members of the herd 29.

If these are caricatures of crowds, they are nonetheless meaningful; for as a rule, psychological as well as sociological studies of crowds have indicated the same basic symptomatology as that portrayed here.

For his part Freud saw the masses as stupid. According to him, they cannot be fully human if they are not guided by reason and intellect; and the loss of individuality, a basic principle for the 179

existence of the mass, results in a total loss of morality and refrained behaviour, both features being fundamentally characteristic of the individual sense of discipline and moral values 30.

The psychology of crowds has its roots in animal psychology, says Vitus Droscher, stressing the fact that human reflexes can be conditioned by powerful mechanisms, in the same way as human feelings can be manipulated by such techniques as brainwashing and behaviour therapy as a whole 31. Perhaps extreme, yet just as vehement in his condemnation of the blocking of all original ways of thinking, Joseph Gabel describes the psychology of crowds as a pre­ dialectical phenomenon 32; a view akin to that of Martin-Santos whose dialectical insight does not allow stagnation to dominate the world scene. For the latter as for Sartre, collective being is definitely the non-being of humanity.

In Martin-Santos' novels, as already seen, instinct overpowers reason. Out of fear and a desire to conform, the individuals fused into the mass finally lose their critical sense, thus becoming the slaves of momentary impulse 33. The mixing of the social classes on festive occasions has the immediate effect of promoting equality among the people composing the mass; an equality running not along the lines of democratic principles, but rather along those of the mass degeneration of a society. The extreme feelings of love or hate, revenge or guilt, anguish or ecstasy, and so forth, are the outcome of a situation of mass hypnosis, of a swaying of the crowds by passion and belief. The unconscious life prevails, based on the reign of the senses as opposed to that of the intellect. The automaton-like behaviour of the masses reflects their uniformity of thought and 180

action, bred of a need to imitate the group so as to identify with it in outbursts of jubilation, when not of revolt. This need to imitate the crowd to the extent of being lost in it bears the seeds of a much more serious problem: that of the psychic epidemics which ravage the life of the human herd.

Indeed, the imperious need to copy others has given way to a chronic state of echolalia and echopraxia (as defined previously) in Martfn­ Santos' world, where the folie communiquee of the exalted crowds springs from mental contagion, itself produced by mass delusional thinking and noxious propaganda. Under the influence of peer pressure and mass contamination, the good people gathered at the bullfight or the vulgar show (to quote only two examples in Tiempo de silencio) thus soon becomes a depersonalized crowd united in brutal merrymaking.

Inauthenticity and mimetism dominate the Spanish scene of the times. Martin-Santos provides a vivid illustration for this view in Tieropo de destrucci6n, with his introduction to the festivities in the provincial town of Tolosa:

Con impresionante simultaneidad, los dieciocho mil ciudadanos de la villa se pusieron contentos. A tal fin aderezaron sus trajes y sus espiritus. Bajo el imperio de un llamado carnaval ... los ciudadanos de esta villa... proceden a las operaciones necesarias para que los procesos unificadores se realicen. Es preciso, ante todo, unificar el tono vital de los que se convierten en corifeos de este olvidado arte reciproco del exhibirse-verse siendo actor­ contemplador de la misma multitudinaria pantomima por todos simultaneamente repetida, por todos simultaneamente gozada, en todos virulentamente vivida... (TD309-10) 181

The purpose of the carnival of Tolosa is to celebrate together; not as a community of individuals, but as a mass of people, a mixture of the social classes. In order to avoid frustration - a consequence of which would be some signs of rebellion from a segment of the population -, everything is arranged to promote the unification of all the movements of bodies and minds; "unificar los deseos" (TD312) is the path to that artificial happiness created by the cheering crowd mimetically united in revelry. To sum up, unification is the key word and the most essential element in the running of the town celebrations. Indeed,

De tal unificaci6n gesticulatoria deriva la unificaci6n social, conseguida por una total renuncia a todo signo de refinamiento inc6modo, hasta que cada clase social arroja desde su respectivo nivel de autorrespeto para reconocerse lo adamita. (TD312)

In this particular carnival, the incidence of alcoholism is extremely high. Heavy drinking obviously enables the participants to stop thinking and start to conform, by making them lose all sense of discrimination as regards tastes, attitudes, behavioural patterns. Once united in drunkenness, the crowd unleashes its frustrations and suppresses many of the social taboos which would keep it under control, socially and emotionally. The outcome of abundant drinking is the degeneration of the human mass into a heated rabble guided essentially by the animal magnetism (TD316) of the night. An epitome of decadence, this carnival represents the tragic loss of selfhood of a people whose every act is ruled by the instinct to imitate:

... la unica marea golpeaba en los salones del Casino con la misma violencia con que rompia en las tabernas de las calles estrechas y con la que habia presidido horas antes la congregaci6n y desfile de comparsas en la plaza pueblerina, momento inicial en 182

que todos los sujetos, unidos por una misma embriaguez, dejaron en suspenso sus deudas, sus n6minas y hasta sus fidelidades de noviazgo siempre sacrosantas. (TD314)

Out of conformism, everyone must wear a mask, preferably portraying an animal face. Ironically, the animal masks seem to announce a new identity in their bearers, that is, their acquired nature as brutish beings; most noticeable among them, La Lucia 's mask figuring a pig's head with its mouth open (TD316). The strange, animal-like behaviour the revellers display when hiding behind their masks- again most striking among his peers, La Lucia, who takes this unique opportunity to display his perverted self at its worst- will further evince the insanity prevailing at the carnival.

The stupidity of the masses here assumes the dimensions of severe dementia. In his painting of the sick society, Martin-Santos draws a dramatic evolution from collective neurosis in Tiempo de silencio to collective psychosis in Tiempo de destrucci6n. Indeed, if Tiempo de silencio depicts the neurotic condition of a society living in bad faith, Tiempo de destrucci6n draws more colourful scenes of mental alienation, with the description of an autistic world of psychopathy in which reason and dignity have been abandoned to the reign of the instincts. In this the collective will is involved; in other words, the will of the masses which annihilates the individual as a thinking being, a cogito ergo sum. 183

Conclusion.

We hope we have made clear the notion that both neurosis and madness as depicted in Martin-Santos' novels do reflect his professional outlook on the manifestations of mental illness. From a setting of social violence and primitivism, we have followed the evolution of insanity in his fictional world, to its eventual depiction of a state of collective madness.

As a spokesman for his author - he himself states that his name is Luis (TD69) -,Agustin does not feel at ease in such festivities as the carnival of Tolosa, symbolic of the insane world which surrounds him. A fervent critic of bad faith and human stupidity, he is foreign to this alienated world which is the object of his search for truth. A world full of lies, hypocrisy, cheating, and crime is depicted in Martin-Santos' fiction, most strikingly so in his second novel; a world in which complicity has reached its climax with the hiding of a vicious crime 34.

Agustin's ambition is to change the heart and mind of his people; undoubtedly an echo of the author's thinking as a psychiatrist. His investigation of a crime in Tolosa will bear images of Martin-Santos' investigation of the body of Spain with a view to curing the social madness. One must explore life under all its forms and manifestations, according to Pedro and Agustin. This point will be taken up in Chapter Three, with the analysis of Martin-Santos' role as a doctor/surgeon concerned with the techniques of diagnosis and treatment of a social disease. 184

Notes to Chapter Two.

1 See footnote 53 in Chapter 1 for a definition of ataraxia. It is a sarcastic vision that Martin-Santos holds of ataraxia; more the inevitable outcome of intoxication - be it through drugs or alcohol, or through the blind following of a fascist indoctrination (by abandoning oneself to it) - than the voluntary retirement from the world in the spiritual sense. Before Martin-Santos, Baroja had used the concept of ataraxia with a Schopenhauerian insight, deriving from it a philosophy of lament and resignation likely to lead to silence, in some cases to actual peace of mind. For Baroja as for Schopenhauer, the positive element of human existence is freedom from pain; meaning, in the end, the confining of oneself to one's own business, within one's reduced vital space. What Baroja recommends so highly in El arbol de la ciencia finds itself condemned by Martin­ Santos in Tiempo de silencio; ataraxia leading, according to the latter, to the failure of the will, hence to the suppression of one's freedom to act.

2 Initiated by Viktor Frankl in the 1950s, logotherapy aims to develop in people a sense of responsibility for their destiny. It was within the setting of extreme repression of a concentration camp that Frankl decided to search for a meaning to life, appealing to the need to transcend suffering in order to find authenticity as a human being. With a Nietzschean outlook, Frankl even found meaning in suffering, itself proving to be cathartic and a breeder of hope and courage. Radically opposed to apathetic resignation to fate, Frankl insists on the need for human beings to assert their individuality, thereby refusing to conform to a collective ethics devoid of properly thought-out principles. For him the group means annihilation of existence, the real community being that of responsible individuals. Logotherapy, as its name indicates, aims to treat the soul (logos ) rather than the mind, hence bringing the spiritual dimension into the picture of the human condition. Although not refuted by Martin-Santos, it has been seen by him as superficial and more patronizing than convincing in its approach.

3 In his General Psychopathology, Jaspers described apathy as the absence of feeling. If this absence is total, the person may remain conscious of what is happening around, but treats everything with indifference and loses all motivation to act. In this process apathy converts itself into aboulia.

4 J. Chantraine de Van Praag, "Un malogrado novelista contemporaneo", in Cuadernos Americanos, Mexico, Vol.24 (5), 1965.

5 R.K. Anderson, Tiempo de silencio : Mvth and Social Reality, St.Louis University, 1973. 185

6 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science. New York, 1974.

7 Dr. J. Fursay-Fusswerk, La chute des idoles, P.269.

8 R. Gentis & H. Torrubia, Locura por locura, Buenos Aires, 1973, P.80. (A Spanish translation of Cahiers pour la folie.)

9 Rollo May, The Man who was put in a cage: A king wants to know what would happen to a normal individual if he were suddenly kept prisoner - his reactions, his personality changes, etc. To this end he employs a team of researchers to investigate the psychology of captivity, and selects a victim in a crowd of ordinary citizens. The man first reacts with bewilderment; then anger and indignation follow. His protests come to a peak, until they lessen and finally cease. Silence ensues. Hatred is perceived in his eyes. It is only within a few days that these changes have occurred in his attitude. The prisoner is soon starting to doubt his own judgment, thinking he is being ungrateful to his captors; for, after all, he feels, he enjoys comfort and security within the limited space of his cage. Although he has by then become resigned to his fate, resentment is noted in him by the visiting psychologist. The man admits having chosen this way of life. Stupidity and clumsiness are obvious in him, and his conversation has become one-tracked. He uses fewer words each day, and mumbles rather than speaks. His facial expression is blunt and emptied of humanity. The man has become insane. (Psychology and the Human Dilemma.)

10 W. Dilthey, in L. Binswanger: Being-in-the-World: "Freud's Conception of Man in the Light of Anthropology".

11 See TS163: the speech of the philosopher (Ortega y Gasset) on perspectives, aiming in the end to entertain the minds of the intellectual elite away from political issues.

12 The Generation of 98 had referred to Spain as a nation ill with such ailments - among other minor ones - as aboulia, marasmus, slow suicide, triviality, emptiness, vulgarity. It saw adinamia (a paralysis of the most vital organs), nonetheless, as by far the predominant symptom of the national disease. (Aniano Peiia, "La Volkerpsychologie y la visi6n de Espaiia en la Generaci6n del 98", in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol. III, No.331, 1978, PP.82-102.) In the same article, Macias Picavea is said to report the Spanish problem as one of a sick nation in a state of political inanity. With such descriptions as "pueblo sin pulso", "naci6n inerme, abulica y pacata", he is denouncing the idiocy prevalent in his country at the turn of the century. Two literary generations or so later, the disease has spread, if we consider the lines of a pessimistic evaluation in Martin-Santos' novelistic account.

13 Enrique Tierno Galvan, El miedo a la raz6n, Madrid, 1986. 186

14 The ambiguity of feelings registered in most alcoholics in some way fits Muecas' complex makeup; more precisely, on the one hand a tendency to seek Nirvana through alcohol accompanied by the idea of wishing without acting, and on the other, the impulsiveness of the dependent alcoholic confronted with the blocking of desires. As seen previously, alcoholic sufferers shun rules and regulations because of the unbearable frustration they may cause. Their self-esteem fluctuates between two extremes: high and low, depending on either fantasies of omnipotence or feelings of worthlessness. (See Blane, The Personality of the Alcoholic ... : "Impulsivity and Frustration.") In the case of Muecas, we recall his attitude of comfort and tranquility of conscience following a drunken bout; but we meet him more often in his role of petty criminal of a ramshackle world. From this we get to note the ambiguous effects of alcohol: i.e., the dulling of the senses, as well as their stimulation. The split personality of the chronic alcoholic will either fall prey to an ataraxic state of apathy and resignation, or to the inversed state of intoxication leading to violence; and possibly to both at the same moment, if the will is nearing total blindness.

15 In this raw state of existence based on the instinct to survive, "Every man is enemy to every man", said Hobbes. (Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, 1642.) In Leviathan, Hobbes further described such living conditions as "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." With an Hobbesian outlook, Sartre sees scarcity (and the subsequent need to compete for vital resources) as breeding enmity between human beings. Along with Marx, he also views scarcity as the moving force of history.

16 Gemma Roberts, Temas existenciales en la noyela espanola de postguerra. PP.144-145.

17 Ibid., P.155.

18 Pio Baroja, El arbol de la ciencia, Madrid, 1981, P.94.

19 The dictum homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to man ) is indicative of life as a constant struggle against one's fellow human beings, and exposes egoism as the main characteristic of the heart of mankind. Schopenhauer over-emphasized this Hobbesian outlook by stating that the whole of humanity was dominated by the Will as a blind destructive force, and that civilization was but a veneer that served to hide the savagery inherent in the human spirit. "Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal", stated Schopenhauer, seeing the civilized world as nothing but a great masquerade; a vision taken up by Gobineau who called man "!'animal mechant par excellence". 187

It was the philosopher-playwright Plautus (2nd century B.C.) who first coined the expression homo homini lupus, in his play Asinaria, as follows: "lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit." (Asinaria, II, 4, 495, Padova, Ed. R.A.D.A.R., 1968.)

20 As noted by- Saludes, Agustin suffers from the neurosis of the perfectionist: "Una neurosis de perfeccionamiento y una inflexibilidad, prueba elocuente de una inseguridad patente, causante de gran ansiedad, guiaba todas sus acciones." (E. Saludes, La narrativa de Luis Martin-Santos ala luz de la psicologia, P.141.)

21 The narrator uses a literary technique known as dialectical_realism to describe the way Muecas sees himself (well established, wealthy and influential ... ). It is by saying the reverse of what is meant that Martin-Santos expresses the sarcasm he feels towards the situation described. The narrator thereby decries the living conditions of the slum dwellers by alluding to their creativity in building the chabolas. (In dialectical thinking, there is no radical separation between the positive and the negative, both being two aspects of the dynamics of a process. Dialectical realism opens onto a new reality, which transcends basic reality.)

22 Condemning the mediocrity of his compatriots and the lowering of their social and ethical standards, Ortega y Gasset expressed his elitist views in terms of extreme contempt. He saw the hombre-masa as a non-entity, an ordinary individual who belonged with the rest of his mediocre co-citizens and should be precluded from meddling in the running of the nation. Martin-Santos does not agree with Ortega's notion of the rebellion of the masses in socio-political affairs, as he is an advocate of democracy. Although he uses some Orteguian concepts in his evaluation of decadence, he eventually refutes Ortega as a fascist­ like traditional intellectual who shunned all social commitment in his literature. (See his climactic comparison of Ortega with Goya's monstrous "Grand Bouc" .)

23 J. Ortega y Gasset, Espana Inyertebrada CObras completas, Vol.3, 1917-28 in Reyista de Occidente, Madrid, 1966).

24 Americo Castro, La realidad hist6rica de Espaiia, Mexico, 1966, P.254. Martin-Santos' fictional outlook reflects the historical view of Americo Castro as regards the decadence of Spain. Castro further notes the disappearance of reason - or at least, of the faith in reason - in the Spain of his times: his compatriots, he says, tend to have recourse to brutal action in order to solve their social problems.

25 L. Martin-Santos, "Costumbres extraiias de algunos pueblos primitivos", P.44 in Ap6lo~s. 188

26 L. Martin-Santos, "Tauromaquia", P.78 in Ap6logos.

27 In this point lies the irony of the author, who, behind the scenes, invokes the theme of the Great Decline through his repeated allusion to generations of decadent Spaniards.

28 Pio Baroja, who inspired Martin-Santos to a point in his philosophical and medical views of the decadence of his nation, saw Spain as a giant madhouse and a microcosm of the whole world: "El mundo le parecia una mezcla de manicomio y de hospital; ser inteligente constituia una desgracia, y s6lo la felicidad podia venir de la inconsciencia de la locura." CEl arbol de la ciencia, P.49.)

29 See Part Three, Chapter One of this essay for a detailed analysis of the "Aquelarre".

30 Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, London, 1978.

31 Droscher, in Fursay-Fusswerk: op.cit., P.186.

32 J. Gabel, La fausse conscience, Paris, 1962.

33 In his treatise entitled The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind (La Foule), Gustave LeBon stressed the prevalence of instincts over reason in the crowd situation. To him, reason is too recent a phenomenon in the history of humanity, therefore still too vulnerable, and too weak, to fight against instincts. The unconsciousness of crowds represents their strength, said LeBon, considering the unconscious as a most potent force, in fact the one which directs human actions in a blind manner. According to LeBon, once aroused by suggestion, the crowd can make use of the power of destruction innate to its very core. It can be aggressive to a weakling, but at the same time it can become totally submissive in front of a powerful authority. Altogether the crowd is a servile flock, said LeBon; a flock which cannot do without a master.

34 See the murder of the night watchman, the investigation of which Agustin has undertaken once nominated as a judge. 189

Chapter Three: The Role of the Doctor/Surgeon. Basic Imagery of Social Cancer and its Cure.

In this chapter we evaluate the role of the doctor/surgeon in Martfn­ Santos' fiction. A parallel is drawn between scientific and sociological research, meaning that the findings as regards the degeneration of cells in cancer will be metaphorically linked to the decadence of the nation. From the autopsy of rats in Tiempo de silencio, the author and his protagonist proceed to do the biopsy of the organism of Spain, hence to diagnose social cancer as the ailment which is plaguing the nation. Tiempo de silencio is seen as the actual diagnosis of the disease; Tiempo de destrucci6n, as a follow-up of its evolution and an attempt at treating it. Our speculations on the cure will end at this point for the time being, since the early death of the author prevented the writing of his intended third novel.

At the beginning of the first novel, we meet Pedro as a young scientist researching the cause of cancer and following the course of the disease. Pedro dissects rats of a cancerous species, expressly imported from Illinois for the purpose of cancer research. His aim is to discover in them the origin of "esa mitosis torpe que crece y destruye" (TS8) - the process of cell division - and apply his findings to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer in human beings. From the autopsies carried out in his laboratory, he will be led - by the circumstances the novelist places him in - to do a biopsy of his country's illness. 100

A first general impression of the novel might lead the reader to conclude that part of the problem of Spain is attributable to biological heredity; indeed, an hereditary lack of intelligence in the Hispanic lineage could well have emerged from such characteristics as "debiles cerebros" (TS12), "frentes tan menguadas" (TS158), "cierta estrechez de las frentes" (TS71), "angulo facial estrecho del hombre peninsular" (TS8), "craneo de apariencia dolicocefalica" (TS224) among others. However, as Anderson indicates, the laws of heredity are here confined to culture; for, as we have seen, it is the overwhelming influence of the past over the present that has determined the development of an hermetic nature in Martin-Santos' Spaniard 1; and degeneration is more likely to occur through loss of selfhood, says Anderson, than through heredity itself.

Genetic heredity is seemingly not at fault in the development of the degraded species appearing in Tiempo de destrucci6n. Agustin's singular heredity did not in itself inhibit the development of his brain and intelligence. Indeed, in spite of having had a retarded cousin, as well as three brothers whose poor intellect was reflected in their physiognomy- "frente... estrecha" (TD207), "gruesa cabeza" (TD210), eyes in which "nunca... se encendia la luz de la comprensi6n" (TD212), Agustin is a gifted individual:

esa alegria del conocimiento, ese comprender que dos y dos son cuatro de un modo mas perfecto, quien pudiera nunca explicar en que consiste si no ha conocido otro espiritu tan ricamente dotado ... (TD213- 4)

The sudden arrival of a talented being in a long line of retarded children directly counters the belief that heredity is the only basis for 191.

degeneration. In Martin-Santos' fictional world, it is at the level of the social disease that "la siempre continua linea de descendientes tarados" (TS14) finds its real justification.

If the author of Tiempo de silencio speaks of achieving, through his protagonist's dreams of grandeur, the creation of a perfect humanity - "creaci6n de una humanidad perfecta, extirpaci6n de todo mal hereditario" (TS13) -, it is therefore not so much in the genetic domain, but rather at the social level, through the purge of that socio­ cultural ailment which is affecting the entire nation.

Identification of the National Syndrome.

The illness of Spain, as the evolution of Tiempo de silencio indicates, is encompassed in the general diagnosis of social cancer , its cause being a pernicious environment destructive of human values. The sick organism will be, in metaphorical terms, prone to further atrophy in Tiempo de destrucci6n.

Related to the notion of cancer is, in the first novel, the cyst growing on the City; in other words, the zone of chabolas proliferating in the centre of Madrid, a sordid reminder of Spain's physical ailment 2. As Talahite says:

Le cancer est... dans le roman la metaph ore de la misere, ce qui insinue l'idee d'un remede social possible, d'une sorte de vaccin a decouvrir. 3 192

Cancer is, in Tiempo de silencio, the metaphor of misery and suffering. Yet it is, at the same time, the object of the search for a vaccine, since, as we know, in the 1940s cancer was still considered to be a viral source of contagion. In the context of a social disease, Martin-Santos is looking at a form of alienation which has the propensity to spread, in the same way as cancer multiplies its cells in the sick organism.

With regard to Tiempo de silencio, Jose Ortega views cancer as "... el simbolo de la enfermedad social y moral que corroe a Espana" 4. For her part Jane Morrison sees cancer as functioning like "a metaphor used ... to describe and investigate the condition of Spanish society, both past and present". This metaphor, she says, "operates on the basis of an extended comparison, or analogy between the physical health of an individual or community and its moral or spiritual well­ being" 5. "The initial impression of the cancerous cell becomes the dominant visual form of the novel", declares Sally Ann Hargrave

Kubow 6, alluding to a growing sense of loss as Martin-Santos' first novel unfolds towards a climax of alienation.

Also dealing with the etiology of social cancer, Jose Schraibman sees Tiem.po de silencio as an attempt to X-ray the Spanish ethos:

Tiempo de silencio es una entelequia que intenta hacer la radiografia del ethos espaiiol, de hurgar en el meollo de lo que define el ser y existir de los espaiioles. 7

It is by looking through the microscope, says Schraibman, that the doctor/scientist becomes conscious of the proportions of that social disease he is undertaking to treat and cure. The novel is, according 193

to him, an attempt to understand the mental patient, figuratively speaking, and a start of treatment.

Like Camilo Jose Cela in Pabell6n de reposo, as well as Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain, Martin-Santos is, metaphorically speaking, X-raying his society through remote observation; here a society diseased not with tuberculosis, but with social cancer. It would be hard to deny that he was inspired by both writers. Indeed, he had read them both 8, and had scrutinized their novelistic approach to the notion of a decaying society affected by an ailing will, a national will that could not transcend its post-war conditions.

As an ironical justification for his socio-historical viewpoint on the Spanish syndrome, Martin-Santos refers to a national complex developed through multiple generations; that is, a complex relating not to the individual alone, but to the whole nation, and whose diagnosis and treatment, he says, should also be considered. Here, with a mockingly pseudo-scientific view of the world, he states that:

La psiquiatria, no trata exclusivamente con sujetos individuales. Hay, una psicologia tambien, de pueblos y naciones. Cada pueblo tiene sus complejos y la gente, de una forma un poco rutinaria, dice, que los franceses son orgullosos, muy patriotas los alemanes, muy negociantes los ingleses y asi, por el estilo. 9

Labanyi stresses the notion of an inferiority complex in the Spaniard; a complex not pre-determined, she says, but rather emerging from a self-destructive tendency, itself a spontaneous reaction to a hostile milieu and unfavourable circumstances. The illness of Spain is a degenerative, self-destructive illness, emanating in the first place from a tendency to regress in lieu of progressing 10. 194

In his treatise El espaiiol y su complejo de inferioridad (1951 ), Lopez Thor diagnoses a dramatic inferiority in his compatriots, especially in the domain of scientific achievements; a view echoed in Tiempo de silencio with the allusion to the Iberian's "inferioridad nativa ante la ciencia" (TS7). Invoking historical circumstances as the major cause of the nation's ideological backwardness (such a phenomenon as the Spanish Inquisition, for instance, had precluded the development of creative ideas), Lopez Thor nonetheless throws the blame for this inferiority upon the average citizen, whom he calls "un hombre inmoral y amoral", who lacks all sense of incentive and originality.

As a professional psychiatrist, Martfn-Santos occupies the post of a critical observer. He thus sees himself as the doctor who is seeking to cure the national illness (or complex); a doctor striving to come closer to the sick organism or mind, yet at the same time detaching himself from it. This strategy is the one used by the psychotherapist, and the only one he considers valid if the treatment is to be successful:

La relacion de la cura psicoanalftica es, ante todo, el mantenimiento de una distancia... La impasibilidad del analista ante las tempestades afectivas del analizado, es uno de los factores para el exito de la cura. (L TT197 -8)

A detailed observation of a people and its culture leads to a phenomenological description of the national ailment; a description based on the analysis of the lived experience of this ailment in the society. From Tiempo de silencio to Tiempo de destruccion: Pedro, the young scientist doing the vivisection of his society, becomes 195

Agustin, the young judge determined to rid his nation of its ills, starting with the cancer-like corruption that is devouring the Spanish ethos.

E;merimental Inyestie-ation of the Social Disease.

Era preciso investigar, saber, ver... (TD236)

Experimenting is very much a part of Agustin's life. He is eager to discover the truth in the investigation he has taken on with regard to the murder of the sereno. His longing to find truth and a meaning to existence is the most essential part of his ethos, of his way of life 11. His experiments with Agueda, his retarded cousin, do reflect the author's investigation of the soul of Spain: in both cases, it is necessary to understand the laws of behaviour which govern the sick organism, thereafter to begin treating it.

.Agueda is barely human: she behaves and reacts just like an animal. However, Agustin is not giving up on her, and decides to uncover the reality beneath appearances. Using the behaviourist model, he tests her reactions to simple psychological tests, that is, through placing before her pieces of food of various sizes, objects and insects to fiddle with. All stimulus triggers a response, so Agustin thinks; in the case of .Agueda, a purely insensitive as well as irrational response: the girl does not seem to make any differences between edible and inedible goods, and gnaws everything she can grab. Using positive reinforcement - a system of reward for the right behaviour - does not work on her: conditioning is definitely not bearing its fruit. Agustin, 196

regardless of the amount of patience he is showing with her, cannot at this stage cultivate any other pattern of behaviour in his cousin 12.

Seeing culture and the environment as the main shapers of a society, B.F. Skinner affirms that what conditions people to adopt certain attitudes - be they rational, odd, or extravagant - is the impact of the cultural milieu on their minds. Elements such as language, beliefs, communication patterns, symbolism, and so forth are, according to him, greatly conditioned by a cultural indoctrination 13. By referring to Agueda as the epitome of the national illness, the reader may decipher, along the lines of the behaviourist model, the effects of an oppressive environment upon a being deprived of the faculty to speak and communicate with others.

Agustin's mode of experimentation on his cousin's reactions does not always yield the expected results. Indeed, within his behavioural analysis notions of existential psychology will emerge, of particular importance the fact that, after all, his cousin is not empty-minded owing to her stupidity only, but also partly due to her own free choice to remain inaccessible to others. Indeed,

... algo le indicaba... que su prima no era vacia por tonta, sino maligna por elecci6n cuasilibre de sus oscuras voliciones. (TDlll)

Moreover,

... en el contacto directo con su persona se advertia la presencia de una sustancia humana bajo la jeta inm6vil y los dientes crispados, algo mas profundamente existente a lo que el mas avispado macaco nunca llega. Y esto algo queria decir. (TD112) 197

In short, there is a latent humanity in Agueda; a humanity which has to be uncovered, and redeemed. Agustin further notes in his cousin a decision not to give - "En Agueda habia una decision de no dar que era profundamente mala y pecaminosa" (TD112) -; a pernicious attitude towards others and the world. Agueda's humanity is estranged from its authentic potentialities, we are led to understand; and if there is a possibility of redemption for her, it will be along existential principles. A symbol of the pathological state of her society, Agueda is being probed by the representative of the same psychiatrist-philosopher of alienation who has put his profession at the service of his country.

The psychopathology of society is one of the problems now confronted by social psychiatry. Orthodox psychiatry in Spain has, until recently, refused to consider revolutionary views which would dethrone humanity from its spiritual estate and thus desacralize its vital aspirations. Before the advent of Freudianism - up untill950 -, Spanish psychiatry was assimilated to religion, in the sense that the role of the doctor reflected that of the priest; in other words, that of the spiritual healer whose duty was to purify the patient's soul by exorcising the illness out of it 14.

"La sociedad esta enferma, pero nosotros no somos sus medicos" 15, proclaims Dr Valenciano Gaya, acknowledging the Spanish ailment yet refusing to be involved in what he considers to be the duty of the sociologist and the historian.

Displaying some affinities with the views of Martin-Santos on the sick society, Dr Rojo Sierra refers to Spain as an organism (or social 198

body) suffering from a psychiatric illness similar to a human neurosis 16. The main fault with the diseased nation, he says, lies in its absence of a collective purpose to fulfill its historical mission. Once the society errs from its straight course, it fills itself with contradictions and enters a crisis. It then abandons its beliefs and traditions - and this is the point at which Martin-Santos would part with Rojo Sierra -, only to fall into a state of perplexity, until it finally becomes ill. (Here the psychiatrist is promoting conservative values, furthermore in favour of the interests of a ruling class.)

According to Rojo Sierra, social pathology makes a head start with the rebellion of the masses. The elitist views of this Orteguian model of thought have impaired the efforts of reformers such as Martin­ Santos and Castilla del Pino in the psychiatric domain, by stressing the point that the evils of modern society are offshoots of its democratization. Within this very framework of the Orteguian-based outlook, L6pez Thor insists that if society is ill, it is because the State as well as paternal authority have lost their impact on the masses, hence the latter's protest and, in the end, complete disorder on the socio-political scene 17.

A lack of knowledge and understanding of the real problem has led the conservative medical theorists to advance such opinions. A lack of investigation is what Martin-Santos, as a dialectician, condemns in his colleagues of the Orteguian school of thought; for it is only by investigating the ailment in depth, and with an open mind, that the psychiatrist is likely to find a remedy for it. It is partly through experimentation, probing and deduction - a method used by Pedro in his laboratory and by Agustin in the testing of his cousin's behaviour 199

- that the doctor/scientist will come to understand the illness, and thence proceed to treat it appropriately. It is also with an existential approach, as the medical writings studied in Chapter One indicate, that a social ailment must be treated and cured.

As regards the social disease which is affecting the world of Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n, its cure is to be effected through the treatment of a defective socio-cultural outlook, the emphasis being placed on the existential model of thought.

Treatment of Cultural Attitudes.

Like Baroja in El arbol de la ciencia, Martin-Santos presents a clinical picture of his country in his two novels. Like Baroja at the turn of the century, fifty years or so later he diagnoses the same type of ailment, that is, a profound lethargy in the social organism, indicative of a rapid degeneration of the Hispanic culture. According to both doctor/physicians, there will be little possibility of surmounting the problem as long as their compatriots remain blind, or at least indifferent, to the marasmus in which their country is plunged.

Instead of a coercive system of indoctrination aimed at promoting old traditional moral laws, creative innovation should become the keynote of the educational system: this suggestion, made by the existential psychiatrist Thomas Szasz 18, echoes the existential ethics of Martin-Santos, who sees established culture as the main 200

impediment to progress, for narrowing the potential freedom of the individual under its domination.

The achievement of true culture is based on a reassessment of cultural values, said Nietzsche who, by advocating for human beings the need to create themselves as well as to become responsible for their own destiny, ushered in Existentialism. The most conspicuous sign of weakness in a regressive cultural outlook is the herd instinct, he stressed; a characteristic of the inauthentic beings who have not overcome their basic humanity and cannot escape from the tyranny of morals and religions established by decadents 19. The Nietzschean statement that "everything unconditional belongs in pathology" 20 further condemns the attitude of the mass that rallies to the command of its established laws and traditions, without questioning the validity of its precepts nor searching for the truth in the human spirit itself.

The Nietzschean superman as an independent soul- incarnated by the San Jorge Agustin intended to become- is still only a proposition in the mind of the hero of Tiempo de destrucci6n; for time is not yet ripe for the advent of the "hombre importante portaestandarte de la humanidad inventor de las nuevas leyes nihilista" (TD506). In other words, the fictional treatment of Spanish cultural values has only begun, and at this stage the cure cannot be guaranteed. Its results

from now on can only be based on speculation 21; more precisely, upon speculations deriving mostly from the psychiatric perspective of Martin-Santos. 201

At this point we may evaluate the future of Spain as conceived by the ideological outlook of the philosopher/psychiatrist/novelist concerned with the possible redemption of his country.

From denial to acceptance of the problem, and from an awakening of consciousness to an effort towards liberation: such is the path of the existential conversion of the Spain figuring in the two novels. The new national spirit emerging from the cure will lend itself to the building of a positive future. The sane society envisaged by Martfn­ Santos, once rid of its stale myths, will be motivated by the need for a continuous revaluation of its socio-cultural patterns. The J asperian concept of life as an eternal flux is applied to this theory of permanent renewal inspired by creative innovation.

Once culturally treated, the Spaniards as presented in the two novels will indeed emerge from their lethargy and aim at reintegrating themselves in the world and in history. Cultural development, for them, will come to mean evolution, that is, the passage from alienation to a creative existence. Once treated and cured, they will have achieved the status of mentally healthy people living autonomously and in harmony with their world 22.

No longer will these individuals be alienated from their environment and social values; no longer will they be idolaters submitting to irrational authorities; no longer will they depend on established customs to exert their judgment; and definitely no longer will they let themselves be silenced by a political system that oppresses all aspects of personal freedom. 202

At the close of the second novel, these features of the redeemed social being of a nation remain uncertain probabilities. However, the treatment of cultural values has actually begun, and Agustin's search for truth and identity - for his co-citizens as well as for himself - will perhaps bear fruit in a distant future. Although the cure is not yet in view, it still has to be conceived as a possible final outcome.

The Absurdity of Life.

As mentioned previously (Part One, Chapter One), Martin-Santos, although eager to use human potential to reform a way of life, is prone to defeatism with regard to the ability of human beings to act rationally and in good faith. For him, what motivates human behaviour is at times beyond all understanding; and no matter how much experimentation may be done on the psyche and its functioning - the fictitious case of Agueda being a dramatic illustration of this point-, the irrational element emerges out of all logical comprehension.

There exist no consistent laws of behaviour, so we are led to understand when reading the Ap6logos. In the short fable Ni:iia paseando por el monte23, the girl picking flowers does not abide by any logical rules to assemble her bouquet. It is perhaps a sense of aesthetics that guides her; in any case, her flower arrangement denies any discoverable laws of logic. A more dramatic instance of irrationality is depicted in another apologue, namely, Comprensi6n24, a tale of aberration which defies all ethical laws as 203

well as all common sense. Here a woman prepares herself to leave the man with whom she has been happy for years, in order to elope with her seductor, a despicable person, "hombre despreciable, que no la queria ni la querria nunca, que la abandonaria en breve dejando su vida rota." The meaning seems obvious; added to this is the fact that she does not even like the seductor. Her motive for going with him is simply her decision to do it. Emphasizing the absurdity of such an act, the fable further decries irrational behaviour as the main guiding rule of human actions:

El ap6logo anterior puede parecer al lector una curiosa anomalia o divertida excepci6n. Lo esencial es - por tanto - que comprenda que el autor no lo cree tal excepci6n, sino que - muy al contrario - lo propone como regia general. 25

Opposed to such demonstrations of irrationality, Martfn-Santos recommends an appeal to the human power of reasoning as the prime ingredient of his psychological method of education. It is in a light-hearted, not to say ironic, account of the basic absurdity of life, that is, in the apologue La educaci6n de los hijos, that he advocates the use of simple logic and reason in the educational system:

No comprendo los quebrad eros de cabeza con que se atormentan los te6ricos de la pedagogia, ni las graves preocupaciones por las que se dejan dominar tantos sesudos padres de familia en torno a las dificul tades que - segtin. ellos - presenta la educaci6n de los hijos. En cuanto a mi, tengo la cuesti6n de:finitivamente resuelta. Y no solo en el plano de la teoria, sino lo que es mas importante, en la practica de cada dia. Cuando un hijo corre desaforadamente por el pasillo de la casa, le digo no corras ; cuando salta por encima de los muebles de mi despacho, le digo no saltes ; cuando me abruma con preguntas ininterrumpidas y con gestos de monito sabio le ordeno no marees. De este modo crecen al mismo tiempo su amor y su respeto y su caracter se modela armoniosamente sin esfuerzo. 26 204

In reality, how far can Martin-Santos appeal to human common sense? And how far does he trust his fellow human beings? Although, as a therapist, he favours his patients' active participation in treatment, if we consider the contents of his novels and apologues, we must acknowledge the potency of his irony as regards the human ability to think and act creatively.

It is in his over-simplification of a major problem that he displays the futility of striving to elaborate complicated theories which would, as he shows it in the latter apologue, only result in a misunderstanding between the parties. Adverse to all orthodox psychology is the concrete approach indicated in the example quoted above, and mediated by an ironical vision.

Along the lines of Reality Therapy 27, this change-of-attitude approach tends to concern itself uniquely with the moral faculties of the person, and to omit all psychological handicaps which might be present or latent in that person's mind. Anti-deterministic, it does away with the past, regarding only the present situation and its repercussions on the future.

Although not representative of a serious theoretical viewpoint, La educaci6n de los hijos serves to remind us, once again, of its author's existential ethos, with an emphasis on responsibility and rational behaviour. 205

Conclusion.

As a psychiatrist, Martin-Santos does not deny the influence of organicity in the decadence of a people. However, as an existential philosopher endowed with a dialectical mind, he refuses to be one­ sided in his judgment; and, as seen with his medical theories, his existential views always triumph over determinism within the realm of his global attitude of compromise.

The role of the scientist preoccupied with the treatment of a sick society concludes Part Two of this essay. In Part Three we analyze the role of Martin-Santos as a creative artist concerned with a vivid description of the same social disease. This third role assumed by the philosopher of alienation is meant to interlink with the same views on dehumanization and social madness, and to reflect the multi-dimensional vision of the novelist aiming to communicate his message of despair in order to awaken his readers to the urgent need for change in the Spanish ethos. 206

Notes to Chapter Three.

1 Robert Kent Anderson, Tiempo de silencio:: Myth and Social Reality.

2 See Jean Tena, "Pour une lecture de Tiempo de silencio", Centre d'Etudes & Recherches Sociocritiqyes, Montpellier, No.1, Nov. 1980.

3 Claude Talahite, "Tiempo de silencio : une ecriture de silence", Montpellier, 1980. ("Cancer is ... in the novel [T£1 the metaphor of misery, which insinuates the idea of a possible social remedy, of some kind of a vaccine to discover.")

4 Jose Ortega, "La sociedad espanola contemporanea en Tiempo de silencio de Martin-Santos" , in Symposium, 22 (Fall1968), P.256.

5 Jane Morrison, "Of Mice and Men: Cancer as Metaphor in Tiempo de silencio", Confluencia, 3 (2), 1988, PP.3-9.

6 Sally Ann Hargrave Kubow, The Novel as Irony: Luis Martin-Santos' Tiempo de silencio, Riverside, 1978, P.l38.

7 Jose Schraibman, "Tiempo de silencio y la cura psiquiatrica de un pueblo: Espana", in Insula, 365, 1977, P.3.

8 The theme of a sick society, living in the aftermath of a major war, was developed by C. J. Cela in his novel La colmena, following the Spanish Civil War. As a novelist of national renown, Cela was read by all people of letters who pretended to understand the Spanish situation of the mid-twentieth century. The critic Pablo Gil Casado sees the point of departure of Tiempo de silencio in L.a. colmena; like Cela, he explains, Martin-Santos depicts the life of the big city (Madrid) plunged in the desolation of the post-war era: "Lo que Martin-Santos siente es que el ambiente nacional esta poseido de una total paralisis en todas sus manifestaciones, pues en la meseta, dice, la idea de lo que es el futuro se ha perdido hace tres siglos y media." (La noyela social en Espana. 1942-1965, Wisconsin, 1967.) In his anthology Otono en Madrid hacia 1950, Juan Benet expounds the personal tastes and affinities of Martin-Santos as a writer. Among his chosen foreign novelists figured Thomas Mann, says Benet, principally with his novel The Magic Mountain which inspired Martin-Santos in many of his philosophical debates.

9 L. Martin-Santos, "El complejo de Ramuncho, entre los vascos", P.104 in Ap6lo~os .. (Martin-Santos was most probably referring back to the Volkerpsychologie introduced from Germany in the nineteenth century; a psychology of the people as a cultural group or nation. The purpose of that form of psychology rested on the feeling of national 207 unity in a people - Volk -, with the maintenance of cultural peculiarities. Since then the vision of a national psychology has changed, and the quote under study assumes a new meaning in the mind of its author.)

10 Jo Labanyi, Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio: "Contexto hist6rico".

11 Agustin's rigorous education (ethical and religious) has made him a unique being among his degenerate co-citizens. In this, Demetrios, his father, is not to exclude totally from the young man's ethics of redemption. Different from his fellowmen, Demetrios has partly transcended the socio-cultural impediments of his age. Although he tends to see himself as an exclusively righteous person, he does have strength in the moral sense, added to his intellectual bias and solid education. He too practises self-examination, and searches through his mind for sins (faults) to be eradicated. He too is preoccupied with his salvation (here, though, essentially in the Catholic sense). Demetrios' ambitions to succeed and be different from the village rabble (TD162) have prompted him to inculcate in his offspring a need to search for truth and a meaning to life. From a tender age Agustin has thus learnt to act as a seeker of truth and justice: "Jurisconsulto tierno, Agustin sabia quien tenia raz6n en las disputas infantiles. Conocia las reglas de los juegos y las perfeccionaba mediante su inventiva pr6diga" (TD169).

12 See Tiempo de destrucci6n, Part 1, Chapter 12.

13 It was Skinner who developed in greater detail the view that all behaviour is inherited. For him, emphasis must be placed on the domination of acquired behaviour upon the individual's actions. Therefore, as he said: "What must be changed is not the responsibility of autonomous man but the conditions, environmental or genetic, of which a person's behaviour is a function." (B.F. Skinner, "Punishment", in Beyond Freedom and Dimity, New York,1971.)

14 The psychiatrists of post-war Spain lacked a sense of social awareness, tending to attribute mental illness essentially to biological and hereditary factors. Referring to the treatment of dissidents in times of political repression, Dr E. Gonzalez Duro denounces the authoritarian treatment of mental illness as witnessed during the post-war period in Spain. He alludes to violent methods such as shock treatment, leucotomies, behaviourist techniques etc.; methods employed with a view to protecting society against its undesirable elements, rather than for the purpose of treating the individuals in need as real persons. Dignity was most often omitted in the treatments prescribed. (E. Gonzalez Duro, Psiguiatria y sociedad autoritaria: Espafi.a 1939-1975, Madrid, 1978.) 208

15 In Gonzalez Duro, op. cit., P.294.

16 M. Rojo Sierra, "Psicopatologia de la sociedad", 1n Actualidad Medica, aiio XXXVIII, No.451, Granada, 1962.

17 In Gonzalez Duro, op. cit., "Psiquiatria versus Sociedad".

18 Thomas S. Szasz, Ideology and Insanity, New York, 1970, P.207: "Human behaviour is almost infinitely plastic. Potentially, man is capable of learning to speak hundreds of tongues and performing a great variety of roles. One of the functions of culture and tradition is to narrow this vast potential freedom."

19 For Nietzsche there is nothing permanent, as everything is in a state of becoming. Human beings must perpetually create themselves, thus following the flux of the dialectic. Nietzsche saw the individual as a work of art ready to be created out of its potential (a Greek notion). Power, to Nietzsche, meant self-overcoming. His definition of the will-to-power is the striving to transcend and perfect oneself. To love one's destiny and transcend it is a simplified definition of his concept of Amor fati.

20 F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Eyil, Harmondsworth, 1984, P.85.

21 See the debate in Part Four of this essay, dealing with the destruction of myths, and the possibility of a third novel which would symbolically complete the cure of a sick society.

22 As defined by Erich Fromm (The Sane Society, P.68): "Mental health is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from incestuous ties to clan and soil, by a sense of identity based on one's experience of self as the subject and agent of one's powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the development of objectivity and reason."

23 L. Martin-Santos, Ap6logos, P.28.

24 Ibid., P.67.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., P.46.

27 Reality Therapy rejects the concept of mental illness as well as all Freudian-based methods of treatment. (It does not as a rule deal with the psychotic.) It aims to bring the disturbed person into closer contact with the surrounding world, and make him/her accept the reality of that world. It emphasizes moral values before all else. 209

Reality Therapy does away with the past (unlike existential therapy), thus concentrating fully on the present and future; and this is its main inconsistency. (See W. Glasser, Reality Therapy: A New Approach to Psychiatry, New York, 1975.) 21.0

PART THREE - MARTIN-SANTOS AS NOVELIST­ CREATIVE ARTIST.

The ironist seeks freedom exploring the infinite possibilities of existence: his task depends on aesthetic shaping of the materials. He insists on his own right to stylistic freedom, giving free reign to the play of contrasting emotions, tones and techniques. His moral purpose is lofty, yet remains out of reach. 1

In these two chapters we analyze the role of Martin-Santos as a novelist and creative artist. The perspectives adopted by the author as he caricatures Spanish post-war society are, as we shall see, an extension of his medical views. The observation point is still the microscope behind which stands the scientifically-minded researcher; however, the same cancerous cells of the social disease have multiplied, sometimes reaching high numbers. It is through the use of metaphorical language that the novelist elaborates his scathing caricature, through figures of speech serving to depict the alienated state of the society which appears in both of his novels.

Chapter One indicates how Martin-Santos describes the social disease; that is, with metaphorical imagery, by drawing on the comic transformation of human beings into various animal species with a view to stressing the effects of alienation on mankind. Chapter Two examines a more tragic and pessimistic vision of the human condition 1n the two novels, more particularly in Tiempo de destrucci6n, where humans assume the form of brutes and the nation as a whole is portrayed as living in a state of bestiality. 211

It is by alluding to Tiempo de silencio as the artistic expression of a psychoanalytical cure 2, that we may consider Tiempo de destrucci6n as an illustration of the second stage of the treatment: once diagnosed, the ailment is to be fought with the repeated metaphors of destruction found at the end of the first novel.

Martin-Santos describes a world overwhelmed by neurosis in the first novel, and by the forces of social madness in the second. If science searches for the truth, art transcends it. While giving an account of social madness through the scientific interpretation of lived experiences, the author of the two novels makes full use of his irony by at times commuting his readers to a distant mythological world where monstrousness is the main characteristic of human life. 212

Chapter One: Metaphorical Imagery of the Social Disease.

We first introduce the notion of the city-monster, within the broad zoological picture of the City of Madrid portrayed by the novelist as a dehumanized mass. We then proceed to relate this notion to the baroque expression of reality emanating from the esperpento-like vision, the sources of which are found in Goya; a vision perpetuated by Valle-Inclan in whom irony and the grotesque added up to an extensive sense of the ridiculous. Martin-Santos' use of masquerade to describe the character of a person or group of people serves to intensify the degradation of a humanity he has come to view in Goyesque terms, that is, as bestial deformation. The framework for this zoological vision of reality is that same social and mental alienation studied in the foregoing pages. Let us first describe the City of Madrid as projected by the irony implicit in Tiempo de silencio.

The City-Monster.

Habia caido ya la hora de salida de los cines y las aceras eran incapaces para contener la gran muchedumbre que salia de las puertas bajo anuncios luminosos y entre grandes cartelones... la negra multitud que se arrojaba - todos a una - al paso de peatones, como en un acuario en que fueran los peces los que miraran infinitos visitantes atontados a los que una orden obligara a marchar sin posible detenci6n. (TS232)

A grossly deformed relationship between individual and society lays the groundwork for the concept of the city-monster. Martin-Santos' 21.3

characters have lost themselves in that monstrous creation, giving themselves over to madness in order to avoid self-confrontation. Living in a world of lies and bad faith, they have actually lost their authentic selves, only to be fused with the environment. Willing accomplices in their own destruction, they have even taken on a complete mimetic association with the institutional world of the City.

This fusion of identities, known as homochromy 3, will eventually result in their final absorption into the spirit of the oppressor, the monster-city itself.

In metaphorical descriptions of the blending of the individual with the crowd, we perceive a loss of stature in the anonymous mass which has become a "rio de muchedumbre" (TS233); a mass that expresses itself through the collective unconscious of "el pueblo ululante del elevado gallinero" (TS276). As in Gald6s, Madrid becomes a symbol of Spain as a whole; Madrid, a conglomeration which, through its numbers united in disharmony, has lost all human expression. The nineteenth-century writer Perez Gald6s thus described a street scene in Madrid:

Imposible es referir los vaivenes, las convulsiones, los bramidos con que se manifestaba la pasi6n colectiva del inmenso p6lipo, difundido alli, comprimido con estrechez en aquel recinto. El monstruo oprimi6 con su mas fuerte musculo la puerta de la casa. Vino esta, por fin, al suelo, y diez, quince, veinte personas se precipitaron en el portal dando gritos aterradores ... 4

The need to congregate is formulated by Martin-Santos with forceful irony in Tiempo de destrucci6n, with the human herd expressing itself through "mugidos colectivos" (TD269), more specifically, "ese 214

mugido indistinto y colectivo tan diferente del acto individual"

(TD269).

The herd instinct is powerful, as we saw previously when referring to the depersonalization of a crowd under conditioning. Ortega y Gasset once illustrated the nostalgia of the herd with the picture of a flock of sheep walking passively under the direction of their shepherd; a picture suggesting the herd mentality in the individual who has not reached authentic selfhood:

Ahara, por lo vista, vuelven muchos hombres a sentir nostalgia del rebaiio. Se entregan con pasi6n a lo que en ellos habia aun de ovejas. Quieren marchar por la vida bien juntos, en ruta colectiva, lana contra lana y la cabeza caida. Por eso, en muchos pueblos de Europa andan buscando un pastor y un mastin. 5

To follow the leader is a pernicious need, according to Ortega. In the context of Martin-Santos' first novel, this ingrained attitude generates a dramatic reduction of individuality through loss of personal initiative. Answering to this notion, the pursuit of Pedro by Matias, Amador, Cartucho and Similiano is summed up in the picture of blind worms instinctively following one another through the streets of the City:

Cada animalito, que aparentemente es ciego, segrega a su paso un hila de materia brillante y traslucida. El individuo que camina detras del primero hace pasar ese hila entre sus minusculas patas y lo engruesa con su propia baba. Asi hace el siguiente y sucesivamente cada uno del ciego rebaiio siguiendo al guia que el azar ha convertido en capitan. (TS193)

A humanity debased to the point of taking on an animal stature is what the narrator describes when he repeatedly alludes to the blind 215

instincts of the herd. The concept of the zoo emerges now and then; for instance, with the comparison of doiia Luisa's brothel with a den which harbours another species of beings, and where visitors scatter their orange peels as they contemplate their prey (TS107); later on with the allusion to the prison, in which the bestial rejects of society are kept behind bars (TS206-7); and on the occasion of the variety show, with the assimilation of the "buen pueblo" to ape-like creatures eating peanuts within the precincts of the fair (TS272).

Behind these descriptions of the human herd, a loss of humanity is made obvious in the characters reduced to the state of "el rebaiio de gentes de escasa estatura" (TS232-3). Throughout the first novel, the City of Madrid takes on the aspect of an anthill (or a hive), with the features of an over-populated conglomeration in which the consciousness of the mob prevails, and where the individual cannot always be distinguished from the crowd. Human insignificance is epitomized in the simile "la verbena llena de humanos semejantes a hormigas" (TS284).

The image of the anthill alternates with that of the hive in the novel, in which the two species of insects are at times likened to swarming human communities working to the point of exhaustion. Ironically, the construction of the chabolas is compared to the building of a great city by the two most intelligent species, here the ants and the bees (TS52). It is with sarcasm that dona Luisa's brothel is described as an anthill (TS181), in which the "infatigables obreras apteras" (TS180) are submitted to hard-working conditions by their procuress, the queen-ant, "hormiga-reina de gran vientre blanquecino" (TS180). At this point the despotic dona Rosa of Cela's novel La colmena may 216

well spring into the reader's mind; the notorious cafe owner of little virtue who exploits and ill-treats her employees and whoever comes under her ruthless domination.

La colmena, as the title indicates, is a world of bees; in other words, a metaphor of human reduction. Cela's novel is the painting of a society both physically and spiritually exhausted, and living in the grip of a pervading monotony narrowly linked to such symptoms as aimlessness, apathy, frustration and stagnation. As in Tiempo de silencio, in La colmena the tone is extremely pessimistic. It is in their overall clinical view of the big city that both writers come closest to each other, especially when relating to the inhuman agglomeration that absorbs the bodies and souls of its inhabitants within a setting of extreme ugliness 6.

However, unlike Cela, Martin-Santos makes use of comic images to describe the plight of individuals absorbed by their environment. The concepts of goring and gobbling are repeatedly used throughout the pages of his fiction, with a kind of humour bordering on the absurd. The general idea is that the system gores, while the institutions swallow the stray victims caught in their nets. Thus a taxi appears, with its green horn threatening the passers-by and the noise of its hooter penetrating the night (TS93); the same taxi having been compared to a gas chamber - "camara de gas aspirante-impelente" (TS92) - that sucks in pedestrians and eventually gobbles up one of them.

The social system becomes the digestive tube of a monstrous animal; of an animal which gobbles up and digests its unfortunate victims. 217

We are told that Dora, the old woman, wants to absorb Pedro into her family after making him fall in her net - "Pero el dia que se vea comprometido no ha de saber defenderse y ha de caer con todo el equipo y cumplir como un caballero" (TS96); a point indirectly confirmed by Matias - "Comprensi6n femenina, asimilaci6n, digestion del infeliz var6n en el seno pit6nico" (TS198) - who sees Dorita as a threat to Pedro's freedom. The allusion to doiia Luisa as an ogress (TSlll), a cannibalistic monster that swallows its victims, although comic and somewhat ludicrous, emphasizes the sinister reality of a system which swallows up the human beings who are part of it.

The inevitable consequence for those who interact too closely with their social system- that is, to the point of blending with it- is that they will eventually swallow themselves up. The comparison of Spain as a monstrous country (TS7 4) with a monster-fish eating its own tail (TS72) is very clear: the whole nation is destroying itself by rallying to the cause of its oppressor. Indeed, by adopting an attitude of protective mimetism through fusing with the tyranny that looms over them, the citizens of Spain will not really share the power of the socio-political body, but rather lose their own autonomy and metaphorically transform themselves into beings devoid of human reason and understanding, in a word, into monsters.

In Tiempo de silencio, the City clearly symbolizes the socio-political power of the nation; here the City of Madrid, seat of all governmental institutions and repository of the collective will of its inhabitants fused into an amorphous mass deprived of individuality. The City has impaired the development of natural tendencies in its people, 218

having stripped them of their own natural being, thus drowning them in a mass of swarming subhumanity, the end product of its institutional life. Pedro himself has been absorbed by this huge metropolis from which he can no longer escape:

Ya esta incorporado a una comunidad de la que, a pesar de todo, forma parte y de la que no podra deshacerse con facilidad. Al entrar alli, la ciudad - con una de sus conciencias mas agudas - de el ha tornado nota: existe. (TS78)

"Pero ya esta alli y la naturaleza adherente del octopus lo detiene" (TS78): in a comic yet baleful manner, Pedro is snatched in by the numerous arms of the monster-city, a part of which he has become against his will. Within the deeply alienated state of the victim absorbed by the system, Pedro will even find some comfort in his predicament while deploring it:

Yo tambien, puesto en celo, calentado pr6digamente como las ratonas del Muecas ... pendiente de una bolsita en el cuello recalentador de la ci udad... (TS121)

Though a helpless animal caught up in the arms of the monster-city, an individual is nonetheless the very image of it; the image of the City with a brain made up of a thousand heads united by the same will-to­ power (TS18), the same blind will that characterizes the mass.

The octopus which clasps its victims in a noisome embrace is a recurrent theme in the novel; a theme linked to the concept of absorption of human beings into the digestive apparatus of the monster. The tentacular monster not only swallows its victims but, as mentioned previously, transforms them into members of its own odious machinery, before finally reducing them to the state of 219

despicable creatures or mere vermin 7 In a vicious circle of constantly renewed life, the thousand-headed hydra resuscitates and multiplies its strength, as indicated by the constant interaction between the citizens of Madrid and their monster-city: as one head becomes extinct, another emerges; a new head arising to reinforce the power of this undying Leviathan 8.

Nature as a breeder of life has been replaced by the shattering institutions, prominent among them the gaol, in which the citizen is observed through the bars like a caged animal (TS19). Through an elaborate description, the prison is referred to as a sophisticated urban system of government. Indeed, its numerous passage-ways are similar to the streets of a big city; its innumerable narrow, uncomfortable cells are juxtaposed to one another like the habitats of the shanty-towns; and within a much reduced space, it includes a subterranean kindergarten where young children laugh and scream (TS214). Here the gaol is a microcosm of the monster-city in which people are caught and eaten up:

. .. una nueva boca, ya mas proxima a las fauces definitivas, engullia con poderoso sorbo las almas tremulas de los descendentes. (TS209)

The mythical world of the Dantesque inferno (TS210), with its endless layers of hellish torture chambers descending toward the infinite, has been reproduced with a view to exposing the cruelty of an institutional system which deprives its citizens of their basic rights and inflicts upon them the most savage punishments.

All the human parts are masticated and digested by the labyrinthine tracks of the "enrevesado vericueto cretense" (TS226). The digestion 220

is concluded by the monster with the final absorption into anonymity of the captives now stripped of their civilian clothes and personal items:

La proxima boca da paso a una garganta escalonada y tortuosa a traves de la que, sin carraspeo alguno, la ingestion es ayudada por los movimientos peristalticos del granito cayendo asf - tras nuevas rejas - en la amplia plazoleta gastrica donde se iniciara la digestion de los bien masticados restos. Allf efectivamente se procede al desguace de cada pieza individual recien cobrada, privandole de su carga de metales preciosos, plumas estilograficas, corbatas, tirantes, cinturones, gafas y cualesquiera otros objetos aptos para el suicidio, con lo que los desprovistos individuos de casta intelectual quedaban especialmente disminuidos... (TS209)

This scene of the final absorption of human beings into a gigantic apparatus closes the mimetic process of integration ushered in by the concept of estrangement from self. The undialectical relationship between the self and the world reaches its acme in this image of absorption and destruction of humanity. The ironical vision of a grossly deformed world finds its sources in the esperpento, a technique initiated by Goya in the eighteenth century and developed by Valle-Inclan in the 1920s.

A Traditional Basis for Martfn-Santos' Imagery.

We now turn to the techniques and/or ideologies of past writers and artists who have inspired Martfn-Santos in his vision of the world as a dismembered aggregate of an impoverished humanity. 221.

Looking at Spain and its social disease through Martfn-Santos' microscope is somewhat equivalent to looking in the concave mirror of Valle-Inclan: in both cases, reality is distorted through the enhancement of the most grotesque features of the beings observed in action. The grotesque that emerges will magnify the deformity and ugliness of a people in the process of degeneration. The geometrical distortion produced by this mirror reflects a potent sense of irony in a writer incensed by the folly of his times.

The keynote in Valle is despair; more precisely, despair as regards the possible regeneration of Spain following its downfall at the turn of the century. As an heir to both the literary and politico-social traditions of the Spain of the Generation of 98, Martfn-Santos perpetuates the vision of a decadent Spain throughout his writings. Like Valle in his age, he has to come to grips with the tragic sense of life, an aspect of the negative mentality which has frustrated the social and spiritual growth of his nation.

Within a sarcastic appraisal of the tragic sense of life, it is the death of the classic hero that has produced Valle's esperpento:

Los heroes clasicos reflejados en los espejos c6ncavos, dan el Esperpento. El sentido tragico de la vida espanola s6lo puede darse con una estetica sistematicamente deformada. 9

The esperpento reflects the disintegration of all that is seen in the concave mirror 10. One of the main features of the esperpentic vision is the dehumanization of the characters observed, in particular with respect to their appearance and behaviour. In Valle the theme of death, which creates an atmosphere of horror, is appropriately used 222

to echo the Spanish reality of his times. The spiritual death of the tragic hero is expressed through his transformation into a mere puppet manipulated by a distant and scornful creator who chooses to remain estranged from the life of his characters. This strategy confirms a bitter sense of humour in the writer, but also, on the other hand, his unease about the pettiness and lack of will of his hero lost in the midst of a degraded world 11.

In Luces de Bohemia Max Estrella, the blind poet, is found wandering aimlessly through the night in a Madrid replete with misery and ugliness; in Tiempo de silencio, Pedro undertakes his absurd odyssey through the most decadent parts of the same city. Both suffer from a chronic paralysis of will, acting in the automatic manner of puppets which seem to be passively awaiting retribution from a distant cruel master: in the case of Max, waiting for death at the hands of the playwright-puppeteer; in the case of Pedro, expecting the punishment he will later quietly endorse as just, following his thoughtless, well-intentioned deed. The alienation of the latter protagonist is further linked with the absurdity of a world devoid of meaning, "este mundo poco comprensible donde el habia estado dando saltos de titere con la cabeza llena de humo mentiroso" (TS244).

The distancing of the author from his characters and their circumstances answers to Valle's principle of observing life from behind the mirror, like a demiurge looking down on people who belong to another world. In what he calls la perspectiva de la otra ribera, Valle can afford to watch with detachment what he sees as the lower life. His attitude is echoed in Martin-Santos' scientific 223

method of observing his society from behind the microscope, or in the psychiatrist's observation of the illness taking its course in the mental patient.

This detached attitude suits the purposes of the doctor/scientist who appraises the life of the nation from his observation point, and can describe without apparent shock or emotion what he sees as the behaviour of a species of beings limited by their illness 12. Martin­ Santos thus depicts the Hispanic caste as an animal species emerging out of the Iberian culture, whose most salient characteristics are reflected in the force of instinct, that is, in the cruelty which dominates the relationships between the city dwellers living in constant conflict among themselves.

The medico-scientific perspective of the narrator introduces Pedro as a species of "hombre joven" (TS42). Amador is described as a not-too­ well defined species of being, a gross figure smiling insipidly at Pedro (TS7). Ramon y Cajal, for his part, is "el hombre de la barba" (TS7), an embodiment of the strict yet benevolent teacher who overlooks the work of the young scientist from his own observation post, here his portrait on the wall of the institute. Associated with the MNA stock of rats Pedro is using for his experiments, Muecas' daughters have become a new female species serving as guinea pigs for the study of cancer in humans (TS12). Their mother, Encarna­ Ricarda, is seen as "un grueso cuerpo de mujer casi redondo" (TS61 ). All beings, from the individual to the group, are analyzed, and at times dissected - as is the case with Florita and Dorita - in a scientific manner, until they are stripped of their human essence and reduced to the state of animals or objects of experimentation. A general 224

impression emanating from the esperpento-based vision is that the characters portrayed are gross; besides, the word grueso is used throughout the novel to refer to various features of this society.

A more dramatic vision of a deformed humanity is that of the same doctor/scientist who, after dissecting the body and soul of the nation, finds himself in a close encounter with the disease he feels helpless to treat for the time being. The doctor's preoccupation with death and suffering is here reflected in Pedro's appalling vision of a corpse in the place of Dorita's body, after a sensation of nausea overpowers him:

La imagen de la belleza de Dorita segu:fa flotando en la confusion de su mente. No como lade un ser amado ni perdido, sino como la de un ser decapitado. Ella habia quedado alli, separada de el solo por un tabique y unida a el por una historia tonta que no podia: ser tomada en cuenta, pero que le perseguiria inevitablemente. La cabeza flotaba- como cortada- en el embozo de la cama. jEra tan bella! Ella dormia. (TS120)

This Flaubertian vision of the professional doctor had been expressed artistically, and with lurid fantasy, by Baudelaire in his anthology Les £leurs du mal. Among other poems dealing with the putrefaction of bodies, in "Une charogne" death is exemplified by the stately carcass of a woman left by the roadside; the death the poet visualizes for his beloved when he metamorphoses her, in his imagination, into that rotting body.

The grotesque deformation of reality through the use of gruesome images of death and decomposition betrays a certain amount of pessimism in the narrator of the above quote, in tune with the 225

situation of his times. We find that same pessimistic deformation of humanity in past writers imbued with the tragic sense of life; of importance among them, as well as Valle-Inclan, Pio Baroja.

In his novel El arbol de la ciencia, Baroja makes a zoological study of the human species, relating his characters to various kinds of animals. In Baroja the concept of the fight for survival gives way to that of homo homini lupus. Hatred is part of everyday life among the poor, as illustrated by his trilogy La lucha por la vida. Hatred and misery deform to the point of transforming their victims into beasts of prey, enemies of their own species. In Martin-Santos the expression hombre-lobo is, as in Baroja, closely related to this notion of the fight for survival. In both novelists the winners of the struggle are ferocious beasts, whereas the vanquished have become vermin, parasitical beings of low stature quashed by brute force.

Such visions of a degraded humanity befit the esperpentic deformation of reality. On the other hand, it is in Goya that Martin­ Santos has found his most creative inspiration; specifically, that which enabled him to produce the monstrous scenes of socio-political life known as the "Scene de sorcellerie" in Tiempo de silencio (TS155) and the "Aquelarre" in Tiempo de destrucci6n (TD455). In Luces de Bohemia Valle-Inclan himself credited Goya for having invented the esperpento.

We may also trace the esperpento to the baroque era, with Quevedo's gruesome scenes of witchcraft and superstition developed within a background of popular ignorance and unreason. Quevedo's portrayal of the grotesque - and to a certain extent, monstrous - 226

reality which surrounded him was based on the social disorientation of his times. His epoch was indeed plagued by hunger and misery, which in their turn bred fear and a deformed perception of reality. The world he lived in was altogether an abject world, as delineated in his novel El Busc6n 13.

A brief mention must be made of Goya's Black Painting-s before passing to the Goyesque caricature of society in Martin-Santos' two novels. It was as a moral critic of his contemporaries living in the midst of witchcraft and superstition, that Goya drew in his art a world of madness. These paintings, representing monsters of all shapes and sizes, symbolize the animality dormant in human beings, thereby serving to denounce their lack of reason as well as their malevolence towards one another. According to Goya, the origin (and end) of life is chaos; more precisely, a chaotic state of existence in which instincts prevail over reason and the senses reign over the intellect. Mute terror is the keynote in his Black Paintin~s, a terror bred of the fear of being killed which turns potential victims into killers 14. The deformed facial expressions indicate evil in the form of the degenerate nature of a humanity deprived of reason. The animal masks people are made to wear denounce their brutish state, hence their deep alienation from true humanity.

Like Goya, Martin-Santos displays a certain amount of black humour in the artistic description of his sick society. Like Goya, through art he strives to make his contemporaries aware of their catastrophic situation. His Goyesque vision does have a redeeming function, in that it serves to expose not only the morbid, but also the ridiculous aspects of life in a world overflowing with stupidity and unreason. It 2Z7

is through the use of masks - but most of all masquerade - that the novelist unveils the monstrous features of the social disease against which he is struggling.

The Masks.

Masks, in their most Goyesque aspects, exhibit the total atrophy of a society in Tienmo de destrucci6n. By imitating Goya in his satire of the evils of Spanish society perpetuated through history, Martfn­ Santos gives free reign to the caricature of vices such as stupidity, injustice and cruelty, with the same ultimate purpose of arousing public indignation to the monstrosities of his times.

At the carnival of Tolosa - "lugar umbilical y membranoso" (TD316) -, the animal stifles the human being from behind the mask, a brutish nature prevailing within the dynamics of the nocturnal animal magnetism (TD316). Even the revellers who do not wear a mask are contaminated by this atmosphere of bestiality, as in the case of the two young men, "que rebuznaban con alegria intentando cada uno hacerlo no mas fuerte pero si mas bestialmente que su compaiiero ... " (TD314).

Whoever does not wear a mask is thus expected to enact one, in order to comply with the rules of the social game. Agustin, "vestido de oscuro, sin antifaz alguno" (TD314), is the intruder. Dressed as a judge, he is nonetheless viewed as "mascarita-juez" (TD316). Masks represent the reality of conformism in this carnavalesque situation; 228

those who, like Agustin, reject them, are the odd ones out, in fact the ones disguised as their natural selves.

Here, masks represent the acquired natures of their wearers. The face hiding under the gigantic pig's head is that of La Lucia, a being dehumanized to the point of being sexless:

Su confuso sexo apenas podia deducirse de la agria melifluidez de una voz equivoca. El rostra permanecia oculto bajo mascara de gran tama:iio representando cabeza completa de cerdo. Esta cabeza u hocico tenia la boca abierta; no abierta del todo, sino entreabierta. (TD316)

In such surroundings, human beings have become feral; and the masks serve to paint the squalid reality inherent in their minds. The metamorphosis of humanity into an animal state is more vividly reproduced in two separate episodes of the Goyesque Aquelarre ; here the protagonists do not choose their disguises: they are simply imprisoned in them. A masquerade-travesty of ridicule is elaborated by the author whose aim is to emphasize the grotesque in a people which has, figuratively speaking, taken on the attributes of an animal world.

The Aauelarre.

By deforming the social reality to the point of non-recognition- with recourse to the comparison of Spanish society with the dramatis personae of Goya's famous Witches' Sabbath -, Martin-Santos has produced a vivid caricature of a decadent nation living in the clutches 229

of leaders whose main attributes are sheer stupidity and malevolence.

In the same way that fear manifests itself as ugly stupor on the faces of many of Goya' s characters, fear grossly deforms the faces of Martfn-Santos' protagonists in the two distinct scenes of his Aquelarre. In Tiempo de destrucci6n, it is fear which, throughout the centuries, has led the oppressed to take part in the rituals of the monster he-goat, the "buco sonriente" (TD476), a suggested embodiment of demoniac authority. In Tiempo de silencio, it is fear­ added to guilt - which has metamorphosed, in the mind of the persecuted Pedro, the benevolent portrait of the scientist Ramon y Cajal - "hombre de la barba" (T87) - into the satanic figure of the "Grand Bouc" (TS155), whose accusing look discharges all the noxious substance contained in his monstrous soul. As Waller says:

It is through the symbol of the Grand Bouc that the thesis of the novel is fully developed, giving to Pedro's personal experience a universal meaning. Goya's picture is parodically used for an explanation of the individual Weltanschauung and more generally the Spanish theogony.15

In Tiempo de silencio the scene of Goya's Aquelarre, with an assembly of enraptured women presenting their aborted foetuses to the goat and hoping he will restore them to life, comes to assume a socio-political meaning. Here Martin-Santos has transformed the deformed will-to-power of the fascist mentality of his times into a mythological animal who holds in his protuberant horns the right to life or death of the repressed citizens he is overlooking with contempt from the height of his bearing. It is obvious that the stupid goat cannot feel any compassion for the women who implore him to save 230

their offspring; and the foetuses, symbolic of the children of Spain, will not be spared the look of the Buco - a look which penetrates and gores - condemning them to death (TS156). This phallic symbol of power has captured the bodies and souls of his assembly of ecstatic females whom he dominates from the throne of his glorious presence:

El gran macho cabrio en el aquelarre, rodeado de sus mujeres embobadas, las recibia con un gesto altivo, con la enhiesta cabeza dominando no solo a cada una de las mujeres tiradas por el suelo, sino tambien a cuantos inermes espectadores se atrevieran a fi.jar en el cuadro su mirada. (TS155)

The Buco wants to be worshipped and glorified. This mythological animal is not only a malevolent supreme authority, but also a force of contamination. Phallic power spreads from contact with the beast, as we clearly notice when discovering the other face of dona Luisa, that of a feminine Buco who blesses and curses at will when presiding over her own assembly of devotees :

... Dona Luisa tom6 de nuevo el aspecto providente y confidencial de gran madre fa.Iica que convida a heber la copa de la vida a cuantos ... hasta la misma fimbria de su vestido llegan arrastrandose y - postrados de modo respetuoso - besan aquellas cintas violetas, aquellos encajes de color de albaricoque, aquellos ligueros pudorosamente rosados ... (TS185)

With the power intrinsic to her commanding position, dona Luisa considers herself of sufficient eminence to give her blessing, or to condemn those who do not conform. As a deity who reigns over the bodies and souls of a congregation of decrepit females, she does fulfill the role of this ruthless phallic power. 231

The irony displayed in the deification of the beast serves to emphasize the power of instinct in those leaders who are not endowed with a properly developed intellect. Physical strength is revered in this society; more specifically, brute force, the primordial characteristic of the powers that be:

Legrand bouc, el gran macho, el gran buco, el buco emissaire, el capro hispanico bien desarrollado. El cabr6n expiatorio. jN o! El gran buco en el esplendor de su gloria, en la prepotencia del dominio, en el usufruto de la adoraci6n centripeta. En el que el cuerno no es cuerno ominoso sino signo de glorioso dominio falico. En el que tener dos cuernos no es sino reduplicaci6n de la potencia. (TS155)

According to Craige in her comments on the conflict between instinct and intellect in Tiempo de silencio, Dionysus, the Greek god of lust and destruction (Nietzschean deity of force), has turned into the Buco. While the left hoof of the goat, which makes a gesture of salvation, represents the force of instinct based on nature, the right hoof that threatens, represents the force of intellect based on consciousness:

Behind the Buco aborted fetuses hanging from a sapling wait to be revived ....The left hoof of the goat makes a gesture of salvation, reminding us that we are the children of the earth and shall return to it; it represents the force of nature, of instinct, of natural procreation. But the right hoof, with the apple, threatens; it represents the force of the intellect, of consciousness, which separates us from the earth, which deprives Pedro of the ecstasy of sexual union, and which finally yields passivity, impotence, and sterility. 16

Since the intellect and all other faculties of judgment are suppressed by this incarnation of the fascist powers dominating the post-war scene, only instincts can save. However, as indicated above, the life 232

force fails altogether, and the forces of destruction are the sole winners of the struggle. To our understanding, the children of repression will not develop beyond the metaphorical stage of aborted foetuses, as any attempt to live as authentic human beings will be crushed by the life-destroying powers of fascism.

It is by referring to the Buco as "el gran mat6n de la metafisica" (TS157) that the author introduces him as the philosopher Ortega y Gasset, a traditional intellectual condoning, even supporting, fascism as a way of life. The metaphysical rhetoric used by the philosopher is a mechanism of evasion from the socio-political issues that would concern the audience he is aiming to distract. In his right hand - corresponding to the right hoof of the Buco - is an apple representing a set of perspectives dwelled upon at length by the philosopher who teaches people to see life as he does. The very incarnation of Spanish vitalism, Ortega, as he is depicted in the novel, has juxtaposed the forces of instinct and intellect, with a view to building a philosophy which he pretends is his very own. His pseudo-originality is here caustically attacked, as when he is described as being:

dotado de una metafisica original, dotado de simpatias en el gran mundo, dotado de una gran cabeza, amante de la vida, ret6rico, inventor de un nuevo estilo de metafora, catador de la historia ... (TS162-3)

The philosopher-Buco, full of himself and boastful about his innovations, despises his audience, more particularly that circle of admirers to whom he feels so superior, both physiologically and intellectually: 233

Y puesto que de una mas noble sustancia tu estas hecho, oh buco, a todos nos desprecias. Si, realmente si, que bien, que bien lo has visto: Todos somos tontos. (TS158)

The Buco is, before everything else, a symbol of virility, of masculine power (machismo ). His look penetrates the submissive look of his audience whom he knows how to deceive with his mellifluous words - "palabras de hidromiel" (TS157). The vision of Ortega as the disguised wolf who cheats ignorant people is made concrete in a parody of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood:

l,Pues, para que tiene tan listo el ojo? jPara mirarnos mejor! l,Para que tiene tan alto el cuerno? jPara encornarnos mejor! (TS157)

This comic illustration of the theme of homo homini lupus as developed in the novel bears in itself the implication of sadism in human relations. Indeed, the relationship between the Buco and his worshippers is one of sado-masochism, with the image of a select audience assembled around its master in a sacrificial attitude of surrender, and of the master himself imposing his unwholesome ideas upon those he despises for absorbing his words.

Here a group of people is seeking to identify with the power of intellect exhibited by the maestro. This group is part of the conventional society, whose members strive for recognition through the display of a tawdry intellect. It is a group whose social laws and rules of etiquette are hypocritical as well as superfluous:

Ser oido y admirado, saber besar la mano, ser admitido al dialogo insinuante, estar arriba, ser de los de ellos, de los selectos, de los que estan mas alia del bien y del mal porque se han atrevido a morder la 234

fruta de la vanidad o porque se la han dado ya mordida y la respiran como un aire que no se siente ni se toea. (TS171)

The euphemistic metamorphosis of members of the aristocracy into birds of the tree of knowledge parodies the vanity and superficiality of the idle classes who think themselves intellectual and well-learnt, in spite of their total lack of judgment and their misunderstanding of the ideas they are applauding in a philosopher of low calibre. This scene refers more specifically to Matias' mother and other women of her kind, "estas mujeres pa.jaros dorados que son estupidas y vanas" (TS1 71 ). Using a string of metaphors to describe a shallow society without any sense of its own degeneration, whose minds are floating in space in constant expectation of being pulled away and reorientated by a stronger force, the narrator has built a florid image of emptiness and stupidity:

Con regocijo, con jubilo, con prisa, con excitaci6n verbigerativa, con una impresi6n difusa de ser muy inteligentes, se precipitaban los invitados en los dominios del agilisimo criado y se posaban luego en posturas diversas, ya sobre los asientos de las butacas gigantescas, ya sobre los brazos y respaldos de las mismas que eran capaces de dar confortable acomodo a los pajaros culturales que encaramados en tales perchas y con un vaso de alpiste en la mano, lanzaban sus gorgoritos en todas direcciones, distinguiendose entre si las voces mas que por su contenido especifico, por el matiz sonoro de los trinos. El "iQue facil se le entiende!" era muy pronunciado por aves j6venes de rosado pico apenas alborotadoras y hasta humildes, incredulas de su facil vuelo hasta las ramas mas bajas del arbol de la ciencia... (TS165)

This idle society does not harbour any serious ideological views, as the above scene, indicating the frivolity inherent in the condition of cultural birds, reveals. The allusion to Matias' mother as "la pajarera mayor" (TS1 71) depicts her as the hostess who flies from 235

branch to branch in an effort to attend to all her guests at the same time (TS166). The overall picture of the flying group symbolizes the flightiness of an animal species whose members do not have a firm hold anywhere, and hence pass the time moving from one place to another without leaving any traces behind them. Among the audience we distinguish such types of birds as "pajaro-bobo", "irresponsable avestruz", "pa.jaros-toreros", "pajaros-pintores", "pajaros-poetas o escritores" (TS166); birds of a feather, who belong to the same decadent species:

Estos pajaros lindos solo podian llegar a tales alturas, para ellos no predestinadas, merced a gracias especiales de plumaje o gorgorito que compensaran con su valor estetico e interesante la mediocridad basica de su especie. (TS166)

It is interesting to note that, in the same way as Goya dedicated his first Witches' Sabbath to a rich duchess 17, Martin-Santos has taken the utmost care to locate his in the house of Matias' family. If Goya's first Aquelarre is extended to become a caricature of elegance and false dignity in Tiempo de silencio, his second one, in which the same he-goat appears - this time amid a degenerate crowd with grossly deformed facial features -, befits the caricature of ugliness and bestiality elaborated in Tiempo de destrucci6n. However, a common element of irony links the two disparate Buco scenes; namely, the idolatrous adoration lavished upon the grotesque animal; an adoration bred of sheer ignorance and stupidity amongst the rich in the first novel, and bred of fear as well as blind religious zeal amongst the poor and downtrodden in the second. 236

Goya's second Witches' Sabbath depicts a decomposing world in which the plebs have become a mob spurred on by idiocy and pugnacity. With Martin-Santos, the overall picture of the crowds worshipping the beast is one of a totally alienated humanity, assimilated to an animal-like condition:

Era una humanidad primitiva y triste. Olian a cuerpo sucio y sudado. Se agitaban en una inconsciencia zool6gica como el celo ritmico de las especies inferiores. (TD4 77)

This scene of demonic worship does not constitute a caricature of a specific age, but rather one of a legend reflecting the spiritual sickness of the Iberian culture. Goya's reinterpreted Aquelarre paintings reveal the true nature of an ailing culture, the reality hidden behind the masquerade of those rituals which incessantly revive the legendary religious conquests. Jose Schraibman sums up the meaning of the Aquelarre of Tiempo de destrucci6n in such terms:

En este Aquelarre se hace referencia a la verdad escondida bajo las mascaras, bajo la fiesta y bajo el simbolo de la cloaca, o rio putrefacto de la gran ciudad. En esta verdad esta contenida toda la historia de Espana, la Santa Tierra J udaica, la Tercera Roma Espiritual. 18

The Goyesque crowds of this historical Aq ue la rre have been transformed into actual monsters; in other words, into a new species of feral creatures. The women - and Agueda is one of them - have become witches as a consequence of their ill-treatment at the hands of the cultural system "haciendo de la hembra un nuevo ser, una poseida" (TD461 ). In this episode the cult of the philosopher assumes a new dimension: that of the cult of religious authority. The possessed females initiate the profanation of the Catholic mass, thereby converting it into the black mass that befits their witches' coven. Altogether the scene, described by the voice of a disorientated historian (TD4 73), parodies the rituals of Catholicism, thus serving to condemn human aberration in a context of mental conditioning. The deity worshipped is a comic yet baleful embodiment of the repressive force of religion.

After a caricature of elegance, then, in the second novel the narrator produces one of mere ugliness. The flocks of cultural birds have, in this setting, turned into bat-like creatures:

En las noches claras podian verse los grupos voladores recorriendo los tejados del pueblo, contorneando con cuidado los arboles, dirigiendose en fin hacia el sitio elegido, lugar de circunstancias magicas, de proporciones especificas humanas, bien medidas, generalmente llano, frente a un gran farall6n o boca de una cueva donde el acompaiiamiento de murcielagos en nada podia estorbar a las solemnidades. (TD476)

The author's use of scenes of witchcraft was anticipated in his description of the three goddesses of the boarding house in Tiempo de silencio; namely, the aged Dora and her two descendants. What Pedro saw as "tres vulgares y derrotadas mujeres" (TS46) are in effect the three deities pulling the threads of his destiny in their hands; that is, the three Graces, unconsciously weaving their own degradation and final metamorphosis into the witches painted by Goya in his maste-rpiece Hilan delgado, described in these terms by Lafuente: 238

Tres mujeres vteJaS, arrugadas, de expres10n maligna y bestial, hilan su hilo. La del primer termino, sentada en una silla, tiene el huso bajo el brazo y entre sus manos extiende el hilo. Las otras dos, acurrucadas en el suelo junto a la madeja, devanando. Son brujas ... 19

Still following the lines of Goya's Witches' Sabbath, Martin-Santos transforms the penitents of a Holy Week procession into toads led along the track by their herd instinct; toads, symbolic of the ugliness and mental deficiency attributed to these beings who accomplish their senseless rituals covered with hoods and farcical robes:

Los sapos eran conducidos en rebaiio, a veces cubiertos de una caperuza y con un palo enderezados hacia el camino recto, hermosos y orondos, arrastrando su tripa por el suelo, tan semejantes, tan caricatura de la humanidad, con sus ojos salientes de hidr6pico y sus repugnantes manos tiernecillas. (TD475)

It is in the midst of a violent sexual orgy that the laments and hymns of adoration of the faithful are heard,

todas las voces, las letanias, las lamentaciones y los canticos de adoraci6n, los ajujus rijosos tambien y los ayes doloridos de las virgenes al ser violadas. (TD4 76)

The Catholic myth has indeed been placed under attack in this Aquelarre, and with it all authority that propagates any form of blind zeal and repression of the instincts. The "buco sonriente" (TD4 76), a deity who remains callously detached from the suffering of his creatures, is simply the other face of the "alto Consuela divino" (TD455). The cult of the Buco - an implacable Pope in disguise - is ridiculed, along with the absurdity of worshipping a distant god or divine authority whose mandates do not make sense to his followers. The "gran mat6n de la metafisica" (TS157) has thus degenerated into 239

"el mago mayor" and "el gran cabr6n" (TD474), who gives communion in the most blasphemous manner:

l,Les daba de heber el gran buco de su propia boca un licor extrafi.o? l,Se lo daba en una mano? l,O su ubre de macho magicamente se abria? (TD477)

In this satanic ritual of the communion, transubstantiation - the symbolic absorption of the blood of Christ with a view to acquiring his divine essence- is satirized by the scene depicting the intoxication of the goat with animal blood:

El gallo ... negro era sacrificado, desangrado vivo a traves de la cresta, a veces antes cegado con una aguja al rojo. Su virtud genesiaca, su capacidad para ser rey de cien gallinas, de algun modo se exhalaba y penetraba al buco sonriente. (TD4 75-6)

Forever dependent on the blood of his victims whom h~ destroys through the abuse of his own powers, the inebriated Buco (also a travesty of Jehovah) incessantly calls for more bodies which he can immolate in order to acquire their vital substance- here, virility.

The destruction of the human soul is concluded in the infernal world of the Aquelarre. With the rituals of the black mass - itself an emblem of the ecclesiastical tribunal of the Inquisition -, humanity has been sacrificed at the altar of its inexorable superpowers turned into a satanic deity.

The narrator is here raising his voice against the suppression of natural human tendencies by the Spanish institutions - more especially the Inquisition. Instinctual repression has apparently, in the past, led his fellow human beings to resort to such violent 240

ceremonies as those of the black mass (or so the legend goes), or to the rituals of the penitents who, once assembled in processions, have come to inflict appalling tortures on the heretics of the system in order to purge the earth of evil.

Anquilostom (a voice of the past) closes the chapter on history by inviting people of the modem era (and the readers) to take part in the Aquelarre:

Venid conmigo sobre el aluvion redondo de los cantos primarios, en el fondo del antiguo mar donde solo flotaba fauna primitiva, en el que aun no hubo peces ni sirenas, vereis como se produce ante vuestros ojos atonitos el unico fenomeno: la levitacion trascendente y la transferencia retrograda de la sustancia del pan transubstanciada. (TD478)

This travesty of religious celebrations, like that of the intellectual elite in the preceding novel, unveils the true nature of the protagonists; that is, the degenerate nature of beings who delude themselves by believing in their own magnitude. Be they the select audience of a pseudo-philosopher, or the chosen worshippers of a makeshift deity, these protagonists are strongly ironized by the narrator who, by exposing the most ridiculous aspects of their social behaviour, discloses the gross stupidity of a world so dramatically estranged from reality. Through the elaboration of his two Buco masquerades, Martin-Santos uncovers the evils of an alienated society, displaying the extreme bad faith of those who have learnt to play the social role imposed on them to the extent that they have actually become that role itself, losing their identity at the altar of their beliefs and cultural values. 241.

Conclusion.

If readers perce1ve a sense of the com1c in the novelist's use of metaphors of degeneration, they will, nevertheless, come to see the more dramatic side of the metamorphosis of human beings into beasts and subhuman species of all kinds; for what is at stake, in this masquerade, is no less than the human condition itself. We shall now proceed to analyze the Kafkaesque aspects of human degradation in Martin-Santos' novels, with their aftermath of widespread destruction of life. We shall then illustrate the notion that the environment makes human beings, but also decimates them; for no being stands as an island on its own, and the crumbling of a society can thus only mean the ruin of all its component parts. 242

Notes.to Chapter One.

1 Sally Ann Hargrave Kubow, The Novel as Irony: Luis Martfn-Santos' Tiempo de silencio, P.74.

2. See Chantraine de Van Praag, "Tiempo de silencio: obra clave de la novelistica de lengua espanola", in Aetas del Sexto Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas: celebrado en Toronto del 22 al 26 de agosto de 1977: PP.195-197.

3. Homochromy basically means the resemblance of animals with the milieu in which they live. In this particular illustrative case, it is bred of protective mimetism, whereby harmless beings take on the aspect of dangerous ones, with the defensive instinct to protect themselves against their predators.

4. Benito Perez Gald6s, La Fontana de oro, P.1 72 in Obras Completas, vol.4. The scene described here is that of a wild demonstration taking place in the City of Madrid. Gald6s was fascinated by Madrid, which he came to see as representative of the whole nation. His preoccupation with the decadence of Spain provided the Generation of 98 with a background of lamentation over the loss of culture and civilization in the ethos of their homeland.

5. Ortega wrote those lines at the time he was publishing La rebeli6n de las masas. (See Julian Marias, Obras, Madrid, 1966: "La rebeli6n de las sociedades-masa", PP.516-517.)

6. C.J. Cela's La colmena (depicting life in Madrid in 1942) is a reminder of Baroja's trilogy La lucba por la yida, for its concern with social problems and most of all, human beings' inhumanity towards their own kind, all within the setting of the fight for survival. Imbued with the spirit of the tragic sense of life, Cela's novel preoccupies itself with the spiritual emptiness of men and women who have suffered brutal repression as an offshoot of the past Spanish Civil War. La colmena is a novel without a hero; in Cela's words" : "En La colmena no presto atenci6n sino a tres dfas de la vida de la ciudad, ode un estrato determinado de la ciudad, que es un poco la suma de todas las vidas que bullen en sus paginas, unas vidas grises, vulgares y cotidianas, sin demasiada grandeza, esa es la verdad. La colmena es una novela sin heroe, en la que todos sus personajes, como el caracol, viven inmersos en su propia insignificancia." The literary technique used by Cela is known as emphatic realism; it attempts to draw an objective portrayal of life in its most anguishing aspects. According to Donahue, the impression left by the novel is that of Cela's picking up handfuls of little ants, letting them run 243 around in his hand while he observes their behaviour, and then placing them back into their sordid habitats. (See F. Donahue, "Cela and Spanish Tremendismo", in Westem Humanities Review, 20,1966, PP.301-306.)

7. See Chapter 2 for details.

8. From time immemorial, the City which absorbs human personalities in order to destroy them has been a recurrent bearer of metaphors, hyperboles and allegories in literature and the arts. Invoking the power of the wicked city in antiquity, Robert Graves sees the biblical story of the whale swallowing and later spitting out Jonah as a symbol of the dreaded city that swallowed and then regurgitated the Jews once completely absorbed and chewed up as persons in their own rights. (Graves, The White Goddess.) In an even more pessimistic tone, the writers of the Generation of 98 looked upon the modern city as a destroyer of nature and humanity. For his part Azorin saw the city and its institutions as a main destructive agent of individual will and human personality. (Azorin, La Voluntad.) In his trilogy La lucha por la :rid.!!, his most antiurbanistic novels, Baroja displayed all his antagonism towards the modem city born of industrialism. That generation of writers saw the city as an aberration, a deformity, a stain on the map without links with past or traditions; worse, as a tentacular monster that drew people from the country and created a proletarian population in the slums. In short, the city alienated from all cultural trends that make up the character of a people soon became a hornet's nest, its most pemicious aspect being life in the slums where vagrancy, prostitution, delinquency and alcoholism reigned amongst the many symptoms relevant to the social disease. (Lily Litvak, "El fracaso de la ciudad moderna", in Transformaci6n industrial y literatura en Espana. 1895-1905, Madrid, 1980.)

9. Ram6n del Valle-Inclan, Luces de Bohemia, Madrid, 1943, P.222.

lO.For Valle-Inclan, the esperpento is a whole way of life. It expresses his despair at the lack of values in his countrymen; the despair which has led him to set them against the concave mirror, so to speak. His vision of the world as an esperpento is best expressed in Luces de Bohemia (P.297): jEl mundo es una controversial - jUn esperpento! The scene of Valle's major esperpento is "un Madrid absurdo, brillante y hambriento" (Luces). In this play the main protagonist, Max Estrella, comes to see Spain as "una deformaci6n de la civilizaci6n europea".

ll.Cardona & Zahareas, Visi6n del Esperpento, Madrid, 1970.

12.The art of describing facts and events in so detached a manner as to make them appear alien and distanced from the 244 narrator belongs to the mid-century literary movement known as objective realism. Through it writers have been able to communicate to their readers the most horrific messages, without even shocking them or arousing their emotions. They have thus reported the most outrageous aspects of reality as if remote from them, expounding them objectively, i.e. without taking an active part in the life seen from above.

13 .It must be noted that the baroque leading to the formation of the esperpento from Quevedo and Goya to Valle-Inclan has become pure dialectical irony in Martin-Santos; the latter's view reflecting a more dynamic outlook which, in addition to the witnessing of the destruction of a people, calls for a remedy against the ills of a decadent society.

14."The fear of being killed turns us into killers", says Licht in his appraisal of Goya's Black Paintings. (Licht, Goya - The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art, New York, 1979.)

15.Myriam Waller, "The Ethics of Existentialism in Tiempo de_silencio", in Reflexi6n, Nos.3/4, 1974-75, P.178.

16.Betty Jean Craige, "Tiempo de silencio: Le Grand Bouc and the Maestro", in Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, No.13, 1979, PP.111-112.

17 .Goya painted an Aquelarre for the study of the Duchess of Osuna at her residence. It became known as the Aquelarre de la Alameda. This masterpiece was followed by a second one, later known as Aquelarre de las Pinturas Negras. In this second painting, a multitude of vague, non-identifiable figures is gathered in front of the same he-goat. Nothing really happens in this scene surrounded by darkness. (See Valeriano Bozal, "Quevedo y Goya", in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.121, Nos.361-362, 1980, PP.112-127.) It is not certain whether Martin-Santos knew this second painting by Goya. His own Witches' Sabbath in Tiempo de destrucci6n basically correlates with Goya's description of the crowd, while the scene of worship itself still befits that of Goya's first Aquelarre.

18.Jose Schraibman, "Tiempo de destrucci6n: lNovela estructural?", in Reyista Iberoamericana, Vol.47, Nos.116-117, 1981, P.219.

19.Lafuente, in Valeriano Bozal: "Quevedo y Goya", P.124. 245

Chapter Two: Dramatic Metamorphosis; The Kafkaesque in Tie mpo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n.

The metamorphosis of human beings into animals takes on a much more dramatic bearing in this part of the essay. The irony of the author becomes black humour as he depicts a disfigured human condition, with the final outcome of total estrangement at the end of his second novel. As the main point of reference in our critical evaluation, we shall use Metamorphosis, the most poignant of Kafka's stories depicting the gruesome and nightmarish aspects of an existence stripped of its human attributes 1.

With the decimation of the city dwellers who have become members of their tottering structure, the zoological picture of the City of Madrid comes to assume a more sinister character. The insect world of the hive becomes crushed vermin; human beings are disembowelled, when not totally desiccated by their environment. The City of Madrid here serves as the object of a concrete Kafkaesque metaphor.

The Thousand-Headed Monster.

Podremos comprender tambien que la ciudad piensa con su cerebra de mil cabezas repartidas en mil cuerpos ... (TS18)

With its numerous heads teeming inside its unique brain, the tentacular Leviathan that represents Madrid finds its thousands of parts maintained in crowded disunity. Unable to move in a coherent 246

manner, the members of this thousand-headed monster subsist in a state of apraxia (the inability to act), in this context a spastic-like ailment which denotes a complete lack of coordination between them. At the level of the metamorphosis of human beings into freaks of nature, this predicament closely relates to that of Kafka's multi­ membered cockroach-like beetle, Gregor Samsa, whose new life as a helpless insect does not permit him to use his brain as a command for the functioning of his limbs.

The attitude of detachment displayed by Martin-Santos as a scientific observer finds an echo in Kafka's mastering of understatement. As a dark humourist, Kafka strives to distance himself from his characters. The world we perceive through his fiction is that of a diseased humanity, an alien world in which the hero has been decimated by a proneness to despair and impotence in the face of the relentless forces which dominate him. With Kafka, every event, no matter how shocking or morbid in its nature, is told in a prosaic, matter-of-fact way, with the help of objective descriptions that make readers feel they are learning anew about life, or simply another fact of common life. It is with a technique similar to objective realism that Kafka introduces his tale of horror:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armour-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. 2 247

Estranged from his basic human condition, Gregor has lost the use of coordination in his now useless limbs. His dilemma will lead to an inevitable death at his own hands; for, once unable to consciously control his thoughts and movements, Gregor loses the poor remnants of his humanity and becomes a true monster, a woeful beast which cannot keep itself alive, not even as an insect. This tale of alienation correlates with Tiempo de silencio, in the sense that the circular image of Kafka's many-legged insect complements that of the thousand-headed monster affected by the malfunctioning of its limbs. The main difference, though, in the latter case, is that the transmuted being is given power to harm others, since the numerous heads with which it has been endowed come to represent many creatures united in the same destructive will-to-power.

This gigantic miscreation, a cancer on the map of Spain, is, as we have seen, the animal which gobbles and engulfs all the victims who have relinquished their rights as human entities. The recurrent image of the octopus does, notwithstanding, bring the plight of the Madrilenes closer to that of Kafka's protagonist, with the havoc caused by the many suffocating embraces of their monster-city.

What is at stake, in Kafka and in Martin-Santos, is humanity itself. In the writings of both novelists, human nature is debased, when not actually in the process of being destroyed. Let us now consider the effects of devastation and loss on the societies of Tiempo de silencio and Tiempo de destrucci6n. 248

The Debasement of the Human Condition in Martin-Santos' Novels.

The impulse to portray a defaced human condition, in Martin-Santos as in Kafka, is in some way linked to the Expressionist movement of post-war Europe. The literary movement known as Expressionism consisted in the development of an art of anxiety - often neurosis -, an art of obscure fantasies leading to creative spontaneity. Bearing in mind the fact that visual presentation replaced analysis, artists would express their emotions by splotching them on canvas, in a disorderly manner if need be, at times displaying the intense feeling of crisis which corresponded to a profound dissatisfaction with their ambient reality. It is by using metaphorical descriptions of sickness that Martin-Santos- like Kafka to a certain extent- has been able to replace lengthy analyses of social alienation with dramatic colours and shapes, as befits the situation 3.

In Tiempo de silencio, the brief allusion to the "aleman-rat6n canceroso" (TS83) with whom Pedro and Matias meet - a consumptive being with sad eyes and a meagre amount of residual humanity - ushers in a metaphorical description of the social cancer which has ravaged the human race in a time of wars or major disasters. The German painter himself uses Expressionism as a technique to express "el pathos atormentado de un pueblo culpable y en derrota" (TS83); or so he boasts of doing when he introduces his masterpiece to his newly-found friends. The narrator describes the painting in the following terms:

Era un cuadro realmente muy malo. Sobre un fondo color marr6n oscuro, con un color marr6n mas claro y con algunos toques de rojo-infierno se habian representado las ruinas bambalinescas de una ciudad 249

bombardeada. . .. El argumento de la composicion consistfa en una gran muchedumbre de seres aparentemente humanos' pero mas bien formiciformes de tamaiio muy inferior al normal. (TSBB)

Although very bad, the painting proves to be expressive. What it reveals is the dismemberment of a monstrous world; a world populated by beings human in appearance, but of entomological proportions. The squalid scene of the fly-infested ruins of a city is the artist's subconscious vision of his native environment, war-torn Germany. The irony of the narrator has stretched the description of this faecaloid picture (TS89) to the point of making it assume features of the devastation characteristic of his own country. Within the frame of a sloppily blotched-on mixture of dirty-looking colours, the worm-like aspect of the characters indicates the unconscious state of collective despair in a reduced humanity. The social disease depicted here indeed expresses the tormented spirit of mankind sunk to its lowest form. The German painter's neo-Expressionism (TS83) is a poor version of a fashionable artistic movement, yet it renders the desired effects of destruction. The infrahumans appearing in the painting are later summed up in the person of Encarna-Ricarda, "este ser de tierra que no puede pensar" (TS247); a being who belongs to the species of "seres redondeados, malolientes, sucios" (TS245).

With the projection on canvas of this "humanidad insectaria" (TS91 ), the narrator summarizes the general picture of human destruction, invoking guilt as the main cause of victimization:

En las revueltas gesticulaciones de aquel mundo insectfvoro y sucio parecfa querer expresarse una desesperaci6n colectiva en la que el padecer infinitos sufrimientos se acompaiiara de la conciencia de la estricta justicia con que habian sido merecidos. (TS89) 250

It is primarily guilt which has overcome those beings who, like Kafka's protagonists, have yielded to the absurd world that surrounds them. In Martfn-Santos, guilt and suffering breed existential despair. Those condemned to silence are doomed to destruction; more specifically, to a degradation of their humanity through an eerie transformation of their human features into those of a Kafkaesque animal species.

For both of these novelists of alienation, it is the corrupt ruthlessness of the Establishment which has reduced the protagonists of their fiction to the figurative state of defenceless animals; in other words, to the victimized condition of beings who have given up fighting to survive, and who will even blame themselves for their unjust punishment 4.

In Tiempo de silencio, guilt has deformed the faces of the prisoners, "seres de color verdoso y barba crecida" (TS206), creatures of a race which is anthropologically unidentifiable. Here the lived experience of guilt is expressed in a spectacle of total degradation. The near­ permanent isolation of the culprit only serves to enhance his shame when he enters into confrontation with others of his own species, all reflecting the same expression of guilt, the same look of fear and resentment which mirrors their alienated world.

With their beards growing and their faces getting paler because of a lack of sun and air, the prisoners soon become unrecognizable. Through a distorting expression that emerges from an over­ developed sense of guilt, they sink into a near-monstrous state. An 251

unhealthy, pathological fear is what IS laid out as the factor provoking their transformation,

ese mismo terror que deformaba los rostros de los ... hijos de esa raza despreciable en la que todo hombre puede ser trasmutado par la culpa publicamente descubierta, hecha patente yen ruta hacia el castigo. (T8206-7)

Like the other prisoners, Pedro, once incarcerated, has assumed this animal condition. Like them, he has been dehumanized by guilt and punishment. Fear has made him filthy through profuse sweating, and imposed silence has caused his oral cavity - "cavidad bucal" (TS206) - to contract. The metamorphosis he has suffered bears similarities with that of Gregor Samsa, in the sense that he has become totally estranged from the functioning of his own body, and of his mind as well:

Asi pues, lo que el notaba como pequefia sensaci6n de cansancio en ambas corvas, tensi6n de la balsa del parpado inferior, picores prolongados a lo largo de ambas hendiduras palpebrales, ausencia absoluta de hambre sobre superficie seca de lengua vuelta objeto extrafio en cavidad bucal repentinamente contraida, incapacidad para comprensi6n de preguntas sencillas, fuerte deseo de ser amable con todo el mundo, suciedad pegajosa en axilas y en pies no por falta de jab6n sino par sudor nuevo nunca antes eliminado, mirar agitado y vertiginoso hacia todos ... proximidad excesiva de los zapatos a los pies que han perdido aparentemente toda utilidad traslatoria ya que no se es movido a impulsos de una voluntad que se trasmite a los musculos de las piernas sino par una fuerza magnetica que emana de los habiles ordenadores de la circulaci6n en tales pistas, proximidad excesiva del cuello de la camisa al de la carne que ha perdido tambien sus naturales propiedades transportadoras de aire, alimentos, etc. .. . temblor 0 bien rigidez a lo largo de las vertebras lumbares ... (TS206) 252

The progression of Pedro through the labyrinthine corridors of the prison is seen by Lyon as the most Kafkaesque section of the novel, being described

in terms of a descent through a gigantic digestive system: mouth, throat, stomach. Pedro is masticated and swallowed. He is deprived of his own identity (himself as he sees himself) and comes to accept the identity that others confer upon him. He undergoes a kind of metamorphosis ... 5

Pedro is deprived of his identity, having lost his name and his own clothing: the uniform of the gaol, with a number pinned on it, is the only mark of recognition ascribed to him, once he is swallowed up by the institution (TS209-10). From then on he is to be evaluated not as a person, but merely as a statistic.

This final outcome of depersonalization and punishment will only generate more apprehensive guilt in the victims of the system; in Pedro himself, guilt followed by a blurred vision of reality. His obsessional guilt will bring him close to hallucinating when he attempts to draw on the walls of his cell: in his disturbed mind, a simple, insignificant sketching first assumes the shape of a mermaid, then a more human shape; more precisely, that of a girl whose look has come to fix itself on him:

un dibujo que va tomando forma semihumana y que acompaiia porque llega un momento en que toma expresi6n, va llegando un momenta en que toma forma y llega por fin un momenta en que efectivamente mira y clava sobre ti - la sirena mal dibujada - sus grandes, humedos ojos de muchacha y mira y parece que acompaiia.... No hay nada en la pared hasta el momento en que cristaliza la forma, cuando se reconoce al ser humano en un poco de cal rayada y lanza su mirada y mira. (TS21 7 -8) 253

The fear of the look that leaves one guilty has disfigured Pedro's vision of the mermaid, originally a product of his subconscious mind. Does this expressive mermaid reflect Dorita's accusing look, a look of reproach as well as dismay following Pedro's imprisonment? It seems the look is rather that of Florita, who is the reason for his incarceration; the girl who, once dead, "se resignaba a la modesta utili dad de ser campo de aprendizaje para el sabio que ... realizaba aquella intervenci6n por vez primera" (TS135).

As her name indicates, Florita incarnates a small flower, "florecita pequeiia, pequeiiita" (TS288). What is left of Florita's body, in the end, is a mere nothing, the ghost of a mass of flesh; in the eyes of the narrator, "fantasma engaiioso de carne tentadora" (TS179). Similarly, what will be left of Pedro at the end of his ordeal is a piece of roasted meat, a "lorenzo" (TS295) as he sees it.

Unable to fight in order to survive as an authentic human being, Pedro admits that he, along with his co-citizens, belongs to a species doomed to extinction, the species of "este tipo de hombre de la meseta" (TS290). The final annihilation of the hero, in the first novel, is illustrated by his reduction to the state of a dried tuna; an aflliction induced, according to him, by the violent sun of the Meseta, itself an embodiment of the ruthless political powers of his country:

Y yo, sin asomo de desesperaci6n, porque estoy como vacio, porque me han pasado una gamuza y me han limpiado las visceras por dentro, empapando bien y me han puesto en remojo, colgando de un hilo en una especie de museo anat6mico de vivos para que perciba bien las cualidades empireumaticas e higienicas, desecadoras y esterilizadoras, atrabiliagenesicas y justicieras del hombre de la meseta... reseco y carcomido, amojamado hombre de 254

la meseta, puesto a secar como yo mismo para que me haga mojama en los buenos aires castellanos ... (TS290)

This metamorphosis of Pedro into a salted tuna becomes the fate of the entire nation, according to Pedro himself, who sees his compatriots, reduced to absolute silence and inaction, as

mojamas tendidas al aire purisimo de la meseta que estan colgadas de un alambre oxidado, hasta que hagan su peque:iio extasis silencioso. (TS292)

The drastic image of the reduction of live beings to an animal stature is no doubt reflective of death; a death generated by the same monster-city which squeezes the vital juices of its victims and tums their innards inside out 6. In the bewailing mind of Pedro, the metaphor of the soaking of humanity- "me han puesto en remojo" (TS290)- is closely related to that of emasculation. "z,Por que me estoy dejando capar?" (TS291), asks the passively resigned Pedro who also sees himself - among others - as an eunuch. Pedro has been, figuratively speaking, desexed, just like a vulgar domestic animal. He has, in more dramatic terms, been reduced to the status of a castrated beast.

What is left of the martyrs of this system is illustrated by the pitiful image of the lorenzo, a degradation of the legendary saint to the state of a piece of roasted meat (TS295). Indeed, after having been metaphorically disembowelled and left to dry out in the sun, the victims of repression are tortured and finally die, as Pedro laments:

... a ese sanlorenz6n a ese que soy yo, a ese lorenzo, lorenzo que me des la vuelta que ya estoy tostado por este lado, como las sardinas, lorenzo, como sardinitas pobres, humildes, ya me he tostado ... dame la vuelta 255

que por este lado ya estoy tostado ... y el verdugo le dio la vuelta por una simple cuestion de simetria. (TS295)

Within this pessimistic account of destruction of life, nature seems to conspire with the forces of authority in order to decompose all living matter: what is viewed in Tiempo de silencio as the violence of the piercing sun - "el sol tuesta, va tostando, va amojamando" (TS295) - re-emerges in Tiempo de destruccion with the image of "un cielo absolutamente seco que vuelve mojama los cuerpos vivos que osan habitarlo" (TD4 72).

From a geographical description of the Aquelarre (Villaflorida) by Anquilostom (TD469-73), emanates a tortured vision of the tableland's geology, according to Mainer 7 ; a vision reminiscent of the beginning of Juan Benet's novel Volvercis a Region, he specifies. In both settings, nature has become a hostile reality. The phantomatic landscape is above all sterile, and mirrors the violence of the war as well as the fear of fascism and political injustice. The mythical world depicted by Martin-Santos is, like Benet's fictional setting, a world of ruins, in which human beings are superfluous.

As in Region, in Villaflorida the overwhelming aridity of the landscape is accounted for by a dehumanizing social environment which saps the life juice of all living organisms coming into contact with it. The implacable environment described by Pedro in Tiempo de silencio as a destroyer of life - "no hay mas que tierra seca, paisaje masculino nunca castrado nunca, de donde quien sabe aun que nuevas piedras pueden salir si se arranca la tierra" (TS294) - has become, in the words of Anquilostom in Tiempo de destruccion, "viril selva donde supervivir es victoria conquistada a fuerza de raiz y de 256

crueldad" (TD470); a metaphor of the triumph of masculine power over the earth-mother now totally devastated and from which no life emerges:

Entre los arboles, jaras de hoja brillante y pegajosa, espinosas plantas, tomillos, quitameriendas azuladas, flor de cardo amarilla y muchas piedras redondas de aluviones antiquisimos que no dejan tocar el vientre de la tierra y que nos estorban evitando que de ella logremos minas de hierro, filones de carbon, surtidores de petr6leo maloliente y vibraciones magneticas directas de las que en vital abdomen prenden yesca... (TD4 70-1)

The stream of consciousness used to render a dry and violent landscape that yields only emptiness and sterility ushers in a flood of images which connect in a psychological sense, but not necessarily in a concrete manner. The description of the landscape is metaphorically linked to a lamentation on the barrenness generated by centuries of unproductive governments whose rulers have left their country in the desolate state of a waste land.

"Quisieramos entre las piedras descascarilladas del Iugar encontrar un monolito que perpetuara el nacimiento en tal espacio del terreno de un grande hombre cuyas iniciativas conmovieron al mundo" (TD479), says the narrator, only to deplore the absence of such a figure in the history of his nation:

pero no nos es dado comprobar nada de esto sino una esterilidad continua de documentos y de nombres, de piedras y de prodigios, de batallas famosas y de caudillos moros, de todo cuanto constituye la masa sanguinolenta de la historia... (TD480)

The great vegetative mass (TD481) referred to IS the decimated landscape on which a unique flower has grown, an offshoot of 2!)7

human mishandling of nature, so it seems. This accursed flower, "flor que aqui muestra sus petalos ensangrentados" (TD482), is a product of its monstrous surroundings; it is a symbol of sterility, of lack of growth. This flower sums up the stagnation of humanity after centuries of repression and suffering.

Martfn-Santos' waste land reflects the disasters of history and the subsequent invalidation of the human beings who have suffered them. However, it does also represent the spiritual emptiness of a people which has not been able to liberate itself from the yoke of the oppressor, and has therefore not acquired a mind of its own. "Y a sabes que el paisaje es un estado de animo" (TD117), says Agustin, thus referring to the "arido paramo" (TD117) that stretches all around him as nothing but the mental dryness of his country.

In his study of the landscape as a state of mind, Martfn-Santos perhaps reveals the inspiration he has received from the writers of the Generation of 98, in particular Baroja. For the latter, the environment is crucial to the development of a people; and within his naturalistic personification of the elements, the violent sun is often a cause of destruction of humanity 8.

In the context of an already violent and destructive setting, the rape of nature by industry has led to the uttermost devastation of the landscape in the northern province of Guipuzcoa. The rivers, used as receptacles for factory rejects, have become rubbish dumps, sewers woefully running through the dry land (TD335). 258

This despoliation of the environment is inevitable, according to the local people. However, the destruction of nature means not only the ruin of all vegetation that grows in it, but also the ultimate degeneration of a humanity estranged from the natural world. The monstrousness of the environment does breed its own freaks; here a society that has emerged out of dirt and pollution, and which, as a consequence, has not evolved to a full human stature. For Schraibman,

Agustin vive en la ciudad donde el rio se ha convertido en cloaca. Sus l}abitantes son peces, crustaceos en descomposici6n. Este es el estado al cual han llegado los hombres habitantes de la vieja ciudad.9

La Lucia is such a product of the debased natural world of his province. Like a bird of the sewers (TD381 ), he feeds on the detritus thrown out by the rich; more specifically, on cheap promiscuity through sexual intercourse with wealthy idlers. He is, figuratively speaking, the image of the city-sewer, "la ciudad-cloaca" (TD304), the old town converted by pollution into an immense repository of human rubbish and putrefaction. The author depicts him as a snake-like creature, a noxious and perfidious animal which can only express itself aggressively and with stifled hatred. Indeed,

Todo este veneno rabioso fue emitido por una boca fina de labios casi inexistentes, cuya lengua aunque no bifida era larga y delicada y que escupia peque:fias esferulas mefiticas ... (TD375)

The eyes of this creature, "ojos del chivato" (TD375), reveal all its vulnerability and a constant fear of the potential aggressor. La Lucta is a misfit, a reject of society; a being who has not developed to the point of assuming a fully human appearance. The strange fact that 259

he possesses a young face within the frame of a rapidly decaying body (TD376) serves to confirm his doom as regards the growth and development of his being. Ecologically speaking, he is a victim of his rotten environment. Figuratively speaking, he is part of the image of lack of human growth epitomized in that of the repeated abortions (TD488).

The picture of the aborted foetuses illustrates the stage of evolution at which Martfn-Santos' characters on the whole remain. A reminder of the Goyesque presentation of death of the unborn, the foetuses represent the still-birth of development in human beings condemned to remain static:

. .. madres poderosas madres que estais diciendo a gritos que de vuestro embaraz6n amarillento y pringoso de vuestros abortos repetidos ... por que hemos de Hamar parto lo que no lo es sino provisionalmente... (TD488)

In this lamentation over the still-birth of humanity, the theme of a sterile earth-mother re-emerges. These under-developed beings incarnate the dried-out atmosphere they live in; an atmosphere of barrenness and silence, in which nothing grows save for stumps and weeds. If nature has engendered its own monsters, human beings are accordingly giving birth to misfits.

By using the Kafkaesque element of the reduction of his characters to the size and behaviour of pitiable creatures, Martfn-Santos has emphasized the degeneration of a people caught up in the destructive force of its myths. The intense feeling of crisis he expresses in his metamorphosis of human beings into vermin only serves to further stress his concern with the wretchedness of the human condition in a setting of extreme repression. The ataraxic protagonists of his two novels have let themselves be crushed by their executioners; once masticated and swallowed, they have become left-overs of humanity, pitiful rejects to be thrown away.

The passivity of these victims, as we have seen, carries in itself feelings of resentment; feelings which, when aroused, will turn them into brutes, in line with the author's concept of the victim­ executioner. The will-to-power of the oppressed is a gross deformation of the Nietzschean will-to-power, a notion we have previously dealt with. We shall now describe the final transformation of these alienated beings into monsters of brutishness and violence.

Dramatic Metamorphosis.

Seemingly by-passed by the later stages of evolution, Agueda is, metaphorically speaking, the foetus of a human organism. As we already know, her intelligence is lower than that of beasts, and her physiognomy corresponds not to that of the homo sapiens, but rather to that of the dog (or the wolf), with the conspicuous feature of her prominent sharp canines (TDl 06) within what the author refers to as "la gran abertura bordeada de dientes" (TD108), the huge mouth which utters not words but threatening groans, all day long.

Like a predatory animal, Agueda" behaves violently. She grabs the food people give her, and runs to her corner to gnaw it sonorously. 261

Like a dog or wolf, she swallows huge pieces of raw meat, but without chewing them. Like a dog, she likes to be scratched and teased to the point of irritation. When challenged by the behaviour of others, she shows her teeth, thus threatening to bite; and as she grows up, she actually becomes dangerous, in her own retrospective statement, "daiiino animal de dientes largos" (TD465).

At the best of times, Agueda is nothing more than a placid animal:

La niiia jugueteaba, corria a dos, a tres, a cuatro patas, echaba sus babitas. Venia donde la madre y tomaba tambien sus sopas, no con cuchara de cuerno, sino chupadas con la lengua como correspondfa a su nivel mental y a su modo de ser hfbrido. (TD175)

The apex of Agueda's bestiality is her lived experience as a demon­ possessed being, a witch on this particular occasion, eager to profanate the Catholic mass in the most obnoxious manner 10. With all the might of a ferocious animal on heat, Agueda, through the sacrilegious verses attributed to her, expresses all her bodily sensations of the moment. After plundering the cemetery for human parts, she ransacks a poultry farm in order to find animals for the witches' sacrifice at the altar of the he-goat. Once the feast is prepared, she invites all the beasts to join in an orgy with her. It is with her well-developed animal instinct that she sniffs the presence of her prey and of her prospective mating partners. A mixture of humanity and beastliness, Agueda is the epitome of insanity as well as estrangement from the human condition.

The under-development of beings like Agueda reflects the primitiveness of a degenerate human group which, contrary to 262

Agustin and Demetrios, has not evolved mentally or intellectually. Through its self-destructive tendency, the nation as a whole has regressed to a brutish state. Brute force devours humans in such a world; a world in which Pedro and Agustin will in the end be victimized. As opposed to the natural law that individuals of a same species do not eat one another, in this fictional world human beings destroy the members of their own group; for they, like wolves, tear one another apart under threat of devourment by stronger kin.

It is in his lament on human malevolence that Pedro condemns the monstrosity of those who, trampled upon by the ruling system, have revengefully attacked him as a weaker being and finally crushed him like a parasite. In his referring to mankind as a species stripped of all human attributes, the main protagonist of Tiempo de silencio strives to discover close analogies between man and wolf:

;,Hombre o lobo? ;,El hombre-lobo? ;,Ellobo que era hombre durante las naches de luna llena? ;,El lobo feroz cuya boca es cuatro veces mas ancha que la de un hombre? ;,El hombre lobo para el hombre?;,La batida contra las alimaiias da:iiinas que descienden al valley estragan los rebaiios? (TS286)

This picture of the hombre-lobo who devours his own kin is a Barojian image of the cruelty and mercilessness rife among human beings who live in a crude state of nature. Evolution is a slow process, according to Iturrioz who, in his zoological study of the human species 11, establishes numerous parallels between the life of humanity and that of animals. Many species devour members of their own group, says Iturrioz in his pessimistic account; in particular, insects, to whom he compares various human characters as their negative features present themselves to him. Altogether the natural world is a destructive one, he concludes. All is cruelty in life, insists Baroja12; a conclusion echoed by Martin-Santos' protagonist as he is suffering his final defeat.

The theme of the hombre-lobo permeates human relationships in Tiempo de destrucci6n, as a follow-up to the concluding thought of the defeated protagonist in the first novel. The author draws a simile of animal physiognomy by transforming the ruthless school prefect into a predatory animal ready to jump on its prey: "ofrece un vago parecido con un animal en acecho antes del salto" (TD71). Here he is indirectly alluding to a debased education system whose representatives strive to inculcate fear and a defensive attitude in the young; this attitude will prepare them for the violent struggle for survival lying ahead of them. The law of the jungle becomes lupine law in a world filled with ferocity and sadism; a world in which man becomes a wolf to his own species 13:

. . . como si no fuera acaso una ley de los crueles lobos lobos carniceros la de alimentarse de presas palpitantes y por que habra de darle tanta importancia a la presa palpitante si ella tambien palpita ... (TD502)

As members of the wolf pack, human beings feed on the blood of their victims: Agustin's vision is that of a humanity in conflict with its natural instincts; a humanity which has not transcended the stage of savagery. Agustin, like Pedro and the Andres Hurtado of El sirbol de la ciencia, deplores this lack of evolution from beast to man.

In the provincial world of Tiempo de destrucci6n, survival values are developed in a spirit of hatred and revenge. The beast which metaphorically resides in Agueda - the demon that possesses her - is 264

the same beast that lives in her degenerate society at large. These victims of their system have become wolves to their own kind. Taught the use of brute force at a tender age, they have learnt to ill­ treat smaller or weaker beings, as suits their own needs.

With the same joyful ferocity the school master displays when hitting his pupils (TD73), the butcher of Villaflorida publicly slaughters the lambs he uses as scapegoats, chosen victims of his unfulfilled instinct of destruction:

Oficiante del sacrificio era el marido de la senora Paca, que... sabia decir palabras temes con el to no de mala intenci6n debido. Clavaba el cuchillo puntiagudo a traves de la piel y de las lanas. (TD114)

Like a wolf maiming its prey, the butcher proceeds to make the ultimate sacrifice of an innocent victim. It is in the midst of such demonstrations of sadistic brutality that malevolence arises in the oppressed. Through the perpetuation of cruelty and sadism, human beings are finally transformed into wolves.

Conclusion.

If Agueda is pictured as a ferocious animal always ready to bite those who threaten to endanger her bestial existence, the world that surrounds her is no less than the image of the principle homo homini lupus, man become a wolf to man. The dehumanization of Agueda's co-citizens is on the whole dramatic, for it indicates, even if only in a figurative sense, the degeneration of a human group which has let itself be absorbed by bestiality and is now in the clutches of an 265

animal-like existence. The monstrousness that was latent in the humanity alluded to by Pedro has, with the emergence of Agueda as the product of her environment, become reality; a sinister reality which brings Martfn-Santos' time of destruction to a final climax of horror and Kafkaesque degradation. 266

Conclusion to Part Three.

All this imagery of horror and destruction could well be the outcome of a Freudian dream, a fantasy. It seems that a great part of it arises from the oniric divagations of a narrator who, through an endless stream of consciousness, transports the reader to a mythological world of human beasts; an archetypal world in which various aspects of human behaviour find their symbolic correspondence. Tiempo de silencio is a fully structured novel with a main storyline, while Tiempo de destrucci6n remains unfinished and contains two major themes; one relating to the metamorphosis of humans into brutes, and the other illustrating the reverse process through tracing the growth of Agustin as an authentic human being14.

The disalienation of the main protagonist of the second novel is ' rendered by the image of his breaking his protective shell:

Es mas, habia alcanzado a hacerse cargo de la necesidad - para su propio desenvolvimiento - urgente del paso a otro estadio vital, de la ruptura de la que podria ser denominada crisalida espiritual, formada por los hilos de seda de los habitos infantiles ... (TD257)

This picture of the breaking of the shell is used by the author on different occasions, but only reveals a positive meaning in the case of Agustin and Constanza, where it refers to their passage from infancy to adulthood. Having been spared the state of imbecility that dominates her bourgeois environment, Constanza is indeed the only character who follows Agustin along the path of the psychoanalytical conversion. Like Agustin, she grows to a higher stature: De renacuajo, pues, paso ella a ninfa en metamorfosis. (TD440)

Through the development of her imagination, she creates her own world, remote from the insipid material world of her wealthy family and relations. In the end,

Habia concluido su metamorfosis. Durante el tiempo de su apasionado goce vanidoso la inteligencia alcanz6 el nivel al que estaba destinada y con su baba venenosa lleg6 a romper, de un modo mas quimico que fisico, por disolucion o podredumbre, los hilos de seda del capullo que tan suavemente la hab:ian arropado. De all:i salio como insecto adulto y al asomar la cabeza fuera tuvo frio y comprendi6 que ya solo le quedaba el refugio del cinismo. (TD444-5)

"El hombre, cuya necesidad es conocer, es como la mariposa que rompe la crisalida para morir" 15: in other words, knowledge leads to death, away from the tree of life. As regards Constanza, her discovery of life has only brought her restlessness and disillusionment. Moreover, her metamorphosis into an adult insect, although affirming the positive aspect of her physical and mental growth, bears in itself that same Kafkaesque reduction of humans to a miniature size, the reflection of their insignificance.

The apparent cynicism of the text should nevertheless not deter us from interpreting the narrator's vision of Constanza as one of disalienation. The suppressed concluding remark does, after all, reveal hope in this character's progress as a person:

Que esta mujer tardara tantos aiios en llegar a este punto de madurez y que, sin embargo, fuera capaz de alcanzarlo, nos llena de admiracion. A traves de tantas tentaciones, de tan peligrosas sirtes, supo llevar la navecilla fragil de su instinto. Tantas otras quedan detenidas. (TD445) 268

However cynical he shows himself to be when transforming human beings into beasts, Martin-Santos does indeed leave room for the reverse process. Teaching in a school, for Demetrios, offers a possibility of redeeming humanity, as the teacher's ambition is to tame animals (TD276), we are told.

According to our reading of the ambiguous ending of the second novel, the main metamorphosis of disalienation arises with the final conversion of the previous San Lorenzo, martyr of his circumstances, into a San Jorge, symbol of courage and masculine power. The noble saint is however reduced once again to the size of a minor being, having lost his capital letter and assuming an appearance of pettiness and inauthenticity:

sanjorgemono sanjorgesimio amado que eomo espejo me trae la imagen de la grandeza ... sanjorgerat6n que das miedo ... sanjorge gordito bien alimentado al sol lustroso hacienda oir la miel de mis palabras sabias al auditorio de selectas orejas ... sanjorge resplandeciente o gordito charlatan de feria.(TD505-6)

Sarcastically, indeed, this sanjorge is an image of false greatness; an image of the petty animal making itself important through the fear it can communicate to others. It is another image of the same pseudo-philosopher who shines amid his selected audience, whose silvery words enthrall the ignorant public he is eager to deceive. It is, finally, the very image of mediocrity and triviality. Is this middling condition the apex of human triumph over an animal-like condition? Or is there a real possibility of redemption after this disappointing outcome? 269

From the situation of a defeated hero (Pedro), emasculated by his circumstances and forces greater than himself, the psychoanalytical process leads to that of a triumphant hero (Agustin), who boasts about his capabilities and his importance while standing on the pedestal of an insignificant figure. Does this final picture convey a message of condemnation of humanity to a degenerate state, or does it, on the contrary, illustrate the possibility of slowly overcoming defeat and eventually reaching the point of breaking through the chrysalis ? The ambiguous meaning of the final metamorphosis will be the object of the next part of this essay, in which a debate on the interpretation of Tiempo de destrucci6n leads to two possible and opposing conclusions, namely, destruction or cure. 270

Notes to Chapter Two.

1. In Kafka's stories, the transformation of human beings into pitiable creatures assumes the aspect of a natural phenomenon, leading almost inevitably to a nightmarish vision of life. The world of alienation Kafka is depicting was born of anguish and despair, the two main features of the human condition as perceived by him; it is also generated by the suffering inflicted on individuals by the maiming forces of institutional bureaucracy that beset them on all sides, and from which they cannot escape. Metamorphosis is a tale of fear and horror. It is also a tale of human solitude and estrangement from a reified universe. The Kafkaesque hero is alienated from his own essence, being immersed in the non-human. He has long learnt the lesson that striving is mere futility, life being totally absurd and meaningless. The concept of the reduction of human individuals to the state of helpless insects whose physical size or stature only serves to make them more vulnerable to crushing by the malignant forces that surround them, is the main theme of this study of metamorphosis. In Cela those forces are the components of a forlorn human condition; in Martfn-Santos they are the more concrete forces of the institutional State. In Kafka they are viewed as a combination of both, as we shall see when analyzing metamorphoses of guilt and bureaucratic victimization.

2. Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, introductory paragraph.

3. An Expressionist in the literary field, Kafka, as seen above, has been able to throw into his stories the absurdity of the human dilemma, thereby invoking - although very indirectly - a need for change in human destiny. (Ref. Lionel Richard, Phaidon Encyclopedia of Expressionism.) In earlier times Goya had expressed his concern with a need for human regeneration; a theme duly rehandled by Martfn-Santos, whose metaphorical abruptness aims at shaking mankind out of its lethargy, thus reorientating it towards the fulfillment of the Promethean vision of the Expressionist, i.e. that of the revitalization of the human condition.

4. Lacking the full dimension of a human being - as is usually the case with Kafka's heroes -,,K. (The Trial) shrinks in front of the overpowering forces of the machinery of government assailing him; which is also the case with Pedro in Tiempo de silencio, once apathy and lack of will have given way to the most complete indifference to his fate, hence to his final acceptance of the monstrous. It could be generally stated that grotesque exaggerations of injustice pervade Kafka's stories: the culprit is practically always the poor devil accused unfairly, who does not know how to use the ropes of bureaucracy to defend himself. In Kafka, the all-powerful father­ figure who despises his creatures and condemns them unjustly is represented, at the governmental level, by the ironfisted judge who 271 applies arbitrary and irrational laws against the will of his charges. While The Castle announces the mandates of an inhumane and distant power, The Trial depicts a reified universe, namely, the universe of guilt bred of unfair punishment.

5. J.E. Lyon, "Don Pedro's Complicity: An Existential Dimension of Tiempo de silencio", in Modern Language Review, Vol.74, 1979, P.75.

6. See quote on P .18 in Tiempo de silencio: "... un hombre es la imagen de una ciudad y una ciudad las vfsceras puestas al reves de un hombre ... "

7. J.C. Mainer, Pr6logo a Tiempo de destrucci6n, P.38.

8. See the following quote from Baroja: "Hacia en la calle un calor espantoso, el aire venia en rafagas secas, como salidas de un horno. No se podia mirar a derecha y a izquierda; las casas, blancas como la nieve, rebozadas de cal, reverberaban una luz vfvida y cruel hasta dejarle a uno ciego." (El arbol de la ciencia, P.150.)

9. Jose Schraibman, "Tiempo de destrucci6n: :;,Novela estructural?", P.217.

lO.See "Canci6n de Agueda", TD447-454.

ll.Baroja, "La crueldad universal", PP.93-99 in El arbol de la ciencia.

12.Throughout Baroja's writings is reflected the idea that egoism is a natural fact of life: in order to survive, human beings, like animals, must fight, sometimes to the point of harming their own kind. Baroja as a rule sees no mercy in the human world: "Si; todo es violencia, todo es crueldad en la vida. Y ;,que hacer? No se puede abstenerse de vivir, no se puede parar, hay que seguir marchando hasta el final." (El mundo es ansi, Madrid, 1968, P.152.)

13.As a general feature of their behaviour, wolves attack the old, the weak, the sick, and sometimes the unlucky. They are on the whole big-game hunters. A synonym of savagery and treachery, the wolf comes to symbolize two adverse forces: the one of ferocity and satanism, the other of benevolence. (In a figurative sense, a wolf is a malevolent person bearing an aspect of goodness.)

14.Within a Freudian-based psychological analysis of Agustin's life, Martin-Santos has made Existentialism emerge, thus bringing the two streams into close association. To a certain extent his second novel can be seen as an illustration of the major steps of the psychoanalytical cure, with an awakening of consciousness in the protagonist, followed by his breaking of old values and his 272 triumph over deeply ingrained taboos. The treatment is left at the stage of rebellion against the past.

15.Baroja, El arbol de la ciencia, P.l31. 273

PART FOUR- TIEMPO DE DESTRUCCION: AN END AND A NEW BEGJNNING.

The object of this final section is to debate the meaning of the concluding remarks of Tiempo de destrucci6n. With the ambiguous destruction of the hero and the overall decimation of his country, the Aquelarre comes to a close. The recurrent theme of abortion serves to illustrate the author's vision of still-birth in the realm of human growth and authenticity; a vision further confirmed by the narrator's statement that "todos absolutamente todos los frutos del amor tristemente concluyen en la nada" (TD487). The novel ends no doubt on a note of tragedy; not only with the picture of aborted foetuses - symbolic of the premature death of the children of Spain -, but also, supposedly, with the tragic death of the hero after his martyrdom at the hands of the penitents 1 in San Vicente de Sonsierra 2. As Agustin himself ponders from the hell to which he has been assigned:

... pobre imbecil que no encuentras alln. la palabra con la que quieres decir lo que pasa de que modo has sido crucificado ... (TD499)

Agustin's crucifixion follows Pedro's castration (TS293); a dramatic advance towards death, marking the end of all hope for regeneration, so it seems. According to Josefa Rezola, a friend of the author, the novel ends in tragedy; yet, for Martin-Santos' brother, Leandro, hope is not rooted out completely, the final chapters remaining open to conflicting interpretations. For his part Jose Carlos Mainer rallies to the former viewpoint, although by no means denying the possibility

of a final triumph of the hero over repression 3. 274

Development of the Debate.

Seeing the mainstay of Tiempo de destrucci6n as an attack on the stale myths of Spanish life, Mainer argues the point that, had Martfn-Santos had the opportunity to finish his second novel, the advent of a final liberation from those myths could have become a reality. In that case the ground would have been laid for the edification of new myths, in the very words of the author, "Sagradas

Escrituras del maiiana" 4. Naturally, this opinion is debatable, and as Mainer appears undecided on the ultimate meaning of Martfn­ Santos' novels, various critics have expressed diametrically opposed views about the author's purpose and ideology. Although the majority of these critics do not directly refer to the second novel, they clearly delineate their understanding of the author's philosophical insight and concluding vision.

According to Santos Sanz Villanueva, the development of Tiempo de silencio leads to suicide, to the total negation of any possibility of human realization; in short, to the absurdity of existence 5. The only option for the Spanish people here, he says, is nihilism, the hero renouncing history as well as the future.

"Tras el silencio venia la destrucci6n, tras la tragicomedia la tragedia en estado puro" 6, states Rafael Conte when assessing the tragic evolution of what started as a parody of Spanish life and became an obscure metaphysical account of the devastation of life. In other words: 275

A la parodia ha sucedido la tragedia, a la sociologia casi la metafisica, a la realidad, disecada hasta la exasperaci6n - hasta la abstracci6n, en ocasiones - sucederia el mito, el derrumbe, la destrucci6n. 7

Martin-Santos' lack of confidence in humanity reveals his boundless pessimism, says Salvador Clotas; an attitude which eventually brings the novelist to adopt a nihilistic vision of existence. No illusions are left in this author whose lucidity is the very aspect of his mind that leads to silence or to destruction:

Yo creo que tras el verbo ret6rico y alambicado de Martin-Santos se oculta un pesimismo sin fronteras, una poderosa tendencia que, olvidada de cualquier ideologia civica, le lleva a un nihilismo destructor. Martin-Santos contempla cuanto le rodea con demasiada lucidez para forjarse ilusiones. Su lucidez no es la inteligencia clara y equilibrada de un Montaigne sino una pendiente tragica que puede llevarle al silencio o a la destrucci6n. 8

Responding to this opinion, Janet Winecoff Diaz expresses the view that, although pessimism is at the root of Martin-Santos' writings, Clotas' conclusion on nihilism is not sustainable. Irony and cynicism might be present in the novels as well as in the apologues, she says, yet their author "had not concluded that humanity was not worth saving. While some of his writings may appear to explore that

possibility, the life ofMartin-Santos was an eloquent affirmative" 9.

At this point we refer to the philosopher who, through a dialectical understanding of reality, will vindicate a new creation out of the chaos of destruction. As Martin-Santos reiterates on various occasions, his work has taken on a destructive meaning; and for a

while longer, it will keep following this path 10. In the Spanish 276

reality, almost everything must be destroyed and later rebuilt, he insists.

Is Martin-Santos, as a Socialist, really denying hope?, asks Talahite, who sees Tiempo de silencio eseentially as a meditation on under­ development. Refusing to view misery as fate, the critic considers it to be a result of historical circumstances that can be modified. The message of the first novel is, in his words:

un temoignage de confiance envers les desherites, la certitude que les forces de I' avenir se trouvent la ou se trouve la misere. 11

Along existential rather than sociological lines, Saludes confirms the above opinion with the statement that

Tiempo de silencio no aboga por un optimismo facil, pero si pone de manifiesto una inquebrantable fe en el hombre que, consciente de los escollos que se interponen en su desarrollo, es capaz de conquistar su destino. 12

It is with the heralding of destruction followed by a new creation, says Saludes, that Agustin, in the second novel, allots himself the task of destroying the complicities of his contemporaries; complicities including, as seen before, social structure, myths, history, archaic customs, stagnation and backwardness of the generations. Is Tiempo de destrucci6n a tragedy, she asks, or does it give way to a dialectically-based hope in the future?

According to Mainer, who bases his opinion on information supplied by Rezola, the second novel could end in tragedy; according to Leandro Martin-Santos, there is a suggestion of hope in the future. 277

From these ambiguous findings, and with a global consideration of the primary role of the author as a psychiatrist concerned with the existential cure of his society, we are brought to discern, along with the latter critics, the possibility - however dim it might be - of a change for the better. It is along the lines of psychoanalysis, as we see it, that Martin-Santos has developed his metaphor of alienation in these two novels. Tiempo de destrucci6n is, in our view, the second stage of eradication of the social disease.

A Psychoanalytical Process of Destruction.

The psychoanalytical cure is initiated in Tiempo de silencio, with Pedro's figurative return to the womb - "Vuelto a la cuna. A un vientre" (TS219) -;that is, during his sojourn in prison. By plunging into the depths of his past acts, Pedro goes down to the Hades of existence, thus effecting a catharsis of the social disease in himself. In Tiempo de destrucci6n, says Abad N ebot, Agustin descends to the national hell, not to be silenced like Pedro, but annihilated 13. However, Agustin's role will in the end prove to be that of a redeemer; of one who, by taking upon himself the sins of history, aims to liberate the Weltanschauung of his fellowmen.

Affirming the dialectical circularity between the Freudian and the existential modes of psychoanalysis, Jose Aumente refers to Tiempo de destrucci6n as a phenomenological description of psychoanalysis14. It is with the Aquelarre that the psychoanalytical process of destruction is completed; that is, with the parody of the 278

stale myths and traditions which have directed the lives of Agustin's fellow Spaniards from the remote past to their own time.

With parody comes rejection in the mind of the philosopher who repudiates all determinism and all causal explanations. Under attack in this process is the mythical vision which sees history as the repetition of an original moment. Martin-Santos has recourse to myth in order to denounce it, says Labanyi 15. By rejecting the mythical Eternal Return which belongs to infantile obsession- and which has resulted in the stagnation of a people whose fear of the future yields to a continuous re-enactment of the past-, he propounds a new humanistic notion based on "la destrucci6n del universo magico del primitivo o del niiio" (LTT242).

Myth is opposed to history, Labanyi reminds us; precisely for reinforcing universal truths which are antagonistic to change. With Martin-Santos, myths are destroyed through irony; an indomitable weapon that will eventually bring their downfall. The Spanish myths, on the whole attached to the Catholic tradition, are indeed invalidated by the satirical metaphors developed throughout the second novel. As it appears in his fiction, Spanish history has been invaded by senseless myths; myths that plague the lives of the people who are influenced by them, forcing these people to obey absurd unwritten laws, often against their will.

"jMaldici6n es y no pequeiia ser un pueblo con historia!" (TD482), the narrator laments when surveying the damage caused by the past in a context of enforced repression. To return to the past is useless, 279

even noxious; for unless past events serve to illuminate the present, they might as well be forgotten:

La his to ria no tiene ninguna realidad. .. porque pertenece al pasado. z.Que sentido intelectual tiene preguntar por la verdad de un suceso que hoy ya es inverificable? Lo importante es saber de su eficacia sobre nosotros. (TDl 00)

In opposition to the static Demetrios, imbued with the traditions of his institutionalized teaching and resigned to conforming to established myths and values, stands his own son Agustin, a dynamic reformer whose major attempt at breaking with a stale history aims to generate in the Spaniard a maturity of mind and spirit 16. It is from the University of Salamanca, a symbol of institutionalized tradition, that Agustin disavows the moral arrogance of those intellectuals who refuse to become free thinkers and even help to propagate dogmatism through their anti­ philosophical culture. The greatest impediment to progress and evolution, according to the young scholar, is conformity; a conformity that excludes all creative power, and that will only breed more apathy, if not brutality, in his social world.

In his fight against compliance to old sacred myths, Anquilostom (a J oycean voice of the past) invites his compatriots to deny what he views as the absurd authority of Catholicism, thence to discover life for themselves:

Si quereis conocer, habreis de ver, oler y tocar. No puede bastaros con leer. (TD478) 280

The heretical Saint Thomas shows himself more aggressive when embodied in the person of Agustin, the young rebel whose prophecies come to connote a certain amount of violence:

Que venga el padre Julian y que se haga crucificar aqui, en lo alto de un paste telegrafico. Su sotana negra sera agitada por los vientos que asi desprenderan los excrementos que los pajaros dejen caer amorosamente sabre ella. (TD118-9)

Not only violence, but also profanation contributes to the theme of destruction of the old values. On various occasions the narrator uses the notion of excreting the evil which lies dormant in the sacred myths, as follows:

. . . que estas vomitando ahara to do lo que tenias dentro con su peligrosidad de odio ... (TD496)

... que el pecado me rodea por arriba y por abaj<;> que lo vomito y lo defeco y lo masturbo y lo expelo ... (TD501-2)

The protagonist thus evacuates his old self, with its load of existential sins, so to speak. By profaning the most sacred aspects of his indoctrination, he eliminates them, thereby destroying all the obstacles to the path of his enlightenment. With this note of triumph of the new self over established universal values, Agustin's psychoanalytical process of destruction is accomplished.

Creative Destruction in Martin-Santos and Goytisolo.

lN o seiiala Tiempo de destrucci6n algunos de los temas mas fascinantemente abordados en la Reivindicaci6n: tradici6n hist6rica abrumadora, nostalgia de la espontaneidad, hostilidad al edipismo, anticatolicismo exacerbado, etc.? 17 281

Mainer's supposition that Goytisolo was acquainted with Martfn­ Santos' second novel emanates from an obvious resemblance between Tiempo de destrucci6n and Reivindicaci6n del conde don Julian. Although he has not specifically mentioned Tiempo de destrucci6n as a model for his own fictional writings, Goytisolo has, in an article on the contemporary Spanish novel, acknowledged Martfn-Santos as a novelist of prominence in the desecration of traditional language and attitudes to life 18.

In the same way as Goytisolo has been seen as an unruly disciple of America Castro for seeking to regenerate history through the creation of a new mythology 19, we view him as an unruly disciple of Martfn-Santos, for his aggressive attack not only on the Spanish language, but also on the myths that have made up the social structure of his nation for many centuries.

The need to break the limits - romper los Umites - has led Juan Goytisolo to follow in the footsteps of Martfn-Santos in his fictional endeavour to free Spain from its sacred myths, above all from its Christian and bourgeois essence. It is in Reiyindicaci6n that Goytisolo proceeds to annihilate the past, by on the one hand destroying his protagonist's infantile ego, as Martfn-Santos had done with Agustin's in Tiempo de destrucci6n, and on the other hand, ending the novel with the suggestion of a national psychoanalysis, a step forward on the latter's attempt to rid Spain of its social ailment. 282

In Martin-Santos the creative destruction of the old values constitutes a slow process, much in line with his professional outlook:

La cura psicoanalitica no es un proceso decisivo, sino sucesivo. No hay un momento crucial en que el sfntoma deja de existir totalmente y en que el ser­ neur6tico es sustituido por el ser-curado. Por el contrario, se trata de un acontecer lento y paulatino: de una destrucci6n y de una reedificaci6n con los mismos materiales del derribo, ordenados segun un nuevo estilo. (LTT109)

In Goytisolo, the destruction is obviously more sudden and radical, as it assumes the dimensions of mythoclasm before those of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the protagonist's immediate and ultimate purpose is, essentially:

.. . hacer almoneda de todo: historia, creen,cias, lenguaje: infancia, paisaje, familia: rehusar la identidad, comenzar a cero ... (RCDJ135)

Martfn-Santos' methodological iconoclasm is thus succeeded by

Goytisolo's oniric and schizophrenic aggression 20; an aggression leading nevertheless to the same thematic purpose of restoration. Although both novelists uphold, in their own way, the Nietzschean dream of a new creation, in Goytisolo the conversion process is clothed with an extolment bred of onirism and evasion. What

Goytisolo finally does is destroy with a hammer 21, thus leaving no place for the old creation to subsist.

In Reivindicaci6n the protagonist destroys not only Spain, but also himself, the Spaniard. Spires sees in this process something akin to

"un complejo proceso psicol6gico de autodestrucci6n creativa" 22. Once the old man is dead, the new Julian will assume the task of 283

destroying and rebuilding his culture. Whereas in Martin-Santos the proselyte emerges from the same person - that is, from the old innocent Agustin -, in Goytisolo the main protagonist, Julian, can only be reborn once his infantile ego has been totally annihilated through the death - via sodomization and beheading - of Alvarito, symbol of the old innocent sel£

Although more violent and less rational in his approach to psychoanalysis, Goytisolo, through a fantasy, does achieve the result of abolishing the sacred past of his nation, thus coalescing with Martin-Santos in his ultimate aspiration to remodel history through the creation of the myths of the future. His first task is to demolish the very mechanism of transmission of myths and sacred values, that is, the Word itself, praised as a divine attribute and used as a powerful control mechanism. As he states himself in his dissertation El furg6n de cola:

El mundo en que VlVImos reclama un lenguaje nuevo, virulento y anarquico. En el vasto y sobrecargado almacen de antigiiedades de nuestra lengua s6lo podemos crear destruyendo: una destrucci6n que sea a la vez creaci6n; una creaci6n a la par destructiva 23.

In Reivindicaci6n, his claim for a new language takes on an outlandish aspect, which nonetheless expresses this very need to abolish the means of perpetuating stale ideas and precepts:

hay que rescatar vuestro lexico: desguarnecer el viejo alcazar lingiiistico: adueiiarse de aquello que en puridad os pertenece: paralizar la circulaci6n del lenguaje: chupar su savia: retirar las palabras una a una hasta que el exangiie y crepuscular edificio se derrumbe como un castillo de naipes. (RCDJ196) 284

This tone of command is thoroughly affirmative and certainly more assertive, thus producing a more direct effect, than the stream-of­ consciousness method employed by Martin-Santos in his upholding of the suppression of established language, as follows:

... equivoca los tiempos de verba mas rapido mas rapido suprime conjunciones preposiciones es destruir el lenguaje para que al fin al otro lado de haber hablado tanto al fin nos entendamos y pueda decirte a ti a mi a ti no repitas el mismo efecto de cambia de personas que no destruye suficientemente infinitivos infinitivos lenguaje negro ... (TD497)

The dynamism of conquering the environment also pertains to Goytisolo, who proposes to transform an arid and sterile Spain into a green and fertile country, in a literal as well as in a figurative sense. The heretical deity who recreates the Hispanic world is alive and well, unlike the annihilated hero of Martin-Santos who does not survive the ordeal of his conversion; for in Reivindicaci6n the new Julian is himself the supreme accomplishment, the creator of the world - "recreador del mundo, dios fatigado, el septimo d:ia descansaras" (RCDJ148).

Just like Martin-Santos, Goytisolo destroys the sacred by profaning it; or, from our perspective, by making his protagonist excrete it. One example will suffice to indicate the aggressiveness with which Alvaro scatologically denigrates the virtue of innocence, that is, by humiliating defenceless beings:

... vertiendo recia, caudalosamente el rubio desden fluido hasta el punto en que, de la negrura del antro, brota un gemido angustioso y una infernal presencia se remueve, vivamente contrariada... (RCDJ98) 285

Also like Agustin, within his own grandiose ambition to decimate sacred Spain, Alvaro betrays the tenets of Catholicism, although in a more concrete fashion, calling for, and eventually generating in his imagination, the crumbling of the Church/"casa del miedo" (RCDJ231 ). Harbouring anti-conservative and anti-fascist views, their authors attack the patriarchal system - an offshoot of Catholicism; a system which, in Spain, has come to associate the arbitrary power of Franquism with the irrational omnipotence of a distant god. Neither does matriarchy escape their attention, and the contradictory figure of the alternatively passive and devouring mother of Martin-Santos' psychoanalytical model 24 becomes, in the words of Goytisolo, "Madrastra inmunda" (RCDJ15), a catatonic figure in the shape of a statue.

Once the Catholic doctrine is abolished, Goytisolo indicates, history will be conceived in a new light. What his narrator deplores is the lack of motivation for change in his co-citizens who, as passive adherents to a stale culture, would rather suffer silently than attempt to modify their social conditions:

el carpeto concibe la Historia como un lento proceso de autodepuraci6n, como un continuo ejercicio ascetico de perfeccionamiento: en el fonda del alma ibera hay un residua indestructible de estoicismo que, hermanado intimamente con el cristianismo, ha enseiiado a los hombres de la Meseta a sufrir y a aguantar... (RCDJlll)

By advocating responsibility for one's destiny as a people, Goytisolo features the advent of the liberated individual, free to create the new values and myths of the future. In a world devoid of established and repressive moral constraints, instincts will no longer be suppressed- 286

"en el solar ingrato, verdugo de los libres, inteligencia y sexo floreceran" (RCDJ127). It is with poetic imagery that he envisions the new creation; an imagery that befits his oniric process of creative destruction. In his psychoanalytical dream of liberation, he has, in this way, broken all limits, placing radical violence at the forefront of every step of his venture. As he acknowledged on different occasions, he had read Martin-Santos, and found in his ideas a source of inspiration. His Promethean vision of change is obviously more fantasy-ridden, and certainly more eccentric. Let us now return to Martin-Santos' dramatic, and at times tragic, vision of redemption.

The Promethean Vision.

In his short play De Prometeo: palabras para una tra~edia 25, Martin-Santos sums up his opposition to tyrannical oppression, and laments the fate of the hero who is jailed for exalting revolutionary ideas of freedom. Although no direct reference to Spain is made in this play, the metaphorical presentation of socio-political attitudes does reflect the ethics and ideology of Franquism. In spite of the fact that it contains little action, De Prometeo is not altogether lacking in significance. The play, according to Villarino, echoes its author's personal reflexion on life; the central character, says the critic,

al igual que Pedro de Tiempo de silencio, y al igual que su autor, es un personaje que parte de una posicion vacilante y que a traves de una actitud coherente intenta buscar su sinceridad. 26

Liberation from old myths and traditions, for Martin-Santos, has socio-political as well as psychoanalytical implications. In his 2B7

second novel, it involves a search for truth and enlightenment, followed by the illusory Promethean image of the breaking of chains -

II liberado at6nitamente victorioso de las cadenas que eran la expresi6n directa de la impotenciall (TD501) - leading to new life, hope and a release from oppression.

The 11 prometeos encadenadosll (TD499) alluded to by Agustin in his stream of consciousness are, metaphorically, the children of repression, forever destroyed by the cruel gods of history. They are here represented by Agustin himself, whose fate is sealed with death,

11 11 11 or so it appears in his lamentation and fall in Destrucci6n : porque soy yo el que caido ya caigo cayendurialmente hacia los prometeos encadenados ... II (TD499).

The most oppressed being in this novel is, as we have said, Agueda, whose chain is a sinister reminder of the figurative chains of the nation. In spite of a keen attempt to liberate herself - through a rebellious profanation of imposed beliefs -, Agueda will, too, end in defeat. However, maybe partly through Agustin's patient teaching, she seems to have reached a certain degree of enlightenment before her death; as she states herself:

Que yo ya no soy tonta, que ya he aprendido ... (TD452)

Her death after the Aquelarre gives way to reminiscences of her youth from the place she has been assigned to in a hellish after-life. She then comes to an understanding of her past life, seeing herself as she used to be, that is, a ferocious beast without any control over her 288

instincts. Agueda, in short, awoke too late to authentic existence 27; so freedom never came to be a reality for her.

At the end of the first novel, the defeated Quijote in Pedro had, at the moment of his final disillusionment with life, compared the future of his nation to the burnt-out colour of the desiccated body of an ox - "el futuro ya no es sino la carcomida marronez que va tomando un cuerpo de buey puesto a secar y lacarne vuelta mojama" (TS290); an obvious indication of his utter lack of hope as regards any possible change towards freedom. Talahite characterizes Tiempo de silencio as a work which exposes the murder of children by their fathers, as

well as that of a society which has sterilized itself 28.

In Tiempo de destrucci6n, the national slaughter is completed with the climactic episode of the celebrated Aquelarre in which Agustin,

.Agueda - and perhaps also Constanza - apparently lose their lives 29. With the death of the enlightened ones, the nation seems to be, more than ever, threatened with extinction.

The existential triumph of Agustin linked to his death is bound to raise a major question in the mind of the reader; that is, as Mainer among other critics wonders, does the second novel close on tragedy, or does it remain open dialectically to hope? On the one hand Mainer sees Agustin as a kind of redeemer, a saviour of his people who heralds their liberation from old myths; on the other hand, as a condemned Christ figure, whose passion and death are a reminder of the martyrdom of the one who brought life to his fellow human

beings 30. 289

Considering this turn of events as a plausible one, Agustin would be a misunderstood Messiah - be it Christ or Prometheus - who, in his endeavour to cure his society of its ills, only ends up being killed by those who do not accept an authentic being as part of their social group. By stealing the fire of knowledge and attempting to spread news of freedom around him, Agustin was only to accelerate his own downfall 31.

It is in the last section of Tiempo de destrucci6n, entitled "At6nitamente victorioso", that the ultimate ambiguity of the novel is most strongly felt 32. To start with, Agustin is realizing- only too late - that his task of breaking the chains of the nation has remained unfinished owing to his past fear of freedom (here, nothingness):

... nostalgia de aquello que yo sabia que era capaz de hacer pero que no queria hacer porque hacerlo era caer en el reino de la nueva ley en el oscuro Iugar nuevo donde la libertad se erige como una palmera embravecida... (TD501)

When he awakens to a new life, it is in Hell, as we understand it, where his project of ecstatic liberty can only remain unfulfilled. In his nightmarish awakening to existence, he has simply become one of the J oycean voices of the past, as encountered in the Aquelarre.

Agustin's false exhilaration at being a new person, free from the bonds of old myths and values, is, to say the least, ironic. In his peregrination through an oniric stream of consciousness, he visualizes a confused victory for the hero as San Jorge, a slayer of dragons. The realization of his being through sexual love will evaporate within the realm of his new hell-bound existence. Like 200

Agueda, Agustin has won a pyrrhic victory by redeeming himself and assuming a new life of enlightenment. The last lines of the novel close on an ambiguous note between triumph and defeat, as follows:

. .. hombre muerto hombre vivo donde el germinal continuador de lo fatigante donde el genesiaco engendrador de lo agobiante que eres tu que a tanto te atreves sanjorge resplandeciente o gordito charlatan de feria. (TD506)

Within Martin-Santos' consistent vision of Spain - a vision of apparent greatness concealing its real decrepitude -, this sanjorge bears in itself but the mediocre, as opposed to the glorious. In the notion of the superficial "charlatan de feria", the ambiguity of Agustin's victory is disclosed. Since the author's interpretation of his triumph does not allow for a glorious end, the hero cannot attain heroism. By deflating the importance of the young hero who wishes to identify with the real San Jorge, Martin-Santos confirms the triumph of the forces of irony over Agustin's achievement. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Agustin has won a final victory, through an awareness of his non-heroic state.

From the cathartic process of expelling evil a new beginning emerges, so we are led to understand; a shaky beginning leading to an uncertain and insecure development, yet all the same a rebirth. The new man (TD502) has emerged in Agustin, a new spiritual life totally free of the mythical past. Although the hero is, we assume, physically dead, his spirit lingers on; a creative spirit which yearns to see the advent of new values for the future of the nation. 291

Agustin's search for truth, and his finding of a meaning to existence, assimilate him not so much to the San Jorge , the slayer of dragons with whom he identifies through his exploits - "porque ni siquiera se trata de un dragon" (TD503) -, but rather to Saint Augustine, bearer of his very name. By ending his work in progress on a faint note of Promethean hope for regeneration, Martin-Santos raises in his readers ' minds the question of whether, had he been able to finish Tiempo de destrucci6n, a victory would have followed. Did he intend to close on an ambiguous destructive victory, or did he have in mind the germination of a third novel, with the final reinstatement of the hero and the nation as a whole?

A Trilogy.

The critic Jose Ortega sees Tiempo de silencio as the first part of a trilogy entitled La destrucci6n de la Espana sagrada 33. Chantraine de Van Praag acknowledges this concept of a trilogy, with Martin­ Santos' first novel as the forerunner of a climactic psychoanalytical cure 34. According to her, in the third volume the author would have construed the spiritual path of the hero towards responsible existential knowledge (a step reached by Agustin at the end of the second novel, yet seemingly too late). The new hero, says the critic, would be the creator of his own vital project, a transcendent being akin to the proselyte emerging from the psychoanalytical cure. It is in line with the notion of a future restoration that we explore the possibility of a trilogy. 292

Tiempo de silencio is the story of a search, of an investigation of life, according to Chantraine; it is, above all, a novel with an open perspective. At the end of the story Pedro returns to the beginning of his odyssey - "Ya estoy en el principio, ya acab6, he acabado y me voy. Voy a principiar otra cosa" (TS286) -,plunged in a dilemma of hope or defeat. On the one hand his pessimistic vision of the immediate future forces him to see only despair and nothingness at the end of the road; yet on the other, he harbours great ambitions for himself in a distant era, when he is given a chance to pay his debt (TS286) to the world. The crowning of all success is, in the mind of Pedro, the winning of the Nobel Prize. Like the physiologist Ram6n y Cajal whom he is eager to imitate - if not to equal -, he might, one day, receive the supreme reward for his professional endeavours; or so he thinks 35.

Pedro's ideal other self is Cajal, then, but also Prince Hal, who redeemed himself after having transgressed the laws of ethics befitting his position. Like Prince Hal, Pedro says, he will one day surpass all hopes placed upon him (TS286), in particular on his career as a scientist. Deep down he craves to be unique, setting himself apart from the masses whom he despises as a lower form of life. However, Pedro holds no faith in the immediate future; and the dominant pessimistic vision he communicates to us marks the end of Tiempo de silencio.

For Kubow, the intended trilogy was to be entitled Tiempo de destrucci6n, like Martin-Santos' second novel 36. In Tiempo de destrucci6n, she says, man's project is followed through the evolution from Pedro to Agustin; which gives the unfinished work 293

predominance over the completed novel, and makes it the bearer of its author's ideology.

I If the first novel ends on a pessimistic note of defeat, with Pedro's state of utter despondency, the second novel, as we have seen, ends on an ambiguous one, a mixture of victory and defeat. What the first protagonist had not achieved - a psychoanalytical conversion to authenticity -, the second one does through an awakening of consciousness, although too late:

. . . para que yo sepa al fin lo que es existir plenamente vivir existir o amar o saber que soy asi que estoy asi hecho que se acab6 la ingenuidad... soy expulsado al mismo tiempo que estoy averiguando en que consiste lo del hombre nuevo que nueva grandeza me empavoriza que especie de corona ensangrentada de la que descienden gusanos esta rodando en mis rodillas ... (TD501-2)

As an extension of the hero's triumph, the existential redemption of the Spaniard is likely to find a place in the concluding novel of an intended trilogy, if we consider the psychiatric hopes of Martfn­ Santos as regards the possibility of curing neurosis - even psychosis - through the cathartic process of expelling the ailment. In line with

Americo Castro's theory of a redeemed future 37, the philosopher­ novelist expresses, although with a severe pessimism, his faith in the future of Spain, his hope that Spaniards will, one day, come to understand their own history and place it at the service of the present and future. Therefore, in the same way as Martin-Santos' individual patient will be cured of a neurotic affliction, the whole nation will be cleansed of its social disease. In both cases the process of curation runs along the lines of an existential conversion. 294

Spaniards will be redeemed, then, when they become aware of the fact that the stagnation of their country results from the overbearing effects of the past upon the present. They will thus evoke the need to change the course of history, first by reinterpreting their so~called glorious past, next by coming to comprehend the meaning of all established myths and traditions and the validity of their perpetuation in times ahead. A search for the meaning of history is summed up in this comment of the narrator about an imperious need for change:

... tal vez nos ha llegado la hora de comprender que dice la fiesta, que nos esta gritando y por que somos los que hemos de inventar la nueva vida mas alla de lo que dice ... (TD483)

To understand the celebrations bred of social customs and a mythical past, says Saludes, is the door open to a liberation from history. The ritual of the penitents, which serves as an axis for the narrator's meditation on the forceful influence of customs upon daily life, she stresses, should thus be understood as one of the compelling forces of tradition 38.

"Para llegar a la posibilidad de elecci6n de un nuevo proyecto, es necesaria una previa concienciaci6n del antiguo proyecto de neurosis" (LTT53), states Martfn~Santos the psychiatrist who, by advocating an awakening of consciousness of the problem to be eliminated, insinuates there is still hope for change in those who form part of the invertebrate body of his sick society. A cure for the social cancer plaguing his nation has been fictionally initiated by a purgation of illness in Tiempo de destrucci6n, that is, through its ... evacuation; in other words, the apex of bestiality reached by Agueda 295

gives way to the purgation of evil through the pouring of her consciousness into the blasphemous verses that will lead to her tragic death. At this point evil is eradicated, but also all hope of redemption, at least for the time being. This dilemma makes the object of a third novel, in which the psychoanalytical cure would be achieved.

Conclusion.

After proceeding to destroy the stale myths which he views as a perversion of the history of Spain, the author envisages the creation of new myths (values) for the future. Psychiatrically speaking, his aspiration amounts to bringing into the future a modified past, a past seen in the light of a new consciousness. As an extension of the psychoanalytical method of transcending an ailment, the Nietzschean process of destruction finds a place in Martin-Santos' radical elimination of the social cancer which, in his novels, he shows to be ravaging the country. The second novel indicates that breaking all limits is the first step towards re-edification.

It must be noted that the ambiguity of character in the philosopher­ novelist prone to both exaltation and defeatism, justifies his indecision as to the ending of his second novel. The changing moods of the author are reflected in the conflicting testimonies of his friends and relatives: for his part Leandro Martin-Santos sees a possible optimistic end to the novels, whereas for Josefa Rezola, the nihilistic vision is the only one nurtured by the novelist. 296

If Martin-Santos' novels, and more specifically the second one, end in tragedy, they nonetheless open a perspective on to the future; a perspective of hope, as we see it. The dialectical vision of the philosopher-psychiatrist encompasses, in the light of the third volume of a trilogy, the transcending of defeat, from which are bound to emerge the seeds of regeneration. It is indeed after a catharsis of the social illness that the cure of this fictional Spanish society will finally be realized. Notes.to Part Four.

1. It seems that the end conceived by the author did not correspond fully with the published version as regards the death of Agustin (see prologue by_ J.C. Mainer). As appears in the novel, the hero's life does not come to the brutal end envisaged by friends and relatives of Martin-Santos; it rather fades into a sombre mediocrity after his major achievement in the process of redemption.

2. As befits the situation, Martin-Santos chooses San Vicente as the site for the ultimate sacrifice of his hero. San Vicente was a renown Spanish saint, a martyr who perished under the emperor Diocleciano in 304 A.D. It was for his Christian faith that he had been tortured; a parallel with Agustin's persecution for his faith in existential redemption.

3. See Prologue to Tiempo de destrucci6n by Mainer.

4. J.W. Diaz, "Luis Martin-Santos and the Contemporary Spanish Novel".

5. Santos Sanz Villanueva, "La alienaci6n", PP.134-140 in Tendencias de la novela espanola actual (1950-1970), Madrid, 1972.

6. Rafael Conte, "En el umbra! del misterio: Luis Martin­ Santos y su Tiempo de destruccion", in Insula, Nos. 344-345, Julio­ Agosto 1975, P.25.

7. Ibid.

8. Salvador Clotas, Pr6logo a los Ap6logos de Luis Martin­ Santos, P.10.

9. J.W. Diaz, "Martin-Santos, Luis. Ap6logos", University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, P .396 in Books of the Hispanic World.

lO.See J.M. Castellet, "La litterature espagnole et le temps de la destruction", in Lettres Nouvelles, Mars-Avril1968, PP.113-131.

ll.Claude Talahite, "Tiempo de silencio, une ecriture de silence", Centre d'Etudes et Recherches Sociocritigues, Montpellier, Nov.1980. (''. .. a testimony of confidence in the disinherited, the certainty that the forces of the future are found where there is wretchedness.")

12.E. Saludes, La narrativa de Luis Martin-Santos ala luz de la psicologia, P.81.

13 .F. Abad N ebot, El si@o literario, Madrid, 1977. 298

14.J. Aumente, "Un libro p6stumo de Luis Martin-Santos", Insula, No.220, Marzo 1965, P.12.

15.J. Labanyi, "Mito e historia", in Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio.

16.In Agustin, the need to mature as a human being is illustrated by the urge to lose his virginity, symbol of innocence as well as ignorance. With his passage from infancy to adulthood, Agustin awakens to a new life. What this means, in the context of a broader reality, is that he has not only transcended his fear of sex, but also, and most of all, his fear of repression in general. From a repudiation of his overpowering indoctrination, he passes to the stage of changing the vital values in himself.

1 7 .Jose Carlos Mainer, Pr6logo a Tiempo de destrucci6n, P.28.

18.J. Goytisolo, "The Contemporary Spanish Novel: Crisis, Silence, and Change of Direction", in Boston University Journal, Vol.19, 1971, PP.24-32.

19.Juan Goytisolo, among other writers (Carlos Fuentes et al), deals with history not as a linear process, but as a circular process the centre of which is the regeneration of myths, legends and beliefs. America Castro viewed history on this basis. However, unlike Castro, Goytisolo has sought to create new myths (in his fiction) to replace the ones he loathes and which have, as he sees it, plunged the nation in a vision of myth as actual history. (Michael Ugarte, "Juan Goytisolo": Unruly Disciple of America Castro", in Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, 7,1979, PP.353-364.)

20.Goytisolo himself sees Reivindicaci6n as a form of alienated, oniric and schizophrenic aggression, as reported by Jose Ortega. (Ortega, Juan Goytisolo, New York, 1972.)

21.The concept of destroying with a hammer is originally Nietzschean. The hammer is known not only as an instrument of destruction, said Nietzsche, but also as one of reconstruction. To abolish all idols was the Nietzschean purpose, with a view to an authentic creation based on the re-evaluation of all values.

22.Robert C. Spires, "La autodestrucci6n creativa en Reivindicaci6n del conde don Julian", in Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Centuzy, 4,1976, PP.191-202.

23.J. Goytisolo, "Literatura y Eutanasia", in El furg6n de ~~ Barcelona, 1976. 299

24.See Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia,, P.78: the alternative image of the mother as a victim of sexual aggression and as a cruel and cannibalistic archetypal monster.

25.De Prometeo, Burgos, 1970. This short play was banned by censorship during Franco's regime, for being allegedly subversive and displaying revolutionary ideas. (See Manuel L. Abelian, Censura y creaci6n literaria en Espana. 1939-1976, Barcelona, 1980, PP.229-230.)

26 .Alfonso Villarino, AnalisiS e interpretacion de Tiempo de silencio, Department of Spanish, Case Western Reserve University, 1972, P.18.

27.According to Mainer (Prologue), Agueda died after her violation by the Civil Guard in Villaflorida, place of the Aquelarre. It was her blasphemy of the mass that brought her downfall.

28.Talahite, op. cit.

29 .See Prologu~ in which the end of the novel is the object of a two-sided argument. Agueda dies in Villaflorida, whereas Agustin and Constanza are supposedly killed in San Vicente.

30.Mainer, "Luis Martin-Santos, de Tiempo de silencio a Tiempo de destrucci6n", in Travaux de l'Universite de TQulouse-le­ Mirail13, 1981, PP.53-65.

31.According to the Greek myth, Prometheus is never free; for once liberated, he is chained and tortured again. Human beings have been raised to a fettered existence ever since the advent of Prometheus. Here a distinction must be made - although not extremely relevant to the novel itself - between the two saviour figures: whereas Christ gave life, Prometheus brought knowledge to his people. To Martfn-Santos, knowledge means real life, for being consciousness-enriching. Promethean man originates from a modern philosophy establishing the triumph and independence of science once religion has been eliminated.

32 .It is not clear whether the novel should conclude on "At6nitamente victorioso", or on the preceding section, "Destrucci6n". In the Prologue, Mainer admits that the order of the chapters is uncertain, more particularly in Part 3 of the text. The structure adopted in this thesis is that supplied by the publisher.

33.Jose Ortega, "Compromiso formal de Martfn-Santos en Tiempo_de silencio", in Hispan6fila, No.37, 1969, PP.23-30.

34.J. Chantraine de Van Praag, "Tiempo de silencio: obra clave de la novelistica de lengua espaiiola". 300

35.The Nobel Prize winner Ramon y Cajal, a physiologist, explored the human brain with a view to uncovering thought and will. His Promethean ideal was science as an implacable destroyer of myths. Evolution was a prime basis for his precepts. According to him, the human brain could one day reach the upper state of perfectibility. Human beings would then become the kings of creation, having conquered their own brains. Pedro's major ambition is based on Cajal's own utopic vision, namely, the creation of a perfect humanity (TS13).

36 .Sally Ann Hargrave Kubow, The Novel as Irony: Luis Martfn-Santos' Tiempo de silencio.

37.Americo Castro, "The Millennium between Espana and Espanol ",in An Idea of History, Columbus, 1977: "I have faith in the future, and I think that, when Spaniards fully realize who they are and how they were, they will return to the essential task. The truth is that today they do not inhabit their own history; they are ignorant of their own identity, insofar as they are ignorant of their true past."

38.E. Saludes, op. cit.: "Tiempo de destrucci6n: Intento de interpretacion." 301

In this thesis we have attempted to integrate the three main roles of Martin-Santos; namely, those of a philosopher concerned with social and existential issues, of a psychiatrist aiming to open the field of medical science, and finally, that of a novelist eager to communicate to his readers the problems of despair and lack of enlightenment encountered among the people of his oppressed nation. Central to these three roles, the theme of alienation has been expounded with a view to understanding the predicament of a sick society - that of post­ war Spain. As we see it, the dominant role of Martin-Santos was that of a professional psychiatrist, whose ideas and preoccupations greatly pervade the spirit of his philosophical and novelistic writings.

As a philosopher, Martin-Santos turned his attention to the estrangement of his contemporaries from their potential for growth as social beings. Having once been a Catholic student, living in obedience to the dogmatic teachings of the Church, he later became a staunch opponent of religion, refuting all authoritarian views or beliefs which might impede the growth of personal ideas. As a Socialist, he attacked the political body of his country for perpetuating repression, the effects of which surely afflicted the spirit of a people already abated by the disasters of two major wars (the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War).

A dynamic reformer in his time, Martin-Santos was strongly antagonistic to backwardness and stagnation. An advocate of 302

change, he condemned all conformist attitudes, most particularly his compatriots' acceptance of the conventional life style imposed by their socio-cultural system. Through the fictional world of his novels, we have witnessed a condemnation of the myths blocking the thought processes of Spaniards for many generations and enslaving them to their past. As a dialectician, Martin-Santos invoked the need to transcend history, in order to correct the errors of the past and bring positive changes to the present and future.

Greatly influenced by the Existentialist movement of his epoch, Martin-Santos also became an advocate of freedom as the basic requirement for self-expression and creativity. Rejecting the ethics of silence and resignation imposed by an oppressive cultural system upon the minds of the Spaniards of his age, he formulated Spain's loss of identity through the plight of the protagonists of his two novels. These novels portray a world in which freedom has failed completely, and where people have given up being individuals in their own right. Through his desire to change the world in a grand way - by creating the new myths of the future -, their author visualized the advent of a sane society, cured of its stagnation and immobility; a society in which love and friendship would dominate the lives of human beings.

Opposed to this idealistic vision of redemption came his apparent disillusion with life, illustrated by a recurrent lamentation on human mortality. His defeatism was reflected in his cynical turn of mind, and in the potent irony he displayed in his fiction on many occasions. What he showed himself most cynical about was the possibility of a change of attitude in his contemporaries; a change 303

that would have made them yearn for the ethical regeneration of their homeland. His lack of faith in human love or fellowship stood in clear contradiction with the moods of exaltation he expressed in his philosophical comments on the advent of a positive future. He indicated in some of his apologues that life was absurd, and that it was therefore pointless to strive to change the world. According to the pessimistic narrator of these stories, human beings are irrational and unpredictable; a view which profoundly contradicts that of the professional psychiatrist concerned with social issues and eager to see human relationships flourish in a loving community.

It was as a psychiatrist that Martin-Santos placed human relationships at the forefront in determining the mental health of the patients under his care. Empathy with others, he stressed, led to sanity; and, as opposed to empathy, estrangement from others could only breed neurosis and, in extreme cases, insanity. His attack on Freudian-based deterministic attitudes in psychoanalysis led him to seek an understanding of the mental patient in existential phenomenology, which concerned itself with the lived experience of the sick mind in the first instance. It was in great part his dialectical insight in psychiatry that brought him to adopt the more revolutionary views pointing to a social predominance in the make­ up of the individual.

Through an eclectic consideration of the treatment of mental illness, Martfn-Santos was able to adapt the tenets of his professional training to the appropriate situations - and to the needs - of his patients as distinct individuals. Madness came to assume a broader meaning for him, since he viewed it with an open mind. Madness, 304

as he emphasized in his medical writings, spells destruction of the mind and rupture with the world; yet at the same time it can generate a creative production in the psyche.

The dual role of Martin-Santos as a psychiatrist-novelist is most clearly felt in his linking of psychosis with social madness. With the philosophical insight of an intellectual reformer, he made notions of social psychiatry emerge from his fictional descriptions of cultural disorientation and collective madness. The aboulic society of his two novels is described as living in a deeply alienated state, resigned to oppression and to the forces of destiny. It is, before everything else, a disorientated society, whose members have opted for collective violence as the only way out of their suffering.

The irony of the psychiatrist-novelist in portraying the social illness which decimates his country gives way to a potent amplification of the fundamental problems, hence to a caricature of the Spanish situation in the two novels. The role of the creative artist is revealed through a Goyesque deformation of the social reality. The world of monsters appearing on the occasion of the Witches' Sabbath is thus an illustration of collective madness. The undialectical relationship between human beings and their world takes the aspect of a fusion of the individual with the City; a fusion eventually leading to the transformation of the inhabitants of Madrid into a gigantic monster, an octopus-like creature which grabs and crushes its victims with its powerful tentacles. Within this overall caricature of decadence and ugliness, blind violence characterizes the life of the new animal species. 305

Alienation is seen at its most dramatic level in the Kafkaesque metamorphosis of Spaniards into an alien people living in the grasp of an animal-like condition. Fear and guilt emanating from this alienated state, and corresponding to a total suppression of freedom - at the social as well as at the existential level - bring in their trail a deformation of human features, thus announcing the final degradation of a mutilated humanity. Irony is at its peak in the descriptions of a helpless species which has undergone a crippling destruction of its psychical life.

If Martin-Santos made a serious attempt to express his views on social and existential reform through his philosophical as well as medical writings, his success in justifying all visions of revolutionary change arose most powerfully from the dilemma of the protagonists of his two novels. Indeed, the psychological preoccupations of Pedro and Agustin externalize most vividly the psychiatric concerns of a world suffering from neurosis and alienation. With his portrayal of a bewildered society drifting towards its final downfall, Martin-Santos illustrated the deteriorating aspects of insanity, thus raising the issue of an urgent cure and regeneration of the spirit of his homeland. 306

Agpepdix.

Tiempo de destrucci6n is divided into three parts, each tracing the evolution of Agustin within the bounds of the alienated world of Spanish provincial life. Part One describes his childhood and adolescence in Villaflorida 1, as well as his student years at the University of Salamanca, a seat of Spanish culture and tradition. A shy and self-centered youth, Agustin is confronted with what he sees as a potent dilemma; that is, his preoccupation with losing his innocence by launching himself into a cold and hostile world. As a scholar who strongly rebels against tradition, he will seek to emancipate himself from all established values and authority. Life in Villaflorida unfolds in an atmosphere of torpid dullness. The general impression that emanates from the account of village life is one of backwardness: devoid of all personality and spirit of initiative, the brutish population of this small town passively drifts along with the tide of everyday life. The educated elite presiding over this lower country life is represented by Demetrios, the local schoolteacher and father of Agustin. Shown as an unduly strict paternal figure who does not spare his children any punishment, Demetrios firmly intends to develop in his offspring not only a sound education, but also what he sees as the right attitude to life, in other words, the respect of social conventions and long-established values. A vivid contrast to this intellectual elite appears in the person of Uncle Bias, the brutal veterinary surgeon who mistreats all living beings under his care. It is in Bias' household that the most tragic specimen of human alienation is evinced; namely, Agueda, his own daughter and the deaf-and-mute cousin on whom Agustin proceeds to 3ffl

elaborate various behavioural theories in the hope of rescuing her humanity. As his teenage years draw to a close, the youth is becoming less egotistical, and begins to show his concern for social problems.

Agustin's graduation as a judge marks the end of his years as a student, and precipitates his leaving home and his province. His decision to change the world through establishing new social laws ushers in Part Two of the novel. Agustin has been sent to Tolosa - an industrial town in the Northern province of Guipuzcoa- on a work assignment, in fact, to investigate a murder; no doubt an allegory of his search for truth and enlightenment. It is at the carnival of Tolosa that he discovers the life of the region, with its violent folkloric customs and the rowdy habits of a population prone to vice and brutality. In his investigation of the crime, he comes to know members of the diverse social classes, from the idiotic, mute-like lower proletariat to the idle and insipid wealthy bourgeoisie. The imbecility prevalent in all classes of society exhorts him to meditate upon the need to change all set values and eradicate the overwhelming bad faith unveiled through the dishonest attitude of his co-citizens. The only figure Agustin acknowledges as a real person is Constanza, who rapidly becomes a close friend of his and prepares herself to accompany him in his confrontation of life's challenges.

Part Three introduces Constanza's family, describing her origins. Shunning her upper-bourgeois heritage of social rigidity and conformism, Constanza undertakes to travel with Agustin to his birth-place and become acquainted with a different way of life. In 308

this last part of the novel, the main protagonist assumes, more than ever before, the role of the author, by proceeding to debunk the stale myths that have paralyzed the life of the nation for many centuries. In the context of the profanation of the most sacred myths, various voices emerging from an obscure past narrate the section entitled "Aquelarre". In the unique, unpolished version of this episode, laments on history are heard, dominated by the notion that the past has enslaved the present and future of Spaniards for many generations. According to additional information supplied in the prologue, Agustin and Constanza depart for San Vicente de Sonsierra, a renown place of pilgrimage, where they will participate in the celebrations of the Holy Week in order to decipher the meaning of myths. There, at the time of their possible death, the devastating effects of myths on the life of a people will be evaluated, and lamented by the spirit of Agustin.

The ambiguous ending of this unfinished novel precludes a final conclusion as to the fate of its hero in his search for truth. The author's last lines indicate, on the one hand, the triumph of truth over the falsity of myths; yet, on the other hand, they reveal his pessimistic outlook with regard to changing a world full of lies and prone to degeneration. The victory of the main protagonist is, apparently, crowned by false glory.

Notes.

1. Villaflorida is a fictitious name for Villaflores, a small township North-East of Salamanca. 309

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works by Martin-Santos

Grana Gris, Madrid, Afrodisio Aguado,1945.

"El problema de la alucinosis alcoh6lica", Aetas Luso-espafiolas de Neurololtia y Psiguiatria, Vol.9, Madrid, 1950.

"El psicoanalisis existencial de Jean-Paul Sartre", Aetas Luso­ espafiolas de Neurologia y Psiquiatria, Vol.9, Madrid, 1950.

"Ideas delirantes primarias, esquizofrenia y psicosis alcoh6lica aguda", Aetas Luso-espafiolas de Neurololtia y Psiguiatria, Vol.11, No.1, Madrid, 1952. "La critica de los recuerdos delirantes", Aetas Luso-espafiolas de Neurololtia y Psiquiatria, Vol.12, No.1, Madrid, 1953.

La influencia del pensamiento de Guillermo Dilthey sabre la psicopatologia general de Carlos Jaspers y sabre la posterior evoluci6n del metoda de la comprensi6n en psicopatologia, Madrid, Universidad Central, Facultad de Medicina, 1953. "La paranoia alcoh6lica", Aetas Luso-espaiiolas de N eurologia y Psigyiatria, Vol.13, No.4, Madrid, 1954. "Fundamentos te6ricos del conocer psiquiatrico", Theoria, III, 9, Oct. 1955.

"Jaspers y Freud", Revista de Psiguiatria y Psicologia Medica, Vol.2, No.5, Barcelona, 1956.

"Descripci6n fenomenol6gica y analisis existencial de algunas psicosis epilepticas agudas", Reyista de Psigyiatria y Psicologia Medica, Vol.5, No.1, Barcelona, 1961. Tiempo de silencio, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1962.

Libertad. temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoancHisis existencial, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1964.

"El plus sexual del hombre, el amor y el.erotismo", Tiempo de Espana, III, Insula, Madrid, 1965, PP.117-130. Ap6logos, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1970.

De Prometeo: palabras para yna tragedia, Burgos, 1970.

Tiempo de destrucci6n, Barcelona, Seix Barra!, 1975. 310

Primary Bibliography

ABAD NEBOT, F. El signo literario, Madrid, Colecci6n Edaf Universitaria, 1977.

ANDERSON, Reed. "Luis Martin-Santos and Juan Goytisolo: Irony and Satire in the Contemporary Spanish Novel", Orbis Litterarum., 33 (1978), PP.359-374. ANDERSON, Robert Kent. Tiemvo de silencio:: Myth and Social Reality, St. Louis University, 1973. ANDERSON, Robert Kent. "Myth in Tiempo de silencio", Pacific Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages, Proceedings, Vol.29, No.1, 1978: 151-154. ANDERSON, Robert Kent. "Self-Estrangement in Tiempo de silencio", Reyista de Estudios Hispanicos, No.13, 1979, PP.299-317.

AUMENTE, Jose. "Un libro p6stumo de Luis Martin-Santos", Insula, No.220, Marzo 1965, P.12. BENET, Juan. Otoiio en Madrid hacia 1950, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1987, PP.109-141: "Luis Martin-Santos, un memento".

BUCKLEY, Ramon. Problemas formales en la novela espanola contemporsinea, Barcelona, Ediciones Peninsula, 1968, PP.195-209: "Tiempo de silencio, de Luis Martfn-Santos".

BUCKLEY, Ramon. "Del realismo social al realismo dialectico", Insula, No.326 (1974), PP. 1 & 4. CABRERA, Vicente. "Elaboraci6n tematica de Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martin-Santos", Sin nombre (Puerto Rico), Vol.3, No.3, 1973, PP.64-74.

CABRERA, Vicente. "Tiempo de silencio", Duguesne Hispanic Review, Vol.10, 1971, PP.31-47.

CARENAS, Francisco, & Jose Ferrando. La sociedad espanola en la novela de la post@erra, New York, Eliseo Torres & Sons, 1971, PP.117-144: "Psicologia, lenguaje y existencia en Tiempo de silencio".

CASTELLET, Jose Maria. "La litterature espagnole et le temps de la destruction", Lettres Nouvelles, Mars-avril 1968, PP.113-131. 311

CAVIGLIA, John. "A Simple Question of Symmetry: Psyche as Structure in Tiempo de silencio", Hispania, 60, 1977, PP.452-460.

CHANTRAINE de VAN PRAAG, J. "U n malogrado novelista contemporaneo", Cuadernos Americanos (Mexico), Vol.24 (5), 1965, PP.269-275. CHANTRAINE de VAN PRAAG, J. "Tiempo de silencio, de Luis Martin-Santos", Les Langues Neo-Latines, No.175, die. 1965-enero 1966, PP.39-45. CHANTRAINE de VAN PRAAG, J. "Tiempo de silencio: : obra clave de la novelistica de lengua espanola", Aetas del Sexto Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas: celebrado en Toronto del 22 al 26 de agosto de 1977, PP .195-197.

CLOTAS, Salvador. "Pr6logo" a los Ap6logos de Luis Martin­ Santos, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1970, PP.7-19.

CONTE, Rafael. "En el umbral del misterio: Luis Martin­ Santos y su Tiempo de destrucci6n", Insula, Nos.344-345, julio-agosto 1975, P.25. CORRALES EGEA, Jose. La noyela espanola actual, Madrid, Cuademos para el dialogo, 1971, PP.142-145.

CRAIGE, Betty Jean. "Tiempo de silencio:: Le Grand Bouc and the maestro", Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, No.13, 1979, PP.99-113. CURUTCHET, Juan Carlos. Introc1ucci6n ala novela espanola de postiDJ,erra, Montevideo, Editorial Alfa, 1966.

CURUTCHET, Juan Carlos. "Luis Martin-Santos, el fundador", Cuadernos de Ruedo Iberico, No.17, Feb.­ Marzo1968, PP.3-18.

CURUTCHET, Juan Carlos. "Luis Martin-Santos, el fundador", Cuadernos de Ruedo Iberico, No.18, Abril-mayo 1968, PP.3-15. DIAZ, Janet Winecoff. "Luis Martin-Santos and the Contemporary Spanish Novel", Hispania, Vol.51, No.2, May 1968, PP.232-238. DIAZ, Janet Winecoff. "Martin-Santos, Luis. Ap6logos " , Books of the Hispanic World, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, P .396. 312

DIAZ, Janet Winecoff. "The Spanish Novel from Ortega to Castellet: Dehumanization of the Artist", Hispania, 50, 1967' pp.35-43. DIAZ, Janet Winecoff. "Techniques of Alienation in Recent Spanish Novels", Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, Vol.3, 1975, PP.5-16.

DOMENECH, Ricardo. "Ante una novela irrepetible", Insula, Vol.17, No.187, Junia 1962, P.4.

DOMENECH, Ricardo. "Luis Martin-Santos", Insula, Vols.19- 20, No.208, Marzo 1964, P.4. DUQUE, Aquilino. "Realismo pueblerino y realismo suburbano", Indice, Vo1.17, No.185, 1964, PP.9-10.

DURAN, Manuel. "Spanish Literature since the War", .Q.n Contemporary Literature, Discus Books, 1969, PP.193-203.

FEAL DEIBE, Carlos. "Consideraciones sicoanaliticas sobre Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martin-Santos", Revista Hispanica Moderna, Vol.36, 1970-71, PP.117-127.

FEAL DEIBE, Carlos. "En torno al casticismo de Pedro: El principia y el fin de Tiempo de silencio ", Revista Iberoamericana, Vol.47, Nos.116-117, Julio'-dic.1981, PP.203-211. FRANZ, Thomas R. "Baroja's Science in Martin-Santos' Time", His.pania, No.66 (3), 1983, PP.324-332. GARCIASOL, Ramon de. "Un espa:iiol malogrado: Luis Martfn-Santos", Cultura Universitaria, Caracas, No.92, Junio-sept. 1966, PP.71-76. GEORGESCU, P.A. "Lo real y lo actual en Tiempo de silencio, de Luis Martfn-Santos", Nueva Revista de Filologfa Hispanica, Vol.20, 1971, PP.114-120. GIL CASADO, Pablo. La novela social en Espa:iia (1942-1965), Madison, University ofWisconsin, 1967, PP.253-279. GRANDE, Felix. "Luis Martfn-Santos":Tiempo de silencio ", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 158, Feb. 1963, PP.337-342.

GUILLERMO, E. & J.A. Hernandez. Noyelistica espanola de los sesenta, New York, Eliseo Torres, 1971, PP.45-63: Tiempo de silencio. GULLON, Ricardo. "Mitos 6rficos y cancer social", El Urogallo, No.17, 1972, PP.S0-89. 313

HOLZINGER, W. "Tiempo de silencio : An Analysis", Revista Hispanica Moderna, 37,1972-73, PP.73-90. JOHNSON, Roberta. "El arbol de la ciencia and Tiempo de silencio in Light of Ortega's Ideas on Science", La Chispa '83, Selected Proceedings, New Orleans, Tulane University, 1983, pp.135-141.

KUBOW, Sally Ann Hargrave. The Novel as Irony: Luis Martfn-Santos' Tiempo de silencio , Riverside, University of California, Dec. 1978. LABANYI, J o. Ironia e historia en Tiempo de silencio , Madrid, Taurus, 1983.

LOPEZ, Fran~ois. L'Individu et la ville dans le roman espagnol contemporain, Paris, Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982, PP.65-73: "L'Individu et la ville dans le roman espagnol contemporain". LUNA, Norman. "Parallel, Parody and Satire in Tiempo de silencio ", Reyista de Estudios Hispanicos, Vol.18 (2), May 1984, PP.241-257.

LYON, J.E. "Don Pedro's Complicity: An Existential Dimension of Tiempo de silencio ", Modern Language Review, 74, 1979, PP.69-78. MAINER, Jose Carlos. "Luis Martin-Santos, de Tiempo de silencio a Tiempo de destrucci6n ", Travaux de l'Uniyersite de Toulouse-le-Mirail -13, 1981, PP.53-65 in "Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martin-Santos, Seiias de identidad de Juan Goytisolo: Deux Romans de la Rupture?" MAINER, Jose Carlos. "Pr6logo a Tiempo de destrucci6n II' PP .9-42 in Tiempo de destrucci6n , Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1975. MORAN, Fernando. Novela y semidesarrollo, Madrid, Taurus, 1971, PP.381-388: "Tiempo de silencio - Realismo de segundo grado. Las categorias de la vida intelectual y el semidesarrollo".

MORRISON, Jane. "Of Mice and Men: Cancer as Metaphor in Tiempo de silencio ", Confluencia, 3 (2), 1988, PP.3-9. ORTEGA, Jose. "Aproximaci6n al realismo dialectico de Tiempo de destrucci6n ", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.101, No.303, 1975, PP.692-703.

ORTEGA, Jose. "Compromiso formal de Martin-Santos en Tiempo de silencio ", Hispan6fila, No.37, 1969, PP.23-30. 314

ORTEGA, Jose. "Luces de Bohemia y Tiempo de silencio : Dos concepciones del absurdo espanol", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, No.317 (1976), PP.303-318.

ORTEGA, Jose. "Realismo dialectico de Martin-Santos en Tiempo de silent;io ", Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, No.3, 1969, PP.33-42.

ORTEGA, Jose. "La sociedad espanola contemporanea en Tiempo de silencio de Martin-Santos", Symposium, Vol.22, Fall1968, PP.256-260.

ORTEGA, Jose. "La tecnica del esperpento en Tiempo de silencio de Martin-Santos", Nueva Estafeta, No.7 (1979), PP.56-62. PALLEY, Julian. "The Periplus of Don Pedro: Tiempo de silencio ",Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 48 (1971), PP.239- 254. PEREZ FIRMAT, Gustavo. "Repetition and Excess in Tiempo de silencio ", Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, No.96, 1981, PP.194-209.

REY, Alfonso. Construcci6n y sentido de Tiempo de silencio , Madrid, Ediciones Jose Pornia Turanzas, 1977.

ROBERTS, Gemma. Temas existenciales en la novela espanola de postguerra, Madrid, Ediciones Gredos, 1973, PP.129-203: "El fracaso".

ROBERTS, Gemma. "Conflicto entre raz6n y vida en Tiempo de destrucci6n ",Insula, 396-397 (1979), PP.10-11.

ROMERA CASTILLO, Jose. "Luis Martin-Santos: Entre la auscultaci6n de la realidad y el analisis dialectico", Insula, 358 (1976), P.5.

ROUQUIE, Alain. "Situation de Luis Martin-Santos", ~ Lanfrnes Modemes, Jan.30-fev.5, 1965, PP.97-100.

RUIZ SALVADOR, Antonio. "Exaltaci6n de la miseria: El enfoque satirico en Tiempo de silencio ", Reyista de Estudios Hispanicos, 6,1979, PP.41-49.

SALUDES, Esperanza G. La narrativa de Luis Martin-Santos a la luz de la psicologia, Miami, Ediciones Universal, 1981.

SALUDES, Esperanza G. "Presencia de Ortega y Gasset en la novela Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martin-Santos", Hispanic Journal, 3 (2), Spring 1982, PP.91-103. 315

SANTOS AMESTOY, D. "Luis Martin-Santos: Libertad, temporalidad y transferencia en el psicoantilisis existencial", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, No.183, March 1965, PP.657-663.

SANZ VILLANUEVA, Santos. Tendencias de la novela espanola actual (1950-1970), Madrid, Cuadernos para el dialogo, 1972, PP.134-140: "La alienaci6n".

SCHRAIBMAN, Jose. "Notas sobre la novela espanola contemporanea", Revista Hispanica Moderna, 35 (1969), PP.113-121. SCHRAIBMAN, Jose. "Tiempo de destrucci6n : l,Novela estructural?", Reyista Iberoamericana, Vol.47, Nos.116-117, 1981, PP.213-220. SCHRAIBMAN, Jose. "Tiempo de silencio y la cura psiquiatrica de un pueblo: Espana", Insula, 365, 1977, P.3.

SCHRAIBMAN, Jose & Janet W. Diaz. "Un par de charlas sobre Tiempo de silencio ", Hispan6fila, Vol.62, 1978, PP.109-120.

SEALE, Mary L. "Hangman and Victim: An Analysis of Martin-Santos' Tiempo de silencio ", Hispan6fila, 43, 1971, PP.45-52. SEGUELA, Gilberte. Le temps et la mort dans la philosophie espa@ole contemporaine, Toulouse, Editions Privat, 1968, PP.67-71: "Luis Martin-Santos: La temporalite et l'inconscient".

SOBEJANO, Gonzalo. Novela espanola de nuestro tiempo, Madrid, Editorial Prensa espanola, 1970, PP.352-365.

SOL, Manuel T. "Don Quijote en Tiempo de silencio ", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.144, No.430, 1986, PP.73-83. SPIRES, Robert C. La novela espanola de posguerra, Madrid, Cupsa, c1978, PP.176-201: "Tiempo de silencio y la Nueva Realidad".

SPIRES, Robert C. "Otro tu, yo: La creaci6n y destrucci6n del ser autentico en Tiempo de silencio ", Kentucky Romance Quarterly, Vol.22, 1975, PP.91-110.

SUAREZ GRANDA, Juan Luis. Tiempo de silencio, de Luis Martin-Santos, Madrid, Editorial Alhambra, 1986. 316

TALAHITE, Claude. "Tiempo de silencio , une ecriture de silence", Centre d'Etudes et Recherches Sociocritiques, No.1, Novembre 1980, Montpellier. TENA, Jean. "Pour une lecture de Tiempo de silencio ",Centre d'Etudes et Recherches Sociocritigues, No.1, Novembre 1980, Montpellier. VILLARINO, Alfonso. Amilisis e interpretacion de Tiempo de silencio , Department of Spanish, Case Western Reserve University, August 1972.

VILLEGAS, Juan. La estructura mftica del heroe en la noyela del siglo XX, Barcelona, Ediciones Planeta, 1973, PP.203- 230: "La aventura en un mundo mitificadamente desmitificado: Tiempo de silencio de Luis Martfn-Santos". WALLER, Myriam. "The Ethics of Existentialism in Tiempo de silencio ", PP.174-181 in Reflexi6n (Revista canadiense de estudios hispanicos), Carleton University, Vols.3-4, 1974-75. ZULUETA, Carmen de. "El mon6logo interior de Pedro en Tiempo de silencio ",Hispanic Review, 45,1977, PP.297-309. 31.7

Secondary Bibliography.

ALBERES, R.M. & P. de Boisdeffre. Kafka: The Torment of Man, New York, The Citadel Press, 1968.

ALONSO del CAMPO, Urbano. La comunicaci6n humana, Departamento de Psicologia Experimental, Secci6n de Psicologia, Facultad de Filosofia y Ciencias de la Educaci6n, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1980. ALVAREZ PALACIOS, Fernando. Novela y cultura espanola de postguerra, Madrid, Cuadernos para el dialogo, 1975. ARANGUREN, Jose Luis L6pez. La cultura espanola y la cultura establecida, Madrid, Taurus, 1975.

ARIETI, Silvano. Interpretation of Schizophrenia, London, Crosby Lockwood Staples, 1974. ARON, Raymond. Marxism and the Existentialists, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1970. ARONSON, Ronald. Jean-Paul Sartre - Philosophy in the World, London, NLB, 1980. · BAN, Thomas A. Conditioning- and Psychiatrv, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1966. BANTON, Michael, ed. Darwinism and the Study of Society- A Centenary Symposium, London, Tavistock Publications, 1961. BAROJA, Pio. El arbol de la ciencia, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1981. BARROW, Leo L. Nef:ation in Baroja- A Key to His Novelistic Creativity, Tucson, The University of Arizona Press, 1971.

BASTIDE, Roger. The Sociolog-y of Mental Disorder, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. BINSWANGER, Ludwig. Being-in-the-World, London, Souvenir Press, 1975.

BLANE, Howard T. The Personality of the Alcoholic: Guises of Dependency, New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

BLEIBERG, German & E. Inman Fox, eds. Spanish Thouf:ht and Letters in the Twentieth Century, Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 1966. 318

BLEULER, Eugen. Dementia Praecox or The Group of Schizophrenias, New York, International Universities Press, 1955.

BORELLI, Mary. :Valle-Inclan, Poet of Sarcasm", Hispania, 44,1961, PP.266-268. BOZAL, Valeriano. "Quevedo y Goya", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.121, Nos.361-362, 1980: 112-127.

BROWN, G.G. A Literary History of Spain - The Twentieth Century, London, Ernest Benn, 1972.

BROWN, Phil, ed. Radical Psychology, London, Tavistock Publications, 1973.

BRUNEL, Pierre. Le mythe de la metamorphose, Paris, Armand Colin, 1974.

BURTON, Arthur, J.J. Lopez Ibor & W.M. Mendel. Schizophrenia as a Life Style, New York, Springer Publishing Co., 1974.

CARANDELL, Luis. Los espaiioles, Barcelona, Editorial Estela, 1971.

CARDONA, Rodolfo & Anthony N. Zahareas. Vision del Espernento, Madrid, Editorial Castalia, 1970.

CARR, Raymond & Juan Pablo Fusi Aizpurna. Spain: Dictatorship to Democracy, London, Allen & Unwin, 1979.

CASTILLA del PINO, Carlos. La culpa, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1979. CASTILLA del PINO, Carlos. El humanismo imposible, Madrid, Ediciones Taurus, 1975. CASTILLA del PINO, Carlos. Psicoancilisis y marxismo, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1971.

CASTILLA del PINO, Carlos. Yieja y nueya psiguiatria, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1978.

CASTRO, Americo. La realidad historica de Espana, Mexico, Editorial PorrU.a, 1966.

CELA, Camilo Jose. La colmena, Barcelona, Editorial Noguer, 1967. CELA, Camilo Jose. Pabellon de reposo, Barcelona, Ediciones Destino, 1957. 319

CHABRUN, Jean-Fran~ois . .GQ.m, London, Thames & Hudson, 1965. CHARME, Stuart L. Meaning and Mvth in the Study of Lives - A Sartrean Perspective, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. CONDRAU, Gion. Angustia y culpa. problemas fundamentales de la psicoterapia, Madrid, Editorial Gredos, 1968.

COOPER, David, ed. The Dialectics of Liberation, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1971. COOPER, David. Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry, London, Tavistock Publications, 1967.

COPLESTON, Frederick S.J. Arthur Schopenhauer - Philosopher of Pessimism, London, Burns Oates & VVashbourne,1947.

CUMMING, Robert Denoon, ed. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, New York, Vintage Books, 1965.

DARTIGUES, Andre. Qu'est-ce gue la phenomenoloiie?, Toulouse, Edouard Privat, 1972. DENTAN, Michel. Humour et creation litteraire dans !'oeuvre de Kafka, Geneve, Droz, 1961.

DIAZ, Elias. Socialismo en Espaiia: el Partido y el Estado, Madrid, Editorial Mezquita, 1982. DILTHEY, VVilhelm. Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff,. 1977.

DILTHEY, VVilhelm. Dilthey's Philosophy of Existence: Introduction to Weltanschauungslehre, London, Vision Press, 1960. DISERTORI, Beppino & Marcella Piazza. La psychiatrie sociale, Paris, Editions E.S.F., 1975. DONAHUE, Francis. "Cela and Spanish Tremendismo ", VVestern Humanities Review, 20,1966, PP.301-306. DURAN, Manuel. "El Baroja esencial: El arbol de la ciencia ", Insula, 27 (1972), Nos.308-309, PP. 1,14-15.

DURKHEIM, Emile. The Division of Labour in Society, New York, The Free Press, 1965. EBANKS, Gerardo. La Espana de Baroja, Madrid, Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1974, PP.167-282.

ELIADE, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return, New York, Pantheon Books, 1954.

ELIASBERG, Wladimir G. Psychotherapy and Society, New York, Philosophical Library, 1959.

ELLER, Kenneth. "The Autobiographical Sources of Baroja's El arbol de la ciencia ", Reyista de Estudios Hispanicos, Vol.12, 1978, PP.323-335.

ELORZA, Antonio. "El realismo critico de Pio Baroja", Reyista de Occidente, 21,1968, PP.151-173.

EY, Henri. La conscience, Paris, Desclee de Brouwer, 1983.

EY, Henri, P. Bernard & Ch. Brisset. Tratado de psiquiatria, Barcelona, Toray-Masson, 1971.

FEDIDA, Pierre, ed. Phenomenologie. Psychiatrie. Psychanalyse, Paris, Editions G.R.E.U.P.P., 1986.

FERRERAS, Juan Ignacio. "La generaci6n del silencio: Ensayo sobre un novelar de la posguerra espanola", PP.154-212 in Fascismo y experiencia literaria: reflexiones para una recanonizaci6n, edited by Hernan Vidal, Minneapolis, Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1985.

FOUCAULT, Michel. Mental Illness and Psychology, New York, Harper & Row, 1976.

FOULQUIE, Paul. La dialectica, Barcelona, Vergara Editorial, 1958. FRANKL, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1964. FRANKL, Viktor E. Psychotherapy and Existentialism, London, Souvenir Press, 1967.

FREUD, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1961. FROMM, Erich. Beyond the Chains of Illusion, New York, Simon & Schuster 1962, PP.43-62: "The Sick Individual and the Sick Society".

FROMM, Erich. The Fear of Freedom, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960. 321

FROMM, Erich. Man for Himself, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967. FROMM, Erich. The Sane Society, New York, Fawcett Premier, 1985. FURSAY-FUSSWERK, Joseph. La chute des idoles, Toulouse, Editions Privat, 1986.

GABEL, Joseph. La fausse conscience - Essai sur la reification, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1962.

GABEL, Joseph. "Kafka, romancier de !'alienation", CritiQue, Nos.74-79, 1953, PP.949-960. GALLO, Max. Historia de la Espana franCJ.Yista, Madrid, Ruedo Iberico, 1971.

GANNET, Angel. Idearium espaiiol y el porvenir de Espana, Buenos Aires, Espasa-Calpe Argentina, 1949. GENTIS, Roger & Horace Torrubia, eds. Locura por locura, Buenos Aires, Granica editor, 1973.

GILMAN, Stephen & Edmund L. King, eds. An Idea of History (Selected Essays of America Castro), Columbus,. Ohio State University Press, 1977.

GLASSER, William. Reality Therapy, New York, Harper & Row, 1975. GONZALEZ DURO, Enrique. PsiQ..Uiatria y sociedad autoritaria: Espana 1939-1975, Madrid, Akal editor, 1978.

GOYTISOLO, Juan. El furg6n de cola, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1976.

GOYTISOLO, Juan. Reivindicaci6n del conde don Julian, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 1982. GOYTISOLO, Juan. "The Contemporary Spanish Novel: Crisis, Silence, and Change of Direction", Boston University Journal, Vol.19 (li), 1971, PP.24-32.

GRANJEL, Luis S. Baroja y otras figuras del 98, Madrid, Ediciones Guadarrama, 1960.

GREENFIELD, Sumner M. "Reflejos menores en el espejo c6ncavo", Insula, Vol.16, Nos.176-177, Julio-agosto 1961, P.16.

HEIDEGGER, Martin. Basic Writings, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. 322

HELMAN, Edith. Trasmundo de Goya, Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1963. HENN, David. Camilo Jose Cela- La colmena , London, Grant & Cutler, 1974. _

HERRERO, Jesus. "Ortega y su critica ala sociedad de masas", Arbor, No.359 (1975), PP.13-39.

HERRERO, Jesus. "Lo social y su contenido en la sociologfa de Ortega y Gasset", Arbor, Nos.321-322 (1972), PP.5-30. HEYWARD, Harold & Mireille Varigas. Antipsiguiatrfa, Caracas, Editorial Fundamentos, 1977.

HOBBES, Thomas. De Ciye - or The Citizen, New York, Appleton Century Crofts, 1949.

HOLLINGDALE, R.J. Nietzsche, London & Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. HUSSERL, Edmund. Idees directrices pour une phenomenologie, Paris, Editions Gallimard, 1950.

RUTMAN, Norma Louise. "Disproportionate Doom: Tragic Irony in the Spanish Post Civil War Novel", Modern Fiction Studies, 18, 1972, PP.199-206.

IGLESIAS, Carmen. El pensamiento de Pio Baroja - Ideas centrales, Mexico, Antigua Libreria Robredo, 1963. INMAN FOX, E. "Baroja and Schopenhauer: El arbol de la ciencia ",Revue de Litterature comparee, 37 (1963), PP.350- 359.

IZENBERG, Gerald N. The Existentialist Critigue of Freud, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976.

JASPERS, Karl. General Psychopatholo~y. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1964. JASPERS, Karl. The Nature of Psychotherapy, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1964. JASPERS, Karl. Philosophy, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1969.

JASPERS, Karl. Philosophy of Existence, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971.

JELLINEK, E.M. The Disease Concept of Alcoholism, New Haven, Hillhouse Press, 1960. 323

KAELBLING, Rudolf & R.M. Patterson. Eclectic Psychiatry, Springfield, Charles C. Thomas, 1966.

KAFKA, Franz. Metamorphosis and other stories, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1961.

KAFKA, Franz. The Trial, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1985. KERENYI, C. Prometheus - Archetypal Image of Human Existence, London, Thames & Hudson, 1963.

KESSEL, Neil & H. Walton. Alcoholism, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1965.

KING, Magda. Heideg~er's Philosophy, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1964.

KLAPP, Orrin E. Currents of Unrest - An Introduction to Collective Behaviour, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972.

KLAPPER, Joseph T. The Effects of Mass Communication, New York, The Free Press, 1960. KOCKELMANS, Joseph J. A First Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenolo~y, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1967.

KUNA, Franz, ed. On Kafka - Semi-Centenary Perspectives, London, Paul Elek, 1976.

LAFARGE, Rene. Jean-Paul Sartre: His Philosophy, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

LAING, R.D. The Politics of Experience, New York, Pantheon Books, 1967.

LAING, R.D. Self and Others, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1969.

LEA, F .A. The Tragic Philosopher. - A Study of Friedrich Nietzsche, London, Methuen & Co., 1972. LEBON, Gustave. The Crowd - A Study of the Popular Mind, London, Ernest Benn, 1930. ' LEE, Edward N. & Maurice Mandelbaum, eds. Phenomenolo~y and Existentialism, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967. 324

LEFEBVRE, Henri. Le materialisme dialectique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1947.

LICHT, Fred. Goya - The Origins of the Modem Temper in Art, New York, Universe Books, 1979.

LITVAK, Lily. Transformaci6n industrial y literatura en Espana (1895-1905), Madrid, Taurus, 1980.

LOPEZ IBOR, Juan Jose. El espafiol y su complejo de inferioridad, Madrid, Ediciones Rialp, 1960.

LUIJPEN, William A. Existential Phenomenology, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1960.

LUKACS, Georg. Existentialisme ou Marxisme?, Paris, Editions Nagel, 1961.

LUKACS, Georg. Histoire et conscience de classe, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1960. MACKIE, J.L. "The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of Evolution", Philosophy, 53 (1978), PP.455-464.

MACKMURDO, A.H. The Human Hiye: Its Life and Law, London, Watts, 1926.

MANN, Thomas. The Ma~c Mountain, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1960.

MANUEL GIL, Ildefonso. "En la base del esperpento", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.75, Nos.224-225, 1968, PP.611-622.

MAY, Rollo. Psychology and the Human Dilemma, Princeton, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1967. MERLOO, Joost A.M. The Rape of the Mind, Cleveland, The World Publishing Co., 1956.

MERQUIOR, J.G. Western Marxism, London, Paladin Books, 1986.

MIJOLLA, A. de & S.A. Shentoub. Pour une psychanalyse de I'alcoolisme, Paris, Editions Payot, 1973. MINKOWSKI, Eugen. Liyed Time, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1970.

MIRALLES SANGRO, Fatima. Alienaci6n: Medida y cambio, Tesis doctoral 178/82, Editorial de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1982. 325

MITCHELL, Alexander R. K. Schizophrenia: The Meanings of Madness, London, Priory Press, 1972.

MORODO, RaUl. Los origenes ideol6gicos del franguismo: Acci6n Espanola , Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1985.

MOSCOVICI, Serge. The Age of the Crowd, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1984.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1985.

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. The Will to Power, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968. ORTEGA, Jose. Juan Goytisolo, New York, Eliseo Torres, 1972.

ORTEGA, Jose. "Andres Hurtado: un estudio en alienaci6n", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.89, Nos.265-267, 1972, PP.591-599.

ORTEGA, Jose. "Fascismo y cultura franquista (1936-1945)", Texto Critico, No.14, 1979, PP.155-162. ORTEGA y GASSET, Jose. Espaiia Inyertebrada, Obras Completas, Vol.3, Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1966.

ORTEGA y GASSET, Jose. La rebeli6n de las masas, Obras Completas, Vol.4, Madrid, Revista de Occidente, 1966.

PAYNE, Stanley G. Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1961. PENA, Aniano. "La Volkerpsychologie y la vision de Espana en la Generaci6n del 98", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.111, No.331 (1978), PP.82-102.

PERKINS, Geoffrey. Contemporary Theory of Expressionism, Bern & Frankfurt, Verlag Herbert Lang & Cie., 1974.

PFEFFER, Rose. Nietzsche: Disciple of Dionysus, Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 1972. PITTMAN, David J. & C.R. Snyder, eds. Society. Culture. and Drinking Patterns, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1962.

PLANTINGA, Theodore. Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1980. 326

POVEDA de AGUSTIN, J.M. Locura y creatividad, Madrid, Editorial Alhambra, 1981. RAMA, Carlos M. Fascismo y anarauismo en la Espana contemporanea, Barcelona, Editorial Bruguera, 1979.

REICH, Wilhelm. The Mass Psychology of Fascism, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1970.

RICKMAN, H.P., ed. Meaning in History- Wilhelm Dilthey's Thoughts on History and Society, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1961. RIESMAN, David. The Lonely Crowd, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1961.

RODRIGUEZ, Enriqueta L. "El pensamiento filos6fico de Cajal", Arbor, Vol.104, No.408, 1979, PP.65-71.

ROGERS, Edith R. "Sobre el pesimismo de Baroja", Hispania, 45, 1962, PP.671-674.

ROMERO, Hector R. "Los mitos de la Espana sagrada en Reivindicaci6n del conde don Julian ", Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, 1, 1973, PP.169-185.

ROSA, Julio M. de la. "Juan Goytisolo o la destrucc16n de las raices", Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, Vol.79, No.237, 1969, PP.779-784.

SARTRE, Jean-Paul. Critique de la raison dialectique, Paris, Gallimard, 1960.

SARTRE, Jean-Paul. L'Etre et le Neant, Paris, Gallimard, 1943.

SARTRE, Jean-Paul. L'Existentialisme est un humanisme, Paris, Editions Nagel, 1970.

SARTRE, Jean-Paul. La transcendance de l'Ego, Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1966.

SCHNEIDER, Kurt. Clinical Psychopathology, New York, Grune & Stratton, 1959.

SCHOECK, Helmut & James W. Wiggins, eds. Psychiatry and Rewonsibility, Princeton, D. Van Nostrand Co., 1962.

SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur. Essays and Aphorisms, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1970.

SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur. On Human Nature, London, Allen & Unwin, 1957. 3?:1

SHAW, D .L. "The Concept of Ataraxia in the Later Novels of Baroja", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 34, 1957, PP.29-36.

SKINNER, B.F. About Behaviourism, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.

SKINNER, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, London, Jonathan Cape, 1972. SPIRES, Robert C. "La autodestrucci6n creativa en Reivindicaci6n del conde don Julian'', Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, 4,1976, PP.191-202.

STAPLETON, Timothy J. Husser! and Heidegger: The Question of a Phenomenological Beginning, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1983.

SZASZ, Thomas S. Ideology and Insanity. - Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man, New York, Anchor Books, 1970. SZASZ, Thomas S. The Mvth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, London, Seeker & Warburg, 1962. TIERNO GALVAN, Enrique. Cabos sueltos, Barcelona, Bruguera, 1982. TIERNO GALVAN, Enrique. El miedo ala raz6n, Madrid, Editorial Tecnos, 1986. TURNER, Ralph H. & Lewis M. Killian. Collectiye Behayiour, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1958. UGALDE, Lewis M. "Destruir es crear: cruzada de Baroja", Reyista de Estudios Hispanicos, Vol.3, 1969, PP.117-127.

UGARTE, Michael. "Juan Goytisolo: Unruly Disciple of Americo Castro", Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Centuzy, 7, 1979, PP.353-364.

VALLE-INCLAN, Ramon del. Luces de Bohemia, Madrid, Editorial Rua Nueva, 1943. V ASZQUEZ BIGI, A.M. "El pesimismo filos6fico europeo y la Generaci6n del 98", Reyista de Occidente, 38, Nos.113-114, 1972, PP.171-190.

WARNOCK, Mary. The Philosophy of Sartre, London, Hutchinson University Library, 1965.

WEINSTEIN, Edwin A. & Robert L. Kahn. Denial of Illness, Springfield, Charles C. Thomas, 1955. 328

WOODBRIDGE, Frederick J.E., ed. Hobbes - Selections, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958. WYERS WEBER, Frances. "Luces de Bohemia and the Impossibility of Art", Modern Language Notes, 82 (1967), PP.575-589. YOUNG-BRUEHL, Elisabeth. Freedom and Karl Jaspers' Philosophy, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1981. ZAHAREAS, Anthony. "La desvalorizaci6n del sentido tragico en el esperpento de Valle-Inclan", Insula, 18, No.203 (1963), PP.1 &15.

ZIMBERG, Sheldon, John Wallace & Sheila B. Blume, eds. Practical Approaches to Alcoholism Psychotherapy, New York, Plenum Press, 1978.