INFORMATION TO USERS

This manuscript has been reproduced firom the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly firom the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in ^ewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer.

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely afiect reproduction.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sectionssm all overlaps.with Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book.

Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.

UMI University Microtilms International A Beil & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1345 USA 313.761-4700 800.521-0600

Order Number 9130474

The prose fiction of César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro

Fisher, Jeftey Charles, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1991

Copyright ©1991 by Fisher, Jeffirey Charles. All rights reserved.

U-M-I SOON. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 481G6

THE PROæ TîîCrrCM OP CSSAR VALLEJO AND VICEN1E HÜIDOERO

DISSERTAJTCN

Presented in Partial Pulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Jeffrey Charles Pisher, B.A., M.A.

*****

Ihe Ohio State University 1991

Dissertation Committee; Approved by Jaime Giordano Josaphat Kubayanda Advl^r Abril Trigo-Ehlers Department of Spanish and Portuguese Copyri^t by Jeffrey Charles "Pisher 1991 To My ■Pamlly, Especially Diane

ii ACKNCWLEDGETENTS

I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Stephen Sunmerhill for the special attention he gave to this project and, most especially, for his unremitting encouragement without which this study would still be only an idea. I would also like to thank Dr. Grinor Rojo for his frequent guidance and valuable input as well as for the initial stimulus to write about the prose fiction of César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro. I am truly indebted to Dr. Jaime Giordano for his willingness to agree to direct a thesis already in progress and, most particularly, for giving so graciously of his time and considerable expertise. Many thanks go also to Dr. Josaphat Kubayanda vôio despite having plenty to deal with still found time to read my manuscript and offer valuable direction. Let me express, too, my appreciation to Dr. Jorge Abril Trigo-Ehlers for kindly consenting to serve on my Reading Committee. This project could not have been entirely canplete if it had not been for the Tiriker Foundation Travel Grant which I received in 1986 and which permitted me to travel to Peru, Chile and Argentina that same year. During my visit I was graciously received and assisted by Dr. Alberto Escobar, in Peru, and by Mr. Vicente Huidobro Portales, in Chile. I also had the generous help of Dr. Hugo Montes, respected authority on Vicente Huidobro. Finally, none of this would have been possible without the love, patience and good faith of my parents, my wife, Diane, and my daughters, Sarah and Amy.

iii Y l T k

May 20, 1 9 5 1...... B o m - Columbus, Ohio

1 9 7 4 ...... B.A., Chlo State University, Columbus, Ohio

1977-1986 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Spanish and Italian, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1 9 7 9 ...... M.A., Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

198 6...... Recipient Tinker Foundation Travel Grant

1986, 1 9 8...... 7 Graduate Teaching Associate Latin American Studies, Chio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1987 ...... Graduate Administrative Associate, Translator Spanish and Italian, Columbian Quincentenary Committee, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1986-1988 ...... Visiting Instructor, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Œiio

FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese Studies in Narrative Genre, Spain and Spanish America: Professors Grinor Rojo, Stephen Sunmerhill, Salvador Garcia and Margarita Levisi Studies in Colonial and Nineteenth Century Latin American Literature: Professor Grinor Rojo Minor Field: Italian Language and Literature iv TAELE OE C Œ S m ïS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii VITA ...... iv PREFACE ...... 1 CHAPTER PAGE I. JNTRGDÜCTICN ...... 9 Latin-American Development frcxn the Final Decades of ttie XIXth Century until the 1930 ’ s ...... 9 Literary H i s t o r y ...... 22 Avant>-Garde Narrative...... 34 César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro as Writers of F i c t i o n ...... 57 II. THE PROSE FICTTCN OF CESAR VALLEJO...... 77 Circumstances of Production...... 77 Critical Reaction...... 82 Parameters of Itextual An a l y s i s ...... 86 Escalas melografiadas (1923) and Fabla salvaje ( 1 9 2 3 ) ...... 90 Hacia el reino de losSciris (1924-1927) .... 110 Tungsteno (1931) and the subsequent unpublished short stories (1931-1934): remnants of the avant-garde...... 125 III. THE PROSE FICTION OF VICENTE HÜ I D O E R O ...... 163 Circumstances of Production...... l63 Critical Reaction...... l67 Mlo Cid Campeador. Hazaha (1929)...... 173 Ca^iostro. Novela-film Tl934)...... 197 Satiro o El poder de las' palabras (1939) .... 218 CONCLUSIŒ ...... 244 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 248 PREPACE

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the clarification of the origins and nature of the Spanishr-Merican avant-garde of the -twenties and thirties by undertaking a careful s-tudy of the novels and short fiction of two central figures of the Spanish-American avan-t-garde : César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro. It is believed that original analyses of these represen-bative works of Spanish-American a-vant-garde prose fiction, concentrating on what is unique to their production, will serve to explain both the indi-vidual works and the -yanguardis-ta phenomenon. Ihe li-fcerary avan-t-gardes of the 1920’s and 1930’s and the abstract theoretical constructs Modernism/the Avant>-Garde formula-fced to contain them have been, especially in recent years, the subjects of much scholarship. In Latin America, the tendency toward theoretical abstraction and Eurocentrism in this debate prompted some critics to counter with the question: VIhat is the peculiar na-fcure of the Spanish-American avant-garde? As early as 1928, José Carlos Maria-tegui sou^t to answer this question as he put forward a new theory of Peru-vian li-cerary history in "El proceso de la literatzira," the seventh essay of his Siete ensayos de in-terpre-tacion de la realidad peruana. Employing the methods of historical ma-terialism, Mariategui concluded that the cosmopolitanism of the Peruvian avan"t-

1 2 garde represented not a form of servile imitation but, rather, an important step toward artistic independence and the forging of a national literature. Because a cosmopolitan importation of European and U.S. literary techniques and content promoted the breakdown of longstanding colonialist ties with mother Spain it exerted a liberating effect upon local authors. As a corollary, the experimentalist climate created by the avant-garde led full circle to the intensification of interest in local forms and techniques. ]ji the final paragraph of his essay, Mariategui summarized his analysis as follows:

. . . cosmopolitismo se traduce, en la imitacion entre otras cosas de no pocos corrosivos decadentismos occi­ dentales y en la adopciôn de atérquicas modas fini- seculares. Pero, bajo este flujo precario, un nuevo sentimiento, una nueva revelaciôn se anuncian. Por los caminos universales, ecuménicos, que tento se nos repro- chan, nos vamos acercando cada vez mas a nosotros mismos.^

And, it was for these same reasons that Mariategui declared, in assessing the importance of Peruvian writer César Vallejo's experimental poetry, that:

Este arte senala el nacimiento de una nueva sensi- bilidad. Es un arte nuevo, un arte rebelde, que rompe con la tradicion cortesana de una literatera de bufones y lacayos. Este lenguaje es el de un poeta y un hcxnbre. El gran poeta de Los Keraldos Negros y de Trilce— ese gran poete. que ha pasado ignorado y desconocido por las calles de Lima tan propicias y rendidas a los laureles de los juglares de feria — se présenta, en su arte, ccxno un precursor del nuevo espîritu, de la nueva conciencia.^ 3 Mariategui's Siete ensayos inspired a fundamental réévaluation of Latin American reality vôiich continues to this day. Literary critics who have strived to continue his line of analysis include Juan Marinello, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Angel Rama and Françoise Perus, amcxig others. Ihe models and inspiration for this project are the pivotal works of Françoise Perus^ and Angel Rama^ on the avant-garde’s immediate antecedent modemismo and the literary production of its most prominent figure, Ruben Dario. In their respective studies, Rama and Perus utilize a sociohistorical approach to precisely define the conditions within vhich the Nicaraguan writer produced his poetry (and, in Rama's analysis, his prose) and relate them to its form and content. In particular, their conclusions concerning the implantation of a dependent capitalism in Latin America and its impact upon the form and substance of Spanish-American literary production resulted in a major revision of traditional thinking about modemismo. From the outset, the perspective, methods and basic format anployed by Rama and Perus have appeared readily applicable to the different but related problem of the Spanish-American avan't-garde.5 it only remained to choose a suitable corpus and adapt or modify as well as update the documentation and theoretical apparatus. Ihe decision to study the narrative fiction of César Vallejo and Vicenta Huidobro is based on several key criteria. First and foremost is the desire to analyze the production of a figure or figures vho were central in determining the shape of the Spanish- American avant-garde. Ihe choice to concentrate on the prose fiction 4 of these authors, all of vhose reputations rest primarily on their poetic out^t, originates precisely in the less well-known nature of these works. Finally, avant-garde narrative, of vhich the novels and short fiction of Vallejo and Huidobro are some of the best and most representative examples, possesses a unique po’tential for revealing the sociohistorical dynamics of the Spanish-Merican avant-­ garde promotion and the Impact of capitalism in Latin America on the production of art. A valuable by-product of these investigations is expected to be the dispelling of a widely disseminated misconception within the criticism on Spanish-American •twentieth-century rarrative : that is, that the great -technical transformation in Spanish-American narrative, the passage from the old, pre-modem writing to a new, modem one takes place in the 1950's and 1960's. "Diis position is forcefully argued by Carlos Fuentes^ and Mario Vargas Llosa^, for example. Ihe present study will danonstrate that, on the contrary, the great -technical transformation in Spanish-American narrative in fact takes place much earlier during the decade of the twenties. The basic structure of my dissertation, then, reflects its origins and articulates a causal relationship to show how economic changes produce social changes which in t u m provide the environment for political, ideological and cultural change. Ihis is accomplished, however, without disregarding the relative autonomy of each sphere of acti-vl-fcy nor their intarrelationship and mutual influence. Such an approach combines general history, li-terary history and a close -textual analysis. Regarding this last point, the analyses 5 are carried out with attention to the use by Vallejo and Huidobro of the most characteristic strategies of avant-garde narrative in Europe (to a certain extent, tiie United States) and Latin America.^ In particular, this study bases its concept of avant-garde narrative on the ccmpatible theories developed by Georg Lukacs^, and Peter Hirger.^*^ Additional theoretical (and some historical) support is supplied from readings of other essential writings on the avant- garde, especially those of Matei Calinescu^^, Jose Ortega y Gasset^Octavio Paz^3^ Renato Poggioli^^ and Guillermo de Torre^5. Particularly valuable in the undertaking is the concept of transculturation— as it has been defined by Angel Rama— vhich renders visible the canpeting impulses of regionalism and cosmopolitanisn, the traditional and the modem, the local and the universal. When used in conjunction with otherwise fairly conventional methods of literary analysis the concept enables one to catalogue the heterogeneous elements of these works and establish the basis for a more accurate knowledge of the works than previously available. Chapter I surveys the various circums"tances of production of Spanish-American avan^t-garde narrative. Chap"ters II and III also begin with an overview of the specific circumstances, biographical and artistic, within vhich Vallejo and Huidobro conposed their novels and short fiction. Ihis is followed by a characterization of the reception these received based on a cross-section of li"terary reviews. At this point in Chapter II, the concept of 6 transculturation is introduced and its methodological value demonstrated as part of a statement of parameters for textual analysis. Finally, the results of close readings of the prose fiction of Vallejo and Huidobro are presented while the larger implications of these readings are recorded in a final Conclusion. Notes

^José Carlos îferiâtegui, Obras complétas, 38th éd., 5 vols. (Lima:Amauta, 1978) 2: 350-51* ^îferiâtegui, 316. ^Françoise Perus, Literatura y socledad en America Latlna (Mexico: Si^o Veintiuno, 1976). ^Angel Rama, Ruben Darîo y el modemismo: circunstancia socloeconcmica de un arte americano (Caracas: Sdlclones de la Blblioteca ünlversidad Central de Venezuela, 1970). 5while Rama and Perus have not undertaken such a study •üiemselves, several of their publications do speak to specific aspects of this issue and provide valuable theoretical support for my own investigation. See Pranciose Perus, Historia y critica literaria: el realismo social y la crisis de dcminacion oligarquica, (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1982); Angel Rama, La novela en America Latina. Panoramas 192O-I98O (Veracruz: Fundacion Angel Rama, 1986) and Transculturacion narrative en America Latina (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 19B2). ^Carlos Fuentes, La nueva novela hispanoamericana (Mexico: Joaquin Moritz, I969)• ^Mario Vargas Llosa, "Primitives and Creators," Times Literary Supplement 14 Nov. 1968: 1287-1288. ^ihe reader is advised, in this context, that the expression ’surrealism’ (and its derivatives— ’surreal’, ’surrealist’, etc.) is employed in this study as both a specific reference to the French avant-garde artistic pranotion defined and led by André Breton in the nineteen twenties and as a general term synonymous with irrationalism in artistic production. In every case care is taken to indicate which meaning is intended. 9See Georg Lukacs, Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle, Trans. John and Necke Mander (New York: Harper and Row,'1964). Peter Hirger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). llMatei Calinescu, Paces of Modernity: Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977). ^2jose Ortega y Gasset, La deshumanizacion del arte y otros ensayos esteticos (Madrid: Revista de Occidents, 1964). Octavio Paz, Los hijos del limo: del romanticiano a la vanguardia (Barcelona: Seix Barrai, ISJM). ^^Renato Poggioli, Ihe Iheory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). ^^Guillenno de Torre, Historia de las literatures de vanguardia (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1965). ŒÎAP'ÎER I INIROraCTICN

Latin-Merican Development f ran the Final Decades of the XlXth

Century until t±ie 1930 ’ s Ihe period called vanguardista and extending approximately fran

1916 to 1930 can be located within a clearly defined phase of Latin- American history that begins rou^nly with "the t u m of the century and ends with the world econonic crisis of the 1930’s.

The process of üie transformation of Latin America’s economic order and, consequently, its social, political and ideological forms is generally considered to have begun with the decade of the

1880’s.^ It was then that the Industrial Revolution in developing nations, such as England and, to a lesser extent, France and Germany, had gained sufficient momentum as to need to draw upon sources of raw materials and foodstuffs outside their borders and to open up new external markets for their rising production of finished products. Ihus, the period saw a growing interest and investment in Latin America by Europeans, and this also brou^t the continent into the capitalist system; althou^, this did not always mean that substantial changes had occurred in the forms of production. Until

9 10 that time, Latin America's econonic apparatus for production had been in large part a modified version of the feudal structures existing in

Spain when the first conquistadors set out for the New W o r l d . ^ ihe feudal heritage, rather than being discarded with "Sie development of the capitalist mode of production, fused with it, and became a permanent and prominent component of Latin-American econonies. Implementation of capitalism occurred, then, not in the classic manner; that is, by way of a bourgeois democratic revolution, as it had in many western European economies. Rather, its implementation was carried out by the existing feudal istic landed elite. Ihe result was retarded development and disequilibria in all sectors of Latin- American life due to the traditional landed elite’s favored position to take maximum advantage of, and dominate, Latin America’s new relationships with the world market, furthermore, the advent of capitalism in Latin America meant, to a large extent, the rein­ forcement of existing econonic and social structures. That is, a feudalistic relationship in which a laborer on a large estate (hacienda, plantation, ranch) supplied his labor in the grain fields, or in the mines, or among the cane, henequen, etc., in exchange for food, shelter and protection. Ihe majority of such laborers came from a usually ample supply of indigenous Indians whose ancestors had been brou^t to this way of life by several centuries of existence under the more explicitly feudal insti-kutions of the encomienda (a royal grant to a conquistador of jurisdiction over specific tract of land and over the Indians residing on it) and repartimiento (an 11 allotment of local Indians to work the colonist’s land). Instead of basing its production of surplus value on the application of scientific and technological advances, the Latin-American capitalist structure it merely obtained this throu^ the redoubling of its demands on the existing producers.

Ihe years 1900 to 1930 represented a time of considerable expansion which saw the export-import model of economic growth pursued to the limits of its potential:

Argentina became . . . wealthy frcxn its beef-and-wheat econcxny . . . Plantations appeared and expanded in Mexico, producing henequen in the Yucatan and sugar in the central zones . . . Mining was also profitable, and the nascent industry of oil production was beginning to grow into a significant activity. Copper exports continued to grow from Chile, vhich produced some fruits and wheat for international markets as well. Technological Improvements led to increased prcxiuction of sugar in the Caribbean, especially in Cuba, as U.S. producers stepped up their investing in modem sugar mills. Brazil lived off coffee and natural rubber exports. Ihe United Pruit Company expanded its huge banana plant:ations in Central America.3

However, the net effects of this increaise in production were the Inevitable erosion of prices received by Latin-American producers for exports and an intensification of the struggle to maintain terms of trade sufficiently favorable as to allow continued importation of necessary manufactured goods from the major world industrialized centers :

. . . con la incorporacion creciente al mercado mundial de nuevas areas productoras de raaterias primas . . . los terminos de intercambio se mueven en el siglo XX en sentido predcxninantemente desfavorable a los productos primarios [y a el] responden las econondas latinoamericanas aumentando 12 el ritmo de ppoducciôn y solo oc^ionalraente intentando organizar el mercado exportador.^

Furthermore, periodic crises, both local and worldwide (the outbreak of World War I as the worst), served as constant reminders of the vulnerability^ of the export model "bo market forces and of the precariousness of dependence on one or -two products as principal generators of income. Rather than seeking relief fron these weaknesses in the syst:an throu^ diversification and a vigorous program of import substituting industrialization— which would have also meant a fundamental restructuring of the social relations of production— the Latin-American economies responded with retrenchment and by reinforcing their bonds with the major world economic centers and increasing exports to offset lower prices.5 These economic policies proved, of course, to have disastrous consequences vhen the Great Depression of the 1930’s paralyzed the world economy, vir'tually eliminating the markets for Latin-American exports. This does not mean, however, that industrialization was not •taking place in Latin America. As early as the last quanter of the nine"teenth cen"tury, cer'tain export economies, the wheat and beef economy of Argentina and Uruguay, for example, whose products needed processing before export, had developed some basic industries for those purposes. And, during the expansionary phase of 1900 to 1930, industrialization began in earnest on a limited scale. L i ^ t industries such as textiles, leather goods, beverages, food processing and construction ma"terials produced for the heme 13 markets.^ Nonetheless, this phenonenon was, with the exception of Mexico, a direct result of the growth in the export econony rather than, as sane have suggested, a by-product of periods of crisis in the export-import model:

In countries specialising in primary production for export, that is, countries in vhich productivity was raised in response to the expanding world demand for raw materials . . . Ihe rise in productivity and the consequent increase in the purchasing power of the population led to diversification in the pattern of overall demand for manufactured products Whereas the classical industrialisation experience was the result of innovations in the productive processes which, by cutting prices, made possible substitution of craft manufactures and the creation of a hare market, in the Latin American case the market was created as a result of the rise in productivity brought about by export specialisation and was at first supplied by imports.7

Because Latin-American econonic activity for the period 1900 to

1930 had as its basis an expansion of the export-import model of econonic growth established at the time of the implantation of capitalism (the 1880's), the social relations of production dating from that earlier period, and still in force at the t u m of the century, remained fundamentally intact throughout the expansionary phase while yet experiencing modifications and adaptations. Ihe great landowners still occupied the pinnacle of the Latin- American social hierarchy during this period while the rural masses remained on the bottom rung of the social ladder. But the intensification of industrialization and its corollary, urbaniza­ tion^, brought with it the enlargement of the middle class and the 14 emergence of an urban proletariat:

La diverslf icacion de la economla, la industrializacion, la urbanlzacion, la expansion del Estado, estimulan . . . Importantes modlficaciones en la estructura social, aunqae estas no pasen practicamente mas alia de las grandes ciudades [ . . . J La diferenciacion social interna tiene lugar . . . y se manifiesta ante todo en el desarrollo de las capas médias urbanas [ . . . y . . . ] el numéro y peso especîfico de las masas urbanas. Hn importante sector de ellas pasa cada vez mas a estar constituido por grupos de trabajadores asalariados, ocupados en actividades tradicionales, en el artesanado, los servicios y la produccion fabril.5

However, while it is true that during this time, new social groups, such as an expanded middle class and an urban working class did emergeand grow in number, these remained a function always of the export economy and as such were ultimately dependent upon the good fortunes of that economy and on the good will of the elites in control of it.

Politically, this meant that, even thou^ the face of Latin- American society appeared to be changing, the elites maintained essential control:

Elites in several countries permitted enough political reform to allow effective pursuit of power by members and representatives of the middle sectors. The idea was to gain the allegiance of the middle sectors and therefore strengthen the structure of elite control and power. Accordingly, the early twentieth century was a period of political reform in sane of the larger countries: a voting law in 1912 in Argentina opened suffrage to large sectors of the population and permitted a middle-class party, the so-called Radical Party, to win the presidency in 1916. Changes in Chile, actually beginning in the l890’s, saw the imposition of parliamentary rule on a previously presidentialist system. In Brazil, the overthrow of the 15 monarchy in 1889 opened a period of limited electoral politics. Cuba, after gaining independence fron Spain in 1898 (and ceding it to the United States), remains a special case. And even in Mexico, vôiere a large-scale revolution broke out in 1910, the generalization holds: the original goal of the revolutionary movement was not to transform Mexican society but merely to gain access to the political system for excluded fragments of the country's middle class. Ihe reformist movements often produced a 'co-optative democracy’ — in vâiich effective participation spread from the upper class to the middle class, to the continued exclusion of the lower class. Such transitions usually reflected the attemp'ts of ruling socioeconomic elites to co-opt the middle sectors into supporting the system, thou^ they sometimes had unforseen and unintended consequences— as in the case of Mexico, where events transpired to create a full-blown revolution. "Por the most part the goals were limited.

ihe t u m of the century brou^t with it a nationalist and an increasin^y Latin-American, supranationalist perspective motivated by a reaction to the rising position of influence of the Uni'ted

Sta'tes following the Spanish-American conflict (I898) and in'tensified by Europe's loss of prestige as a result of the First World War. On the other hand, the cosmopolitanism so predominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century continued to exist, particularly in the cities and, most specifically, in those cities most directly linked to the metropolises. However, the presence of the latter does not necessarily contradict the former. To fully understand this apparent paradox, one must first understand what some have called the structural dualism of Latin-American society :

Las diferencias existantes entre la sociedad rural y urbana han llevado a la postulacion de la teoria del dualiano estructural [I.jEn America Latina han existido desde la epoca colonial, y se han ido acentuando cada vez mas. 16 grandes diferencias tecno-econ&nlcas, sociales, polîticas y culturales entre: regiones incorporadas en diferentes grades al slstema Intemacional; entre regiones relativamente desarroUadas y atrasadas; entre zonas urbanas o rurales, entre élites urbanas y rurales y masas populares de la ciudad y del cazpo; entre poblaciones indîgenas y no indîgenas [. . . pero . . . J Mbos polos de la sociedad integran un mismo proceso historico . . . dialécticamente relacionadas de un miano sistema capitalista dependiente, apéndice de las potenciaa metropolitanas.

Ihese canpeting nationalist and cosmopolitan ideologies correspond, then, to the two poles of Latin-Merican structural duatllsm to which Kaplan refers. Further on, in the same study, Kaplan describes the way in which these 'two psychologies operated during the first phase of Latin America's incorporation into the world economic order:

For una parte, la dinamica de la incorporcion al sis'tema intemacional y a la relacion de dependencla conlleva la ■fcendencia a la europeizacion. For otra parte, la oli- garqula [members of the elit:^ necesita conservar •fcambién una base de maniobra, para la explotacion del sistem product!VO, el mantenimiento de la cohesion intema y de la propia hegemonîa y el refuerzo de su posiciôn negociadora con los grupos extranjeros y grandes potencias . . . La dialéctica del cosmpolitismo y el nacionalismo no desaparece del todo, aunque duran“te un periodo considerable el primero prevalezca sobre el segundo. El nacionalismo sigue siendo estimulado por la confluencia de varios factores: persistencia del localisrao y del regionalismo; toma de conciencia de las posibilidades nacionales; . . Fetc.l .12

As no"ted, the second phase of Latin America's participation as a dependent partner in the world econcxny sees the ideological balance swing in favor of national! sm/supranationalian. This was due in great part to the fact that, since the close of the nineteenth century, the United States had begun seeking for itself a dominant 17 role in the affairs of its nei^bors to the south. The treaty of Paris, following the Spanish American War, left the U.S. in control of Puerto Rico and Cuba. Ihe issue of Cuban independence in Latin America, where the memory of its principal eulogist, José Îfertî, was well-respected, had wide spread popularity.13 ]ji addition to its involvement in the Spanish-American conflict, the U.S. also interceded, in 1902, in the Venezuelan debt-crisis incident wherein Germany and England, as principal creditors, with the help of Italy had imposed a naval blockade in order to force a return to fiscal responsibility. By its intercession, the United States sought to establish its ri^t to the role of sole mediator of any financial disagreements between Latin America and the rest of the world. 1^ This policy came to be known as the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe doctrine. There was also the matter of Ihited States involvement in the machinations which ultimately resulted in the sucession of Colonbia’s northern-most province to beccrae the country of Panama

(1903), site of the future canal zone— to which the U.S. was awarded exclusive sovereignty in exchange for guarantees of the new country's continued independence. This overt encroachment by the United States during the early years of the twentieth century, coupled with the nervousness of the Latin-American eli'tes at home as they began to feel threatened by the very changes (expansion of the middle class and emergence of the urban working class) which their assumption of capitalism had wrou^t, provoked a reaction among the eli'te which translated into a 18 pronounced hispanlsm among Spanish A m e r i c a n s . ^5 The nationalism of the middle and lower classes was stimulated by an additional set of factors. Less overtly, but perhaps more importantly, 1he United States was taking over from Great Britain the role as Latin America’s principal trading partner. Comfortable in its position of absolute dominance (so absolute that it normally had no need of the sort of hegemonic political strategies in vhich the U.S. was engaged^^) in industrial production, in the purchase of imported raw materials and foodstuffs and as investor of foreign capital, Britain had become complacent and, by the turn of the century, had lost the technological edge necessary to compete with the more rapidly advancing United States, Germany and Japan.World War I brought financial ruin to the principal industrialized European nations of Great Britain, Belgium, France and Germany while the U.S. emerged as the most powerful industrialized nation in the world. The war, however, also left the state of the world import-export econany permanently altered, to the disadvantage of Latin America. Among the developed countries (especially in Europe), as a result of World War I, a tendency developed toward econcxnic nationalism, protectionism and autarky (self-sufficiency). In this climate, for example, many industrialized nations increased their local agricultural production while resorting to •tariffs, import quoths, etc. In the case of the United S'ta'tes, this also meant the production of agricultural products and raw materials in sufficient 19 quantum to ccxnpete directly witti those produced in Latin America. ■Pinally, tiiere was the general impact of the Russian Revolution;

Se revela la posibilidad de una forma diferente de desarrollo y de organizaciôn de la econania, de la sociedad y del Estado. Se evidencian las ventaJas que présenta un fuerte y centralizado intervencioniano estatal, como factor superador de las crisis y motor del desarrollo, especialmente en la prcmociôn y orientaciôn de los recursos y de las inversiones, y en el crecimiento adecuado del pleno empleo y de los ingresos de la poblacion. Pasa a plena luz la importancia del gran espacio econonico que abarca poblaciones numerosas y recursos abundantes y dlversificados. Se verifican las virtudes de la planificaciôn, sobre todo en lo referente a la centralizaciôn de las decisiones de inversion; a la eliminaciôn de usos duplicados, capacidades excedentes, desperdicios y falsos costos; a la inexistencia de frenos inJustificados al progreso têcnico; a las posibilidades de râpida standardizaciôn y organizaciôn en serie de la producciôn; a la distribuciôn mas racional y amplia del ingreso nacional.^9

The classes most vulnerable, first, to the erratic nature of the export-import model of econonic growth and, later, to its general decline, were the urban middle and working classes. Their response, articulated by the younger intellectuals of that urban middle class less bound to the oligarchy, was a nationalist program including ■these basic objectives:

. . . la limi'tacion del poder irrestricto de la oligarqula y del capi'bal extranjero; la fijacion de me "tas de cambio socioecononico, en términos de desarrollo diversificado y autoicxno, industrializacion, un grado considerable de justicia social; bases mas amplias de consenso y de integraciôn nacional; arapliaciôn de la participaciôn polltica; la renovaciôn insti'tucional en diverses aspectos y niveles; el mayor intervencionismo del Es"tado, como représentante e instrumente de una sociedad nacional cuyos in'tereses se pos'tula superiores a los de cualquier grupo 20 particular; la imagen de un destine historiée y de un papel excepcienales para el prepio pais y para America Latina en su cenjunte.20

Ihe Latin-American writer is, ef course, very much in the middle of the econcxnic, social, political and ideological developments of this moment. As Françoise Perus so clearly sees, the advent of capitalian in Latin America, and the nature of its assumption, truly left the writer adrift without a sail:

Frustrado el proyecbo de trasformacion democratico-burguesa de la sociedad latinamericana: ahogado -lo que es peor- en una ola de "prosperidad" cuyas fosforecencias encandilan incluso a los sectores medios an'fces en rebeldia; los escritores de cuho tradicional que emergen a la vida sœial hacia 1880 ya no tienen, ciertamente ninguna "mision" que cumplir en este sentido; en rigor, ■fcarapoco tienen gesta alguna que cantar. Deshecha, o si se quiere "degradada" la vieja aristocracia, tampoco quedan muchos "mecenas" capaces de acoger a estos escritores en su regazo protector; los negocios interesan, de todos modos, mas que la poesla. Sin saber bien cano ni por que -o apenas intuyendolo- los escritores no "cientificos" -que por lo demas provienen muchas veces de families arruinadas por la propia prosperidad oligarquica- se sienten entonces desamparados : "marginados" por esos "reyes burgueses" que en vez de protegerlos y ubicarlos en un sitial de honor, los condenan a realizar tareas tan "prosaicas" como el periodismo o a ejercer funciones subaltemas en las filas de una "mediocre" burocracia. Para no hablar de la obligada inmersion en unas relaciones de mercado que todavia conocen mal y donde ni siquiera estan claramente definidas la réglas de juego para la produccion literaria y artistica.^^

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the profes­ sionalization of the Latin-American writer was a goal not achieved but only sou^t after and, as Rama indicates, most aspiring authors 21 still find it necessary to combine tiieir literary vocation witii other work:

aun hoy . . . el escritor sigue consagrado mayoritariamente a otras tareas que no son las de la creacion, y tienen que ver con su ubicaciôn social y su concomitante nivel educative. De ahî sean profesionales, maestros, profesores, funcionarios, periodistas. Todas estas actividades ya han alcanzado la especialidad; el escritor aprovecha de ellas para vivir y también para escribir.22

As a social group, writers tended to be either middle-class city- educated intellectuals or the sons and dau^ters of landowners. Ihey constituted, in any case, an elite minority and, as such, were often their own audience:

La importancia del conjunto de intelectuales como grupo social ha sido enorme en Latinoamérica a los efectos de la obra de creacion: la debilidad cultural que durante un siglo caracterizo el medio social, diluyendo la existencia de un Publico consumidor especîfico, transformo a los mismos intelectuales en productores y consumidores simultanées, organizandose un circuito cerrado de la cultura que solo coiænzô a ceder ya entrado el siglo XX. 2^

Ideologically, they shared the perspectives, as one m i ^ t expect, of one or the other pole of the cosmopolitan/nationalist dichotxxny:

En America Latina la elite movible, de "intelectuales no ligados al terreno [Rama quoting ManhheinT]" tuvo una inclinacion universalista y cosmopoli'ta que en hechos consistio en una imitacion de las mas modemas corrientes europeas . . . En frente, como respuesta. historica se le opusieron las elites [those "bound to its local arena" (Mannheim, 94^ de la generacion ronantica que intenteron la adopcion descriptive y pintoresca de las realidades nacionales, o las de la generacion regional de 1910 con su primera valoraciôn social de la realidad zonal 22

americana. 25

Literary History The characteristic literary pronotion of the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first ten years of the 'twentieth in Spanish America was modernismo. As its name implies, it was the introduction of "modernity" to continental li'tera'ture in a successful attempt to create an art both cosmopolitan and uniquely Spanish American. The transformation of the Latin-American econany as a result of its insertion, in the l880’s, as a dependent partner in the world econonic order and its consequent contact with the modernizing forces of the industrialized centers had profound consequences for the writing of that period. Those consequences have been well-documented by Angel Rama in his pivotal stady, Ruben Dario y el modernismo: circunstancia socioecononica de un arta americano^^, and in ■Pranciose Perus's response, Litaratura y sociedad en America Latina, in the same line. As Rama indicatas, the continent's new econonic relationships with the principal centers of the world econony implied new cultaral relationships, as well: however, these relationships were one-way only and were conditioned by Latin America's dependent statnis •vis-à-vis the metropolises:

Acababan de ponerse en intlmo contacto las grandes potancias econonicas en pleno desarrollo industrializador con las comarcas marginadas demoradas en estructuras artesanales y semifeudales. El cota jo de -valores debîa producirse fa'fcalmente; el afan de integrarse y equipararse a los niveles de cultura y holgura economica de los 23 europeos se produjo cano era prévisible; la desvalorizacion de los productos natives respecte de los productos extranjeros fue una de las consecuencias primeras, en varios sentidos explicable; la desvalorizacion de la creacion artlstica tradicional del continente respecte de los productos de mas afinada elaboracion originarios de Europa fue otra.^^

Initially, this meant the devaluation of Spanish literary models to be followed by an accelerated and chaotic assimilation of models from the new centers:

En los hechos se produce una repentina superposicion de estêticas. En el periodo de las dos ultimas generaciones, la de 1880 y la de 1895 jlhat is, from 1880 to 191(g, encontramos reunidos el ultimo ronanticisno, el realismo, el naturalisme, el pamasianismo, el simbolismo, el positiviano, el espiritualismo, el vitalismo, etc., que otorgan al modernismo su peculiar configuraciôn sincrética, abarrotada, no solo en cuanto periodo de cultura, sino, inclusive, en el desarrollo de la obra de los escritores individuales.

Ihis phenomenon. Rama notes, amounted to a universalization of the culture produced in the centers of economic power. ^ Amplifying on this point, Perus adds:

Esto, no solo por el afan de las elites latinoamericanas de participar en el concierto de una cultura occidental ahora mas cercana a las zonas periféricas gracias a la intensificaciôn de los intercairibios materiales y cultu­ rales, sino también porque el avance del modo de produccion capitalista en tierras americanas tiende a romper las estructuras tradicionales de esta area, unificando al misno tiempo su cultura bajo un nuevo s i g n o . 3 0

Nevertheless, what modernismo proposed was not a new type of literary dependence but, rather, the continuation of the movement toward cultural independence undertaken in the early nineteenth century and 24 championed by figures such as Andres Bello, Jose Victorino Lastarria and Esteban Echeverrîa^^:

El fin que Ruben Dario [and the modemistas~l se propuso fue practicamente el mismo a que tendieron los ultimos neoclasicos y primeros romanticos de la epoca de la independencia; la autonomia poetica de la America espanola como parte del proceso general de libertad conti-nental, lo que significaba establecer un orbe cultural propio que pudiera oponerse al espanol matemo, con una implicita aceptacion de la participaciôn de esta nueva literature en el conglomerado mayor de la civilacion europea, que tenia sus raices en el raundo grecolatino.32

The implantation of capitalism in Latin America with its ideological corollaries of liberalism and subjectivist individualism radically influenced the direction which the modemista innovation ultimately took. Ihe emergence of capitalism, as noted in above, produced a new set of rules for the production of literature as well as a new audience with new demands, the principal of which was a demand for novelty:

[the modemistas] hacen suyas . . . las normas de la ideologia liberal con el correspondiente individualisme subjetivista, fundando su arta en la originalidad y la novedad, 'trasposicion li'fceraria de los principios de la libre competencia que rigen la produccion material y el mercado capitalista.33

It is not surprising, given the relationship be'tween capitalism and modernis'ba art, to discover that the modemista phenomenon was most intense in those areas in which capitalism took most firm root:

. . . debe apuntarse a la mayor o menor posibilidad de éxito del sistama econonico liberal en tierras americanas. Donde se imp>one con decision, también se intensif ica la corriente modemista; donde zozobra como en la reacciôn 25 balmacedista, en Chile, o donde se entorpece, ccmo en las Indecisiones y dificultades a que se enfrenta en Mexico en la primera década del siglo, el movimiento modemista disninuye su vigencia y vlolencia.3^

. . . cabe anotar que, a partir de 1888, su [modernismo'^ centre esta ya en el sur, en Santiago, en Buenos Aires y en Montevideo, siendo su capital la capital argentina. Simultaneamente debe consignarse que la burguesla argentina, y . . .la chilena y uruguaya, establecen las bases de la especial contextura de los paises del cono sur al inaugurarse el siglo XX. Se trata de una transformaciôn econanica que responde a una nueva y razonada actitud polltica.35

The new order was most apparent in the modifications experienced by Journalism, which sou^t to serve the increasing demand for the novel and the unusual. And, as the lack of a sufficient market for their literary production had led many modemista writers (Dario, Marti, Gutierrez Najera) to choose to work as Journalists, this activity was to have a decisive impact upon their art:

Ruben Dario afinnaba categoricamsnte que "el periodisno consituye una gimnasia del estilo." Esas tendencias estillsticas epocales son: novedad, atraccion, velocidad, shock, rareza, intensidad, sensacion. Las mismas que reencontraremos en el arte modemista. La busqueda de lo insolito, los acercamientos bruscos de elementos dislmiles, la renovaciôn permanente, las audacias tematicas, el registre de los matices, la mezcla de las sensaciones, la interpenetracion de distintas disciplinas, el constante, desesperado afin de lo original, son a su vez rasgos que pertenecen al nuevo mercado, y, simultâneamente, formas de penetrarlo y dominarlo.3°

Ihus, Joumalism proved to be (and continues to be), an important vehicle to "modernity" for both art and artist. 26 The journalistic connection of the modemista promotion turned out to be a special boon for the renovation of prose. Dario's first experience with the new press, in Chile, is emblematic of the experience of others :

Dicho desde un angulo sociologico, la mayor libertad ideologica que le permite al poeta la sociedad chilena . . . en pleno proceso de transformaciôn por obra de una burguesia nacional, y el campo inedito de la prosa menor, de esa prosa no codificada por la retorica y la academia, que llenaba ccmo sirvienta informativa los periodicos, introduciendo, si torpes, también libres invenciones extranjeras, son los que le abren nuevas perspectivas para aconeter una modificacion formal de la prosa poetica de los cuentos y estampas literarias.37

Ihe modemista renovation of Spanish-American prose was further aided by a tendency toward the breakdown of the limits betzween artistic systems and of the boundaries between genre:

Uno de los principios de la estetica modemista. . . . es una escritura donde se mezclan los sistamas de distintas antes, en particular la rausica y la pintura. Del mismo modo también los limitas entre los géneros tienden a disolverse: si la poesla surge soberana e independiente . . la prosa, que es el gran campo experimental del movimiento renovador, admite diversas lecciones y tan- dencias en un esfuerzo coherenta de intagracion.

Prose fiction of a purely modemista sort, during these years

(I88O-I91O), was limited in great part to the short story.39 Modemistas who excelled in the genre included José Marti, Manuel Gutiérrez Najera and Rubén Dario, in the movement's first moment, and Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, Araado Nervo, Julio Herrera y Reissig and Leopoldo Lugones in its second phase. The only writar who 27 approached the modemista novel in a sustained way was Manuel lâaz Rodriguez. Ror the most part, modemista prose innovation was limited to influences appearing in otherwise realist-naturalist writing. Ihe significance of the movenent, however, ran deeper than the esthe"tic elaboration for which the movement is most widely known. The modemista writer— most times a member of the old landed elite^^— , under the influence of the new capitalist order for art and artist, expresses responses which can be described in considerable detail. As an artist, the modemista writer was confronted with drastic changes in the rules for producing art. Ihe old systems of patronage were weakening and had yet to be replaced by a satisfactory market in which one could present one's creations.^3 As a consequence the writer used a combination of approaches, occasional patronage, limited income from book sales, work in Joumalism or the govemnent bureaucracy, in order to survive financially. Ihe new audience which accompanied the installation of art as merchandise also had different values, desiring novelty and sensation as opposed to profundity of meaning. 'While yet participating in the new order, the modemista writer was alienated by the same experience intellectually. In his/her compositions he/she sou^t to distance him-/herself f ran the new reality. As members of society, many modemista writers found their positions in the old order threatened by the chants implicit in the implantation of capitalism. The results were again expressions of 2 8 alienation and/or nostalgia.

Cultural cosmopolitanism began to moderate at the turn of the century in favor of the national and the supranational. As Jean ■Pranco affirms, the increasing power and influence of the United States in the years following the Spanish-American War "led Latin- American intellectuals to look at their own society and its own culture in a new and critical light"^^:

The stress on Latin America as an identity, rather than on narrow nationalism, is one of the main features of intellectual life after I900, finding expression in such movements as 'New Worldian’ and 'Literary Americanism'. Ihis did not prevent a continuing interest in the devel­ opment of a national culture. In the novel, the short story and poetry, wri'ters increasingly depicted the landscape and people of their native country, especially those of rural areas where manners were most different frcxn those of Europe. Ihis movement is generally known as 'Criolliamo'.^5

Ihis upsurge in nationalist and continental sentiments paralleled the similar shift in the dominant ideological perspective, described above as resulting, as well, frcxn the growing vulnerability of the export:-import model of econcxnic growth. Cosmopolitanism by no means disappears (which would be an impossibility) during this period. Rather, it "too continued to evolve while yet seeking to play a part in the growing cultural nationalism which Franco has described:

Ihou^ writers, artists and musicians continued to flock to Paris, they also returned to their own countries tx> make their reputation at hone. Europe could still "teach then techniques, but they began to realise that it could no 29 longer offer them values.

Expansion of export-import activity favored an intensification of cosmopolitanism in and around those areas vhere this activity was the greatest; that is, the large port cities of South America: Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Rio de Janeiro. Mexico City, too, with its important and longs-tanding econonic ties with Europe and the United States had a well-established cosmopolitan tradtion. However, the phenomenon of the Tfexican Revolution coupled with the proximity of the increasingly powerful Uhitad States reinforced the nationalistic countercurrent which the other Latin-American countries were experiencing. At the same time, cultural nationalism promoted an increasing disengagement of imported artistic forms and ‘techniques fron their foreign roots:

Desarraigadas de las obras europeas originarias, las ■tecnicas fueron manejadas como simples sis'temas de composicion, p>asibles por lo tanto de un uso general e indiscriminado. Lejos del si^nificado e-timolorico que para los griegos hacia de una tecne una epistemologia, de'vinieron recursos lit:erarios que se extrapolaron de una obra europea o norteamericana a otra latinoamericana y que posteriormente los escritores desarrollaron con alto brio inventive, trabajando sobre el mismo cauce y proponiendo nuevas soluciones.^7

Econonic growth meant the stimulation of the growing free-miarket aspect of art. As a result one sees, among the cosmopoli'tan writers, an ever-grea-ber emphasis on form over content and experimentalism runs rampant in an effort to cater to the new sensibilities of a 30 consumer public. Paradoxically, the experimentalist climate thus created leads full circle to an intensification of interest in local forms and techniques. The breakdown of barriers between artistic systems and between genres continues unabated. It becanes commonplace for writers to produce in all the possible genres as well as mix them— poetic novels and theatre, prose poems, etc. The artist, however is cau^t in a contradiction. He/She is appalled by the new capitalist order and, particularly, its impact upon art. His/Her works form a criticism— sometimes explicit, sometimes Implicit— of that order while at the sane time catering to tastes of the public.

After Rubén Dario’s death in 1916— which marked the definitive closure of the modemista cycle— , the cosmopolitan cause is taken up most forcefully by four younger writers Saul Yurkievich has characterized as the "fundadores de la nueva poesla latinoamericana"; César Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda. ^ Vanguardism was in fact a principally poetic phenomenon. The expression ’vanguardism’ is actually an umbrella term covering the multitude of individual literary promotions— futurismo, creacionismo, ultralsmo, estridentismo, surrealismo, etc.— which appeared and disappeared with dizzying speed during the 1920’s and

1930’s. In spite of this proliferation and in the midst of their most radical diversity they shared in conmon certain fundamental characteristics. Foremost among these was their concerted to challenge to traditional literary conventions and procedures— forms 31 (stanzas, rhymes, meters), imagery (metaphor), language— which had been all but exhausted in the estheticism of modernismo. Ihere was also an anti-realist, anti-representational reaction in vanguardist literature in favor of a subjective and abstractionist art. The artists themselves were unconventional in their lifes'tyles, choosing to challenge with their bohsnian dress and behavior the false opulence and real cultural poverty of the urban societh-es in which they found thanselves. The harbinger of things to come was Vicen'te Huidobro's publi­ cation, in 1916, of El espejo de agua, a small volume of poems which proclaim the new esthetic of "Creationism" :

iPor que cantais la rosa, ;oh Poetas! Hacedla florecer en el poema; Solo para nosotros Viven todas las cosas bajo el Sol.

El poeta es un pequeno D i o s . ^9

This first poem of the collection, "Arte poetica," anticipat^ed an art of greater autonomy sth.ll than was ever attempted by modemista predecessors. And, in the same year, Huidobro sought his first rigorous application of the creacioniste. esthetic in his symbolically entitled Man. In that work, the protagonist discovers reality anew and, just as his biblical counterpart mi ^ t have, he gives original names to what he sees, expressing himself through the Huidobran "created image." At this time, however, Huidobro had yet to experience first hand the avant>-garde of Europe. It would be in that same year that he would make his first trip te Paris. 32 Already there, in the thick of things, was another central figure of the Spanish-American avant-garde movement, Jorge Luis Borges. Borges, son of a father of second generation English ancestry and an Argentinian mother, was early thken to Switzerland to receive his education. From there he had easy entry into the Parisian artistic scene. Back in his native Argentina by 1921 he would be responsible for the opening of an impor'fcant channel to the innovations of the European avant>-^rde when he joined in establishing the litarary magazine. Proa (1922-23; 1924-1926). Hirou^ this publication Spanish-American writers gained access to the latest developments in the European avan't-garde art. Thus it became a vital source of new litarary forms and techniques for Spanish-American authors. One such writer was Peruvian poet César Vallejo. Vallejo, whose roots lay deep in the Andean mountains, in the village of Santiago de Chuco, depended entirely on publications like Proa— Cervantes (1916- 1920), Prisma (1921-1922), Amauta (1926-1930), Martin Fierro (1924-

1927)— for information about the new artistic trends. He would not have direct contact with Paris, site of the most intense expressions of avan'fc-gardist art until he was thirty (1923). In this he differs from Huidobro and Borges, vhose lives were more coanopolitan, and, he stands, as Angel Rama has noted, as represen'tative of a regionalist trend within the cosmopoli'tan Spanish-American avant-garde^O ^ in vhich participâtes also Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. 33 Pablo Neruda, üie youngest of this quartet and influenced more by the later avant-garde manifestations— particularly Surrealism— also had his roots in the backlands of his country, Chile, specifically the town of Tfemuco. In Itemuco, located in an area of heavy rainfall and dense forests, Neruda felt at one with nature and the small world of the town. Separated from this world and living variously in Santiago, on the remote island of Chiloe and in Rangoon, Burma, Neruda’s early poetic production, Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (1924), SI hondero entusiasta (not published until 1933), Tentativa del honbre infinite (1926), Anillos (with IbmJs Lago, 1926), the first Residencia (1925-1931), reflected the anguish and alienation he felt at no longer being able to experience that vholeness. Similarly, Vallejo’s first bocks of poetry, Los heraldos negros (1918), Trilce (1922), also recorded a sense of loss of wholeness, product of the poet’s grea-ber and grea-ber separation from the structured, feudalistic and Christian world of Santiago de Chuco51. On the other hand, Jorge Luis Borges’s first book of poetry, Rervor de Buenos Aires (1923), celebrated the cosmopoli'tan city as locus of integration with the uni^versal Wes'bem cul-bure. In every inst:ance the poets appealed to the conquests of the European a'van'b-garde movements to express their satisfactions and disatisfactions. Other well-known poets of the day either followed the lead of these founders of the -vanguardist promotion— Pablo de Rohka (Chile), Martin Adân (Peru), Manuel Maples Arce, Jaime Ibrres Bodet, Salvador 34 Novo, Gilberto Owen, Xavier Villaurrutia (JÉxico), Luis Pales I'fetos (Puerto Rico), Mariano Brull (Cuba)— or else experienced a parallel trajectory which lead them to many of the same conclusions— as in the case of the older posts Ricardo Güiraldes and Macedonio Fernandez (Argentina).

Avant-Garde Narrative Arnold Hauser has stated that, for Europe, the twentieth century began after the First World War,

Pero la guerra raarca una variacion en la narcha de las cosas solo en cuanto suministra una ocasion para elegir entre las posibilidades existent:es. Las tres corrientes principales en el ar'te del nuevo si^o . . . el cubismo . . . el expresionismo . . .el surrealismo. 52

In fact, Hauser would reduce these three categories to two more general ones, intellectnalian (cubism) and irrationalism (expressionism and surrealism), under which he would subsume the various experiences of avan't-garde narrative produced during the •twenties.53 For, as Hauser so clearly saw, these corresponded to the only 'two possible ideological responses to the increasingly problematic nat^ure of the capitalist sys'tem; either to seek, to establish control over a syst:sn which no longer seemed able to pro-vLde its own internal rationale (fascism) or overthrow it for another (socialism), or, seek supernatural means by which 1%) coun'fcer the seeming incoherence of the current system (mystician). These two currents often merged (the Russian Revolution) and, in fact, they 35 both can be related to a same underlying loss of confidence in reality. ■Por the artist in European society during this period, there were the additional aspects, against which he/she reacted with greater and greater violence; his/her disaffection with the market art of the capitalist order^^, and, with the concept of autonanous or disinterested art55. in the latter instance, the artist sou^t to make art reality in an attempt to merge the elements of art and the praxis of life.56 Ihe majority of avant-garde European narrative tended to fall into Hauser's category of irratd-onalism, although such a pure distinction cannot really be claimed to exist. Every artist during this period had their own ratios of "classicism" 'to "roman"ticism, " to employ other perhaps more familiar terminology. (Ihe true intellectualists of this time were writers such as Eliot and Pound.) Ihis irrationalist narrative tended to assume the following characteristic s. Reality's loss of coherence meant the emergence of the non- organic work, that is, a work in which the parts can no longer relate to meaningful totality. Ihe work became an assanblage of fragments, a montage if you will. Ihese fragnents no longer possessed any inrnanent meaning but, rather, alluded, as in allegory, to a nsaning outside the work. 57 And, these fragments of tan included pieces of reality, itself, transferred to the work, as in a collage.58 Any relationship be"tween the parts was left to the reader to establish. 36 if he/she c o u l d . 59 Die artist’s loss of ability to relate to, or comprehend, his reality, as Georg Lukacs has indicated, resulted in a shift in focus from object to subJect^O which produced, in turn, a series of effects in a narrative’s conposition. Die narrator and protagonist tended to fuse and beccme one and the narrated world became a function of the narrator’s interiority. As a result, the language was lyrical and poetic. Dime became subjective and a-chronologic while there was little action and the overall sensation one experienced was that of stasis. Diese features actually began to emerge in European narrative as early as the fiction of Henry James and Joseph Conrad.However, they did not coalesce into something like a coherent esthetic until the second decade of the twentieth century with Proust’s Remembrance of Diings Past (1913), Gide’s Vatican Cellars (1914) and Joyce’s Die Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (1916). Following the war, narrative production in this line increased with the publication of such key works as Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Mann’s Magic Mountain (1924), Kafka’s Die Trial (1925), Le paysan de Paris (1926) by Louis Aragon and André Breton’s Nadja (1928). Fiction of a similar sort and heavily influenced by that being written in Europe also appeared in the U.S. and included the novels published by John Dos Passos, e.e. cummings, William Faulkner and Diomas Wolfe during the decade of the ’20’s. In Spain, the preeminent authors of avan't- garde narrative were Ramon Gonez de la Serna and Benjamin James. 37 However, it was France, more specifically Paris, vôiich was at the center of the avant-garde revolution. Paris, before, during and after the war, was the gathering place for artists frcxn all over the world who would be the shapers of the avant-garde. And, it was there that the most extreme examples of European avant-garde fiction were produced and published: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Aragon's Le paysan de Paris and Breton's Nadja. Ihe reasons for this are several. France, of course, had been home to a long tradition of capitalism, and, bourgeois hegemony had been secure since 1848, dath of the un­ successful Ccxmnunal uprisings. Bourgeois art, therefore, was nowhere more fully developed than in the France of the "twenties. Also, nowhere else in Europe, except perhaps Germany, were the limi"tations of the capi"talist sys'tem more apparent than in pos"t-war France which, in spite of its participation on the winning side, had been left financially ruined and forever excluded fron the lion's share of the world export market. This margination meant that, there, the capitalist order was experiencing a great deal of stress and thus offered more oppor"tunity for the avan't-garde reaction against bourgeois art "to gain a firm foothold. Furthermore, the very cosmopolitan na"ture of Paris and the consequent absence a strong nationalist coun"ter-current pro"vided additional encouragement to the "revolution." For these reasons, France was the most fertile place for the reactionary artistic revolution against bourgeois art which was the a'van'b-garde. 38 Ihe üiree works by Joyce, Breton and Aragon, as mentioned above, are paradigmatic of European avant-garde narrative fiction. They are all categorized by Hauser as "surrealist," applying the term in the more general sense in Which it is employed today. Joyce, vfco spent much of his adult life living in Europe, published the completed Ulysses in Paris in 1922. Ihe work created a storm of controversy and was censored, at least temporarily, in various countries, including the U.S., in the belief that it was obscene. Ulysses, as one m i ^ t recall, presents a Dublin day as it is experienced by the three main characters, Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Blocxn and Bloom’s wife Molly, in a series of l8 untitled segments. Ihe narration is a transcription of the flow of thou^ts of each individual and thus admits their emotions and memories (sexual and otherwise) of each as well as the sum of their knowledge and experiences. The language of the novel is a lyrical hodge-podge through which the interiority of each individual reports his/her subjective experience of the day. As the title implies, the work's fragnents can be related to another level of meaning related to the myth of Ulysses as it appears in Homer’s Odyssey.

In 1926, Louis Aragon, then active in the surrealist movement, published his novel. Le paysan de Paris, about his beloved native city. In its three sections, "Le Passage de 1 ’Opera," ’’Le Sentiment de la nature aux Buttes-Chaumont,” and "Le Songe du Paysan," the narrator, identified as Louis Aragon, explores what for him are the French capital’s most attractive features: the Arcade of the Opéra, 39 the Buttes-Chaumont park in the evening, and 1he women of Paris. Ihe attraction, he explains, lies in the equal measure of concrete reality and "shadowy" mystery which each possess; "Bie whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly l i t ones of human a c t i v i t y . "^2 ] ] b i s quality gives them the power to provoke insist in a properly receptive individual:

I no longer wish to refrain froa the errors of my fingers, "the errors of my eyes. I now know that these errors are not just booby traps but curious paths leading towards a destination that they alone can reveal to me. There are Strang flowers of reason to match each error of the senses. Admirable gardens of absurd beliefs, forebodings, obsessions and frenzies. Unknown, ever-changing gods take shape there. I shall contemplate these leaden faces, these honp-seeds of the imagination. How beautiful you are in your sand-castles, you columns of smoke! New myths spring up beneath each s'tep we "take. Legend begins where nan has lived, where he lives. All that I intend to think about fron now on is these despised transformations. Each day the modem sense of existence becomes subtly altered. A mythology ravels and unravels. It is a knowledge, a science of life open only to those vho have no training in it. (24)

Tb communicate to the reader his experience of the "merveilleux quotidien," the narrator of Le paysan de Paris uses subjective imagery based on free association, such as the well-known disquisition on potential terms of comparison for vhat is blond, as well as inserting into the text materials such as placards, menus, advertisenents, newspaper articles, etc. As in the case of Joyce’s Ulysses, where the work’s final meaning resides outside the novel, in the myth upon which it is based, the narrative coherence of Le paysan de Paris does not derive 40 fron üie sum of its parts, which are only a montage of the narrator's experiences of a sane phencmenon— surreality. Rather, the reader must again refer outside the text, this time to the principles of surrealism, in order to fully decipher its meaning. André Breton, whose 1924 manifesto. Manifeste du surréaliaae, inauguratedthe Surrealist movement, published his novel Nadja in

1928. It has been said that "Nadja serves as an indispensible introduction to the theory of Surrealism."^3 In it, Breton takes the opportunity to explore the elements of chance and the unconscious employing as sample his apparently autobiographical experiences with the woman named Nadja. Ihe narrator, meant to be Breton, frankly confesses to the reader his experiences and impressions about them in a series of untitled fragnents divided into three similarly undifferentiated parts. All the fragments of the first section are meant to demonstrate by example the narrator’s ideas regarding chance and the unconscious. In the first case, for example, he recounts instances in which he has had a chance anonymous encounter with an individual, Benjamin Peret (actually it was his mother), Paul KLuard, only to be introduced to that same individual soon after. In the second ins-tance, the narrator-protagonist records how he has inexplicably violent emotional reactions to common objects, certain individuals and locations. In the second section, his experiences with Nadja, a mysterious, but rather mentally ill young woman whom he has met by accident one August day in Paris, are intended as a more extended development of 41 the same themes. Richard Howard, the translator of this work into English, has described the importance of Nadja here perhaps as well as any. In 1he introductory notes he states:

Ihe Nadja of the book is a girl, but, like Bertrand Russell's definition of electricity as "not so much a thing as a way things happen," Nadja is not so much a person as the way she makes people behave. She has been described as a state of mind, a feeling about reality, a kind of vision, and the reader sometimes wonders whether she exists at all. Yet it is Nadja who gives form and structure to the novel.

The brief third collection of fragments is a reprise, a conclusion in which the essential thsnes— chance, "provocation" (the quality of cer'tain people, places and things to evoke subconscious responses which often lead to hei^tened awareness and insist)— are discussed and demonstra'ted. Here Nadja's special liberating function is replaced by Woman and Beau-ty.

Be'tiveen 1920 and 1930, a series of works of fiction, novels and collections of short stories— although the generic distinction when dealing with avant-garde works, may not be very certain— , were published in Spanish America vhich continued but also radically differed from the modemis'ba tradition which preceded it. Some of the more important authors of this period— excluding for the moment those who are the subject of this study— with their respective works are: Martin Adan (Rafael de la Puente Benavides), La casa de carton

(1928); Roberto Arlt, El juguete rabioso (1925), Los siete locos

(1929); Mariano Azuela, La malhora (1923) and El desquite (1925); 42 Juan Ebiar (Alvaro Yanez), Ifoibral; Macedonio Fernandez, Papeles del reclenvenido (1929); Xavier Icaza, Panehito Chapopote (1928); Pablo Neruda, El habitante y su esperanza (1926); Salvador Novo, Return

Ticket (1928) and El joven (1928); Gilberto Owen, La llama frla

(1925) and Novela ccmo nube (1928); Jaime Torres Bodet, Margarita de niebla (1927), La educacion sentimental (1929); Arqueles Vela, La senorita Etcetera (1922) and El café de nadie (1926); Xavier Villaurrutia, Dama de corazones (1928). A reading of these works reveals that, while they differ in many ways from each other, they share an essential characteristic. Each one of then challenges, at one or several levels, the conventional procedures of nineteenth-century realist narrative, of which the modemis'ta and the regionalist fiction of the first three decades of the twentieth century were continuers. The new authors experimented with innovative new approaches to the handling of the categories of narrator, language, narrated world (characters, space, action, time) and the reader’s role, as well as with the nature of the contint. For all, the new organizational stra"tegy becomes that of short sections or fragments, often untitled, rather than the traditional division into chap'ters. This film-like technique approximates the natural rhythms of the lives of its twentieth-century subjects. It also emulates poetry and the short story by limiting each section to its briefest possible extension and leaving more for the reader to infer or in-buit. 43 While some authors employ third-person narrators and others first>-psrson (first>-person narrators make up the majority), all the narrators can now transmit the thou^'fcs of the character as he/she thinks than, after the fashion of Joyce’s Ulysses. When the narrators do speak, they all use, to varying degrees, a complex expressionist form of imagery vhich imbues the world they describe with the colors of their interiority. In a few cases— those of extreme introspection— his language becomes lyrical and poetic. Frequent also is the incorporation of modern technological or scientific language. The characters, tXKO, are of a different breed. Widely differing among themselves they have in conmon a basic existential anxiety about their lives which seem out of control and enigmatic to then. As a consequence, there is li'ttle action in many of these narratives as the protagonists are reduced to pondering their destinies and meditating over human rather than social issues. In those narratives where there is action (e.g., Arlt's Siete locos), the character demonstrates a kind of Nietzchean frenzy of activity for its own sake. In general, however, the characters are abulic and introspective. This causes a reduction in the importance of the category of space to a few vague and sketchy lines. Ihe importance of space is thus secondary. However, this does not mean that the national flavor is absent from these works. A national referent is usually clear, although more in the language and the subjects dealt with. This is perhaps most apparent in the 44 writing of Macedonio 'Pemandez. Interestingly, time, vtilch ou^t to at the very least be distorted by the subjective nature of these novels. Is generally little affected and remains for the most part chronological. All these developments are displayed to differing degrees In the Spanlsh-American cosmopolitan narrative of the twenties. This difference of degree, however. Is not dependent upon chronology. Sons of the earliest narratives are Intensely experimental, Vallejo's Escalas melografladas (1923), for example, while later ones are fairly traditional, Torres Bodet's Educacion sentimental (1929). This fact I attribute to a by this time wide-spread familiarity with the experiments of the European avant-garde and to each author's desire to apply only those techniques which were appropriate to his material. What follows, therefore, are descriptions of three of the most Intensely experimental examples of the Spanish-Amerlcan prose fiction— excluding that of Vallejo, Huldobro and Neruda— written during the decade of the twenties : La casa de carton of Martin Adân, Novela como nube by Gilberto Owen and Macedonio Eemandez's Papeles de Reclenvenido. When asked to give an example of a narrative representative of that produced by the Spanish-American avant>-garde, the title which often comes to the minds of students of Spanish-Amerlcan literature Is La casa de cartôn^^ by the Peruvian wrl'ter Rafael de la Puente

Benavides (1908), better known as Martin Adân. 45 As has been noted elsevflaere. La casa de carton is a Liman

"portrait of an artist as a young m a n . "^5 it is composed of a series of static vignettes by which the unnamed narrator-protagonist impressionistically depicts the acquaintances, experiences and familiar spaces of a summer vacation during his adolescence. The principal venue is Barranco, an affluent ocean-side town on the outskirts of the capital and favorite summer retreat for Lima’s haute bourgeoisie. It is the affectionately critical attitude which the narrator maintains vis-à-vis this his own class which forms the underpinning for La casa de carton. He is ccsning of age and his class has prepared for him a ccsnfortable althou^ undistinguished life, if he will only accept it:

Habîa que resignarse . . . El servicio militar obligatorio ... Una guerra posible ... Los hiJos inevitables ... La vejez ... El trabajo de todos los dlas. (27)

Just as Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus discovers that he ultimately cannot escape his Dublin origins by emigrating to Paris, so also must the protagonist of La casa de carton recognize the futility of such an action:

. . . thou^ he jjthe narrato:^ frequently dreams of travel, he ironically dismisses the [at that tim^ customary trip to Paris as a solution, for experience has 'taught him that •visiting Peru-vian in'tellec'tuals do no more than sample the bright li^ts of Europe and then return with a phony veneer of cosmopolitan sophistication. 46 The narrator’s response to his dllezma is to affirm his profession as a writer of poetry. Only in this way may he remain a part, albeit a marginated one, of the middle class and yet be free to publicize (expose) its defects. The internal process by which the narrator arrived at his decision is expressed allegorically throu^ the experiences of his late friend, Ramon:

This pressure Q'to renounce his literary aspirations and turn into the practical and respectable bourgeois'!] is felt particularly by Ramon, who in one of his poems [see "Poemas Underwood'Q states that he would be arrested by the police if he were to let it be known that he is a poet, and who at one stage suffers a crisis of despair at the prospect of the comfortable, affluent life mapped out for him."'

Interestingly, the narrator sometimes narrates directly to Ramon in the second-person familiar, as if La casa de cart&i were an extended private conversation. And, occasionally there is ambiguity as the two figures seem briefly to merge. In discussing this point, J.M. Kinsella makes the following illuminating observations:

. . . throughout the novel the reader cannot but be in doubt about the continual overlapping of experience between the two characters and wonder about the identity of Ramon . . . Within the stricter confines of the narrative itself we would logically suppose that Ramon is a separate character, whilst on another level, the fusing of a joint experience into one, the doubts as to the validity of [a] man’s image, lead us to suspect that the author is presenting us with the dramatic explici"tation of a single state of mind.""

The inst:ance alluded to by Kinsella concerns the narrator’s auto­ interrogation re^rding a man depicted in his late friend’s diary. 47 about whose existence he is unsure:

^Habra exlstido alguna vez aquel hombre? ^Habremos sonado Ramon y yo? iLo habremos creado Ramon y yo con facciones ajenas, con gestos propios? &Nos habra Uevado el aburrimiento a hacer un hombre? (58)

Further evidence of Ramon’s role as alter ego can be found In the narrator’s substltlon for his friend as lover of Catlta:

Tu [Catlt^ cataste a Ramon, y el no te supo mal. Pues bien, yo sere Ramon. Yo hago mio el deber de el de besarte en las munecas y el de mlrarte con los ojos estupldos, dlgnos de todas las dlchas que tenia Ramon. Tonto y aludo deber, aceptado en una hora Insular, celeste, ventosa, ablerta, desolada. Yo sere Ramon un mes, dos me ses, todo el tlempo que tu piedas amar a Ramon. (83)

The combination of the second-person familiar with the Implied fusion of Ramon and the narrator suggests a sort of contrived schizophrenia by which the narrator Is able to observe and critique his own existence.^9 jn this particular Instance, Ramon’s life becomes a metaphor for the current status of tiie artistic vocation In Peru and the social pressures to which It Is being subjected. Ramon’s death symbolizes the definitive exclusion of poetry as a practicable profession within the suffocating environment of the capital. Furthermore, the detachment and passivity with which the narrator reviews the life of his friend Is symptxmatlc, as Lukacs has indicated, of an alienated consciousness no longer capable of comprehending the reality within vhlch It exists. 48 As a result of his condition, the narrator is content to merely present a collage of humorous caricatures of the more familiar figures of Barranco: the ubiquitous black-shawled beatas and the proud parish priest of the church of San Francisco with his shiny silk hat; the sexually frustrated maiden school ■teacher, "la senorita Muler"; the foreigners residing in Barranco— the wealthy British tourist "miss Annie Doll" and her compatriot, the agent for Dawson & Brothers, whose true lack of refinement is e'vident in his rustic fishing habits, and Herr Oswald Teller, the German border in Ramon’s house; the old pierolistas sunning themselves in the town plaza; and, the narrator’s young ronantic in'terests— Lala, Lulu, Catita, etc.— , each of whose bdna'vior betrays a facet of their parents’ world. As James Higgins confirms, this "series of ironic and extremely funny penr-portraits" expresses "the narrator’s rejection of the shallowness and sterility of the bourgeois life-style."7^^. Ihe narrator’s portrayal of his world is a much more subjective one than that permitted by traditional realist>-nat3:rallst narrative. It is his consciousness which "chooses" what to relate and frcxn this derives the fragmented and discontinuous structure of La casa de carthn. And, it is the st%imp of the narrator’s sensibility which is upon the language used to narra"te. The result is such a proliferation of unusual metaphor that Brushwood has •termed this the novel’s "most readily apparent characteristic."72 ihe narrator’s analogies, in fact, recall to mind the of "ten humorous imagenes creadas (unusual noun-adjective combinations) of Vicente Huidobro’s 49 creaclonista poetry. Here is an oft-cited example of tiie novel’s unusual imagery which appears in the opening fragnent:

EL desayuno es una bola caliente en el estoraago, y una dureza de silla de comedor en las posaderas, y urns ganas solemnes de no ir al colegio en todo el cuerpo. (21)

Ihe narrator’s speech also shows a marked preference for the sensory, both in imagery deriving fran sensory experience— the olfactory, most passive of the five senses, being the predoninant— and in the choice of words for their musical qualities. Included among the novel’s innovations in the narrative language is curious blending of (for the reader) undefined regional vocabulary — ficus, jacaranda, huaco, guamaripa, lucuma, yuyo— with expressions referring to modem technology such as the autonobile and the airplane. Estridentismo, the form which vanguardism took in îfexico, along with the group Los Conteng)oraneos, saw the publication of many experimental narratives: Arqueles Vela’s La senorita Etcetera (1922) and EL café de nadie (1926), Gilberto Owen’s La llama frla (1925) and Novela como nube (1928), Xavier Villaurrutia’s Dama de corazones

(1928), Jaime Torres Bodet’s Margarita de niebla (1927) and La educacion sentimental (1929), Salvador Novo’s Return Ticket (1928) and El joven (1928), and, Xavier Icaza’s Panehito Chapopote (1928). Uie boldest of these were Vela’s EL café de nadie and Owen’s Novela como nube. Gilberto Owen (1904-1952) was the first of the Con'temporaneos to publish a n o v e l . 7^3 His second novel. Novela como nube, although published in 1928, was actually conposed, according to the author’s 50 footnote, between I/!arch and April of 1926.7^ One of idle novel's most Innovative features vis-à-vis the traditional Spanish-American prose fiction is its use of myth to structure the narrative, after the fashion of James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. In this case, Gilberto Owen has employed the obscure myth of Ixion to express his protagonist's (and Man's, by extension) futile search for the ideal woman. Greek mythology told how Ixion,

. . . son either of the god Ares or of Phlegyas, king of the Lapiths in Ihessaly . . . murdered his father-in-law and could find no one to purify him until Zeus did so and admitted him as a guest tx) Olympus. Ixion abused his pardon by trying to seduce Zeus's wife Hera, vho substitxited for herself a cloud . . . Zeus, to punish him, bound him on a fiery wheel, which rolled unceasingly throu^ the air or, according to another tradition, in the underworld.^5

In objective terms, the novel, consisting of 26 episodes equally divided into 'two parts, presents the story of a young poet/painter, Ernesto. In part I, entitled "Ixion en la tierra," Ernesto searches for love in the local café, streets and movie theatre but ends up being shot and wounded by the husband of one of the women he sought to woo as they watched a Chaplin movie. In part II, "Ixion en el Olimpo," Ernesto is taken to convalesce to another town, that of his father’s house which now belongs to Ernesto's uncle Enrique. Ihere he re-encounters an old flame, Elena, who has become Enrique's wife. No'twiths'tanding, Ernesto seeks to reconquer her affections. One evening, in the darkness of the hallway, Ernesto hears what he 51 believes to be the footsteps of Elena. As the figure approaches he intercepts her, kisses her and requests a rendezvous at midni^t. Later, at the meeting place, Ernesto discovers that it was Elena's younger sister, Rosa Amalia, vhom he had stopped and arranged the encounter wiiii. She had always been in love with him, it turns out, and, as he finds her desirable, they marry. As Oscar Rivera-Rodas tells us, though:

Para el Joven y modemo Ixion este [matrimonic^ es el castigo de Zeus: casarse y ser esposo de Rosa Amalia, la nube que por un momento tuvo la forma de Elena. Ernesto, condenado a su raatrlmonio, revivira el castigo de Ixion en el lârtaro.T^"

Because tiie myth of Ixion is the ultimate referent for Ernesto's story, the novel's meaning can no longer be said to reside within the sum of its parts, as was the case with nineteenth-century realist narrative. Novela como nube, then, is more like a modem allegory— what Peter Burger calls the "inorganic" work. In this sense, its vision can be termed an ahistorical one, in that it deny's a constructive, dialectical evolution in the patterns of the protagonist's life, replacing it with a cyclical and pessimistic view of human destiny. This vision is consonant with Beatrix Gonzalez's description of the general situation encountered by those of üie estridentista promotion:

. . . atendiendo ya mas de cerca al contexto historico mexicano, el fracaso del proceso revolucionario— que de alguna manera pudo haber traido una transf ormacion social radical— profundizo aun zms la crisis y desorientacion de las espectativas de los sectores populares y medios urbanos, que ya hacia los anos de 1920 comenzaron a 52 reorganizarse dentpo de las limitaciones que la sociedad oligarquico- burguesa pennitla. Sin embargo, no deja de producirse una desilusion que incide en la perdlda de una perspectiva historica de la realidad [1 . f] La perdida del horizonfce historico, como expresion de la crisis que entrano la conteraporaneidad en lyêxico, U e vô a absolutizar y a ontologizar las caracteristicas del ser humano de la sociedad urbana.'^'^

This sense of loss of historical horizons is reinforced, at the level of language, by the multiple narrators’ exclusive use of the present •tense and the rela'ted future of probability. As the narrator is the component which ultimately de'termines the shape and subs'tance of a narrative, a close examina'tion of this novel’s narrators serves to uncover the remaining non-traditional ■techniques employed by its author. The narrators are three. Predominant is an unidentified third-person extradiegetic voice responsible for relating the principal even-ts befalling Ernesto as well as his feelings and thou^ts about them. This narrator submerges those events, however, in a subjectivity marked by critical judgement of the pro'tagonist’s actions:

Sus hermosas corbatas, culpables de sus horribles companîas. Le han dado un gusto por las flores hast:a en los poemas: rosas, claveles, palabras que avergüenza ya pronunciar, narcisos sobre todo. (7)

Seffor, Senor, ^por que nacerîa Ernesto en una tierra ■tan meridional? Conprende que ■todos sus actos giran en tomo del amor, que la mujer esta presente en todo lo suyo, eje de todas sus acciones. jSiente en est% momento unas ganas tan verdaderamente dramaticas de besarla!... (41- 42)

'Ihe effect of this, for most of the novel, is to cause the discursive 53

plane to gain preeminence over the narrative plane.78 Corollary to this is the fragmentation of the narrative which becomes subject to the narrator’s willingiess or unwillingness to provide more information. Ihe pro“tagonist himself, whose own voice is only heard in a few fragments transcribed by him in moments previous to that of narration, is the second narrator. These fragments are inserted montage-like, without any warning or explanation from the third- person narrator, into the flow of the principal narration. The third narrative voice, that of an author, emerges half-way throu^ "to address the reader and exhort him/her to exert him- /herself to help assemble the narrative from the pieces he has given him/her:

îfe anticipe al mas justo reproche, para decir que he queri-do asî mi historia, vestida de arlequin, hecha toda de pedacitos de prosa de color y clase diferent%x% Solo el hilo de la atenciôn de los numerables lectores puede unirlos entre sl~^. . Yo he notado, caballeros, que mi personaje solo tiene ojos y memoria; aun recordando solo sabe ver. Comprendo que debiera inventzarle una psicologîa y prest:arle mi voz. îAh!, y urdir, también, una trama Q . Es que solo pretendo dibujar un fantoche. (6^65, emphasis mine)

The picture is complete. The subjectivity of the narrator overwhelms the objective narration, clouding and fragmenting it. The action becomes schematic and the characters vague and even indistinct, as in the case of Cfelia-^ Eva— > Eva^—^Eva^—>Elena-^Rosa Amalia. The title of the novel, then, signals a relationship between the myth of Ixion and the narrative components as well as expressing the author's 54 expectations regarding his work's reception by its readers. Owen subverts the traditional procedures of Spanish-American narrative in favor of a form of writing in which the reader is encouraged to collaborate in the work's realization. Macedonio Fernandez (1874-1952) of Argentina is the writer of Ihe twenties who most vigorously rebelled against the procedures of narrative as they had been formulated by tradition. His Papeles de Reclenvenido challenged the most fundamental principles of the narrative genre as they were understood by readers of the period. At first glance Papeles de Reclenvenido would not appear to possess such a serious intent, due to its seaming lack of plan— it is made up of articles published by the author in contemporary newspapers and Journals— and to the fact that it was assembled and published by the author's friends, Jorge Luis Borges and Alfonso R e y e s 7 9 . This impression of casualness is compounded by the author's characteristic use of humor as his primary mode of expression. However, a close inspection reveals that nothing in Papeles is gratuitous. tihat little action takes place in this short fifty-five page narrative centers around an accident which Reclenvenido (Newcomer), the protagonist, suffers Just after arriving in Buenos Aires. The incident, in which he falls on the sidewalk and sustains a blow to the head, is first referred to in the opening fragment which acts as a sort of preface or prologue. However, the mere mention of this concre1% event in the opening sentence provokes a flurry of digressions reminiscent of Freudian psychotherapy's free 55 associations. As John Brushwood recounts:

Hie reference to the accident turns miraculously into a brief dissertation on the wisdom of dividing time into forty-five year intervals. Frcm here we slide into a proposal that a statue be erected in honor of the man who invented the difference between left and ri^t. This possibility brings up the narrator’s dislike of statues: he loathes those folds of cloth that should be rippling in the wind, but really never move. Somehow these thou^ts lead him to conment on an account in the newspaper La Prensa concerning a disaster [the explosion of a city]"that really wasn’t a disast%r at all [because it improved the city’s housing distribution]. Prom this point, the essay- narrative wanders to hunger in Germany, to the dangers of travel, back to the street accident and on to boring li"terature.°^

PoUowing this in-medias-res introduction are "two chapters relating more fully the details of the accident. Ihe behavior of those— the public, the police, the journalists— Miho attend to the accident is the object of the narrator-protagonist’s humorously ironic commentary. Next comes an introduction to the rest of the book by the ’’editor,” towards vhose admonitions Recienvenido shows a certain resentment. As it is Recienvenido’s autobiography, the remainder of the book is made up of his pronouncements, still full of digressions, regarding the literary conventions of the day. As Naomi Lindstron, author of a remarkable study of "l'îacedonian” prose, describes it:

. . . the newcomer of the title is an alien to the literary world and hence able to see its conventions as arbitrary rather than necessary. His editors try to tell him that his writings must be ’’cercados o sea contenidos por un cerco y que tuvieran la solucion cerca, y, ademas, que ocuparan un solo lugar.” Ihe untainted newcomer cannot see the validity of even these basic literary presuppositions. Casting his eyes on the literary scene, the newcomer experiences an exaggerated revulsion. In an extreme stete of innovative rebellion, he complains that his editors 56 would domesticate literature into a clerical task demanding only office skills. Even the laws of physics place unacceptable constraints on his freedom fa reference to his fall] .31

As Lindstrom indicates in her study, Macedonio Femândez approaches the narrative genre with an eye toward overturning such basic conventions as the linear reading, the closed ending and the passive reader, all of which, for him, are symp'toms of an art of consumption rather than an art of original creation and recreation (in the playful sense of the word).32 In fact, the most extreme Macedonian program calls for a littérature centered on absence rather than on any exis"tent element of the work. Ihe artistic endeavor focuses on that which is missing: the plot, the character’s attributes and actions, the author’s guidance [. . .] Ihis cer-tainly applies to those Macedonian works where there is an attempt to banish every element that mi ^ t dictate •to the reader what the ’’main point” of the work is.33 Papeles de Recienvenido, while yet relatively early in demandez’s narrative production, clearly explores all the possi­ bilities of the author’s anti-esthetic. Ihe method of its composition and publication is symptomatic of the author’s desire to minimize his role in i'ts conception and realization. 3^ Furthermore, the sketchiness and incompleteness of character and plot seek to maximize the responsibility of the reader in the shaping of the work. Ihis process is encouraged both directly through the literary remarks of the narrator which serve to promote his anti-esthetic and 57 indirectly throu^ his use of ■whimsical digressions and non- conç)liance with reader expectations, which provoke the reader into skipping parts and beccxning, "tiiereby, an active participant (albeit in a small way) in the work’s unfolding.^5 Ib conclude, the brief re'view undertaken in this section has hi^aliÿited the existence, during the nine"teen "twenties and shoulder to shoulder with the regionalist narrative of the period — José Eus'tasio Rivera's La voragine (1924), Ricardo Güiraldes’s Don Segando Sombra (1926) or Rctnulo Gallego’s Doha Bérhara (1929), for example— , of a cosmopolitan and experimen'tal avan-t-garde prose fiction. Occupying a proninent place within the production of that -vanguardist narrative— #iich continues to a cer'tain point the modemista narrative and anticipates, also to a certain point, the "new narrative" of post World War II— are the narratives writ'ten by César Vallejo and Vicen"te Huldobro.

Vallejo and Huldobro as Wri'ters of Prose Piction César Vallejo, recognized as one of the major figures of Spanish-Amerlcan poetry, is not as well known for his works in prose, although, as Luis Monguio points out, for years he wrote almost exclusively prose, embracing a variety of literary genres: the novel, the short story, theatre, the essay, and newspaper and magazine articles.85 Prominent within Vallejo's prose production is his narrative fiction, which forms a chronological block, from 1923 to 1936, and comprehends a period pivothL in the in'tellec'fcual and 58 artistic evolution of üie author. The totality of his creative prose consists of the following: Sscalas melograTiadas (1923), a collection of short stories, the short novels "Pabla salvage (1923) and Hingsteno (1931) and "Paco Yunque," a children’s story, as well as several narrative sketches which the author had not polished sufficiently to be considered definitfLve versions; to wit: Hacia el reino de los Sciris, a short novel dated 1924-1928, "EL nino del carrizo," short story, "Viaje alrededor del porvenir," short story, "Los dos soras," short story, and "EL vencedor," a short story for children. Within this corpus of vailejian narrative, an evolution from vanguardism to a realist prose of social comment is clearly recognizable. Those works which fall clearly into the first category are essentially two. In Lima during the first months of 1923, shortly after the appearance of Trilce and before leaving for Paris, Vallejo published his first two extended works of prose, entitled Escalas melografiadas and Pabla salvaje. The first of these consists of two groups of narratives. One, under the general title of "Cunéiformes” and conposed of six brief episodes, appears on Ihe surface to collect impression of Vallejo's jail experiences; the other, under the general heading "Coro de vientos," is a series of six short stories. One of these, " M s alia de la vida y la rauerte," had appeared previously, earning the author a literary prize. Pabla salvaje, on the other hand, is either a long short story or a short novel or perhaps, as Monguio suggests, a novella in the

Italian s e n s e . ^7 its protagonist, Balta Espinar, an industrious 59 Indian happy in his home together with his wife, breaks a mirror vÆiile shaving when the image he sees there is not his own. From that moment forward the superstitious omen and his increasing paranoia concerning the mys'terious apparition disrupt the normalcy of his daily life and entangle him in a web of self-incurred misfortune culminating in his mys'terious death at the bottom of an abyss.

Vicente Huidobro was a prolific writer of prose fiction, publishing a total of fi-ve avan't-garde novels and one collection of surrealist novell^ during his career.And Huidobro probably enjoyed the grea-test degree of success in the marketplace of any Spanish-American wri'ter of avan't-garde narrative. His first published novel, M.o Cid Campeador. Hazana (1929), based on the old Cantar as well as the other Rodrigan epics and filled with attracti've illustrations of its hero’s exploits, was popular and widely read. His next novel, Cagliostro. Novela-Rilm (written 1921; published 1934), about the mystical adventures of the (in)famous ei^'teenth- century alchemist, won its author a $10,000 award in a Hollywood scriptwriting con'test.89 in addition, both Mlo Cid Campeador and Cagliostro were transla'ted into Ehglish soon af'ter their publication in Spanish.90 ihe novels which followed enjoyed similarly favorable receptions. Huidobro in fact published -two more novels in 1934, ^ proxima and Papa o El diario de Alicia Mir. These novels (ll'verged frcxn the hazana mold employed in M o Cid Campeador and Cagliostro. The first 60 to appear, ^ proxlma^l, -which originally carried the subheading "Historia que paso en poco tiempo mas," was a prophetic "tale which foresaw -the conflagration of the second world war. Alfredo Roc, an ambitious and farsi^ted philanthropist underwri-bes a Noah's Ark- st^le expedition to Angola for the purposes of establishing a colony there safe from the impending disaster. Ihe colony is to incorporate the best principles of capitalist technology, whose perversion he blames for Europe's problems. In contrast. Roc's son Silverio believes a better solution is to be found in the Soviet socialist experiment. After war breaks out— the inhabitants of Paris are all turned to stone by a surprise poison gas attack— Alfredo Roc's u-topian society succeeds for a time as the haven frcm e-vil it was meant to be. However, it eventually founders on the conflict among its residents over the right use of technology. Ihe story concludes with the sabotage of the stockpiled machines and its protagonist ends up wondering out loud whether his son wasn't rigit aftar all:

Alii estaban todos los amigos, -fcodos los primeros pioneers, contanplando la gran devastacion. El gigan-te de fuego seguia tragando, tragando. Tenia un hambre cosmica, un hambre de planeta, un hambre de muchos siglos . . . En ese instan-fce el techo del museo se desplcmo estrepitosamente, cayo ardiendo como un gran libro abierto. Y se oyô la voz de Roc que parecia aullar al infinite: — Rüsia, Rusia, mi hijo ténia la razôn. Rusia, la ûnica esperanza. (318)

Huidobro's last novel of 1934 was Papa o El diario de Alicia Mir. In her diary, six-fceen-year-old Alicia Mir records the sometimes humorous struggles of her father Alejandro, a poet, to preserve his 61 personal freedom against tie attempts to limit it by his wife and her band of supporters, her sewing circle. Alicia, who supports her father’s position, faithfully notes his opinions on a variety of topics. Not suprisingly, these opinions almost invariably echo the public pronouncements of the novel's author. In the end, Alicia’s mother’s actions provoke the breakup of the marriage and Alejandro leaves to "bake up residence with an adoring mistress vho bears him a child. In 1939» Huidobro’s last novel appeared entitled Satiro o El poder de las palabras. As the title suggests, the experiences of the novel’s protagonist, Bernardo Saguen, dramatize the power which words sometimes possess to actually transform reality. Ihe entirety of Huidobro’s poetic production was founded on just such a presupposition. In Satiro, the protagonist is out for a stroll one day when he spies a little girl hungrily eyeing chocolatée caramels displayed in a candy-store window. He generously "bakes her inside to buy seme and then takes his leave. As he is crossing the street a doorwoman who had apparently been watching the whole time accosts Bernardo and hisses the epithet of the title in his face. Bernardo, a ccanfortéably well-off, sensitive soul particularly susceptible to the power of words, spends the rest of the novel struggling to free himself frcxn the burden of the old lady’s accusation. But it is of no use and, in the end, he commits the very act to which he first thou^t himself immune. 62 Perhaps Vicente Huidobro’s boldest experiment in narrative, however, was his 1935 collaboration with the Alsatian surrealist Hans Jean Arp (1877-1966), Tres inmensas novelas ejemplares. True to the tradition established by Cervantes^^ and Unaniuno93 of employing the exemplary novella as an occasion for testing the possibilities of narrative, Huidobro and Arp sou^t in their three "immense" novella^ to expand the frontiers of tiie genre. The first of the jointly-authored novellas bears the title "Salvad a vuestros ojos (novela pos't-his'torica)The novella's setting is pos't-apocalyptic Earth, where humanity has disappeared and, in its place, a race of ^obulos hermafronetalicos has arisen. Its members are uniformly named either José, Antonio, Carolina or Rose Marie. The human element has been virtually eliminated by the supertechnological ^obulos. Nonetheless, the squirrels have saved, along with their usual hoard, a little of the past which, when combined with the revival of the "future unknown soldier" (440) results in what Evelyn Picon Garfield has termed "una resurrecion historica epifanica."9^ Here as in La proxima, the desire is to call attention to the potential dangers of modem 'technology. In "Salvad a vuestros ojos," however, the authors have preferred humor as the medium for their message. In a letter to his co-author, Huidobro explained the function of this humor:

Muchos diran al leer es'tas paginas que nosotros solo sabemos reir. Ignoran lo que la risa significa. Ignoran la potencia de evasion que hay en ella . . . En mi pieza de "teatro Gilles de Raiz hay una escena en la cual Gilles 63 dice: "Si no riera en este instante, mi cerebro estallarîa." Para cuântos hcxnbres la risa es una vâlvula de escape salvadora ccxno lo es el Uorar . . . EL aima popular, que posee tantas intuiciones, lo ha indicado en dos de sus dichos mas corrientes: "Estallô en carcajadas. Estai16 en lâgrimas." Esas frases encierran en si un concepto . . . profundo . . . que a veces estallamos en risas o en llantos para no reventar. (451)

In the Tres inmensas novelas ejemplares of Arp and Huidobro humor plays a much darker, more characteristically modem role than that which Cervantes described for his own Novelas ejemplares95 ;

Mi intento ha sido poner en la plaza de nuestra republica una mesa de trucos, dcnde cada uno pueda llegar a entreteners . . . sin dano del alma ni del cuerpo, porque los ejercicios honestos y agradables, antes se aprovechan que danan . . . H o r ^ hay de recreacion, donde el afligido esniritu descanse.^o

Ehtertainment has become "exorcism of a world painful to its authors."97 The second novella of the collection, "El jardinero del castillo de medianoche (novela policial)" mercilessly parodies the detective novel as it leads the reader on a wild goose chase ("La sombra del asesino . . . permanecla en las sombras." [44^) throu^ a series of fantastic intrigues analogous to the chaos of the modem world. 98 The narrator tells of the investigation into the death of a certain Swiss residing in London, named George V. News of the murder creates quite a stir and pursuit of the murderer is intense. The scene then shifts to the Midnight Castle and its gardener named Shiller. The narrator follows him into the castle and then follows the movements of a pair of mysterious eyes which witness the 64 treacherous murder of the Pope. The eyes continue opening and closing on a variety of scenes, some located in other countries, seme in the castle, sane with elements of the surreal— kangaroo guards filing into a piano, for example— but almost always witnessing other crimes. At the conclusion, the -two eyes go their separate ways and.

habiendo desaparecido los ojos misteriosos que seguîan los crlmenes, los crîmenes también desaparecieron y todas las madres de familia pudieron dormir tranquilas. (445)

Arp’s native Alsatia is the protagonist of the third novella, entitled ”La cigüena encadenada.” The region’s extreme mili'barism is used to parody the mass hysteria of radical nationalism which ’’allana la individualidad e invalida la comunicacion entre los hombres vueltos cifras identicas.”99 This leveling effect is seen to reach i'ts climax following Alsatia’s victory, when its irhabi'tan'fcs decide to baptize all things with the name of their most revered war hero Duval, even their language:

Pronto todo se llamo Duval. Asl la lengua fue extreraa- damente hermosa y simple. Cuando dos amigos se encontraban en una calle o en un bar, se hablaban en el mas puro duval. Uno decxa al otro: — Duval, duval, duvalduval, duvalval. Lo que antes se habrla dicho: ”Es increible el numéro de cochinos extranjeros que hay en el mundo”. El marido al volver a casa, contaba a su mujer los acontecimientos del dîa: — Duval, duvalduvalduval, duval, duvalduval, duval, duval. Lo que querîa decir en lengua je vulgar: ’’Esta "tarde perdî un guante en las Galerie Lafayette”. Su mujer le respondîa: — Duvalduval duval, du"valdu -val, duduval? Duval duvalduvalduvalduval, d'uval, du"val. Lo que puede traducirse asî en lengua inculta.: ”&No serîa en otra parte? Tte dire que la cocinera quemô el 65 asado. Esto te pasa por llegar tarde". A lo cual el marido contestaba, colerico: — Duval. Queriendo decir en el vieJo idiona: "Mierda". (450)

One final note about Tres innensas novelas ejemplares. In the above cited letter written by Huidobro to his friend and collaborator Hans Arp, Huidobro also informed Arp that the prospective publisher of their three exemplary novellas "las encontre cor'tas para hacer un libro" and that, he goes on to say, "me he visto obligado a escribir yo solo otras dos mas" (451). These 'two additional novellas maintain the ironically humorous 'tone of the original three, as can be gathered from their titles : "EL gato con bo"tas y Simbad el marine o Badsim el marrano (novela pjostuma)" and "La mision del gangs'ter o la laiiçiara maravillosa (novela oriental)." The former is a freewheeling and free associating history of the narrator’s fictitious homeland, Oratonia. Ihe lat"ter tells of the infamous deeds of cer'tain John Chicago, gangster. Contrary to what one would expect, however, the masterful artistry of Mr. Chicago and his gang only inspires the entire population to become gangsters, as well. In spite of the basic similarity of Huidobro’s "two novellas to those he wrote with Arp, these were ultimately not included with those and, for reasons never disclosed, they were not published at all during the author’s lifetime. Also not published were the uncompleted Cuentos diminutes. Left behind were a pair of short stories which Huidobro composed in 1927. The first diminutive— one-half p a ^ — short story, "La joven del 66 abrlgo largo,” deftly combines poetry’s power of suggestion with, liie objectivism of a movie scene. An unidentified narrator dispassionately speculates about a mysterious lady vfco crosses the plaza everyday (for years) always wearing the same overcoat. His feeling is that she's hiding something:

^Es que ella es tîmida? ^Es que tiene vergüenza de tanta calle inutil? &Ese abrigo es la fortaleza de un secreto sentimiento de inferioridad? . . . Ihl vez tiene el telle rauy alto o muy bajo o no tiene cintura. Tal vez quiere ocultar un embarazo, pero es un embarazo demasiado largo, de algunos anos. 0 sera para sentirse mas sola o para que •bodas sus células puedan penser mejor. (909)

And, as he concludes, one receives the impression that perhaps he knows more about her than it first seemed: "Acaso [ell^ quiere solo ocultar que su padre cometio un crimen cuando ella 'tenia quince anos" (909). "Tragedia," the second, similarly brief short story, is the story of a certain "Maria Olga." She has run into difficulty with her husband because of the dualit:y implicit in her name: that is, he doesn't understand that he's only married to "Maria” and, therefore, he becomes infuriated and even homicidal when "Olga" takes a lover :

Pero sucedio que el marido se equivoco y mato a Maria, a la parte suya, en vez de ma'tar a la otra. Olga continue viviendo en brazos de su amante, y creo que aun sigue feliz, sintiendo solo que es un poco zurda. (909)

Dri-ving the marital conflict is Huidobro's belief in the power of the 67 word to determine reality, a Hieme repeated in the novel Satiro.^QQ

The intent of this first chapter has been to survey as thorou^ily— but, also, as concisely— as possible the circumstances of production of Spanish-American avant-garde narrative. Relevant issues in that context are social milieu as well as artistic and literary trends. In examining these issues several ttiemes emerged v M c h will resurface when, in the next two chapters, close readings are undertaken of the prose fiction of César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro. Principal among ttiem are üie impact of Qie establishment and spread of dependent capitalism in Spanish America on all aspects of Spanish-American life, including its cultural production, and, the existence and pervasive influence in that cultural production of Spanish America’s regioral/cosmopolitan structural dualism. By continuing to keep track of these two larger thenes as the focus narrows to the "two authors and their respective works much will be revealed not only about their individual works but also about the specific nature of Spanish-American avan'fc-garde narrative. This task is accomplished with the aid of the concept of transcul-turation, which is applied as a methodological frame of reference. Notes

^Hicmas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modem Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) 47. ^Sergio Bagu, Economîa de la sociedad colonial (Buenos Aires: Librerîa "El Ateneo" Editorial, 1949)- 3Skidmore and Smith 51. ^Hjlio Halperin-Don^ai, Historia contemporanea de America Latina (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1969) 315-318. ^Agustin Cueva, El desarrollo del capi~taliamo en America Latina (îfexico: Si^o Veintiuno Edi tores, 1982) 163:

. . . las crisis del capitalisme, por si solas, no hacenmâs que producir efectos negatives en les puntos débiles del sistema, a menos que la lucha de clases arroje resultados favorables a las fuerzas portadoras del progreso. Cuando este no ocurre les aspectos mas retrogrades del modelo oligarquico-dependiente se acentûan y la econanîa subdesarroUada entra en una prolongada fase de estagiaciôn, en espera de que una reactivaciôn de la economîa imperial vuelva a ponerla en marcha, supeditandola en funciôn de las necesidades de reordenamiento del sistema todo. ^Skidmore and Smith 50. ^Celso Eurtado, Economie Development of Latin America, 2nd ed, trans. Suzette Macedo (London: Gantoridge University Press, 1976) 100- 101. '^Skidmore and Smith 53- ^Marcos Kaplan, Eormacion del estado nacional en America Latina (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universi'tarias, 1969 ) 262-263- ^^Skidmore and Smith 54. 68 6 9 llKaplan 173-174. i2fâLplan 194-195-

^^Balperin Don^ii 290. ^^Halperin Don^ii 283-84. 15Halperin Don^il 295- ^^E.J. Hobsbawn, The Age of Revolution (1789-1848) 355- Quoted in Kaplan 245. ^T^Kaplan 246. iSg^lan 249-261.

l^Kaplan 252-53-

^(^Kaplan 266- 21i?ranciose Perus, Literatura y sociedad en America Latina (îtexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1976) bl. 22Angel Rama, La novela en America Latina. Panoramas 1920-1980 (Veracruz: Pundacion Angel Rama, 1986) 37- 23Jean Pranco, The Modem Culture of Latin America: Society and the Artist (New York: Praeger, 1967) 61- 2^Rama, La novela en America Latina 41-42. 25Rama, La novela en America Latina 43. 2^Angel Flama, Ruben Dario y el modemlsmo: circunstancia socioeconomica de un arte americano (Caracas: Ediciones de la Biblioteca de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1970). 27Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 112-113- 28Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 42. 29Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 42-43. 30perus 66. 3^-Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 20. 32Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemiano 5- 33perus 78. 3^Raina, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 31. 35Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 28-29. 3^Rania, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 76-77. 37Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 91* 33Rama, Ruben Dario y el modemismo 78. 39ssyincur Menton, Ihe Spanish .American Short Story. A Critical Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) 125. ^^lyfenton 126. See also John S. Brushwood, "Ihe Spanish American Siort Story Rran Echeverrîa to Quiroga" in Ihe Latin American Short Story. A Critic^ History, ed. Margaret Sayers Peden (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 19Ô3) 57-70. ^^See, for example, Idolos rotos (1901) and Sangre patricia (1902). ^^■pranco. The Modem Culture of Latin America 50. ^3perus B6-87- ^^■Pranco, The Modem Culture of Latin America 41- ^^TTranco, The Modem Culture of Latin America 41. ^^Franco, The Modem Culture of Latin America 102. Angel Rama, La novela en America Latina 298. ^®Saul Yurkeivich, Pundadores de la nueva poesla latinoamericana (Barcelona: Seix Barrai, 1971)- ^^vicente Huidobro, Obras complétas, ed. Hugo Montes, 2 vols. (Santiago: Editorial Andres Bello, 1976) 1: 219. 50Rama, La novela en America Latina 340. 5^Jean Franco, César Vallejo. The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) Chapter 1: "Poetry as Mode of Existence." ^^Amold Hauser, Historia social de la literatura y el arte (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1967) 396.

53nauser 401: 7 1

El mises de Joyce y Ihe Waste Land de T.S. Eliot aparecen siraultâneamente, en 1922, y dan las dos notas clave de la nueva literatura; una de estas obras se mueve en la direcciôn expreslonista y surrealista, y la otra en la simbolista y formalista. La actitud intelectualista es camm a los dos, pero el arte de Eliot arranca de la "experiencia de la cultura", y el de Joyce, de la "experiencia de la pura y primaria existencia", segun ha definido Friedrich Gundolf, que introduce estos conceptos en el prôlogo a su libro sobre Goethe, expresando con esto un tîpico patron de pensamientos de la época [Friedrich Gundolf, Goethe, 191^. En un caso la cultura histôrica, la tradiciôn intelectual y el legado de las ideas y de las formas es la fuente de inspiraciôn; en el otro lo son los hechos directos de la vida y los problemas de la existencia humana. En T.S. Eliot y Paul Valery el fundamento primario es siempre una idea, un pensamiento, un problema; en Joyce y Kafka, una experiencia irracional, una vision, una imagsn metafisica o mitolôgica. La distinciôn conceptual de Gundolf es como la comprobaciôn de una dicotcmîa que va recorriendo todo elcarapo del arte modemo. Cubismo y constructivisme, por una parte, y expresionismo y surrealisno, por la otra, encaman tendencias estrictamente formales o respectivamente destructoras de la forma, las cuales aparecen aliora por primera vez juntas en tan violenta contradicciôn. 5%enato Poggioli, The Iheory of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) :

. . . the modem writer or artist has yet to reconcile himself with the fact that bourgeois-capitalist society treats him not as a creator but, on one hand, as a parasite and consumer and, on the other, as a worker and producer. (112)

. . . bourgeois cultzire . . . prefers to consider the frui-ts of literary-artistic activity as a service rather than a product, it naturally leads the artist to assume the function or fiction of being a self-employed professional: but in most cases he lacks the doctor’s, lawyer’s and engineer’s regular clientele. (113)

It is exactly by way of a reaction against the pluralism of 72 bour^ois taste that avant-garde art chooses the path of stylistic dissent. (120) 55peter Hirger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986):

. . . the separation of art from the praxis of life becomes the decisive characteristic of the autonomy of bourgeois art . (49) S^Hirger 49:

. . . the avant-gardists proposed the sublation of art— sublation in the Hegelian sense of the term: art was notto be simply destroyed, but transferred to the praxis of life where it would be preserved, albeit in changed form . . . What distinguishes then . . . is the attempt to organize a new life praxis from a basis in art. (49) 57Rirger 49, in describing Walter Benjamin’s concept of allegory, as it appears in his The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: NLB, 1977), states:

As one attempts to analyze the allegory concept into its components, the following schema results: 1. The allegorist pulls one element out of the to'fcality of the life context, isolating it, depriving it of its function. Allegory is therefore essentially fragment and thus the opposite of the organic symbol. "In the field of allegorical intuition, the image is fragment, a rune . . . The false appearance (Schein) of totality is extinguished" (Origin, p. 176). 2. Ihe allegorist joins the isolated reality fragments and thereby creates meaning. This is posited meaning; it does not derive from the original context of the fragments. 58Bürger 77-78:

A theory of the avant-garde must begin with the concept of montage that is suggested by the early cubist collages. What distinguishes them from the techniques of composition developed since the Renaissance is the insertion of reality fragments into the painting, i.e., the insertion of material that has been left unchanged by the artist. But this means the destruction of the unity of the painting as a whole, all of whose parts have been fashioned by the 75 subjectivity of its creator [^ . • Ihe insertion of reality fragnents into the work of art fundamentally transforms that work. îhe artist not only renounces shaping a whole, but gives the painting a different status, since parts of it no Icnger have the relationship to reality characteristic of the organic work of art. They no Icxiger have signs pointing to reality, they are reality.

An example of this procedure in narrative would be the inclusion of excerpts from actual newspaper articles, newsreel texts, radio broadcasts, current musical lyrics, etc. as John Dos Passos did in his Ihree Soldiers (1921) and Mahhat'ban Transfer (1925). ^^Rirger 80-81:

The recipient of an avant>-gardis'te work discovers that the manner of appropriating int%llectual objectifications that has been formed by the reading of organic works of art is inappropriate to the present object. The avant-gardiste work neither creates a total impression that would permit an in'terpre'tathon of i'ts meaning nor can whatever impression may be created be account:ed for by recourse to the individual parts, for they are no longer subordinated ■to a pervasive in'tent ^ • J What remains is the enigmathc quality of the forms, their resistance to the attempt to wrest meaning from then. If recipients will not simply give up or be contented with an arbitrary meaning extrapolated from just a part of the work, they must attempt to understand this enignatic quality of the avant>- gardista work. ^*^Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: Ihe MIT Press, 1986) 100. ^^See Malcolm Bradbury and John Pletcher, "Ihe Introverted Novel," in Modernism, ed. îfelcolm Bradbury and James McParlane (Great Britain: Penguin Books Ltd., 1986) 394-415. ^-Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, trans. Jonathan Cape (London: Ihe Trinity Press, 1971) 28. All further quotations will be from this edition. Ann Caws, André Breton (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1971) 65. ^^Dfertln Adan, La casa de carton (Lima: Ediciones Nuevo Mundo, 1961). All quotations will be from this edition and page numbers will be indicated in parentheses immediately following the 7 4 quotations. ^5james Higgins, A History of Peruvian Literature (Liverpool: Francis Caims Publications, Ltd., 19Ü7) 121. ^^Higgins 122. ^^Higgins 122. ^^John M. Kinsella, "Ihe Artist as Subject : a Study of Martin Aden's La casa de carton," in Belfast Spanish and Portuguese Papers, ed. P.S.N. Russell-Gebbett et.al. (Belfast: Queen's University, 1979) 71. ^^ihis device became very popular in the '50's and '50's with the emergence of the nueva novela and the novel of the "boon". 70gyorgy Lukacs, Realisn in Our T ^ . Literature and the Class Struggle, trans. John and Necke Mander (New York: Harper and Row, 1954) ÈÏ. ^^-Higgins 122. ^%rushwood, Ihe Spanish American Novel 62. 73oscar Rivera-Rodas, "EL discurso narrativizado en Owen," Prosa hispanica de vanguardia, ed. Fernando Burgos (Madrid: Origenes; 1986) ll6. ^^Gilberto Owen, Novela como nube (Mexico: Ediciones de Ulises, 1928) 98. 75i»ixion,'' The New Encyclopaedia Brit;annica: Mlcropaedia, 1980 ed. ^^Rivera-Rodas 117- "^"^Beatriz Gonzalez, "EL cafe de nadie y la narrativa del estridentismo," Dsxto Critico 12.34-35 (1986): 63. ^^Rivera-Rodas 119- ^9jo Anne En^ebert, Macedonio Ferr^dez and the Spanish American New Novel (New York: New York University Press, 1978) 48. ®*^John S. Brushwood, Ihe Spanish Merican Novel : A Twentieth- Cen'fcury Survey (Austin: Ihe University of ïfexas Press, 1975) 78. ®^Nacmi Lindstrcm, Macedonio Fernandez (Ihe University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 75 19-31) 29. ^^Lindstrcm, Chapter 2 : "Ihe Reform of Reading and Writing,"- 29-66 .

^^Lindstrom 52- 53 •

^^indstrcm 11-12.

^^Lindstrcm 37 :

A gradualist strategy especially common in I'facedonio’s view, skipping, is one of the few creative abilities in use among the reading public. Skipping is one way the reader can wrench control of the literary event from even a reactionary author for, as Barthes observes, "the author cannnot...choose to writhe what will not be read." Part of the responsibility for the final form the work •takes lies with the skipping reader. ^%uis Monguio, "César Vallejo: vida y obra," Re-uista hispanica modema, l6 (1950): 65-66. ^^Monguio 64. ^^In the "No'ta de los editores," p.4, of Huidobro’s his first novel M . O Cid Campeador. Hazana (Madrid: Ccmpania Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones, 1929), there areindications that he intended to compose other contributions to his "hazana" series— of which his second novel, Cagliostro (Novela-FilinT (Santiago: Editorial Zig- Zag, 1934), is also a part:

Huidobro nos ha proraetido para pronto algunas otras Hazanas: una sobre Hemân Cortes, otra sobre Cristobol Colon, otra sobre Lau'taro y acaso una sobre Simon Boli-var. Asl completara el ciclo de los Paladines. Del ciclo de los Magos tiene ya dos: Cagliostro y Nostradamus. Ademas prépara très del ciclo de los Poe'tas: Gcngora, Cervantes y San Juan de la Cruz.

In December of 1986, I had the good fortzine to have been the houseguest of the writer’s son, Vicente Huidobro Porthles, who is the ultima'te heir to his father’s belongings. These he has sou^t to organize and preserve, with the learned aid of his close friend. Dr. Hugo Montes, a respected authority on the author. During my -visit Don Vicen-te was very forthcoming with information and his father’s papers and, with the collaboration of Dr. Montes, he graciously aided % my Investigations into whetiier or not tiie author m i ^ t actually have left behind manuscripts of the other "hazanas". Qifortunately none have ever appeared. ^^Cedcxnil Goic, "Vicente Huidobro: datos biograficos," in Vicente Huidobro y el creaeionismo, ed. René de Costa (Madrid: îhurus, 1975) 55^ 9®See Vicente Huidobro, Mirror of a Mage, trans. Vferre B. Wells (New York: Houghton Mifflin Ganpany, 1931 ), and. Portrait of a Paladin, trans. Warre B. Wells (New York : Horace Live right. Inc., 1932). 9^Vicente Huidobro, La proxima in Cbras ccxnpletas, ed. Hugo Montes, 2 vols. (Santiago: Editorial Andres Bello, 197Ô) 2: 241. All quotations from Huidobro's prose fiction will be from this edition.

^^Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas ejemplsires (l6l3). 93]vtj_guel Unamuno, Tres novelas ejemplares y un prologo (1920). 9^Evelyn Picon Garfield, "Tradiciôn y ruptura: îfodemidad en Tres novelas ejemplares de Vicente Huidobro y Hans Arp," Hispanic Review Summer 1983 51.3: 295. 95ihis is one of the central theses of Evelyn Picon Garfield's analysis of the Tres inmensas novelas ejemplares. 9^Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas ejemplares, ed Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, 2 vols. (Madrid : Clasicos Castalia, 1982) 1: 64. 9^Picon Garfield 284. The translation is mine. 98picon Garfield 287. 99picon Garfield 292. ^^^Benjamin Rojas Pina, "La prosa narrativa de Vicente Huidobro." Diss. Univ. of Minnesota, 198O, 62. CHAPTER II THE PROSE FICTION OF CESAR VALLEJO

Mariâtegui define muy bien la tecnica dialectica del arte en su estudio sobre Vallejo: "Su tecnica esta en continua elaboraciôn". Cano la tecnica industrial y la racionali- zacion de Ford. (Vallejo on Vallejo in El arte y la revoluclcn)

Circumstances of Production César Vallejo's first prose fiction canposition was the short story "Mas alla de la vida y la muerte," which appeared in the literary magazine Variedades in 1922.^ In November of 1921, the author had been awarded a cash prize for the story by the cultural society "Entre Nous," which gave him the opportunil^ to have it published.2 He later included the story in the collection Escalas melografiadas (1923). Four years prior to the publication of "IVÉs alia de la vida y de la muer'te," Vallejo had published his first book of poetry, Los heraldos negros (1918), vhich, together with his first narrative, represented an initial effort by the provincial writer, aided by the technical discoveries of the European avant-garde, to disengage himself from a literary tradition of Hispanism and modemismo. More fundamentally, these works expressed the growing

77 78 sense of alienation which Vallejo felt as a result of his increasing estrangement frcm his roots; the soni-feudal and Catholic world of his childhood, the Andean village of Santiago de Chuco. Moving first to Trujillo and then to Lima, the author was thrust deeper and deeper into a new reality vhose central ethic was that of the marketplace. As a consequence, themes such as nosthlgia for home and mother, orphanhood, ironization of the Holy Scriptures, figure prominently in these early works. Vallejo’s alienation intensified and solidified when, in 1920, he was wrongly imprisoned for allegedly participating in the the destruction by fire of the house of an importât Santiagan family during the celebrations of the village's patron saint. In fact, Vallejo, who was s"baying with his brother, Manuel, had became cau^t up in a power struggle among the local gamonales (political bosses, usually large landowners) over the upcoming mayoral elections.3 Vallejo spent one hundred "twelve days in a Trujillo Jail before being exonerated by the court of the charges against him. Ihe li"terary products of this experience^ were a second collection of highly experimental poems, Trilce (1922), writtan while Vallejo was in prison, as well as the book of poetic short stories and narrative fragments entitled Escalas melografiadas (1923). Not suprisingly, in each of these books the prison becanes the objectification of the author’s existantial anguish. Vallejo’s prose fiction of this period bore little resemblance to that of other Peruvian authors of the early "twenties. 79 As Vallejo prepared to travel to Paris in the Pall of 1923 (March throng June in Peru), he published his first "extended" narrative (actually only forty-nine pages), Pabla salvaje. More reflective in tone and less experimental in technique than his previous works, it nonetheless maintains the existential thematic. It was about this same time, however, that serious social concerns began to emerge in Vallejo’s writing. Ihe posthumously published novella, Hacia el reino de los Sciris, dated "1924-1928," marked the author’s first efforts to tap the indigenista sentiments which were as much a part of him as was his mixed blood.5 Still somewhat experîiæntal in technique with its subjective narration, lack of chronological development and the often unmediated use of quechua expressions, Hacia el reino de los Sciris is essentially a nostalgic evocation of the empire of Inca Ihpac Yupanqui. Ihe novella prepares the way, however, for the more frankly indig^enista Ihngsteno, which Vallejo, now under the influence of Soviet socialist realism, published in 1931 vhile living in Madrid. During the years since leaving Peru in 1923, Vallejo came increasingly to see his salvation in the tenets of Marxism. He became a member of the Parisian cell of the Peruvian socialist party established by José Carlos Mariategui.° And, in 1928-1929, he made two trips to the Soviet Union, the fruit of which was a collection of essays gathered and published after his death under the title of El arte y la revolucion.'^ A liberation theologist avant le lettre. 80 Vallejo’s writings during the rest of his short life (Vallejo died in Paris in April of 1938) envisioned a synthesis of the Christian ideals of faith, brotherhood and sacrifice with the Marxist exhortation to the masses to give their lives in the class struggle. In this way, he was able to remedy the crisis of faith which he had experienced upon leaving Santiago de Chuco. This is an emerging theme in the Poemas humanos and Poemas en prosa, conposed between 1923 and the author's death and published posthumously In 1939« However, Vallejo's religious anbrace of Comnunism found 11% maximum expression in a third and final collection of poans published in his memory inl938 and inspired by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) • 'faking as its title lEspana, aparta de ml este caliz!, also a verse frcm one of its most ecstatic poans^, the collection begins on a note of hope as it presents a vision of redanption and salvation, to follow the revolution:

; Entrelazandose hablaran los mudos, los 'tullidos andarân! jVeran, ya de regreso, los ciegos y palpi'tando escucharan los sordos! C • * • H I Solo la muerte morira! 9

Ihis new utopia, however, will be a technological one in which socialism will insure that all members of society share in its advances. It was within this same world view that Vallejo's novel Ihngsteno was conceived. The story of the ruthless exploitation of the sierran Indians by the foriegn-owned Quivilca tungs'fcen mining operation, it proposes to present, in the form of a socialist 81 BUdungsroman^^, the harsh apprenticeship of ccxnpany engineer Leonidas Benltes and his tranformation into revolutionary. As I have ^own elsewhere^l, the novel finishes on an open note, for the protagonist’s trajectory could not be completed outside of a socialist reality, vhich did not exist in Peru. Esthetically speaking, the novel strives to ranain within the limits prescribed by Soviet socialist realism, althou^ there are glimpses of Vallejo the avant-gardiste— the surreal sequence of Benltes’s feverish delirium^^, for example. As a companion piece to his indigenista novel, Vallejo wrote ’’Paco Yungue,” a realist children’s tale about the inferior status of the Indian in Peruvian public schools. Vallejo also wrote several other short stories which are in the same esthetic line as ’’Paco Yungue” and Ihngsteno but whose dates of composition are uncertain. Clearly the author did not consider these to be polished enouÿi to publish. ”EL vencedor” recalls ’’Paco Yungue” as it recounts a school yard scuffle between two children, one well-off, the other poor. In the end, the poor child Juncos, almost defeated but monentarily favored by the sympathies of the crowd, wins the f i ^ t with a desperate punch. The result, of course, is that the loser is helped away and Juncos forgotten. In ”Los dos soras” (the soras are a race of Indians), two Indians innocently wander into a small mountain village where they happen to witness a Christian funeral service. Ihey are possessed with Joyful laughter at the sight of so many bri^t ornaments. Ihis unfortunately earns than the wrath of 82 the uncanpréhendîng townspeople vèio abuse and imprison them. "Vlaje alrededor del porvenlr" records the bizarre efforts of Arturo, administrator of a sugar plantsation, and his wife Eva, distant relative of the plantation’s owner, to beget a male child (they already have a dau^ter) after the patron promises them a reward of 10,000 soles. The fragment "El nino del carrizo" appears to be based upon an Indian legend regarding the magical properties of the mountain rush or reed. Its aroma is capable of returning one to an animal-like state, ihe theme of regression to an animal state reappears in the short story "Los Caynas" of Escalas melografiadas and reflects Vallejo’s struggle with the dilemma of man’s inescapable subjection to the laws of nature, e.g., the drive to procreation, and evolution.

Critical Reaction ihe contemporary reviews of Vallejo’s publications were few in number and sometimes widely divergent in their appraisals^3 ^ although, generally speaking, his prose was more favorably received by critics and readers than his poetry. ihe Escalas melografiadas collection began with the advantage that it contained the award-winning "Mas alia de la vida y la muerte." It is significant, also, that this story had appeared in Variedades, a literary magazine edited chiefly by members of Lima's traditionalist li'terary clique led by Clemente Palma. Years before, Palma, as the magazine’s literary critic, had reviewed Vallejo’s poem 83 "El poeta a su amada" (later included In Los heraldos negros) which the author had submitted for consideration. Palma’s inccxnpréhension of Vallejo’s innovative technique and imagery led to his extreme conclusion that:

Rasta el momento de largar al canasto su mamarracho, no tenemos de usted otra idea sino la de deshonra de la colectividad trujillana, y de que si se descubriera su ncanbre, el vecindario le echarîa lazo y lo amarrarîa en calidad de durmiente en la linea del ferrocarril a l’ialabrigo.

Ihe magazine’s critic appears to have been equally mystified by Escalas but chose not to attack it, limiting himself to a neutral acknowledgement of the author’s originality:

"Escalas melografiadas", nueva obra del autor de "Trilce", senor César A. Vallejo, poeta y cuentista de indudable origLnalidad, esta Uamada a causar alboroto por las audacias de estilo y concepcion que encierra y en las que cifra su ideal estético el forjador de "Heraldos Negros" que en su odio al lugar comun, a la idea manoseada al pensamiento manido, tortura la frase y va en caza de vocablos nuevos para reflejar sus impresiones, para volcar su mundo interior.^15

Eabla salvaje, on the other hand, elicited the Variedades reviewer’s enthusiastic praise:

"La Novela Peruana" que tan hermosas obras nacionales vienes ofreciendo a la consideracion del publico acaba de edi tar uno de los libros buenos; porque "Pabla Salvaje" es libro orientado hacia la vida, fiel trasunto de una alta idealidad de poeta y de novelista, porque en Vallejo, aun cuando en sus novelas es fuerte y rotundo, aun se ad^erte en el las exquisiteces del poeta. "Pabla Salvaje" como dice Pedro Barrantes Castro, su prolongador, es una narracion demostrativa de que "los verdaderos amores se destruyen con su propia sombra". En "Fabla Salvaje" cierto halito de misterio vive en 84 todas sus paginas y es a la manera de poderoso aliciente para que el lector encuentre doble seduccioi de la belleza Ideallzada: una novela hermosa y vallente, tal es "Fabla Salvaje".^"

In May of 1923, Claridad, directed by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, reprinted in its pages the opening narrative of Escalas melografiadas, "I4jro noroeste," along with the following introductory remarks:

Pagina del poeta rebelde y creador . . . Contra todos los canones de la ortodoxia literaria, ranpiendo con la inmovil actitud prostemada de nuestros profesionales del arte, César Vallejo créa ya una obra de maravillosa originalidad, toda henchida de valores etemos. Para el transitorio predominio de gustos y escuelas y reglas de métrica, su elevada y magnifica revoluciôn estética résulta incanprensible y odiosa. Pertenece toda ella al future. De "Escalas", el ultimo libro del poeta, ha deshojado él uno de sus mâs admirables posnas [i.e., the "poetic" narrative "IVhro noroeste" |. Pue escrito en la cârcel de Trujillo, entre los muros de la celda a donde lo arrojô la Justicia de Jueces y trotaplietos y de donde lo sacô la otra, la verdadera y la etema que a las veces nos anuncia los dîas cercanos de su imperio.^'^

Contained in these lines are the basic ingredients of the formula vhich Raya's colleague and coreligionist José Carlos Mariategui would apply more generally to the novelties of the avan't-garde: that is, that the avan't-garde's challenges to traditional artistic procedures were exerting a liberating influence upon the nascent national li-beratures.^^ Maria"tegui also felt that the experimentalist climat% created by the a'van'k-garde would lead full circle to the discovery of local forms and content.^9 In his prologue to the first edition of Pabla salvaje, wri'fcer 8 5 and editor Pedro Barrantes Castro seems already aware of Mariategui's conclusions :

Nos permitimos recomendar al lector la presente novela de César Vallejo, por ser un notable acierto de creacion original sobre motives rurales andinos, cosa que mucho se ha intentado sin exito, debido a la miopia y falta de vuelo creador en los circunstanciales aficionados de la literatura. Como Valdelanar fue quien llego, aunque pasaJeramente, a la verdad poetica de los villorios y lagares costenos, puede decirse de Vallejo que es de los primeros escritores autenticos que es tan descubriendo el intime fonde de humanidad y belleza, virginal aun, de las razas y los paisajes que viven y esplenden, apacibles igual que tragicas aquellas, luminosas igual que sambries estos, en las inmensas extensiones de la cordillera peruana. Leyendo Pabla Salvaje se siente el hormigueo dramatico que Vallejo trata de producir con su obra y que muy bien se aviene con esa f atalidad de un sentido tan brumoso y triste que el indio y el mestizo creen imprime direcciôn a la vida. La novela parece una demostracion de lo equivocos que son siempre los verdaderos amores, que se destruyen con su propia sombra. EL misterio vigila desde la primera has ta ia ultima pagina. Y la forma misma del relato constituye un ejemplo mas de la exquisites extrana con que César Vallejo sabe producirse.^^

Vallejo's last novel Htngsteno (1931) was published abroad in Madrid during the chaotic times of the birth of the Second Republic. The novel appeared Just a week prior to the abdication of Alfonso XIII on 14 April 1931. Ihe factors of dis'tance and the novel’s release during a time of overshadowing political 'turmoil may help to explain the fact that the novel’s impact in Peru and Spanish America was diffuse. To da'te only one re'view of the novel has been found 86 amcxig üie Spanish-American publications of 1he period.

Parameters for Dextual Analysis Ihe inference one may draw frcm the published reviews reproduced here is that Vallejo's intended audience found in his narratives both the originality and the familiarity which Mariategui regards as the hallmarks of avant-garde literary production. As it turns out, this dichotomy can also serve, with some refinements, as the basis of a new, more comprehensive reading of Vallejo's narrative fiction than heretofore available. The refinements alluded to proceed from the work of Angel Rama on the concept of transculturacion. Rama's hypotheses concerning the phenomenon of transculturacion and, in particular, its relationship to the evolution of Latin- American narrative are summarized in his volume Transculturacion narrativa en America Latlna^^. His ideas represent a synthesis of the thou^t of many, beginning with the conmen'taries on the Spanish- American cultural nationalism of Jose Victorino Las1;arria^3, Ignacio Altamirano^^ and José Carlos Mariategui^S and concluding with the twentieth-century studies in Latln-American cultural anthropology and sociology of Manuel Diegues Junior^, George M. Poster^'^, Jean Meyer^G, Fernando Ortiz^^^ Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff30, Darcy Ribeiro^^, Julian Steward^^, Claudio Veliz^^ and Charles Wagley3^. Rama supports his theories with frequent and sometimes extended references to the narratives (narrative strategies) of Miguel Angel As"turias, Jorge Luis Borges, Ale jo Carpentier, Julio 8 7 Cortâzar, Gabriel Garcia IVÉrquez, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, José Lins do Rego, Juan Carlos Onetti, Graciliano Ramos and Juan Rulfo, while he devotes the book’s final section to a sustained scrutiny of the production of José Maria Arguedas. Rama conmences his exposition of the various facets of the concept of transculturacion, as he defines it, by positing, as he does elsewhere, the existence within Latin-Anerican cultural production of a persistent and longstanding will to independence from the madre-culturas.35 Corallary to this impetus toward cultural independence, Rama asserts, are the twin desires that the home cultural production be both original and representative.36 'While Rama poin'fcs out that tiiese sen'fcimen'fcs could be detected everywhere in Latin America, he no"bes that they were strongest in those areas most removed geographically, economically and ethnically from the cities (and their elites) most directly linked to the mother countries and, lat%r, the industrializing metropolises. In effect, Latin America’s entry as dependent partner into the world economic sys'fcem at the end of the nineteenth century ultimately leads to the entrenchment of these sentiments which Rama generically terms regionalism. 37 ihe advent of dependent capitalism in Latin America acted as a stimulus to the dominant cities to seek to subdue and gain control of the until then relatively autonomous outlying areas and diverse ethnic groups. Nevertheless, the sudden and powerful onslau^t of the modernizing forces frcm Europe and North America met with an unsuspected resistance from the redoub'ts of 88 regional cultural tradition which had been made strong by centuries of cultural sincretism (acriollamiento) and by the recent consolidation of a regionalist intelligentsia capable of manning the battlements. These intellectuals, however, did not, for the most part, seek the safety and tranquillity of a picturesque but essentially lifeless costumbrismo. The majority set about instead to forge a new culture fran the dialectical interaction between tradition and modernity. The resulting modifications Rama declares to be neither acculturation nor déculturation but transculturation vhose product is neoculturation. Rama actually appropriates this formula frcm the originator of the expression ' transcultziracion', Fernando Ortiz, vho states in his Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar that;

the word transcultjuration bet"ter expresses the different phases of the process of transition frcm one culture to another because this does not consist merely in acquiring another cultzire, vhich is what the English word acculturation really implies, but the process also necessarily involves the loss or uprooting of a previous culture, which could be defined as a déculturation. In addition it carries the idea of the consequent creation of a new cultural ^enomenon, which would be neocultniration.3"

To illustrate the impact of transcul'buracion on the cultxiral production of Latin America, Rama turns to literature and, specifically, to the narrative genre. As parameters of analysis, Rama employs three broad categories: structure, language and cosmovision. For each category, Rama indicates alternatives offered by the modernizing forces. Then, he outlines what creative responses 8 9 were arrived at by the regional writers vhich both preserved the integrity of their cultural fund vhile keeping it vital and current. For example, when confronted with such modem innovations to the category of the narrator as those of stream of consciousness, interior monologue and indirect free style, the regional writer often responded by reaching back to the earliest traditions of oral narrative: the spoken discourse, the monodialogue, the dramatic monologue. The device of multiple narrators, Joyce's Molly and Leopold Bloom, for example, was countered by the recuperation of a traditional chorus of oral village gossips' narrations. Modemizatd.on meant universalization and homogenization. At the level of literary language this translated into a demand for a discourse which was uniform. Regionalisms and dialect were no longer tolerable. Furthermore, modernization fostered a breaking down of the barriers separating narrator and characters. The regional authors, confronted by these leveling forces, found they could fabricate a literary equivalent of regional speech which needed no glossaries and yet stood the test of verisimilitude. Also, narrator and characters alike could use the synthetic regional language, thereby reducing the distance between than without destroying it. Modem European and North-American writers, inspired by the twentieth-century investigations of psychoanalysis and anthropology, often employed a new vision in their texts which was mythical and/or fantastic. One alternative offered by regional writers was what Rama denominates as "el pensar mitico." This procedure involved bypassing 90 the mere incorporation of Western myths into new texts in favor of anulation of the process of mythic invention itself. Traditional, particularly rural, societies have long dealt with the shifting realities of their worlds by appealing to the equally fluid process of invention of local beliefs. Althou^ local in nature, these beliefs prove nonetheless universal because they frequently deal with situations cœmon to humanity in its struggle with the natural world.39 Finally, Rama is quick to point out that while the modernizing influences upon Latin-American culture tend to be constant, quantifiable and easily catalogued, the considerable variety of regional difference throu^out the Latin-American continent implies the existence of a rather large number of transcultural possibilities. It is for this reason that he makes no attempt to provide a ccxnplete taxonomy of Latin-American transcultural phenomena but only to define transculturacion and provide evidence of its existence.

Escalas melografiadas (1923) and Fabla salvaje (1923) For the purposes of this study, Vallejo’s first two books, Escalas melografiadas and Fabla salvaje, are considered both individually and as an organic whole. Ihis approach is not motivated solely by the coincidence of their publication but, rather, it is prompted primarily by the inescapable similarities between thorn in theraatics and technique. 91 The volume entitled Escalas melografladas^^ is ccxnposed of twelve narratives distributed equally into two sections allusively entitled "Cunéiformes" and "Coro de vientos." Insisting for a moment on the musical metaphors of the book's title and it's second section, one may say that ttie two halves of the book form a complement, not unlike a theme and variations. The six narrative fragments of "Cunéiformes," in fact, briefly restate a series of thanes initially developed in Los heraldos negros and Trilce: the enigmatic nature of justice; the essential orphanhood of the individual; the loss of God and the consequent crisis of the logos; the nature of the poetic act; the existential dilemna. Ihe ensemble of longer narratives that make up "Coro de vientos," serve to amplify these themes and lend them depth and support. Hiis interpretation is reinforced if the expression "coro de vientos" is taken in its literal sense of a 'chorus of winds', that is, of human voices. More will be said on this aspect in the next section. Continuing with the musical line of interpretation, the "dissonant" tone of the thenatic and montage-like juxtaposition of these twelve narratives recalls to mind the modernist twelve-tone method of conçosition employed initially by the expressionist composer Arnold aioenberg.^1 Furthermore, Shoenberg's method implied a mechanical approach to the composing of music, one in which the act of notation preceded the performance of the music. This same formula blending writing and sound, succinctly captured in the collection's title, is, of course, also the essence of poetry. 92 In contrast to the modem Idiematic and structuring principals of Escalas melografiadas are Vallejo’s traditional approaches to the narrative categories of the individual pieces. The principal narrators (those charged with relating the anecdote) are, in virtually every case, of the contemporary first-person variet:y. Of a tradition more distant is the oral nature of these narrators, as each signals in various ways that he is speaking to an audience. Ihe narrators, without exception, employ a language which is educated and, on occasion, artistically elaboraiad after the fashion of the modernistes (but often toward an expressionist end); that is, they sometimes anploy a cultured vocabulary and elaborate phraseology for obvious esthetic effect. Otherwise, however, the Spanish of the narrators is of an archaic sort, characteristic of the isolated speakers of the moun'tainous areas of Spanish America. These elements give the narratives more the feel of nineteenth-century peninsular prose fiction. The secondary characters, although for the most part schematic and superficially treated (partd.cularly in "Cunéiformes”), have their origins in the realist-naturalist and even romantic (Nérida del Mar of "El ünigénito”) traditions while the narrator-protagonists all belong, explicitly or implicitly, to the tradition of the artistic narrative developed by modemista. fiction. The action, while in "Cunéiformes" it is sometimes less dynamic, still falls within standards set by nineteenth-century realist>- naturalist fiction. 93 The settings, again with "Caneiformes" providing the exceptions, reproduce the spaces of objective reality, frequently those of Lima and rural Andes.

"Cunéiformes," the first of "two collections of narratives which together constitute the book Escalas melograf iadas, is a series of six narrative fragments. These six fragnents are not unrelated, however. Rather, they each relate to some facet of the prison experiences of an unidentified narrator-protagonist vhose characteristics are nonetheless deducible from his language. A relationship among the parts is explicitly signal led by the six titles each calling attention to a part of the prison architecture: "Muro noroes'te," "Muro antartico," "Dhro es'te," "Muro dobleancho," "Alfelzar," "Muro occidental." A certain unity of space and time is also subtly adhered to within the six pieces, further contributing to the sensation that one is reading the individual installments of a single story. The language of the narrator-protagonist is at the same time educated and archaic. His is not the language of the comnon criminal nor is it the speech of the rural campesino or Indian. Instead, his artistic elaborations of his own speech as well as rhetorical expressions of his inferiority (which occur but do not predcxninate) would lead one to the conclusion that he is a writer, even a poet. However, the language ençloyed by the narrator is not precious, either, and does occasionally include local expressions 94 whose meaning tiie reader, if he/she is not fron the area, is left to deduce fron the context. And, there 3^ a honogeneity of language spoken by the protagonist and the secondary characters. (There are in fact few true secondary characters in "Cunéiformes,” and those who do appear seem contrived to illustrate a point.) Interestingly, the narrator-pro'bagonist's speech is always logical-rational and

sprinkled with indications of 11% orality, as if he were always addressing an audience. In addition to the narrator-protagonist, the reader is aware of another "silent" perspective responsible for the reproduction of the narrations. This here'fcofore silent narrator momentarily betrays its presence in the last fragnent of "Cunéiformes," vhich consis"ts of a single declaration: "Aquella barba al nivel de la tercera moldura de plomo" (54) . It is as if this overarching presence were merely observing, listening, organizing. An awareness of this silent narrator causes the reader to revise his/her understanding of the other narratives. First, the certain knowledge that the individual narratives are being in sons way assembled lends them an allegorical dimension; for, one must suppose that the silent conciousness is organizing the fragnents according to some plan or vision within which the ultlma"te meaning of "Cuneifornfâs" may be found to reside. A clue to the narrator’s silence may be found in the title of the first section. Cuneiforms were the pictographic symbols of an ancient, originally Sumarian, form of writing. They were easily appropriated by many early languages because of their essentially visual and 95 silent nature: the speech of many tongues could be represented by one system. In this first section of Escalas melograf iadas, it can be said that üie silent narrator is presenting Qie reader with six word pictures which transcend, on a certain level, üieir verbal origins. In this fashion, any uncertainty about the ability of language to adequately or correctly express reality and the experience of it can be at least partially superseded. By combining the narrative and the poetic, the allegorical and the organic, the author succeeds in producing a prose fiction with vhich the reader is familiar and a prose fiction with which the author may transcend his misgivings about the capacity of language to adequately express reality without being betrayed by his medium. Other insists, this time into the thematic of "Cunéiformes," become available to the reader when the allusive possibilities of the title are pursued still further. Clearly, the dominant theme of the six narratives, considered as a unit, is that of the enignatic and apparently arbitrary nature of Justice. In general. Justice is portrayed as a negative force whose usual consequence is to contribute tx) the suffering of the individual. This Kafkaesque vision of Justice appears most explicitly in the narratives of "Miro noroeste" and "Muro dobleancho." In the first, the narrator-protagonist observes his cellmate accidently kill a spider \hich had been unobtrusively traversing their cell. When the prisoner is told of his deed, he receives the news with indifference. These events prompt the narrator to 96 speculate, almost "out loud,” upon the symbolic significance of the spider's innocent destruction to the concept of justice. He concludes that justice is a relatd.ve matter and ultimately beyond human understanding. In "Muro dobleancho," the narrator-protagonist recounts the story of his cellmate. Aside from his admitted thievery, the narrator Informs his audience, the prisoner was unwittin^y res­ ponsible for the death of his good neiÿibor vhom he had compelled to accompany him on one of his ni^ts of drurken bohania, whereupon they were assaulted and the good fellow fatally stabbed. The narrator finds it ironic that his cellmate, whose thievery can be discounted because "al fin la necesidad le hizo robar" (22), will not be punished for his complicity in the death of his nei^bor. The cuneiform document with which most readers would be familiar is that of the ancient Code of Hamnurabi, humanity’s earliest recorded written formulation of a code of laws. The Code of Hamnurabi possessed two powerful advan'tages over modem legal codes: its pictographic writing rendered it less susceptible to mis-/mal- interpretation; and, because its bases were essentially secular and materialistic, it was invulnerable to the sort of problematic to vhich many modem legal codes were prone as a result of the crisis of the Judeo-Christian system, upon vhich they were founded. The collection of narratives of "Cunéiformes," then, proposes to provide its readers with a modem(ist) version of the Code of Hammurabi by detailing, with the clarity of its individual "word 97 pictures," üie system of justice as it exists in "Qie twentieth century.

In the second section of Escalas melografiadas, "Coro de vientos," the narratives grow longer, a progression which will culminate, in this phase of the author’s production, in the novella Fabla salvaje. It is as if the author gained greater and greater facility in the narrative genre with each new composition. Each of the six narratives is a finished short story in which an anecdote with a fantastic twist is recounted in first person by an individual close to the event. Again the thematic of the six stories cleaves toward those concerns vhich first emerge in Los heraldos negros and Trilce and are reiterated in narrative fragnents of "Cunéiformes": the enigmatic nature of justice; the essential orphanhood of the individual; the loss of God and the consequent crisis of the logos; the natxire of the poetic act; the existential dilenma. However, there is also an insistence in "Coro de vientos" on the themes of love ("El unigenito," "Mirtho"), nature vs. convention (social, intellectual, religious, etc.) ("Los Caynas"), and fate/destiny ("Cera"). These serve, nevertheless, to complement rather than compound the thematic of "Cunéiformes." The treatment of the theme of love in "Coro de vientos," for exanple, serves to expand the exploration of the themes of poetry and orphanhood; the theme of natxire vs. convention complements those of the existential dilemma, the essential orphanhood of the individual, and, even the loss of 98 God; vôiile fate and destiny are clearly a function of the theme of justice. Ihe narrative strategies employed by the author and the cosmovision expressed in the stories represent a synthesis of traditional procedures with the Irrationalisn of the European avant-­ garde. The form of narration continues to be the monodialogo (or monologo discursivo or discurso hablado) to which Rama r e f e r s ^ 3 and which he describes as proceeding from the earliest oral traditions. Ihe language used by the speaker and by the secondary characters alike is uniformly educat-ed, at times artistically elaborated after the fashion of the modemistas (but often toward expressionist ends) but uses a vocabulary which is hispanized and archaic. Unlike the narratives of "Cunéiformes," four of the stories of "Coro de vientos" contain more than one narrator. However, these narrators differ little among themselves and are, in fact, virtually indistinguishable one from the other. Ihe uniformity of narrators and hanogeneity of narrat-ed and spoken language is a function of the modernizing (universalizing) tendency. The other narrative components of character, action and space are organized around the deterministic principles of naturalisa. The conventional procedures of "Coro de vientos" are in contrast to the visionary (and therefore partially allegorical) content of the six short stories, product of the irrationalist influences of the various European investigations intx) myth and psychoanalysis. The 9 9 stories themselves, however, are (somehow) uniquely local and have the feel of a folktale or a local legend. It is a case of what Rama has termed "pensar mitico." Ihe title of the collection, as noted above, contains both musical and vocal connotations, all of them relevant to the design of the series of six stories. To continue the interpretation begun above, the "choral" ("coro") role of the stories is apparent in the use of many voices ("vientos"), whose oral character is snphasised, to support and "cannent" upon the thematic of the previous section. It is useful to recall that, in theatrical •terms^^, the role of the chorus is to express:

the fears, the hopes, and judgement of the polity, the average citizens . . . [whil^ . . . the protagonists act out their defiance of the limits subscribed by the gods for man. ^5

Whether one understands "coro de vientos" to refer to a chorus of human voices or to an ensemble of wind instruments (the two interpretations are not mutually exclusive), the primary in"fcent of the title remains essentially unaffected : to signal the collection’s reliance not so much upon isolated utterances and/or, in this case, the individual stories, "to convey meaning as upon the combined force and suggestiveness of the six narratives. To borrow another analogy fron the idiom of music— which like the cuneiform, is anonverbal, relatively umedia'ted form of communication— the emphasis in "Coro de vientos" is on the "tonality” (i.e., the sum of relations, melodic and harmonic, existing between the different notes) rather than the 100 "libretto." This approach allows ihe author to partially circumvent the fecklessness of language, in much the same way as the strategy employed in "Cunéiformes" does, by appealing to other, more primary modes of communication, those of the senses.

"Pabla salvaje represents the continuation of ihe line of narrative strategies initiated in "Cunéiformes" and developed in "Coro de vientos." Of Vallejo's prose fiction production thus far, Fabla salvaje exhibits ihe most seamless joining of modernizing influences with conventional/traditional/regional procedures and content. The various acceptations of ihe two words, fabla and salvaje, which make up ihe novella's title, alert ihe careful reader that this duality of forces is at work in the text's production. Fabla — fable— refers, for example, to that ancient and originally oral form of didactic narrative consisting of a story with a moral. This form, however, also contains elements particularly in vogue in modem narrative, such as its frequent use of allegory and of archetypal material such as myth and legend. The adjective salvaje, on ihe other hand, means most literally 'savage', that is, cruel, inhuman, vicious. Understood in this sense an obvious relationship between the title and ihe tragic nature of ihe anecdote can be inferred. Nevertheless, a second, less dramatic but most likely equally intended derivation of 'wild', in ihe sense of uncivilized, pristine, unspoilt, can be ascribed to ihe term. Ihe novella's structuring principle is that of ihe scientifistic 101 determinism of nineteenth-century naturalism. But the story's development and denouement have as their motor not the proof of a scientific truth but the verification of popular superstitions. And, because the narrator operates always as if nothing were amiss, the result is an ironization and a subversion of the original intent of the naturalistic narrative. ■Paithful to the dictates of the naturalist experiment, the novella devotes the opening pages to the presentation of conditions and subjects as well as the hypothesis to be tested:

Balta Espinar levantose del lecho y, restregandose los adonnilados ojos, dirigiose con paso négligente hacia la puerta y cayo al corredor. Acercose al pilar y descolgo de un clavo el pequeno espejo. Viose en el y tuvo un estremecimiento subito. El espejo se hizo trizas en el enladrillado pavimento, y en el aire tranquilo de la casa sono un âspero y ligsro ruido de cristal y hojalata Q . 7] Cuando tomô al hogar Adelaida, la Joven esposa, Balta la dijo con voz de criatura que ha visto una mala sombra: — iSabes? He roto el espejo. Adelaida se dsnudo. lY como lo has roto? jAlguna desgraciai Yo no sé como ha sido, de veras... Y Balta se puso rojo de presentimiento. Atardeciô . . . una gallina del bardai turbô el grave silencio de la tarde, lanzando un cântico azorado y planidero. — ;Balta! ^Has oldo? — exclamo sobresaltada Adelaida, desde la cocina. Si... Si he oldo . . . cuando canta una gallina, mala suerte, mala suerte... Para que muera mi madré, una manana, muchos dlas antes de la desgracia, cantô una gallina vieja, color de habas, que tenlamos. — lY el espejo, Balta? ;Ay Senor! Que va a ser de nosotros. Adelaida sentôse en el otro poyo, llevô ambas manos al rostro y se echo a sollozar. (95, 96, 97) 102 This formula is enunciated, in tiie first instance, by an essentially traditional naturalist third-person cxnniscient narrator who, although undramatized, can be discerned throu^ his educated speech ("todo el espejo habiase deshecho en lingotes sutiles y menudos y en polvo hialoideo" ) to be locking down (thou^ not without sympathy) upon his two unfortunate subjects, humble Andean sharecroppers. However, despite his evident worldliness, he continually reports uncritically their popular beliefs and superstitions, as in this passage relating the causes of Antuca’s cataracts :

. . . la vieja Antuca, madre de Adelaida . . . venia a pedir candela. Discola suegra esta, medio ciega de unas cataratas que cogio hacia muchos anos, al pasar una medianoche, a solas, por una calle, en una de cuyas viviendas se velaba a la sazon un cadaver; el aire la hizo dano. (103)

Furthermore, as Balta is transformed and ultimately destroyed by his obsession with the breaking of the mirror and with the mischevious "other" he imagines provoked the accident, the narrator makes none of the rational judgements which seem called for by Balta’s apparently irrational behavior:

Bal'ta . . . sediento y transido de cansancio, fue a la fuente de agua limpia que manaba entre los matorrales, arrodillose, y bebïô direcbamente []. . De nueV O , y después de algunos meses, aconteciô a Balta muy parecida cosa a la que le sucediô aquella tarde de julio an'te el espejo. Entre el juego de ondas que produclan sus labios al sorber el agua, habian percibido sus ojos una imagen extrana, cuyos trsizos fugitivos palpitaron y diéronse contra las sombras fugaces y môviles de las hierbas que cubren en brocal el manantial. El chasquido punteado y ruidoso de sus labios al beber erizo 103 de pavor la vision especular. ^Quién le seguia asi? iQuién jugaba con él asi, por las espaldas, y luego se escabullia con tal artimana y tal ligereza? îQué era lo que habia visto? La inquietud hincôle en todas sus membranas. (105)

Balta hubo de ir una manana a los potreros, a lo largo de un calvero en el arbolado, y bordeando una acequia de regadio. Iba solo. De pronto, y sin darse cuenta, bajaron sus pupilas a la corriente y tuvo que hacerse él a un lado, despavorido. Otra vez asomôse alguien al espejo de las aguas. Prodûjose al propio tianpo un rumor fugitivo entre los sauces que erguianse a la vera del arroyo. Volvio Balta la cara en esa direcciôn y vio que entre los tupidos ramajes de trepadoras y malvarosas recobraban las hojas su natural posiciôn que, al parecer, acababa de romper y alterar una fuga atropellada y volatil, cono de as tu to y bârbaro mamifero asustado, o de âgil y certera brazada de alguien que huye. Balta dio gritos de alerta: — i ^ién va !... ; Guarda, sinvergüenza!... (107)

Balta, sentado en el filo de la roca, miraba todo esto como en una pintura . . . Contemplé largamente el campo, el limpido cielo turquî, y expérimenté un leve airecillo de gracia consoladora, y un basto candor vegetal. Abrîase su pecho en un gran desahogo y se sintiô en paz y en olvido de todo, penetrado de un infinite espasmo de santidad primitiva. Sentése aûn nas al borde del elevado risco. El cielo quedé limpio y puro basta los ûltimos confines. De subito, alguien rozo por la espalda a Balta, hizo este un brusco movimiento pavorido hacia adelante y su caida fue instantanea, horrorosa, espeluznante, hacia el abisno. (129-130)

Yet, vhile the narrator neither corroborates nor discounts Balta's experiences, he does bear witness to the sharecropper's sanity and ccxnmon sense, employing in his defense the best arguments of nineteenth-century social darwinism and environmental determinism:

Balta era un hombre no inteligente acaso, pero de gran sentido canun y muy equilibrado. Habla estudiado, bien o mal, sus cinco anos de instruccién primaria. Su ascendencia era toda formada de tribus de fragor, came de 104 surco, rusticos corazones al ras de la ^eba patriarcal. Habla crecido, pues, cono buen animal, cuyas sienes situarlan linderos, esperanzas y temores a la sola luz de un instinto cabestreado con mayor o menor eficacia, por ancestrales injertos de raza y de costurabres. Era bârbaro, mas no suspicaz. (105-106)

In sum, the reader is confronted with the mounting and, on the surface, irreconcilable contradiction between a narrative structure and discourse based upcn scientific logic and its üiesis, which is to demonstrate the trutii value of a superstition. The solution to this dilemma begins with a small adjustment to the frame of reference used to view the text, based upon the regional perspective discussed by Rama. This perspective, rather than cancelling out the previous vision of the text, serves, instead to amplify it thereby broadening one's knowledge of the text to include what was not previously "visible." ■Por example, if the reader re-examines the narrator just discussed frcxn the vantage point of transcultxiracion, one finds that the ambiguities may be resolved by positing for him dual yet complemen-tary roles : the original one of clinical natziralist observer; and, that of regionalist cultural mediator. In the latter case, the narrator's speech, which thou^ cultxired betrays his own regional, and probably mestizo, origins, and his objective handling of the popular material— including superstition— which he transmits, allows one to recognize in him the role of mediator be'tween "two cultzires. This recognition encourages the reader to t:ake the next step of adopting the perspective of those in vhose culture the 105 beliefs and superstitions presented origirmted. For it is only from this perspective, one corresponding to a rural-indigenous vision of reality, and, more specifically, of nature, that the naturalist mode retains/regains its function and its meaning for the reader. As a consequence of their intimate and prolonged contact with their natural physical environment, rural and, in particular, indigenous cultures tend to evolve an organic relationship with nature. Ihis phencanenon is encouraged by the absence of modem technological sophistication which would promote the opposition man/nature based upon the domination of the latter by the former. As Rama affirms, the interpenetration of indigenous life and the natural world invariably exerts a pervasive influence upon the various aspects of indigenous culture:

No puede ser insolito, que los productos literarios de la cultura indigena (canciones, cuentos, leyendas, consejas) asi como su religion y sus creencias morales, hayan integrado a la naturaleza dentrq^de su cosmovisicn con . . . coherencia y sistematizacion.**®

Superstitions, which Melville Herskovits places within a culture’s religious sphere^?, also participate in this nature-based cosmovision which Rama describes in some detail:

?#s que una suerte de aniraisrao, que incluso en las creencias indigenas alterna con otras vlsiones . . . hay . . . una valoracion précisa del papel que Juegan en la vida de las ccraunidades los elementos fisicos: es apreciacion de la potencialidad del rio o de la montana, de su funciôn en un or den natural bien conocido, del lugar que les cabe a las plantas y a los animales como participes de una tarea que cumplen conjuntamente con los hombres. Itodos estos elementos no se presentan escindidos de la especie hurnana, sino relacionados con ella, accmpanandolo de alguna manera 106 en la edificaciôn de la cultura. ^

It is precisely such a world view vHnletx operates at the level of the characters of Pabla salvaje and deterroines their destinies. On the surface, nature appears to perform within the novella the function originally established for it by Romanticism of resonator and reflector of the vicissitudes experienced by the characters in their lives:

Un torvo malestar le poseîa [a Balt^ entonces . . . Triste y siniestra expresion iba cobrando su semblante. En los dlas de enero, en que cala aguacero o terribles granizadas, cuando los campos negros y barbechados ya daban la sensaciôn de gruesos pahos fûnebres . . . pabulo tormentoso adquirlan sus inquietudes . . . los puercos . . . a causa del eléctrico fluido del aire, hozaban nerviosos el portillo del chiquero, rugiendo y haciendo un ruido ensordecedor . . .

jBalt^ Caminô incansablemente. Era de manana y, aunque no llovla, el cielo estaba cargado y sin sol. Era una nanana gris, de esas prenadas de electricidad y de hôrrido presagio que palpitaban todo el tiempo sobre las tristes y rocallosos Jalcas peruanas. (116-117)

Cuando volvio Balta de su largo y solitario pere­ grinate por los paramos, agonizaba la tarde y bajaba una granizada furiosa. Las centellas y los truenos sucedianse en altemativa desordenada y vertiginosa. (121)

Sobre el techo graznô toda la noche un buho. Hasta hubo dos de taies avechuchos. Pelearon entre ambos muchas veces, en enignâtica disputa, üno de ellos se fue y no volvio. (127)

However, nature’s role goes beyond that of a romantic naturaleza 107 participe : rather, the very beings of Balta and Adelaida appear fused with the substance (underlined) and rythms of their natural environment:

jAdelaid^ Ihnla una voz dulce y fluvial; esa voz rijosa y sufrida que entre la boyada es gula en las espadanas yermas, acicate o admonicion apasionada en las siembras; esa voz que cabe los torrentes y bajo los arqueados y solidos puentes, de naderos y cantos mas compactes que marmol, arrulla a los saurios dentados y sangrientos en sus expediciones lentas y lejanas en los remansos alvinos, y a los moscardones amarillos y negros en sus vagabundeos de pecîolo en peclolo; esa voz que enronquece y se hace ho.i'arasca lancinante en la garganta, cuando aquel cabro color de lûcuma, pûber ya, de pânico airôn cosquillante y aleznada figura de incubo, sale y se va a hacer dano al cebadal del veclno. y hay que Uamarlo . . . Voz que en las entranas de la basâltica pena îndiga de enfrente tiene una hermana encantada, etemamente en viaje y etemaraente cautiva... Asi era la voz de Adelaida. (100-101, emphasis mine)

Desde el poyo contemplaba Balta, con su viril dulcedumbre andina Q* • O niuchacho aun, él adoraba tiemamente a su mujercita. Pâlido, anguloso, de sana mirada agraria, diriase vegetal, y lapidea expresiôn en el vivaz continente, alto, fuerte y alegre siençjre. (96-97, emphasis mine)

Within the world of Balta and Adelaida Espinar the individual does not live divided frcm nature. Therefore, superstition, like religious ritual and magic rites— all of which represent humanity’s attempts to understand and gain control over the universal order^9— holds for them the force of reality. In this context, the breaking of the mirror, a device v;hich in Andean indigenous cultures is thou^t to allow one 'to view one’s soul (which is a mirror-image of the individual) amounts to a real disruption of the natural order. 108 (In a sort of ripple effect, the disturbance of nature's ecuilibriim is reiterated elsewhere, in the hen's crowing.) Ihat this act will have fatal, even self-destructive repercussions for its hapless agent seems foreshadowed at the outset by the narrative's insistence upon Balta's fragmented image in the pieces of the broken mirror :

[Balt:^ intento verse de nuevo el rostro, pero de la luna solo quedaban sujetos al marco uno que otro breve fragnento. Por aquestos jirones brillantes, seme Jantes a parvas y agudisimas lanzas, paso y repaso la faz de Bal'ta, fraccionandose a saltos, alargada la nariz, oblicuada la frent%, a retazos los labios, las orejas disparadas en vuelos inauditos. (95-96)

Ihe reflexive "fraccionandose" with "la faz de Balta" as its logical subject is particularly tilling here. A third— and the most modem— reading of Fabla salvaje now becomes possible. It, too, does not cancel out the others but, rather, it is their logical sequel. Ihis reading begins at the moment the reader returns (again) to the title of the novella. Put simply, the title invitées the reader to l eam a lesson, to extract a moral, from its tragic indigenis-ba fable (fabla salvaje). Ihis may be accomplished by organizing the first two readings into a sort of equation, the sum of which is the third reading and the "message" which Vallejo in-bended to convey to his con-tanporaries. Ihe first reading proposes a scientifistic examination of a hypothesis and its proof. Ihis reading presupposes a mind set compatible with the rationalis-b-positi-vist ideology which pre-vailed amongst the elite of Latin America in the latter third of the 109 nineteenth century. As has been shown^ this reading is subverted, thou^ not excluded only transmuted. Ihe second reading proposes the rigorous examination not of a scientifically-generated hypothesis but of superstitions deriving from an indigenous and Irrationalist cosmology. In this reading, the non-indigenous reader is required to make a leap of faith: he/she must recognize that. In many instances, rationalism and the scientific method will not always suffice to apprehend, explain nor exercise control over reality. Conversely, the reader must also accept that other, even non-rational approaches merit exploration. Of course, this operation repeats at the level of the text the same epistemological revision vhich took place throughout the Western world of the early twentieth century as the direct consequence of the discoveries of Einstein and Freud as well as the world conflagration of 1914-1918. It also provides the key to the third, modem and, it m i ^ t be added, neocultural reading of Fabla salvaje. The third reading begins with the reader’s acknowledgement that his/her own circumstances do not differ meaningfully from those of the pro"bagonist8 (this operation is authorized by the expectation implicit in any fable that it will be applied to one’s own life), in terms of his/her underst:anding of and control of his/her universe. For example, as a result of the modem epistemological crisis, intellectuals cont:anporary to Vallejo were appealing to whatever irrationalist devices they could in order to answer the questions which previous epistemologies were incapable of resolving. Evidence 110 of this are the many innovations of the artistic avant-gardes based upon myth, the methods of psychoanalysis, etc.. In this sense, Fabla salvaje can be read as an allegory of modem existence in which the individual, his/her essence fragnen"ted as a result of its separation from the original uni1:y with nature by the anonymous forces of modem society and technology, slides inexorably and unconçrehending toward madness and self-destruction. Ihe tale’s ’’moral” would translate as an admonition to the reader not to depend upon rational means/methods to relate to reality. Instead, one should observe as truth knowledge and procedures vhich either pre-da'te (e.g. myth, magic, superstition) or transcend the limitations (i.e., the inspirations of the subconscious mind) modem science.

Hacia el reino de los Sciris (1924-1928) Until the appearance of his novel lungsteno in 1931, Vallejo’s publications consisted of essays, written for various Peruvian newspapers, an occasional poem contributed to literary journals as well as a fragment of his novel, published under the title "Sabidurîa” in José Carlos Maria"fcegui’s journal Mauta.^*^ We now know fron the author’s published correspondence, however, that Vallejo had actually finished another narrative, a novella, -to be entitled Hacia el reino de los Sciris, by 1927, and, that he was seeking financial support for its publication. In a let-ber dated

July 24, 1927, writ-ten to his close friend the Peruvian poet Pablo Abril, Vallejo’s remarks concerning this work provide invaluable Ill insists into liie circumstances of its ccmposition:

Todavia no le he hablado sobre mi novela, pues espero la opinion de Ud. para decidinne a la gestion. Se trata de pedir al Gobiemo auspicie economicamente la publicacion en franees de mi novela de folklore americano, Hacia el reino de los Sciris, que la tengo terrainada y mecanografiada. Me apoyo para esta gestion en la labor modesta, pero efectlva, que he hecho por la prensa en favor del Peru desde hace tiempo y digo que el objeto de dicha version francesa de mi novela es la difusiôn y propaganda europea de la cultura indoamericana y, singularmente, peruana. Lo que pido para este libro, que ira ilustrado de maderas y grabados incaicos, es la suma de qujjiientas libras peruanas. Naturalraente, toda la ediciôn queda de propiedad del Estado y yo no tomarê sino unos cien ejanplares de ella. El tiraje sera de 2,000 ejemplares en papel de obra... ^Se podrâ conseguir este pedido? ^Qué opina Ud., personalmente, del asunto? Yo no sé si el Mnisterio asienta y le patrocine eficaianente.51

Most noteworthy for this study is the fact that, althou^ Vallejo is known to have further revised Hacia el reino de los Sciris during the years 1932-1933^^, he nonetheless seems to have considered it essentially a finished product. Of equal importance to tiie proper understanding of the piece is the author's acknowledgement that he was, in effect, producing the novella for a European-Prench audience.

Ihis project was not to cane to pass, however. Only in 1944, some six years after Vallejo's death, did a four-chapter fragnent of the novella appear in a Lima newspaper through the auspices of the author's widow Georgette.53 jn 1967, the complete text was published, along with a transcription of the author's handwritten textual notations regarding po'bential revisions: 112 1. Cambiar el tîtulo, aludiendo al contenido. Suprimir la presencia de Runto Caska. El cuarto debe versar solamente sobre Lleray, su jarro y su ruptura, y el lloro de la nusta por el mal presagio.■ 2. Cambiar el tîtulo, haciendo alusion a la relacion que hay entre la colera de los dioses ( Hlapa), el dolor del pueblo y el envenenamiento de los corazones amantes por esa colera divina y por ese dolor social. 3. Se puede sostener la unidad de todos los capltulos. Pero entonces hay que corregir palabras trop exageradas. Kay entonces que decir desde el primer capitule que Lleray esta enamorada de Runto Gaska y este lo ignora. De otro modo, sin la unidad novelîstica, suprimir el tercer capitulo del libro. 4. Cambiar el tîtulo. Cambiar el ncxiibre de Lleray por el de Keray. C'est tout. 5. Suprimirlo. 6. Ca va. Cambiar el tîtulo. 7. Reemplazar a Runto Caska por otro y cambiar el tîtulo. 8. Este capîtulo debe ir a otro sitio que no siga al anterior. EL tîtulo puede ser: "La paz incaica", u otro. Independizar este capîtulo del 7. 9. Cambiar el tîtulo. 10. Suprimirlo totalmente. 11. Cambiar el tîtulo. En lugar de Runto Caska otro, el guerrero del capîtulo 7. 12. Cambiar el tîtulo. — En general hay que cambiar los tîtulos, refiriéndose al contenido de cada capîtulo, independientemente de los demâs capîtulos. — Corregir palabras demasiado fuertes y apocalîpticas. Revisar el fin de cada cuento.5^

These notes betray a struggle in the author’s mind— a struggle which remains unresolved in the final text— between the romantic ("decir desde el primer capîtulo que Lleray esta enamorada de Runto Caska y este lo ignora") and the mythico-epic ("Cambiar el tîtulo, haciendo alusion a la relacion entre la colera de los dioses . . . , el dolor del pueblo y el envenenamiento de los corazones amantes por esa colera divina y por ese dolor social") and, not unrelatedly, between the novel ("sin la unidad novelîstica, suprimir el tercer capîtulo 113 del libro") and soraetMng more akin to the short story. A thorou^ reading of Hacia el reino de los Sciris, in fact, reveals that canpeting and often conflicting impulses permeate the text at the levels of both structure and thematic. Thus, contradiction becomes the basis for the fullest apprehension of the work. One additional document cf crucial importance to the adequate explication of Hacia el reino de los Sciris (one, it can be said, in which the aforsæntioned tension finds a satisfying resolution) is Vallejo's posthumously published Incan play. La piedra cansada (written 1937). Althou^ the drama was staged in January of 1938, its complete text was not published until 1969.^5 Its value is of a compara'tive nature and resides in its use of much of the same material— most particularly the Incan legend of the say kuska or tired stone— in its configuration. Hacia el reino de los Sciris brings to life through fiction a fragment of the history of the Incan empire (lahuantinsuyo). Specifically, the moment is the reign of Tupac Yupanqui (1471-

149356). The tenth ruler of the empire, he is generally believed to have led the empire to its grandest feats of territorial expansion as well as to its hipest level of cultural development. Soon af'ker Tupac Yupanqui’s passing, the empire appeared to reach the limitas of its growth and, following the death of Thpac Yupanqui's son, Huayna Capac, the (once) mi^ty Tahuantinsuyo fell into disarray and civil war. It was this civil war, fougit by the followers of Huayna Capac’s potential heirs. Huas car and Atahualpa, which allowed 114 Francisco Pizarro to manipulate Incan leaders and manuever than into an easy defeat at the hands of his small company of conquistadores. Ihe novella’s argument revolves around Inca Tupac Yupanqui’s vacillation, following a series of military setbacks, between the pursuit of a (the traditional) policy of war, conquest and proselytizing the religion of the Sun (Inti) versus the pursuit of peace and cultural advancement. Ihe first of the novella’s eight brief chapters depicts the return in defeat of the imperial troops led by Huayna Capac as well as Tupac Yupanqui’s decision to rededicate the empire’s resources to peaceful ends. Ihere then follow (chapters II through VII) a series of often costumbrista vignet-bes of life in the empire under Tupac Yupanqui’s enlightened monarchy. Each vignette, however, carries embedded within it the occurrence of an event or events which the citizens interpret as an omen and sign of Viracocha's anger (Viracocha was the principal deity of the Incan people) with the path they had chosen to follow. Below is a schema of the chapters (and subtitles) with summary descriptions of the cminous events:

I. (”E1 otro imperialiano”): Ihe imperial soldiers return in defeat and the emperor declares for peace. H . (”EL adivino” ) : A soothsayer has a vision of the downfall of the empire. III. (”La paz de Tupac Yupanqui”): Ihe royal sash blinds a noble in-law and an unfinished frieze depicting a danse macabre mys'teriously "oozes” gold. IV. (”Un accidente de trabajo” ) : Ihe tragedy of the legendary say kuska or ’’tired stone” of the quarry of 115 Plsuc. As workers attempt to install a wall of tiie fortress of Sacsahuaman, the stone falls, crushing a noble, member of the onlodcLng party of Tupac Yupanqui. V. ("Bizancio, longitud occidental" ) : Without warning, the sky darkens, there is a thunderbolt and the earth shakes. ( Interpreted as a manifestation of the diety Yllapu. ) VI. ("En la Intipampa") : Lleray, the most beautiful maiden in the kingdon, accidently drops and breaks her water Jar at a key moment in the ceremony to kni^t ei^t hundred men. (Ihe Jar, before it was broken, was held to possess mysterious properties.)

VII. ("La colera divina"): Runto Caska, the Inca's favori'fce, is suddenly siezed with the unshakeable premonition that the soothsayer’s vision is true. He begs the emperor to reverse his policy of peace, VIII. ("La guerra vertical" ) : A sacrificial llama mysteriously revives.

In the final chapter, Ihpac Yupanqui's priests conduct a public sacrifice of llamas intended "to divine the true desire of Viracocha— war or peace? As the sacrifices are being performed, an already prepared llama revives, leaps from the altar and runs off, leaving the spectators s'tuplfied. Tupac Yupanqui stands and declares this to be a sign of Viracocha’s anger and orders his troops "to begin the conquest of the Sciris, whose kingdom lay in the vicinity of present>- day Quito. Into the heart of this essentially mythico-epic tale, Vallejo has inserted (chapter V) the little elaborated romantic relationship of the emperor’s favorite, Runto Caska, with the royal maiden (nusta), Kusikayar. This nusta’s name calls to mind the name of another, Sasi Qoullyur, the love interest of the pre-Columbian 116 quechua drama. OUantay.57 set in the period of transition from the reign of Pachacuti to that of Hipac Yupanqui, this story of forbidden love between a conmoner soldier-general, OUanta, and the noble Kusi Qoullyur clearly served as source and Inspiration for elements of both Hacia el reino de los Sciris and Vallejo's own drama. La pledra cansada. Knowledge of the quechua drama allows the reader to infer that Vallejo may have indeed in'tended to develop a secondary, romantic plot line which would ccmplement the principal anecdote just outlined. Miatever the case m i ^ t have been, the love story of Runto Caska and Kusikayar, even in its relatively undeveloped form, does succeed in esta-blishing "la relacion que hay entre la colera de los dieses (Illapa), el dolor del pueblo y el envenenamiento de los corazones aman'bes por esa colera divina y por ese dolor s o c i a l . "58 Also, it is quite likely that Vallejo's affinity for the fragment, so pronounced In "Cunéiformes," led him to conclude, once again, that a briefer presentaticai mi ^ t offer greater suggestive potential. A close examination of the structure and thanatic of Hacia el reino de los Sciris, with the aid of the "lens" of transculturation, reveals a work fraught with ccmpeting and often conflicting impulses. Structurally, Hacia el reino de los Sciris repeats Pabla salvaje's successful blending of a normally antithetical traditional realist-natziralist narrator and a mythical/magical worldview. Just as Balta-'s violation of traditional superstition results in his destruction as surely and as inexorably as if he had viola'ted 117 scientific law, so, too, is Tupac Yupanqui’s decision to deviate from the traditional policies of conquest and conversion portrayed as condemning the empire to inevitable defeat and desecration unless and until the "error" is corrected. Simulating the indigenous perspective, Ihie omens are allowed to stand unrefuted as certain indicators of the violation of the laws of nature and God (here fused). In this context, the writer is attempting to extend the regionalist mediation discernible in the narrator of 'Pabla salvaje (as transmitter of the rural Andean realily to a relatively uninitiated urban middle-/upper-class reader) to include frankly indigenous material. This is also visible in the current narrator’s utilization of quechuan expressions, both with and without footnotes. In addition, he occasionally enploys caiques of indigenous expression, such as those of time and distance:

Las armas del imperio venîan precedidas a m tiro de honda por los expertos rumanchas. (133, emphasis mine)

|La estacad^ Era un semicîrculo inraenso . . . en un claro que media medio tiro de honda. (138, emphasis mine)

Transcurridas algunas lunas de la retirada de Huayna Capac, el Ihhuantinsuyo so vio convertido en una inmensa colmena. (150, emphasis mine)

Transcurrieron muchos soles despuês del dialogo entre el Inca y Runto Caska. (167, emphasis mine)

Vallejo, thou^ mestizo, was not after all a true member of the Andean indigenous community and, thus, his narrator cannot hope to sustain the illusion of Indianess for very long. Malgré lui, Vallejo 118 is forced to appeal either to the rural hispanic fund or to cosmopolitan devices in order to fabricate his Incan idyll. Thus, side by side with the quechuan expressions, one finds discourse deriving from the epic, the chivalric novel, naturalism, modemismo and even expressionism:

a) the epic:

Nunca como en ese dia pudo intuirse en aquel mozo de maciza y gallarda traza de dcminio, al mas grande monarca del Sol. No se sabe que cambio se habîa operado del capitan derruido y vacilante, que un dîa entrara al Cuzco, en vergonzosa retirada, a este soberbio guerrero, alegre y animoso, que, atadas a sus vastos maxilares todas las disyuntivas de la impresa, impartla ahora ôrdenes, con premura y ardor de iluminado, consultaba a sus générales y, en general, daba la impresiôn de una fe inquebrantable en su destino. A los himnos de aliento de los quechuas centelleaban sus pupilas de jaguar. (172)

b) the chivalric novel:

Porque Lleray poseîa, en verdad, una belleza sin par en el reino. Itebido a este don habîa sido elevada, de un naturel humilde, al rango de doncella. (l62)

Runto Caska era pariente del Inca. Joven de notable belleza varonil, rauy inclinado a la musica y a las armas, gozaba de extraordinario ascendante respecte del Bnperador. Ihpac Yupanqui tcmaba raras veces camino en los négocies del Estado, sin haber consultado antes al noble pariente. El consejo de los Ancianos viôse a menudo sustituido en sus funciones consultatives por Runto Caska. (155)

c) naturalism:

[ a adivln^ Itenia un enorme crâneo, achatado por la parte superior en un piano perfectamente horizontal, desde la altura del nacimiento del pelo en la frente, hasta el mismo colodrillo de la cabeza. Si no fuese por los huesos 119 intactos y el cuero cabelludo de todo el crâneo, creerîase en un corte de machete. En cambio, la anchura del rostro alcanzaba un diâmetro excesivo, seme jante a la imagen que producen los espejos convexos. Una vez en la Plaza de la Alegria, el monstruo dio sîntaïas de tranquilidad. (143)

d) modemismo :

Invadlan los bosques, jalcas, lagos, rîos y mares, tropeles cinegéticos, en pos de la pluma delicada, del canto jamas oîdo, de las pintadas pieles, de las garras brillantes, de las finas comamentas, de las escamas diamantinas, de los brunidos colmillos, de las perlas silenciosas, de los encelados mugidos. (150)

Una hermosa doncella de Huaylas, del dulce color del banano, de abundosa cabellera y vincha de esmeraldas, hacia arder, en un ângulo de la estancia, un sahumerio del que salia un câlido perfume de ânades de Chincha. (167)

El crepûsculo arrancaba de los muros de oro del Coricancha un reflejo amarillo y melancôlico. (l68)

expressionism :

En lugar de hailli de victoria, llenaba las bocas un turbio silencio. (134)

Su nariz jdel adivin^ adquiriô el ademan de levantarse, sus belfos presentaron gesto y hasta sus orejas se asomaron a ver mejor el rostro de la mascara. (145)

Ihe heterogeneity encountered thus far again permit one to begin to locate the text at the intersection of the competing impulses of regionalism (Indianism, Hispanism) and cosmopolitanism. Clearly the author is taking advan'tage of what is available to him to craft his text. 120 I M S process is evident, as well, in üie treatment of the individual ccmponents of the narrated world, particularly that of the characters. In the best tradition of historical narrative, Vallejo has chosen as the cast for M s Incan tale, a mix of Mstorical— Tupac Yupanqui, î-fema Ocllo, Huayna Capac, the Villac t&nu— and fictional— Runto Caska, Kusikayar, the soothsayer— characters. For the most part— Runto Caska being the exception— , they are undeveloped in a psychological sense and their function is limited to promoting the movement of the plot. At best, they are social crea-tures, each occupying their place in what can only be described as a feudal- aristocratic hierarchy. There are no peasants nor any sign of communal life, a well-known dimension of the Incan society. Tupac Yupanqui is a somewhat enli^tened version of the monarchs of the medieval epic— Fernando, Alfonso, etxc. Runto Caska, M s favorite, is the Golden Age man of "armas y letras." Kusikayar and Lleray, as previously indicated, are described with the expression traditional ■fco medieval and Golden Age literatxire as doncellas, that is, royal virgins. The soothsayer, on the other hand, is the curious melding of a traditional Incan notion that handicapped (e.g., blind) or misshapen individuals possessed extraordinary abilities59 and the natziralist predilection for the pathological. Furthermore, the hysterical outburst of the soothsayer, in which he spouts in a sort of verbal stream of consciousness the cryptic images which will be interpreted 121 as foretelling the docan of the empire, is thoroughly in line with late naturalism's fascination (anticipating surrealian) with the abnormal state of consciousness. The character of Runto Caska alone is singed out to receive a more extensive development as a thinking, feeling consciousness. Only in his case does the narrator reveal an interiority struggling with the dilemma of royal policy, especially as it relates to his own life. Ihe device employed is the same fusion of traditional dramatic monologue and modem indirect freestyle characteristic of Vallejo's previous narratives :

La imagen del adivino iba en su pensamiento, revestida de un halo deslumbrante que le fascinaba enteramente. Saldrîa cierto cuanto habia presagiado. Podia sobrevenir el dia. Runto Caska se dio cuenta de que todos los agueros del coUahuata eran nefastos. Viracocha preparaba horribles castigos. La colera sagrada sobrepasaria a cuantas reglstraban los anales. Por su imaginacion desfilaban las visiones de sangre, las devastaciones, los templos y palacios reducidos a polvo, los sembrios talados, los andenes derrumbados, secos los estanques y los rios, las Vidas difuntas. (l64, emphasis mine)

In this context, the characterization of Runto Caska can be said to clash with that of the other actors, contributing to the tension alluded to earlier between the mythico-epic and the romantic. It would seen Vallejo felt himself inescapably drawn toward the inclusion of an individual protagonist by a desire to make his imperial tale relevant to the modem experience. At first glance, the action seems merely to repeat a sequence of events which Vallejo has brou^t together from his various sources on 122 Incan history and lore. However, perhaps in order to present his Incan tale in terms familiar to his culturally Hispanic primary audience and/or perhaps because the author’s own cultural heritage was predcminantly Hispanic, he has chosen as his argument’s structuring principal the driving concept behind the Spanish Reconquest and Conquest of the New World, that of the guerra jus"ta or righteous conquest:

Aquella manana se hablaba en los corredores del palacio, en aninmdos corrillos. Dh joven antunr-apu murmuraba contris-tado, ante unos curacas. — ïbdo esto esta muy bien. Mas no hallo oposicion entre el chacu y la batalla. Sabeis que los hijos del Sol, tienen una mision divina sobre la tierra: la de ex'tender sin fin la religion del Inti y sus f ru tos benEFicos. El Inca esti~en error. Una gran calamidad se avecina... (140, emphasis mine)

Ihe avan't-garde •techniques of jux"taposition and montage (vs. the merely episodic) are the central feataires of the "tale’s development. As illustra"ted above, the chap"ters are dissimilar, •tenuously linked -vignettes vhose sum is the fictionalized depiction of a critical moment of doubt in Incan imperial history. The predcxninance of the visual in each section is reminiscent of the author’s appeal to nonverbal means of expression in the earlier ’’Cunéiformes.” Ihat Vallejo wished to pri"vilege the "visual dimension in his text is supported by his declaration to Pablo Abril that Hacia el reino de los Sciris: ”ira ilustrado de maderas y grabados incaicos.” 123 The ending is open and the vision, vhile upbeat, can be said to conclude on only a provisional note of imperialist vigor, for the reader knows, either from his/her own knowledge of the historical events to follow (e.g., the Peruvian reader), and/or, by deciphering the cryptic premonitions of the soothsayer (the European reader), that catastrophe is lnminent. The faith of the Incas in their gods and their visionaries will not protect against the arrival of the conquistadores. In this con-bext, the first chapter's subtitle, "El otro imperialisno," suggests Vallejo intended that the reader, particularly his projected European reader, further juxtapose this non-Westem experience of imperialism with his/her own experience(s) of mod em imperialism in the West and draw the logical parallels. The work's message is that a policy of imperialism, althou^ it may seem from all (even divine) Indications to be the inevitable one, will necessarily fail; that the conquerors will always end up by being conquered themselves (this may be seen as one of the intended messages of the title); and, that there is an inherently tragic sense to history. Whosoever pursues such a policy is condemned to relive this truth. Thpac Yupanqui's attempt to develop an alternative course of peace and cultural advancement is a typical element of any imperialism where there are bound to be moments of doubt and reversal. Such was the environment experienced by Vallejo from his refuge in Paris entreguerras. Vallejo's tragic vision of history warns that history is ultimately a negative force which employs whatever means, especially the inconceivable— the arrival of the 124 conquistadores was beyond the rational conception of the Incas— tx> destroy its victims. IhQnatically speaking, a first reading of Hacia el reino de los Sciris encounters a work much like that described by Vallejo in his letter to his friend Pablo Abril: "una novela . . . de folklore americano para que los europeos aprendan de la cultura indoamericana y, mas especificamente, de la peruana." Ihe author appears to have uncharacteristically discarded his predilect negative thematic in favor of a positive indigenista one. (Inescapable, though, is the fact that while the world evoked has the trappings of pre-Conquest Incan life, its essence is that of Vallejo’s Hispanic heritage.) Hoewever, after some reflection, the reader familiar with Vallejo’s general ouevre begins to suspect, and, after successive readings of the work under scrutiny, ultima'tely conclude that, in Hacia el reino de los Sciris, the author has simply exchanged his usual modus operandi consisting of hi^xLi^ting and lamenting present decadence and alienation for a contrasting, utopian vision of the pre-Columbian past where he can revisit his lost ideals. Nevertheless, despite the utopian idyll, the resolution Vallejo has chosen for his tale implicitly condemns it as vacuous as well leaving one to infer that he no longer can see any viable solution to his exis'bential angst. To summarize and conclude, Hacia el reino de los Sciris is the locus for the confluence of a diversity of conpeting thematic and structural impulses deriving frcxn a regionalist/cosmopolitan dichotcxny. These competing impulses are symp'tomatic of the 125 continuing desire on the part of the artist to produce a text authentically expressive— as authentically as is possible in the face of powerful modernizing forces— of his own cultural heritage which is mestizo. As Angel Rama has observed, the mestizo has no culture of his own and must improvise one from the various elements available to him in his environment.In Vallejo's case this means combining the Hispanic, the indigenous and the cosmopolitan into an original, "neocultural" synthesis representative of his mestizo origins. With this synthesis, the author has constructed something halfway be'bween a mestizo geste and an existential allegory. Hacia el reino de los Sciris is, in the final analysis, a tortured work in vhich the author was not quite able to make the hetergeneous ingredien'ts coexist harmoniously. However, this "dissonance" is a vir'tue rather than a flaw, for, by allowing the reader to experience the conflictive nature of its text, Hacia el reino de los Sciris guaren'tees the authenticit:y (read also: represent^ativeness) of its vision.

Ihngs'teno (1931) and the subsequent unpublished short stories (1931- 1934) : remnants of the avant-garde Ihngsteno, "Paco Yunque," "El niho del carrizo," "Viaje alrededor del porvenir," "Los dos soras" and "El vencedor" all represent a new social realist direction in the author's approach to prose fiction. However, the underlying procedure employed here by Vallejo actually continues to be basically the same one utilized to 126 forge the more obviously avant-garde Escalas melografladas, Fabla salvaje and Hacia el reino de los Sciris. Ihat is, starting always from a desire to express his regional/national cultural heritage in the most authentic and original way possible within the modem and dependent context, the author avails himself of "techniques deri-ving both from his regional repetoire and from the innovations offered by the modernizing forces— which, up to this point had had their origins predominantly in the European avan't-garde— in order to produce represen"tative narratives. And, while these later "texte reveal a definitive movement away from the experiments of the a"vant-garde so influential in the composition(s) of Escalas melografiadas. Important remuante of that moment are discernible here, as well. Thus, while Htngsteno and the subsequent unpublished short stories, as realist, "technically fall outside the parameters of a stxidy whose primary focus is avan't-garde narrative, they nevertheless merit discussion as documentation of the conclusion of a process whose underlying logic remained the same throu^out. It is particularly important "to hi^ili^t this continuity within the diversity of the author’s prose fiction production, for it serves to render (more) "visible that which was the fundamental approach to narrative of all Latin-American producers of avan't-garde novels and short stories.

Ear removed from his homeland and a resident of Paris for many years now, Vallejo had direct access to the la"test modernity had to offer. During the Depression years of the 1930’s this meant Marxist 127 ideology and socialist (realist) art. The author, in fact, made several trips to S-fcalinist Soviet Russia (1928, 1929, 1931) viiere he was able to see, hear, read about and discuss both, first hand, with those who were striving to put them into everyday practice. Not suprisingly, Vallejo, too, sou^t during these years to employ Marxist principles and rhe"toric as well as the tenets of socialist realism in the crafting of various narratives designed to lay bare and criticize the social inequities of his native Peru. The author acccxnplished these objectives well enou^ to convince his subsequent critical readers of the texts in question that his "conversion" was genuine and conplete. Ihe published analyses of these narratives find there only a progressive, Marxisft-inspired thematic, cast in rudementary realist forms. Yet, a rereading of these same texts, specifically one which ■takes into consideratdLon our readings of those narraid-ves vhich precede them, finds they also possess a silent dimension which is indi'vidual rather than social, resigned rather than defiant, nostalgic rather than hopeful, and, reactionary rather than pro­ gressive. And, as these are sentiments and attitudes more char­ acteristic of the avant-garde art of the 1920’s than of the socialist art of the 1930's one m i ^ t also expect, and is not dis^pointed, to discern the persistence of the allegorical and related li'fcerary devices (montage, juxtaposition, etx;.). The present study, while leaving undisturbed the conclusions based on pre-vious readings of these texts, proposes to contribu'te to an expanded knowledge of them. 128 incorporating that which has been repressed. As if to underscore the validity of this approach to the ■text as susceptible to multiple and ccxnplemen'tary readings, while at the same time pro-viding a thorough working description of the first and most extended of these narratives, the novel Hingsteno, the exposition begins with an abridged version of an earlier analysis by this researcher in the same line as those described above. In the first months of 1931, and in the short period of three we^s, Vallejo wrote, in Madrid, the proletarian novel of Andean setting, Hingsteno. Into it, he poured all of his experiences in the mines of Quiru-vilca, between Santiago de Chuco (the town of the poet’s birth in 1892) and Huamachuco, where he worked for some time, around 1911.^^ By placing the action of his novel only six years latter, in 1917, it achieves a moving verisimilitude. Por a consideration of lungsteno as a narrative seeking to emulate socialist realism, I have referred to Georg Lukacs’ dis­ cussion of the contrast between critical realism and socialist realism, and the relationship between them, in Realism in Our lime: Li'bera'fcure and the Class Struggle. Althou^ Lukacs makes few explicit declarations concerning structure, those that he does make are particularly relevant to an unders'fcanding of the structure of Ihngs'fceno and its raison d’etre. Towards the middle of the third chap'ter, ’’Critical Realism and Socialist Realism,” Lukacs observes: "It is striking that both bourgeois and socialist literataure have diown a preference for the 129 autobiographical Bildungsroman" (111). He then goes on to briefly outline the similarities and differences in the approaches of bourgeois critical realism and socialist realism to 1he BildungsrcnBn. Iheir fundamental similarity, he asserts, consists in having originated in societies (i.e., capitalist and socialist) "in a state of constant, dynamic change," in vtoidi: "An individual growing up . . . has to work things out for himself and struggle for a place in the comraunily" (111-112). Thus, the heroes of both reflect reality. However, in contrast, there are a series of essential socially determined differences vdiich the critic enumerates and vôoich are presented here schanatically sunmarized.

bourgeois critical realism socialist realisn the hero’s place in the ccamunity appears arbitrary, as does is historically deter- the individual’s place in mined as becomes the a capitalist societ^; case for the individual in a socialist society. his education under capitalism: "the indi- in the socialist socie- vidual learns to subordina'te ty: "experience . . . his wishes and views to the will convert [th^ interests of society" (102), bourgeois individualist the result being that his into socialist being . conflict often ends in re- . . the process begins signation and in his isolation with resignation and or, one m i ^ t say, his leads on to active par- estrangement varies with ticipation in the life the degree of the indivi- of the ccmraunity . . . dual’s compronise with so- isolation gives way to cie"ty; . . . involvement with the new social forces" (113) 130 the typical Bildungsroman takes its hero from childhood "begins with the crisis to the critical years of early consciousness the adult adult life" (113); bourgeois intellectual experiences when con­ fronted with socialism" (113).

Vallejo divides the novel into three long chapters which are, in reality, three perfectly differentia"ted parts: the first having as its object the description and denunciation of the exploitation of the Indian, carried out in the mines of Quivilca (whose resemblance to Quiruvilca is obvious); the second, the administrative and moral corruption of Colca (capital of the province where the mines are located) as well as the popular uprising there against the ruthless conscription of the -two Yanacona Indians; and the third, pure revolutionary theory. Thus, the general development of the novel moves from scenes of pure exploitation, typical of crude capitalism, throu^ a moment of transition characterized by the riots in Colca— a first sign of rebellion— to the pre-"revolutionary" third chapter in which the seeds are being planted: "para mover a los peones contra la 'Mining Society' y . . . |Bas adelant^ provocar . . . un levantamientx) de las mas as contra el orden social y economico reinante" (22). Among the characters which appear in the novel, three, in particular, stand out from the rest: the contractor of Indian labor for the mines and proprietor of the general store, José Marino; the surveyor, an engineering student from Lima, Leonidas Benites; and the blacksmith of Colca, the self-t:aught representative of the people, Servando Huanca. According to Jean Franco, whose analysis I partially follow here: "The central problem of the novel was Vallejo's own— the problem of how the Intellectual Benites . . . can transcend the ideology of his class and become an ally of the workers."^3 Before his delirium, product of a mœien'tary but serious illness, in which he sees the "corazon de Jesus," Benites appears as: "an unsympathetic character vÆio tacitly consents to brutal exploitation.His attention to cleanliness and healthiness is extrsne and he lives a well-ordered existence according to the ideas of Samuel Sniles:

Benitas, estaba siempre en su lugar trabajando, meditando, durmiendo, comiendo o leyendo Ayudate, de Sniles, que consideraba la mejor obra modema. En los dlas feriados de la I^esia, hojeaba el Evangelio segun San Ma-teo, librito fileteado de oro, que su madré le ensenô a amar y a conprender en tX)do lo que él vale para los verdaderos cristianos.°5

Franco suggests, correctly I believe, that this is a carica-ture of the young Vallejo when he was working in the mines and sugar plan'tations. The vision of the Sacred Heart, however, marks "an ideological turning point in the novel.Christianity is presented as an ideology of the past and the fragmentas of it which appear in his delirous hallucinations represent the character's most positive aspects, those which oppose the crass egoism of his daily existence.^7^ At the same time, the vision of Christ media"tes the transition be'tween the old Beni'tes and the new:

Bh chispazo de sabiduria le envol'vLo dandole servida en una sola plana . . . su rol permanente en los destinos de Dios. Y fue entonces que nada pudo hacer, pensar, querer, ni sentir por si mismo ni en si mismo exclusi-vamente. Su 132 personalidad, como yo de egoismo, no pudo sustraerse al corte cordial y solï3ario de sus flancos. En su ser se habîa posado una nota orquestal del infinlto, a causa del paso de Jésus. (28)

Ihe delirium of Benites, nevertheless, is followed by the incident in which José Marino gambles with the other members of the mining company, including a reluctant Benites, for Marino's young Indian mistress, Graciela. However, Benites is the only one to put forth moral reservations and, during the collective sexual assault of the girl, he is conveniently asleep. Lat%r, the rapes having proven fatal for Graciela, Beni'tes is possessed with considerable remorse— contributing directly to his decision, in the third chapter, to Join the cause of the socialist workers. Beni'tes's absence from the second chapter, a major flaw if he is to play the central role of the character who evolves, is remedied somewhat by this exchange, in the third chapter, be'tween Servando Huanca and the surveyor:

Yo le decîa a us'ted— anadio dirigiendose a Beni'tes— que los curas y los doctores "tambien son enemigos de los indios y de los trabajadores. ^Que es lo que paso aquella vez en Colca? iEntre el subprefecto, el medico, el Juez . . . el alcalde y el sargento, y el gamonal Iglesia, y los soldados, dieron muer'te a mas de quince pobres indios! (92)

Not only, therefore, had Benites been told about the events in the second chap'ter, vhich by themselves mi^it not have been enou^ to convert him, he had himself witnessed seme of the injustices practiced upon the workers :

Una vez, en una hacienda de azucar . . . se hallaba de 133 paseo, invitado por un - . . hljo del propietario . . . senador . . . y profesor [de derech<^ . . . Este hombre . . . solia levantarse de madru^da para vigilar y sorprender en falta a los obreros. [J. . .%] — ^Que temperatura hace aqui [en la fabric^? — preguinto Benites. Unos 48 a 50 grados — dijo el patron. [. . .]] Y fue entonces que . . . Benites vio con sus propios ojos . . . una escena salvaje, diabolica, increible. El patron se acerco en puntillas al obrero donnido y le vaciô de golpe el balde de agua fria en la cabeza F. . Aquella misna madrugada rauriô el obrero. (94-5)

In spite of all ttie evidence of atrocities committed against the workers, Benites only sedcs out Servando Huanca, and agrees to support the cause of the peones, after losing his own job with the mining company and his place in José Marino’s scheme to dispoil the possessions of the Indians of Quivilca. Ihe development of the character Benites, then, parallels that of the novel in general, forming what Lukacs has described as the Bildungsroman of socialist realism. Ihe experiences of the injustices and inequalities of the capitalist exploi'tation of the tungsten mine at Quivilca have transformed the bourgeois indivi­ dualist Leonidas Beni'tes into a socialist being. He is moving away, as the novel concludes, from passivity towards "active participation in the life of the community" and "involvement with the new social forces" brou^t about throu^ "the crisis of consciousness the adult bourgeois experiences when confronted with socialism." However, there is an in'teresting ■twist. VJhen the reader mee'ts Benites for the first time, he is ob'viously, fron the narrator's description of him, completing a Bildung or education of the capi'talist/bourgeois sort and he feels he’s achieved his place in the 134 comraunil^r:

Benites no ignoraba que en este mundo, el que tiene dinero es el mas feliz, y en consecuencia, las mejores virtudes son el trabajo y el ahorro, que procuran una exlstencia tranquUa y justa [^. . . J KL agrimensor tenia, en general, intina. y solida convlcciôn de que era un Joven de bien, laborioso, ordenado, honorable y de gran porvenir. Siempre estaba aludiendo a su persona, senalândose cono un paradigma de vida, que todos debîan imitar . . . Peroraba extensamente sobre el bien y el mal, la verdad y la mentira, la sinceridad y el tartufismo y otros temas importantes. (20)

His is a purely middle-class ethic. Notwithstanding, his negative experiences cause a crisis of consciousness, as we have seen, and ultimately a conversion:

— I Muy bien! — diJo a Benites el herrero— . . . Lo que importa es que usted esté decidido a ponerse a nuestro lado y a luchar contra los gringos. Q. . îBuenoI ;Yo es toy con los peones! ; Cuenten conmigo! (98)

The conversion, thou^, occurs on the next to the last page of the narrative and the reader is left with only an implicit pronise of action: "El viento soplaba afuera, anunciando tempest%.d" (99). In this context, then, the structure of the work may be called transitional. This observation is supported by an examination of the author’s lived experience of Peruvian historical reality vhich he is careful not to betray, for the consequence would have been to fall into a lyrical socialist utopism. 135 TUngsteno, in conclusion, is our best example of Vallejo’s realist prose of social comment. Ihe form that he has chosen for the novel is that of the Bildungsrcxnan— a particularly ^ t vehicle for such a novel in that it portrays the dialectical relationship between individual and society. Vallejo’s novel may be closely identified with the Bildungsroman of socialist realist tradition rather than that of the bourgeois critical realist tradition. We see, for example, that ihngs'teno begins with the crisis of consciousness of the central figure, Beni'tes, rather than with his childhood. It is also apparent that his place in the new order is historically de'tennined rather than arbitrary. Ihe hero's repea'ted con'tacts with concrete social reality point him towards a conversion into a socialist being and a more active involvement with the new social forces in the community. Ihis actual conversion of Beni'tes is not developed within the novel, for the historical circumstances of Peru at the time Vallejo wrot% Tungs'beno preven'fced him from concluding his novel thus. Ihngs'beno, therefore, is a transitional work representing Vallejo’s attempt to enrula'te the Bildungsroman of the socialist realist tradition. This first reading emulates a conventional, traditional approach to the text. Ihat is, a passive reader, led by a familiar, simple spoken if somewhat preachy realist-na'turalist narrator, moves in a predcminantly linear fashion along the text assimilating the various sta^s of the hero’s (Beni'tes’) apprenticeship. Ihe novel of apprenticeship is, as Kayser, among others, has shown, a formula as 136 old as the genre Itself.Perhaps the only novelty the conventional reader encounters before reaching the end is that providence and the laws of science have been replaced by the laws of historical materialisni as the governing force behind the action. This is a formula particularly accessible, and appealing, to the literarily unsophisticated middle- and lower-class Peruvian readers to whom the social message, the vindication of the Indian worker by an enlightened middle class, is clearly directed. Nevertheless, Just as is the case in Vallejo’s other narratives, this first reading of Hingsteno is subverted and transmuted in a second reading, this "time provoked by the novel’s open ending, which thwarts the expectations of the traditional reader and forces him/her to review and revise his/her first impression of the text. Vhat emerges is a pessimistic vision of presen'b-day human relations insidiously infected and corrupted by the modem norm of exchange value, and, a nostalgia for a time of childish innocence, even unconsciousness embodied in the text by the Indians. The reader, his/her suspicions aroused by Beni'tes’s failure to confirm his revolutionary project within the boundaries of the narrative (to say nothing of his questionable emotional rather than in'tellectual conmitment to the cause), must now necessarily question his/her first acceptance of an ascending progression in the novel’s development. Vallejo has in fact craf'ted his novel so mas'terfully, fitting the indi'vidual elements one into the next so cleanly that it is initially difficult "to discern that the three sections are more 137 reiterative (paradigmatic), after the fashion of a musical symphony, than progressive (syntagmtic) as narratives are traditionally held to be. Nevertheless, this beccmes patently clear Wien the three parts are read as independent— a natural next step where organic to"tality has been foiled— and then compared, in search of common fea-tures. In this case, the common thread running throu^ all three sections of Ibngsteno turns out to be the element of exploitation. To begin, all the novel's characters can be organized hierarchically in a pyramid based upon their domination and exploi'tation of others, with the American mine managers. Talk and Weiss, at the top and the Indians at the very bottxxn. There is also a web of vestud inturestu which bind together the members of the middle class: for example, José Marino's collaboration with Beni'tes and others to fleece the naive soras; the Marino brothers' friendly relationship with the subprefect; José Marino's role as procurer for mis'ters Taik and Weiss; etc. (The fact that the most important characters in the novel originate frcm the middle class, as opposed to the landed aristocracy, suggests that the writer is less concerned with the inequities of the organization of his society than he is with the negative effects of capitalism upon the members of his own class.) ■Purthermore, the various conflicts and resolutions which take place in the course of the bock revolve around the twin poles of exploitation and domination. In this con'text, each of the three parth can be broken down into three ccmponents : 1) presen'tation of 138 space (Colca/Qulvilca, which share a symbiotic relationship); 2) presentation of characters (exploiters and exploited); 3) conflicts (exploitation). Each consists of the same basic terms reiterated with similar intensity, only the final section differs in its prepara1:ion of a possible solution, leading one "to conclude that where there is the appearance of movement and change in the story, there is, in fact, only variation and repetition of a same theme: exploitation. In this second reading, the reader in search of an antidote to this all-pervasive corruption of the human relationship finds that the promised land of a future socialist canmunity of the worker, of the first reading, is replaced only by Benites’s delirious, and ultima'tely ineffectual, conjuring of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as well as a sympathetic yet ironic evocation of the bon savage sora Indians. The Qui-vilcan soras are depicted, in Part One, as totally indifferent to the notion of exchange "value and become, as a consequence, the object, first, of curiosi"ty and, later, of ruthless exploitation by the mining employees. Hov/ever, more than mere remnants of an earlier, more noble s'tage of human, or even Andean, evolution— an idealization in any case not consonant with reality— , the soras are to be unders"tood, rather, as projections of the psychologically unaware s'ta'te of the child before the intrusion of the mundane interests and concerns about loneliness, disease, aging and death of adulthood. 139 In this context, a link can plausibly be drawn, at üie level of the Implicit author, between Benites’s vision of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, originating in his Catholic upbringing, and the representation of the child-like soras, based upon their common relationship to a childhood state. That is, the implicit author, present in the organization of the text, can only offer, as alternative to the degraded state of humanity, a regression to infancy— an infancy which for Vallejo, as has been demonstrated previously, carries specific associations to his lost heme of Santiago de Chuco and, by extension, to its ssni-feudal economic and social structures as well as to its Catholician.

Vallejo’s death at the relatively young age of 43 in 1938 meant that any plans he might have had— he left no news— regarding the publication of the five narratives ’’Paco Yunque,” ”EL niho del carrizo,” ’’Viaje alrededor del porvenir,” ”Los dos soras” and ”KL vencedor” would remain unrealized. ’’Paco Yunque” was originally composed as a tale for children to accompany Ihngsteno in the same volume published by Editorial Cenit in Madrid in 1931. However, the editors reportedly rejected it, declaring it to be too sad a piece for young readers.^9 ihus, it was not to appear in print until it was reproduced, posthumously, in the 1951 first issue of the journal Apuntes del hcmbre, published in Lima. Little known is the fact that the story was ultima'tely to be prefaced by a poem of Vallejo’s composition^^ expressing the rage of the poor, an aliena'ted, self- 140 destructive rage which is powerless against overwhelming odds, ihe poem— reproduced below— like the prose currently under discussion, combines some of the author’s avant-garde conquests, most notably his utilization of unconventional subjective imagery, with a traditional quin’tetx) construction:

La colera que quiebra al hombre en nihos, que quiebra al niho, en pajaros iguales, y al pajaro, despues, en huevecillos; la colera del pobre tiene un aciete contra dos vinagres. La colera que al arbol quiebra en hojas, a la hoja en botones desiguales y al boton, en ranuras telescopicas; la colera del pobre tiene dos rlos contra muchos mares. La colera que quiebra al bien en dudas, a la duda, en très arcos semejan'fces al arco, luego, en -bumbas imprevis'tas; la colera del pobre tiene un acero contra dos puhales. La colera que quiebra al alma en cuerpos, al cuerpo en organos desanejan'fces y al organo, en octavos pensamientos; la colera del pobre tiene un fuego central contra dos cratères. Paris, 26 de ocfcubre de 1937

Ihis poem was restored to its intended place in the Mejia Baca edition of 1957• The four subsequent pieces only appear in 1970, under the collective heading Novelas y cuentos canpletos in "the Moncloa edition, authorized by his wife Georgette de Vallejo. 141 In spite of the lack of any definitive action by "the author to organize and publish these five narratives, it is possible, nonetheless, to draw several conclusions deductively about this natter based upon a thorough familiarity with the five stories as well as the novel Ibngs'beno. Association of the stories to Ibngs'beno is encouraged by the common use of the devices and structures of social realism. Iheir affinity with lUngs'teno also extends to an insistence upon the same thematic dichotomy: the presen-t-day corruption of human relationships by modem influences (principally capitalism), often associated here with adulthood, in contrast to a bygone (read: pre-Columbian) ideal natural innocence synonymous with, and frequently personified in the stories by, the child. Based upon these shared features, one is able to formulata for the five narratives in relation -to Ihngsteno a sort of natural subset, each of whose units, vhen considered in the context of the set, is the work of a sane implicit author. In this context, one mi ^ t then hypothesize for these narratives an allegorical function and even a certuin montage-like relationship not unlike those found operating within the collected narratives of Escalas melografiadas. Ihe anecdote of "Paco Yunque" centers on the title character’s experiences on his first day at school. Ihe tale clearly intends to contrast the treatment the rural peasant youth and his classmates receive from their public school teacher with the more deferential treatment accorded one Humberto Grieve, the spoiled son of the town 142 mayor, a wealthy railway manager. Further complications arise in Yunque's case as he and his mother are servants in the Grieve household. This fact in iiils still somewhat feudal Andean provincial society all but grants Grieve license to wilfully abuse and exploit Yunque. Ihe overt object of the tale appears to be to illustrate, for ideological purposes, üie way in vdiich capital infiltrates and perverts human relations in a typical Andean setting. In that context, particular effect is achieved throu^ the utilization of an innocent child protagonist encountering a degraded reality for the first time. Ihe (this) effect is compounded by the author's casting of the narrative in the form of a children’s story, complete with original illustrations. However, instead of explicitly detailing, as is the practice in social(ist) writing, either the causes of or the solutions to the protagonist's dilemma (and that of his fellow classmates), "Paco Yunque" limits itself to a portrayal of negative circumstances. This fact, along with the story's conclusion, depicting Paco reduced by his tormentor to mute and tearful dispair, deflects the story's emphasis away fran the social and toward the existential: that is, a child's loss of innocence, his separation from a previous ideal condition. Another of the five unpublished fictions, "EL vencedor," develops a similar argument and situates itself also at the level of the child, this time adopting the perspective of one who is looking 143 on. The setting is the school playground and the subject is the physical rivalry of üie well-dressed Cancio and tiie raggedly clothed Juncos :

Juncos era el nino descalzo. Esperaba en guardia, encendido y jadeante. M s bien escueto y cetrino y de sabroso genio pendenciero. Sus pies desnudos mostraban los talones rajados. El pantalon de bayeta blanca, andrajoso y desgarrado a la altura de la rodilla izquierda, le descendîa hasta los tobillos. Tocaba su cabeza alborotada un grueso e informe scxnbrero de lana. Reia cano si le hiciesen cosquillas. Las apuestas en su favor crecian. For Cancio, en cambio, las apuestas eran menores. Era este un nino decente, hi jo de buena familia. Se mordîa el labio superior con altivez y colera de adulto. Itenia zapatos nuevos. (193-194)

Ihe stage is set for a Manichaen confrontation symbolizing class struggle. Such a clear cut opposition does not develop, however. In fact, the initial socioecononic mechanism almost seems to have been set in motion so that the events of the story mi ^ t derail it. Althou^ the narrator initially focusses upon those aspects of each character which could differentiate them economically and socially, he does not sustain this attention nor dwell on it further. Rather, his choice to depict the vacillating allegiances of the various children crowded about the two combatants serves to privilege the psychological dimension of their conflict over the social. Finally, Juncos's victory results not from any concrete advantage he has over Cancio, but it is instead an emotional victory inspired by the momentary favor of the crowd, from lAlch he draws the strength for one final, decisive blow. 144 There is implied intellectual support for the triumph of the poor peasant Juncos over the more well-off Cancio in. the unfolding and denoument of the argument. Nevertheless, the emotional support is behind Cancio. The narrator appraises Cancio as: "un nino decente, hi jo de buena familia \\ . Q inteligente y noble" (193- 94). And, he praises him because: "[i^unca busco camorra a nadie" (194). These are aristocratic values, unrealistic and out of place in any true class conflict. Juncos, on the other hand, is portrayed in terns ihich acknowledge his natural physical superiority but which remark a certain unhealthiness of aspect. And, even thou^ victorious, the character Juncos is made to pay mu-te, •tearful homage to Cancio’s nobility in defeat, as the piece concludes:

EL grupo de pequehos avanzaba, de vuel-ta a la aldea, entre las pencas del camino. Hablaban poco y a media voz, con una entonacion adolorida. Hasth. Juncos, el propio vencedor, estaba tris'te. Se aparth de todos y fue a sentarse en un poyo del sendero. Nadie le hizo caso. Le veîan de lejos, con extraheza, y él parecia avergonzado. Bajo la frente y empezo a jugar con piedrecillas y briznas de hierba. Le habîa pegado a Cancio es'be Juncos... — Vamonos — le dijo Leonidas, acercandose. Juncos no respondio. Hundio su sombrero has'ta las cejas y as! oculto el rostro. — Vamonos, Juncos. Leonidas se incline a verle. Juncos es'taba Uorando. (196)

The tone here is melancholy while the tot^al impression left by the story is one of children vho in assuming, even in play, the roles of adults, nonetheless experience the harshness of that reality and lose a part of their natural naïveté. 1 % In "Los dos soras," the tale of a pair of hapless Amerindian victims of culture shock, the association of the child with the Indian becomes explicit, while Catholicism and Hispanic civilization are clearly linked to the world of the adult. However, the intention here is not to evoke, as elsevdiere, the "comfortable" Hispano- Gatholic world of the author’s youth. Rather, the reference is more properly Catholicism at the moment of the Spanish Conquest, when Hispanism and Catholicism would be analogous (for the Indians, that is) to the advent of modernity. As the story opens, Juncio and Analquer wander by chance into the village of Piquillacta, one of only a few "poblaciones civilizadas" on the banks of the Urubamba in the Peruvian Amazon. Ihey are Immediately spellbound by even the most trivial aspects of what for them is a completely unknown world:

Se sent:aron en las "tapias de una rua, a ver pasar a las gentes que iban y venian de la aldea. Despues, se lanzaron a caminar por las calles, al azar. Sentàan un bienestar inefable, en presencia de las cosas nuevas y desconocidas que se les revelaban: las casas blanqueadas, con sus enrejadas vent:anas y sus tejados rojos; la char la de dos mujeres, que movian las manos alegando o escarbaban en el suelo con la punta del pie, completamente absorbidas; un viejecito encorvado, calentandose al sol, sentado en el quicio de una puerta, junto a un gran perrazo bianco, que abrla la boca, tratando de cazar moscas... Los dos seres palpitaban de jubilosa curiosidad, cano fascinados por el espectaculo de la vida de meblo, que nunca hablan ^sto. (188)

As the 'two penetra'te further into the village, their unconventional behavior— walking zig-zag through the street, bumping indescriminately into walls and passersby— soon draws attention. 146 particularly % a t of the children, who are instantly attracted to them:

Los nihos empezaron a seguirles. — Mama — referian los pequehos con ascmbro— , tienen unos brazos muy fuertes y es tan sierapre alegres y riéndose. (189) ihe soras, now accompanied by the children, enter a church where a funeral mass is about to be celebrated. In a scene anticipating lo real maravllloso of later writers such as Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Juncio and Analquer are moved to an unabashed joyful glee, v ^ c h infects the children as well, as the singing and ritual get under way:

Apenas sono el canto sagrado, poblando de confusas resonancias el tanplo, Juncio se echo a reir, poseldo de un jûbilo irrestible. Los nihos, que no apartaban un instante los ojos de los soras, pusieron una cara de asombro . . . Analquer, en verdad, no se habîa reîdo^y, antes bien, se mostraba estupefacto ante aquel espectaculo que, en su aima de salvaje, tocaba los limites de lo maravilloso. Mas Juncio seguîa riendo. El canto sagrado, las luces en los altares, el recoglmiento profundo de los fieles, la claridad del sol penetrando por los ventenales a dejar chispas, halos y colores en los vidrios y en el métal de las molduras y de las efegies, todo habîa cobrado ante sus sentidos una gracia adorable, un encanto tan fresco y hechizador, que le colmaba de bienestar, elevandolo y haciéndolo ligero, ingrâvido y alado, sacudiéndole, haciéndole cosquillas y despertando una vibraciôn incontenible en sus nervios. Los nihos, contagiados, por fin, de la alegrîa candor osa y radiante de Juncio, acabaron también por reîr, sin saber por que. (190)

Reaction by the "adults” is swift and harsh:

Vino el sacristan y, persiguiendoles con un carrizo. 147 los arrojô del temple. IM Individuo del pueblo, indignado por las risas de los nifios y los soras, se acerco enfurecido. — Imbeciles. ^De que se rien? Blasfanos. Oye — le dijo a uno de los pequenos— , que te ries, animal? El nine no supo que responder. El hanbre le cogio por un brazo y se lo oprimio brutalmente, rechinando los dientes de rabia, hasta hacerle crujir los buesos. A la puerta de la i^esia se formo un tumulte popular contra Juncio y Analquer. — Se ban reldo — exclamaba iracundo el pueblo— . Se ban reldo en el temple. Eso es insoportable. Una blasfania sin nombre... Y entonces vino un gendarme y se llevô a la cârcel a los soras. (190-91)

Ibe contrast of tbe adult brutality witb tbe innocent behavior of tbe children and tbe soras is reinforced by tbe simple s'fcyle of tbe "tale, which is recoun'ted after the fashion of a story told to children ("No sabla caminar este Analquer" [_l89j). Ihe narrator, however, does maintain sufficient distance from tbe subjects of his tale "to provide a relatively balanced portrayal of tbeir dilenma. It is tbe regionalist mediative perspective at work again, at-fconpting to capture tbe perspective of tbe Indians, but from tbe world of tbe vbites and mestizos. Ihus tbe idealization of tbe Indians as bon savages, représentatives of a child-like stage of humankind ("Son

decendient:es de los Incas" [189] ) uncomprehended and brutally repressed. Like "Paco Yunque" and "El vencedor" and, to a lesser extent, "Los dos soras," "El nino del carrizo" describes tbe actions of children from tbe perspective of a child. Ihe narrating youth diverts attention from what one would normally expect to be tbe primary focus of tbe plot; the traditional expedition of a group of 148 mountain villagers to collect certain sacred reeds for use in Holy Week celebrations. In a very child-like fashion, he turns his attention instead to his friend Miguel's animalesque behavior which goes unnoticed by the adults on the expedition. Ihlike the stories discussed thus far, though, the style is not that of a children’s tale, but resembles, instead, a Quirogan mixture of naturalistic narrator and the fantastic, or what some call mundonovismo. In this it is the least like the other pieces, more like the narratives of "Coro de vientos." Nevertheless, the same nostalgia for a prior state of ignorant bliss, dramatized by the protagonist's uninhibited sharing of the hounds' watarhole, gives this near fragment an emblematic importance among the pieces discussed thus far discussed:

Sorprendimos en una de estas quebradas, al doblar la pendiente de un meandro, a Miguel. Arqueado en cuatro pies, tcraaba agua de un chorro recondito y azul, entre matorrales. Junto a los labios del amo, Rana tanla sumergido el hocico. La lengua granate de Bisonte herxa la linfa, azotandola. Bajo el agua, ondulaba su baba viscosa. Las pupilas del mozo y las de sus perros, al beber, se duplicaban y centuplicaban de cristal en cris"tal, de marco en marco, entre la doble frontera natural de la onda y de los ojos. Extrana anatomîa la de Miguel, bebiendo en cuatro pies, el agua de la herbosa montana... Muchas veces le vi asx, saboreando lais lâgrimas rientes de la tierra. Trazaba entonces una figura monstruosa, una imagen que expresaba, acaso justificândola, el tenor de su naturaleza, su espxritu terrâqueo, su xnclinaciôn al suelo. Sediento y comido por los ardores de la sangre, Miguel doblaba los pedes'fcales ilxacos y extendxa los brazos hacia adelante, hasta dar las manos en la tierra . . . Miguel hacîa asx el signo de txjdo lo que sale de la tierra por las plan'tas, para tomar a ella por las manos... (iSO)

Ihe complete submersion of the boy in his animal condition suggests 149 the destruction of the personality and regression to a pre-conscious and, if you will, organic state in vhich one has no awareness of individuality, source of one’s sense of solitude and existential anguish. Ihe last of the unpublished narratives, ’’ViaJe alrededor del porvenir," develops, in darkly satirical fashion, thie other term of the thanatic dichotony, that is, the present-day corruption of human relationships by modem influences. As its title suggests, the story pretends to portray a time, future and present simultaneously, in which even the most intima~be of human relationships, the sexual one, has been thoroughly permea-ted by the notion of exchange value. The story concerns a cert:aln Arturo, administrator of an hacienda, vho is married (a marriage of convenience) to Eva, a distant relation of don Julio, the owner (patron) of the hacienda. The patron, vho has acquired the bizarre habit of speaking Spanish like a Chinese immigrant to all (including his wife) iho are his economic inferiors, promises Arturo and Eva 10,000 soles as a potential reward for betting a male child (they already have a girl):

Don Julio, aquella noche del nacimiento de la hija del administrader, habia llamado a es'be a su escritorio despues de cenar, y le dijo severamen'te : — T5 "bene ahora una hica. Por que tu no hacé uno rauchacho. ;Tu ée zonzo! El administrador de pie y en actitud humilde, se puso Colorado de emocion, al sentirse honrado, con el hecho de cjue el patron se interesase asl por la -vicia de los suyos. Una mezcla de orgullo y de pudor le estremeciô ante las 150 palabras protectoras del patron y no supo que contester. Sonriô penosamente y bajô la f rente. El patron anadiô, entonces, patemalmente : — Anda tu hacé uno hico muchacho, uno hico macho. Si tu hacé un chico houe, yo date légale di mil soles. (183- 84)

■Por Arturo and Eva, their next child suddenly assumes, potentially, a concrete monetary worth, blotting from their minds any thou^"fcs about its humanity:

Ambos conyuges empezaron a sonar dla y noche, que les traerîa los diez mil soles pronetidos... dla y noche. Esta perspectiva surgla ante ellos principalmente cada vez que se veîan en apuros de dinero y en cuant:as ocasiones hablaban de proyectos de futuro bienestar. Necesitaban vestirse mejor que los Quesada. Necesitaban ccxnprar muebles nuevos para la casa de Chiclayo. Adanâs, convendrla hacer un paselto a Lima. ^Por qué solamente los Herrera y los Ulercado tenîan derecho a ir a pasear a Lima todos los anos? — Mira Arturo — decla Eva, en un delirio de ilusiôn a su marido si Uegamos a tener el chico este ano, podriamos pasar la temporada de verano en Miraflores. jCh, qué maravilla séria eso! jCâmo se morirîan de envidia ■fcodas mis amigasi (184)

Ihe narrative records, with exquisitely humorous effect, the couple's ensuing frantic, and ultimately futile, efforts to qualify for the prize:

Si el administrador lograba engendrar un hijo macho, serla una cosa formidable. Pero icono lograrlo? l'îas de una vez se hablan hecho él y su mujer esta, interro^ciôn. iComo engendrar un hijo honbre? Los dos pensaban que la cosa consistla en alimentarse bien. Otras veces crelan que era cuestiôn de técnica y, en las horas de escepticismo, pensaban, siguiendo su experiencia, que eran éstos designios de la suer'fce y que no habla nada que hacer. La pareja pasaba noches ardidas de esfuerzo y ansiedad. Habla ocasiones en que Eva, después de un espasmo heroico y calculado, como un teorema de ralz cûbica, se sumla en un silencio abstracts para luego exclamar de pronto sudorosa a 151 su marido: — îYa! îYa creo que ya! jSiento que ahora sî, que va! Lo siento. ;Lo siento claramente! — No — respondîa Arturo, exhausto y desalentado— . Yo he sentido que no. Esto es una brana. Otras veces era el administrador quien solia exclamar en el instante preciso de su goce: — jYa!... !Ya!..* %Ya! •«• %Ya!... Eva, por el contrario, se mostraba escéptica, aunque no se atreviese a desalentar a su marido y, mas bien, le respondia con jadente y débil voz: — Sî... Probablemente... Probablemente... [1 . .]] Pero . . . la empresa aborto completamente, pues siete meses mas tarde, Eva daba a luz una mujercita. (l86, 187)

In this chapter, the application of Ihe "lens" of transculturation— as the concept has been defined by Angel Rama— to the prose fiction of César Vallejo had the effect of making visible the syncretism of that narrative. Specifically, by organizing information about the structural components and the thematic of of the narratives around the various binary oppositions implicit in the transcul-tural encounter, such as regionalism/cosmopolitanisa, the traditional/the modem, the local/the universal, etc., it became possible to effectively catalogue their heterogeneous elements and thereby establish a basis for a more accurate knowledge of the works. This operation produced in every case the substance of at least three readings vhich were detailed as they would unfold for the implied 152 reader of üiese narratives; that is: a conventional reading, based upon models which were either traditional or of longstanding local consolidation; an allegorical/mythical reading, a sociopolitical reading. In the next chapter, which studies three full-length novels generally considered to be representative of the avant-garde prose fiction of Vicente Huidobro, the method of analysis and interpretation will remain the same as that employed in Chapter II. N o t e s

^César Vallejo, ”Mas alla de la vida y la rauerte," Variedades 16 (1922): 1429-1432. ^Luîs Monguiô, "César Vallejo: Vida y Obra," Revista Hispânica Modema l6 (1950): 24-25. ^Monguiô 21-24. ^Ccxnpare, for example, these observations of Luis Monguiô 21:

Sin exageraciôn puede af irmarse que cuantos se han ocupado de Vallejo estiraan criticos para su vision del mundo y para el desarroUo de su obra los ûltimos meses de mil novecientos veinte y el ano mil novecientos veintiuno en que el poeta sufriô persecuciôn por la justicia y conociô los dolores de un encarcelamiento. El impacto de estos hechos sobre su sensibilidad, la profundidad de sus efectos en su espiritu y su pensamiento solo pueden percibirse leyendo sus libros publicados en mil novecientos veintidôs y en mil novecientos veintitrés en los que buen numéro de poemas y de paginas en prosa destilan las amaragas aguas del sufrimiento.

Compare, also, the following remarks by Carlos Meneses, "La narrative de César Vallejo," Camp de I ’Arpa: Revista de la literature 30 (1976): 36:

IXirante ciento doce dies sufriô prison en la cârcel de Trujillo, ccxnpartiendo celda con dos delincuentes comunes . . . Durante este tiempo todos sus amigos lo visitaron y proveyeron de libros, y el poeta, a pesar de la angustia, de la tortura animica que vivia, no dejô de leer y escribir . . . Escribio, estando tras las rejas, varios de los poemas que canpondrian Trilce y algunas narraciones Q'que, poco después, reuniria bajo el titulo de Escalasque, al Igual que los poemas, traducian claramente su deSilitado estado de animo. 1 5 5 154 Finally, there is this note fran the Poemas en prosa in César Vallejo, Poemas humanos (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1979) • 15:

— EL momentx) mas grave de mi vida fue mi prision en una cancel del Peru. ^Monguiô 7. ^Jean Franco, César Vallejo. The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976) l48. César Vallejo, El arte y la revolucion, ed. Georgette de Vallejo (Lima: Mosca Azul Editores, 1973). ®See poem "XV” in César Vallejo, Poemas humanos (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1979) 159- 9 Valle jo, Poemas humanos 137. ^*^See Georg Lukacs, Realism in Our Time; Literature and the Class Struggle (New York: Harper and How, 1964) 111-113, wherein the critic briefly outlines the similarities and differences in the approaches of bourgeois critical realism and socialist realism to the Bildungsroman. ^^Jeff Fisher, "César Vallejo’s Tungsteno: Prose of Social Consnent," in Helicon, 3 (1) Autumn 1983: 56-63- 12césar Vallejo, Chras complétas, 6 vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Laia, 1976) 6: 28-37- ^3perhaps the most effective example of the consternation and confusion which Vallejo’s innovations were capable of producing among contemporary literary critics can be found in the ambivalent canments of Vallejo’s friend and dauntless supporter, Luis Alberto Sanchez in Luis Alberto Sanchez, "Dos poetas," Dtoidlal 3 de noviembre 1922 (reproduced in Juan Espejo Asturrizaga, César Vallejo- Itinerario del hombre 1892-1923 [Lima: Editorial Juan Mejia Baca, 1965] 244-45), upon the publication of the radically original Trilce:

Y he aqui, ahora, a un poeta brujo- A un poeta, con cuyo libro luchc en vano, pues cada linea me desorienta mas, cada pagina aumenta mi ascmbro- ^Por qué ha escrito Trilce Vallejo? Hace cuatro anos — me tienta la evocacion— Valdelomar, siempre en acecho de novedades, me dio a conocer versos de Vallejo- La sorpresa fue tanto 155 mayor, cuanto que de la provincia del poeta hablanme escrito denigrandolo como artista y como ha±>re. Al artista le conocî entonces; al horibre lo traté después. iCuan equivocado el dénigrante! Vallejo es, sin duda alguna, no solo el primer poeta de su terruno, sino el primero de su generaciôn. Ninguno le iguala en originalidad de conceptos, ni en sencillez — desnuda y cas ta es su emociôn— , ni en valentîa para expresarse. Recuerdo que, cuando leîmos "La de a mil", los dos magnîficos versos finales nos produjeron una profunda impresiôn. Y la impresiôn creciô cuando conocimos "Los dados etemos", "Bordas de hielo", "Ausente" y las compôsiciones hogarenas a sus padres y a su muerto hermano Miguel. Asî apareciô "Los Heraldos Negros", libro rotundo y fuerte, con vacilaciones y flaquezas en la expresiôn a veces, pero siempre vigoroso en la idea, profundo en la emociôn, certero en el mirar. La crltica saludô en César Vallejo la apariciôn de una poesîa nueva en el Peru. (Un amigo escritor que me crela hiperbolico al juzgar a este lirida, leyô aquel libro y ccxnentô : " ; ikn grande ccxno Bguren!" Después de très anos en los cuales la vida le ha combatido duramente; después de haber gustado el sabor de la prisiôn, por obra de una calurania infâme, después de haberse emborrachado de exotismo, de amargura y de vino. César A. Vallejo ha lanzado un nuevo libro incanprensible y estrambôtico: Trilce. Pero ipor qué habrâ escrito Trilce Vallejo? îfe extrana y al mismo tienç)o ccmprendo o quiero COTiprender. Este poeta de talento brujo ha menester de rareza. Observador atento de la vida, busca en todas las cosas un sentido Intimo, profundo y palpitante, cuya expresiôn adecuada requiere él aprehender, aunque el lector permanezca atônito preguntandose si se trata de una humorada del poeta o de una cosa tremenda que escapa a su canprensiôn. &Esto o aquello? Con franqueza renuncio a la gloria de resolver el probleraa. Mas, a pesar del enmaranamiento, de los oscuro, de lo dificil e incomprensible de este caprichoso Trilce, de cuando en cuando se encuentra un "la calle esta ojerosa de puertas" u otra observaciôn por el estilo, denunciadora del talento auténtico de quien tejiô aquella canplicada urdimbre de palabras raras con ortografîa antojadiza. "Me siento superior a mi libro", deciane Vallejo. Claro esta. Ccmo que en cuanto le venga en gana dejar las cabriolas verbales y recordar que los dadas valen solo por lo que significan como reacciôn y renovaciôn — y de ellos es millonario este poeta— , Vallejo hara una poesîa suya, COTipletamente suya y absolutamente nueva en el Peru. Cercano al simbolismo, devoto de la sencillez, sincere y observador, dueno de una originalidad desconcertante. 156 César A. Vallejo es un poeta. Se le canbatira imicho. Es de los que deben resignarse a soportar ataques y burlas. Cuando Uegue la hora de la prueba, de todo corazon estaré con él. ^^Clemente Palma, "Correo franco," Variedades 22 September 1917. ^^"Escalas melograf iadas, por César A. Vallejo," Variedades 13 March 1923. Reprinted in Juan Espejo Asturrizaga 245. l^"’La Novela Peruana. Pabla Salvaje," Variedades 26 May 1923. Reprinted in Juan Espejo Asturrizaga 246. Claridad 14 May 1923: 19* Reprinted In Juan Espejo Asturrlza^ 246. ^®See José Carlos Marlâtegul, "Arte, Revoluclôn y Decadencla," Amauta 3 (1926): 3-4. ^9José Carlos Marlâtegul, "El proceso de la literatura," Obras complétas, 38üi éd., 20 vols. (Lima: Amauta, 1978) 2: 316:

. . . cosmopolltlsmo se traduce, en la imltaclôn entre otras cosas de no pocos corroslvos decadentlsmos occidentales y en la adopclôn de anarqulcas modas flnlseculares. Pero, bajo este flujo precarlo, un mevosentimlento, una nueva revelaciôn se anunclan. Por los caminos universales, ecuménicos, que tanto se nos reprochan, nos vamos acercando cada vez mas a nosotros mismos. 20pedro Barrantes Castro, "Prôlogo," Fabla S^vaje, by César Vallejo (Lima: Edlclones La Novela Peruana, 1923). Reprinted In Juan Espejo Asturrizaga 247. Anonymous, "El Tungsteno, por César Vallejo. Editorial Cenlt— Pfedrld, 1931," La Revista Americana de Buenos Aires 32 (84) April 1931: 99-100. Angel Rama, Transculturaclôn narratlva en Amérlca Latina (Mexico, Slglo m , 1986). 23josé Vlctorlno Lastarrla, Recuerdos Llterarlos (1878). See Ignacio Altamlrano, La literatura naclonal (iVfexlco: Porrûa, 1949). 25josé Carlos Marlâtegul, op. cit. 157 ^^îfenuel Diegiies Junior, Etani^ e cul tu ras no Brasll, 5th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizaçao Brasileira, 197b). 27George M. "Poster, Culture and Conquest: America’s Spanish Heritage (New York: Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, i960). 28jean Meyer, et. al., Regiones y ciudades en America Latina (Mexico: Sep-Setentas, 19731^ 29'F'emando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azucar (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 197Ü).

30Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, Amazonian Cosmos. The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians (Chicago: Ihe University of Chicago Press, 1971).

31Darcy Ribeiro, As America e a civilizaçao, estudos de antropologie da civilizaçao, 3rd. ed. (Petropolis: Editera "Vozes, 1979).

32Julian Steward, et. al.. The People of Puerto Rico: A S"budy in Social Anthropology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956). 33ciaudio Veliz, The Centralist Tradition of Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930). See especially Chapter 8, "Outward-Loc&cing Nationalism and the Liberal Pause," pp. 153-188. 3^Charles WagLey, The Latin American Tradition. Essays on the Unity and the Diversity of Latin American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968). 35Raina, Transculturacion narrative en America Latina 11. 3^Rama, Transculturacion narrative en America Latina 12. 37Not to be confused with the more specifically literary Regionalism, Ihat promotion in force in Latin America from 1he turn of the century until the 1930’s. 38]?emando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tbbacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Oniz (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947) 102-103. 39Rama, La transculturacion narrative en America Latina 55* ^^Cesar "Vallejo, Obras completes, 1st ed, 6 vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Laia, 1976). All quotations of Vallejo’s prose fiction. 158 unless otherwise indicated, will be from this edition, with volume and page numbers following each quotation. working definition of Shcnberg’s method is available in J.A. Westrup and F .LI. Harrison, The New College Encyclopedia of Music (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, I960: 686:

A method of composition formulated by Arnold Shbnberg about 1921 after a period of experimentation in writing music without tonality and without using the tradtional ways of building chords. In it the basis of both melodies and chords of a composition is an [sanetimes randor^ arrangement of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale in a particular order, called a tone-row. Hiis series is always used conplete.

Vallejo’s acquaintance with the music of Arnold Shoenberg may be deduced from his references to the composer in several articles which the author prepared for the journal V^iedades (Lima) and the daily Itoidial (Lina.) (later reproduced in César Vallejo, Cronicas, 2 vols., ed. Enrique Ballon Aguirre [Mexico: ÜNAM, 198^):

Asî "también se explica el caso de todos los intelectuales y artisths, llamados "puros". La poesîa "pura" de Paul Valery, la pintura "pura" de Gris y la musiea "pura" de Shoenberg, en un aparente alejamiento de los in"tereses y realidades de la "vida, sirven, en el fondo, a estas realidades y a estos intereses. Solo que lo hacen inconscientemente. (397, anphasis mine)

. . . Schoenberg maneja también sus cocos de Darwin, solo que en él se transforman en los botones del "Pierrot Lunar" [a reference to one of Schoenberg’s most important atonal compositions, Pierre Lunaire (1912), consisting of 21 poetic recitations with chamber accompaniment^. (248)

Y aunque [PeodorJ Chaliapin tiene cincuenta anos y se queja de no tener ya treinta, habrîamos nosotros preferido oirle en Shoenberg . . . îQué habrîa hecho su boca, con la musica nueva? (438) ^^Other instances in which the presence of this silent narrator is manifes"ced include: 1) the conclusion of "Muro esta": 159 Y el proyectil que en la sangre de mi corazon destrozado . . en vano ha forcejeado por darme la muerte. — ^ bien? — Con esta son dos veces que firmo, senor escribano. ^Es por duplicado? (20, emphasis mine.) ^3p{ama, La transculturacion narrative en America Latina 46; 44; 48, respectively. ^^Ihe essential theatricality of all of Vallejo's writing, not Just his drama, has been recorded by Guido Podesta, among others. See Guido Podesta, César Vallejo: Su estêtica teatral (Madrid: Ediciones Hiperion, 1985).

^5”Chorus,” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia, 198O ed. 4DRama, La transculturacion narrative en America Latina l63- ^"^Lfelville J. Herskovits, Man and his Works (New York: Alfred A. Knopf). See Chapter 21, "Religion: Man and his Problems," and, in particular, page 360. ^^Rama, Transculturacion narrative en America Latina l54. ^9see Herskovits, Chapter Two: "Religion: Ihe Control of the Universe," and, in particular, page 36I. 50cesar Vallejo, "'Sabidurla', capltulo de una novela inédite," Amauta 8, 1927: 17- SlLetter reproduced in An^l Flores, César Vallejo. Slntesis biografica, bibliografia e indice de poemas (Mexico: Premia, 1982) W. 52see, for example, César Vallejo, Obras ccmpletas (Barcelona: Editorial Laia, 1976) 2: 7, "Note Editorial":

El volumen [XI . . • Continue con Hacia el reino de los Sciris, que se supone fue escrita entre 1924 y 1928, pero que segun Georgette de Vallejo habrîa sido corregida entre 1932 y 1933.

Note: In the present study, quotations from the text of Hacia el reino de los Sciris will continue to be obtained fran the edition and volume cited above. 160 53See Nuestro Tiempo, numbers 1,2 and 3, corresponding to January, February and March, respectively, of 1944. 5^César Vallejo, Novelas y cuentos canpletos (Lima: Editorial Moncloa, 1967) 166. 55césar Vallejo, La piedra cansada in Vision del Peru, Lima, julio, no. 4. 55Loren McIntyre, Ihe Incredible Incas and Iheir Timeless Land (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1975) 199- For the historical data about the Incan empire that follows, I have also consulted principally but not exclusively: McIntyre, op. cit.; "History of Andean Civilization," Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia, 198O ed. ; Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Ganmentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, trans. Harold Livermore, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Ihxaa Press, 1966); Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva coronica y buen gobiemo, ed. Rolena Adomo and John V. Murra, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, I98O); Benjamin Keen and Mark Wasserman, A Short History of Latin America (Boston: Houston Mifflin, 1984); Jose Carlos Mariat%gui, "Siete ensayos de interpretacion de la realidad pjeruana," in Obras conpletas, 38th ed., 5 vols. (Lima: Amauta, 1978) vol.2. 57Anonymous, Ull^'ta. Drama quechua del tiempo de los Incas, trans. Jesus Lara (La Paz: Editorial Juventud, 1971)- N.B.: While 'Ullanta' has been established by linguists as the spelling which most closely adheres to the correct pronunciation (quechua has no 'o’ sound) of the title, I have found, in the course of my research, that 'Ollanta' and 'Ollan'tay' are the most widely accepted forms for the transcription of the pro'tagonist’s name and the title, respectively. 5^{Runto Cask^ sufrîa. Kusikayar no habia asistido a la fiest:a del huaraco y su ausencia le colmaba la zozobra. La amaba.Desde el dia en que Kusikayar ingresô en la pubertad y su ingreso fue festejado, segun el uso quechua, en la humilde choza de la entonces obscura y pobre nina de pueblo, Runto Caska, que habîa presenciado la quipuchica, la amaba con "todo el ardor de su mocedad. Por insinuaciôn del müsico, el Inca la habla hecho nus-ta, en mêrito a su don para las danzas sagradas. [ . . .%|La figura de Kusikayar llego a adquirir gran relieve en los ritos religiosos. Su danza llegô a constituir una liturgia especial en las fiestas del Sol. EUrante la fiesta del Sitxia, al empezar las Iluvias y cuando prevalecîan las enfermedades, Kusikayar danzaba en las puertas del Coricancha, al contas de las mûsicas hierâticas. En las evoluciones de su cuerpo escru"baban los tacitumos sacerdotes el incierto porvenir y la mortalidad del ano. El pueblo adoraba y temia a Kusikayar, como a una ocilla entre las virgenes del Sol. I6l Y fue en la ultima fiesta del Situa, que a Runto Caska aconteciera un aconteciraento muy vago y sutil, el mismo que vino a interponerse entre él y Kusikayar, como un fantasma misterioso. En la manana de aquel dîa del Situa, en contra de los calculos astrononicos, registrados en el Kalasasaya, el aire se enrareciô de repente y todo quedô oscuro, como si la noche cayese. El yllapa cruzô el espacio y siguiô un horrîsono sacudimiento de tierra. Cayeron algunos rauros y techumbres. Un anciano quedô muerto en medio de la calle. Lloraban las madrés y en sus brazos ganîan los ninos, aranando los senos matemales. Muchas esposas encintas, dieron a luz violentamente, criaturas dormidas para sienpre. En el Hurin-Cuzco saliô una doncella enloquecida y se arrojô al rîo Huatanay. El terror de los quechuas no tuvo limites. Salîan todos de sus viviendas a las plazas, ululando de miedo y clamando al yllapa, para que cesase en su côlera. La ciudad se conmoviô en un inmenso espasmo de pavor. Hombres y mujeres, ninos y ancianos, la COTunidad entera estuvo reunida en la Plaza de la Alegrîa delante de las puertas del Coricancha. Los sacerdotes, con las caras afiladas por el terror, y los amautas, Uenos de majestad, predicaron la calma. Iki villac, dijo tocado de visiones: — El yllapa esta enfadado. Es a causa de no haberse Uevado a cabo la conquista de los tucumanos. Asî lo dice el orâculo. Dejad vuestros hogares y luego de ahuyentar el mal de las sementeras, volved aquî a escuchar el vaticinio de la danza del Situa. [...]] [Kuslkaya^ saliô, rodeada de los sacerdotes y revestida de una tunica fina y transparente. Su corta cabellera estaba suelta y no llevaba brazalete, bîncha ni otro adomo, fuera de sus largos pendientes de princesa. El Inca estaba allî, bajo su solio de oro, rodeado de la corte. Un silencio profundo se hizo. La muchedumbre se inclinô la f rente. Entonces se alzô la musica sagrada, lenta y a grandes girones, y la oclla tuvo un acceso de exaltaciôn. Se entonô el ytu litûrgico y hablaron los sacerdotes a la multitud: — El yllapa cesarâ de su enojo. La conquista de los tucumanos se Uevarâ a cabo. Manana partira la primera expediciôn compuesta de quinientos honderos. Los rauertos del ^ o serin pocos. Podêis retirer os a vuestras viviendas. Orad siempre y que los holocaustos den sus frutos. Oîdas las palabras del Orâculo, la muchedumbre se dispersô . . . Ibdo esto recordaba Runto Caska, al vol ver de la fiesta del huracân. Recordaba también que, a partir de aquella danza del Situa, la nusta manif estaba por él un miedo extrano y observaba réservas misteriosas, aûn en las horas mas tiemas y apasionadas. El artista la interrogé y Kusikayar respondîa de modo inccmprensible. Runto Caska sufrîa. 59]y[clntyre 107. ^*^See Rama, "In"Indigenismo del mesticiano," Transculturaciôn narrativa en Amérlca Latina 138-157 162 ^^Jean Franco, César Vallejo. The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (Cambridge: Canabriclge UP, 1976) 4. ^^Georg Lukacs, Realism In Our Time : Literature and the Class Strug^e (New York: Harper and How, 1964), Chapter 3, "Critical Reallan and Socialist Realism," 93-135-

^3pranco 156.

6^Pranco 156. ^^cesar Vallejo, Tungsteno (Lima: Edlclones de Cultura Uhiversitaria, 196O) 21. All further quotations of Hingsteno will be from this edition, with page numbers following each quotation.

^^Franco 156.

o^Franco 157. Wolf gang Kayser, Entstehung und Krlse des Modemen Roman ( Stuttgart : J.B. Metzlerlsche Verlags Buchhandlung, n.d.). ^9Georgette de Vallejo, "Apuntes blograflcos sobre César Vallejo," in César Vallejo, Obra poétlca comple"ta (Lima: IVbsca Azul Edltores, 1974) 372. "^^See editor's note In César Vallejo, lUngs'teno y Paco Yunque (Lima: Juan Mejia Baca & P.L. VlUanue'va Edi tores, 1957) 7-

Vallejo, TUngsteno y Paco Yunque I67. CHAPTER III THE PROSE PICTICN OF VICENTE HOIDOBRO

Circumstances of Production The biographical and artistic coordinates within which Vicente Huidobro produced his narratives played an influential role in shaping their final form and content. Therefore, it is useful to begin by briefly outlining the circumstances in vhich these works were composed as well as to characterize the reception they received frcm a cross-section of literary critics. Vicente Huidobro's origins and formation were rather different than those of César Vallejo. Huidobro was bom, in 1893, into the highest ranks of the Chilean landed aristocracy vhich at the time doninated Chile's econanic, social and political life. No true peace of mind was ever to derive frcm this fortune of birth for Huidobro, however, for, soon after— circa 1900— , the export-import model upon vôiich the country’s economic growth depended and with it the oligarchic sociopolitical order vhich fed upon that growth began to reach their limits and enter into crisis. The successes of the expor't-import economic model based principally on grain exports, on the one hand, and mining (silver, copper, sal-tpetre) exports, on the other, had led to the appearance, by the first decades of the twentieth century, of an 163 164 entrepreneurial faction within the aristocracy as well as to the emergence and consolidation of a middle class and a proletariat. When these entities sought to obtain a share of the political power the result was conflict followed by the establishment and growth of political parties. The emergence of the middle class and a proletariat led, in particular, to the establishment of radical and leftist parties, respectively. However, in the decade of the twenties the econanic and sociopolitical pressures continued to mount triggering a takeover by the military which believed it could resolve them. Nevertheless, the advent of the Depression merely exacerbated the already difficult situation. Huidobro responded to these developments by alternately escaping to the major centers of the U.S. and Europe— New York, London, Paris, Madrid— where, as a result of his elite coanopolitan upbringing he was able to fit r i^t in, or, by sweeping periodically onto the political stage in his native Chile and assuming the role of champion and savior as in his 1925 campaign for the presidency. He also sublimated these same impulses to escape and to political activian in his literary pursuits. Because Huidobro's prose fiction was composed and published only several years after he had already established his reputation as a prolific writer of experimental poetry, a familiarity with the key aspects of this dimension of the autiior's production provides a valuable frame of reference within which to proceed to a treatment of his narratives. 165 Vicente Huidobro was the first among Spanish-American poets to develop an original response to the perceived short-conings of (what had beccxne traditional) modemista estheticist poetry. Taking inspiration fran the French symbolist aspects of modemismo, which sou^t throu^ poetic devices— particularly those anphasizing the sensual— to divine the answers to reality’s mysteries, Huidobro fashioned what he denoninated his creacionista esthetic. Paralleling in many respects the Cubist poetry of Pierre Reverdy— with which Huidobro would merge once he had visited Paris— Huidobro placed anphasis on the visual aspect of poetry, most especially throu^ the device of the Imagen creada. Ihe created image had as its principle procedure the Juxtaposition of unusual conbinations of nouns and adjectives. Its emphasis on the visual properties of language allowed Huidobro to partial ly bypass the pitfalls of a strictly linguistic expression. He hoped, like the Symbolists, that with this poesîa creada he might "surprise" hidden relationships among the components of reality. As with Cubism, Huidobro's esthetic was an eminently subjectivist and abstractionist one. Crucial in this context to Huidobro’s creaclonismo was an ethical component which demanded that the poet, as one endowed with special vision (influence of Ebierson), assume the role and responsibility of creating new poetic realities. In his poetic career Huidobro began first to merely enunciate his esthetic while still using a mixtmire of modemista. estheticist procedures and created images. This approach characterized his early 166 collections, all of whose titles already signal a persistent subjectivism: Ecos del alma (1912), Pagodas ocultas (1913), Canciones en la noche (1913) and La grata del silencio (1914). I M s approach also persisted into Huidobro's pivotal works of 1916: El espejo de agua, whose "Arte poetica" articulates the author’s esthetic as it would be from then on, and, ïôiose title poem begins to carry out; and, Man, which sou^t to allegorize the modus operand! of a creacionista poet.

After traveling to Paris in 1916— and composing poetry also, then, in French— , Ruidobro published several collections of poetry as well as long poems vftdch have been characterized by Cedomil Goic, Cecil Wood and David Bary as amounting to an on-going elaboration of a new "created" universe. These books all dealt with a rather constant set of themes: the existential dilemma, war (Ruidobro was in Paris during WWI), the dangers to humanity of modem technology and the apocalypse which the writer predicted would likely befall Western civilization, and, lastly, creacionismo as the way, if practiced by humanity, to ease human suffering. Among these collections and long poems were Horizon carré (1917), Rallali (subtitled "poème de guerre") (1918), Torre Eiffel (191S), Poanas articos (1918),

Ecuatorial (1918), Automne régulier (1925) and Tout à coup (1925).

The 1918 poetry composed in Spanish is generally considered responsible for inspiring avant-gardism in Spain where it took the form of ultralsmo. 167 With the publication of his avant-garde long poem Altazor. Un viaje en paracaldas, in 1931, Huidobro's Creationist exploits reached their climax. The poem is a pseudo-^nystical adventure of a poet and his Doppelganger, Altazor, as they seek throu^ creacionsimo to unite with the infinite ("eterinfirdfrete"). Creacionisn experienced here an evolution in which the importance of pure sound as poetic expression, and, play as a valid avenue to poetic insist, emerged. These two aspects found concrete form in the Jitajafora or the palabra creada. After Altazor, Huidobro refined his discoveries while gradually adopting a more discouraged tone as the end of his life approached. His production during this time included the collections Temblor de cielo (1931), Ver y palpar (1941), Giudadano del olvido (1941) and Ultimos poemas (posthumously, 1948).

Critical Reaction^ As occurred with the published narratives of César Vallejo, those of Vicent:e Huidobro received relatively little attention from the Spanish and Spanish American literary reviewers of the day.^ This, however, was in stark contrast to the considerable attention paid by British and U.S. critics tx) his two novels rendered in English, Portrait of a Paladin (l^o Cid Campeador) and Mirror of a Mage (Cagliostro. Novela-film).3 Nevertheless, the reception which all received was generally favorable frcra local and foreign critics, alike. The available reviews, particularly those of Mio Cid Campeador, Cagliostro and 168 their English versions, tend, by and large, to single out, wittingly or unwittingly, as worthy of cannent and praise or criticism the author's efforts to fuse the traditional and the modem, the local and the cosmopolitan. Even in Oner Qneth’s review of the quasi­ narrative rinis Britannae^, the critic is most interested in how Huidobro succeeds in turning a topic such as the England-Ireland conflict, which on the surface seems unrelated to Spanish American local issues, into a sort of allegory by frequently alluding to the historical case of Miranda, whose subversions were made possible by the British, ostensibly on behalf of the liberation of the South American continent. It is a work in French about the English with direct relevance to the Spanish American issue of dependence. Furthermore, he admits that, although Huidobro: "maneja el franees con envidiable facilidad, . . . todavia piensa en castellano." In the reviews of Huidobro’s most popular novel Mio Cid Campeador and its translation Portrait of a Paladin, similar observations abound, often accompanied, thou^ not always, with the vague awareness of the possibility that an ultimately ideological intent miÿit be lurking beneath the appealing surfaces of Huidobro's narrative. H e reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, for example, accurately captures with just the ri^t analogy the essence of the approach taken by Huidobro to the synthesis of the traditional and the modem in his novel:

H i s is the story of the old Spanish epic of the Cid and the Cid ballads, rewritten in the form of a modem novel 169 and much influenced by the techniques of film. Ihe style is flamboyant, without being completely absurd— as flamboyant as the Church of the Holy Family [designed by the pre-surrealist Antonio Gaudi} at Barcelona, which despite everything, succeeds in being an imposing monument of its kind.5

On the other hand, "G.B." of the Boston Evening Transcript seems scarcely to notice the novel's innovative style choosing to hi^ili^t, instead, the traditional and the historical, and, he is enthusiastic about the novel's reiteration of a Spani^ national emblem of honor and patriotism. He believes Huidobro may have chosen his subject for the edification of those beleaguered souls of the Second Republic:

Vicente Huidobro vho claims to be his [the Cid'i] last descendant, has written an "epic novel," or it m i ^ t be called a romantic biography, of his great ancestor f. . Spain’s legendary hero, whose fame will always remain as a legacy to his countrymen and in these times of change and stress in his native land should be, as Huidobro doubtless desired when he wrote the novel, an example of honor and patriotism.°

This view is shared by E. B. Osborne of the British paper The Morning Post:

[Portrait of a Paladin is] A picture-play with the epic touch, full of blazing colour and martial music . . . this virile English version will enable Englishmen to appreciate the new factor of awakening hopefulness in Spain.'

Yet, René de Costa reports that Fernando Mantilla, in a May 1930 commentary, saves his praise for the mode m cinematic qualities of Mlo Cid Campeador: 170 [Tjts filmic qualities did [no^ go unnoticed by critics in Spain. Fernando Mantilla, reviewing the novel for the cinena section of Atlantico magazine, called for it to be made into a movie right away: "Ihe novel is better than Douglas Fairbanks deserves. It should go to launch a new star (...) in a Spanish superproduction. The Cid, with his powerful lance could ride throu^ our borders and Babieca’s hooves could bring to the talkies an as yet unheard success among the sounds of the silver screen." Ihe review is so gushy that it could have been posted by Huidobro himself [7 . . ”1 The book was a great success in Spain. °

Two reviewers— one, Alejo Carpentier, a writer vdio would go on •to produce modem mythical narratives of his own— express an interest in the novel's innovative use of myth. Betty Drury of the New York Times is especially taken, as are vir-tually all the re-viewers, with Huidobro’s literary language and the way in vdiich it lends -vitality to the narrative, but, she wishes sanevhat disappoin-tedly that Huidobro had pain-ted a Cid who was more of the "bru-tal and crafty old Ulysses he was," rather than a "pious Aeneas."5 However, Carpentier, according -to de Cos-ta, is inspired in his praise of the novel's creative conjunction of myth and creacionis-ta imagery:

It is this dynamically inventive use of language, forging a new myth out of the old, that makes this book of fifty years ago seem so alive today, pertinent to the experimentalism of what has come to be called the New Novel. Ale jo Carpentier, dean of Latin America's "new novelists," recognized as much when he reviewed Mio Cid Campeador the October 1930 issue of Social (Havana)]] back at the time of its original publication: "Huidobro has given us a mythic biography of the Cid that will forever fix the hero in our minds— how could History ever pre-tend -to have more authority than the Novel?" Nhat most delisted Carpentier, and was largely responsible for Huidobro's success as a modem mythmaker, was the novel's highly charged language; Mlo Cid Campeador is the novel of a poet, an avan-t-garde pdetT^ 171 An especially important and valuable document is an enthusiastic commentary, on the occasion of the second edition (1942) of M o Cid Campeador, in the Chilean periodical Hoy.^^ This review brings out explicitly the element of the fusion of the traditional and the modem, the local and the cosmopolitan, as well as the positive impact this fusion has on a local reader, as these excerpts will attest:

For cierto, el que venga a examinar la obra con ojos de erudito o historiador, chafado esta. Este es un libro de poeta, y el Cid aparece rodeado de elementos legendaries viejos y modemos, ya que son tan hazanosos el campeôn de tomeo medieval, como de tomeo atlético de hoy.

[ÏJmportante es . . . su arbitrario y acertado empleo de imagenes modemas para animar la evocacion antahona.

Los que recuerdan esos dos libres de John Erskine— Adân y Eva, el uno y La vida privada de Elena de Troya— tendrân una idea aproximada del Cid de Huidobro. Pero, le que en aquel es parodia y burla total, en este encierra, al par, una dosis poética que falta en Erskine. Résulta un tante fuera de lo usual en el humor castellano y sudamericano el estilo de este libro, y, a pesar del cenido entronque que hay entre la poesla de Huidobro y la francesa de les ultimes tiempos, en la prosa del Cid, en la concepciôn misma de la figura, el ambiente y el tone se advierte algo distinto, si acaso, un declive hacia el humorisme sajôn, aderezado por un impetu lirico que a menudo, predcsnina sobre el humor.

[^ste Cid Campeador reclama sitio de honor. La larga experiencia del poeta se vierte aqul a raudales y hay algo asi como un reencuentro con olvidados y quizâ largo tiempo inexpresados zumos, a les que da rienda suelta, optimista y socarron, burlôn y enamorado, con algo de amable Cagliostro y en todo mcxnento de poeta.

Ihe publication in London and New York of Huidobro's Mirror of a Mage 172 also aroused interest among the reviewers of the British and U.S. press. It had, in fact, already developed a certain notoriety stsiming from a published report in the New York Hmes of its receipt of a cash award of ten thousand dollars for best script in a Hollywood scriptwriting contest:

ΠD L E M GETS FILM PRIZE

Vicente Huidobro, young CSiilean poet and novelist, was announced yesterday as the winner of a $10,000 prize offered by the League for Better Pictures for the bode of the year having the best possibilities for moving picture adaptation. The book, still in script form in the hands of Paris publishers, is called Cagliostro and is based upon the life of the ei^teenth-century necromancer and popular mystic.

However, as de Costa confirms, the novelty of its filmic technique seemed to have worn off by the time the Spanish version became available to the readers of Soanish America:

|l)agliostro] no aparecio en espahol has ta 1934, en una edicion chilena popular. No tuvo gran exito en el ambito hispano-parlante. Apenas advertida por la critica establecida y después prâcticamente ignorada por todos, la novela de vanguardia mas audaz de Huidobro, vive todavia en una especie de clandestinidad, aun para los especialistas en la llamada "nueva" novela.

After Cagliostro and Mlo Cid Campeador, Huidobro seemed to lose interest in pursuing the cosmopolitan, multilingual approach to the "marketing" of his narratives (a similar reversal in fact occurs in Huidobro’s poetic production, as well, after the publication of Altazor). In Spanish America, Huidobro’s subsequent narratives. La 173 proxlma.. Hlstorla que pas5 en poco tiempo mas (1934), Papa o El dlario de Alicia Mir (1934), 1res inmensas novelas (1935) and Satiro o El poder de las palabras (1939) attracted little critical attention, reflecting a fall off in readership as well. Only the periodical Hoy dutifully produced reviews of each as it came into print.

Mlo Cid Campeador^^ (1929) An examination of Vicente Huidobro’s first published novel finds evidence of an ambitious effort to synthesize tradition and modernity, the local and the cosmopolitan. Mio Cid Campeador has its inspiration in the various texts of the story of Rodrigo M.az de Vivar, or El Cid, and utilizes this material as point of departure for the production of an original and contemporary version employing some of the (at that time) latest conquests of the European and Latin American avant-gardes. More specifically, the novel’s use as its basic ingredients of elements of the medieval epic and its (immediate) descendent, the chivalric novel, as well as the Rodrigan matter suggests a desire to draw the conventional (less sophisticated) Spanish and Spanish American reader into the text. Once this objective is accomplished the narrative is so contrived as to subtly deliver the components for a second, allegorical-mythical (i.e., symbolic) reading, as well as a third, sociopolitical reading. 174 The novel’s title and the various associations which it produces in the minds of its readers serve as triggering mechanian for the three readings, lb begin with, it places the novel, before the fact, within a specific set of literary coordinates: literature written about the Cid^^; the medieval epic; and, chivalric literature, in general. In addition, it conjures, in the imagination of the reader, the figure of an archetypal hero with nationalist connotations. And, more. concretely, it calls to mind the historical figure of Rodrigo Diaz, deft engineer of the consolidation of Castilian hegemony. On the other hand, the author’s use of the possesive ”Mlo” (as opposed to the definite article employed in the titles of traditdLonal Rodrigan t%xts— e.g., Poema del Cid; Las mocedades del Cid) may also alert a watchful reader to expect the subjectivization which pervades all facets of this new version. Those aspects of Mio Cid Campeador which invit:e a tradition­ al/conventional reading would include the following. When readers of the original edition of Mln. .C.1 d _ Camper dnr^^ first approach the text, he/she may be surprised to discover that the author has taken the— in this centxiry— unusual step of accompanying his narration with colorful, elaborate illustrations alternating with black and vhite drawings. The illustrations and drawings, executed by Ontanon, are done in a neotraditional style and are reminiscent of those of older editions of novels with an historical or chivalric thane. However, while these illustrations clearly perform the customary function of facilitating the consumption of the novel, they also form part of a larger plan to privilege the visual. To 175 anticipate, the author’s creacionista-inspired reliance in his poetry on the verbal image extends to this first novel as well. More specifically, the language of the narrator, vhile generally objective in nature, also makes frequent use of figurative language, often without the traditional signals (’’like," "as," etc.) marking it as such. The shifts from the narrative to the figurative are carried out as if there were no transition at all, but, rather, as if the narration were still moving forward:

Nacio Rodrigo y todo se convierte en recién nacido, todo sigue el ritmo vital del cuerpo rosadote y gordinflon. Espana tiene la edad de Rodrigo. Espana abre los ojos. Espana anpieza a mamar en el seno de Teresa Alvarez. Espana grita y patalea para que le den agua de azahar para el flato. (19)

Because the anphasis of this figurative language is on the image, the reader finds him-/herself transported without warning to a new, purely "created" reality until the illusion, product of a momentary narratorial delirium, is discontinued. The effect, in some instances, is not unlike that produced by the more recent technique of magical realism:

— y bien, puestx) que asi "te Uaman tus vencidos — dijo el rey— y que tal nanbre suena a triunfo y a mascofca, desde hoy te llamaremos Cid . . . Levanto Rodrigo la cabeza al cielo ccmo para recibir el bautismo. La levanto alte, ten alta que las nubes le rodearon y un dedo sagrado escribio en su f rente: Cid. (59)

This visual quality of the text is reinforced by its frequently 176 cinematic approach to the description of characters and action:

AI dia siguien'te por la manana, que es el ultimo del plazo, parten mas rapidamente que nunca. Galopan, galopan. Pasan los llanos y los montes debajo de las oriflamas al viento, con una velocidad cinematografica. (33) lb complete this digression, such an insistence on the visual, just as in Vallejian narrative, can be said to be symptomatic of a fundamental distrust of (the expressive capabilities of) language. Returning now to the question of those elements of Mlo Cid Campeador which facilitate a traditional/conventional reading, the most salient features are those which have been transposed more or less directly from the Poema del Cid as well as the Cantar de Rodrigo (also known as Las mocedades del Cid). Ihis, of course, would implicate much of the plot, most of the characters and some of the linguistic formulae of the novel. Interestingly, the incorporation of the material of the Rodrigan saga into a novel results in the production of a narrative configuration with superficial affinities to those of the Bildungsronan (the Cid as self-made man) as well as the Ronantic historical novel. The preceding observations ser\% as a useful frame of reference for the articulation of a conventional reading of Mio Cid Campeador. The cradle to grave story of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar is "sung" by an unabashedly adoring third-person omniscent narrator:

Amanece. El Cid esta en su reclinatorio, arrodillado, palido, con los ojos fijos en su alma, hecho la estatua de si mismo. Tbda la noche la paso de rodillas. Yo lo contanplo en silencio y veo que este horabre 177 tiene la forma de mi admiraciôn. (80)

In this sense, the narrator resembles both the epic poet and his descendent, the narrator of the chivalric novel. He never fails to exalt his protagonist in the most hyperbolic terms. Often, however, this results in the stalling of narrative progress while the narrator unburdens himself in lengthy lyrical outbursts inspired by his narrative creatures. Ihe life of the protagonist unfolds in a series of familiar episodes which include:

Rodrigo's precocious duel (for his father's honor) to the death with Jimena's guardian, and, Jimena's ambivalent plea for retribution before King Fernando, vhich results in her betrothal to Rodrigo;

Rodrigo's subsequent departure from Castile in search of death in battle;

Rodrigo's miraculous victories even against those as powerful as the Bnperor and the Pope;

Rodrigo's marriage to Jimena;

the Cid'8 exile from Castile by Alfonso VI and the confiscation of his properties in Burgos and Vivar;

r-îartîn Antolinez's clever scheme to obtain a loan for his leader from the Jews Raquel and Vidas, in exchange for the chest full of sand;

the subsequent series of triumphs by the Cid over superior numbers of Moorish warriors, as well as over the powerful Conde de Barcelona, all of which pave the way to his 178 eventual conquest of tiie prized city of Valencia;

the Cid's reconciliation with Alfonso VI;

the cowardice and shame of the Infantes de Carrion, prospective suitors of the dau^ters of the Cid;

the Cid’s postmor'tem ride against those who would recapture Valencia, his corpse having been secured by his men to the saddle of Babieca.

With Rodrigo Elaz de Vivar as its focus, the argument can be said to devolve throu^ three s"tages based upon the phases of the protagonist’s life, that is: 1) apprenticeship: from ’’Adolescencia” (chapter three) to ”EL Cid es armado caballero” (chapter twenty- one); 2) maturity: from ”La vuel'ta a Burgos” (chapter twenty-t;wo) up throu^ ”La fama” (chapter seventy-nine); 3) decline and death : ’’Enfermedad del Cid” (chapter ei^ty), "La muer'te del Cid” (chapter ei^ty-one) and "Victoria postuna” (chapter eighty-t:wo). A secondary plot line consists of Diaz de Vivar’s courtship of and marriage to Jimena. This vision of the novel’s organization views the development as linear and chronological, with a traditional "closed” ending. Ihe novel is somewhat ambivalent concerning the forces which govern the Cid’s ascending trajectory in the narrated world, appearing to credit both providence and chance as the responsible factors. If one is to Judge by the concluding image of the pro- ■tagonist, however, providence prevails :

Se hace la oscuridad, se hace el silencio, y alia. 179 saltando mundos, el potro desbocado y el caballero muerto cruzan el universe como un cela Je, atraviesan las puertas del Par also en una vision vertiginosa y van a estrellarse en el trono de Dios. (184)

The novel's borrowed cast of characters brings with it an easy familiarily for the (Hispanic) reader. Ihat the writer is counting on this effect, can be deduced from, among other things, the text's frequent failure to provide background about a character as he/she is introduced. Ihe most obvious instances involve the Cid's well-known aids-de-camp, Martin Antollnez and Alvar Pahez. In general, the characters exhibit the same lack of depth as their original counterparts, having been endowed with Just enou^ psychology to make them appealing to a modem audience. Iheir ccsnportment follows for the most part the dictates of the medieval code of chivalric behavior, of which Rodrigo-Cid is the maximum representative. His exploits in the novel, viewed fron this perspective, can be understxxjd as a succession of ever greater challenges to his fidelity to such values as honesty, loyalty, valor, chastity, honor, magnanimity. As many of these values have begun to erode in the century in which Mlo Cid Campeador is being composed, the narrator occasionally finds it necessary to come to the defense of his idol in order to insure his credibility before the reader:

Realmente es un caso curioso el de este Campeador. Tiene treinta y très ahos y su cuerpo no ha rozado mujer alguna. Esta virgen. Podeis reir cuanto querais, yo lo considero digno de un respeto admirativo. Que en aquella época, en la cual has ta el clero solia vivir en rosdio de libertades exageradas, este hanbre haya podido conservarse virgen mas alla de los treinta ahos, me parece 180 extraordinarf-o. (114)

Hie humorous nature of this digression, of course, does nothing to elevate the figure of the protagonist nor the tone of the novel. It is, in fact, part of the broader tendency of the narrator to prick the bubble of grandeloquence whenever it exceeds a certain loftiness. Ihis tendency derives perhaps from the author’s irrepressible avant-­ garde instincts to subvert tradition/convention as well as from certain realist considerations with vhich he cannot entirely dispense. That the latter may be true is borne out by the narrator's cons'bant struggle to prevent his crea'ture from beccxning larger than life:

Y es que el Cid sale de la ca~begoria de los hcmbres y entra en la categorla de los elementos. El Cid no es un hombre. Es el viento, es el mar, es la "tempestad, es el huracân. El Cid es la fe. Ch memento de duda y el Cid se acaba, se deshace, se con-vierte en polvo. EL huracân no duda, sacude, desarraiga, derrumba. El Cid entra en la ca'tegoria de los elementos, pero no por es~bo deja de ser hombre, es un elemento profundamen~be humano. Nada en ël de guerrero mitolôgico, nada de Siegfried. Su espada no ha sido labrada en una cavema de gnomos, ni en el yunque del dios de las mon’tanas. No ha arrancado sus fuerzas a los brujos de la selva, no ha desentrahada el misterio del fondo de la tierra, ni ha banado su cuerpo en la sangre de un dragon. EL Cid es un honbre que llora y sufre. (83-84, emphais mine)

This supreme effort to re'bain the figure of Rodrigo-Cid within the range of 'the human stems, it will be shown, from tbe ultimately sociopolitical intentions which the author has for his otherwise allegorical-mythical narrative. I8l The reader finds his/her way fron the traditional/conventional reading onto this second, allegorical-mythical level of narrative meaning thanks precisely to the twin elements of M o Cid Campeador's daemonic cast of characters and its "cosmic" creacionista inagery by Tidiich the novel endows them (the characters) with symbolic significance of mythic proportions. The mythical dimension has been thorou^ily explored and expertly mapped by Benjamin Rojas-Pina in the third chapter of his dissertation, "Un mito poetico: M o Cid Campeador. Angus Fletcher has shown, in his excellent exhaustive study of the mode of allegory, that when fictional characters are made to act as vehicles for a certain set of intellectual constructs— be they philosophical, religious or merely ethical— the inevitable result will be the creation of a flat, rather unidimensional entity whose behavior is wholly predictable and reiterative.^9 Fletcher terms such a being a daemon. The reader of M o Cid Campeador, at sane point in his/her first reading (probably at or near the conclusion, as will become clear in a moment), will necessarily become qui'te conscious of the fact that, as noted above, the protagonist, the secondary characters and their actions have been so presented as to state and reinforce a specific set of ideas. That is, they are daemonic; and, their actions have the effect of creating, beneath the novel’s apparently linear evolution, a circular, upward spiraling movement intended to propagate a particular ideological point of view with greater and greater intensity. 182 Before exploring üie full extent of this message, however, it is useful to examine the mythical dimension of this second symbolic reading, encouraged, as noted earlier, by the text's effective use of the "created" image. At the deepest level, the mythical dimension of Mio Cid Campeador expresses the individual will to fashion/establish one’s own identity throu^ the rite of passage- This rite has been variously defined in mythical studies as the challenge and conquest of the 'Feminine, the Tferrible Mother and even the Terrible Dragon. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that the actions of the novel’s hero, Rodrigo-Cid, do conform to sane sort of basic human impulse toward independent persorhood. And, in a second operation, notes Benjamin Rojas-Pina, this impulse radiates outward as the novel progresses to involve the community— CasttLle/Spain— ais well.20 Rojas-Pina organizes the hero’s mythical labors into three stages: 1) Initiation; 2) Consecration; and, 3) Glorification; each s'tage (after the first) an amplification and intensification of the previous one. Within this general schema, Rojas has selected for analysis those episodes vhich seam t/o best reflect the mythical operations. Among these are (by stage):

Initiation The procreation and birth of Rodrigo; Rodrigo’s invention of the bull fi^t. Consecration The baptism and "recognition" of Rodrigo-Cid. 183 Glorification Hie death of the Cid and his subsequent postmortem adventure against tiiose besieging Valencia.

In each of these episodes, the participation of the cosmos (re?d: Nature; Spain) is evoked "Qirou^ the use of creacionista "created" imagery, as in this excerpt describing the procreation of the hero:

— Hace calor — dice ella— ; serla bueno abrir las ventanas. — Duerme. Diego Lainez se levanta y abre las ventanas. Vuelve el silencio y vuelve el insomnio. Ese simple gesto . . . que parece tan nimio, tan sin importancia, es una cosa grave. Abrir una ventana es como abrir el alma, es como abrir el cuerpo. Por la ventana abierta entra la noche, detras de la noche entra Castilla y detras de Castilla entra Espana. Millones de estrellas se precipitan por esa ventana como el rebano que aguarda que abran las puertas del corral; miles de fuerzas dispersas corren como atraldas por un imân y se atropellan entre los gruesos batientes, todo el calor y las savias descarriadas de la naturaleza se sienten impulsadas hacia el sumidero abierto en el muro de aquel aposento que se hace la arista de "todas las energlas, de todos los arihelos. Innumerables corrientes eléctricas converger hacia esa habitaciôn, ûnico punto interesantÆ del m p a en aquella noche. Diego Lainez siente todo ese enjambre de alientos profundos y substanciales Uegar has ta él. Iki vigor inmenso se apodera de su cuerpo, su pecho se hincha, se dilata y desborda en la noche. D • • J Diego Laînez . . . se précipita sobre su mujer y entra en su came, se hunde debajo de su piel con energlas de guerrero descansado, ansioso de bat:allas, inç)aciente de victorias. La tierra toma el ritmo de esos cuerpos resollantes y suspira como una montana. El infinito se vacla, el universo vacila y duran'fce un minuto el sistana plane'fcario se detiene. Dios, mirando por el ojo de la cerradura del cielo, sonrle. (15-16) 184 Perhaps the single most concentrated expression of Rodrigo-Cid’s mythico-archetypal role— as well as its projection onto the comnunity— is the episode of Rodrigo's invention of the bullfi^t, traditional metaphor of Spanish existence, to honor his prince, the infante don Sancho. Ihe episode, not uncoincidentally, forms part of the chapter entitled "Adolescencia," alluding thereby to the moment of an individual's most Important rite of passage. The symbolism of this first corrida is strai^tforward and begins with its use of the circle, an image which traditionally expresses, among other things, perfection and repetition and which can act as a symbolic sacred space within which an integration of forces may be achieved.21 it therefore serves as an excellent locus for the positing of a series of oppositions, as those listed below:

Rodrigo-Cid vs. Ihe black bull hero dragon li^t darkness life death reason the irrational civilization chaos22

Basing his analysis on the important texts of Joseph Campbell^S, Mircea Eliade^^ and Erich Neumann^S^ Rojas interprets the confrontation thus:

[^1 toro salvaje . . . mltica y sicoanallticamente représenta la lucha con el Dragon Tterrible. La Gran Madre, en su aspecto de devoradora de sus hijos, se transforma en ese dragon o en cualquier bestia que ponga a prueba el valor del iniciado para la vida futura . . . [the individual debe matar a una bestia para liberarse de los oscuros deseos asociados aun al acto primario del 185 naclrnlento y de la llgazôn a su madre. El ri to Inlciâtlco cubre desde la separaciôn . . . bas ta la fundaciôn del nuevo ser, de su propia aima y autoncmîa.^®

There is also an element of ritual sacrifice implicit in this contest. The generic moments of this process then, as Rojas goes on to indicate, consist of: "pasar por una entrada a lo des-conocido, encarar al guarda, veneer el dragon . . . y retomar con el trofeo material y espiritual.”27 As in the earlier cited excerpt fron the episode of procreation and birth, the narrator employs his considerable imagistic ingenuity to link this episode to the transpersonal. This time, however, the association with the universal also carries a strcxig sociohistorical overtone :

Abrieron la puerta y el toro salio de la noche al dia. Un enonne toro negro y un relente sustancioso de lecherîa saltaron al corralon. El toro epico. El primer toro del primer verso en el poema historico y brutal de las corridas . . . jCh espectaculo incomparable! Ahl esta el toro fundador de todas las razas de toros bravos, el primer eslabon de los toros de la muerte. Lanzo mi mirada hacia el pasado y veo una larga cadena de toros rauertos, tendidos sobre Espana, y alla lejos, donde se pierde la vista, el toro de Rodrigo, el gran toro negro . . . El primer toro de los aplausos y de lais lâgrlmas, parado al comienzo de la historia 'taurcmaquica espanola . . . La vida es el juego de la vida y la muerte. Un juego silencioso, oscuro, escondido en el fondo del organisme. Pero este pueblo espanol, realista y palpador, quiere ver y tocar el juego todos los dcxningos, ahî bajo sus narices, sentados al sol o a la sombra, en t o mo a la plataforma de arena en que la vida vestida de oropeles y colgajos, falsificada detrâs de una capa que distrae de su debilidad, pirutea ante la muerte. [^. . .]] La gran fiesta de un pueblo macho, duro, recio. Un pueblo de azar . . . de juego con la muerte, con el destino. Pueblo de al tas y bajas, de grandes for-tunas y grandes desgracias. Asi cano una historia jugada sobre un 186 tape te verde. Le sale un as o le sale un cero. Le sale America o Trafalgar, . . . Songera o Nunsz de Arce, . . . Cervantes o Echegaray, . . . Picasso o Beltran Massés. (26)

Ihese overtones remain constant and increasingly insistent in the second and third stages of the mythical process as outlined by Rojas- Pina. The original phase of Rodrigo's initiation couple te, he returns triumphant to Burgos where he receives the wholehearted approbation of the people and the king. This event, recorded in the chapter appropriately entitled "Cid. Campeador," represents the first in a series of episodes whose intended effect, according to Rojas-Pina, is the consecration of the hero:

Pasada la Iniciacion, Ruy Diaz de Vivar est:a apto para ejercer su poder y convertirse en el guia de su pueblo en calidad de héroe civilizador, guerrero y amante perfectos. En esta nueva etapa todas las prefi- guraciones de Rodrigo y las anticipaciones de Huidobro tienen su cumplimiento . . . El punto inaugurador de la ôrbita de transformaciôn del héroe es el reconocimiento que de él se hace por parte de la cOTiunidad f rate ma de su tiempo y por el poeta de la modemidad. A es'ke proceso Uamamos Consagraciôn del héroe.

ihe evolution of this consecrational line is propelled along by a sequence of apotheoses of the hero29 (all carefully catalogued by Rojas-Pina^O), gach more elevated than the previous, and culminating wit5i that following the siege and capture of Valencia, in which the Cid is recognized even by the Sultan of Persia ("La fama, " 178-79) • Within the development of the consecrational line, Rojas-Pina perceives an "extensive" or "symphonic" ccxnponent, that is, the way 187 in which the hero evolves in harmony with his community, as well as an "intensive" or "chamber musical" component pertaining to the hero’s personal life.31 VJhen the ascendent curve of Rodrigo-Cid’s trajectory reaches its apogee, a final descent begins vtoLch concludes with his ultimate victory :

[L^ ultima apoteosis es la antesala de la abrupta enfermedad del Cid, de su caîda en la muerte y de la subsecuente entrada en la apoteosis final • • . 2 La Glorificaciôn o apoteosis final significa al principio un descenso a las cavemas que repi te el rito iniciâtico. Se pénétra en la oscuridad o se diluye para emerger después transformado, en un renacer espiritual.32

Cf vital importance to achieving this final stage will be Ruy Dîaz de Vivar’s progressively accumulated "supporting energies" in the form of Jimena and their dau^ters; his followers; Babieca; and, the two fabled swords, Tizona and Colada: "quienes, como herederos de su poder . . . , completan la tarea real y simbôlica."33 Huidobro's use of myth as the underpinning for Mio Cid Campeador places his novel squarely in the ranks of contanporary mythical narratives. In this context, the author’s incorporation of archetypal content can be seen as a direct function of his cosmopolitan/avant-gardist encamation. Furthermore, such a procedure has the effect of both complementing— at the level of the subconscious— and subtly modifying the structure and ideological content of a conventional reading based upon traditional themes and techniques. 188 The most important modifications pertain to tiie categories of action and the forces ndiich govern them within the narrated world. Myth, with its origins in a primal vision of the universe, inç»lies something quite different from the chivalric world view based upon Christianity and divine providence. Principal among these differences is a conception of the universe as essentially chaotic and ultimately beyond human canprehension. Ihe best an individual may do, it is felt under such circumstances, is to look for patterns within the course of natural events which can then be expressed in the form of superstitions, myths, etc. Ihese, it is hoped, will allow the individual to gain a measure of control over the forces of natxire. The modem appeal of myth, of course, derives precisely from the similar difficulty experienced by the citizen of the ■twentieth century in rationally apprehending reality, following the crisis of nineteenth-cen'tury Positi-vism. Within the text of Mlo Cid Campeador, the "two -visions of the universe, the providential and the chaotic, can frequently be seen ccxnpeting for dominance, with the hero conveniently in between, 13ke a hedge on a bet:

Los cas-tellanos se acercaron a ver lo que pasaba. Miro el Cid perder a todo el raundo y luego pidio los dados. Los sacudio en sus manos y los lanzo sobre el tapiz. Rodaron los tres dados en un ruido de destinos y for-tunas deshechos, y se pararon en seco. Tres seises. Amigos — dijo el Cid a los suyos— , ganaremos en Roma; Dios esth. por nosotros. Y luego, mirândose espantado a si mismo, rehaciéndose colérico de su debilidad, dio un puntapié al tapiz, a los dados y a la caja de los dineros, y lo echo todo a rodar lejos. 189 ^Qué significa esta atracciôn de probar el azar? ^Va a ser este un vicio de la raza? El, que sent la llevar adentro de su cuerpo a toda Espana, temblô. (64)

Because the rythms of nature tend to be cyclical, so, too, do myths and superstitions often carry within their formulation an element of circularity which is not lost vmen they are incorporated into an object of art. Also contributing to the novel’s reiterative tendencies, it must not be forgotten, is its allegorical dimension, whose explication it is now time to conclude. In addition to complementing and modifying the form and substance of the (’’literal”) first reading of M o Cid Campeador, the mythical dimension also collaborates with and reinforces, again at the level of the subconscious, an allegorical dimension, which in turn interacts as well with the other levels and dimensions of the text. Ihe allegorical dimension of Mlo Cid Campeador, simply summarized, expresses in fable Huidobro’s own creacionis-ta ethic, which proposes that the artist as (heroic) superior being in effect crea-te new ’’realities,” new ’’worlds,” new ’’universes” on behalf of, and for the benefit of his (or her) fellow human being. Without going into great detail (which seems unnecessary) it is sufficient to observe that such a -view of artistic creation puts great premium upon the element of the artist's rational control over his/her craft, as opposed to, say, surrealism. Ihis approach, in fact, resembles the kind of intellectualism and prolongation of neoclassical attitudes, to use Arnold Hauser’s characterization^^, exhibitad by such 190 European avant-garde writers as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, etc. Such an artistic ethic, if transposed to Üie sociopolitical sphere, would, as üie title of Predric Jameson’s study of Wyndham Lewis implies35, have affinities with the ideology of fascisn (and its Hispanic equivalent caudillismo). Clearly this is the direction in which the sum of the first and second readings of Mlo Cid Campeador points on the way to a third, sociopolitical reading. This third reading admit'fcedly depends upon the reader to apply the message(s) of the first two readings to a (his/her) present time and present circums'tances. Setting aside the fact that such an expectation has traditionally accompanied the historical novel and its -various permu'tations^^, it is also true that the narrator of Mio Cid Campeador often encourages the reader to perform this operation by linking his -vision of Rodrigo-Cid favorably with that of his own time:

Rodrigo tiene quince ahos y ya es un formidable atleta. Corpulento, pero con una corpulencia sin grasas, rica de musculos, de huesos rellenos de cal, de nervios sueltos y solides ccxno nervios de una mâquina. Rodrigo tiene cuarenta. caballos de fuerza, 40 H.P., y se llama Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar. iCano -te admiro, muchacho alegre y saltador, rudo y montaraz, ingenuo y -idrginal! Eres un anticipe muy superior a todos los sportsmen de hoy. Eres el inventor insuperado del muchacno yanqui, del futbolis-ta y del cowboy. (20)

Viewed from every angle the larger message of the first two readings is the same one: reality is essentially chaotic and order may only be established and maintained by sheer force of human will. 191 As an antidote to this pessimistic vision, the novelist/novel conjures the figure of Ruy Diaz de Vivar, "EL Cid." In sociopolitical terms, the vision presented of Rodrigo-Cid and his actions calls to mind those characteristics and behaviors which have come to be automatically associated with the fascist leader— Julius Caesar, Mussolini, Hitler, Rranco, for example— as well as the Latin American caudlT 1 o— Juan Racundo Quiroga and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, among others. To review, the fascist ideology has as its principal features "an emphasis on the elements of nation, race or state, as the center of all history and life," in combination with an unquestioning "acceptance of the authority of a single, charismatic leader, behind vhora the people are expected to form an unbreakable unity."37 its philosophical bases rest, in ^neral terms, on a rejection of liberalism, and its comp>anion notions of individualism, personal freedom, egalitarianism, democracy, empiricism and skepticism, in favor of a spartanism emphasizing state authority, rigid hierarchy (in the form of rank and/or caste) and the value of blind faith, obedience, discipline, strength and action. These attitudes reflect to varying degrees the influences of, chronologically, Machiavelli (fifteenth and sixteenth century), Bodin (sixteenth century), Hobbs (seventeenth century), Fichte, Hegel (ei^teenth and nineteenth century), Nietzche, Spengler and Sorel (nineteenth and twentieth century). Fascism is an essentially reactionary ideology often embraced by a faltering, socioeconomically backward society. With economic crisis and external threats to 192 national sovereignty as its ccximon triggering mechanisms, fascism frequently anerges as part of a nationalist reaction which facili­ tates broad coalitions of unlikely political allies such as the prolethriat, the middle class, the military, the Church and the old aristocracy, all under the direction of a popular leader. Ihe author himself sets the tone of this reading when he proclaims his racial pride in his introductory note:

[n] o puedo ocultar el orgullo que siento en mi sangre espanola. Soy, por mis abuelos, castellano, gallego, andaluz, catalan y breton. Celta y espanol, espanol y celta. Soy un celtîbero aborigen. Impermeable y de cabeza dura que tal vez ablanda un poco de judlo. (12)

What's more, in this same no'fce Huidobro explicitly identifies the figure of the Cid with this heri'bage, declaring him: "la quintesencia de la vieja Espana" (11). Ihese remarks imply a desire on the writer’s part to transcend other considerations such as class and appeal directly to his readers' sense of canmon ethnic tradition. This hypothesis is supported at key points in the text by its overt privileging of meritocracy over inheri-ked nobility:

[Nobility 1 0 un absurdo derecho de sangre y herencia. (107)

Junto a los corredores, un hcmbre en un dorman de cuero cuenta sacos de trigo. A1 otro lado, el Cid conduce a Babieca al bebedero. — Senor — dicen los moros— , buscamos a Mio Cid. — Yo soy — con'tes’ta el Campeador, acariciando el cuello de Babieca. Los moros le miran extranados. Ese hcxribre vestido toscamente, sin sedas, sin oro, sin contray; ese hombre que hace el oficio de un peon junto a un caballo, ^ese hcmbre es el heroe del raundo, es el terror musulman, es el îdolo 193 cristiano? . . . — Cuando mis armaduras se reposan — dice— , yo soy un buen labriego. Hombre de tierra vuelvo a ella; ella es siempre fiel y sienpre generosa. — ;Ch el gran hidalgo labrador! (109)

Once the novel gets underway, the narrator, in defining the nature of the pro"bagonist, singles out his charisma as his most important attribute:

MLrad al Cid en las bathLlas; es mas que genio y •talento. ^ el hombre electrico. Al genio puede fallarle la inspiracion, al talento puede fallarle los calculos, al hcmbre electrico no le falla la electricidad. Por encim de la inspiracion genial y de los calculos rlgidos, esth la descarga a alta. potencia, esta la corriente de voltaje irresistible que un hombre puede hacer pasar de polo a polo de su ejército. Y esto es el Cid. (82, emphasis mine) Equally stressed is his capacity for decisiveness and action:

Rodrigo no ha perdido su tionpo, que no es hombre de palabras, sino de accicn. (52)

Pero en este periôdo de su vida el Cid pasa por un momentx) de via crucis. Ocultas luchas internas a^tan su aima y se dirla que por primera vez la duda muerde en el pecho de este hcmbre decidido y sin vacilaciones. De un lado le tiran su familia y su tierra. El rey Alfonso lo llama a Castilla. De otro lado, el plan secreto que solo él conoce y que tiene trazado en su cabeza desde hace tiempo Qhe taking of Valenci^ . Levanta los ojos al cielo y el cielo permanece inmôvil, cuajado de enigmas, luciendo destines. — jAnimo, corazon! Ih hombre decidido vale miles de tibios. (IW)

As the influence of Rodrigo-Cid’s charismatic personality radiat^es ou-kward into the (his) community, he acquires an increasing number of followers who sacrifice everything to join his cause:

Quinientos hombres le accxnpanan, quinientos hcmbres 194 han querido dejarlo todo para entrar con él en la fabula. Quinientos hombres van a todo trote cruzando la leyenda, sanbrando rananceros, enriqueciendo de imâgenes la epopeya y dejando en el aire un reguero de palabras fuertes y gruesos juramentos. Con el Cid a la cabeza no temen a nadie. Fanfarrones y valientes, todos callan cuando él habla. Entre tantos hombres întegros, pechos nobles, hidalgos de fe, se han metido seguramente muchos aventureros audaces, ojos de fiebre, manos de rapina. No importa; todos son instrumentos ciegos de la causa y todos le obedecen y le adoran. Solo a él. Tl32, my anphasis)

Ha formado un ejército de demonios indonitos, una falange invencible que obedece lo mismo que una maquinaria al raenor gesto de sus ojos. (151)

The episode of the oath of Santa Gadea marks the consolidation of Rodrigo-Cid's position as the conplete fascist leader. In a bold and Machiavellian gesture, the Cid refuses to pledge his allegiance to the about to be crowned Alfonso VI unless Alfonso swears an oath that he had no role whatsoever in the assasination of his brother. King Sancho. While this act draws down upon the Cid Alfonso's momentary ire and continuing uneasy suspicion of his motives, it nonetheless serves the necessary function of legitimizing Alfonso's assumption of the throne of Castile in the eyes of its subjects. The narrator records in dramatic tones Rodrigo-Cid’s passage into the plenitude of his power:

Es un ins'tante imponente. El Cid esta en la cûspide de su -vida, en el momento trascendenthl en que muestra al mundo la medida de su aima, la grandeza de su carâcter. La jura de Santa Gadea prueba que el Cid no s6lo es guerrero y sabe vencer y defender su patria, sino que "también es capaz de defender los derechos de su conciencia y de la conciencia de su pueblo. El campeador, el vencedor de batallas, el jefe indiscutible en el terreno ma'terial, se con'vier'be ahora 195 también en jefe espiritual. Pasa de golpe a ser el primer hombre de su pals. (107)

Later, a more experienced Rodrigo-Cid is characterized in similar terms which Include that of caudillo:

Se habla demostrado no solo un gran guerrero, sino un gran caudillo, un admirable conductor de hcmbres, y no solo un gran caudillo, sino también un politico habil y prudente. (144)

The Spanish American caudillo, it will be recalled, had his origins in the landholding "aristocracy" dating from colonial times. The patriarchal lifestyle of the frequently autarkic haciendas encouraged the development of skills vhich were readily and quickly transferable to the government of st:ate, should a vacuum of power arise. Such power vacuums were ccxnmonplace following Independence and during much of the nineteenth century, so much so that a tradtion of personalist siezure of power was able to establish itself in the Spanish American political cul"ture. In the excerpt which follows, the Cid tours Spain as an hacendado would his plantation:

EL Cid vuelve a Castilla y trae ya sus planes de conquis'ta en la cabeza y en los biceps. Viene al paso del caballo, sonando en el atardecer, sonando y silbando. Esta empresa [his visit to the royal court in Zamor^ ha sido un paseo, un paseo tranquilo y discreto de hacendado que sale a contemplar sus tierras. jY ccmo le gusta al Cid mirar a Espana! Echar el alma a pas"tar en sus valles y triscar en sus mont^anas. Echar a rodar los ojos sobre la peninsula amada, mirar su cielo, beber sus aguas, aspirar sus bosques, sus hierbas. En el alma del Cid crece toda la flora de Espana y él se siente embriagado de su propia alma. (87-88) 196 Part of the impunity with which Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar is able to challenge the authority of the traditional aris'tocracy, represented by the king, is his broad-based support which includes, as glimpsed below, the masses:

El rey sabra apreciar, piensa [Rodrig^, y aunque le recuerden todos los dias aquello de la Jura y trat%n de pintarle los peligros que significa un hombre tan amado del pueblo, sabra ver la parte de envidia en los discursos de esos cortesanos. (121)

Ihe lower classes otherwise do not appear in the pages of Mio Cid Campeador, however. Ihe Cid also shows his Machiavellian side when, acting upon the complaints of one of his Moorish subjects, he personally punishes the abuses of the Moorish king Abenamic:

La chusma del Jeque jAbenamic] se echa al suelo en reverencia besando la tierra. Pasa el Cid, pasa el asombro. Resuenan los pasos del asesino Justiciero y nadie se mueve, nadie se atreve a levantar la cabeza. (110)

Ihe lighter side of this same facet of the pro'tagonist ' s nature is reflected in his generous and equanimous treatment of the citizens of Valencia, following i-ks conquests:

Derrotado el mas •fcemible de sus enemigos, piensa el Cid afirmar sus conquistas y cimentar bien su poderîo en la ciudad. Para hacerse amar de los moros valencianos les levanta muchas contribuciones y solo deja las que solîan pagar en los buenos tiempos del apogeo de aquel reino. Su solicitzid esta en todas partes, se preocupa de todos. Hace saber a los musulmanes que dos veces a la semana oirâ y juzgara sus pleitos. — Venid cuando quisiereis a mî . . . quiero ver todas vuestras cosas y ser vuestro canpanero y cuidaros bien. 197 como amigo a amigo y pariante a pariante. (174)

After the Cid falls mortally ill, the eventual Impact of his death and Ihe consequent loss of his charismatic energy as the constitutive force of his and his supporters’ world is foreshadowed:

Al dla siguiente, sobre el rostro fatigado del enfermo brilla un resplandor extrano. Esta mas animado, sus dados palidos aprietan la mano amada de dona Jimena arrodiUada junto al lecho. Le han llevado los sacramentos como todos los dias y don Jeronimo le ha dado su bendicion cargada de indulgencias plenarias. En ese instante oye rumores en el cuarto vecino y cree percibir la voz de Martin Antolinez. Sus caballeros discuten afiebradamente. Las tropas del Cid fueron derrotadas por los almoravldes; esas huestes aguerridas, invencibles, esa mesnada de leones ha perdido su primera batalla. Sin el Canç>eador a la cabeza, les f alto el aliento que las hacia indomables. Sus hues tes eran las mianas, los mismos honbres habituados a vencer; pero ahora les habia faltado la corriente electrica, la fuerza motriz que salia por los ojos del terrible jefe y les centuplicaba el poder. (l8l)

Ca^iostro. Novela-film (1931, English; 1934, Spanish) ihe underlying approach employed by Vicente Huidobro in the prodijction of each of his novels as well as in his short fiction remains fundamentally the same one as that utilized in the crafting of M o Cid Campeador. Huidobro’s only other hazana (epic novel), Ca^iostro, when read, also resolves into at least three readings— a traditional, an allegoricalHmythical and a social reading— each proceeding from and incorporating the previous, encouraged by a remarkable blending of 198 the traditional and the modem, the local and the cosmopolitan. To preview: because criticism on this novel has tended, quita understandably, to direct ita attention toward the writer's experiments with the filmicSS^ it has usually overlooked the traditional models onto which Huidobro grafts these experiments, such as the historical and, more pervasively, the Gothic novel(s). However, the Gothic novel, it turns out, possesses a longstanding reputation as a covert device for the challenging of and the transformation of novelistic convention.39 Furthermore, it can serve as an apt vehicle for the allegorical and/or the mythical. Thus, in the case of Cag^iostro, the question of Huidobro's use of tradition versus his innovation is essentially a circular one. The model of the historical novel, in addition to providing the framework for the novel's anecdotal ma'terial— Huidobro e'vidently researched his subject thoroughly, for his historical and even his infrahistorical allusions are always accura'te^®— also lays the foundation for the final social reading. Not unexpectedly, the third, social reading of Ca^iostro detects the same formula of the fascist project present in M o Cid Campeador, but interestin^y, here the outcane is a negative one. In contrast to his M o Cid Campeador, here the author acknow­ ledges no particular pre-vious "texts as the source of the more familiar content and narrative procedures of Cagliostro. However, while he left no news regarding this point, it is almost certain that several novels of the so-called Marie Antoinette cycle of historical 199 romances by Alexandre Dumas, père^^, as well as the five-act drama,

Joseph Balsamo (1878), by Dumas, fils, played a determining role in the basic shape of the novel. The widespread popularity of these writers and their works makes it very likely that not only Huidobro but many of his readers were familiar with these pieces. ■Purthermore, the dramatic organization preliminary to the incorporation of cinematic effects may be partially attributable to the influence of the five-act drama by IXtmas, fils. Concerning the Gothic, Huidobro's— and his audience's— familiarity with its nuances is assured by his h i ^ regard for, and the public’s long acquaintance with, the mas-ber of the Gothic •fcale, Edgar Allen Poe. Nonetheless, in his "Prefacio," the writer is solicitous and takes nothing for granted as he carefully prepares the reader for what is to follow:

Sin duda alguna todo el mundo ha oido hablar de Cagliostro. Un hombre tan misterioso, rodeado de una vida tan misteriosa, no puede dejar de interesar a las gentes y sobre todo a los curiosos de cosas curiosas. ^Quien era Ca^iostro? Si buscamos su nombre en un diccionario enciclopédico, el Larousse, por ejonplo, encontraremos las siguientes palabras: "Ca^iostro. — Habil charlatan, medico y ocultista italiano (segun se cree), nacido en Palermo y muerto (segun se dice) en el castillo de San Leôn, cerca de Roma (1743-1795). Tuvo un gran éxito en la corte de Luis XVI y en la sociedad parisiense de aquel tiempo, desempeno un gran papel en la f rancmasonerîa, es tuvo raezclado en varios aff^res y en el famoso Affaire del Collar. Luego se traslado a Rana, en donde fue condenado a muerte por la Inquisiciôn; la pena le fue conmutada por prisiôn perpétua". (185)

And, as if to alert the reader to the traditional narrative models 200 (üie Gothic and the historical) with which he will be working, he declares ;

EL autor de este libro . . . ha querido contar, en un negro tono menor, su vida . . . en Francia . . . îEra Cagliostro un personaje al servicio de una naciôn o de una secta oculta que pretendîa cambiar el régimen politico general en Europa? ^Era simplemente un inspirado o un hcmbre al servicio de proyectos secretos? ^Qué mano misteriosa y con que intenciôn guiaba a tan extranos personajes ccmo Saint Germain y Cagliostro? ^A1 decir Cagliostro que él habia vivîdo miles de anos y que viviria aûn muchos siglos, ^se referla a un hecho material o se referia solamente al espiritu revolucionario cjue él parecîa encamar en su tiempo? (187, emphasis mine)

It is interesting to note that, in the "Preliminar," which follows the preface, Huidobro is much more direct concerning his references to the historical dimension of the novel:

Hacia el final del reino de Luis XV, Francia y una gran parte de Europa estaban invalidas por numerosas sectas, cuya accion, aunque ignorada de la mayoria de las gentes, tuvo una gran influencia en los acontecimientos de la época. iCuantas cosas grandes, cuyo origen no conocemos, nacieron tal vez en obscuros subterraneos donde algunos perseguidos dis cut Ian a la media luz de una bujia! (188)

With the basic coordinates of a conventional reading thus illuminated, the outlines of another, symbolic reading are already beginning to become visible:

La mejor respuesta a estas preguntas y a todas las acusaciones de que su nombre ha sido objeto la encontramos en estas palabras suyas: "Yo no soy de ninguna época ni de ningun sitio. Fuera del tiempo y del espacio mi ser espiritual vive su etema 201 existencia." (187)

Ca^lostro’s "self-portrayal" as a cosmic and eternal figure is pranptly restated and elaborated upon— this time by the narrator— in the novel’s opening section, whose oninous storm-swept scenes are given the operatic sounding title of "Preludio en tempested mayor":

Asi fue como Ca^iostro aparecio en Europa. Surgio de una carroza negra vlniendo del misterio hacia Francia en medio de la noche. iDe donde venîa? . . . [v]enia del inf ini to en una carroza en medio de relampagos, al rêvés del profeta Elias, que de la tierra subiô al cielo en un carro de Hamas. Venîa de lo nés profundo de la leyenda. Del fondo de algun designio poderoso, atravesando todos los siglos al trote de sus caballos y sacudiendo el tiempo con el crujido de su carroza sobre los camlnos olvidados. Aparecio en la Historia de reoente entre dos truenos. (193)

It remains only for the author to activate the mechanisms whereby an allegorical-mythical reading becomes possible. In addition to these overt indications of the protagonist’s archetypal qualities, the devices of the Gothic, with their formal embrace of the subjective, the irrational and the unconventional, have already been set in motion. In the "Prefacio," Huidobro, as do the authors of so many Gothic narrativesbegins this process by appealing to his readers at length to put aside vhatever empiricist biases they may harbor in favor of a suspension of their disbelief before the feats of the mage and the alchemist:

No se créa . . . que soy un milagrero y que creo en todos los prodigios que cuentan las beatas de aldea. Ni mucho menos. Solamente que me parece que hay muchos fenanenos que no conocemos aun y que, si no se pueden 202 explicap de un modo inteligente, mas vale la pena no explicarlos y declarar con franqueza que por ahora no pueden explicarse. Esta actitud me parece mâs digna y menos ridîcula que la de dar médiocres explicaciones. (186)

Ihis and other similar statements are intended to ease the reader's entry into a narrated world of uncertain reality. A crucial contribution to (the establishment of) this atmosphere of uncertainty is the author's proposal, cited above, to concentrate on Cagliostro's years in Trance at the court of Louis XVT and Marie Antoinette, just prior to the advent of the French Revolution. These, as is well known, were turbulent years, a time of econcxnic, social and political transition. Feudalism was giving way to capitalism and aristocratic privilege was being challenged by the democratic spirit of the emerging bourgeoisie. It was also a period of epis'fcemological crisis visible in the debate be'tween the rationalist, empiricist disciples of the Enii^'tenment and those schooled in the religion-based methods of apprehending reality of medieval Scholasticism. Thus, the period may be said to function in the novel as a sort of "negative historical m a r k e r " ^3 intended to contribu'fce to the Gothic atmosphere. The first words of the "Preludio":

Una tempested siglo XVIII retumbaba aquella tarde de otono sobre la Alsacia adormecida. (l89) clearly reflect this strategy. In the "Preludio," where the Gothic effect is at its most in'tense of the novel, the narrator deploys a veritable barrage of traditional devices designed to produce a Gothic clima'fce into which 203 he introduces his semi-legendary protagonist. These devices insure the production of a subjective and irrational response in the reader to an otherwise realist presentation (the hallmark of Gothicism). They include such procedures as the use of half-li^t (chiaroscuro), the result of a combination of darkness and li^tning; the depiction of ruins and recondite spaces such as a forest, a secret tunnel and underground meeting room with men in disguises; the evocation throu^ analogy of blood ("un relampago magistral vaciaba sobre . . . nuestro panorama la sangre tibia de una nube herlda" Q.8^ ) and lost children calling for their mothers ("La selva magnifica se queja agitada por el viento . . . se lamenta como si todos los ninos perdidos Uamaran

a sus madrés" [189] ) ; the larger-than-life depiction of the coachman ("EL cochero se ve magnîfico en su actitud de detener los caballos espantados. Parece un monarca sobre el carro de Estado al borde del abismo de la Revolucion" [l8^) and his passenger ("Sus miradas energicas seran bridas suficientes para detener mil caballos

desbocados" Q.9Ô] ) as well as a near overabundance of such expressions as misterio/misterioso, extrano, fantasma, etx;. It is precisely at this Juncture that the avan't-gardist Huidobro's introduction of the filmic (not to say the theatrical) betrays its full significance and value. As the producers of such German expressionist films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Wosferatu (1922) had already surmised, the Gothic and the cinematic were made for each other. Por example, each takes a decidedly visual approach to their tales, relying in large part upon the Juxtaposition 204 of emotiormlly provacative objects and figures to produce their effect. Furthermore, they demand of the spectator/reader that he/she fill in the narrative with his/her imagination, while, at the same time, each encourages than "to suspend his/her disbelief. The influence of the German expressionist films on the author is obvious in his Cagliostro. Novela-film. Ihe reader’s filmic narrative experience begins with an introductory no'fce following the "Prefacio" ("El autor al lector") in which the reader is invi“fced to approach the novel frcxn the perspective of a mo'vie spectator:

Suponga el lector que no ha comprado este libro en una librerla, sino que ha conprado un billete para entrar al cinematégraf o. Asi pues, lector, no -vienes saliendo de un librerla, sino que vas entrando al teatro. Te seintas en un sillon. La orqueste. a-fcaca un trozo de musica . . . Termina la orquesta. Se levante el telôn. (188)

After a bit of narrative summary (the pre-vLously cited "Preliminar") like that which precedes any silent movie, the reader is treated, in the "Preludio," to his/her first taste of filmic narrative as it will unfold throu^out the rest of the novel. Below is a brief sample of this cinematic effect in operation:

Al fondo del camino aparecen de pronto dos lintemas paralelas balanceandose . . . Una carroza misteriosa, a causa de la forma y el color, avanza sobre el lector al galope compacte de sus caballos, cuyos énormes cascos de hierro hacen temblar teda mi novela C • • O La carroza llega delante de nosotros. muy cerca, a algunos metros de nuestros ojos H • • •J De irapro-viso la tempested crece, los relampagos calienten nuestros ojos mojados y el rayo, escapandose de su yunque in-vlsible, se desploma sobre un caballo de la carroza. (I89) 205 Ihrou^out the novel, the writer seeks to simulate such cinematic techniques as silent film subtitles, fade-ins and fade-outs, zocm and montage while incorporating into his narrator’s discourse a greater emphasis on the visual, briefer characterizations and less dialogue. However, an honest assessment of Huidobro’s filmic experiment must produce the conclusion that it is only a modestly modified form of dramatic literature in which the stage directions have been embedded into the flow of the narrative discourse. This appraisal would place the novel in the same line as another piece of Huidobran experimental theatre (i.e., a Celestina-llke dialogued narrative) entitled Gilles de Raiz (1932) which also shares, in equal measure, in Cagliostro’s participation in the Faustian and Don Juanesque traditions. Ihe preceding, on the other hand, is not intended to denigrat^e the wri'ter’s strenous efforts to produce in Cagliostro the phonic or the semantic qualities of language with the obvious intention of eluding the ambiguity and inauthenticity of the purely verbal. Furthermore, a more primary mothve ^pears to govern the employment of a filmic mode of narrative/narration: the facilitation of the novel’s consumption by the reader. As in M o Cid Campeador, this approach has ultimately ideological intentions. In the three preliminary segnents— ’’Prefacio,” ”E1 autor al lector,” ’’Preliminar”— and the ’’Preludio,” the author has provided the triggering mechanisms for at least three readings. In so doing, he has almost guaranteed that these readings will be carried out 206 (more or less) simultaneously/concurrently rattier than consecutively. Ihe body of the novel consists of two sections which trace a conventional parabolic dramatic trajectory, as their titles, "Hacia arriba" and "Cumbre y tinieblas," suggest. The trajectory follows a seasonal evolution frcm Autumn through Winter. In "Hacia arriba," the narrator, feigning ignorance reintroduces the reader to Cagliostro, this time as mage and great healer in the town of Strasbourg. His fane grows and, at the same time, he is cau^t up in provincial intrigues. Also, one meets Lorenza, his hapless virgin wife who, when hypnotized, possesses clairvoyance (serves as a medium). While conceding he was once good and she may have loved him, she is now beginning to despise him for his vir-fcual imprisonnfênt and exploi-kation of her and, furthermore, she suspects him of dark dealings. "Cumbre y tinieblas" follows Ca^iostro and Lorenza’s transfer to Paris. The narration then picks up and develops the various threads of the previous section. Here Ca^iostro is more the magician than the healer as he uses his knowledge and powers to further imbroil himself in intrigues both political and personal. Eventually Marcival, a fellow practitioner of the occult and Ca^iostro's "good" counterpart in the novel, intervenes when Cagliostro exceeds the limi'ks of his oath of initiation (the rit:es of ihich are recorded in a subst:antial digression) not to tzamper with the natural rhythm(s) of life. However, although Cagliostro is 207 defeated and Lorenza has canmitted suicide, the ending is left open to the possibility that Ca^iostro m i ^ t rehabilitate himself and even restore the life of his beloved Lorenza. There is Just a hint of the naturalist novel of experiment in this novel’s reliance upon the protagonist’s tanpermental flaw— his sentimentality ill-suits him to the rigorous responsibility of absolu"te knowledge and power— and his disturbance of natural rhythms as the causes of his downfall. Nevertheless, the protagonist and his fate (in the novel) clearly have their origins (roots) in the Gothic tradition. Huidobro’s Count Ca^lostro shares with his Gothic counterparts— Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, Poe’s Usher, Hawthorne’s lover of Dr. Rappaccini’s dau^ter, James’s governess in ’’The T b m of the Screw”— their obsession for absolute knowledge and their vain quest to surmount the barriers bet;ween the I and the Outside and the Other.It is a formula for tragedy. That the obsessions of the Gothic protagonist tended to render him/her somewhat daemonlc^^— stressing here both the literal and the theoretical definitions of the term— is a fact which Huidobro clearly counts on in his novel, as well, both to help facilitât^ the reader’s access (ion) to an allegorical reading of the text and to reinforce, at the level of the literal, a mythical reading based primarily upon the myth of Lucifer. In fact, the narration does not progress very far before one notices that direct and indirect references linking Cagliostro to a usurpation of the role of Christ and to the sathnic begin to pile up. 208 In the opening pages of "Hacia arriba," for example, those which depict Cagliostro’s activities in his clinic in Strasbourg, narrator and protagonist collaborate to associate the character with Christianity and the figure of Christ:

Un halo de milagro rodea la casa . . . La sala de espera esta siempre Ue na de gent%. De sus muros cuelgan mas exvotos que en las capillas . . . En la sala . . . algunos enfermes aguardan aun su tumo, con los ojos brillantes de buen presagio, esos ojos abiertos al imposible que no se habîan visto en el mundo desde los tionpos del Mesias. (193)

Cagliostro cogiendo un frasco vier'te el contenido en la boca del enfermo. Despues pasa su mano sobre los ojos dormidos que . . . se abren y se posan angustiados sobre el mago. Ca^iostro sonrîe con una sonrisa de varilla magica y exclama: Ya estas sano, levant:ete C • • • H Levante te y anda. Levânte'te y anda, nuevo Lâzaro, mi Lazare. (194)

Ihe reader having been thus prepared, he/she is immediately led into the presence of Lorenza, Cagliostro’s captd-ve wife, who protests and accuses him of dealings with the de\d.l, or worse:

EI ntonces yo no os temîa como ahora. Ahora creo que tenéis pacto con el diablo. Os he visto hacer tentes cosas extranas. jAh Dios mio, yo no quiero condenarme por vos! Antes os amaba, mi corazon os pertenecia . . . tienes por mi ningun sentimiento de carino? Ahora no. Ahora os creo el demonio y siento que vendra un dia en que os detesteré [...%[ Os Juro que solamente por la imposiciôn de vuestra fuerza diabôlica estoy ligada a vos. (202)

Soon after, the thene is sounded again— this time without the Faustian overtones— by Eliane de Montvert, who asks Cagliostro in 209 horror, "Es usted un angel o un demonio?" (199) > as she reacts to a demonstration of the magician’s powers in which he successfully conjures the images of her husband’s death in a duel of honor. In fact, Eliane de Montvert and Lorenza Eeliciani will continue to play a principal role in reminding the reader of the protagonist’s satanic dimension, as in this exchange between them, near the conclusion of the novel, where Lorenza senses Cagliostro’s return hœe:

— Ahora me inspira miedo, un miedo horrible . . . Se me figura que ha hecho pacto con los demonios. Por piedad, marquesa, ayudeme a salir de aquî [. . ."] Cagliostro aparece en el umbral de la puerta. Triste y pensativo, una ligera sonrisa se inclina en sus labios ccmo para volarse. Se acerca a saludar a la marquesa, pero esta se levanta y huye espantada gritando: iViene del infiemo, viene del infiemo! (228)

In spite of the various resonances here and elsewhere in the novel with the related myths of Faust, Prometheus and Don Juan, it is the myth of Lucifer, as Benjamin Rojas-Pina has carefully documented in his own analysis of Cagliostro. Novela-film^^, vhich is the principal structuring force of the mythical dimension of the narrative :

El paralelo con la situacion del angel Lucifer es évidente. Cagliostro quiere daninar este raundo, orien'tarlo de acuerdo a sus misteriosos preceptos y la situacion le es propicia ccmo jefe de los Rosacruces. Siendo conocedor de mis'terios, corao los de la vida y la muerte, se obsesiona por ellos y actua de manera personal sobre los hechos, desconociendo . . . la fuerza del amor espiritual de Lorenza, atropellando el derecho de la marquesa de Mon'tvert a no amar [al Principe Rollan^ . El proceso de desacralizacion del taumaturgo se continua con el poder atrabiliario obtenido por creerse sujeto autonano del ritmo universal. Sus ojos fosfo- 210 rescentes, su inlrada diabôlica, nos explican esta trans- f ormaciôn del alquimista en Satan, y de esta hybris nacen sus actes que le conducipan al fracaso: loco de amop por Lorenza, la pierde por negarle su libertad y por manipularla ccso medium, convirtiéndola en instrumente; loco por el poder material, lo pierde por exceso de confianza en si mismo y por rivalidad. (166-167)

Ihe allegorical dimension (whose presence in the text is much more subtle and likely to be missed by many readers), notes Rojas, is compatible with and, therefore, reinforced by the mythical dimension:

[^1 rasgo tipificador de Cagliostro [that is, the satanic[ entronca con el papel conplejo del artista. visto como el ser superior a media distancia entre lo hunano y lo sobrehumano, prodigioso en su crear, rebelde en su orgullo y ambiciôn. (163)

Finally, no discussion of the mythical dimension of the novel Cagliostro would be complete if it did not pause tx) consider (the matter of) the episode of Cagliostro’s initiation into the mysteries of religion of Isis. Narrated in part by the protagonist as part of an inspirational address to the charter members— Jean Jacques Rousseau and Jean Paul Marat, among them— of the masonic lodge he is endeavoring to establish, the episode shows, in a less disguised form, the influence of the same myth of the Great/Terrible Mother/Dragon employed extensively in Mio Cid Campeador. Alleging that the events he is about to describe took place over three thousand years earlier in ancient Rgypt among the pyramids, the protagonist tells his audience how he was required to submit to five 211 great tests if he wished to be initiated into the mystery of Supreme Biowledge. The first four trials have their inspiration in the ancient concept of the universe as made up of four basic elements: earth, fire, water and air. The fif1h trial tests the individual's resistance to the temptations of the flesh. In the four elemental tests, Cagliostro symbolically returns to the wonb and is reborn as he is forced to crawl the length of a tunnel claustrophobically "obscura y estrecha como en el vientre de jm^ madre" (233)- Also, he challenges and defeats the "dragon" vhen he survives an encounter with a perilous chasm which he describes variously as "una gruta abier'ta en la roca abrla sus fauces como un dragon petrificado" (225), "una garganta entre rocas subterraneas" (225), and, "la gargan'ta estrecha e interminable" (225). Cagliostro's reward for successfully resisting, afterwards, the attractions of sublime music, strong wine, sumptuous foods and seductive unclad dancing wcxnen is entry into the inner sanctum of the temple of Isis, the original Great/Tterrible Mother:

EL Gran Hierofante, llegando junto a el, lo estrecha en sus brazos y le dice: iSalud, oh vencedor de las cinco grandes pruebas! Ahora puedes conocer el secreto. El Gran Hierofante y Ca^iostro atraviesan el •bemplo en medio de la doble fila de los sacerdotes y se dirigen hacia la estatua de la diosa Isis, que levan-ta su velo. Mbos penetran por la puerta del pedestal, y mientras el velo vuelve a caer sobre la puerta, los sacerdotas se inclinan hasta el suelo. (227)

In contrast with Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar's subsequent extensive socialization of his experiences of transformation in M o Cid 212 Campeador, the protagonist of Cagliostro shares his experience with only the handful of numbers of his masonic "Lodge of Isis,” and this only as the novel is nearing the conclusion. Also, the cyclical and consecrational quality which the use of this myth helps to impart to the rythm of Mio Cid Campeador is here canceled due to its reduced role— in favor of the more linear myth of Lucifer. As in the case of Mio Cid Campeador, the summing of the conventional and the symbolic readings results for the reader in the "spon'fcaneous" production of a third level of meaning. Ihis third reading, as indica'ted at the beginning of this section, detects the same formula of the fascist project present in Mio Cid Campeador. However, here the outccxne is a negative one. Ihe basic ingredients for this third properly sociopolitical reading are supplied by the historical content of the novel which is incorpora"ted into the text throu^ the vehicle of the historical novel. This content ranges frcm mere allusion to actual incorporation in the narrative of famous figures and events whose ultimate significance lies in their relationship to the phenomenon of the French Revolution. Crucial in this operation is the "scene" in which Cagliostro, goaded by Marie Antoinette’s pricks to his amour propre, conjures for her and her husband the ominous images of the future:

[a] parece en el espejo un verdadero racimo de cabezas cortadas, entre las cuales casi todos los asis1%ntes se reconocen, aterrados. Las cabezas sanguinolentas del rey y de la reina aparecen en el primer •fcermino [ . . . ] Cagliostro toca de nuevo el espejo . . . y se ve 213 aparecer . . . l a figura de Napolecn sobre su caballo, daninando un campo de batalla ccmo quien domina la Historia [. . .1 Aquî la vision se corta y se ve en el fondo . . . m âguila que se acerca, que se agranda. En la parte inferior del espejo aparece un gran mapamundi, en el c\xal el mapa de Europa se resalta claramente. La sombra del âguila lo cubre entero con sus alas. Bruscamente, como herida por un rayo, el âguila . . . cae y va a estrellarse contra las rocas de una isla lejana. Apenas . . . ha tocado el suelo, se ve levantar se en el mismo sitio la figura de Napoleon mirando tristanente el vaivén de las olas del mar. Cuando la vision desaparece, Cagjliostro también ha desaparecido, dejando el estupor del misterio y la angustia de las profecîas en los muros del salon real. (233-34)

The Hrench Revolution was, of course, only a violent escalation of econonic, social and political struggles already underway for sane time. Feudalism was giving way to capitalism and aristocratic privilege was being challenged by the democratic spirit of the emerging bourgeoisie. Ironically, almost a century and a half later these same conflicts had become very much a part of Huidobro’s own Spanish American reaility. Furthermore, the author’s choice to confine the action of his tale to the time Just prior to the outbreak of the Revolution, and to underscore, as in the previous scene, the imminence of catastrophe, can be intarpreted as a warning to his Spanish American readers, particularly those who are members of the traditional ’’aristocracy,” that a similar potential for upheaval is building in Spanish America, as well. As a corollary, the decision to fictionally recreata the period preceding the Revolution can also be seen as a pretext for the writer to work out artistically, utilizing the historical legendary— and literary— Comte de Cagliostro 214 as ready-Huade vehicle, an alternative to bourgeois heganony and democracy acceptable to aristocracy and the masses, alike. What results is a fascist fantasy vAich necessarily collapses under the wei^t of tiie protagonist’s excessive personal ambition and passion. Ihese impulses are carefully restrained in the protagonist of M o Cid Campeador and channelled into ’’acceptable” social outlets. On the other hand, in Huidobro’s last novel, Satiro o 51 poder de las palabras, 1iie protagonist is allowed to succumb to these impulses and be completely transformed by them. To preview further: when, in the study of Satiro o El poder de las palabras, a psychosocioeconomic optic is applied to its protagonist’s excesses of desire, these reveal their true nature as symptoms of the implantation of a capitalist mode of production. Thus, "bo anticipate one of the findings which will become available frcm the perspective of a combined view of the results of the sociopolitical readings of M o Cid Campeador, Cagliostro and &tiro o EL poder de las palabras, the three protagonists come "to present an evolutionary continuum of sorts along which the symptoms of socioeconcxnic change become more and more visible and/or less and less repressible. Returning to the sociopolitical reading of the present novel the essential formula for this reading can be shown to be already present in both the conventional Gothic and the allegorical mythical readings. As one will recall, the conventional Gothic reading introduces the reader to a protagonist who is a magician, mysterious and magnetic. His powers and charisma enable him to work his will on 215 Nature and the other characters. Meanwhile, he Is engaged in forcing loose frcm Nature and the Universe their ultimate secrets, such as the key to the mys'teries of life and death. He claims to desire this knowledge so he can use it to shape the world to his own, ostensibly humanitarian designs:

133Û jliorenz^ sabes bien que yo te quiero . . . Adsnas, sabes que tengo necesidad de ti, que sin ti no podrîa realizar mis proyectos, mis grandes proyectos. — Tus ambiciones, querras decir, tu sed de dominio. No, Lorenza, mis planes humani'tarios. Es posible que haya todavia en mi espirite deseos de ambiciôn, pero no olvides que ninguna palanca es despreciable. (202)

But, as is frequently the case with protagonists of Gothic narratives, he falls into excess and is symbolically punished by the forces of divine providence and Natxire, here throu^ their representatives in the novel, the quasi-religious Rosacrucians and their sentinel Marcival. The modem allegorical and mythical reading based upon the author's creacionistza ethic and the myth of Lucifer introduces the reader to the additional elements of a demigod vho also seeks ultima'te knowledge of and power over his universe and, in the case of the myth of Lucifer, to certain oblique allusions to the Apocalypse in the novel's preface, which link the pro'tagonist to the prophesied di'vine intervention into history at its mansnt of greatest anarchy:

6De donde venîa? Ya lo he dicho, venîa del infinito en una carroza en medio de relampagos al rêvés del profeta Elîas, que de la tierra subiô al cielo en un carro de Hamas . . . 216 Apareclô en la Historla de repente entre dos truenos. (193)

Ihmlng once more to the excerpt cited earlier, tiie suggestion can now be advanced that the figuring there of the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonapar'be is meant to provide the reader, at novel’s midpoint, with an all-important hint in unders'tanding the sociopolitical implications of the figure and role of Cagliostro in these readings as well as serving to prefigure the negative outcome of his fascist project. And, if this hint were not taken, there is to be found, still within the same episode (of Cagliostro's audience before the King and Queen of "Prance) yet another perhaps more explicit allusion to the sociopolitical significance of the protagonist in his miraculous out>-of-body rescue of the Grand Duke Anastasio of Russia and his dau^ter, as their slei^ careens out of control towards the edge of an abyss:

En el trineo, el gran duque Anastasio y su hija se esfuerzan en vano tra'tando de detener los caballos, colagados de las riendas con un vigor doblado por el panico. C • • •H Patigada por la lucha esteril contra el impulse de los caballos y por la excesiva tension de sus nervios, la joven cae y se acurruca en su asiento, resignada a la ca'tastrofe. Cano si una luz subi'ta iluminara el fondo de su memoria, busca nerviosamente en su pecho un talisman, lo aprieta en sus manos, lo agita en el aire como si pidiera socorro. C * • • ~I iQue hay? ^Que pasa? Los caballos se detienen bruscamente. A1 borde mismo del precipicio ^arece la sombra de Cagliostro, levantando los dos brazos. (217)

In either case, the effect is to foreground a singular individual 217 whose outstanding feature is his abilil^r to exert an extraordinary influence over his world when it threatens to slip into chaos. More to -the point, each is shown in the act of substituting for/taking over from aristocrats on their way to destruction. Taken together, these images exert a decided influence upon the reader to bend his/her attention to the sociopolitical potential of the other readings. Furthermore, the linking, as above, of the character Cagliostro with a variety of runaway horses and conveyances which the protagonist then manages either directly or indirectly to bring under control is a motif which recurs with insistence throu^out the novel^"^ forming thus a network of subtle reminders of this sociopolitical dimension. Once the reader becomes conscious of this sociopolitical dimension, he/she is able to review and revise the (components of the) other readings and undertake a new reading of the novel. In that reading, Cagliostro the mad magician of the conventional Gothic reading and the diabolical/creacionista demigod of the modem mythical allegorical reading is finally recognized as the dream hero of an alienated and declining aristocracy unable to resist the onslaught of historical change. However, once in motion even this fantasy chanç>ion is not imnune to and ultimately falls prey to these same historical forces. Thus, the interception and punishment of the Cagliostro is depicted as stemming not from his transgression of any legal limi"tations and consequent apprehension by the authorities: he engages with apparent impunity in kidnapping, theft, attempted rapes 218 and murders. The indictments and banishment of the protagonist issue, instead, from his violation of the aristocratic code of conduct of his own class, sjmibolized by tiie brotherhood of the Rosacrucians, the members of which condemn his indulgence in the "vices" of personal ambition and materialism:

— Sabeis, conde Cagliostro, que los que estamos aqul présentes scmos tres Maestros. Leed la sentencia de vuestro castigo. Vereis que se os acusa de prevaricaciôn y de trabajar solo persiguiendo ambiciones personales. Se os acusa de que, por el amor de una mujer, no habéis sabido guardar los secretos. (235)

Sâtiro o EL poder de las palabras (1939)

Bernardo se agitaba en su asiento y pensaba que si hubiese sentido su tiempo, si hubiera obedecido al momento historico . . . nunca habrîa . . . vivido en ese desconsuelo interior, en esa misantropla tan hueca y triste. (554) (Ihou^ts of the protagonist as he listens to students debate in a tavern.)

Vicente Huidobro's last novel was Satiro o EL poder de las palabras, published in 1939- As Benjamin Rojas Pina has effectively demonstrated, it seeks to reproduce, in the form of a modem allegory, the agony of literary creation.^ The text also bears a psychological as well as a sociopolitical reading. In constructing his novel, Huidobro reverts to a rudimentary form of realist- naturalist narrative procedures to vhich he makes modifications originating fran his own artistic experiments as a member of the Latin American and European avant-gardes. Ihese changes serve to 219 upgrade the traditional realist-naturalist structures’ expressive capacity while transforming it into something quite new and modem. The substance of the narrative, as indicated in Chapter I, is made up of a psychological study of the protagonist, Bernardo Saguen, as his conscience wrestles with the accusation (iSatiro!) leveled at him by the suspicious doorwoman. The extremely sensitive and voluble Bernardo is slowly but inexorably consumed by his obsession until he ultimately succumbs and does actually ccxnnit the act of which he’s been accused. In formulating the argument of his novel, then, Huidobro borrows a familiar motif from the pages of the naturalist experimental novel: that is, a ’’subject” possessing a given temperament (e.g., sanguine, phlegnatic, choleric, bilious) is placed in circumstances, or under conditions, for vhich his/her personality t^pe is ill-suited and allowed "to destroy hlm-Zherself. The ’’experiment,” in this instance, is observed and (occasionally, but significantly) ccranented upon by the customary semi-dramatized but extra-diegstic (outside the narrated events) third-person narrator. More specifically, the narrator stands close, spatially and emotionally, to Saguen— even articulating the protagonist’s thoughts for him, on occasion— but always above, looking down:

El pobre fantasma hunano se siente desesperado como una bestia acorralada, y presiente todas las tragedias. En cualquier memento puede suceder algo horrible, inesperado, subito. Se siente delirante, cogido por el vertigo de algo impreciso, pero que se va creando con imperiosas fuerzas indomables. Adivina que ya se agotan sus ultimes intantos de lucha, ya en el limite mismo de la voluntad, junto a la 220 entrega définitiva. ( 532)

Although he Is generally sympathetic to Bernardo, the narrator nevertheless frequently singles out the protagonist’s sensitivity and volubility as extreme and flawed:

Bernardo •tenia treln"ba y clnco anos. No era rlco nl pobre; habia heredado de su padre una renta suf Iclente para -vL-vlr hol^damente y sin preocupaclones por la lucha cot:ldlana. AdenAs, no era un hcxnbre gas"tador, y 'bode lo que podia economlzar lo erapleaba en canprar buenos llbros y cuadros de sus plntores favorltos. Indlscutlblemen'be, tenia un alma flna, acaso demaslado sensible. (465, emphasis mine)

Slempre me han asustado los seres con "tanta faclUdad para la trlsteza o la alegria. (467)

Es e-vidente que la persona de Bernardo Saguen creaba una atznosfera especial, ele-vada y trlsta a la vez, pero sobre todo mlstarlosa . . . Muchas veces Bernardo habia -vLsto trocarse la antlpatia o la dlstancla que insplraba, en gran amls-tad o en subi'ta ccsnprenslon y aun admlraclon. Y no es que su -vida fuera mlsterlosa, slno que su aima acaso lo era. Por otra parte, no hay que ol-yldar que es bien dlficll ■vl'vLr junto a personas excesl-yamente sensibles. Cuan'tas veces él habia dlcho: "Soy una ca'tastrofe en marcha". (510, emphasis mine)

Con cuânto placer, a veces, abrimos la puer'ta de nuestra casa. Con cuânto placer nos paseamos entre nuestras paredes intimas. Sobre 'todo aquellos que lle'van el aima como una cosa fragll y demaslada flna, como una campana de vldrlo en las manos Inexpertas. Bemardo Saguen es un hcmbre excesl'vamente dellcado y sensible. (46b, emphasis mine)

The narrator’s collaboration In the experiment is also e'videnced by his foreknowledge of events to come:

&Por que es'taba [Bemard(^ tan optimista? Su optlmismo 221 atraia la suerte. Mas tarde debîa preguntarse mâchas veces por gué estaba tan optimista aquella tnahana, (466, onphasls mine)

Y asî el alba aparecia, empezaba a levantarse en el horizonte . . . sobre el cuerpo palpitante (de Bernard^ . . . sin conciencia de la realidad ni aun de su tragedia. (529, emphasis mine)

La resistencia obscura que forcejeaba en el fondo de su Alma iba desapareciendo . . . j ^ m a r d ^ retrocede, se contempla las manos y palidece mortalmente. El secreto jde su destine^ se hace irradiante, siente que hay algo que esta alll, en las sombras, a poca distancia de us corazon atribulado. Ese algo va a estai!ar, el suceso va a realizarse pronto, muy pronto; el acontecimiento se acerca. (533-34, emî±iasis mine)

For the most part, the language the narrator employs is realist and "transparent," while there is an almost condescending (patronizing) •tendency to encourage the reader to spéculât» on where the story will go by posing rhetorical questions. Nonetheless, some of the narrator’s descriptions, as in Huidobro’s prior narratives, do show an innovative and unconventional approach in their use of animation of the abstract or the inanimate:

Habia mucha primavera en la calle- Primavera por todas pjar'tes, en el suelo, en las ventanas, en los tejados (2. . . 2 la manana estaba "tan hemosa, la primavera se hacia presente por todos los poros del cielo y de la tierra. En un tranvîa no hay primavera, la primavera desaparece por que de testa el enca jonamiento, detasta los ataûdes, aunque tengan ruedas. (466) Also reminiscent of the naturalist experimental novel is Huidobro’s use of the seasonal cycle to mark the stages of the protagonist’s declining trajectory:

A las once y media (^mardoj salio a la calle. Iba 222 contento, se reia solo, reia con los arboles, con el aire, con el sol. Se sentîa tan Uviano, que de repente movîa los hcmbros como para accxnodarse las alas. Habia luucha primavera en la calle . . . Bemardo no podîa precisar si su presencia producîa la primavera o si la primavera producla su presencia. JJn hecho era indiscutible: la primavera se sentla tan contenta de ser la primavera, que su alegria se ccsnunicaba a todo el universo. (465)

Qnpezâba el inviemo, y sin saber por que se le habia metido en la cabeza la idea de que el inviemo séria su salvaciôn. îVaya que cosa nas extrana! Recordô que al empezar el otono habia pensado lo mismo. Y, sin embargo, el otoho no le habia traldo nada, no habia solucionado nada. Bemardo sonriô con esa terrible sonrisa suya de los ûltimos meses, esa sonrisa que parecla como si le pusieran una corona de espinas en los labios. "EL otono me deshojô cccpletamente". (546)

As one can see, the author’s use of this device goes beyond the simple signalling of the passage of time. In each of the excerpts, special emphasis is placed on the close relationship— and the eventual rupture of that relationship— be"tween the protagonist and his natural environment. Yet, while this procedure clearly has i"ts origins in the concept of environmenthl determinism embraced by Naturalism, Huidobro greatly expands the relationship of nature/protagonist, in Satiro, to include the possibility of a mystical union between the "two:

Un autobus le dejo [a Bernard^ en las afueras, a doscientos metros del bosque. A pasos rapidos . . . franqueo los doscientos metros y se intemô entre los ârboles. "Aqul se respira, aquî esta la vida, aqul se sienten fluidos de la tierra y del sol." [. . .] "Si, si, yo quisiera ser ârbol — pensô— Yo soy un ârbol, es"te bosque es mi familia y "todos los ârboles del mundo son mis herraanos [. . . Q Arboles herraanos, sois el ruido de otros mundos. Ife ofrezco el universo, aima, en 223

medio de mi noble familia que te aclama." (498-499» emphasis mine)

Such an attitude recalls that of Huidobro’s modemista predecessor,

José Marti.^5

Finally, traces of the naturalist novel’s predilection for significant and determining spatial oppositions can be detected in the back and forth movements of Satire’s protagonist between interior

(principally his apartment) and exterior (essentially the street, but also the park and forest) spaces, with a decided preference for the former. The more interior the space, the more Saguen’s psychological intériorité is able to dcmina-be and ennervate him while fomenting his capitxilation to the suggestions of the portera’s epithet. In fact, in order to be able to retreat still further inward, the protagonist is made to imagine a ’’marvellous grotto” where he finds womb-like security and the unconditional accep'fcance and ccxnpanionship of the girl-child.

Outside, Bemardo carries out his only truly dynamic act of the entire novel: the heroic rescue of the boy fallen off the ferry boat.

Another exterior space, the street, is where we find the political

(labor ) activism of Pedro Almora, much admired by Bemardo— who would be like him, if he could find the strength:

— iCrees que yo no le admiro [a Almor^? Si yo fuera capaz, le seguirla, es'fcaria a su lado; pero ello requiere demasiada valent:Ia, deraasiada voluntad y poder de sacrificio. Confieso que soy incapaz, delatx) mi debilidad. Acaso mas tarde ... No olvides que soy un sonador es'fcatico y Almora es un sonador dinamico. (471) 22n With this foundation of realist naturalist procedures of long­ standing consolidation within the Spanish American narrative tradition in place, Huidobro sets out to construct upon them an allegory of modem origin. His use of the once imported, now local realist-naturalist model implies a desire to reach a broader and, even, more socially diverse audience than before. Ihou^x he left no word regarding his approach to the composition of his ^tiro o KL poder de las palabras, Huidobro would have had to have been conscious during its production of the Chilean and Spanish American public’s easy familiarity with the realist>-naturalist formula he was Qnploying, aware that it would be easily consumible. And, in fact, the analysis of Satiro thus far has only revealed an effort to maximize reader accessibility throu^ such devices as the rhetorical question, a traditional device meant to promote the reader’s curiosity about the novel's outcome, and, "transparent" language. Once lured into Satire’s comforthble embrace, the reader (hopefully) becomes aware of signs pointing toward a second level of meaning. Perhaps chief among these signs is Bernardo’s exaspera"fced Unamunian exclamation, near the end of the novel: ’’^Pero soy un personaje real?" (559).

iY si yo no fuera personaje real, si fuera solamente la creacion de un ser tan poten'te que me hace creer en mi realidad? Acaso no existo ... No soy una realidad, estoy viviendo una novela, una novela monotona, exasperan'te de monotonia, una espantosa novela. iQue au'fcor desesperado me est:a haciendo cruzar su mundo de horrores, me est:a haciendo vivir su desesperacion, se esta librando de sus angustias y sus monstruosidades por medio de mi persona?... jHorror!... ;Qué absurdo!... jQué espantoso abismo! Un 225 paso mas y la locura compléta". (559)

Unlike Auguste Pérez of Unamuno’s Niebla, however, Bernardo’s suspicions remain unconfirmed in any explicit sense. Nevertheless, for Satire’s reader Bernardo’s outburst has the effect either of provoking a retroactive reappraisal of the text and/or a second reading. Whichever the case may be, a new, allegorical level of meaning beccxnes available to the reader. It is on this allegorical level of interpretation that Rojas Pina bases his reading of Satiro. At the outset, Rojas characterizes Satiro o EL poder de las palabras as "la patentizaciai de la agonîa creadora, personal proceso es'fce liberador de concreciones e imagenes, realidades y quimeras, vivencias y suenos.’’50 One is by now fully aware that this same investigation of the concept of the possible ther^ieutic properties of literary creation informs both Huidobro’s poetic production and his narrative production. However, in this instance, Huidobro has gone a step further than before by incorporating into the text "tres relaciones fundamentales" :

1) la de autor creador con mundo creado; 2) la de palabra con objeto mentado; 3) la de personaje con acto realizado.51

Ihe key is the doorwoman vho utters the fateful word which sets Bernardo’s transformation in motion. Her special suitedness to her role, asserts Rojas, lies in the fact that she is a peasant woman, probably uneducated, and therefore possessed of a more direct, unmediated relationship with language. Sie is certein of the real 226 power of tile word:

EL nlvel de la diccion en la mujer es el de las supersticiones del mundo del lenguaje; se cree que la palabra conlleva su acto, que existe una hilacion secreta que mueve y abre las puertas, el lenguaje se revlste a este nlvel del prestigio conjurador, salva o dana, es expresion de un sentido colectivo y antediluviano.52

Bemardo, as author as well as character to be shaped, possesses, in his education and his sensitive soul, the capacity "fco refine and develop and shape the final form the word ' s invocation produces. 53 As the novel progresses, Bemardo is like "una materia que se ha venido modelando poco a poco con los diversos ingredientes conjurados por una mano magica y poderosa"5^;

Ahora (Bernard^ se pasea por su habitacion, y se dirla que mira sus objetos familiares como cosas extranas. Alll esta él con sus cosas, entre sus cosas habitziales, y, sin embargo, parece sentir que hay algo que esta, de mas. (468)

Venciendo una enorme repugnancia, saliô un momento a la calle . . . No, esta no era su ciudad, su ciudad de antes . . . Alguien, por medio de un subterfugio infernal, la habia cambiado por otra. (511)

Aquella manana, al contemplarse en el espejo, [Bemarde^ tuvo la sensacicn exacta de que no era el mismo . . . "Ignoro en que mcxuento me he convertido en otro. No obstante, sé perfectamente que no soy el mismo, ya no soy el Bernardo Saguen de antes, de hace algunos meses" G • *J 6Como iba a ser el, un horabre dulce, sin malas pasiones, un hcxnbre suave, de tan buen carâcter? No era él, era ese otro que querla sustituirse a él. (544)

Stressing a theme central to his analysis of Huidobro’s narrative 227 production, Rojas Pina defines the novel's process as a dual one of destruction/construction: destructive of certain elements of tâie character existing prior to ttie word, constructive of other elements which were perhaps present but lay dormant.55 Por a time, this process results, says Rojas, in a hybrid being, a Saguen-Satiro^^ struggling to avoid people, places and things which would foment his transformation as "faunesque" elements— sexual passion, disordered living habits, physical changes— begin to emerge.57 ihen, as the changes overtake him, Bemardo becomes automaton-like and phantasmal58;

Ya no era un haribre, era un aulxmata, un sonambulo en marcha por las tinieblas del mundo y de su propio ser. Vivla adentro de una espesa niebla; todos sus actes sucedîan en la bruma ims absolut^.. (536)

Reality and his obsession begin to intersect59 as Bemardo is more and more drawn by the vision of the marvellous cavem, which will act as a sort of "telluric wcxab"^® pro-becting his transformation. Finally, on the day of his transformation everything seems once more normal to Bemardo and he is once again content^^ as he goes throuÿi the events that lead up to the crime:

Aquella manana Bemardo Saguen se levante con'tento, tan contento que, por primera vez desde hacia muchos meses, sonriô a los cuatro muros de su habi-tacion, a esos muros an'tes tan hostiles y tan cuajados de insistantes fantasmas. Sin embargo, se dirla que su satisfacciôn era mas bien inconsciente. Por lo menos, as! lo habria advertido cualquier observador avisado. (573, emphasis mine) 228 In this second, allegorical reading of Satiro o EL poder de las palabras, the laws of science and nature are replaced as tiie governing forces of the narrated world by the "laws" of literary creation, thereby transmuting the first traditional reading into a second, modem one. Ihe aggregate of these two readings produces, in "turn, a basis for a third reading. More precisely, by adopting a social perspective on a canposite of readings one and two, a third reading becomes possible. In this third reading, Bernardo's flaw becomes one of class, while the governing force of the narrated world "takes the form of the forces of historical change, against vhich the protaigonist strug^es mistily but to which he must ultima"tely surrender and be transformed. Behind Bernardo's transformation, set in motion by the doorwoman's imprecation, float the associations evoked by her epithet. In mythological "terms, a satyr was the homed servant of the god Dionysius. Half-man, half-goat, his function was to celebra"te the physical delicts of the flesh, as opposed to the more spiritual pleasures of the intellect. La"ter, the reference came to be applied in everyday speech "to men perceived as guilty of sexual excess. Used in this way, the allusion was purged of any of its original positive conno"tations. If, then, a psychosocioeconanic optic is applied to these associations, the figure of the satyr emerges as the apt embodiment of the acknowledged worst effects of capitalism: to wit, base materialism, excessive consumption. 229 vulgarity, exaltation of the sensual and sensational, etc.. It is this constellation of connotations against which the reader in a subsequent reading must measure the life of Bemardo Saguen prior to his transformation. To anticipa'te, the life thus revealed is that of a (by the writer) cleverly camoflauged aris"tocrat living in frittered isolation and decadence while society leaves him increasingly behind. At first, he tries to retreat into a spiritual ivory 'tower where he at-tempts to engineer a purely interior/individual project of sal"vation (the option of Marci'val in Cagliostro, for example). But, he finds he cannot escape the growing strength of the proletariat— a strength roo'ted in concrete reality and manifes'ted in the sheer power of its (their) words. In the face of this threat, he can "choose” either destruction, altruistic social activism on behalf of the prolet:ariat or the middle course of becoming a capitalist. As the novel begins, Bemardo seems to be rather middle class. Ke is described as having inherited only enou^ to live a modest lifestyle in a modest apartment and he frets about having to move if the landlord raises the rent:

Habia pasado largas horas de la noche haciendo un pequeno catalogo de sus cuadros y de sus libros. Esto en razon de que el propietario de la casa habia anunciado que subirla los precios de los departamentos, en cuyo caso se mudarla del suyo en quince dlas nas . . . Sentîa abandonar aquel departamento en donde vivla desde hacia sieta anos. Un departamento pequeno, pero cànodo y bien situado . . . IBemardo] No era rico nl pobre; habia heredado de su padre una renta suf icienta para -vivir holgadamente y sin preocupaclones por la lucha cotidiana. Ademâs, no era un 230 hombre gastador. (465)

However, indications in the text of his attitudes toward work betray an accustcmedness to liesure and privilege. Novdiere in the text is there any indication that he has ever worked for a living nor, more importantly, that he ever plans to. His project to be a writer, for example, is never linked to any pragnatic money-making end, but is always cast in an idealistic li^t as a vehicle to discover and disseminate mystical insists into the workings of the universe :

Bemardo sintio su pecho henchido de alborozo. "Es absurdo, es ridlculo pensar que mi vida no tiene objeto. M vida — se dijo— tendra un objeto como la vida del mas pintado. Yo puedo ser un buen escritor . . . Mi vida tendra un objeto mas alto que la vida de cualquier pétulante. (480)

jOh!, escribir, escribir, el bello oficio de dar semillas a todos los pâjaros del mundo. "Hoy sera un dla de elevacion, un dîa de luz en la mano. Y la simiente caera de entre mis dedos. Los corazones especiales sentirân en los anos el ruido de las semillas que caen y el ruido de las semillas que crecen y pueden dar sombra a los honbres futuros." (489)

iCual es la realidad? El pceta es el ûnico que la conoce y todos creen, al rêvés, que es el ûnico que la ignora. El poeta suscita la realidad, no acepta cualquier realidad, sino aquella que resuena en el piano del espiritu. Va por el mundo creando realidades, porque las cosas mas apartadas, mas grandes, mâs pequehas, mas escondidas se dan la mano ante sus ojos. (471)

■Furthermore, soon after his rent is nearly raised, Bemardo purchases an original Picasso and the first edition of a volume of Rimbaud, with no apparent concem for future rent increases, nor any 231 consideration of the items as financial investments. Finally, he has a servant, Snilia, whom he eventually dianisses out of a repugnance for social intercourse, not because of worries about money. The continued satisfactory functioning of his household after her dismissal suggests her services may have been superflous to begin with.^2 Bemardo also finds leisure time and sufficient funds to take his girlfriend, Susana, for a (n indefinite) holiday at the beach. Finally, the artistic and literary works with which the protagonist shows a personal familiarity— Picasso, Rimbaud, John Ford (Anabella), El Greco (Vision of the Apocalypse), Meredith (The Egoist), Holderlin (Hyperion, The Death of Empedocles), Blake (Utopia), Gerard de Nerval (Aurelia), Bronte, De Sade (Justine), Marlowe (Faust), KLeist, Achim von A mim (short stories)— mark him as one of broad and fairly cosmopolitan culture. It is precisely the protagonist’s ultimately self-serving and paternalistic generosity toward the poor little girl which provokes the confrontation that will precipitate his eventual transformation. Just before he comes upon her standing before the candystore window, the reader will recall, Bemardo had just witnessed a much more dire case of need but sou^t only to avoid it, by crossing the street;

En una calle estrecha y pobre, pobre de estrecha y estrecha de pobre, vio a una mujer con un nino en los brazos, llorando con pequehos sollozos entrecortados. Iba a detenerse, iba a acercarse a ella, pero no se atrevio. A los pocos pasos penso retroceder, volvio la cabeza, la mujer no le miraba ni miraba a nadie. Bemardo domino su impulso y siguio andando. (467) 232 The little girl knows only gratitude for Bernardo’s generosity, but the portera, like a lucidly class conscious proletarian, sees the potential for co-optation and exploitation implicit in his gift(s) and dares to criticize him for this:

I^a chica le mir-5 agradecida y le sonriô. jQué hermosa sonrisa y que cabellos tan suaves! — Adiôs — dijo Bemardo. Entonces pasô algo terrible, absurdo, triste y grotesco. Una portera que estaba de pie en la acera junto a su puerta, lanzô una mirada feroz a Saguen, y grito a voz en cuello: — iSatiro! Bemardo vol vio la cabeza indignado y vio las espaldas de la mujer que se escondîa râpidamente por el zaguan de su casa. — Estûpida, mala pécora — murmurô Saguen, y se alejô por la calle, camino de su barrio. (467)

This overt criticism, which suprises Bemardo and offends his sense of decorum can be interpreted as symbolic of the proletariat's greater activism, reflected elsewhere (503-504) in the evocation of a street demonstration. The power of her words is evident in the ensuing total destruction of the protagonist’s previous life. Significant is the fact that, immediately after his encounter with the portera, Bemardo begins to feel an antipathy for social contract, particularly, it would seem, with others of the doorwoman’s class. The first to fall victim to this antipathy is his housekeeper and servant, Emilia:

Llamaban a su puerta, estaba sonando el timbre. Se levanto y fue a abrlr, adivinando que debîa ser Emilia, la vieja sirvienta que venîa . . . a hacerle la casa. — Orel que el senor no es'taba — dijo la vieja al entrar. — 6 Como? ^Ha llamado mucho? 233 — Ya iba a ime. He llamado varias veces. Bemardo se sonro jo : — Pues no le habia oldo. Estaba haciendo ruido con el agua en la cocina. "^Por que he mentido?", se pregunto. Expérimenté rabia, y la presencia de aquella mujer le molesto por primera vez, sintiendo la necesidad de estar lejos de ella. C • • • H "iPor que me molesta esta pobre vieja? — pensaba— Antes nunca me habia molestado." . . . 6Querla estar solo? No, no es que quisiera estar solo; en realidad, le habria gustado hablar con alguien; por ejemplo, con su vie jo amigo Mario Viner, leerle una paginas de Rimbaud y discutirle por Rimbaud contra Mallarmé, el poeta favori to de Viner ..., o simplemsnte comentar lo que leerla. (469)

He also mistrusts the doorwcman of his own building and her dau^ter who seem otherwise only interested in his wellbeing:

Hacia algunos dlas que habia despedido a su vieja sirvienta, y cuando una tarde la portera le pidiô las Haves para subir a limpiarle un poco el departamento, Bemardo se las entrego con disgusto. "Esta bruja quiere ganarse algun dinero mas — se dijo- -, o a lo mejor solo quiere curiosear." . . . Su misantropla se sentla atacada por estas mujeres intrusas . . . [Y] Lo que mas le irritaba era pensar que no se atreverla a quitarselas [las Haves]. Pero, ^por que no se atreverla a quitarselas? Muy en el fondo de su alma, como algo muy lejano, le parecio pensar que no se las podrla quitar, porque se harla sospechoso. ^Sospechoso? . . . ^Sospechoso de que? ^Acaso un dueno de casa no tiene derecho a dar y quitar sus Haves cuando se le antoje? (536-637)

Bernardo's attitude is more ambivalent toward three other sociaHy and econcmicaHy subordinate characters, his lovers : Laura, Susana and Ina, because they w i H i n ^ y sutmit to his exploitation and don't chaHenge his rigit to do so. In this sense, they manifest an accepting, child-like naivete similar to the young girls at the 234 beginning and "üie end of tiie novel. On the other hand, Bernardo’s relationship with them betrays an extreme reification as he consistently treats them as objects to be anployed in his quest for salvation. This attitude is consonant with a condition of socioeconcxnic superiorily and alienation. Below, in compressed form, is the parabolic trajectory of Bernardo’s relationship with Susana. Ihe nature and evolution of his relationships with Laura and Ina do not differ substantially:

Susana estaba en pleno apogeo. Bemardo la contemplaba encantado. Le parecio tan magnîficamente mujer que no podia soltarla de sus brazos. ’’Esta es la mujer, es la mujer capaz de salvar a cualquier hanbre; junto a una mujer asi no hay peligros en la vida”. Adivinaba su espléndido cuerpo, sus formas Uenas sin ser excesivas, y le entraban ansias de besarla ferozmente allî, en presencia de las gentes, y gritarles: ’’Esta es la mujer, senores. He aqul la verdadera mujer”. (505)

Bemardo cogiô las manos de Susana y balbuceô: — Quiero viajar . . . Quiero que vengas conmigo. Iremos al mar, a una playa lejana. Susana palmoteô cano una nina a la cual ofrecen un juguete codiciado. (505)

— Pero iqué pasa? Bemardo, que tienes? No comprendo. Por piedad, dime que te pasa. — No te hagas la hipôcrita, sabes muy bien. — Te juro que no sé nada. No entiendo; por favor, no me desesperes — exclamé Susana con una voz lamentable. Bemardo aparté los ojos hacia otro lado y exhalé con tono de profunda repugnancia: — Son todas iguales... Igualmente hipécritas, igualmente maliciosas, igualmente aburridas y per ver sas. Susana escondié la cabeza en sus brazos tendida contra la arena. Sollozaba. Apenas alcanzé a oîr: — Manana regresaremos. Cada uno a su casa. Por fin, por fin podré estar solo. (507) 235 Only Mario Vinier and, to absentia, Pedro Almora escape Bernardo’s antipathy, for it is clear that they share his class formation. Yet, they have eilso escaped his dilemma by consciously adapting to the obvious trends of History:

[Viner speaking — Pienso que de todos nuestros amigos, de todo el grupo de nuestra Juventud, Pedro Almora ha sido el mas logico, el mas justo y razonable. Al elegir el camtoo de la revolucion social, al dedicar su vida a los problemas sociales tomo el camtoo perfecto. Cada dla lo veo nas claro, pues ese es el gran problema de nuestro tianpo. Ahi esta nuestra verdad, y solo alll podemos servir sin rebajar nuestro espiritu y nuestra dignidad. EL camino de Pedro Almora serla tu salvaciôn. (471)

Bernardo's antisocial, antihistorical intransigence is accanpanied by his physical and psychological retreat into the private spaces of his apartment and his fan-tasy. Mien there he unsuccessfully struggles to construct an ideal project to refute the implication that he is a vulgar exploiter and justify and give meaning to his existence. However, these attendts only result to the reinforcing of his sense of alienation and dispair and he finds himself once again impelled into the world, where the forces of change conspire to encourage his transformation. Ihe fact that, once transformed, Bemardo no longer feels estranged frcm himself suggests he has reentered history and accepted its dictates. His overall lack of self-awareness can be seen as a failure, as yet, txi develop a class consciousness of his new role. Judged by his actions, however, he has clearly adopted the role he so vehemently rejected of dispoiler of the proletariat— whose members 236 surround and denounce him for it. He has become a creature of capitalism:

En una especie de neblina, se advertla un grupo de gentes inclinadas sobre algo, impidiendole ver lo que pasaba al otro lado. Quiso hacer un movimiento ccxno para acercarse y contemplar él también esa cosa misteriosa que atraia tantas miradas. Apenas se movio, apenas dio un medio paso hacia adelante como un autcmata, que una cantidad de manos y gritos batieron el aire en medio de las tinieblas del universo. — Cuidado, que se escapa... El bandido. El répugnante. Quiere huir... Matenlo. Matenlo aqul miano... El satiro, el puerco... El répugnante sâtiro. iQuién es? îQué ha pasado? ^Eônde gritan? ^Qué senalan esas manos empunadas en el aire? La nina yacla sobre le divan de la sala, los ojos vidriosos, desmesurados, abiertos al infinito y al pavor. La pequena came dolorosa palpitaba y gemla en medio de una mancha obscura. Bemardo estaba de pie al fondo de su gruta junto al divan, con la mirada perdida. De pie como la estatua de serenidad perfecta, no habia oldo los pasos de los que entraron. No habia visto a nadie. Cuando esas gentes furibundas hablan violado su puerta, él no lo habia advertido. Estaban tan lejos. Sus manos acariciaban la pequena cabellera brillante y esa cabellera silenciosa le separaba de la tierra. No sintiô cuando le cogieron y le empujaron hacia atrâs. — Répugnante. Bandido... Matenlo... Despedâcenlo. Ganalla. Inraundo sâtiro. (577)

Ihe fact that the novel’s argument goes no further in developing the implications of Bernardo’s actions implies an acceptance of the outcome without an accompanying unders'tanding of it. This would jibe with the novel’s overall -vision, whose ’’experimental" format casts Bernardo’s fate as undesirable but inevitable. Pertinent, in this context, are the rare ^impses which the reader receives of the narrator’s own attitude about the natur-e of human exis"tence:

Era el dla de su buena suer-te, uno de esos dlas de buena suerte de que gozan todos los mortales y que son "tan pocos 237 en la suma total de nuestros dlas, en este mundo absurdo construido sobre el dolor y la miseria de la mayorla de los hombres y para goce de unos cuantos escogidos. (466) N o t e s ^The observations which follow are based on a survey of available reviews in Spanish, British and U.S. periodical literature for the years 1924 throu^ and including 1942; it is hoped that a more ttiorou^ and systematic search will turn up articles and reviews hitherto unknown. Also considered is information about readership such as sales and numbers of editions. 2Such reviews which have turned up thus far are, of Finis Britanniae, Oner Qneth, "Cronica literaria. Finis Britanniae, por Vicente Huidobro," EL mercurio (Santiago) 28 April 1924. For reviews of Mlo Cid Campeador see Alone [Heman Diaz Arriet^, "Los ûltimos libros de Vicente Huidobro," La naeion (Santiago) 23 July 1931; Alejo Carpentier, "EL Cid Campeador de Huidobro," Social (Havana) October 1930: 24; Ricardo Latcham, "Mlo Cid Campeador, por Vicente Huidobro," La nacion (Santiago) 20 September 1942; Fernando Mantilla, "M o Campeador: film de Vicente Huidobro," Atlantico (Madrid) May 1930: bb; Roberto îfeza Fuentes, Atenea August 1930: 120-25 • For reviews of Cagliostro. Novela-film see Eduardo Anguita, "Vicente Huidobro, el creador," Forward for Vicente Huidobro, Ca^iostro. Novela-film 2nd. ed. (Santiago de Chile: Zig-Zag, 1942) 7-12; Hoy (Santiago) 4 December, 1931: 6 ; Hoy (Santiago) 17 August 1934: 17-18. For a review of La proxima. Historia que paso en poco tiempo mas see Hoy (Santiago) 22 December 1933: 39. For a review of Papa o EL diario de Alicia M r see Hoy (Santiago) 29 June 1934: 36-37- For reviews of Tres inme^as novelas (with Hans Jean Arp) see Hoy (Santiago) 2 August 1935: 20; Cesar Mro, "Crltlca ejemplar de Vicente Huidobro," Hoy (Santiago) 12 July 1935: 43-44. For reviews of Satiro o El poder de las palabras see Alone (Heman Diaz Arriet^, "Vicente Huidobro y su libro satiro," Revista nacional de cultura (Caracas) May 1939: 43- 47; Braulio Arenas, "Libros y revistas," f/landragora (Santiago) December 1938; Ricardo Astaburuaga, "Vicente Huidobro, poeta y mago," Estudios (Santiago) December 1947 : 69-70. ^Reviews cf Portrait of a Paladin would include those published in the British papers referred to, by way of advertisement, in the frontispiece of Mrror of a Mage, i.e., Manchester Guardian, The Daily Herald, Ihe Liverpool Post, The Morning Post, and The Observer. See also the London Times Literary Supplement 9 April 1931: 289. In the U.S. press see Boston Evening Transcript 16 March 1932, New Statesmen and Nation 21 March 1931; New York Herald Tribune Books 27 March 1932; Saturday Review of Li-berature 26 March 1932.

238 239 For a review of Mirror of a Mage see Angel Flores, ”A High-Speed Cagliostro," New York Herald Iribune Books 29 November 1931. ^Qner Ctoelii, "Cronica literaria. Finis Britanniae, por Vicente Huidobro," SL mercurio (Santiago) 28 April 1924. 5r6v. of Portrait of a Paladin, trans. Narre Wells, London limes Literary Supplement 9 April 1931: 289. %ev. of Portrait of a Paladin, trans. Warre Wells, Boston Evening Transcript 16 March 1932. 7uiis quotation from Ihe Morning Post appears reprinted on the frontispiece of Vicente Huidobro, Mirror of a Mage, trans. Warre Wells (New York: Houston Mifflin, 1931). ®Rene de Costa, Vicente Huidobro. Ihe Careers of a Poet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) 127-28. ^Rev. of Portrait of a Paladin, trans. Warre Wells, by Betty Dniry, New York limes, ij Marcn 1932: S6 . 1 0 % Costa 126. ll"Los libros. Mlo Cid Campeador, por Vicente Huidobro," Hoy (Santiago) 10 September 1942: 33. l% e w York Times 23 July 1927. 13Rene de Costa, "El cubiano literario y la novela filmica: Cagliostro de Vicente Huidobro," Revista de crltica literaria laSnoamëricana (Lima) 6 (1977): 67-79. l^Lhfortunately, to date the pertinent issues of this periodical have not turned up in the holdings of those collections usually containing such materials (Latin American special collections, the Library of Congress, the various research libraries) and no recent researcher has reported laying eyes upon than. Efforts continue, however, to locate them and obtain facsimilies of than. 15vicente Huidobro, Obras complétas, ed. Hugo Montes, 2 vols. (Santiago: Editorial Andres Bello, 1976) 2. All quotations of Huidobro’s prose, unless otherwise indicated, come from this edition and volume and will be indicated by the page number in parentheses. ^^See the author’s introductory no'te, in which he declares that: "Para éviter desorientaciones posibles, debo también advertir al lector que en los datos sobre el Cid a veces he seguido al Cantar, al Romancero y a la Gesta, y otras veces he seguido la Historia" (2). 240 Vicente Huidobro, M o Old Campeador (Madrid: Canpania Iberoamericana de Publicaciones), 1929). l^RoJas-Pina 19Angus Fletcher, Allegory. The 'Sieory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965)• See especially Hie first chapter, entitled "The Daononic Agent," 25ff. 20Rojas-Pina 64. 2lRoJas-Pina 204. 22Rojas-Pina 205-206. 23Joseph Campbell, Ihe Hero of a Thousand %.ces (New York: Meridian Books, 196O). 2^Mrcea ELiade, Ihe Forge and the Crucible, trans. Stephen Corrin (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); Lo sagrado y lo prof^o, trans. Luis Gil (Mdrid : Ediciones Guadarrâma, 1967) ; Mefistofelesy el Androgino, trans- Fabian Garcia-Prieto (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1969); M t o y realidad, trans. Luis Gil (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 196b); El mito del etemo retomo. Arguetipos y repeticion, trans. Ricardo Anaya (Buenos Aires: Eknece Editores, 1968); Mtos, suenos y misterios (Buenos Aires: Canpania Fabril Editora, 1961). 25Erich Neumann, Ihe Great Mother. An Analysis of the Archetype, trans. Rudolph î^lanheim (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963); Ihe Ori^jis and History of Consciousness, trans. R. G. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1973)• 2%ojas-Pina 204. 27Rojas-Pina 204.

2'3Rojas-Pina 208-209. 29Rojas-Pina 210. 30Rojas-Pina 223-224. 3lRojas-Pina 210.

32Rojas-Pina 225.

33Rojas-Pina 225. 3^Amold Hauser, Historia social de la literatura, 2 vols., trans. A. Tovar and F. P. Varas-Reyes (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 2 4 1 1967) II: 395, 401. 35i7redric Jameson, Fables of Agression. Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). Georg Lukacs, Ihe Historial Novel , trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Atlantic Hlgblands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978 ) 40 , 42, 53, 61-62, 63.

57"Fascism,’’ Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia, 198O ed. 182.

55 See, in particular, René de Costa, ’’Chapter VII: Novel and Film,” Vicente Huidobro: Ihe Careers of a Poet (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); ’’Huidobro: From Film to the Filmic Novel,” Review 29 May-August 198I: 13-20; and, ”EL cubisno literario y la novela filmica: Cagliostro de Vicente Huidobro,” Revista de critica IJ-teraria latinosmericana 6 (1977) : 67-79. Ihe filmic is also an impor'tant theme in the discussions of the novel Cagliostro by Lucia Querra-Cunninÿiam, Alicia Rivero Potter and Benjamin Rojas Pina in their respective unpublished dissertations. See Lucia Guerra- Cunnin^bam, ’’Panorama critico de la novela chilena (1843-1949)," Diss. U of Kansas, 1975, 146-148; Alicia Rivero Pot’fcer, "La estetica mallarmeana comparada con la teoria y practica de la novela en Gomez de la Serna, Huid.;'^>’*o y Sarduy,” Diss. Brown U, 1983, 149-170 ; 272- 295; Benjamin Rojas-Pina, ”La prosa narrativa de Vicente Huidobro,” Diss. Ü of Minnesota, 198O, 130-167. Finally, there is John Brushwood’ brief commen-tary on the novel’s cinematic techniques in his Ihe Spanish-American Novel: A Twentieth-Century Survey (Austin: Ihe U of Itexas P, 1975) 124.

59”Ihe Novel," Ehcyclopaedia Britannica: ffecropaedia, 198O ed. :

It is noteworthy that Gothic fiction has always been approached in a spirit of deliberate suspension of the normal canons of taste. (286)

See also George Haggerty, ’’Introduction : Gothic Fiction and Affective Form,” Gothic Fiction, Gothic Form (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP,-iy89Tl------

Ihe purpose of this study is to uncover various ways in which Gothic writers expand Ihe significance of their work through the manipulation of formal effects. Horace Walpole’s familiar explanation of the ’’motives” behind vhat 242 can reasonably be called tbe first Goüiic novel. Hie Castle of Otranto (1764), suggests that the impulse behind Gothic fiction was an impulse toward formal innovation. (1) ^*^See Roberto Gervaso, C^Liostro, trans. Maria Moreu (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1977). Alexandre Dumas, Manoirs d'un Médecin (1848). The four novels traditionally subsumed under this general title are Joseph Balsamo, Le Collier de la Reine, Ange Pitou and La Comtesse de Chamy. Count Cagliostro (Giusseppe Balsamo) figures in all but Ange Pitou. ^^Haggerty 39, 48.

^^Haggerty 119. support this contention, I am relying, in part, on Haggerty's application of the ideas of Julia Kristeva as expoundedin her Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia UP, 1982). ^Sfietcher 51n52, 52n54. ^^oJas-Pina l6l-l67-

^7i92, 193, 206, 209, 210, 211, 213, 230, 240. ^^Rojas Pina, La prosa narrativa de Vicente Huidobro. See Chapter IV, "Satiro: metamorfosis y creacion artlstica" 240-264. 4Q. ■^See Rama, La novela en Amêrica Latina 339» 50Rojas Pina 240. 5^-Rojas Pina 262. 52Rojas Pina 263-

53r o jsLS Pina 263-64 : "EL nivel de la recepcion en (^mardqj es el de la cultura adquirida, se reconoce en la palabra su carga de significado (apacible, hiriente, directo, metaforico, etc.). En este caso pertenece a ese répertorie pasivo de lo mitologico, trasvasijado al dominio mas ordinario e insultante; la palabra ha podido activarse como signo de algo instrumental y luego ha sido reco^da en uno de sus pianos conotativos, asumiendo el nivel de la eficacia nacida de la capacidad flexible y seleccionadora del lenguaje." 5^RoJas Pina 247. 243 55Rojas Pina 247. S^Rojas Pina 248. 57Rojas Pina 250: ”Lo faiinesco del persona je ya no solo se circunscribe a la pasion amorosa, sino que se ins tala en su vida diaria, haciéndola desordenada, irracional. Sobrevienen cambios fîsicos ccxno las manos retorcidas, quizas a modo de sarmientos vegetales, o como sus ojos, en donde 'empieza a aparecer un vago color infiemo' a guisa de ser satanico." 5%ojas Pina 251. 59Rojas Pina 252. ^®Rojas Pina 249-50 : "La imagen misma de la gruta . . . se asocia al mundo de lo telurico, concibiendose este mundo como el lugar natural de la fecundidad y de la vida côsmica, especie de vientre matemo o 'genetrix, ’ espacio que séria el protector de ambos seres, nina y Bemardo." ^^Rojas Pina 258. ^^Ihe protagonist, himself, seems to confirm this suspicion when he exclaims in irritation: "Yo no necesito de nadie, y para sacudir el polvo de mis muebles . . . también tengo iranos (536)." CCNOiüSICN

Hils study of the prose fiction of César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro has done vSiat It set out to do; carefully define the conditions within which these writers produced their narrative and relate than to Its form and content. Ihls was acccmpllshed without disregarding the relative autonomy of each sphere of activity by Insisting on a close textual analysis carried out Independently of the articulation of the circumstances of production and critical reaction. Particularly valuable In the undertaking has been the concept of transculturatlon— as It has been defined by Angel Rama— which renders visible the conpetlng Impulses of regionalism and cosmopolitanism, the tradtlonal and the modem, the local and the universal. When used in conjunction with fairly conventional methods of literary analysis the concept enabled one to effectively catalogue the heterogeneous elenents of these syncretic works and thus establish the basis for a more accurate knowledge of the works than previously available. This operation routinely produced the substance of at least three readings which were then explicated as they would unfold for the Implied reader of these narratives; that Is, a conventional reading, based upon models which were either traditional or of longstanding local consolidation; an allegorical

244 245 and/or mythical reading; a sociopolitical reading. These tasks completed, it is now possible to posit several generalizations which, if one accepts (as this study does) the avant- garde prose fiction of these two authors as somehow paradignatic, are applicable to the larger class of all Spanish-American avant-garde narratives. The first of these generalizations would concern the assertion often made by Angel Rama that there really exist "dos vanguardias paralelas dentro de Hispanoamérica,"^ a regionalist one, represented in narrative by the works of César Vallejo and Pablo Neruda and those of their direct descendents, José Marla Arguedas, Juan Rulfo and Gabriel Garcia Mrquez; and, a cosmopolitan avant- garde fed, in this case, by the prose fiction of Vicente Huidobro and Jorge Luis Borges and including that of their descendents, Julio Cortazar and Carlos Puentes, among others. The validity of such a distinction does seen supported in these analyses, most particularly by the difference in "traditional" sources upon which each of the writers drew when confronted by the modernizing tendencies. Vallejo, as was shown, repeatedly turned to the rural-indigenous cultural fund i*tile Huidobro chose imported models of longstanding consolidation in the local environment. This difference notwithstanding, it is also evident from the close analyses of the texts studied here that the underlying approach of each writer to the composition of their narratives was craftsman­ like and syncretic. In'fceresting in this con'fcext is the tendency of 246 both Vallejo and Huidobro to lay hands on the very most traditional models and conventions upon which to mount their avant-garde experiments. This choice suggests a desire to reach a wider and/or less-sophisticated audience, and, when combined with the consistently alienated and reactionary content of the sociopolitical readings of their narrative, this strategy even acquires a pxitential for ideological duty. Despite the difference in social backgrounds of the two authors their works shaire a camion aversion to the advance of dependent capitalism. N o t e s ^Angel Rama, "La tecnlficaciôn narrativa," La novela en America Latina 338-39-

2 4 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Latii>-American Avant-Garde Prose Fiction With Bibliography 1.1. Adân, Martin. La casa de carton. (1928) Bendezu, Edmundo. "Lo grotesco en La casa de carton de Martin Adân." Letras : Organo de la Pacultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos [ l ^ , Peru] 78-79 (1967): 200-204. Castro Arenas, Iferio. "Gimientos esteticos de La casa de carton." De Palma a Vallejo. Lima: Populibros Peruanos, lybÂ: l2b-jb. Klnsella, John M. "Hie Artist as Subject: a Study of Martin Adan’s La casa de carton." Belfast Spanish and Portuguese Papers. Ed. P.S.N. Russell-Gebbett et al. Belfast: Queens University, 1979. — . "Realism, Surrealism and La casa de carton." Before the Bocm: Pour Essays in Latin American Literature before 19^0. Centre for Latin American Studies Monographs, 10. Ed. Steve Boldy. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 1981. Loayza, Luis. "Martin Adân en su casa de carton." Insula: Revista Bibliografica de Ciencias y Letras 29 July-Aug. :8-9. Weller, Herbert P. "La casa de carton de Martin Adân y el mar ccxno elemento metaforico." Letras 55’-67 (1961) : 142-53- 1.2. Arlt, Roberto. El juguete ràbioso. (1926): Los siete locos. (1929) Giordano, Jaime. "Roberto Arlt: Escritura expresionista." Revista de Estudios Hispânicos fPou^ikeepsie, NY| 19(1) Jan. 1985: 55-70. Jitrik, Noé. "Entre el dinero y el ser: Lectura de El juguete rabioso de Roberto Arlt." Dispositio: Revista Hispanica de Saniotlca Literaria (Ann Arbor, M ^ 1(1976):99-133- Ruffinelli, Jorge. "Arlt: Conplicidad y traicion de clase." Escritura: Revista de teoria y critica literarias (Caracas lObb-A, Venezuel^ 6(12) July-%c. 1981: 375-405.

248 249 1.3. Azuela, Mariano. La aalhora. (1923); EL desquite. (1925) Martinez, Eliud. "Azuela's La malhora (Ihe Evil One): From the Novel of the Mexican Revolution to ttie Modem Novel." Latin American Literary Review [Pittsburgh, 8(1976): 23-34. 1.4. Snar, Juan. IMbral. Urra Salazar, Marcos. "Sobre la situacion narrativa de lM>ral de Juan Snar." Estudios filologicos [Valdivia, Chile! l6 (1981) : 183-188.

1.5 . Remandez, Macedonio. Papeles del recienvenido. (1929) Englebert, Jo Anne. Ifecedonio Fernandez and the Spanish American New Novel. New York: New York University Press, 1978. Jitrik, Noé. La novela futura de Macedonio Fernandez. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1973. Lindstrcxn, Naomi. Macedonio Fernandez. Ihe University of Nebraska- Lincoln: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 198I. 1.6. Neruda, Pablo. EL habitante y su esperanza. (1926) Anderson Imbert, Enrique. "La prosa vanguardista de Neruda." In Slmposio Pablo Nemda. Actas. South Carolina, U of South Carolina: Las Americas, 1974: 293-99* Concha, Jaime. Neruda (1904-1936). Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1972. Cortinez, Carlos. "Interpretacion de El habitan-te y su esperanza, de Pablo Neruda." Revista iberoamericana 39 (1973): 159-73* Gallardo, Andres. • "Novelas de poe'tas chilenos." Diss. Universidad Catolica, Santiago, I966. — . "Vicente Huidobro y las novelas de poetas." Aisthesis 3 (1968): 104-05* Garcia, Pablo. "Primer analisis de Neruda." Mapocho 22 Inviemo 1970: 25-51* Giordano, Jaime. "Finis Britannia o el poder de abstraccion de Vicen'te Huidobro." Edad de la nausea. Santiago: Ins ti tu to Profesional del Pacifico. 199-203. 250 Guerra-Cunnin^iain, Lucia. "El habitante y su esperanza de Pablo Neruda: primer exponente vanguardista en la novela chilena." Hispanla 60 (3) Sept. 1977:470-77. — . "Panorama critico de la novela chilena (1843-1949)." Diss. U of Kansas, 1975* Loveluck, Juan. "Neruda y la prosa de vanguardia." In Prosa hispanica de vanguardia. Ed. Fernando Burgos. Madrid: Origenes, 1986.

1.7. Novo, Salvador. El j'oven. (1928) 1.8. Owen, Gilberto. Novela ccmo nube. (1928) Pérez Fimat, Gustavo. Idle Fictions. The Hispanic Vanguard Novel, 1926-1934. Durham, N.G.: Duke University Press, 1982.

Rivera-Rodas, Oscar. "El diseurso narrativizado en Owen." In Prosa Mspanica de vanguardia. Ed. Fernando Burgos. Madrid: Origenes, 198b.

1.9. Torres Bodet, Jaime. Margarita de niebla. (1927); La educacion sentimental. (1929) Karsen, Sonja. Jaime Torres Bodet. New York: Twayne, 1971. Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. Idle Fictions. The Hispanic Vanguard Novel, 1926-1934. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982. 1.10. Vela, Arqueles. El café de nadie. (1926) Gonzalez, Beatrlz, "El cafe de nadie y la narrativa del estridentismo." Tfexto critico [91000 Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico] 12 (1986): 49-64. Picon Garfield, Evelyn and Ivan A. Schulman. "La estética extraVASANIE de la InNegAusencia o la modemidad de Arqueles Vela." Escritura: Revista de teoria y critica literarias [Caracas I066-A, Venezuel^ 4(8) July-Dee. 1979: 259-267. 2. Original Editions of Avant-Garde Prose of Poets and Complete Works (In Chronological Order) 2.1. Vicente Huidobro Mlo Cid Campeador. Hazana. Madrid: Compania Iberoamericana de Publlcaciones, 1929. Cagliostro (Novela-Fjlm). Santiago : Editorial Zig-Zag, 1934. 251 La proxlma. Hlstorla que paso en poco tlempo mas. Santiago : Bdlclones VJalton, 1934. Papa o el dlario de Alicia Mir. Santiago: Bdiciones Walton, 1934. 1res novelas ejengilares. En colaboraciôn con Hans Arp. Santiago: Editorial Zig-Zag, 1935. Satiro; o El poder de las palabras. Santiago: Zig-Zag, 1939. Obras complétas. Ed. Hugo Montes. Santiago : Editorial Andres Bello, Ï97E: 2.2. César Vallejo Escalas melografiadas. Lima: Talleres Hpogrâficos de la Penltenciaria, 1923. Pabla salvaje. Lima: La Novela Peruana, 1923. Hacia el reino de los Sciris. 1924-1927. Obras complétas. Barcelona, Editorial Laia, 1976. 3. Important General Studies About Authors and Iheir (Principally Poetic) Production 3.1. Vicente Huidobro Balakian, Anna. "A Triptych of Modernism: Reverdy, Huidobro and Ball." ffodemism: Challenges and Perspectives. Ed. Monique Chefdor, et al. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1986. Bary, David. Huidobro o la vocacion poetica. Granada: Universidad de Granada, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientlficas, 1963. Caracciolo Trejo, E. La poesia de Vicente Huidobro y la Vanguardia. Madrid: Gredos, 1974. Costa, René de. Vicente Huidobro: The Careers of a Poet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954. — . "Huidobro en el mas alia de la Vanguardia: Paris (1920-1925)-" Revista chilena de literatura 20 (1982): 5-25- Goic, Cedomil. La poesia de Vicente Huidobro. Santiago: Ediciones de la Universidad de Chile, 19567 Holmes, Henry Alfred. Vicente Huidobro and Creationism. New York: Columbia University, Publications of the Institute of French Studies, 1934. 252 Pizarro, Ana. "Sobre la vanguardia en America Latina." Revista de critica literaria latinoamericana 8 (1982) : 109-121. Wood, Cecil G. Ihe Creacionismo of Vicente Huidobro. Fredericton, New Brunswick: York Press, 1978. Yudice, George. Vicente Huidobro y la motivacion del lenguaje. Buenos Aires: Galema, 1978. Yurkievich, Saul. Fundadores de la nueva poesia latinoamericana: Huidobro, Vallejo, Borges, Neruda y Paz. Barcelona: Seix Barrai Bditores, 1971. 3.2. César Vallejo Arevalo, Guillermo Alberto. Vallejo: poesia en la historia. Colombia: Carlos Valencia Editores, 1977. Espejo Asturrizaga, Juan. César Vallejo. Itinerario del hombre 1892-1923. Lima: Editorial Juan Mejia Baca, 1965• Flores, Angel. César Vallejo. Slntesis biografica, bibliografla e Indice de poemas. Mexico: Premia, 1982. Franco, Jean. César Vallejo. The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1976. Monguio, Luis. "César Vallejo: vida y obra." Revista Hispanica Modema 16 (1950): 1-98. Yurkievich, Saul. Fundadores de la nueva poesia latinoamericana: Huidobro, Vallejo, Borges, Neruda y Paz. Barcelona: Seix Barrai Editores, 1971. 4. Critical Studies of the Avant-Garde Prose of Huidobro and Vallejo 4.1. Vicente Huidobro Alegria, Fernando. "Tres inmensas novelas: La parodia cono antiestructura." Revista Iberoamericana 106-107 (1979) : 301- 307. Costa, René de. "El cubismo literario y la novela filmica: Cagliostro de Vicente Huidobro." Revista de critica literaria latinoamericana 6 (1977): 67-79 . "Huidobro: From Film to the Filmic Novel." Review 29 May- Aug. 1981:13-20. 253 — . Vicente Huidobro: Ihe Careers of a Poet. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. [Chapter VII, "Novel and Pllm'^ Forster, Pferlin H. "ELementos de innovacion en la narrativa de Vicente Huidobro: Tres inmensas novelas.” Prosa hispanica de vanguardia. Ed. Fernando Burgos. Madrid: Origsnes, 1986. Gallardo, Andres. "Novelas de poetas chilenos." Diss. Universidad Catolica, Santiago, 1966. — . "Vicente Huidobro y las novelas de poetas." Aisthesis 3 (1968): 104-05. Garfield, Evelyn Picon. "Tradicion y ruptura: Modemidad en 1res novelas ejemplares de Vicente Huidobro y Hans Arp." Hispanic Review 51(3) Summer 1983: 282-301. Garganigo, John. "Sobre Satiro, o el poder de las palabras." Revista Iberoamericana lOb-107 (1979) : 315-323» Guerra-Cunnin^am, Lucia. "Panorama critico de la novela chilena (1843-1949)." Diss. Ü of Kansas, 1975» Kason, Nancy M. "La proxima: hacia una teoria de la novela creacionista." Prosa hispanica de vanguardia. Ed. Fernando Burgos. Madrid: Origenes, 1986. Luvecce Massera, Maria. "La prosa creacionista de Vicente Huidobro." Atenea 127 (374) enero^narzo 1957: 69-96. — . "La prosa de Vicente Huidobro." Diss. Univ. de Concepcion, 1954. Picard, Hans Rudolf. "La reinterpretacion de un tema medieval: M o Cid Campeador (1928) de Vicente Huidobro o la identificacion con un mi to." Actas de VII Congreso de la Asociacion Intemacional de Hispanistas. Ed. Jose Amor y Vazquez, et al. Madrid: Istmo, 198b. 455-59. Pizarro, Ana. "Sobre la vanguardia en America latina. Vicente Huidobro." Revista de critica literaria latinoamericana, 8 (15): 109-21. [peals with Adan, Altazor and M o Cid Campeador Rivero Potter, Alicia. "La estetica mallarmeana canparada con la teoria y practica de la novela en Gomez de la Sema, Huidobro y Sarduy." Diss. Brown Ü, 1983» Rojas-Pina, Benjamin. "La hazana de M o Cid Campeador (1929) : Un modo de nueva novela en V.H." Atenea 445 (1982): 201-17» 254 . "La prosa narrativa de Vicente Huidobro." Diss. Univ. of Minnesota, 198O. Sepulveda, German. "Antecedentes hispano-franceses de la Hazana de mlo Cid Campeador de Vicente Huidobro." Estudios en honor de Rodolfo Oroz. Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1985- 299-315- Williams, Raymond. "Lectura de Mlo Cid Campeador." Revista Iberoamericana 106-107 (1979): 309-314. 4.2. César Vallejo Barrera, Trinidad. "Escalas melografiadas o la lucidez Vallejiana." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 451-455 (1988) : 317-28. Cabeza-Ollas, Emilio. "Prosa creativa y prosa critica de César Vallejo." Diss. New York U, 1973- Puentes, Victor. "La literatura proletaria de Vallejo." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 451-455 (1988): 401-13. Lôpez Alonso, Prancisco J. "El tungsteno. El arte y la revoluciôn." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 451-455 (1988): 415-22. Mattalla, Sonia. "Escalas melograf iadas : Vallejo y el vanguar disno." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 451-455 (1988) : 329-343- Meneses, Carlos. "La narrativa de César Vallejo." Camp de l'Arpa: Revista de la literatura 30 (1976): 35-44. Neale-Silva, Eduardo. "La angustia del escritor, segûn César Vallejo." Homenaje a Luis Alberto Sanchez. Madrid: Insula, 1983: 38ÿ ^ T O — . " ’Mjro este' de César Vallejo." Thesaurus 26 (1971): 534-50. — . " 'Muro occidental' : miniestampa de César Vallejo." Otros mundos, otros fuegos. Ed. Donald Yates. Pittsburg: K and S Enterprises, 1973: 4l8ff. Sainz de Medrano, Luis. "César Vallejo y el indigenisno." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 456-459 (1988): 739-49 - Villanes Cairo, Carlos. "El indigenismo en Vallejo." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 456-459 (1988): 751-60. Zavaleta, Carlos E. "La prosa de César Vallejo." Cuademos Hispanoamericanos 456-459 (1988): 981-90. 255 5* Studies on tiie Avant-Garde Balakian, Anna. Surrealism. The Road to the Absolute. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Bajarlla, Juan Jacobo. "Del modemisno al vanguardismo." Atenea 288 June 1949: 444-454. Burger, Peter. "Bieory of the Avant-Garde. Trans. Michael Shaw. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Burgos, Pemando, ed. Prosa hispanica de vanguardia. Madrid: Origenes, 1986. Calinescu, Mtei. Faces of Modernity: Avantgarde, Decadence, Kitsch. Blocxnington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Cano Ballesta, Juan. Literatura y tecnologîa. Las letras espanolas ante la revolucicn industrial (1900-1933). Madrid: Origenes, 1931: Corvalan, Octavio. Modemismo y Vanguardia. Coordinadas de la literatura hispanoamericana del siglo XX. New York: Las Americas, 19b7. — . El postmodemiano. La literatura hispanoamericana entre dos guerras mundiales: New York: Las Americas, 1961. Correa Camiroaga, José. "La vanguardia y la literatura latinoamericana." Acta Litteraria Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 17 (1975): 55-70. Enzensberger, Hans I'dagnus. "The Aporias of the Avant-Garde." In Issues in Contemporary Literary Criticism. B3. Gregory T. Polleta. Trans. John Simon. Boston: Little Brown, 1973. Fernandez Retamar, Roberto. "Sobre la vanguardia en la literatura." Para una teoria de la literatura hispanoamericana y otras aproximaciones. Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1975: 107-110. Forster, Merlin. "Latin American Vanguardiano: Chronology and Terminology." In Iferlin H. Forster, ed.. Tradition and Renewal. Essays on Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature and Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975: 12-50. Franco, Jean. The Modem Culture of Latin America. New York: Praeger, 1967. Langowski, Gerald J. El surrealiano en la ficcion hispanoamericana. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1982. 256 Micheli, Mario dl. Le avanguardle artistiche del Novecento. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1SÎ5FI Pérez ■Pirmat, Gustavo. Idle Fictions. The Hispanic Vanguard Novel, 1926-1934. Durham, N.G.: Duke University Press, 1982. Poggioli, Renato. The Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. Torre, Guillermo de. Historia de las literatures de vanguardia. Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1965. Yurkievich, Saul. Fundadores de la nueva poesia latinoamericana: Huidobro, Borges, Neruda y Paz. Barcelona: Seix Barrai Editores, 1971. 6. On Modemismo Castillo, Homero. Estudios crlticos sobre el modemiano. Madrid: Gredos, 1968- Jitrik, Noé. Las contradicciones del modemiano: productlvidad poetica y situacion sociologica. Mexico: El Colegio de l'îexico, 1978: Marinello, Juan. Sobre el modemismo: polanica y definicion. Mexico : UNAM, 1959* Pacheco, José Snilio, ed. "Introduccion." Antologla del modemismo 1884-1921. Ed. Pacheco. Mexico: UNAM, 197O. Perus, Françoise. Literatura y sociedad en América Latina. Mexico: SiglbVeintiuno, 1976. Rama, Angel. Ruben Dario y el modemismo: circunstancia socioeconcmica de un arte americano. Caracas: Ediciones de la Biblioteca Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1970.

7. Literary Histories Alegria, Fernando. Historia de la novela hispanoamericana. Mexico: Ediciones de Andrea, 1974. Brushwood, John S. "Die Spanish Anerican Novel: A Twentieth-Century Survey. Austin: Ihe University of Itexas Press, 1975. Burgos, Fernando. La novela modema hispanoamericana. Madrid: Editorial Origenes, 1985. Cano Ballesta, Juan. Literatura y tecnologia. Las letras espanolas ante la revolucicn Industrial (1900-1933). Madrid: Origenes, I98T:------257 Castro Arenas. Mario, La novela peruana y la evoluclon social. Lima: Ediciones Cultura y Libertad, 1964. Goîc, Cedomll. Hlstorla de la novela hispanoamericana. Valparaiso: Ediciones Universitarias, 1972. . La novela chilena. Los mitos degradados. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1976. Guerra-Cunnin^am, Lucla. "Panorama critico de la novela chilena (1843-1949)." Diss. ü of Kansas, 1975- Langowski, Gerald J. El surrealismo en la ficcion hispanoamericana. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1982. Pérez ■Pirmat, Gustavo. Idle Pictions. Ihe Hispanic Vanguard Novel, I926-I934. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982. Perus, Françoise. Historia y critica literaria: el realismo social y la crisis de d^inacion oiigârquîcâl Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1982. Rama, Angel. La novela en America Latim. Panoramas 1920-1980. Veracruz : Pundacion Angel Rama, 1986. Schwartz, Kessel. A New History of Spanish American Fiction. Coral Gables, Florida: Universil^ of Miami Press, 1972. 8. Socio-History Bagu, Sergio. Economia de la sociedad colonial. Buenos Aires: Libreria "El Ateneo" Editorial, 1949. . Estructura social de la colonia. Buenos Aires: Libreria "El Ateneo" Editorial, 1952. Cueva, Agustin. El desarrollo del capitaliano en America Latina, îfexico: Siglo Veintiuno Edi tores, 1982. Cardoso, Pemando Henrique. "Associated-Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications." Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies, and Future. Ed. Alfred Stepan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. Furtado, Celso. Econcxnic Developnent of Latin Merica. 2nd ed. Trans. Suzette Macedo. Ca^ridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Halperin^Don^ai, Tulio. Historia contemporanea de America Latina. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1972. 258 Kaplan, Marcos. ~Pomacl6n del estado nacional en America Latina. Bdiciones IMiversitarias: Santiago de Chile, 1969. Keen, Benjamin and Mark Wasserman. A Short History of Latin America. 2nd ed. Boston: Houston Mifflin, 1984. Mannheim, Karl. Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction. Studies in Modem Social Structure. New York: Ear court. Brace and Company, 1940. Mariategui, José Carlos. "Siete ensayos de interpretacion de la realidad peruana." Vol. 2 of Obras coapletas. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1978. Pike, Fredrick B. The Modem History of Peru. New York: Praeger, 1967. Perus, Françoise. Literatura y sociedad en America Latina. Mexico: Si&Lo Veintiuno tmuores, iy/5. Skidmore, Thomas E. and Peter H. Smith. Modem Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Stein, Barbara H. and Stanley J. Stein. The Colonial Heritage of Latin America. Essays on Econcxnic Dependence in Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Veliz, Claudio. The Centralist Tradition of Latin America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. 9. Methodology Althusser, Louis, ed. Reading Capital. T?rans. Ben Brewster. New York: Pantheon Bocks, 1970. Barthes, Roland. "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." In Image, Music, Ttext. Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977 Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976. Forster, E.M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1954. Goldmann, Lucien. Lukacs and Heidegger: Tfowards a New Philosophy. Trans. William Q. Boelhower. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. 259 . Pour une Sociologie du Rcman. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. Hauser, Arnold. Historia social del arte. 4tb éd. Trans. A. Tovar and P.P. Varas-Reyes. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1967* Jameson, Predrlc. Marxism and Form: IVentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. . The Political Unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983: Kay ser, Wolfgang. Entstehung and Krisis des Modemen Ronans. Stuttgart : J.B. Metzlerische Verlags Buchhandlung, n.d. Langowski, Gerald J. "Hacia un criterio del surrealismo en la novela hispanoamericana." In XVII Congreso del Institute Intemacional de Literatura Iberoamericana. 2 vols. Madrid, Ediciones Cultura Hispanica, 1968: 2:933-939. Lubbock, Percy. The Craft of Fiction. New York: J. Cape, 1922. Lukacs, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1971. . n marxismo e la critica letteraria. Trans. Cesare Cases. Torino: Klnaudi, 1964. . Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle. Trans. John and Necke Mander. New York: Harper and Row, 19647 . The Theory of the Novel. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1975. . Writer and Critic and Other Essays. Ed and trans. Arthur D. Kuhn. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970. Macherey, Pierre. A Theory of Literary Production. Trans. Geoffrey Wall. London: Rutledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. Ortega y Gasset, José. Meditaciones del Quijote. Madrid: Revista del Occidente, 1963. . La deshumanizacion del arte y otros ensayos esteticos. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1964. Rama, Angel. Transculturacion narrativa en America Latina. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1982. Spencer, Sharon. Space, Time and Structure in the Modem Novel. New York: New York University Press, 1971.