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Discourse and ideological contradiction: Structure and history in Ignacio AgustPs “La ceniza fue drbol”

Mate-Kodjo, Samuel-Edwin Mate, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1992

UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Discourse and Ideological Contradiction:

Structure and History in Ignacio Agusti's

"La ceniza fue Arbol".

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in The Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Samuel Edwin Mate Mate-Kodjo

The Ohio State University

1992

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Professor Stephen Summerhill

Professor Salvador Garcia

Professor Samuel Amell Adviser Department of

Spanish & Portuguese DISCURSIVE AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTRADICTION: STRUCTURE AND

HISTORY IN IGNACIO AGUSTI'S LA CENIZA FUE ARBQL. Copyright by

Sanuel Edwin Mate Mate-Kodjo

1992 To Arnold Opata Mate-Kodjo and

Beatrice Anorkor Lartey

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I express sincere appreciation to Dr. Stephen

Summerhill for his guidance through what has been a rather trying time. Thanks go to the other members of my

Dissertation Committee Dr. Salvador Garcia and Dr. Samuel

Amell for their support and enoouragement. Likewise sinoere gratitude to the entire Faoulty and Staff of the former Department of Romance Languages and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Special thanks to Dr. Josaphat

Kubayanda and his family for softening the jagged edges of distance. Deepest appreciation to 'la quinta de Logon,

Andrew, Paschal and Christian. To my family and friends I say no. and thank you.

iii VITA

September 27, 1955 ...... Born - Osu - Accra

1979 ...... B.A. (Hons) Legon

1984 ...... Post Grad Diploma in

International Studies

Hadrid

1985 ...... Licenciatura en

Filologia HispAnica

Madrid

1989 ...... ABD The Ohio State

University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major field: Spanish and Portuguese.

Studies in Spanish Language and Literature with

specialization in 19th and 20th century Literatures.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

VITA ...... iv

Chapter Page

I ...... Introduction. Text and Ideology: The 1

Historical novel and "La ceniza fue Arbol"

II ..... Contrastive Definitions of the Ideal: Mariona 52

Rebull and El viudQ itius-

III .... Desiderio and El 19 .iulio: The definition of 161

the other.

IV ..... Guerra civil or tying up the ends 281

V ...... Conclusion 331

BIBLIOGRAPHY 349 Chapter I

Introduction. Text and Ideology: The Historical Hovel and

"La ceniza fue &rbol"

Genres are essentially literary institutions, or

social contracts between a writer and a specific

public, whose function is to specify the proper

use of a particular social artefact. The speech

acts of daily life are themselves marked with

indications and signals (intonation, gestuality,

contextual deictics and pragmatics) which ensure

their appropiate reception1.

Fiction is defined by its pragmatic structure,

and in turn, this structure is a necessary part

of the interpretation of fiction2 .

Genre is an important consideration for both the aesthetic and historical understanding of texts as part of a metatextual continuum in which the text participates and finds its legitimacy and practicability. The fact of

1 2 ideological motivation is the thesis of Gyorgy Lukacs' The

Historical Novel (1962). According to LukAcs, the historical novel and, in fact, the realist novel of the nineteenth century are historical in that they are representative malgrA soi. LukAcs treats the text as a symptom or signifier that signals the stages of historical societies. Other authors, for example Herbert S.

Lindenberger (1975), point out that historical writing is not generic because it cannot in any way be linked to formal characteristics. In our consideration, beyond the fact of its symptomatic nature, any novel that defines itself as historical does so not only in content but also in intention. It is this intentionality that conditions the structuring of the novel. Therefore while recognizing the argument that the qualities that make a novel historical are thematic as opposed to formal, we shall argue later that the main characteristic of historical fiction is its overt ideological project. And this political intention invests the text with formal elements that can be traced and analyzed. The historical novel is thus an ideologically motivated construct in both literary and political terms. Placing "La ceniza fue arbol" in its generic and social context can assist the reader in 3 understanding how the series works. In this chapter, we shall offer a brief exposition of the historical novel to show how it served an eminently ideological role in the nineteenth century. This will be followed by a brief survey of the historical genre in Spain with particular emphasis on the Galdosian "Episodio nacional". We will then touch on the overall goals of Ignacio Agusti's "La ceniza fue Arbol" and end with a description of the historical novel as an 'authoritative fiction'. This last point is important because it shows how the need for univocality subverts itself in texts that emphasize doctrinal intentions. Susan Suleiman (1983) develops a series of formal criteria for identifying authoritarian fictions and how they tend to subvert their own intentions by their insistence on the authority of their version of history.

History has always been present as part of the practice of literature but the historical novel had to wait until the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries for its classical development.

Associated with the great political changes of the period, the genre emerges from the upheavals of the French revolution, the Napoleonic wars and the wars of national 4 liberation. This new concern for national history within the arts was an important part of the recuperation of national conscience as part of the struggle against French hegemony. The difference between this new literary form and earlier incorporations of historical material into novels was in the understanding of history as a process and as a concrete precondition for the present3 .

The new attitude towards history at the turn of the nineteenth century took two basic forms within the ideological and political conflicts of the period between conservatives and liberals. On one hand, history was used as a basis for justifying an ideology opposing change.

Such an approach advocated a return to the pre-revolutionary political and social systems, and was practised especially by aristocratic legitimists who found justification in history for their 'restoration' and conservation of a 'glorious' past presented as an example for present and future emulation. On the other hand, post-revolutionary liberals were also resorting to history in order to create texts that would prove the historical necessity of their notion of 'progress'. In all instances, history was invoked pragmatically as legitimiser of political programs. No less importantly, history was 5 conceived as holding the cypher for the explanation of contemporary political and social experience.

It is this climate of change and flux, under the particular circumstance of an insular British culture already well advanced in the industrial and social changes that were to alter the rest of Europe that the novel of

Sir. Walter Scott emerged. He was the first major exponent of the historical novel, and he was influenced by the historical “accident' of England's special situation. For example, the novel of Walter Scott is characterized by a lack of exalted sentiment, attention to historical detail and an interest in portraying the panorama of the whole of the period involved in the novel. According to Luk&cs this attention to detail was due to the fact that Scott did not feel obliged to make his characters live out contemporary conflict (1962, 33). Sir Walter Scott is thus able to create a non-inflammatory depiction of the crises of

English history although others in the period, in general terms, did not always share the same fortune. Luk&cs states that not even this Scottian political “neutrality' is devoid of ideological intentions. According to this, ideological intention is even here traceable in the very abhorence of violent social upheaval. By means of his novel, Scott actually promotes the English version of the bourgeois ideal of economic and political progress based on evolutionary processes as opposed to revolutionary ones.

One could also read in the profile of some of his heroes a reaffirmation of England's Saxon heritage. The Scottian historical novel was thus also a reification of the history of England. In this sense, Scott's "middle of the road" heroes are personifications of the bourgeois ideal. The countries of continental Europe did not enjoy the same relative political peace. The differing political processes and programs of the nineteenth century, the restoration of the monarchy and the consolidation of aristocratic conservative regimes frequently led to political and ideological goals that conditioned many aspects of texts. Many of Scott's emulators gave the genre new impetus by concentrating descriptive power on

'archeologically' correct renditions of the people and customs as well as the events of the past which they narrated. The novel thus also concerned itself with historical truth.

In Luk&cs' decription of the historical novel, the genre is not only a narrative form but also, and perhaps more importantly, an attitude or awareness by the author/narrator of a continuum in which the events of the past play an important role in the understanding of the present. Harry Shaw states in his The Forms of Historical

Fiction:

Historical novelists whose works center on

history are usually not content to give a

panoramic view of an age. They wish to

understand, evaluate, and sometimes to rebel

against or accommodate themselves to what they

have presented. They are faced in other words

with the problem of giving not only shape but

meaning to history (1983, 101).

Even when an author does not explicitly wish to endorse a particular interpretation of history, he or she makes choices as to what shall be counted as historical fact and what shall not. The very fact of writing a history, while being a way of concretizing and preserving past events for posterity is also, and perhaps more probably, a way of forgetting because the events and the relationships established between them are necessarily a rationalization after the fact. Dominant discourse ignores and 8 marginalizes all other social discourses but the selective reification in itself cannot change the shape of the event itself as a happening, only its textualization for posterity.

In Spain, history as an important source of literary and ideological material became important in drama and theatrical productions during the war of independence. The first historical novels were translations of Scott and his

French emulators4 . Once the Scottian novel was cultivated it was used as a vehicle to propound, support and legitimize political behaviors. For our purposes, the most important antecedent for "La ceniza fue drbol" came much later, the Galdosian 'Episodio nacional'. Galdbs incorporated the formal aspects of the Scottian novel as well as the circumstancial imperatives of the period in which he wrote. His interest was not in the remote but rather the recent past. Galdos intended his historical novels to show the dominant patterns of conflict in Spanish political life.

The "Episodio nacional" has its historical antecedent in the romantic historical novel. They both share interest in history and also interest in the realistic recreation of the past. There are, nevertheless, important differences that should not be forgotten. These exist at the level of the treatment of the plot, the protagonist, the intra-novelistic world and the special relationship between the "Episodio" and history. According to Joaquin

Casalduero:

Ni por el contenido emotivo y sentimental ni por

las intenciones es posible confundir los

episodios con la novela histdrica. Esta se siente

atraido por el pasado, es la nostalgia de los

tiempos que fueron, la afiorante vivencia del

pasado lo que la impulsa. Los episodios por el

contrario, se refieren al presente, tratan el

pasado como una causa, como una explicacidn, como

una raiz de la epoca que est£ viviendo el autor

el cual quiere comprender lo que est£ sucediendo

y espera que sus compatriotas lo comprendan con

<§1°.

Each and every novel is conditioned or even determined by the society in which it flourishes either as a validation or a negative reaction. That is, each literary work provides the possibility of reading in it the 10

ideological assumptions of its society. As Casalduero puts it, the motor and the incentive of the "Episodio" is to be found in the project to interpret the past as a precondition for the present. The way historical events are incorporated into the "Episodio" varies as is demonstrated by the commentaries of JosA F, Montesinos and

Frederico Carlos SAinz de Robles. According to Montesinos:

Es comprobable que la historia entra en los

"Episodios" con sorprendente parsimonia y que en

todos predomina lo novelesco, aunque lo hist6rico

sea esencialisimo, por lo menos en algunos de

ellos (1968, 85).

In some of the novels of the series the emphasis is not on the fact of history itself but hew individuals experienced it. Other novels are fully dedicated to the individual analysis of the event in itself and history thus plays a more important role as this quote from SAinz de Robles corroborates:

En ciertos episodios -por ejemplo, Zaragoza- la

materia histdrica se desborda de tal modo, que 11

anula la accion privada, al paso, que en otros

-por ejemplo Cadiz- . domina la accidn novelesca,

quedando la historia reducida a contadas

anAcdotas8 .

In Agusti, there is also a free interplay of fact and fiction, history and novel in the meaning of the individual

"Episodio". In "La ceniza fue Arbol", there is a proportionally higher history content from the first novel,

Mariona Rebull to the last, Guerra .civil. In

Agusti,however, this obeys imperatives other than his own investigation of the effects of momentous events on private lives. Changing focus, in this case, is due primarily to the nature of the events narrated and the pressures of the time of publication.

The major focus in the Galdosian "Episodio" is not on the plot or individual heroism but on the analysis and comprehension of collective historical experience. A series of archetypal and individual life experiences become representative of the collective experiences of Spanish history of the period. In what is basically a proselytization of bourgeois progress, Galdds' sympathy initially lies with the liberal cause. The initial 12

"Episodios" place the blame for the political chaos of the

first half of the nineteenth century on the conservatives

and the monarchists. These "Episodios" espouse social progress identified with political reform in the liberal

tradition of representative democracy. This position

changes in later novels as they reflect Gald6s' disappointment with the political process and classes of

Spain.

The structural scheme of the 'Episodio' follows the

imperatives of the totalizing vision of history as a process in which the present and the future are nothing more than consequences of past action and happening. The

organization of the series obeys chronological necessity but it also responds to other imperatives within the

totalizing coordinates of the text of the series. Linear

chronology supposes history as a concatenation of causal

relations. Within individual texts, narrative elements are

organized according to the same structural and thematic needs. The creation of the characters of the novels is

also posited on the doctrinal needs of Galdos' total image

of the history of Spain. These purely ideological needs

are, however, not divorced from other imperatives of

chronological, historical and narrative verisimilitude. 13

The way characters relate to one another in individual

texts and their presence in various texts of the series allow them to function as an element of textual cohesion

and continuity.

The so called Generation of 1898 were acutely

interested in the history of Spain. They thought that they could find the reasons for the political and economic decline of their country in its political and social history. Unamuno, Baroja and Valle Incl&n all cultivated the historical novel and imbued it with their own aesthetic as well as political personality. In their writing the pragmatic and ideological nature of the genre is not lost.

The ideological vision of history as the exclusive preserve of the bourgeois class is shared by all these writers though they materialize this in different ways.

Unamuno's Paz en la tfuerra (1897) is the closest in structural terms to Agusti's rendition of the traditional

"Episodio". In this novel, Unamuno speaks of his native

Bilbao in the same loving terms that Agusti uses for

Barcelona. Unamuno's civil war (1874) is far from a glorious crusade or restoration. His main interest is the

instrumentalization of the war as a metaphor not only for the political failures of the system but also as a symbolic 14

depiction of the very process of human life. The text is therefore interspersed with abstract philosophical discussions on human existence and the place of violent conflict in human destiny. In the end, Unamuno's hero dies fighting not because he was convinced of the exalted nature of the war he is engaged in but rather because he is caught in a web from which he is unable or unwilling to free himself. He in fact dies convinced of the futility of human or individual desire in history. Ideologically Paz en la guerra is an illustration of the dilema of the

Generation of 1898. They had lost faith in the old patterns of bourgeois thought but are unable to engage themselves creatively with other social forces or presences to create a new schema of national history.

Valle Incl&n's Ruedo ibSrico published in the twenties is a clearer illustration of political positions. This series comprising three titles, La corte de los milagros

(1927), Viva mi duefio (1928), Baza de esoadas (1932), speaks to the problem of Spain by analyzing the source of the political and economic loss of opportunity identified with the various governments of the restoration of 1875.

In his case, the historical novel is a vehicle in the attempt to prove that cynical and corrupt public officials 15

and an ineffective and licentious Queen were the culprits for all the processes that led to the debacle of 1898. It was also a pointed criticism of contemporary politics under

Primo de Rivera. Valle also wrote a trilogy about the

Carlist War of 1874 between 1908 and 1910. The three titles are Lo^ cruzados de la causa (1908), El resplandor de la hpguera (1909), Gerifaltes de antaffo (1909). These novels are about the carlist war but Valle celebrates the

Carlist war in reaction to the drab bourgeois cynicism of his time. In most of his writing Valle uses history or myth as a means of rejecting contemporary society and its values. The writing of Valle InclAn and Unamuno borrow from the system established and used by Galdbs. They explain contemporary society by looking at the recent past and history is an instrument for the materialization of their political positions. Another writer of the same generation who also cultivated the historical 'genre' was

Pio Baroja. He too used the Carlist War of 1874 as the background for his Zalacaln el aventurero (1909). This novel was part of a trilogy called "Tierra vasoa". The other titles of the series are La casa de Aizgorri (1900) and El mavorazgo de Labraz (1903). In the case of Baroja, history is just a mere background against which he weaves 16

the plot of an action novel. The intention is not so much to explain history as the creation of exciting adventures.

This is more apparent in Baroja's Memorias de un hombre de aocibn written between 1917 and 1935. The "Memorias" are the life of one of Baroja's relatives, Eugenio de

Avinareta, a liberal conspirator of the first half of the nineteenth century. The wealth of historical information is used to present the life of Eugenio de Avinareta as a long series of adventures, conspiracies and narrow escapes. There is no intention of using his life to illustrate or explain the history of Spain.

Whether committed or not to social and political change, the writers of the Generation of 1898 all expressed their personal vision of history through their historical novels. To Unamuno history, in individual and collectiveterms, was a constant struggle between being and nothingness, in Valle's work it is a degraded and cynical bourgeois present that was object of his rejection. To

Baroja life and indeed history was a series of arbitrary and oftentimes disconnected adventures. What they do have in common and share with both Gald6s and Agusti is a vision of history that favours their own class. In their texts, failure or success in Spanish history is assimilated, in 17

all instances, to success or failure of the bourgeois class. Agusti differs only slightly in that his interpretation of history is limited to the provincial spaces of Barcelona.

The Spain of the period immediately following the

Civil War was characterized by a kind of literature which evaded or ignored the war's significance through what

Soldevila has called the hyperrealism of "tremendismo" and the stylistics of the *garcilasista' movement in poetry

(1980, 33). In this same period, there was, especially in the novel, an impulse to write self-justifying and triumphalistic narratives of the period of the Civil War itself. Novelists like Agustin de FoxA, Garcia Serrano and others wrote vividly of the horrors perpetrated on Spanish society by the "antinatural" and "antinational" forces of

"red" internationalism. It was within these literarycurrents that Ignacio Agusti published the first of what was going to be a series of historical novels set in

Barcelona. The series itself is entitled "La ceniza fue

Arbol" and is composed of five novels Mariona Rebull

(1944), El viudo Rius (1945), Desiderio (1957), 19 de .iulifi

(1965), and Guerra civil (1972). Taken together, these texts incorporate the author's interpretation of the 18

historical process of Spain from the last third of the nineteenth century until the years after the war with emphasis on the 'milieu' of the industrial class in

Barcelona. Azorin states in a commentary he wrote shortly after the novel Mariona Rebull appeared in 1944:

Pesaba en ella ante todo, el tiempo: el tiempo

dividido en dos bpocas, la antigua y la moderna.

Dos bpocas en la historia de Barcelona; una bpoca

no lejana a la nuestra, inmediatamante anterior a

la nuestra, y luego §sta en que vivimos. Pero si

el novelists iba a trazar en su novela una p&gina

de Barcelona, en el pasado, el pasado inmediato,

ipara qub necesitaba parar el presente? Porque

el pasado es una creacibn del presente; no

podemos ver el pasado sino a travbs de lo actual;

vemos ahora, por ejemplo el siglo XIX con arreglo

a nuestra visibn del tiempo en que vivimos; segtin

los dias actuales, asi contemplamos los dias del

siglo XIX 7.

This rather long quote from Azorin's text is illustrative

in two ways. In the first place, it demonstrates Azorin's 19

reading of the novels relationship with history as an explicable process. In the second place, it shows Azorin's own attitude towards the importance of understanding history in diachronic terms. As a signified, to Azorin, it is both narrative and ideology in the sense that the understanding of the past is tempered by the understanding and perception of the present. This conscious or unconscious ideological element influences the way the past is presented and narratively explained.

In spite of the fact that the series does not touch the Civil War directly nor extensively until the last volume, the whole cycle is an instance of what Ferreras has called 'escritura totalizadora', that is, texts governed by a unifying principle which organizes collective history according to an ideological or universal principle®. In this sense Agusti worked in the Galdosian tradition of the "Episodios nacionales" although with a different ideological intention.

The title, "La ceniza fue Arbol", allows the possibility of a very suggestive reading and interpretation. Indirectly, it brings up the old question of *ubi sunt' with all its literary and cultural baggage.

"La ceniza fue Arbol" could also signify the destruction of 20

a previous vitality at several levels of meaning. Gogorza

Fletcher refers to the presence of the imagery which likens

Joaquin Rius, the protagonist of the series, to an oak tree which ends up scarred by his life's experience (1981,

141). This vitalistic interpretation would bear out the reiterative leit motif of the necessity of continuity both of the Rius line and the family business. On the larger national plane the same imagery could apply to Catalonia and Spain.

The series has a circular construction centered around the almost organic relationship between the Rius family and the family textile business. Joaquin and his father, the builders, are followed by a weakening represented by

Desiderio, after whom the family tradition once more finds itself in Carlos whose marriage holds promise for the future of the family business. The personal saga of the

Rius' and, in more ways than one, of the Catalan upper classes could be considered mere pretexts for a discourse aimed at or contrived within the limits and goals of the dominant conservative political and ideological thought of the immediate post-Civil War era. The Rius family can be considered representative of the human resources not only of the Barcelona where their story takes place, nor even 21

only of Catalonia, but also of the whole of conservative

Spain. This is suggested by the authorial commentaries in the last two novels.

"La ceniza fue drbol", then, gains coherence and cohesiveness within the post-war world as a reenactment of the various processes which led up to the Civil War, and at the same time, it is a nostalgic evocation of a golden age of thriving economic activity. The obvious pretension is to explain and illustrate a historical process in which anarchy and lack of control threaten, at a certain moment, both the material and spiritual gains of hard work and self-discipline. The work is imbued with ideological positions at all levels from the purely literary to bourgeois regionalism. Moreover, a close look at these novels also shows that the series forms a closed structure in which the war, as described in Guerra civil, has a very important political function.

What "La ceniza fue &rbol" shows, as a whole, is a static vision of history in which the Civil War constitutes a 'Restoration' couched in the language of the quest. In this version of history, social conflict is limited to the problems which confront Agusti's own class. From this perspective the whole process of the political struggles 22

which culminated in the Civil War are explained as the result of the willful alienation of the bourgeois classes from their historical responsibility. "La ceniza fue

£rbol" is in this light a moral lesson in responsibility and an eulogy to the continuity of the strictly hierarchized and immobile society which the prologue to

Mariona Rebull seems to corroborate. In it, Agusti states:

Dedico "La ceniza fue Arbol" a la memoria de mi

padre Don Luis Agusti Sala. A la memoria de los

padres de mis amigos que ensancharon y

defendieron una ciudad (1944, 7-8).

The intention of Agusti as translated here in the dedication establishes the parameters on which he constructs his version of the history of Barcelona. It is essentially the history of his class, the mercantile and manufacturing oligarchy of Barcelona. In this 'version' of

Spanish history, the sole agent and subject of history is a single social class while others such as the working class are given short shrift. Figuratively, the bourgeoisie

'builds' Barcelona and is called to reconquer and rescue not only its city but also its 'manifest destiny'. Through 23

a two-tier arrangement, the Rius family recuperates its personal fortune on the one hand and the control of

Barcelona and Spain on the other. In this sense the nostalgia evident in the initial novels, Mariona Rebull and

El viudo Rius. explains and illustrates the model of society which has to be reconquered through war.

From the structure and theme of the first novel of the series, Mariona Rebull (1944), one could assume that, far from the first flood of novels and fictionalized histories of the Civil War, more accurately described as propaganda than literature, Mariona Rebull is an escapist voyage to the 'belle 6poque' of Barcelona's modern history. But the saga of the self-made Rius men and their self-abnegation in the pursuit of productivity and wealth has to be read within the historical and ideological possibilities of the post-war period. Within the literary text or any other pertinent discursive practice the socio-political sphere exerts conditioning pressures. It does this by establishing, inculcating and objectifying epistemologies which validate the discourse of the power structures. In the Spain of the immediate post-war this meant all the functional parts of the power structure centered around the military, the church, traditional Carlism, conservative 24

liberalism and the "falange espafiola". These facts notwithstanding, Agusti affirms that his novels are devoid of any political intention, in Ganas de hablar he states:

Creo que m&s que una obra literaria, la gente

juzg6 entonces un acontecimiento de comprension y

de amor. La gente pensd que, por fin, alguien

ajeno a ideologias y banderias, habia comprendido

c6mo 6ramos e intentaba explicarlo con llaneza a

todo el mundo (1974, 157).

The author's own protestations of ideological neutrality are repeated by several critics but a close look at the text itself reveals several ideological and political positions that are not always compatible with one another.

Our reading of the series hopes to discover and illustrate the ways in which these various and varying ideological messages affect the narration by creating gaps in its formulation of its own wholeness.

Mariona Rebull (1944) enjoyed great popular success when it was published. The novel covers the last decades of the nineteenth century and is the story of the struggles of a lower middle class family to rise into the upper 25

middle class through the efforts of its patriarchs.

Joaquin Rius, the first patriarch, is forced to migrate to

America in search of fortune. In Cuba he quickly amasses a respectable capital and returns to Barcelona where he establishes a textile business. Joaquin's son, who shares his father's name, grows into an ambitious young man who as part of the family's new found status marries into an old money family. In spite of Joaquin's affluence he is never at ease in the frivolous world of his wife, Mariona

Rebull. He engrosses himself in his work and effectively distances himself from his wife. Left to her own devices

Mariona soon starts a relationship with her old beau.

Through an irony of 'fortune' Mariona dies in her lover's arms as a consequence of a terrorist bombing of the Liceo of Barcelona.

Through the lives of the protagonists, Ignacio Agusti shows how the events of Spanish history impinge on and affect the life of Barcelona, the growth of industry and the industrial class, and the development of the workers' movement. The interrelationship between history and the lives of his protagonists establishes in Mariona Rebull the parameters of Agusti's depiction of Spanish history and

Barcelona. This novel also establishes the bourgeois class 26

as the subject of Spanish history and the creator of modern

Barcelona. This class is, however, not predicated as a uniform group. Joaquin and a new breed of entrepreneurs are set against the circles of the "old" conservative and almost artesanal burghers of Barcelona on the one hand and against that part of the same society which is more concerned with the enjoyment rather than the production of affluence.

El viudo Rius (1945) continues the history of the Rius family, the upper middle class milieu of Barcelona, the growth of the city and industry and the pressures of the workers' movement in Barcelona. It is the novel of the consolidation of the family fortune. In the same way as in

Mariona Rebull, the antagonism between workers and industrialists ends up in the events of "la semana trAgica" of 1909 during which mobs took to the streets to protest government military recruitment policy. In the violence of the moment, an attempt is made on Joaquin's life. He is, however, saved by the timely action of Arturo Lovet, his closest collaborator, who loses his life. El v iu d o R ius not only deals with social problems, it also looks at the effects of the loss of the colonial markets on industrial production. The loss of the external markets for 27

Catalonian industrial output creates political problems with the central government, with the Catalonian industrialists asking for more protection for Catalonian textiles on the domestic markets. The campaigns in Morrocco also appear in the novel as Joaquin and his collaborators try to beat a workers' strike (during the Semana tr&gica) and meet delivery cuotas for the war effort.

Twelve years passed before Agusti published the third novel of the series, Desiderio (1957). Here narrative attention is concentrated on Desiderio Rius Rebull, the son of Joaquin. The historical period with which the novel deals spans the years of the first world war. We see an affluent Barcelona dedicated to enjoying the fruits of non-belligerance and increased industrial production. This constitutes an exposition of the other half of bourgeois life, that is, not as a hardworking productive class but rather as an affluent society characterized by conspicuous consumption and loose morals. In this novel, the opposition marked out between the world of Joaquin and that of Mariona is underlined in the life style of a Desiderio who does not feel comfortable in the environment where the wealth he so lavishly spends is created. In fact,

Desiderio is more at home in the salons of high society and 28

in the popular night spots of Barcelona. The process of

Joaquin's courtship of Mariona Rebull is reversed. This time it is Desiderio who is the unwilling object of the wiles of Barcelonian matrons in search of a good catch for their daughters. Desiderio fits into this world as comfortably as his mother did when she was alive. The inference is that this opposes him to his father who never felt at ease in the consumption-conscious and unproductive environment of the salons.

El 19 .iulio (1965) refers to the years of the Second

Republic and aptly has as its title the day after Franco's

"pronunciamiento". In this novel, new characters who are going to join in the elaboration of narrative material are introduced and Agusti more clearly links his narrative purpose to the explicit ideology of Franco's Spain. The rift between owners and workers is widened and there is a repetition of the conflicts of "la semana trAgica".

Another Lovet dies defending the property of Joaquin Rius.

La guerra civil (1972) continues the saga of the Rius family and incorporates the events of the time, which were, of course those of the War. In order to give a comprehensive and extensive view of the period, the narration revolves around several centers or protagonists 29

and thus continues the trend of 19 .iulio by incorporating other perspectives into the dynamism of the plot. Contrary to what one might have supposed, this novel does not close with the fall of Barcelona but continues to give an accountof the post war period of reconstruction. Though chronologically the last of the novels, it is nevertheless pivotal in the symbolic model of history created by the whole series. Guerra civil is not just a description of the war nor simply an explanation, but rather a justification and a legitimization of the Civil War as a necessary part of the personal and collective history of

Barcelona and Spain.

Wenceslao Miranda (1982) believes that Guerra civil should be looked at as forming a separate unit from the other novels of the series. According to this critic, the exclusive dedication to the war somehow sets Guerra civil apart from the others. However, it is within reason to insist on the fact that this last novel not only deals with the realities of the war but also, and perhaps more importantly for the series as a whole, it shows the reconstruction, reconstitution, restitution and restoration which the Francoist victory supposes and to which all the earlier novels implicitly pointed. As a novel of the 30

restoration, it completes the cycle which began in Hariona

Re.bull-

The novels of "La ceniza fue Arbol" merit some critical attention because they are exemplary of the ideological tendency of the genre and are significant in their attempt to explain history from a conservative and ultimately non-historical point of view without, however, denying time and process. The contradiction which this implies is present throughout the series and leads to many important questions about the writing of history. For example, Frderic Jameson's description of literature in The

Political Unconscious (1981) as a squaring of circles seems to fit Agusti well and points to the ability of language to obscure or repress dissonant dimensions of reality to fit its purposes.

Although inspired by the war, Agusti's pretensions go beyond providing a mere chronicle of the war. Agusti and his contemporaries wrote at a very difficult time for literature in Spanish history. Writing fell under the

'negative' influence of overt and covert censorship and as a result all writing of the period, in order to survive, became very self conscious as an activity full of pitfalls. Not all writing however took on the same 31

characteristics0 . "La ceniza fue Arbol", can be considered a conscious effort on the part of Agusti not only to document the war but also to insert it within a historical continuum, and thus to explain it as part of a process. Another of his contemporaries who approaches the novel with the same attitude might be Jos6 M*. Gironella whose trilogy of the war tries to construct a cohesive and cogent whole out of the experience of the Civil War.

Agusti however is more ambitious and in the line of

Galdbs, the originator of the genre of the "Episodio nacional", he tries to create a novelistic world in which his contemporaries could understand the historical processes which led up to the war. Starting from a nostalgic evocation of the golden age of Barcelonian industry of the late nineteenth century, he shows how, even in periods of prosperity, the tensions which would later explode in the Civil War were present. If nostalgia is the most clearly visible mood of "La ceniza fue Arbol", Agusti presents an interesting synthesis of Catalonian nationalism and the Castilian vocation of nationalist discourse which is another implicitly contradictory dimension in the series. In an analysis of Agusti's writing in the Spanish language, Soldevila states: 32

Sus relatos, crbnicas y articulos de la guerra se

reunieron luego en un libro, Un siglo de

Catalufia. donde ya aparece el nuevo escritor en

lengua castellana dedicado al empeflo de colaborar

a la restauraci6n de una unidad de destino

nacional, de un centralismo opuesto a todo

regionalismo, identificando al separatismo

catalin, como JosA Antonio, con una "tentativa de

suicidio entre turbios cendales romAnticos",

abrazando a la causa universalista del Imperio

hacia Dios y repudiando el rAgimen democrAtico

como algo esencialmente ajeno al espafSol (1982,

135).

In structure and also in intention Agusti reproduces, in "La ceniza fue Arbol", some of the elements which went into the traditional "Episodio". This in itself qualifies

"La ceniza fue Arbol" to a closer reading to find out if it is as successful in projecting a coherent interpretation of

Spanish history through the saga of industrial Barcelona, and, in the second place, to see whether the discourse maintains a coherent syntax in accordance with Agusti's own 33

version of history.

Another reason for a closer reading of Agusti's historical novels is perhaps the resounding editorial success of the first two novels of the series. In fact

Mariona Rebull set all sorts of records when it came out in

1944. Agusti himself links the success of Mariona Rebull to its evocation of a more prosperous and happy time. He says of the resounding success of the novel:

Mariona Rebull, llegaba, pues, en un momento

dulce en que cualquier piropo a la ciudad seria

bendecido. No se trataba de adoptar el tono

jeremiaco y lacrimoso de los nost&lgicos al uso.

Era tratar a Barcelona como lo que es, explicar

cbmo habia sido: radiante, apasionada, fabril,

g 020sa, pero tambibn sacudida en otros tiempos

por el estruendo de la revoluci6n anarquista.

Creo que, mAs que una obra literaria la gente

juzg6 entonces un acontecimiento de comprensibn y

amor (1974, 157).

For the author himself, there is a perfect connection between the novel and the aspirations of his reading 34

public. Even though this opinion only deals with the first novel of the series, it establishes the fact that a closer

reading of the novels of the series should shed light on

the complex private and public aspirations of the period.

Moreover, the period changes as time passes and we can ask

if the later novels in some way express the concerns of

their time too.

These multiple aspirations or responses help explain

the diverse and sometimes contradictory nature of the messages of the text. The initial paradoxes can be found

in the historical persona the series creates for Barcelona

and its bourgeois classes. In the teleology of the series,

the industrial class of Barcelona plays the role of

exclusive subject of history and its failures as a class

are advanced as the explanation for the crises which

culminate in the war. This attempt to focus on the bourgeois class as the only subject of historical action necessarily falsifies history and, by a strange turn of

events, important players like the anarchists are converted

into instruments of providence.

Bearing in mind the characteristic link between

history and ideological intention which the historical novel exemplifies as a genre, we are going to examine the 35

discourse of "La ceniza fue arbol" to see how it

accomplishes its ends through a study of the plot and the

way it unfolds, while keeping in clear focus the fact that

narrative events have not only a logic of sequential

connection, but also a logic of hierarchy. This, of

course, does not mean that the text will be held up to

comparison with something external to it, but rather

attention will be focused on the examination of the

strategies of its own emplotment as narrative.

Jameson in his The Political Unconscious (1981)

advances the theory of the political unconscious to explain

the self constitution of texts as socially symbolic

signifiers. According to his thesis, there is a hidden

ideological element that the text makes accessible by its very structure thereby permitting one to follow the traces

of the political element in texts. In his opinion,

criticism and the reading of literary texts cannot be

separate from socio-historic experience and still be valid. An important part of this thesis is the concept of

the idelogeme which he defines as 'the smallest

intelligible unit of the essentially antagonistic collective discourses of social classes' (p.76). In his consideration, the text is a forum for various ideologemes 36

which, through their free dialogue, produce the ideological direction of texts. This is the direction that is outlined in Pierre Macherey's Theory of Literary

Production. In this text, Macherey affirmed the necessity of going beyond the surface structures of texts in order to fanthom their meaning. He states:

What begs to be explained in the work is not that

false simplicity which derives from the apparent

unity of its meaning, but the presence of a

relation, or opposition between the elements of

the exposition or levels of the composition,

those disparities that point to a conflict of

meaning (1978, 79).

Jameson sets out the outlines of such a method of reading texts by introducing the concept of metacommentarv. With this concept he tries to resolve some of the problems of an ideological approximation to texts. Within this system, the complexity of the problem of ideological conflict in texts is in itself appropiated as a signifier in the process of understanding the work. The basis is, of course, that meaning is never transparent. Critical 37

enterprise becomes, in his opinion, "a commentary on the very condition of existence of the problem itself". The problem as enunciated is twofold. The text not only has to be read against its history in relation to the history of the critic as a reader but also, against the history of its author and the relationship established between the author and the various narrative perspectives that inhabit the text. It is a reciprocal self reflection and reflexion in which the reader participates in two ways. Firstly as an external observer of how text, author and history interact and secondly, as an active agent reflecting and also interacting with the text. In other words, we have to take into consideration the complexities of the text's appropriation of history and our own appropriation of the text in our history.

What we propose to do is carry out a reading that is genuinely generated by the text on its own terms first as an elaboration of history which it 'consecrates'in its ideological version and secondly as part of an artistic system. This will have as its mainstay a consideration of the dual nature of the signs of the text, as signifiers with extratextual signifieds and, as signifieds in themselves, that is, in the relationships they elaborate 38

among themselves. The historical considerations will provide a background for real meaningful interaction with the text by situating it in context as an elaboration of history. The assumption, for our reading, is that knowledge of the events of the epoque covered by the novels that make up "La ceniza fue Arbol" and the time of publication will, in the first place, provide access to the events narrated themselves and then situate such events as they appear in the text within a larger context of rhetorical and ideological tradition. Reading "La ceniza fue Arbol" in relation to history will thus help to identify the text as an ideological version of history.

The question of what is chosen for representation, and how this representation is done will identify what this version of history is.

The focus of much contemporary criticism is that ideological content, covert or overt, willful or otherwise, can be identified in traceable patterns in the narrative structures of texts. The ideological or political establishes itself as a metatextual given which is concretized in the text. There do exist various formulas for the examination of the structural elements of narrative texts. The area of concentration of attention can vary 39

according to author, subject matter and locus of interest.

The general possibilities of analysis that we are presented with are two, the purely structural and the purely historical or thematic, that is, in literary and historical terms. The premises of most reading permits a combination of formal as well as thematic and historical input in the understanding of texts. As historical novels, the novels of "La ceniza fue Arbol" can be understood for the purposes of this particular analysis as "authoritarian fiction".

Susan Suleiman provides a definition of what she calls "the roman A these" that is useful for the purposes of our reading of Ignacio Agusti. According to Suleiman this kind of fiction is defined as follows:

The roman A these is a didactive narrative genre

which uses formal criteria to persuade of the

validity of its own version of historical reality

(1983, 10).

The definition Susan Suleiman provides isn't remarkable in any new contribution to the understanding of texts with ideological or functional objectives. It does, however, provide the basis for a discussion of formal 40

criteria which identify and charactertize such texts as definable objects of study and analysis. The most immediate structural index which identifies this kind of text is redundancy. which she defines as an excessive insistence on a particular content as a means to restrict meaning and thus reduce ambiguity. She also posits that novels with a thesis propose systems of values identifiable within the text as a certain paradigm of historical action. The third element which Suleiman identifies with authoritative fictions is the presence of a doctrinal intertext, a kind of metanovelistic ideological context and co-text which will provide the reference point for the motivations which determine the contents validated or referred to by the redundancies that signal the presence of the system of values which the text predicates.

These three elements control the way the text is read by the manipulation of the narrative materials and rhetorical devices proper to the genre. In this case, the historical novel has a pretension to be true in history.

Thus, the fictional element and the facts of history are woven together to present history as a process of coherencies. Fact and fiction work in tandem to reinforce the thesis proposed. The choice of material and the use of 41

devices invest the historical novel with an authoritative interpretation of history that legitimizes and justifies itself in its own structural paradigm of history. The discourse of this type of fiction will thus operate in two ways. On the surface representational structures and on the deeper level of process or dynamic, it provides the ideological conditioners or the political dimension of the reading within the text of history.

Redundancy. system of values and ideological metatext are identified separately but they function within the authoritarian text as a closed unit. On the textual level, redundancy or the iteration of certain structures and contents is the most apparent formal characteristic. The reiteration and insistence or persistence of these narrative elements and structures compound the value system of the text by their polarization and limitation of the signifying structures of the text. This polarization in turn is the indication of the metatextual or "urtextual" assumptions behind the formal structures of the text. Of the three characteristics the most readily available to the reader is redundancy and any analysis of a text will be conditioned by the identification of these redundant structures as they occur within the fabric of the text. 42

Suleiman defines redundancies according to the level of discourse where they can be identified. On the level of the story they affect characters, events, contexts, commentary and the actantial role of the characters. At the discursive level, they affect the narrator's link with his implied reader, the implied author's commentaries and his narrative focalization of events and characters.

Redundancies are also present in what Suleiman identifies as the spaces between the levels of discourse and story and affect the same elements of events, characters and context as well as the interpretation and commentary of the same from the action of the story and the implied narrator.

"La ceniza fue Arbol" conforms to the definition of

Susan Suleiman even further in its narrative model.

According to her, the 'roman a these' is characterized by two generic structures, the bildungsroman or narrative structure of apprenticeship, and the confrontational or conflictive narrative, which links the genre to novels of war. The bildungsroman essentially embodies its 'lesson' by exemplifying the life of a protagonist who through the vicissitudes of life goes through a positive learning process. It is the story of transformation in a protagonist who undergoes a series of changes that allow 43

him/her to attain full historical selfhood. "La ceniza fue

Arbol" does not conform fully to this model because the protagonist does not undergo any real change. The focus of narrative energy is not the individual but rather history itself as a process and the city of Barcelona (and Spain in general) as the object of transformations wrought by the very process of history. Due to this, the transformations are embodied in three separate generations of

Barcelonians. The bildungsroman as an eminently didactic narration has as its principal distinguishing feature the relationship it establishes with the reader. The example it presents and the discursive strategies it employs invite the reader to make ethical judgements about characters and actions and they imply a rule of action applicable to its implied readers. The learning experience of the bildungsroman is present in the general complex of the novel. The experience of the Rius family and Barcelona are proposed as examples worthy of historical emulation.

The ambition and work ethic of the Rius men and the proud artesanal and independent laboral traditions which they come from are a symbol of the energy which transforms

Barcelona into an industrial metropolis. At the heart of

"La ceniza fue arbol" then, is a belief in history as a 44

process which depends on certain human qualities in order to be positive. The human values that are proposed in "La ceniza fue Arbol" are not an end in themselves. They gain importance and relevance as necesary means to a desired end. The stakes are not personal but collective.

The only novel in "La ceniza fue Arbol" which conforms to the traditional narrative of confrontation is Guerra civil the last novel of the series, although it is also true that 19 .iulio adopts some of its forms. The element of bildungsroman is, however, present in all the novels.

For example, Carlos Rius' active participation in the Civil

War is part of a learning process, a kind of baptism by fire, a ritual of passage. In spite of this fact, the novels also present a very polarized vision of Barcelona in which conflict is not presented as bodies of men in opposition nor indeed of opposing wills in action but rather as contrastive attitudes to life and work.

Starting with the premise that redundancy, value system and metanarrative doctrinal context are identifiable within the structures and the dynamism of the text, it becomes imperative to analyze the formal components of "La ceniza fue Arbol" in order to discover how they combine systematically, to provide the dynamism that drives the 45

narration to its culmination as a closed architecton and

how they postulate the values of its symbolic system.

What can then be proposed is a description of the way

in which the text is articulated as part of a material or

formal construct and also as part of an ideological whole.

The formal component of the analysis does not aspire to

deal with textual minutiae nor will it aim at any sort of

totalization. Rather, we will foreground, in the critical

text, those elements most identifiabble as macro units of

'meaning' as evidenced in each novel's formal and

structural unity. The volume of material and the nature of

the analysis means that there is a process of selection in

the critical enterprise. The structure of the series in

the first place as a saga and then as a history of

Barcelona conditions the choices of area of interest. The

structure into saga of the oligarchs of Barcelona makes it

imperative to have a closer reading of the characters and generational change as part of the reading of the series.

History in the series is defined in spatial terms. The

city of Barcelona is almost a protagonist in the novels and generational change in the history of Barcelona is

interpreted in spatial terms also. In this case the moral

evaluations of characters is accompanied by an undercurrent 46

of love for the city. In the third place the depiction of

feminine space within a novel which has a clear intention

of glorifying a patriarchal class and past should offer

interesting possibilities of approximation to the problems

of the ideological infrastructure of the text.

The tripartite generational structuring invites an

examination of the three generations of Rius men. In the

series' scheme of history, there is a cycle of generational

degeneration and regeneration. The negative signs of

bourgeois experience are present in all three parts of the

saga but the tripartite construction of the historical

process in the novels invests generational change with deeper historical significance. In ideological terms, the

localization of conflict in the confrontation between bourgeois weaknesses and strength makes the study of the

characters imperative as revealers of the value systems the

text promotes.

Space in the initial novels of the series is an

important illustration of change and at the same time, it

is the basis for the construction of conflict in the plot.

In all the novels, it plays important discursive roles by establishing a criterion for difference within the text's contrastive formulation of difference. The landscape of 47

Barcelona, described in physical socio-economic and moral

terms, is so important that geophysical spaces in the

series can actually be read as a series of different and

differing emplotments of space. The examination of the

spatial element should establish its dual nature in the

ideological version of history. On one hand, this occurs

in purely material terms as representation, and on the

other in "metaphysical" terms as a symbol of historical

continuity.

Feminine space appears initially when in the first novel, Mariona Rebull, masculine virtues are contrasted to feminine values in the protagonists, Joaquin Rius and

Mariona Rebull. The vision of feminine space as

illustrated in the series is however not only patriarchal but also class defined. The reading of feminine space is important in the examination of ideological and structural contradiction in that the non-contiguity of the patriarchal ideal and class interests shows up in inconsistent attitudes toward women within the text.

A practical starting point would be a tripartite division in which the history of the period as epitomized metonymically by the bourgeois classes of Barcelona, is divided into periods following purely chronological 48

patterns. But another plausible division due to the very nature of the plot of Agusti's "History" of Barcelona, is

to use generational subdivisions. That is, we shall deal with Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius. the novels of

Joaquin Rius, in Chapter 2. Then Desiderio and 19 .iu 1 io. the novels of Joaquin's son, Desiderio, will be studied in chapter 3 and, finally Guerra civil, the novel of Carlos

Rius his grandson in chapter 4.

In these chapters we shall study the novels of "La ceniza fue Arbol" individually or in groups as parts of a total and 'unified' iconic whole. We shall seek to show how they function to articulate their version of history collectively and individually. The elements of character, space and feminine space will be analyzed mostly for their ability to demonstrate the doctrinal leanings of the text.

They will be studied as they corroborate and subvert the text's political formulation of history.

In conclusion, the analysis of these component elements of the discourse of the text and an examination of the relationships they maintain among themselves within the text should enable us to study meaningfully the identity of discursive and ideological contradiction within the text of

Agusti's historical novel. This might in turn enable us to 49

discuss the nature of the intertextual relationships between the literary and the sociopolitical spheres and how these might condition not only the content structure of the literary text, but also how, in different ways, the discourse of the text is articulated. 50

RqJL&£-

1. Frederick Jameson, The Political Unconscious:

Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (NY: Cornell

University Press, 1981), 106.

2 . Jon K. Adams, Pragmatics and Fiction (Amsterdam

(PN): John Adams Publishing, 1985), 2.

3 . Gyorgy LukAcs, The Historical novel Translated from German by Hanna and Stanley Mitchel (London: Merlin

Press,1962). LukAcs' explanation covers what we may call the classical realist novel of the nineteenth century.

4 . More recent research however establishes that the earliest historical novels written by Spanish writers was a consequence of the direct influence of Scott. Salvador

Garcia Castaneda 1991 in his treatment of Valentin de

Llanos establishes the fact that Spanish writers in England wrote and published historical novels in England and Spain before the great eclosion of Spanish romanticism that is generally attributed to indirect Scottian influence through french writers. 51

B . Joaquin Casalduero, "Historia y novela" CHA. 250, 36.

This is also the opinion of Antonio Regalado Garcia in

Benito Perez Gald6s v la novela histdrica (Madrid : Insula,

1966), 13.

8 . Frederico Carlos S&inz de Robles in his

introduction to Benito Perez Galdds, Qbras Completas

(Madrid: Aguilar, 1950), 149.

7 . Azorin's text is given in the form reproduced by

Ignacio Agusti in Ganas de Hablar (Barcelona: Planeta,

1974), 160.

8 . Ignacio Ferreras, "La prosa del siglo XIX" in Diez

Borque, J-M (ed.) Historia de la literatura espaflola III siglos XVIII/XIX. (Madrid: Taurus, 1982), 403-4. Ferreras uses this definition to differentiate between the realist novel and what he terms the dualist novel of pre 1868.

e . Jose Corrales Egea, La novela espaflola actual

(Madrid, 1971), Juan-Luis Alborg, Hora actual de la novela espaftola (Madrid, 1958) and Sobejano among others consider

Agusti to belong esthetically to the nineteenth century.

They think he was not open to any of the new writing styles of post-war Spain. Antonio Iglesias Laguna in Treinta afios da navala aapaftola 193B-196B (Madrid, 1968) however disagrees. He believes that Agusti , like the others, was indeed receptive to the new ways of writing. Contrastive definitions of the ideal: Mariona Rebull and

El viudo Rius.

Introduction.

This chapter will be dedicated to the study of Mariona

Rebull (1944) and El viudo Rius (1945) as units within a

larger pattern of meaning identified in the above title,

"contrastive definitions of the ideal". At a primary

level, the two novels stand on their own as parts of the

family saga of 'Tejidos Joaquin Rius'. In the life of

Joaquin Rius, the epoque marked by Mariona Rebull is the period of his establishment as an industrial and social

'persona' in Barcelona. The subtitle, 'The struggle for acceptance' signals this inaugural stage in the periplus of the Rius family fortunes. From another point of view,

Mariona herself as the material object of Joaquin's desire, signifies and represents his hope for acceptance and

integration into the older circles of the Barcelona oligarchy. At this purely historical and mimetic level marriage to her is the embodiment of the age old practice

52 53

of new money buying into established respectability through

martrimony. On a more symbolic level she is incorporated

into the plot as the symbol of Joaquin's own inability to

surmount his deep psychological feelings of being an

outsider. Following his incorporation into the established

order through marriage, the period covered by El viudo Rius

describes the consolidation and growth of both his business

and his status within the community.

The two novels form a unit. The titles are significant

as predicates of what can be identified as contrastive definitions of the ideal. This ideal, as can be read in the

contrastive evaluative structures of the novels, is Joaquin

Rius, the representative of the vigor and drive of the

Barcelona oligarchy. In other words, he is the exemplary

typification of the bourgeois oligarchy and most of all, of

those virtues that characterize it as a group. These are

the virtues that helped to create Barcelona, the city and

its wealth. This fact is of particular importance as the time frame covered by the whole series demonstrates.

The novels of "La ceniza fue Arbol", as a whole, deal with the historical process of the growth of Barcelona from the last quarter of the nineteenth century through the

Civil War into the decades of the post war period. In chronological and purely historical terms, they cover the period from the restoration, its various crises, the civil 54 war and its aftermath and up to the boom years of the sixties. Jaime Sendra-Catafau incorporates this time lapse into the title of his dissertation on "La ceniza fue

Arbol", entitled La novelistica de Ignacio Agusti en "La ceniza fue Arbol": una saga catalana (1865-1965)1. This time period can be defined in economic terms as the period of the growth of Catalonian industry and the industrial class, the crisis of this class and its restoration.

The series itself is not however a mere chronicle of

Barcelona history nor a diary of notable events. According to Ignacio Soldevila in La novela desde 1936 (1982) is organized around the industrial crisis of Barcelona from a very class-oriented perspective:

Las limitaciones de la saga son las de su propio

autor: situado en Barcelona, la crisis industrial

es la de CatalufSa; situado socialmente en la

burguesia, su punto de vista es el de ella, y a

ella considera como el motor de la evolucibn de su

pais. Situado familiarmente en la parte

decreciente de la curva de prosperidad, su

perspectiva es la de una persistente nostalgia de

tiempos mejores, y su esperanza, la recuperacidn

de las virtudes y valores que llevaron a la

prosperidad finesecular de la industria catalana 55

(136).

These chronological limitations are important not only in purely historical and mimetic terms but also, and perhaps more importantly, in ideological terms as a defense of the bourgeois 'version' of Catalonian history. This shall be

seen more clearly in the study of the narrator and narrative point of view. But also, far from the passive nostalgic evocation that Soldevila seems to suggest, "La ceniza fue Arbol", can be read against the unitary positions of the political discourses of the post-war period and thereby appears as a positive and active

'engagement' with historical reality. The time period and the treatment of history through the saga of five generations of Rius men is a conscious effort to provide not only a lesson from history but also a 'modus operandi' for its active recuperation as a panacea for present troubles.

The time period stretching from late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries was the object of an essay published by Ignacio Agusti in 1940 titled Un sitflo de

Catalufia2 . In this essay Agusti traces the history of

Catalonia, specifically of the cultural rennaissance or the

'ressorgiment' that accompanied the economic boom of the nineteenth century. The main thrust of Agusti's argument 56

in this essay is to disqualify the separatist current in the Catalonian body politic. His premise is that politically and economically, Catalonia is only possible within a centralized Spanish State. If the essay looks at the problem of Catalonian decline in political terms, "La ceniza fue Arbol" deals with the same period in economic and social terms as well.

What the two novels offer in their titles is a comparison of Mariona Rebull, scion of a wealthy entrenched household, and Joaquin Rius, self made-man in the same

Catalonian tradition which created the wealth of the Rebull household. As significant actants in the saga of

Barcelona, they represent different aspects of the same class. Mariona is the background on which Joaquin is highlighted as the positive historical example. In this sense, Mariona appears as the antiheroine or anti-subject not only in her own right as an important actor in the story of the Rius household but also and above all, as a representation of certain modes of social behavior considered in the text as worthy of censure.

As the story of the life of Joaquin Rius, the titles also reinforce the processal and chronological dimensions of the narration of Joaquin and Barcelona. They represent two historically contiguous but different stages in the life of Joaquin and his city. They are contrastive in this 57 sense as two very different static stages in a social and urban process. In Mariona Rebull, social success is the focus of the activity of two generations of Rius men. In

El viudo Rius. the important thing is the younger Joaquin

Rius' consolidation of this enhanced social and economic status and the expansion of the family enterprise.

The contrastive arrangement permeates the relationship with Barcelona too and the Rius' saga is tightly linked to the 'saga' of Barcelona. And, as evidenced in the dedication, the narrative interest is on Barcelona both as human and as physical space. In a description of the successes of the Rius textile factory during the adolescence of young Joaquin, the narrator states:

Mientras tanto, los negocios de don Joaquin Rius

padre, habian seguido viento en popa. Primero un

telar, despu6s otro y otros, hasta llegar a la

media docena3 .

Then in the next paragraph the expansion of the family business is linked to the changes within the city of

Barcelona:

La ciudad empezaba a distenderse hacia la parte

alta, avanzaba como una lava de oro por la 58

planicie, inundaba la huerta con empuje hacia la

ladera, gue era ya cosa pr6xima, no un contorno

lejano (52).

The real difference between Mariona and Joaquin is in their

attitudes towards work and duty or obligation. The

ambition, drive, "seny" (moral and material temperance),

of Joaquin and his father are contrasted with the

frivolous, self centered and capricious nature of Mariona.

This polarity then, defines the discourse of the text.

In plot structure, significant events and actants also

follow a contrastive structure. In Mariona Rebull, hard

work and dedication are the elements which determine the

growth of Barcelona and Tejidos Rius. Most conflict is

localized within the family, that is, all the other

characters can be aligned behind Joaquin and Mariona as two different lifestyles within the same class. In El viudo

Rius. hard work is not the only factor. An adverse

economic climate and more importantly the political

activism of the working classes come into play. If judged

according to narrative space and attention, Barcelona, in

Mariona Rebull is an exclusively bourgeois space while in

El viudo Rius it is a conflictively shared space. In the diachronical continuum they represent different stages in the life of Barcelona in the history of Spain. 59

As shall be seen in a more detailed account of how

characterization functions within the actantial structures of the series, "La ceniza fue Arbol", as a whole and

Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius that form the first unit of our analysis, follow a very tightly controlled narrative pattern of point counterpoint. This contrastive structure is closely linked to the evaluative elements of the text as a whole and conditions all the structures of the novels.

We can begin with a short synopsis of the story of

Joaquin Rius and Barcelona as told in the novels. This is to be followed by a summary of the most relevant elements of the plot as organized within the individual texts. Then attention will be focused on individual discursive elements such as narrative point of view, time and space and character. These elements will be scrutinized as they operate within the text as a series of mutually reinforcing structures which formulate its system of values.

2. The struggle for acceptance: Mariona Rebull.

2.1 Preliminary Considerations

The title of Mariona Rebull is somewhat misleading because rather than being the story of Mariona, the novel 60

presents Joaquin Rius' struggle to integrate qualitatively

into the traditional oligarchy of Barcelona. Dissatisfied

with his lot in life and driven by a need for social and

economic advancement, Joaquin Rius (senior) abandons his

wife and two sons and travels to America to seek his

fortune. He returns to Barcelona, years later, with a

small fortune. After trying his hand at selling imports,

his restless nature leads him to invest in the nascent

textile business as a sideline. Soon, the textile business

absorbs most of his attention and he quickly amasses a

large fortune.

This fortune allows Joaquin to gain the respect he wanted for his person and permits him to enjoy all the outward material benefits of his new status. As part of this, he is able to send his son, also named Joaquin, to one of the most exclusive schools in Barcelona where he gets a good look at how the scions of the wealthiest families in Barcelona live.

Young Joaquin shares his father's ambitious and enterprising nature but while his father just wants the material benefits of being rich, young Joaquin, who had been brought up poor when his father was away, resents the marks of poverty and wants the benefit of wealth, that is, full integration into the established oligarchy. He believes he can achieve this through marriage. He believes 61 that he can get rid of the stigma of being a 'nouveau riche' and wipe out his humble origins by this external mark of belonging. He woos and marries Mariona, the daughter of a well-to-do jeweller. His marriage is on a rocky footing right from the beginning because he still has a'nouveau riche' complex. Fully dedicated to his factory, he is incapable of understanding his wife's emotional needs. Repulsed by what she sees as his indifference, she is unfaithful. He discovers her infidelity the day she dies in a terrorist bombing of the

Liceo opera house in Barcelona.

The difficulties which the unfulfilled promises of

Joaquin's marriage suppose not only add drama to his struggle for acceptance, but also serve to highlight his personality. The vicissitudes of this 'love interest' show him off positively against Mariona and Ernesto Villar, his rival for her affection. This functions at the same time as an educational experience for a Joaquin who will tend toward a misogynous expression in later novels of the series. Indeed, he remains a widower for the rest of his life.

2.2 Some important elements of the plot of Mariona Rebull.

Mariona Rebull is organized around a series of dualistic and contrastive elements. The evaluative system of the novels hinges around the mental and physical struggles of the younger Joaquin Rius to integrate into and be accepted by the traditional, monied circles of

Barcelona. This is the driving motive behind the activity of both him and his father. This is further complicated by the addition of the intrigues and dramatism of a love triangle.

Some of the most important events which support the dualistic operations of the plot are the older Rius's trip to America and the experience of wealth on his return. He later brings the younger Rius into contact with a world in which he never seriously thought of participating. The decision to send him to a private school also functions the same way. It is the first time young Joaquin shows shame and rejection of his origins. These are also important events in the organization of the plot because they all influence his decision to follow his father into business.

In effect, that is the only area where he can outperform his schoolmates. His incorporation into the world of business at such an early age is crucial to his way of thinking and his behavior later on. All his decisions are going to be taken as if they were cut-and-dried propositions. Joaquin has an atrophy in the development of his human relations and this leads him to relate to his 63

work with an almost religious dedication. The family

business is the only place where he feels entirely at

peace. The factory and his relationship to it become a

substitute for human relationships. This pattern of

material compensation is probably the most important to the

later development of the plot because it is at the heart of

his decision-making even in marriage.

The dialectic of the plot in Mariona Rebull involves

the conflictive relationship between Joaquin's attitudes

and dedication to his work and his approach to love and

marriage. As the novel of 'The struggle for acceptance',

the plot of Mariona Rebull is a combination of various

threads. In the first place there is a struggle to make money. This is the struggle of the elder Joaquin Rius and

it is the story of the gradual build-up of the Rius family

fortune through the hard work and sacrifice of the father

and son team. Money is however not an end in itself.

There is also a struggle towards integration into the social life of the monied classes. This is presented as a harder struggle because of prejudice towards newcomers within the oligarchy. It is within this struggle that what one might call the psychological struggle of Joaquin takes place. In spite of his money he feels awkward in the 64

company of his peers. The other struggle is situated in

the domestic life of Joaquin and seems to ilustrate the

problems of his more basic struggles at work. This is the

struggle to create his own domestic happiness. All these

'struggles' are woven together into a plot which is more

description than action.

The dynamism of the plot is furnished by a series of

scenic descriptions. As a historical representation, the

plot is fixed in Barcelona, the characters are linked to

specific spaces and all the changes, for example, social

mobility, are translated in spatial terms. The plot is

thus a complex of descriptions of change rather than a

narration of change. Narrative attention moves from one

space to the other.

The pendular movement is accompanied by swings in the

dramatic tension in the relationship between Joaquin and

Mariona. In this regard, the triangle of love plays an

important role in addition to focusing the conflict between

Joaquin and his wife on one hand and Joaquin and Ernesto on

the other. Both protagonists, Joaquin and Mariona are

faced with difficult choices in which their reason is

confronted by their passionate natures. On the part of

Joaquin, the inability to express his love, the motiv of jealousy and his keen interest in competing with Ernesto

also serve to highlight his insecurity in the purely social 65 aspects of oligarchic life. Apart from the interest the incorporation of drama and melodrama generates, these elements invest the relationship between the spouses with a tragic element as they both inexorably follow their passions to the end.

2.3 The narrator and narrative point of view.

Mariona Rebull is narrated by a third person external narrator who, however, establishes a biographical dimension by stating an intimate relationship to the city whose story he tells. The affective dimension that this implies reinforces, paradoxically, in this case, the objectivity that the third person narrative indicates. This narrator gives the initial impression of having participated, at least partially, as a witness. He/she uses a regressive historical mode which lends itself admirably to an judgemental posture concerning the events and characters of the novels. There is thus a psychological as well as ideological relation of the narrator towards what is narrated.

Formally, the doctrinal point of view is made explicit in the dedication and prologue and also in the initial chapter. Essentially descriptive in orientation, they localize narrative attention and provide the coordinates of 66 historical, physical and human space which are integrated in the novels. The dynamics of this initiating part of the novel indicate and insist on the narrator's relationship to his narrated material.

The dedication formulates the frame in which the narrating subject would like his novels --the whole series of " La ceniza fue Arbol"-- to be read. They are dedicated to his father and the fathers of his friends, which is to say, members of his social class, the industrial and commercial oligarchy of Barcelona in particular. This is further reinforced when we read the 'virtues' for which they earn this dedication. They are meritorious for two reasons: the expansion of Barcelona and its defence during the civil war of 1936-1939. These terms of their merit are important for narrative perspective in the ideological sense of the word because they explain the members of the narrator's class as the exclusive subjects of this vision of Barcelona's history.

This dedication also posits the fact that the novels of the series are to be considered parts of an organic whole.

This organic whole is historically established on two levels:

Cada uno de estos fragmentos de la vida del

personaje Joaquin Rius abarcarA un periodo 67

determinado de su existencia y de la vida de su

ciudad (7).

On the one hand, the series is to be the story of a person,

Joaquin Rius and on the other, it is to be the story of a city, Barcelona. There is established then, a relationship of equivalence for narrative purposes between the life of

Joaquin Rius and the life of the city of Barcelona. On one hand there is a dialectic of reciprocal influence for any positive as well as negative change. For example, the growth and expansion of Barcelona is due to the drive of her industry, and in the same way, the problems of urbanization and labor unrest are a direct consequence of the 'new' expansion. On the other hand the episodes in the lives of the five generations of Riuses epitomize the struggles of the city for survival and the changes it also has to undergo. This relationship reinforces the reading of the history of Barcelona as inevitably linked to the fortunes of its entrepreneurial classes.

The first chapter, which can be labelled as introductory, starts immediately in the same tone as the dedication. It sets the evaluative and doctrinal perspective from which subsequent narration is to be carried out and also establishes the intimate and personal relationship of the narrator to his material. This 68 affective relationship is stated in dualistic, diachronical terms. Personal objective knowledge is presented as part of an affective experience and is then linked to an almost elegiac evocation of past time that is implicitly contrasted with the present from which it is narrated:

Hablo de muchos affos atr&s. Mi ciudad alcanzaba

su cima sin perder un 6pice de su encanto

recoleto. Cada barrio tenia su parroquia (9).

The use of the first person in this and other texts is important insofar as narrative perspective is part of the doctrinal or political dimension of the text as a whole and sets the tone of what is to be narrated in very direct terms. Intimism and nostalgia are the keys to the relationship of the narrator to the city of Barcelona, an intimism which the reader is invited to share. The bias and the affective nature of tha narrator's connection with old Barcelona is underlined by the repeated use of the first person possessive adjective "mi". It incorporates a nostalgic evocation of an almost provincial and parroquial

Barcelona in a panegyric to artesanal industry in which worker and employer are characterized by the same physical and moral qualities: 69

Los trabajadores lucian, como los patrones,

cuidadas barbas, que olian a tabaco y honradez.

Las casas de los trabajadores eran como las de los

burgueses, pero m&s pequefias. Como ellos sentaban

a sus hijos entorno a la gran mesa a la hora de

comer. Lo que m&s identificaba los hogares de los

operarios con las casas de los patronos eran la

vocacidn de trabajo de que estaban colmadas (11).

Another important element to remember is the interest of the narrator in telling about "his" city and the fact that this "his" city is now gone. This is repeated often in Mariona Rebull. The relationship past-time versus present-time, present-Barcelona versus past-Barcelona, provides commentary in itself with a clear indication of the parti oris of the narrator for old Barcelona.

This initial chapter however does more than establish the affective and ideological frame within which the history of Barcelona is to be narrated. It also introduces the various locuses of geographical space which are going to predominate in the history of Barcelona, the intimate and closed spaces of the old, almost artesanal, Barcelona and the expanding industrial ring of the newer industrial and manufacturing class. That is, space itself becomes part of narrative perspective and an important element of 70

the plot. The contrastive presentation of physical space

also becomes a part of the evaluative system of the text.

2.3 Mariona Rebull as a novel of space

Jaime Sendra-Cartafau understood the importance of the link between the physical spaces of Barcelona in the series. In

his analysis of the series (1977), he writes:

Pocos han sido los novelistas espafSoles que han

emprendido la tarea de "biografiar" a una ciudad

como lo ha hecho Agusti. Los m&s destacados

fueron Galdos y Clarin que hicieron biografias de

ciudades espafiolas. Lo que hace Agusti con

Barcelona es darle talla de personaje central y le

imparte cualidades y defectos humanos: crece se

desarrolla toma una personalidad y se destruye a

si misma (71).

The focus of attention in "La ceniza fue Arbol" is the city of Barcelona, understood as a collective history through the story of five generations of its burghers. The structure of the series is epic in that the whole history of Barcelona is considered within the text as the archetypal story of its burghers. The didactive intertext 71

and the authoritarian bias of the discourses, however,

influence this narrative structurally. The whole ordering

is more like what has been defined as the bildungsroman.

In this kind of narrative the protagonist goes through a

process of change in what is generally a positive process

of apprenticeship. In the case of "La ceniza fue Arbol",

it is not an individual who goes through this process. The

locus of narrative attention and force is the personality

of Barcelona, the city. The five generations of Riuses and

the other members of their class participate in the history

of Barcelona as the active principles of its physical and moral transformation. This symbiotic relationship is

further reinforced by the dialectical structure of the relation between men and their world. The human actants act on their city and their city also acts on them.

According to Sendra-Catafau (1977):

Barcelona y la burguesia viven dos sagas paralelas

que se complementen y se definen, la una amparada

en la otra (25).

The transformation of the city from provincial capital to industrial metropolis is wrought by its entrepreneurs but their action transforms the peaceful spaces of their

Barcelona into a conflictively shared space on one hand, 72

and on the other, it transforms the nature of the

relationships between employers and employees.

The different personalities and characters are

associated with specific spaces. These spaces are

essentially bourgeois and they are separated into the

established old bourgeois with attributes of the

aristocracy and the new rising bourgeois. Space is

actantial in the development of the plot. The

representatives of old money, the Rebull household, has all the characteristics of an entrenched aristocratic family.

Their spaces in Barcelona are the jewellery store and their spacious house. La calle Puertaferrisa and la calle de la

Plateria, where their shop is found, are described as part of the old recondite and lordly Barcelona. The aristocratic attributes of this class are further reinforced by the fact that they possess a country estate where they retire in the summer months. The "other family", the Ruises are also associated with specific spaces. Their old warehouse is no comparison to the jewellery shop and their home in calle de la Paja is a small one in a crowded neighbourhood. In consonance with the theme of social mobility, the changes in the wealth of the Rius family are followed by a change of space to a bigger and better house.

As an integral part of the plot, the spaces of the 73

Barcelona of the narration are presented in contrastive

terms. The initial opposition interprets space in terms of

class. It does this by locating narrative attention on two

households, the Rius household and the Rebull household, which both belong to Barcelona, and are presented as antagonistic. The older artesanal bourgeois look with apprehension at their manufacturing counterparts. In this sense, space is not only associated with social standing but also with mode of production. Into this dualistic conception of geographical space are inserted the characters who are going to be the protagonists of the novels.

El joyero Rebull era, desde tiempos inmemoriales,

61 de la casa episcopal y de ahi que la Familia

Rebull contara siempre con algtin miembro

preponderante en la politica municipal y nacional

(15).

New money or the new vitality is represented by Joaquin

Rius and his family:

Los Rius eran ya entonces una de las primeras

fortunas de la ciudad. Recien llegado de America,

adonde habia ido con lo puesto, el padre 74

estableci6 unos telares en la parte posterior de

un almacen de coloniales que habia instalado pocos

meses antes. Prosperb velozmente (17).

In the third person narrator's discourse, the physical

spaces and the attendant human spaces are equivalents, that

is, subsets of the same universal. Both spaces belong

totally to the bourgeois class and the dialectic

established between them serves to highlight and focus narrative attention on the various activities and groups which together form Barcelona's oligarchy. All of this reinforces the extratextual premise of the history of

Barcelona as the history of its bourgeois classes. This particular point of view is stated strongly by the narrator:

Mi ciudad no tuvo apenas aristocracia, porque la

aristocracia abandon6 sus tierras, en la que

radicaba, para seguir a la corte y hacer la

corte. Las luchas politicas del siglo XVII, por

afiadidura, habianle amputado sus mejores brazos.

Las fuerzas vivas de mi ciudad eran pues por

aquellos ahos los antiguos gremios, en todo su

esplendor y, entre ellos los de las artes mAs

nobles (14). 75

The identification of the bourgeois of Barcelona as the subjects or active principle of the narrative world and thus of her history is important because it forms part of the ideological system which will influence and permeate all the other narrative elements of "La ceniza fue &rbol".

By the exclusion of the aristocracy, the two kinds of bourgeois become important motors for the life of Barcelona and their rivalry becomes part of the very dynamism of a growing urban and industrial center.

Living and working spaces are not the only ones of importance. The Liceo opera house and the various tertulias are also important social spaces. These outward signs of the aristocratic life style separate the old money bourgeois from the newer upstarts. It is within the contexts of these spaces that they demonstrate the social skills which separate them from the latter. The physical spaces and the spatial relations which are enunciated in the dedication and the first chapter and govern the dynamics of the plot are important, above all, as the generator of a specific attitude as well as authority vis 6 vis narrated material.

In Mariona Rebull, space is incorporated into the plot by means of the overwhelming theme of social mobility, which is translated into spatial terms. The distance 76

separating the Riuses from the Rebull is not just money but

rather the generations of accumulation of the "refined"

social behaviors, the veneer of distinction, which Joaquin

so much admires and envies in people like Ernesto Villar.

All his efforts at assimilation seem to be doomed. When

Mariona gets back to Barcelona from Santa Maria, she finds

her house spacious and well furnished but she notices the

lack of the sheen of slow accumulation. This ubiquitous

fact is incorporated into the plot by Joaquin's own self doubt, a reflection of all those things which he feels money cannot acquire nor help acquire.

The spaces associated with the Rebull's, the box at the

Liceo and the country estate are all outward signs of those things which Joaquin desires and which he nonetheless feels

incapable of having. They are the outward manifestations of the "aristocratic" life in a city where the aristocracy of money has replaced the aristocracy of the blood. While the plot evolves around the opposition of two physical spaces, the satisfied old money Barcelona and the upstart desires of the Rius household, the 'real' conflict is not between the two areas of industrial activity but rather between two different kinds of social behavior that are equally present in both spaces. 77

2.4 Time and history in Mariona Rebull.

The time span of the novel is continuous starting from 1865

and ending in the tragic bombing of the Liceo opera house.

The treatment of time in the novel is however not always

linear nor does it follow the same time sequence as

extranovelistic history. This has to do with the

narrator's own historical time, which is well after the

events he describes. It also has to do with the focus of

his narration on a central protagonist, Joaquin Rius.

The plot follows the chronological order of historical

events and these are incorporated into the plot as

important articulations of Joaquin's life. Two of the most notable are the universal trade fair of 1888 and the

bombing of the Liceo opera house in 1893. Concerning the

former, the international trade fair is woven into the plot

on two levels. In the first place it marks the public

recognition of Barcelona as an important and vital

industrial space. Secondly, it is mentioned in such a way as to coincide with Joaquin's full incorporation into the

Barcelona oligarchy, for the Queen regent and the crown

Prince stop at his pavilion, and the next day day he is hailed in the press as the exemplary representative of

Barcelona industry. In addition, the moment of the fair marks the time of Mariona's coming of age. In a way, just 78

like Barcelona, she is consecrated that day.

The other historical fact in the plot is the bombing of

the Liceo opera house in 1893. It acts as a rather

dramatic ending to the period of Joaquin's struggle for

acceptance and prepares for his full incorporation into the

core of Barcelona society in El Viudo Rius. It is the end

of an era and it is also the beginning of another. The

violent undercurrents of worker dissatisfaction, symbolized

by the bomb attack will burst onto the stage of history in

El viudo Rius and demand a role in Barcelona's history.

The focus of narrative attention is Joaquin Rius and

the narrative time is organized as part of it. For example, though Joaquin's father is important, his full story is told in just a few chapters at the outset through a technique of "embedding" which condenses earlier events and details in such a way as to lead up to Joaquin.The same technique appears during an early evocationof old

Barcelona, when a description of a tertulia appears. It is in this tertulia at the Rebull home that the Rius' name crops up. The decription of the Rius family is then started at the tertulia before the narrator completes it by furnishing a short history of the Riuses. This passage in fact illustrates the technique of moving from one time frame to another which characterizes the novel. 79

2.5 Characterization.

"La ceniza fue Arbol" as a series basically deals with

the character of Barcelona and the character of the men who

created her modern history. As a novelized history of

Barcelona, the city itself is a protagonist whose changing

personality is described through the peripecies of the

human protagonists. Consequently, the narration is descriptive in tone and the character of the city seems to

condition the way all the other elements of the plot are put together. Thus, descriptive power is focused on processes of change in the character of the urban spaces of

Barcelona and also its human spaces. The configuration of the actants within this frame is also affected by this system. This fact is predicated on theses about the familiar virtues of hard work, sobriety and financial good sense ascribed to Catalonians in general. These virtues, which are the conerstones of the actantial structures, also determine the conflicts within the 'family' of "La ceniza fue Arbol".

The characters are divided into two groups depending on their attitudes to the Catalonian work ethic and their conformity with the predominantly patriarchal social organization of Barcelona. This division of the protagonists is supported by the inclusion of the institution of marriage and social mobility as important references in the plot of the novel. In the symbolism of the plot, Mariona is the object of Joaquin's desires and also represents the negative element within the social

institutions and customs of Barcelona. In a basic patriarchal construction of history, positive values are attributed to the masculine drive and 'seny' while negative values are ascribed to the aristocratic and leisure oriented lifestyle associated with the feminine social spaces like the theatre, the opera and the formal socializing of the salons. In all of Agusti's writing the patriarchal element is evident but in Mariona Rebull, this is further complicated by the incorporation of the character and figure of the female protagonist, Mariona.

The negativity associated with the social spaces of the matrons of Barcelona does not only affect women. It applies to those who break the molde of the bourgeois patriarchal norms of the oligarchy. In our reading of this novel, we shall dedicate some space to the study of

Mariona. In subsequent novels, feminine space is not so important as an actant in the plot, it is more of an ideologiacal position that colors the depiction of history. Due to this, in subsequent novels we shall see how the representation of feminine space conforms to the bourgeois patriarchal ideal in its interpretation of 81 history.

Joaquin and Mariona are opposed, in the plot, as two distinct ways of responding to what is interpreted as the historical responsibility of the bourgeois oligarchy of

Barcelona. The reference to the work ethic and Catalan industriousness is the key to understanding the focus of attention in this historical account of Barcelona. The connection between work and history is provided for, in the structure of the text, by the generational focus of the narration and the linkage of the Rius history to the history of Barcelona. That is why in spite of its title,

Mariona Rebull focuses attention on the two Joaquin

Riuses. In the generational tandem they form, there is also a clear consciousness of the need for continuity.

Joaquin is most marked by his ambition to be like his wealthy friends. They inherited their wealth. He wants to create wealth and in doing this fulfill his own image of his worth. This ambition to 'be somebody' is the compelling force behind his father's drive to make money.

As we are told:

Los recuerdos de los primeros trabajos de Joaquin

Rius van unidos al del propdsito, todavia vago y

presentido, de llegar hasta donde los dem&s;

aquellos , duefios de las berlinas que se 82

detenian de tarde en tarde ante la puerta de la

botica, y de las ouales bajaba apresurada una ana

de Haves en busca del nanojo prescrito para la

peguefSa que se habia resfriado, o para la reuma

del abuelo; los , dueffos de los flamantes

carruajes cuyo paso era saludado por el vecindario

con reverencia respetuosa y solenne; los que en la

procesion llevaban el hacha con una naturalidad

condescendiente y delicada cual si llevaran un

cetro. Si; sobre todas las ambiciones, la de la

preponderancia que da el dinero y no ciertanente

por el dinero nisno; sabia que no trata de un

nontdn de netal muerto, sino de la vida misma, de

la conciencia del trabajo: 61 es el espejo del

alma, mis atin que el rostro, que muda y envejece

(19).

The elder Joaquin Rius is driven by the ambition to gain recognition. In his son's case there is another ingredient. Educated among the sons of the social elites of Barcelona, he is ashamed of his own humble origins.

He sabe mal ser el primero de mi casa que soy

rico. Me gustaria ... qui s6 yo ...; haber sido

hijo mio, por ejemplo (82). 83

Joaquin wishes he were born into a wealthy and established

part of the socio-economic oligarchy of Barcelona. With

all his money he carries the burden of an ‘upstart complex'

and his need for acceptance by the established oligarchy on

equal terms is what drives him and ultimately becomes his

undoing. Joaquin Rius embodies the values of'seny', that

is, prudence, maturity, circumspection and self control.

This opinion is born out by others' reaction to him. In

the opinion of Desiderio Rebull, his father-in-law after

their very first meeting:

Parece un chico decidido y en§rgico. No creo que

tenga malas intenciones (89).

His own father admired his resoluteness as well as his ease

in difficult moments:

El padre empezaba a admirar la decisidn de su hijo

y sobre todo, su naturalidad y desenvoltura (62).

These are valuable attributes in the world of business and industry but they are near disastrous when applied to his affective life. 84

Joaquin Rius, hijo, a los veinticinco afios habia

vivido el mundo de los negocios como una persona

de cuarenta. Elio comportaba la madurez en todos

los demas aspectos de la vida. E infiere a todos

los demas aspectos del hombre un aire frio y

previsor, que llega hasta las raices del corazdn.

Hombre sin problemas, se planted el de llegar a

una definitiva cristalizacidn de todo su dxito: se

propusd casarse. Este era el unico modo de echar

al suelo el valladar que le separaba de la vida de

los ; habia olvidado esa ambicidn con tanto

trabajar, pero se mantenia en su interior

vigilante con los recuerdos y los propdsitos

adolescentes (68-69).

The qualities that make him a good businessman have been gained at the expense of other social skills. In

Joaquin's universe, everything, even his marriage, is functional, a pragmatic and programmatic choice. This is what most characterizes Joaquin and separates him from his father with whom he shares the ambition and drive to be somebody in Barcelona. His dedication to the family business epitomises this. In the generational structure of

Mariona Rebull. Joaquin represents continuity in the broader sense but more importantly his family business 85

signifies the revitalization of Barcelona society and

industry. He modernizes the equipment and streamlines the

administration and also introduces the shift system at the

factory thereby increasing profits and production. He is

not just continuity but also the capacity to meet new

challenges. This then, the text suggests, is the ideal

structure of history.

In spite of his image as a cold calculating businessman

who has no place in his heart for affection, it would seem

that Joaquin also has a just and affectionate side

especially in his treatment of young Arturo Llobet after

the incident of the stolen money. On the whole, however,

all the positive ingredients of his profile pertain to that part of him that is the businessman.

The intelligence, foresight and understanding he demonstrates time and time again in the commercial

technical and administrative side of his business do not however translate into his 'extra tejidos Rius' human relations. Not even in his relations to members of his own family. This fact can be attributed to the doctrinal factors which condition the structuring of the text of

Mariona Rebull and indeed of "La ceniza fue arbol". The emphasis as Ignacio Agusti reveals in his dedication, is the eulogy of that which made Barcelona great, its vibrant and innovative commercial and industrial oligarchy. 86

This unidimensional focus on the personality of the characters and events in Mariona Rebull leads to significant gaps in the logical structures of the series as a whole. For example the presentation of Joaquin as a forceful and resolute individual contradicts the fact of his rather weak reaction to his wife's rejection of his love. The noble and positive side of his character does not match the deceit he uses in order to gain Mariona's affection and once he has managed to get it, his incapacity to continue to humor his wife is not presented convincingly. Throughout the text Joaquin's preocupation with continuity is stressed. For example, he wants young

Llobet to be to his son what the elder Llobet had been to him yet within the text no other concern for the education of his son is attributed to Joaquin Rius.

The very concern for his son's education and the need for continuity that is illustrated in his plea to the young

Llobet, is part of the contradictory messages of the text.

While this feeling on the part of Joaquin is presented as an egotistical striving for generational continuity, we are also informed by the very nature of the universe within the text that continuity is the rock on which prosperity is built. Joaquin himself left school in order to work with his father. The Rebull fortune and good name were possible not only due to a long line of Rebulls but also to their 87 continuing relationship to the archdiocese.

Within the actantial structures of the text and in contrast to Joaquin Rius, there are two principal anti-heroes or villains, Mariona Rebull and Ernesto

Villar. In comparison with Joaquin they are frivolous and capricious in Mariona's case, and philandering and selfish in the case of Ernesto Villar.

Mariona is a spoiled child who is presented as someone who wants all the joys of her privileged position without any of the attendant responsibilities. In fact, within the

Rebull household, she compares negatively to Mercedes her sister who conforms to the text's depiction of the matriarch. Mariona encourages Joaquin's courtship against the express will of her father. In contrast to Joaquin, the dutiful son, she is self-indulgent and capricious.

Unable to be a good daughter, she can't be a good wife either. Once the novelty of her new status as wife and mother wears off she inevitably 'falls'.

The Barcelona of the patriarchal oligarchs had a very peculiar space for women. In what may be described as a strict division of duties, women are confined to domestic concerns. It is illuminating in this sense that no women are mentioned in the male space of industry. In Mariona

Rebull. women are associated with the outward signs of wealth, that is, their finery is a measure of their 88

husbands' claim to wealth. They are also associated with

social functions such as the theatre. In that world, men

generally married younger women. This trend is followed

throughout the text:

Las esposas eran j6venes, en general mucho m&s

jbvenes que los maridos. Apenas salidas del

colegio, con sus buenos rudimentos de francos, y

su urbanidad bien aprendida --una urbanidad de

polisdn y abanico-- encontrAbanse de la noche a la

mafSana unidas fisicamente y espiritualmente al

marido; un marido alto, severo, de audaz bigote y

grave condescendencia, que ejercia sobre ellas una

especie de tutela paterna y usaba con pulcritud de

su talonario de cheques; ademAs las hacia madres

copiosamente, hijo tras hijo (12).

This is the situation in which Mariona finds herself on marrying Joaquin. As a couple they form an archetypal pair of very pronounced contrasts. Joaquin is described as

"Alto enjuto con una frente dura" (54). He is “un tipo tieso, mayor y con cara de hombre. Mas se parece a un tio que a un novio" (38). In comparison with Joaquin, Mariona is almost a child. She marries him almost as soon as she leaves school. The differences between her and her husband 89

are not just a question of age. Joaquin actually looks and

behaves older than his age. The childlike or childish

nature of Mariona is further exacebated by the fact that

she is brought up by a doting father who lets her have her

way most of the time. She has a stubborn streak. Once she

has decided to allow Joaquin to court her nothing her

father can say will change her mind. Her sister Mercedes

sums it up when she says of Mariona:

-Yo s6 ctianto pesan en ella las primeras

decisiones. No quiere cambiar nunca de camino,

aiin a costa de su felicidad (92).

She is also very spoiled and pretends to be ill when her husband refuses to let her leave Barcelona for the country:

Indudablemente era uno de sus dias de capricho;

parecia absolutamente dispuesta a hacer pagar cara

a Joaquin su negativa de anoche (204).

Mariona then, is used to having her own way and could be very strong headed. Her problems with Joaquin are basically problems with married life as her society understands it. She had made up her own idea of what being married was going to be like, and when this did not 90 correspond to reality, she could not abide by it.

The other representation of the negative values of the class is Ernesto Villar. He is the male figure of anti-seny. He is associated with female spaces as a socialite and as part of the indolent aristocratic lifestyle of soirees and tertulias. Ernesto Villar is the son of an old monied family. Joaquin refers to him as a man of fortune. He is presented as a person of very little personal drive; in fact, Desiderio Rebull feels that there is something lacking in his personality.

Physically, Ernesto is an attractive and elegant young man with an aristocratic poise. This aristocratic bearing is what Joaquin found attractive in him when they were both in school. As a young politician he is decribed in these terms:

Era un hombre joven, alto, elegantisimo. Su

cabello era castafio claro. Su porte sefSorial, se

hacia m&s agradable aun en el movimiento de sus

manos en sus ademanes (80).

Ernesto's physical attractiveness, his poise, bearing and social skills are the only positive things about him. Even a member of the entrenched oligarchy like don Desiderio finds him lacking in those qualities of drive, independence 91

and seny which are the basis of Catalonian society:

No cabe duda que Villar era un muchacho de

porvenir. Pero por lo mismo le molestaba a don

Desiderio que tuviera ese aire de 'presente', de

hombre predestinado al 6xito. Donde no hay

dificultad no hay m6rito (30).

In the mind of don Desiderio, Ernesto has gone through life with no effort on his part. This seems to suggest that in his own mind a man's worth is to be earned in what he builds up for himself and not what he inherits. The very fact that he does not dedicate himself to any 'productive' enterprise nor work in Barcelona adds to this negative presentation of Ernesto. He is a politician in Madrid. He is brilliant in cafe debates but is a lackluster politician whose nocturnal habits show him up as an unenthusiastic mediocre talent. Ernesto plays an important part in the plot of the story of Joaquin Rius in that he is the representation of the ouimera in the lives of Joaquin and

Mariona. Joaquin admires in Ernesto those social skills he feels he lacks and Mariona finds in him the representation of the things she feels her husband does not possess.

Joaquin's quest for acceptance and his ambition as a social riser are dramatized by his romance and marriage to 92

Mariona. His own psychological sense of excision is

exemplified in the frustration of his marital life. The

ideal he desires for himself is shown to be false while he

himself is held up as the epitome of Catalan

industriousness and 'seny'. In his mind's eye he is never fully accepted into the circles of old money

Barcelona but the discursive patterns in the text clearly define the attitude of the narrator towards Joaquin Rius as an example of the drive that created modern Barcelona. In spite of all his problems, even his marriage to Mariona is not criticised because it is the norm of social mobility among a people with a strong tradition of self-made men.

There are however other characters who do not fit so easily into the contrastive world vision of opposing forms of bourgeois action. In the texts we are reading such characters are presented at certain stages of the narration as central to the later processes of the plot and then are silenced. The view set up in Mariona Rebull by this procedure is that the exclusive subject of Catalonian history is the male figure and that the female participates as an appendage of the male protagonists.

Other descriptions of women are in purely physical and erotic terms but both are redundant in that they repeat the same definition of feminine space as outside of history.

In the terms of Mariona Rebull, women participate in the contradictive structure of the novel not in opposition to male figures but rather in consonance with what can be termed the traditional role of women as supporting players in the activities of their husbands. Mariona is compared negatively to her mother, Joaquin's mother, and even her own sister, Mercedes. The suggestion is that her search for her own independent happiness outside the domestic tradition is the cause of her downfall. These ambivalences in the text that oppose primary actants against secondary subjects, some of whom cannot be readily defined in actanctial terms, is however not the main thrust of structural ambivalences and contradictions. As we shall see, these contradictions have more to do with the very nature of the narrative form chosen and also the doctrinal intention of the organizing subject which brings differences into the relationship between the overall represented world and the way discourse is put together to create it.

2.6 Structural and ideological contradiction in Mariona

Rebull.

The primary concern in this reading of Agusti's "La ceniza fue Arbol" is not with what the text says about the history of Barcelona but rather how it puts together what 94

it says. Mariona Rebull as part of a larger given does not

always operate the same way as all the novels. Indeed a

close examination of the novels will show that structural

and ideological contradiction influences individual texts

in different ways. Nevertheless, contradiction or

incompleteness as identified in individual texts is

symptomatic of the text of "La ceniza fue Arbol" as a whole. The basic assumption for this approach is that any differences or contradictions that may exist in the way the various elements are put together into the narrative are a direct consequence of a conscious choice of technique or material expression. That is, any inconsistencies in the logic of the text, any flaws in its processes of transformation, definition and self regulation are a consequence of the strategies of its own pragmatics.

Within the structures that construct the novel's closure, Mariona Rebull provides ground for contradictory readings. As a novel of character, and in the confines of its own creation of reality, contradiction inhabits the very spaces of the ideological composition of the text.

The novel, is eminently descriptive in character as the novel of Barcelona and the men who gave it its modern personality. The characters of the novel are types created with didactic intent and it is in the mode of their pragmatic presence in the text that contradiction can be 95

identified. An example is the depiction of Mariona. The

description of Mariona that most readily persists in the

minds's eye is one of a sensitive young woman married to a

husband who does not understand her needs and finally

leaves her no other option but adultery. While this

assessment may be demonstrable in the text, a closer look

at Mariona reveals cracks in her presentation. She is also

a calculating woman who decides to deceive her husband and

her family. One of the ways that this is made apparent in

the text is in her attitude towards marriage.

Reacting to her sister Mercedes, who would like to marry a paternal, passionless man in the tradition of her

class:

Si. Y si me caso, me casard con un hombre que

tenga m&s temperamento de tio que de marido (160).

Joaquin assures Mercedes that she will marry when she falls

in love. Mariona disagrees with this; she rather thinks that Mercedes will get marrried when it was convenient for her. There is no such feeling in the presentation of

Mercedes, who in the novel marries a long time friend and has a happy marriage. But, even though Mercedes is never accused of duplicity in the novel, her sister, Mariona thinks love will play no part in her choice: 96

Mariona pensaba es falso. Te casar&s cuando te

convenga. Los hombres creen que las mujeres se

enamoran, que llega un momento en que no son

duefias de si (161).

This affirmation coming from Mariona does not fit her profile as a sensitive and romantic woman and dispels any

such passion from her relationship with Ernesto Villar. In

fact after her suggested adultery in chapter fourteen, she coldly decides to lie to Joaquin about reconciliation and she does this at a moment when everything shows that

Joaquin really is in love with her and wants reconciliation more than anything and not just for social appearances as had earlier been suggested:

Joaquin dirigid su mirada con lentitud a la pista,

Mariona le observd; en los ojos del hombre

apuntaban las 16grimas (261).

Passages like these show that Mariona, the sensitive, starved for affection 'hothead', is quite cold and calculating. This happens at a time when the text goes as far as to suggest that despite his coldness and his apparent lack of understanding, Joaquin is really capable 97

of deep feelings about others, especially Mariona:

Por fin la vela de nuevo sonreir, adivinaba con

gozo que habia sido restablecido el contacto entre

las dos almas (165).

This would seem to justify accusations of duplicity on her

part. But judgments like these are untenable because there

is no real development of cause and effect to demonstrate

the progression towards adultery. Just in the same way

that the accusation against Joaquin is not developed to any

extent, the reasons of Mariona's adultery are not developed. What we are presented with are faits accomplis because at the same time, she is also presented as someone with a strong case of bovarysme. The love or pleasure she is after is a auimera in her own mind. This makes her quite insensitive to her husband's solicitude in her quest for love:

Por las noches sentia temor mortal; buscaba el

cobijo del hombre, alii, del hombre que le

acompafiara. Y el brazo de Joaquin se extendia

sobre la almohada, para que sirviera de reposo a

su mujer (162). She knows herself that what she wants is not possible in

the marriages of her class. But, paradoxically, she does

not evaluate this situation negatively because she knows

that her temperament is probably not suited for it:

Quiz&s las que no deben casarse son las que no

tienen temperamento de tia. En efecto, ino hay

muchos aspectos que en el matrimonio son amor al

ordbn, temperamento dombstico, espiritu de

sacrificio, propbsito de vivir asi hasta el fin de

los dias? £No es eso casi todo el matrimonio?

( 160).

The rebel against social necessity as opposed to subjective

needs which she seems to embody contradicts this Mariona who is in effect defending the social norms she is

contravening by her behavior. Then again Mariona knew of

the incompatibility between her character and traditional marriage and still married Joaquin. There is no evidence

in the text that any pressure was exerted by her family, and her assesment of the women of her time that they marry when they find it convenient strongly contradicts the discomfort she feels at the Liceo opera house when she discovers Ernestos's presence.

Another contradictory presentation is to be found in gg

her attitude towards her husband. Throughout the novel,

Joaquin is presented as meticulous and somewhat severe in

his dress. In fact, his attention to detail is such that

he notices a loose button on his father's waistcoat at the

Universal Trade Fair at the moment when they are escorting

the Queen Regent around the Tejidos Rius pavilion. He went to school with the sons of the wealthiest people in

Barcelona but his dress is only mentioned once on his first day at school when he is very self-conscious about the fact that he is wearing a hand-me-down from his father. This same man is then presented later on as a clumsy all thumbed man who cannot fasten the button on his collar because he is not accustomed to wearing one. Indeed it is Mariona who comments:

Estupido, este corbatin no lo pasaras nunca por la

ranura del cuello, porque no estAs acostumbrado a

vestir de frac, y porque nunca podr&s

acostumbrarte (188).

A few lines later however the narrating subject comments on this by showing that Mariona was wrong:

Se equivoc6. Pas6 por la ranura (188). 100

In this particular passage, the structure of contradiction

shows up the mistake of Mariona in thinking negatively of

her husband as too crude or uncultured and the commentary by the narrator would seem to support this. In this specific case the narrator is making not so much a positive statement about Joaquin as a negative evaluation of

Mariona. But even the form that this takes contradicts the way Joaquin's psyche has been delineated by the same narrator previously. Mariona has never expressed any judgement about Joaquin as an outsider. This is more akin to what Ernesto, a discredited commentator, might have thought or said. Mariona expresses these feelings that are more appropriate for Ernesto because, in this case, they both express the narrator's commentary on Joaquin as an upstart in his class (the oligarchy). At the same time, the narrator's own commentary disqualifies both Mariona and

Ernesto as valid representatives of their class.

Contradictions such as these are present in the novel due to several factors. One of these is the very nature of the novel as a descriptive as opposed to narrative text.

That is, it describes in order to prove its theses as opposed to developing its own internal logic narratively.

What these constraints did was to predetermine the structure of the novel into a descriptive mode which 101

negatively influenced the logical dynamism of cause and

effect that are supposed to operate in narrative texts. As

a result of this the text presents gaps in sequencing and development. Joaquin, for example, seems to love his wife

and the novel does not show the circumstances which lead to

this change of character. There is no development of the

internal drama of Mariona, those conflicts that lead her on

to marry and then repudiate Joaquin are not examined

logically. At one moment she is very calm and cool towards

Ernesto; then in the next sequence, she is disturbed by his mere presence. This lack of development or explanation for some of the events of the novel affects the characters the most because as a novel Mariona Rebull, deals with the character of the men and women of the historical bourgeoisie of Barcelona.

Their lives are a series of stereotypal incidents idealized with strong doses of melodrama that fit into slots in the structure of the novel. For example in the love triangle, Joaquin effectively plays the injured husband, Mariona plays the bored wife looking for extramarital excitement and Ernesto is the Don Juanesque second man. Agusti's own class afiliation makes him unaware of the fact that he is mortifying his hero as an upstart. In the same way, the incorporation of melodrama 102

leads to situations where the offended husband, regardless

of his presentation as exemplary bourgeois s£ny, is

demonized as an insanely jealous person. This is where the

depiction of character in Mariona Rebull fails to coalesce

into a whole leaving instead a series of discrete qualities

which seem to enter into relations of contradiction with

one another when read against each other.

The next problem concerning contradiction is found in

the contradiction between external focalizor and internal

focalizors. In most narrative, the organizing subject will

choose to 'see' things from the perspective of any one of

the human actants of the narration. When this happens

there is an identifiable difference that will establish the

external focalizer and the internal one or ones as discrete

personalities in the text.

In Mariona Rebullr focalization through the characters

contributes to the presence of contradiction because the

separation between the extranarrative space and

intranarrative space as evidenced in the separation of voices is not constant. This leads to the problem of differentiating the logic of the narrator's point of view

and the points of view of the actants of the novel. Quite

frequently, the characters seem to change the logic of

their own personality in the text while remaining in the 103

logic of the narrating voice. For example, this is the

reason why we find Mariona defending the traditional

marriage practices of her class. Her contravention of the

norm would seem to suggest that she is expressing not her

own but rather the narrator's point of view.

What has happened is that the narrating conscience's

centrality in the control of all the aspects of the

discourses of the text, affects the logical structures of

the text itself. The axiological arrangement elicits a

series of set responses which tend to accept the logic of

the text because their references transcend the logic of

the text and provide a supratext which validates all the

stages of the argument without necessarily developing them

logically within the text itself. The narrating subject unites all the legitimization of the events in its own voice and looses the distinction between the vision through which the elements are presented and the identity of the voice that is verbalizing that vision. Messages from different needs that are unified in the narrator are

interspersed in the text and attributed to characters. As a consequence, the logic of the protagonists of the novel as subjects in their own text clashes with the narrator's assigned space for them in the novel and leads to situations where it challenges the coherence of the text. 104

The axiological bent of the narrative also provides

grounds for contradictory readings because not all the

axioms belong in the same historioal or social space and

have differing historical and biographical legitimization

but this specific case of contradictory reading in history

is clearer in the following novel by Agusti El viudo Rius. we will postpone analizing it in detail until that novel.

3. El viudo Rina: The struggle for consolidation.

3.1 Preliminary Considerations.

The final event of Mariona Rebull is the bombing of the

Liceo Opera House in Barcelona on the seventh of November

1893. El viudo Rius begins its narration in the period after the crisis and war of 1898 on the last day of the nineteenth century. If Mariona Rebull is the novel of the struggle for acceptance, El viudo Rius is the novel of the of struggle to consolidate the new status of eminence acheived by Joaquin. As a historical novel, El viudo Rius deals with the dawn of the twentieth Century from the industrial crisis of 1900 until the 'revolution' of 1909 in

Barcelona.

As the novel of the struggle to maintain the gains of the period 1865 to 1893, El viudo Rius is primarily 105 organized around the activities of Joaquin Rius as an industrialist. In the overall logio of "La oeniza fue

Arbol", the defense of the economic, social and political

'status quo' is equivalent to the defense of Tejidos Rius, and by extension, Barcelona industry. The time period incorporated into the novel is thus significant because it is a time of struggle for survival for the industrial class in Barcelona due principally to the loss of the overseas markets and a deep systemio crisis in Spain. Albert

Balcells sums up the era this wayin his Catalufia

ContamporAnea II (1900-1936) (1974):

La industria textil algodonera, que representaba

el 70 por 100 del valor de la produccibn de las

grandes empresas industriales del principado y

cerca del 70 por 100 de las capitales en ella

invertidos, fue de las mAs afectadas por la

pArdida de las bltimas colonias en 1898. Sufri6

crisis agudas de superproduccibn en 1900-1901 y

1908-1909. Fracasb la creacibn de una Hutua de

Fabricantes en 1907 para subvencionar la

exportacibn de tejidos de algodbn. No pudo contar

con la ayuda del Estado (2). 106

This first industrial crisis of the century, which opens up

the story of the struggle of the Rius factory to stay in

production, is presented as a direct consequence of the

Spanish American war of 1898. In the first place, the war

represented a loss of markets especially for the textile

industry. In the second place, the failure of the central

government in Madrid to appreciate the demands of the

Catalonian industrial classes for some sort of

protectionist legislation led to a heightened regionalist

bias in politics not only among the industrial olass but

also in the general populace of Catalonia. The industrial

recession is, however, not the only source of conflict in

the battle for survival of the industrial class and the preservation of life in Barcelona. Expanded industrial production had also incorporated a lot of wage labor into

the growing urban spaces. The increasing demands of this

sector of the population for more wages and better conditions of employment are also an important ingredient

in the crises that Joaquin Rius and the rest of the

industrial class of Barcelona have to resolve in order to survive.

Mariona Rebull is a novel localized in two predominantly bourgeois spaces of Barcelona,traditional

*haute-bourgeoisie' and 'nouveau riche', and its oonflicts 107 are centered on the movement from one to the other. El viudo Rius. by oontrast, is organized around oonflioting interests and competition. That is, we find conflict with central power in Madrid, conflicts within the industrial class and conflict between the industrial class and the worker's movement.

El viudo Rius also contrasts with Mariona Rebull in economic terms. It represents a period of orisis of growth in opposition to the era of expansion described in Mariona

Rebull. This focus on industrial activity influences the way spaoe is described and incorporated into the structure of the novel. Mariona Rebull deals with the interior spaces of a predominantly bourgeois world. El viudo Rius deals more with exterior spaces and the factory. Taken together, both oover the full spectrum of Brcelona as seen by one class.

In the following pages we will read El viudo Rius as a continuation of Mariona Rebull in the overall 'historical' text of "La ceniza fue &rbol“ while pointing out the changes, if any, that create the transformation to conflictive spaces. The era described in El viudo Rius is one in which the city has undergone important physical, economic and social changes. It is pertinent therefore that the discussion of the individual discursive elements 108 should start with a look at the changes in the physiognomy of the city of Barcelona. Character will be looked at as part of the structure of conflict within the novel.

Femenine space which played an important part in the structure of Mariona Rebull also plays an important role in the plot of El viudo Rius. It shall be examined to see how the changes in its configuration also obey structural imperatives within the ideas of the text. Finally we shall examine the nature of contradiction as it appears in El viudo Rius and attempt an explanation of its dynamics.

3.2 Some aspects of the plot of El viudo Rius.

The novel is primarily focused on the industrial activity of Joaquin Rius as a manufacturer, and the major events are all associated with his primary concern to keep his factory running. The text opens with the last day of

1899 and ends in the aftermath of the events of what has been called 'la semana tr&gica' of July, 1909. As a consequenoe of the doctrinal intent that informs the structure of the text of, there is an uneven treatment of historical time within the narration. The concentration of narrative energy is on those events and situations that

Joaquin Rius has to combat in order to survive as an 109

industrialist. Attention is only fleetingly retained on

large tracts of history which neither Barcelona nor Joaquin

protagonize. The economic crises of the first years of the

new century get attention as do the general strikes and

other worker agitation of 1901 to 1909. Indeed the general

strike of January 1909 for better working conditions, and

the Morroccan campaign of the same month occupy the most

prominent spaces in El viudo Rius. The intervening 'non

eventful' years are explained away in very few words as

times of hard work, on the part of the industrial classes

of Barcelona on the one hand, and lack of political

leadership on the part of the central government on the

other, in an era of random and arbitrary violence.

The first event is a crisis in the industrial sector due to the negative effects of the loss of the colonial markets. Loss of the markets and exoessive inventory are not, however, the only source of problems for Joaquin. He

also has to deal with worker agitation for higher wages.

This situation, we are given to understand, is not new.

According to Joaquin, the intervening years between the death of Mariona and the dawn of the new Century are:

iAffos, de olvido furioso, de trabajo oonstante,

aturdidor, enArgico! jAftos de lucha! ;Y la 110

maldita amenaza constante, la inestabilidad, el

desorden, la politica y las bombas4 .

These are the circumstances of El viudo Rius and the novel works out the details of another statement by Joaquin which is, in that sense, proleptic:

Estamos destinados a pasar de la crisis a los

atentados y de los atentados a la crisis. Esto no

tiene remedio, Llobet. Por lo visto no hay forma

de que pueda existir en Espafia dos cosas, dos

hombres un ministro de Hacienda y un ministro de

Gobernacidn (29).

In Joaquin's own mind the need is for a minister of Finance to put fiscal policy on a sound basis for industrial activity, and a Minister of Public Order to maintain the necessary law and order and to control the worker unrest that is destabilizing the recovery of the industrial sector.

The first crisis Joaquin has to resolve is the industrial recession of the first years of the century. In order to survive he tries his hand at the stock market. He finds out however, that he does not have the necessary I l l

speculative skills to wait out the market and he therefore

withdraws his investment after taking a small loss.

Finally in order to raise the neoessary oapital he has to

sell one of the properties he inherited from his father.

Not only does he finance his survival through the hard

times but Joaquin decides to take advantage of the low prices on industrial machinery to recapitalize and renew

his plant.

As a further step, Barcelona industrialists decide to

act in concert to elicit help from the central government

in Madrid, and through the Fomento del Trabajo Nacional, they organize themselves to petition the central government. Joaquin is selected to be a member of the delegation in representation of the textile sector. Before

he leaves for Madrid he visits his son, Desiderio in boarding school to inform him of the need to sell one of their properties to pay for their survival. Desiderio, who does not understand, is annoyed when his father refuses to buy him a horse.

In Madrid the Barcelona industrialists come away with no more than promises but while there Joaquin is attracted to a young actress with whom he spends a lot of time. On his return, perhaps due to guilty feelings about his prolonged stay in Madrid, he promises to buy the horse for Desiderio if he studies and passes his exans. As a result of this purchase he begins to get anonymous letters threatening violence against his person and against all

'exploiters of the people'. Curious about the worker's movement, he visits one of their meetings. There, he is confronted by Reg&s, a lazy inneffective worker he dismissed from his factory who is now a trade union organizer and agitator. Joaquin's problems with the workers don't end here. He also has an argument with

Campins the supervisor of the sizing and starching department at the factory. Campins and Reg&s have in common the fact that, refusing to believe that they are dismissed because they are bad workers, they think they are terminated because of personal animosity. Unlike Reg&s

Campins is offered his old job back and refuses on

'ideological principle'. Another connection between

Joaquin's factory and the troubled times is that his accountant, Pamias is connected to violent criminals. He finds out that Pamias is responsible for the anonymous letters he has been receiving.

Through the whole of this time Joaquin tries to continue a normal life surrounded by the effects of

'arbitrary' political violence. During his visits to

Desiderio's school he meets and is attracted to Carmen 113

FernAndez, the elder sister of one of Desiderio's friends.

She lets him know that any liaison between them is entirely out of the question. On the occasion of the end of year exhibition at the school, Joaquin meets the other members of her family. As it turns out, Carmen's stepmother is

Evelina Torra, an old aquaintance of Joaquin's from the time when Mariona was alive.

The narration quickly passes to January 1909 and the general strike. The Governor of Barcelona's efforts at arbitration fail and the strike goes on with threats of violence from both sides. The strike is only partially resolved, so while the textile and industrial workers go back to work, the transport worker's union still holds out. In the effort to fill out an urgent order for the military, Joaquin has to break the transport workers' strike. As a result of a confrontation with picketing workers one is injured and another dies. The workers' organization blames Joaquin and his life is seriously threatened. He is offered police protection but, on a night when his escort does not show up, he is ambushed in the company of Arturo Llobet. Llobet is killed while attempting to save Joaquin's life. Joaquin is wounded in his leg and face. As a result of his wounds he has to have a beard and walk with the help of a cane. 114

In July, 1909, a Military draft is instituted to carry

out a punitive campaign in Horrocco. Believing that they

are being punished for the strike, the workers of Barcelona protest violently. The burghers organize a self protection group but fail to protect anything as the nobs set fire to

convents and churches.

When order finally prevails Pamias is shot dead at the

factory while attempting to toroh it and Desiderio, who has

found other interests, expresses his unwillingness to work at the factory. Joaquin renews an old aquaintance and proposes to Carmen Fern&ndez. But the die is already cast: their union is impossible because Desiderio is already

involved romantically with her younger sister. A disappointed and frustrated Joaquin meets Lula Yepes again and decides to go off on a trip with her. This does not, however, take place. The novel ends on a note of generational continuity with Joaquin and his son on their way to the factory in the early morning hours.

Structurally the first five chapters are a regressive narration which relates El viudo Rius to Mariona Rebull as parts of both a narrative and historical continuum. In this regard, narrative continuity is not only invested in the Rius family but also in some figures and charaoters who appeared in Mariona Rebull. One of these is Reg&s who is 115 dismissed in Mariona Rebull and visits revenge on Joaquin in El viudo Rius. Some elements of the conflict as depicted in El viudo Rius also reproduce conflicts started in Mariona Rebull. Such is the murder of Pallui by Jaime the drunken carter. At one level, this particular episode reproduces the melodramatic elements of the 'm6nage A trois' and the motif of jealousy that colored Joaquin's psychological makeup in Mariona Rebull. The novel concludes the fight between Jaime and Pallui, in Mariona

Rebull. on the occasion of the 'fiestas' of Santa Maria.

The arbitrary and senseless bomb attack at the Liceo Opera house operates as a motif of historical contiguity and continuity in the various explosions that are interspersed in El--yimiQ .Rius.

At the historical or mimetic level, the travails of the

Spanish and particularly Catalonian textile industry are woven intimately into the saga of the Rius Family as are also the general attitudes and outlooks of 'fin de sidcle'

Barcelona under the currents of modernism. Within the plot the political bankruptcy of the system of 'turnos' is presented as a contributing factor in the crisis of industry and the problems of Joaquin Rius. In the first place, the political crisis is part of the package that excarcebates an already untenable situation in the textile 116 industry. Conflict in the plot is part of the larger struggle between the industrial class in Barcelona and the political class in Madrid.

In this regard, Joaquin's trip to Madrid as part of the delegation from Barcelona is significant as is the case he argues for protectionism. The unwillingness of Madrid to act effectively contributes to the problems of Joaquin and

Barcelona as a whole in the pursuit of consolidation.

Another important fallout from this is the progressively extremist worker organizations. Though not explicitly mentioned, the lackadaisical attitude of the political class in Madrid is indirectly blamed for worker unrest and lack of public order. The trip to Madrid is also significant in other ways. Joaquin Rius is presented as one who puts duty and responsibility before his own libidinal necessities. In Madrid, he meets Lula Yepes and

'looses control' for a week. This presents a new more sensual aspect of Joaquin's character. It also links up with a previously mentioned conflict between duty and pleasure. This is particularly important in the mysogynous tone of "La ceniza fue Arbol" since at the end of the novel

Joaquin has to decide between going to the factory or going off on a pleasure trip with Lula. He goes to the factory.

Worker unrest, the other half of industrial crisis is 117 not woven into the discourse of El Viudo Rius in quite the sane way. The new Barcelona of the boom years has created a larger working population with new demands. Strikes, pickets and sabotage by worker's groups are part of the problems Joaquin has to overcome to maintain his activity as an industrialist. In the case of worker unrest.

Joaquin is connected first hand to the agitation by his own workers and their grievances against him. RegAs, a lazy worker dismissed from Tejidos Rius in Mariona Rebull, returns in El viudo Rius as a trade union activist to hound

Joaquin. Campins, an ineffective foreman at the factory, is also dismissed and turns out to be connected to a clandestine worker's organization. Joaquin's interaction with these individuals allows narrative attention to dwell on elements which up till El viudo Rius had always been on the periphery. The workers movement is however not incorporated in all its historical 'truth'. In this bourgeois version of history its space is very peculiar.

This can be illustrated by looking at the interaction with the representatives of worker aspirations as they are depicted in the text.

Joaquin's meeting with Reg&s in the cafe is important to the structuring of the novel because it illustrates the way that the worker's movement is incorporated into the 118 text as part of the ideological scheme of "La ceniza fue

Arbol". As opponents to Joaquin and therefore of industrial progress, worker actions are set up as arbitrary and 'unreasonable'. The presence of Reg&s as a close advisor and collaborator of the principal leaders is illustrative of the discredit of the movement and its leaders. Joaquin's visit to the Campins home serves the same purpose. In addition to this, however, the visit to

Campins' home has another purely narrative funotion. It provides, through the inclusion of the lame child, an element of suspense and dramatism, and maybe even of horror, in the association forged, from them on, of the image of the spastic child hobbling away into the distance midst all the bomb attacks in the city.

This same quality is associated with Pamias, the other figure linked to the random and arbitrary violence of the period. He is the accountant at the factory who, it turns out, is a member of a secretive messianic cult. In his case it is not dismisal but rather the promotion of Arturo

Llobet and the crazed logic of his readings that determines his actions as we shall explore when we examine the role new characters play in the conflict of the novel.

Part of the plot conflict between Joaquin and his workers is connected with his own need to produce more 119 efficiently and the incapacity or unwillingness of the workers to meet these demands. At a more general level, the climate of violence is illustrated by the various strike actions and these ooupled with Joaquin Rius' reputation as a strike breaker determine important events that will head the narrative towards its term.

The history of the first decade of the twentieth

Century is also the era of the oult of modernity and cosmopolitan values. The elements of this particular history are incorporated into the industrial expansion of

Barcelona and specifically in the pastimes and interests of

Desiderio. The vestiges of this eclectic and cosmopolitan lifestyle appear in the novel not only through descriptions of the physical environment and activities but also in various English and French neologisms. This incorporation of the spirit of the new age is important in the larger text of "La ceniza fue Arbol" because it repeats the dichotomy and the configuration of oonfliot already stated in Mariona Rebull. In this regard the meeting with Evelina

Torra represents the reintegration into the discourse of El

Yiudo JRiua of a basic conflict of Mariona Rebull, that is, the opposition between leisure-oriented burghers and the work-oriented burghers of Baroelona.

This basic conflict also serves to introduce a new 120

storyline, that is, the social education of Desiderio. It

is suggested that the seductive influence of Evelina Torra

turns Desiderio fron interest in his family's business to

the pleasures of a young socialite. As a consequence of

this another interesting contrast is established between

Desiderio and his father. Desiderio is perfectly at ease

in the kinds of company and activities which his father is

incapable of enjoying. Desiderio's immersion in a society

in which his father does not participate due to his obligations at the factory is an important ground for conflict not only in El viudo Rius but also in the rest of

"La ceniza fue Arbol". This fact will come out even more strongly in later novels like Desiderio and El 19 .iulio that explore the lifestyle of the aristocratic and idle sector of the Barcelona oligarchy.

3.3 Space and the plot of El viudo Rius.

Space is presented in Mariona Rebull as part of the struggle for acceptance in terms of social mobility. The

Riuses move up the social ladder to occupy a new space.

The conflicts in the psyche of Joaquin are linked to the incapacity, on his part, to fit into the new environment.

Space in Mariona Rebull, then, has a hierachical 121

distribution and basically represents two sectors of a

bourgeois reality. In El viudo Rius. the conflicts linked

to the movement from one space to another have been

transcended and the new conflicts are connected to the

struggle to consolidate what has already been achieved.

Thus, space is incorporated into the plot differently. It

is the same space, Barcelona, but now the conflicts are

opposition to external pressures and in the interior of

this space the conflict centers around redistribution.

While in Mariona Rebull, space is fundamentally interpreted

as bourgeois, in El viudo Rius. it is full of conflict.

The Barcelona of El viudo Rius is a changed world.

Under the impulse of municipal authorities and private

investment, the face of Barcelona has changed:

El ayuntamiento habia aprobado un vasto plan de

Reforma, que abriria una ancha avenida hasta el

centro, sacrificando la poesia, la antiguedad, la

solera del hormiguero urbano (6).

Apart from the plans of the municipal authority, private people also have contributed and are contributing to the changes in the physiognomy of the city. Some, in the spirit of the new age, are radically changing the face of the city. An example is the terms in which the adoption of new architectural styles is described:

El m£s aventurado parecia ser el conde de Z, conde

de nueva cepa, wagneriano y reformador. Estaba

decidido a que su casa, am6n de contar con todos

los adelantos modernos, fuera la expresibn

pl&stica de la poesia musical del progreso, y que

estuviera absolutamente enraizada con la

naturaleza y hasta con la geologia del pais (7).

The physical transformation, urban planning and the new architecture are expressions of a will to control the changes that are taking place in the city, but this planning does not take into account other changes which are perhaps going to be more important for the survival of the city.

Changing spaces are linked to the very history of

Barcelona and signal the process of aggrandizement and modernization started in Mariona Rebull. In Mariona

Rebull. these changes are accompanied by a nostalgic evocation of an artesanal Barcelona. A generation of people like the elder Joaquin Rius have transformed the city from its recondite provinciality into a vital and 123

energetic metropolis reaching out in all directions. In El

viudo Rius. these changes are consecrated by new urban

development and expansion and also the new spirit of the

times represented by the Gaudi buildings.

Change has not just affected the physical aspect of the

city. During the era depicted in Mariona ..Rehllll, the

'elites' of Barcelona shared the same meeting places. At

the Rebull tertulia, young socialites and older people

could all assemble. The spirit of the new times has

established a different pattern:

Las tertulias tenian lugar en los circulos y

casinos: la de intelectuales en el Ateneo, la de

solteros en el Circulo del Liceo, la de solterones

en el Ecuestre. Ho quedaban en el antiguo centro

mis que los rezagados (6).

While not stated expressly, the different oenters of

leisure could be a sign of the weakening of the center

around which the city had previously been organized. This points to a more open social life that later novels will describe in more detail. That is, in the 'old' days,

access to a tertulia had to be 'won' by merit. This new dispersal points to a depersonalization of social life and 124

the breakdown of the old fabric under the assault of the

changing times and the city's own vitality. These changes

in the socialization patterns are accompanied by a more

ominous transformation. As the face of the tertulia has

changed so too has the 'old' cafe society changed and taken

on a new personality. Where only intellectuals and

students discussed art and society, now working people meet

to vent their frustration and get a politioal education:

Hasta ahora en los cafAs s61o se reunian los

artistas para hablar de politica. Ahora se retinen

aqui las masas (141).

These changes and displacements, as we shall see later, are

important in that the militant voice of the working masses gathers momentum in the vacated spaces of the old society.

The fact that politics are discussed is tinged with a value judgement because part of the old society, it is implied,

that pursued this activity are a particularly otiose

sector, the artists. This seems to be the intention of the

reflection by which Joaquin indicts the new Barcelona:

<<£Se ha ensanchado la ciudad o se ha

empequefiecido? A1 ensancharse Barcelona, parece 125

como si los barceloneses se empequefiecieran.

iCu&n lejos de si misma est& la ciudad, en una

mezcla horrenda de pasiones, de egoismos! jHacer,

hacer! Los ruidos m&s nobles -los de los

herreros, los de los carpinteros, las campanas de

los conventos y el caminar de los madrugadores-

quedan apagados en el griterio ensordecedor de esa

babel que crece (185).

The tone of this reflection is nostalgic of a oertain

image of Barcelona much as we saw earlier in the narrator of Mariona Rebull, whose perspective is now taken over by

Joaquin. The feeling is that the larger Barcelona has forgotten its roots and the Catalonian work ethic which was the basis of its spiritual and industrial growth. In place of this, a babel of conflicting voices and needs has appeared. In Joaquin's mind, the problems are due to egotism, a distancing of the new Babel from the harmonious relationship between the components of the idealized

Barcelona of the past. The new space of Barcelona has thus changed from the paternalistic relationship between the upper and lower classes into a set of conflicts emanating from the working classes.

The conflicts which characterize this new Barcelona are 126

integrated into the plot in the violent terrorist bomb

attacks, assasinations, and riots that disturb the peace in

Barcelona, on one hand, and on the other, the conflict

invades the factory floor of Tejidos Rius, between enployer

and employee, as well as between employees who actively

support their union and those who don't. Within the text

of the novel Joaquin prevails in the factory and all

challenges to his authority are removed. But in the wider

Baroelona the opposition and the prooess of redefinition of

space persists and irrupts occasionally in random violent

explosions.

3.4 Characterization and conflict in El viudo Rius:

The characters who appear in El viudo Rius develop from

Mariona Rebull and support the full development of "La ceniza fue &rbol". Though the structure of opposition or the contrastive definition of the ideal is maintained, this time the object and the nature of the conflict have changed. These changes color the depiction of the characters who participate in the events of El viudo Rius.

The focus of narrative energy is Joaquin Rius and his efforts to maintain and consolidate his status as an

industrialist. In this effort, he is confronted by various 127 other interests. We shall begin this analysis by examining the character of Joaquin as he is depicted in this novel pointing out the changes that the new circumstances have wrought in his personality. Then we shall look at the nature of the opposition to Joaquin by describing some of the actants who oppose him in the text to show how they contribute by their interaction to define the ideological goals of " La oeniza fue Arbol".

In Mariona Rebull. Joaquin is defined by his technical competence in the environment of his factory and his emotional and affeotive incompetence in his married life.

In that novel, his problems are a result of his own self doubt and feelings of inadequacy when he is in the circles of the 'aristocratic' bourgeoisie of Barcelona. In El viudo Rius. the self doubt and lack of confidence have been replaced by supreme self-confidence and competence. This is due perhaps to the fact that the spaces of the text are predominantly industrial, that is, the narrative concerns itself with those spaces in which Joaquin is at his best.

Another reason is of course that time has passed and he has become a fully integrated part of the traditionalist oligarchy of Barcelona. This full integration into the society of industrial Barcelona is emphasized by the fact that even though he is still the butt of jokes, the 128 motivation for these is different:

Esas ligeras bromas sobre Rius se hacian, sin

embargo, ya sin encono. Eran m&s bien efecto de

una rutina (5).

Rius has indeed become part of the daily routine of the

Baroelona he so ardently desired to be a part of. In the oountry estate, he has also beoome an institution, as muoh a part of the scenery as he is in Barcelona:

A raiz de la gran desgracia los colonos creyeron

que no le volverian a ver. La finca era cosa de

la seftorita o, mejor, del padre de la sefiorita don

Desiderio. Ho creian que don Joaquin pudiera

haberle cobrado afecto a Santa Maria. Sin embargo

ahora les parecia que no habia habidonunca otro

duefio (9).

The change in circumstance is reflected in the part he plays in collective action. Joaquin is now a basic and stalwart part of the Barcelona industrial class. A sign of this is the fact that he is selected twice to represent his class. In the same way that the events of the 1888 129

International Trade Fair of Barcelona consecrated the elder

Rius as a shining example of the entrepreneurial

establishment, Joaquin is picked by his peers to represent

them in Madrid in their efforts to influence the fiscal and

trade policy of the central government. So too, he is

chosen to represent the textile sector when the governor of

Barcelona tries inneffectively to arbitrate the labour disputes of 1909.

Joaquin's full incorporation into his class has been at

a cost. Physically, he is still an imposing and severe

figure:

El cuerpo del fabricante, aquel tronco inflexible

y alto (28).

His physical description is initially very much like he was during his years with Mariona. After all, he had been described as someone who looked older than he really was.

Internally or psychologically, however, he has been deeply affected by his unsuccessful marriage. He is a sad, lonely man whose memories return time and again to haunt him. A glove in a restaurant makes him react painfully:

A1 dar con el simbolo, huidizo en la memoria sobre 130

la mesa, habia retrocedido siibitamente hasta el

dolor del guante original (32).

His reaction in response to the mental pain the glove evokes in his memory is physical. It almost seems that

Joaquin works so hard just to keep the memories at bay. He is very uneasy when he is not working at his factory, and in fact, it is everything to him, as if offering an almost religious feeling to him. It is still, in El viudo Rius. the only place where he feels totally at ease. The motions he goes through are a religious ritual for him and certainly define his relationships to others:

Y es que con s61o pisar las losas del patio dela

f&brica todo el ser del fabricante se ha puesto en

tensidn. Los obreros que aguardan formando

grupos, se separan maquinalmente para dejarle

paso. 21 se dirige, directo, a la puerta lateral

de entrada, junto a la grande de la verja. Saca

la H a v e y la introduce en la cerradura. Hay algo

de movimiento ritual, religioso, en su manera de

introducir la llave, de darle la vuelta. Esto es

el emblema de su categoria, de su supremacia y el

simbolo de la continuidad econdmica, familiar y 131

social (17-18).

This almost religious link with the factory and the daily

ritual are reinforoed in the plot. For example at the

height of the crisis in the textile sector:

Mientras tanto, la salud de Rius parecia

resentida, pero el fabricante no pudo tomarse

aquel verano unas vaoaciones. No podia tomarla

mientras hubiera un solo telar parado (91).

Joaquin's religious dedication is worked into the plot

as he uses all his resources to defend his livelihood.

In other ways too, Joaquin maintains the integrity of

his character. As the personification of the Catalonian work ethic, 'seny', he does not understand the stock market. To his upright manner it represents the most negative aspects of human nature:

Era un mundo insospechado y fraudulento que daba

vArtigo. Queria estar en la f&brica, no moverse

de ella, aunque tuviera que presenciar c6mo iban

qued&ndose inmdviles, una tras otra, todas sus

m&quinas. Pero queria estar alii y no sabia 132

ganarse la vida de otro modo (73).

It is not just a refusal on his part but also an avowed

refusal to be a speculator. In his mind, the stock market

was not only grotesque but immoral:

El Casino Hercantil era un antro de perdicidn, una

horrenda Babilonia. Atildados bolsistas leian el

periddico indiferentes, en los butacones,

esperando a que se abriera la sesidn. En los

muros sonreian las oarnes opulentas de los dioses:

la Fortuna, el progreso, el Comeroio y la

Navegacidn. A Rius le parecia aquello grotesco e

inmoral (72).

At the end of the novel there are other changes in

Joaquin's physical appearance. As a result of an

assassination attempt he is left with ugly scars on his jaws and a limp. This change in his appearance can be related to the reading of the novel as a narrative of

Barcelona. The changes that Joaquin goes through and the problems he has to overcome are the same ones that the city has to face up to. The random violence that characterizes the first decade of the twentieth century can be said to 133 have had the same effects on the city, leaving it lame and disfigured.

The consideration of the characters as actants in the confliotive structures of the novel has to deal with the anti-subjects or anti-heroes of the novel. The antagonist in Joaquin's fight to preserve and consolidate his status are the central government in Madrid, the worker's movement and his own affective and domestic problems.

As part of the scheme of contrastive definition of the ideal, Madrid is contrasted to Barcelona through the comparison of the preoccupations of two groups of people; the Barcelona industrial class and the political class in

Madrid. Madrid also participates in the thesis of conflictively shared space that is the basis for this reading of El viudo Rius. It is a part of conflictively shared space, that is, the conflictively shared wider national space. This depiction of Madrid hinges on the inability on the part of the central government to harness national energy in order to save and preserve national industry in general and Barcelona industry in particular.

The conflict between the two locuses of action is twofold.

In the first place, the conflict centers around the need for creative fiscal policy to nurture national industry at a time of stress. In Joaquin's opinion, the government's 134

fiscal policy makes it more difficult to overcome the

situation of crisis:

Ahora tenemos algo peor que colonias: tenemos los

impuestos a causa de la pbrdida de las colonias.

En una palabra, antes el estado se dedicaba a

despojarnos porque teniamos las colonias y ahora

porque no las tenemos (29).

In his opinion, the central government or Madrid has taken

the wrong decision. Instead of improving conditions their

fiscal policy is making things worse with an ill advised

system of taxation. This is not the only motive for

conflict however. Trade policy from Madrid is also leaving

local industry in a disadvantageous position vis A vis

foreign competition:

Los tejidos de Manchester y las sedas de Lyon

entraban en Espafia e invadian el mercado. Los

fabricantes espaftoles estaban sin proteccibn (60).

The government in Madrid was permitting competition from

outside and this was further ruining the domestic market

for Barcelona industrialists. The text suggests, even 135 though it does not pursue it to any length, that the role of Madrid in the industrial crises of Barcelona and Joaquin

Rius is the result of the inherent weaknesses of the

'turno' system. According to Joaquin, the various governments are not interested in running the country as much as they are in retaining political hegemony even if for a few weeks. This is further exarcebated by the fact that governments were formed not on the merits or weaknesses of their political and economic programs:

Habia caido por impotencia el Gobierno Silvela, y

el bal6n del poder habia pasado de uno a otro

prohombre a tontas y a locas. Los gobiernos se

habian sucedido sin ningtin programs concreto, m&s

que el de detentar el mando aunque s61o fuera por

unas semanas (106).

Strange as it may seem therefore, to include a faceless entity like 'Madrid' or the central government as part of the actantial structures of the novel, we must remember its importance as part of the paradigm of conflictively shared space in the first place and as part of the greater discursive device of contrastive definition of the ideal.

The actions of Madrid are important in the delineation of 136

the other discourses in the text and help define the

parameters of textual action as Joaquin and his compatriots

fight to overcome the effects of the actions of the central

government.

It is even suggested that the central government has a

more direct role in the events that take place in

Barcelona. Lerroux, the republican firebrand, is received

at the Ministry. There is in this a veiled allusion to the

oentral government as a oulpable participant in the civil disorders of Barcelona. In all this, however, the central government, even though it has created the conditions, is but a distant participant in the drama of Barcelona's

industry, which is basically a confrontation between employers and employees.

The worker's movement is the most active ingredient in

the conflicts of the novel. The treatment of labor dispute

is neither abstract nor historical. The presence of workers and their organizations is woven into the discourse

in two ways. On one hand worker unrest and random violence provide a dramatic background to the whole novel. On the other hand, the worker's organizations are directly

involved in the saga of the Riuses by placing three kinds of worker directly in the factory at Tejidos Rius. El viudo Rius has to deal with the various ways in which 137

Joaquin is confronted with the workers' demands. The description of worker demands is focalized from Joaquin's perspective as an industrialist.

Joaquin had always felt uncomfortable around workers.

He actually criticised his father for the familiar way in which he addressed workers and his accessibility to workers. The first thing he did when he was called upon to direct the operations of the faotory was to institute the shift system. This, with its consequent massification of workers ooupled with Joaquin's own 'aristocratic' distancing from their oonoerns places him in a position where he does not really know or care about his workers as individuals. He relates to them as they relate to his needs on the production line. In Joaquin's eyes:

Desde la ventana que da al patio observa a esa

masa amorfa discurrir a sus pies, puertas

adentro. Volvi6ndose, al otro lado, a la amplia

ventana que da a la sala de m&quinas, contempla

como esa masa se desmenuza, diluye y personaliza.

Un simple tr&nsito a trav6s de una puerta abierta

y ya puede reconocerlos, dominarlos ... Cada cual

ante su m&quina, ya todos ellos son otros (18). 138

From this perspective the workers have no individual shape as human beings. This is a recurrent theme in the way workers are incorporated into the discourse of the novel.

Workers have no private lives and their descriptions, which are focalized through Joaquin's eyes, show that their only possibility at individuation is in the place they occupy within the factory, that is, their identity as a factor of production. Narratively they are part of the 'realise' of a novel that deals with industrialization. They are also elements in the configuration of conflict in the novel. In both instances, their historical personality and role is only partially realized. In the text they are almost an abstraction that serves a political program

Initially, differences between workers and employers is explained as the work of external forces, agitators whose malign influence turns peaceful workers into anonymous demons. This is illustrated by the fact that after the strike Joaquin's judgement of his workers changes somewhat. He becomes aware that the same people who were smiling and greeting him would, at the drop of a hat, be out in the streets opposing his intentions as an industrialist.

Entonces advirtid realmente la gravedad de la 139

situaci6n. Todos podian hacerle dafio,

perjudicarle; a 61, en oambio, a la hora de exigir

explicaciones, satiafaociones, no tendria a quien

dirigirse (237).

The enormity of the situation is not in the revindications

of the workers, which he thinks are unjustified anyway, but

the mere faot that workers oould stand up against him as a

group. Even though there are union representatives at the

factory, he sees himself as the target of an amorphous and

anonymous mass whose violence is arbitrary and senseless.

He cannot imagine them as being valid interlocutors.

After the attack on him, these same workers send him a

get well present. This reinforces the idea that worker

violence and intransigence are the consequence of some

external 'demonic' influence.

Sobre una mesa habia una estatuilla de bronce con

un pedestal de m&rmol; era un herrero batiendo el

yunque. En el pedestal una inscripcibn: << A don

Joaquin Rius, sus obreros, en testimonio de

aprecio>> (237).

Throughout the text of El viudo Rius. the pattern remains 140

the same. There is an ambivalence in the treatment of

workers. The only time they are separated from the mass of

faceless demands is when individuals among them make an

effort on Joaquin's behalf. For example Llobet or Roig

because they are on his side and others like Campins or

Reg&s because they come into conflict with him. These

workers come into conflict with him because they are not

good workers, but then Joaquin and the discourse of El

viudo Rius seem to identify all worker discontent with lazy

ineffective workers.

This attitude towards the workers at his factory on the part of Joaquin is a kind of paternalism that does not or

cannot admit that workers may have other needs and

interests outside the factory. This attitude is reiterated by Arturo Llobet who cannot even give them the credit of being able to think things out and discern for themselves the truth of their own situation as workers:

A esta gente pueden meterle en la cabeza las ideas

que quieran. Ha llegado un agitador no s6 de

donde, al que los diarios conservadores llaman<

Emperador del Paralelo>> (139).

This is the feeling Joaquin expresses when he gets a chance 141

to see for himself:

Rius observaba atbnito la sugestidn que la simple

figura de aquel hombre ejercia sobre los oyentes.

Hasta el humo parecia haberse quedado parado a la

expectativa (143).

This kind of depiction of the workers as children and their

leaders as demagogues is further underlined by the fact

that most of the members of the unions are the youngest members of the workforce. The most vociferous but not necessarily the most reasonable:

Por lo visto, no todos, ni mucho menos, eran

afectos al sindicato. Los sindicalistas o los

sindicados eran, sin embargo, los m&s jdvenes y

los que m&s gritaban (221).

The manichean way in which workers and their

representatives are painted can best be illustrated by the way the worker's struggle is incorporated into the discourse of the text of El viudo Rius in the persons of

Reg&s, Campins and Pamias.

Campins' part in the plot is rather small as indeed are 142 the parts of the other representatives of worker's demands in El viudo Rius. His conflict with Joaquin Rius and the visit of the latter to his apartment, serves more of a purpose in the ideological discourse of the novel. The intentionality is clearly to illustrate the already stated prejudices about the worker's organization. He is an example of the worker who is loyal in the extreme to the leadership and the dictates of the worker's movement. The desoription of his hone gives the narrating oonsoienoe an opportunity to paint a picture of the life and habits of the working class through the eyes of Joaquin. While ignoring the narks of poverty and difficulty, attention is rather focused on the reading materials in his hone.

Rius aprovechd para observar la habitacidn.

Pegado a la pared presidia la estancia, sobre el

papel descolorido y agrietado del tabique, un

retrato de Marx y otro de Pablo Iglesias, anbos

recortados de una revista gr&fica. En el rostro

de anbas lideres habian dejado su huella las

noscas de tres tenporadas. Anontonados en un

desvencijado aparador se veian un montdn de

revistas, novelas por entregas y folletos

politicos (152). 143

The picture is one of an autodidact who has filled his head with the 'fantasies' of 'novelas por entregas' and politioal panphlets. The assooiation of the two kinds of

literature disqualifies any opinions and ideas Canpins night have. In faot the description of Canpins nakes hin

an alnost quixotic figure in his refusal to even consider going back to his old job in order not to conpronise his beliefs.

The description of Panias is rather longer. It follows

the sane general gist of the description of Canpins in that

the beliefs he holds are disqualified right fron the outset. The technique used in describing hin is

reniniscent of Azorin's nininalist technique and also of

Valle Incl&n.

El cajero de la f&brica era un honbre enjuto y

bajito; la ninina expresidn fisica de cajero.

Lleva desde tienpo innenorial unas gafas

deterioradas por el constante esfuerzo de

nantenerse a presidn sobre una nariz

pr&cticanennte sinbdlica. Panias apenas habla.

Pero se escucha cons tan tenente, afio tras aflo, la

letania lejana de su nondlogo aritnAtico flotar 144

sobre los compartimientos: doce, veintisiete,

cuarenta y dos, ciento quince, ciento noventa,

doscientos siete...La oonstante efusibn de una

segunda alma de aquel hombre entristecido y minimo

(24).

The very vocabulary of his description insists on the fact that he is insignificant, both physically and spiritually.

His body, like his mind, is tied down to the spaoes of the numbers he adds and subtracts in the ledgers. In his world, everything is black or white, subtraction or addition with no allowance made for intermediate spaces.

This tendency in him is reinforced by his esoteric religious beliefs in which good and evil are in constant battle.

Pamias is the butt of office Jokes and he hates and envies the salespeople because they have more liberty than he does. He is also dissatisfied with his station in life and thinks that he gets less than his due in terms of respect and deference from his co-workers.

An interesting fact however is that Pamias, who is associated with violent revolutionaries, does not identify with the wider conflict between worker's demands and the establishment. He is part of a violent messianic cult 145 curiously colored by regenerationist premises and Christian theses of salvation:

Mi nodestia ha sufrido nucho y sblo pruebas

irrefutables han podido convencerme de mi

destino. La eleccibn que sobre ni ha pesado ne

obliga a hacer entrega de mi persona para la

regeneracibn de la sociedad y la nueva luz. La

antorcha de los tiempos nuevos ha empezado a arder

y siento su peso en mis impuras y miserables manos

por el camino de la purificacibn universal, aunque

duros de oidos se nieguen a su evidencia (165).

The violence he and his correligionists carry out is obviously distinct or even contrary, at least in its objectives, to the violence of the worker's movement.

The other close-up of a character associated with the climate of violence and the worker's organizations is

Reg&s. He used to work at Tejidos Rius but was dismissed after Joaquin discovered he was incompetent. Joaquin still remembers him:

Ya no me acordaba de eso — Rius jadeaba— . Se

llama Reg&s. Si, Reg&s ... --repetia-- ... Hace 146

bastantes aflos le ech6 de mala manera. Era un

gandul, se lo aseguro. Su padre lo sabe. Un

gandul y ... todo lo peor ... (144).

In Joaquin's mind, Reg&s is not just a lazy worker but

something worse because he has converted himself into one

of the leaders of the worker's movement. This serves to disqualify the worker's organization because the inference

is that the organization as an institution is a hiding place for poor workers who then become lobbyists.

This evaluation is corroborated by the fact that later

on Reg&s turns up as a representative for the workers when

the governor of Barcelona tries to arbitrate labor disputes. Joaquin accuses him of not being interested in resolving the issue at hand and repeats his opinion of him as a lazy good for nothing:

-Lo que usted quiere — intervino, con indignacidn

contenida, personal, Joaquin Rius— no es resolver

la ouestidn, sino embrollarla. Este procedimiento

es muy de usted, que por otro lado no ha trabajado

nunca (230).

Inherent in the description of Reg&s, in the same way as in 147 the descriptions of Pamias and Campins, are elements which disqualify them as individuals and as representatives of the forces that are vying to define their own spaces as subjects in the political and economic spaces of

Barcelona. The utilization of such questionable subjects and their motives disqualifies and delegitimizes workers demands.

3.5 Feminine space in El viudo Rius:

El viudo Riua follows the pattern of Mariona Rabull with important differences. There are elements of continuity, such as the limitation of feminine space within the patriarchal system that defines the text. Hence, at the representational level, the same ideal of feminine nature is repeated. The differences at this level between

Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius are those of amplified scope. Where the feminine ideal was defined in contrast to

Mariona alone in Mariona Rebull, now, there are several representations of the ideal as there are of its opposite.

The traditional ideal of perfect feminine space in the patriarchal universe of Barcelona is Gertrudis, the fiancAe of Arturo Llobet. She is described thus: 148

Gertrudis era agradable, delicada; una de esas

muchachas a las que en seguida se las descubre el

inmenso bien que pueden hacer por el solo heoho de

existir; discretas, su vida es un relevo de

carifios, de los padres al marido, del marido a los

hijos; derraman sin cesar los dones de una

sumisidn innata, atenta; la vida cotidiana parece

florecer literalmenmte de sus manos, tan pulcras

para la cocina, como para la ropa blanoa y la

alianza conyugal (34).

Within this image of the ideal, the space reserved for women in Barcelona society is domestic, as caregiver and nurturer. Feminine space is defined in terms of service to the other elements of the 'family'. Gertrudis is, however, not the only example of this limitation of feminine space.

Mercedes, Mariona's sister is another example, this time of the happily married woman. When Joaquin asks her whether she is happy at her fifth pregnancy, she responds:

Esta es la mayor felicidad- afirm6, resuelta-.

Los quiero con todas mis fuerzas. Quiero verlos

crecer y estar a su lado. ;0h — prosiguid, en

broma— , no creas que vaya a ser una madraza! ... 149

Los llevo muy rectos (89).

Heroedes' idea of domestic bliss fits within the paradigm

of the perspective from which Gertrudis is described.

El viudo Rius also amplifies the scope of its description of 'positive' feminine space. There is an

example of self-sacrifice and abnegation that perhaps

repeats the possible description of dofta Paula who had to bring up her two sons alone when her husband went off to the Americas. Carmen Fern&ndez actually gives up the possibility of her own happiness twice. In the first

instance, she refuses to become involved with Joaquin because of her prior commitment to her father. She feels she needs to watch over him and protect him from the wiles of Evelina Torra, her stepmother. In the second place, she gives up her love for Joaquin, a few years later, for reasons of family unity. She cannot look out for her own happiness because it would destroy Joaquin and Desiderio's father-son relationship.

The other women who intervene in the story as actants in important events are Lula Yepes and Evelina Torra. Lula is the only woman who manages to break Joaquin's ascetic dedication to his factory. He loses his "sang froide" when he meets her. The encounter with Lula allows the 150

narration to touch a hitherto barely insinuated side of the

relationship between nen and women and it is curious to

note the bourgeois 'propriety' even here. This can be

demonstrated with a look at various episodes in which the

erotic element is present in Joaquin's encounters with

Josefina, his maid. Carmen Fern&ndez and finally Lula

Yepes.

In the encounter with Josefina, Joaquin resists the

erotic urge:

Una voz ya le ha interrumpido la ilacidn de las

ideas. Sin incorporar la oabeza ve, sin embargo,

la mano de la doncella que deposita con cuidado

sobre el escritorio ese vaso de leche. Josefina

lo hace con cuidado, con sumo cuidado, para no

estorbar. 21, Joaquin, ve ese brazo que se retira

y la silueta de la mujer. Ella se vuelve

lentamente y se va (84).

This description of the simple act of serving a glass of milk is very suggestive and emphasizes female sexuality in terms of Joaquin's physical urges. This is the same kind of description associated with Carmen: 151

Era una sorpresa, una reacci6n a la mera

presencia. Aquellos ojos rasgados, el talle

flexible, la boca semiabierta, plena y brillante,

el endiablado desgarro de la voz, quebrada y

honda, emotiva ... (101).

The purely physical nature of the attraction that Joaquin feels is even more pronounced in the description, through his eyes, of the encounter with Lula:

Joaquin no queria mirarla. Lo que no hubiera

querido ver, sobre todo, era su escote, la fresoa

piel turbadora, excitante, tibia y opulenta, que

palpitaba (123).

In this description, as in all the others, the element of temptation or the negative image of female sexuality is reiterated. Finally Joaquin does seduce or is seduced by

Lula, but the description of the encounter insists on its purely physical nature:

-He ha hecho usted perder la raz6n y no la

recobrarA- su voz era brumosa.

Besaba su boca, su escote, arafiaba su seno. 152

Ella se desvanecia, pero luego redoblaba, fiera.

Y fue ella quien le atrajo ahora a 61 hacia si,

para hacerse ganar otra vez. A1 fin la mujer se

sent6, alii sin fuerzas, sobre la c6sped. Se pas6

la mano por los cabellos, por la sien, con

lentitud.

-Es usted un b&rbaro.

Joaquin Rius estaba de pio, mirAndola sin ternura

(134).

The attitude displayed by Joaquin towards Lula reinforces the mysogynous content of the depictions of feninine space in "La ceniza fue Arbol". Having succumbed to 'temptation'

Joaquin is full of remorse and guilt on his return to

Barcelona.

Within the plot structure however, feminine space is subjugated to Joaquin's dedication to the factory as the main source of the continuity that is sought in El viudo

Rius..

3.6 The contradictions of a conflictively shared space: El viudo Rius.

In El ViudQ Rius, as in Mariona Rebull, there are many 153 structural inconsistencies within the narrative. These tend to share the general weakness inherent in the need of the ideological or political text to have a "tightly controlled" discourse. As part of the contrastive definition of the ideal, the weaknesses of the text lie in the manichean opposition of good, identified with Joaquin

Rius and the good health of his business (Barcelona and its good social and economic health), and, evil, all the instruments and elements in opposition to the well being of business. There is a proliferation of 'loose' ends. In

Mariona Rebull. this is partly due to the imbalances between the purely narrative discourse and the ideological discourse in the text and the use of melodramatic effects.

There is a prevalence of static description as opposed to narration, that is, the needs of the political or ideological statement override the needs of the narration.

In El viudo Rius. the contrastive descriptive presentation of the opposing forces, Joaquin on one hand and, Madrid, worker unrest on the other, does not establish any connection between one sphere of action and the other.

The descriptive background of what is essentially an antagonistic narrative structure are laid down without the necessary posterior narrative or discursive development.

The antagonic forces are described in their relation 154 toJoaquin and Barcelona industry alone. There is no reference to their own motivations. In fact, in the case of the workers' organizations, their collective personality as a valid subject and agent of history is denied. Thus, for example, the oppositional forces in Barcelona, identified in the various personnifications of the worker's struggle, are disqualified as authentic centers of opposition even as they are identified. The whole of the worker's movement is reduoed to the level of personal vendetta (Reg&s), childlike faith in the union and the ramblings of political pamphleteers (Campins), and the wild ravings of an insignificant ledger keeper (Pamias).

The principal ideological intent which informs the story of El viudo Rius is the triumph of Joaquin Rius over the obstacles that confront him as an exemplary definition of the Barcelona burgher, that is, one who transformed the city from provincial anonymity to what it is. As a discourse, the emphasis is not on the evolution of the conflict per se but rather on its resolution. What we have essentially are two elements of the course of narrative discourse, the beginning and the end, with scant attention paid to the middle.

The fictionalization of history or the fictionalization of prior texts is not problematic if the discourse 155

organizes itself into the appropiate narrative structure to

achieve its own ends. The history of Barcelona as it is defined in El viudo Riua. is not supported by the discursive structures of the text. Within the ideological

suppositions of the text of “La ceniza fue Arbol", history

is envisioned as the object of bourgeois action but this

runs counter to the historical experience of Barcelona during the period that is represented in the novel. This fact is insinuated by the prevalence of texts in which

Joaquin Rius is a passive witness to the events of his city. During 'la semana tr&gica', the mob takes over the streets of Barcelona. It burns and loots churches while

Joaquin and the other members of his self-defence unit look on helplessly. The history of those days is beyond their scope of action. This change from active subjects to passive onlookers is not narratively developed. Such situations in El viudo Rius. lead to serious flaws in the flow or logic of the text and a loss of cohesion with the causal motives and structures. The narrating conscience also seems to be placed in the same dilemma and seems not to be able to extricate itself from the 'logic' of non knowledge which seems to be the only motive for these lapses in continuity. For example, Campins' life outside the factory is never connected to his activities within the 156

factory. They are almost two different persons. In the

same way, the role of the spastic child is never explained

in the text. He is a demoniacal presence that is connected

to Campins on the one hand and to the acts of random and

arbitrary violence on the other.

There seems to be a conscious effort on the part of the narrating subject to avoid dealing with the history of the

events in their plenitude either as 'history' or as

fiction. On one hand the worker's movement has to be

included but then it is denied any actantial participation

in the history of Barcelona. In this sense any development or explanation of workers' motives would subvert the

ideological object of the text. The dilemma of fictionalization is hence twofold. While denying the facts of history, the fiction is nevertheless obliged to include workers because they determine the choice of antagonist.

This is why the worker's organization, subject and protagonist of its own history during the period in question, is reduced to a faceless mass prone to arbitrary and random acts of violence.

In a passage reminiscent of Lope de Vega's

Fuenteove.iuna. Joaquin thinks of the destiny of Barcelona and the arbitrary violence that had come to characterize it. In his own mind he cannot understand the violence and 157

opines that the whole of Barcelona's citizenry is to blane

for it:

En ese todos estaba Barcelona. £Qui6n fabrica las

bombas, qui6n las coloca? Todos. *Qui6n ha

silbado contra la policia? Todos (184).

This text illustrates the result of the incapacity to

signal clearly the agents and the objeot of all the

violence. The violent act is somehow divorced from the

antagonism of the plot of the novel. In fact the

suggestion is that the whole city is somehow guilty of the

random violence. Joaquin symbolically includes members of

his own class. The fatalistic tone, and the ignorance of

the true authors thus became a necessary ingredient in the

ideological structures of the text that deny personality as

active subjects of their history to the working masses of

Barcelona. An illustration of this unconnectedness between violent acts and the adversarial subjects of the novel's plot is the fight that Joaquin witnesses in the Plaza de

Catalufia:

En efeoto en el oentro de la Plaza un grupo

numeroso y heterogAneo cantaba <>, 158

al par que recibian considerables sillazos y

estacazos de otro grupo, no menos nutrido. A

ambos de este campo de Agramante se sunaban por

momentos elenentos de refuerzo, de forma que el

lio parecia llegar a su cAnit en el momento que

Rius y Miret desembocaban a la plaza por la calle

Vergara con expectaci6n (182).

The separation of Joaquin's struggle against organized

labor in his factory from the struggles on the outside of

the factory is one culprit for the existence of discontinuity and contradiction in El viudo Rius. But as

is the case in Mariona Rebull, it is a consequence of the

ideological conditioning of the text. Ironically, it is

the need for ideological control that actually leads to the discontinuities that subvert the ideology of the text and reveal it as no more than very partial. Its own discursive

insistence destroys the unanimity that the text seeks to project on the subjects of Barcelona history. The version of the history of Barcelona that it seeks to materialize is also subverted by the need to adhere to the facts and experience of what took place. In the effort to deny part of history, that very part comes back to 'haunt' the text and destroy its unity of purpose by introducing 159

contradictions into it; contradictions that are not only a

consequence of what is said and how it is put together but

rather the result of what the text refuses to acknowledge.

The most obvious example of this is in the text's denial of

the economic and political basis for the worker's

struggle. For example, Pamias is linked to violent

messianic anarchist factions in Barcelona but his own acts

are attributed to his mental illness. The protagonist of

history we are told is the bourgeois class. But the

history the text narrates is one of antagonistic relations between this class and the urban proletariat. By eliminating the proletariat as a valid interlocutor, the text also eliminates the connection between socio-economic circumstance and conflict. Though this is consistent with

Agusti's thesis of the bourgeois class as the only valid subject of Barcelona history it creates discontinuity in the narration. 160

H otos

Jaime Sendra-Catafau La novellstioa de Ignacio

Agusti en "La ceniza fue Arbo!" (1865^1965) DAI 39:

912A-13A.

2- Ignacio Agusti Un siglo de Catalufia (Barcelona:

Destino, 1940).

3 - Ignacio Agusti Mariona Rebull (Barcelona: Destino,

1944), 52. Subsequent referenoes and quotes from the text will be followed by the page number in parenthesis.

*• Igancio Agusti El viudo Rius (Barcelona: Destino,

1945), 15. All other references will be followed by the page number in parenthesis. CHAPTER III

Desiderio and El .19-Julia: The definition of the other.

Introduction.

In Desiderio (1957) and 18._.i.uIi.Q. (1965), the thesis of

"La ceniza fue Arbol" follows the contrast established between Mariona Rebull (1944) and El viudo Rius (1945).

Desiderio is closer to Mariona Rebull in that the story it narrates, in both chronological and social terns, is linited to a bourgeois conception of historical space. As a part of the contrastive structure of the discourse itself, Mariona Rebull defines exellence (Joaquin Rius) against a background of decadence (Ernesto Villar and

Mariona). Desiderio reverses the equation by concentrating narrative attention on the description of decadence

(Desiderio) against the ever present figure of excellence,

Joaquin Rius.

The definition of the other within the oligarchy and the contrastive presentation of attitudes is achieved by linking difference to generational change. In this regard, 161 162

lechuguino existence is formulated in terms of the sons

of affluence. The generational conception of this

difference is further reinforced by a certain mitigating

circumstance, the European War of 1914.

In an essay titled "19 julio en la tetralogia de

Agusti", That appeared in Raz6n v Fe 173(1968) Rafael

Hornedo states:

A mi entender, Ignacio Agusti lo que se ha propuesto

con Desiderio es contraponer dos mundos: el dificil y

agitado mundo del trabajo en la Barcelona fabril y

laboriosa del primer decenio del siglo XX (El viudo

Rius) y el mundo vacio y hedonista de la cioudad

nochenierga y cosmopolita en que se convirtid Barcelona

en aquel epilogo de la belle dpoaue por los afids 15 al

17 (Desiderio). 0, tal vez, m&s exactamente, su

propdsito parece haber sido enfrentar dos generaciones:

la de Joaquin Rius y la de su hijo Desiderio.

Propdsito que continua en 19 .iulio (94-5).

Desiderio sets the action within an exclusively bourgeois space while 19 .iulio presents this same space as one full of crises and conflict. An important difference between these two novels and the earlier pair is that

Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius represent two almost 163

chronologically contiguous moments of Barcelona's history

whereas the time lapse between Desiderio and 19 .iulio is

over twenty years. This may be due to the familial idea of

history governing the series. That is to say, the narrator

chooses the young adulthood of successive generations, that

of Desiderio taking place around World War I, and that of

his son Carlos some twenty years later in the Civil War.An

immediate oonsequence is to overlook the Primo de Rivera period as a contributing factor in the problem of decadence

and civil strife in Spain. This shows that the overwhelming presence of "factual" historical events in the two novels is nonetheless highly selective. In the earlier novels of the series, historical events are incidental to

the narration of the Rius' rise to prominence in Barcelona, whereas in Desiderio and 19 .iulio. they beoome central to

the action. At the same time, Agusti is only interested in a few historical periods, which he documents or presents in great detail. Accordingly the foous changes from the nature of a people and their city to the perception and

interpretation of specific historical moments.

This new emphasis on history influences the way the discourse of the texts is arranged and human action is displaced in favor of history itself as a determinant in human affairs. The characters are not actants in their own history but rather passive reactants to events outside 164

their control. This also means that our reading has to

recognize the importance of the extratextual signified,

history and ideology, because there is an effort to follow

the text of "history" closely especially in 19 .iulio. In

both novels, authorial commentary and political intentions

acquire their own space in the discussion of historical

events. In other words, the novels are full of abstract discussions of the events narrated. In addition there is a

subtle subtext reminisoent of Ortega y Gasset's Espafia inyertebrada and La rebelidn de las masas. The very generational structure lends itself to this interpretation.

The most important problem is the inability of the generation born at the beginning of the century to continue the work of their fathers. Desiderio. as part of the Rius family saga, signifies invertebration, loss of vigor and drive. This problem is compounded by another, working class dissatisfaction and rebellion. In 19 .iulio, the generation of Desiderio makes bad political decisions that result in chaos, thereby contributing to the process which would lead to the anarchy and rebellion of the 'ignorant masses'. These processes end on a note of hope because a new generation emerges that is ready to carry on the work of the forefathers, the grandchildren of Joaquin's generation represented by the figure of Carlos Rius. In this light, the work as a whole is built upon some of the 165

premises and assumptions of the regenerationist currents in

Spanish political life.

Our reading will deal with the processes of continuity

and contiguity as they are incorporated into the discourse

of the text. We hope to show how the configuration of

these disoursive elements and the discourse itself form

part of the larger plot of "La ceniza fue Arbol". It is

hoped that they will demonstrate the unity of purpose

behind this ideological version of history in Barcelona and

Spain, and how this unity of purpose is subverted as it

develops in the plot.

4. Desiderio: generational change and the definition of the

other.

4 .1 Preliminary Considerations.

As mentioned, Desiderio (1957), abandons the intense preoccupation with the factory and social unrest that

characterized El viudo Rius. The focus is mainly on

Joaquin Rius' son, Desiderio, and the problems he

encounters as he reaches adulthood in a socially and morally transformed Barcelona. As Alborg notes:

En las primeras p&ginas de la novela parece que la 166

economia y los telares del mundo van a

seguir seftoreando el cuadro, pero inmediatanente

toma posesibn del ancho rio novelesco la

desbordada juventud de Desiderio, y desde entonces

la novela va a convertirse en la intensa y

sostenida narracibn, viva, din&mica y enfebrecida

de sus pasiones amorosas (1958, 120).

Alborg aotually thinks that Desiderio is a romantio novel that has very little to do with the previous novels of the series. In his view, the thematic constraints and the preoccupation with economic and social questions are absent in Desiderio. In fact, however, Desiderio forms a thematic and narrative continuum with the previous novels as a part of the description of the various processes of change and transformation that Barcelona undergoes. This transformation is certainly spatial and material but it also has a human dimension and it is in this sense that

Alborg's reading of the narrative world must be understood when he affirms:

En esta ocasibn, sin embargo, no lo componen la

economia ni la industria de Barcelona, sino sus

fiestas y sus placeres, su mundo dorado, su

agitacibn ciudadana, sus deportes, sus monumentos 167

y su riqueza, su rostro de gran ciudad cosmopolita

y ruidosa, sus teatros, sus circulos brillantes,

sus salones y sus oasas de juego (122).

Alborg intuits another kind of narrative object in the novel, but he fails to situate Desiderio within the continuum of "La ceniza fue Arbor*. The factory is ever present and, as we shall see, economic activity is still a huge part of PesidflriQ.

The changes that take place in Barcelona as a consequence of economic expansion are especially important. The Barcelona of the novel is one that has gone through myriad material and spiritual changes as a consequence of the European War. These changes are an important part of the plot in two ways. They provide the referential codes and circumstances that condition the underlying historical and historicizing discourses of the novel as a whole. They also provide an important ingredient in the plot's definition and explanation of change. In spite of the glamor that Alborg mentions,

Sendra-Catafau understood the work as a novel of decadence:

Para nosotros el tema principal de la obra es la

decadencia: decadencia en las costumbres, en el

vestir, en el hablar, en el actuar, en el sexo, en 168

el comportarse, en el pensar (1977, 122).

Sendra-Catafau's insistence on decadence perhaps has to do

with the rejection of the loss of Barcelona's 'innocence'

that Desiderio clearly describes. The Barcelona of this

novel is licentious, dyonisian and nocturnal. In

Sendra-Catafau's view expressed in his La novellstioa de

Ignacio Atfustl (1977, 127), the decline in the bourgeois

ethic signified by the world of the novel is to be blamed

on the very things that made modern Barcelona possible. A closer look reveals that the cause for the apparent difference is only defined in vague moral terms by

Sendra-Catafau. The text of Desiderio itself insists on the material progress of Barcelona during the European

War. If anything, the Barcelona of the novel is one that

is more vital and vibrant, dynamic and cosmopolitan than the city in Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius. In the same way, Desiderio as a character is not to be imagined as a mere decadent version of his father.

Difference as it is incorporated into the text is not only decadence but also change. Desiderio depicts that other bourgeois Barcelona that was more concerned with the affluent lifestyle of the class rather than those occupations that had made their class and city great. In other words, the expression of affluence through the 169

earlier character, Ernesto Vilar (Mariana Rebuild, finds

its full expression in Desiderio. In 'real life', the difference between the lifestyle and the creation of wealth

is not mutually exclusive. The narrating conscience of

Desiderio gets around this problem with a reductive

operation in which, on the one hand, there are those whose primary concern is for industrial continuity, and on the

other, those for whom the effort at working conscientiously day after day is less attractive than the enjoyment of the benefits accrued through such industry. Within the

ideological text of the history of Barcelona, as told by the saga of the Rius family, continuity is a very vital part of industrial progress. In Desiderio. this circumstance is influenced by outside forces, history

itself, in the form of the War in Europe.

The change wrought by the war on the physical and moral fabric of Barcelona creates the 'temptations' that draw the young men of Barcelona away from the more austere lifestyle of individuals like Joaquin Rius, who were educated in different times. According to Tuflon de Lara:

A1 estallar la guerra mundial regia los destinos

del pais un gobierno encabezado por el

conservador Eduardo Dato, que declarb la posicibn

espaftola de neutralidad. Romanones y Lerroux se 170

proclamaron partidarios de la intervenci6n en

favor de los aliados; los carlistas en favor de

los imperios centrales. En verdad, todos se

apasionaban por una lucha que servia para poner

etiquetas a los grupos politicos e ideoldgicos en

presencia pero nadie deseaba entrar en la horrenda

conflagracidn. Mucho menos las empresas, los

negociantes, los especuladores de todo gdnero para

quienes se abria un periodo de ganancias sin tasa

(1974, 23)

The Spanish and Catalonian political classes found it easy to identify with the parties in conflict but the advantages of neutrality were for the most part for the financial and commercial classes who expanded markets and profit margins. As Albert Balcells insists:

La neutralidad de Espafta durante la primera guerra

mundial origind para la industria espaftola una

coyuntura excepcional. La industria catalana se

benefici6 a la vez de los pedidos de los

beligerantes y de los mercados temporalmente

desabastecidos por las potencias industriales

europeas (1974, 13) 171

This historical fact is incorporated into the text and

used to explain the events and the actions of the

protagonists. Firstly, there is more profit for some

industries including 'Tejidos Rius'. Secondly, the influx

of foreigners tended to lead to the modification of social

customs in some sectors of the population. These

situations play a prominent role throughout Desiderio.

4.2 Desiderio: The story of the generation of differenoe.

The movement of the plot of Desiderio deals with the

struggles of Joaquin Rius' son, Desiderio, as part of the

process of growing up in the affluent carefree Barcelona of

1914-1918. At the outset, he is recalled from Manchester

where he is undergoing training at a factory associated

with his father. Back in Barcelona, he has to start working at a job where he always felt like an outsider and

has no real importance in the daily running of the

business. In addition, he has to do military service.

While in the service, he meets Anselmo Dur&n, Pablo

Inglada, Tom&s Esteve, and Antonio Rovira. He is

introduced by Anselmo to the 'pleasures' of the "new"

Barcelonian night life of clubs, dance halls and women.

During these nocturnal outings he meets and has a tryst with Jeannine, a French model who is part of the wave of 172 people displaced by the war who are living in Barcelona.

The affair with Jeannine brings Desiderio into conflict with the plans which had already been set in notion by

Evelina Torra for hin to marry Crista, her daughter. The tryst with the French girl also creates conflict with his training in the family business.

After he is made to see the 'error' of his ways, he resolves to break up with Jeannine and return to his old life. However, he finds this easier said than done.

Though he promises to give up his mistress, Jeannine, and formally gets engaged to Crista, Jeannine still has a hold on him, as is dramatically demonstrated at a horse show.

Desiderio takes a fall and abandons the competition when he becomes aware of Jeannine's presence. A disappointed and frustrated Crista bites him on the lip. He reacts violently by breaking off his engagement to marry her and takes up with Jeannine again. In the meantime, Crista is being wooed by Pablito Inglada whom she encourages in the hope of getting Desiderio to react out of jealousy. She is however not really interested in Pablito. Pablo acquires the services of Rita Arquer the lady companion of Evelina in his effort to win Crista.

On finding out about Desiderio's infidelity, Evelina resolves to put a stop to it. Jeannine's protector and mentor in Barcelona, Hugtenhagen, is an international 173

entrepreneur who, it is suspected, deals in illicit drugs.

Evelina's friends get the polioe to start a campaign of

harassment in an effort to get both him and Jeannine out of

Barcelona. Initially, Jeannine resists the idea of

abandoning Barcelona but on the night of the new year's

carnival celebrations she realizes that she could never

gain acceptance and recognition in Barcelona society as

Desiderio's mistress. She sends him on a false errand and

while he is gone she leaves Barcelona.

The disappointed and depressed Desiderio wanders

aimlessly among the New Year's revelers. Crista, on the

other hand, has managed to persuade Pablito Inglada to

accompany her to the ball at the Liceo Opera house. Her

real intention is to look for Desiderio. Once at the ball,

she puts her plan into action and abandons Pablo. She

finds and follows Desiderio to his family's private box at

the theatre. One thing leads to another and Crista gives

in to Desiderios's sexual advances.

After the sexual encounter, a depressed Desiderio

abandons Crista at the theatre and flees Barcelona for

Santa Maria del VallAs, the family's country estate. He

is found unconscious the next day by his servants, who call

Joaquin Rius in Barcelona to inform him of what has

happened. Desiderio is very ill for several days and when he gets better, he determines to remain in Santa Maria and 174

renounces any possibility of returning to Barcelona against

his father's wishes. Joaquin wants Desiderio back in

Barcelona helping out at the factory. While Desiderio is

in Santa Maria, Crista writes to inform him that she is expecting his child. He decides then to get married to

Crista in Santa Maria, and they are duly narried in the parish church. The narriage is a compromise for both

Crista and Desiderio. Crista wants to get away from a very domineering mother and Desiderio wants to start a new life on his own terms. The novel ends with the newly-weds alone at Santa Maria del Vall6s.

4.3 Some aspects of Desiderio: the emplotment of otherness.

The plot of Desiderio does not depart from previous novel of the series. It has basically a linear development in chronological terms. The overall structure is one of various nuclei of conflict which intensify, reach a climax of tension and are then resolved.

The War, as already mentioned, plays an important role in the plot. It is the determining factor in the mass of changes that occur in the Barcelona. It also explains the incorporation of new elements to the history and space of

Barcelona. Conflict in the novel is articulated around the 175 relationship between Desiderio and Jeannine that enters into contradiction with Desiderio's social and family responsibilities.

The story is organized as a progressive and linear narration that culminates in the events of the night of carnival of January, 1916. This episode is the one on which all the conflict of the text is hinged. The carnival provides the protagonists with a traumatic experience that affects their actions afterwards and that gives the narrator the opportunity to close one series of events and open the door on another. Discursively, the conflicts and contradictions in the lives of the protagonists of the novel are all resolved in the period immediately after the carnival. It is then that Desiderio has a crisis in his

life and determines to go live in Santa Maria del Vall6s.

The new post-carnival day is thus significant for the conclusion in two important ways. In the first place, it is narratively a new post-carnival Desiderio who is impelled to the resolution given to the various conflicts that occur as a result of the historical and social situation of Barcelona. Desiderio's romantic life comes to an end, Crista has the sexual experience that will make her the wife of Desiderio, and, Pablito de Inglada has an accident which will close a chapter of his life story.

Chronologically the narration remains linear both in 176 its narrative movement and in its depiction of history.

The changing perspectives and parallel narratives organized from different centers of interest are structured into an interplay of divergence and convergence that broadens the narrative spaces of the text while at the same time limiting its interpretive possibilities. An event such as the relationship between Desiderio and Jeannine is narrated from different perspectives but, in the end, even Jeannine who is not expected to partioipate in the bourgeois morals of Barcelona comes round to this point of view.

As mentioned, conflict is formulated in generational terms. Within the saga of the Rius family, father and son represent the confrontation between two different sectors of the bourgeois world. "La ceniza fue Arbol" defines these in terms of the producers (Joaquin) and the wastrels

(Desiderio). The father-son conflict is also the opportunity to expand the sources of conflict to include the opposite pulls of obligation and pleasure. If Joaquin is the factory, diurnal hard work, Desiderio is cabarets and places of pleasure, as well as nocturnal and hedonistic. Desiderio's failure to conform to the destiny his father has planned for him is only one of the threads around which other stories that are just as important for the ideological composition of "La ceniza fue Arbol" are woven. Within the larger frame of the oonfliot that 177 opposes and contrasts Desiderio and his father, there are several subplots and motifs that function not only to dynamize the narration but also provide elements of drama and suspense.

One of these related subplots is the love triangle or manage ft trois that abounds in the novel. This is a

literary convention that is employed in Mariona Rebull.

Mariona is torn between Ernesto and Joaquin and Jaime the carter commits murder when Palui's wife rejects his amorous advances. In El viudo Rius. Carmen Fern&ndez is torn between her love for her father and the possibility of her own happiness. Joaquin also gives up his own pleasure for the well-being of the family business.

Initially, in the present novel, Desiderio is torn between Crista and Jeannine. Jeannine herself is torn between Hugtenhagen, her 'protector' and Desiderio. Crista plays Pablito off against Desiderio and Pablito has to decide between Crista and respectability or Olvido. In all the novels of the series however, the question of love or the purely amorous is only a part of the function of the love triangles. In the case of Desiderio. it symbolically represents the question of conflicting attachments to duty and pleasure, between what Desiderio perceives as his needs and the pull of his obligations towards the family business. 178

As mentioned, an important factor in the novel is the

place of the War in the plot. The War is part of change

and it is this change in reaction with Desiderio's own

character that provides dynamism to the narration. Indeed

the war creates social and economic changes in Barcelona

and they form a background against which the story of

Desiderio Rius is woven. Some of these changes in the

physical and moral geography of Barcelona are important

enough to warrant a separate study and we will limit

ourselves to only a few. Changes include a cosmopolitan

and lively nightlife that is a consequence of the influx of displaced people to Barcelona. Social life is interspersed

with debate about the merits and defects of the nations at

war. Some of the individuals who find themselves in

Barcelona are an important element in the life and story of

Desiderio Rius. Normal industrial activity experiences a

boom as a result of War orders from the belligerants.

The economic boom is also a boon to Desiderio in ways

that are exploited by the plot of the novel. For example,

he undergoes a social emancipation from the tutelage and

economic dependence on his father and his job at Tejidos

Rius. He earns commissions on a transportation deal with

the French Consulate

It is not just the war as a period that is interesting, the importance of the war is enhanced by the fact that 179 this same period is exploited narratively as Desiderio's coming of age. The war thus provides historical material for the emplotment of the story of generational change in the Rius family. In a manner reminiscent of Emile Zola, change in the Rius family is associated with changes in the moral and social fabric of Barcelona. The link between

Desiderio as personality and the period of the war is olearly stated by the narrator in his prologue:

El trasfondo de la epoca de la Guerra Europea de

1914 en los percances barcelondses de Desiderio me

parecid, en teoria, muy sugestivo y decidi no

sacar por ahora a la figura central de este libro

del marco de su primera juventud. Pensd que m&s

adelante ya hallarian ocasifin de expresarse las

conclusiones de su madurez y la vida posterior de

los personajes que lo acompaflan; principalmente la

de Joaquin Rius, eje de la novela (5).

In the narrator's own mind, the link is inescapable.

In this sense, "La ceniza fue 6rbol" is not just the story of how men influenced history, but also and perhaps more importantly, how history influenced the actions and behaviors of men. Joaquin and his father are leaders and products of the late nineteenth and early twentieth 160

centuries, Desiderio is part of the society of the great war in Barcelona and he also is responsible for it; and

Carlos, Joaquin's grandson, is both actor and victim of the momentous events of the Civil War years.

As the introduction in Desiderio rightly states, builders are followed by consumers or those who tend to forget how the status and social consideration they enjoy was achieved. The novel is thus the story of Desiderio

Rius' coming of age and the struggles that he suffers as a consequence of the clash between his responsibility toward his class (father) and his more selfish, personal interests as a young adult. It could very well be interpreted as a tale of his struggles and failure to find an identity outside his class.

4 .4 Point of View.

Narrative attention is however not exclusively focused on

Desiderio's activities as such. Changing focalization is as much a part of the discursive strategies of previous texts. The novel develops with a plurality of centers of narrative interest that leads to fragmentation. This serves to create a totalizing effect, that is, the same events are narrated from various, sometimes conflicting points of view, thus giving the impression of a more 181

complete and objective representation of narrated history.

The changing point of view also serves to mediate the generational formula Desiderio. That is, it moves the story out of the limiting confines of the Rius family and creates a true generational conflict between young men in

Barcelona and their elders. For example, the conflicts that Desiderio has with his father are almost exactly reproduced in the conflicts Pablito de Inglada has with his aunts. Thus, the differing focalizations offer the possibility of including different spaces of Barcelona.

The narration moves from the salons and parties of the

Evelina Torra de Fern&ndez' household, the recreational spaces of oligarchic Barcelona and the Rius factory.

This breakup of the locuses of narrative focus forms part of a larger explicative discourse within the novel while also being part of the techniques of totalization in both discursive and ideological terms. Fragmentation, in this case, reinforces lineality by recuperating chronological and physical spaces that combine to form a

'bigger picture' of the action in the narrated world.

Thus, the changing narrative focalization enables the discourse of Desiderio to explore the contiguous elements of Barcelona's subversive other nature. Even within the world of the easy pleasures of the flesh, the elegant internationalized elite clubs like the “Excelsoir" (115) or 182

the "Iris" are compared with the tugurios of the barrio

chino and "La Criolla" (114) and its environment. The girls are also different, they have none of the glamor or

elegance and to them what they do is no source of pleasure

(434)

Another aspect of changing narrative perspective is the fact that as part of the process of totalization, it enables various subplots to emerge as paradigmatio entities. For example, the whole text of the novel symbolically reproduces the structure of a rite of passage. Desiderio's vicissitudes culminate in the crisis he has after Jeannine's departure. The coincidence with the end of military service all reinforce the idea of a painful rite of passage into adulthood. Significantly, the novel ends with a promise by Desiderio to live his life from then onwards as his father had wanted all along. In fact all the young men and women of the novel seem to have the same kind of experience. With Pablito de Inglada it is the needless death of Olvido; Crista loses her virginity and Desiderio becomes aware of the emptiness in his existence and the fact that he is powerless to influence his own destiny.

By changing the perspective then, various other individual stories are woven into the fabric of the story of Desiderio while at the same time providing a necessary 183

extension of the descriptive force of the discourses of the

text in accomplishing the definition of the other in terms

of the history of Barcelona as an industrial metropolis.

4.5 Desiderio: Generational change and difference.

Desiderio is educated not by his father, who breaks

with the family tradition, but by Evelina Torra. She is

the mother of one of Desiderio's schoolmates, Paco

Fern&ndez. Because of his father's extreme dedication to

the family business, the young man spends a lot of time at

the home of Evelina Torra in the company of her children,

Crista and Paco. In the scheme of the novel, Evelina fills

the same ideological space as Mariona. She also represents

the aristocratic and ostentatious element in the Barcelona

oligarchy, that part of the commercial and industrial

aristocracy that is more concerned with the trappings of wealth than in the hard work and dedioation that produoed

it. Evelina's importance in the social education of

Desiderio is very clear. In her own mind:

Durante muchos aftos habia considerado a Desiderio

como algo propio, como una creacibn personal;

siendo no m&s que un chiquillo de calzbn corto le

habia atraido a su circulo, en 61 como 184

un objeto de inapreciable valor, dominado y movido

por ella como se mueve a una marioneta de vivos

colores. Desiderio era una exclusiva, un

patrimonio personal suyo (289).

In Desiderio, all her efforts are to shift the

relationship from that of surrogate mother to mother-in-law. Paradoxioally, her ambitions enter into conflict with the intentions of Desiderio beoause of the egotistical and irresponsible value system she herself has helped to inculcate. Right from his early years, her home had become his home through friendship with her children that Evelina herself had encouraged:

Desde la nifiez, en aquella casa habian sido para

Desiderio la primera copa de champana, los m&s

tiernos emparedados. Evelina le mimaba, se

encariffaba con 61 como como un hijo (58).

The suggestion is that he had imbibed her social habits and not those of his father, Joaquin. In fact, Evelina considered Desiderio as her personal creation (289). The relationship with Evelina becomes difficult when Desiderio wants to express his own desires contrary to what she had planned because, though he frequents her house and shares 185 her love of pleasure, Desiderio is far from being a puppet. He had grown, in her shadow, into a handsome young man with a distinguished aristocratic bearing and a mind of his own. His own father, Joaquin, is fully aware of the changes that his son has gone through. In his father's mind Desiderio is at that point in his life when he is ready to take up responsibility. He compares him to the young men of Europe who are being drafted to fight:

Un muchaoho a punto de cumplir los veintiiin affos,

la edad precisa en que, por el hecho de ser

franceses o alemanes, los muchachos eran

embarcados en los transportes y metidos en un

cuartel, para acabar en las trincheras (10).

As a Spaniard, Desiderio does not have to go to war but the novel is about his struggles against the destinies prepared for him by his father and people like Evelina Torra. To his father, the equivalent burden of responsibility for

Desiderio, in comparison to the young men of Europe, is full-time work at the family business. Evelina on the other hand, wants to maintain the control she had enjoyed over him by marrying him to her daughter, Crista.

The plot of the novel defines Desiderio as part of the oligarchy of Barcelona in conflict with his class in his 186 relationship with his father, his bethrothed and her family and the relationships he establishes outside of his own social class. The novel opens with the imperative that

Desiderio return to the relative peace of his native

Barcelona from England. The focus of the narration is initially on change. Desiderio is no longer a boy. His pastimes and interests are very different as the text insistently states:

!C6mo habia cambiado Desiderio desde el famoso dia

del Polo! Ni uno s61o de sus trazos correspondia

del todo al muchacho de antes. Ahora era todo un

hombre (542).

When we meet him, he is a young man who has lived in relative independence away from home. He has undergone a loosening of emotional ties not only from his father but also from the immediate social world in which he had moved. Host importantly he is sexually aware and active, as can be culled from his own impressions of Crista at their first meeting on his return from England:

El reencuentro con Crista significaba mucho m&s

que lo que habia supuesto. Crista no era ya una

chiquilla; era una mujer magnifica, la que tendria 187

a su lado, la que venia a decorar su existencia a

darle un sentido, un impulso que no esperaba (26).

The initial reaction to his obliged return is negative and

his reincorporation into the routine at Tejidos Rius is

uneventful. What does change his lifestyle is his joining

of the militia. In the same way as his education in the

social circles of Evelina Torra's household, military

service changes his life in unpredicted ways. The 'mili'

is an emotional release from the influence of his father

and Arturo Llobet. He discovers a new world of pleasure

that leads him to try and escape from the oppressive

environment of Tejidos Rius, which he sees in these terms:

El mundo de su padre y de Arturo era un mundo

angosto, cuadrado y sin ventanas. Como si

vivieran en el estrecho corredor entre las cajas

fuertes de los bancos: el dinero. Eso trascendia

de su conversaci6n, m&s elemental y simple al

dinero. Detras de las palabras de ambos no se

veia nada m&s (42).

Desiderio's rebellion against the closed materialistic

world of his father is a part of the dialectio of the discourse of the novel but it does not transcend to the 18B

creation of a new value system. His attraction for the night life of Barcelona is initially purely hedonistic.

The period of the 'mili' then, brought Desiderio into contact with a world he never suspected existed that was diametrically opposed to the safe restricted spaces of

traditional Barcelona:

Surgib ante los ojos de Desiderio la noche de la

ciudad con su sbquito de luces, de lugares

prohibidos, de rostros a los que solo veria una

sola vez, teffidos por la luz fantasmal de las

bombillas coloreadas y azules y arropados en la

mrisica (89).

The Barcelona that Desiderio is introduced to by his friends in the service is indeed a Barcelona that his upbringing had not prepared him for. Desiderio leads a double life. By day, he mechanically goes through the motions of work at the factory. Then, by night, he visits the music halls and fleshpots in the company of his friends.

In his own mind then, Desiderio can justify this double existence as a necessary release from the strictures of his

'normal' life: 189

Hasta entonces se habia limitado a hacer lo que

haoian los dem&s. £Por qu6 no iba a ser como

ellos? A beber una copa en los lugares piiblicos,

a tener sus mAs y sus menos con alguna nuchacha

sin compromiso, a reir y a charlar intentando

distraerse un poco del agobio de las horas de

cuartel (98) .

Later, what began as an easy way of finding excitement in a boring daily existence is soon transformed into an almost addictive need to go out on the town every evening:

Mientras duraba el dia no le costaba el menor

esfuerzo decirse que aquella noche no iba a salir,

pero bastaba que decreciera insensiblemente la luz

del creptisculo hasta encender la negrura mAs hosca

en el exterior para que empezara a bailar

alrededor de 61, en su imaginaci6n, todas las

luminarias de la noche (99).

The interest in the night and the outings in the company of his friends is transformed into an emotional battle when he meets and becomes involved with the French model,

Jeannine. Desiderio is caught in the net of his passion for her and the attractions of night life. He is entrapped 190

in a quandary that he will not be capable of solving by

hinself:

Lo que habia empezado siendo una aventura

nocturna, afable y prometedora se convertia paso a

paso en un drama intimo, singular. La realidad de

Jeannine, las condiciones de su vida, la lucha en

que se debatia atormentaban a Desiderio en el

cuartel, en su oasa, en el despacho: le hacia

caminar solitario y melancdlico entre los dem&s,

dando ya una justificacidn (192).

Desiderio's problems serve to highlight an important generational difference between him and his father. The

situation the younger Rius finds himself in reproduces

almost exactly the dilemma Joaquin had had to resolve in El viudo Rius. He had been faced with a choice between Lula

Yepes and his obligations in Barcelona. In Joaquin's case,

the love of the family business was stronger than any

attraction he might have felt for his lady friend. The

suggestion is that Desiderio does not share his father's strength of character. This fact is further corroborated when he makes no effort either to separate himself from

Jeannine or to 'regularize' her situation. The ending of the novel paints him as a man who is quite incapable of 191

making a serious commitment to anything or anyone even

though he does get married to Crista.

In contrast to Joaquin Rius, father, who makes a

conscious voluntary decision to learn his father's

profession, get married into the 'right' kind of family and

leave school all in the interests of continuity,

Desiderio's settling down is the result of an accident.

His life, unlike that of his father, is controlled by

fortuitous events outside the operations of his own will.

The text insinuates that this was a problem of the era and

that Desiderio was simply living out the fate of his

generation during the years of World War I. This is

especially evident in the fact that Desiderio is associated

with a group of men of his own age who introduce him to the

pleasures and adventures of Barcelona's night life. All

these young men are from well-to-do homes. Inglada and

Esteve are members of the landed aristocracy of old

Catalonia. Anselmo Duran is not described in quite the

same terms but he is also a scion of the aristocratic

bourgeoisie of Barcelona. The only member of the group who

is perhaps closer to the lower half of the class spectrum

is Antonio Rovira, though in his case, he belongs the class

of self made men in the same mold as Joaquin Rius and his

father. The presentation of the activities of this group

of young men provides a background for reading Desiderio's 192

own behavior while also showing that their lifestyle was a

tendency of the period.

Anselmo Duran almost exactly repeats in his person the personality and character of Ernesto Villar of Mariona

Rebull. He is elegant and well educated in social finesse. He is the son of very well-to-do parents. He has no profession; in fact, he started law school and has not been oapable of finishing his degree:

Anselmo Duran era un hijo de familia sin profesidn

reconocida. Habia estudiado la carrera de

Derecho, que atin no habia terminado, por puro

deporte, por justificarse de algun modo ante los

dem&s (81).

He takes extreme care of his personal appearance and likes to frequent the company of 'chicas de alterne':

Un muchacho de facha impecable, vestido segiin los

m&s estrictos c&nones del dandismo, dotado de una

elegancia de de modas, a la que daba

m&s relieve el asomo de una calvicie prematura y

un recortado bigote de una gran simetria bajo la

recta nariz (32). 193

Even though he is not engaged in any visible employment,

Anselmo has an income from his family that he administers very frugally to get the most enjoyment. His particular skill is taking girls from the lower classes and teaching them how to behave in society. Once they can get along in that society of night clubs and dance halls, he leaves them to their own devices and looks for another girl to seduce.

Esteve, the aristocrat, is in the Santiago cavalry unit because all the male members of his family have been in that regiment.

Tom&s Esteve, en efecto, habia elegido el cuerpo

porque todos sus parientes y consanguineos, habian

jurado armas caballerescas en Santiago (83).

Esteve is quite simple in his tastes and limited in his education. Physically he is tall, angular and quite grotesque. Rovira is the well read one of the group. He is of humble origins and is physically described as stocky and short:

Un muchacho grueso, bonachdn, con unas grandes

gafas de concha sobre los ojos reposados. Perico

Rovira era el hijo de una familia de

transportistas. Tenia rasgos de un humor cordial 194

que rezumaba agudeza, comprensi6n (83).

Pablito Inglada, the last member of the quartet of

friends, is also an aristocrat. He is the physical

opposite of Anselmo Duran and Desiderio. While Desiderio

is away in England, Pablito is part of the group of young people around the Fern&ndez household. He has been

courting an indifferent Crista unsuocessfully(16). His

family has problems trying to get him to settle down and

look after the family estate. In fact he is referred to

as:

Una bola perdida. A la pobre dofia Consolaci6n le

ha hecho pasar por las verdes y las maduras (151).

The Ingladas family is of old stock and his older relatives don't know what to make of their young charge. The family

estate in Valterra, Tarragona, has had to be put in the charge of an administrator because of the careless nature

of young Pablito Inglada. In addition to an imposing physical presence, he also has what may be termed a

sanguine and gregarious temperament which the narrator

explains by recourse to genetics:

En la sangre de Pablito bullia adn la fuerza de 195

los ganaderos y tratantes que en el siglo XIV

habian peleado con pequefias hordas contra aquellos

obispos ecuestres que acampaban en los riscos y

dominaban la tierra. Son siglos de dominio que no

habian hecho m&s que acrecentar los impetus de una

sangre grasa y terca (318).

The result of centuries of leadership is a nature that is very open and honest and very impatient with the refined and hypocritical manners of the times. He does not feel very comfortable in the civilized milieu of bourgeois simulation of aristocratic refinement:

En una palabra, Pablito empezaba a sentirse

incdmodo, cansado de los climas de chocolateria a

las que Rita era tan inclinada, demasiado hombrdn

para tanto taburete y tanto bizcocho (170).

In spite of all the headaches he gives his relatives, they have the hope that he will one day settle down, and in fact, all the indulgence that his aunt Consolacidn showers on him is to that end. Pablito's story is parallel and identical to the story of Desiderio Riu with the difference that he belongs to the gentry of the land while Desiderio belongs to the industrial and urban 'gentry'. 196

All these young men are used to recreate the social and behavorial changes that are taking place in Barcelona. The different ways they react to their environment provide a background for the consideration of Desiderio's own reaction. Together they serve to illustrate the patterns of 'acceptable' behavior in the youth of their class as part of the overall ideological intention of the novel.

4.6 The spatial oomponent of Daalderlo; Phyaioal and moral change.

In his analysis of Agusti's work, Juan Luis Alborg states:

Mariona Rebull y El viudo Rius. a pesar del nombre

propio que las rotula, poseen nuevo interns como

pintura de unos caracteres individuales que como

evocacidn novelesca de la vida de Barcelona, a

partir de los tiltimos lustros del pasado siglo, es

decir desde el momento en que la gran ciudad

inicid su poderosa transformacidn econdmica (118).

Space and its description are important as a part of the discourses that define the ideological perspective of “La ceniza fue Arbol". Mariona Rebull describes a period of 197 growth and transformation of Barcelona from provincial artesanal center to industrial metropolis. As we saw, space in the novel moved from the recondite tertulias of the old city to the growing areas of the suburbs. El viudo

Rius dealt with the problems occasioned by growth and expansion in spatial terms too. The changing personality of the city was blamed on the changes in the ethnic composition of a workforce that had been bolstered by immigration from the south. In fact, our reading showed how Barcelona became a conflictively shared space. In

Desiderio. certain other problems come to the fore and are described. Alborg identifies excessive descriptionism as a significant issue in the text:

El descripcionismo de estirpe naturalists que

excede incluso las p&ginas de Mariona Rebull y de

El viudo Rius. es en Desiderio manifiestamente

excesivo. Hi los m&s prolijos de nuestros

escritores realistas del XIX llegaron a este

extremo (121).

Though we agree with Alborg, it should be noted that one reason for excessive destription is the quantity of environments the text seeks to present. Alongside the traditional Barcelona of Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius. 198 there is also a Barcelona of youthful excitement that is carefree and pleasure seeking. This element is a consequence of the events that are taking place outside

Spain. Barcelona is filled with displaced persons fleeing the War:

Calles, terrazas, despachos y caf§s estaban

animados de una extraffa locuacidad colectiva.

Empezaron a llegar forasteros, teutones

misteriosos, con maletas de cuero y soberbios

tipos rubios, comisiones de franceses gruesos y

calvos, bajo fieltros y bombines de escasa

arrogancia, ingleses de aire reserv6n de mirada

displiciente y clara que llenaban las fichas de

los hoteles con un infinito cansancio (39).

It is not just the presence of foreigners in Barcelona; the

War is present in conversations at work and in the private clubs. The significant thing about all of this is that even though there are foreigners from all over Europe, the most influential group within the actantial structures of the novel are the French. The moral fabric of Barcelona is negatively affected by the presence of so many Frenchmen and women. Barcelona had become: 199

Un metrdpolis extrangerizada a ralz de la guerra,

que vibra con el remolino de esta nezcla de

personajes que antes no conocia (123).

Hew industries and businesses crop up to take care of the

recreational needs of all the people in Barcelona. It becomes a cosmopolitan center on the fringes of the War

fully dedicated to behaving as if the War did not exist.

EstA divirtiAndose a costa de Europa,

despreocupados completamente del sentir de los

dem&s. A la mayoria lo tinico que imports es

pasarlo bien (122)

According to Desiderio. the new situation brought on by the

War and the presence of so many foreigners in Barcelona affects the young people, who only think of having fun:

Los hijos de los ricos, esa generacidn que conocid

la guerra de Africa, aprenderia a prolongar la

noche matando, como la mujer de MacBeth, el suefio,

mat&ndolo con estupefacientes, o con bafios turcos

o como fuera, y recuper&ndolo a plazos en los

sillones de los casinos entre dos posturas de

ruleta (88). 200

It is not only the idle who undergo change in their habits. While others are amusing themselves, still others are making a lot of money:

A los pocos meses quedd borrada la linea de

transicidn del dia a la noche. En las horas

soleadas, el tr&fico interno daba f£ de la gula

con que todo el mundo se lanzaba a la captura del

dinero. No habia tiempo m&s que para las visitas,

los contratos, las conversaciones de negocios, los

planes financieros. En la bolsa, las sesiones

eran la marejada del oro ndmada que venla a

recalar en un pais situado fuera del alcance de

los explosivos (87).

Moral habits are also affected by the influx of strangers and money to Barcelona:

El tener una amiga habia dejado de ser pecado

mortal, en un sector muy amplio. Y como es

natural, pronto la vistosidad y el chic de las

mujeres de mundo constituyd un estimulo y leccidn

para las amas de casa (88). 201

The new social habits affect young men the most and they

start to frequent the plethora of clubs which have been opened to oater to all tastes. This night life and the economic activity that also come with the War are part of the circumstances that drive a wedge between Desiderio and his responsibilities as defined by his family and his class. As the text insists, the new life is mostly nocturnal and is a direct consequence of the changes brought about by the War. The description of the

, where opulent Barcelona gathers to enjoy the night, is an example of this:

Toda la fauna del noctambulismo barcelonAs creada

y ensanchada por los beneficios de la guerra, por

la impunidad, por la prosperidad de los dias, por

una ansia irrefrenable de agitarse, de gozar y de

lucir, se hallaba alii reunida (116).

Negative evaluation of this new Barcelona is part of the description of . According to the narrative conscience, the main characteristic of all the fun is its transient and false nature, very much like the decorations of the interior of the club.

Ese local se parecia a una gran baracdn de feria, 202

adornado con exceso de falso lujo. Estaba casi

enteramente tapizado de espejos (114).

The new Barcelona is full of fun for the differing tastes of the city in its euphoric dialectic of pleasure.

'La Criola' is full of transvestites. But it is not just the question of differing tastes; the whole of Barcelona seems to be given to the pleasures of the flesh and to catering for the market of pleasures. Even the poorest parts of the city are caught up in this process. This can be seen in the description of Calle del Cid, where

Desiderio took Jeannine to show her the city:

Cuando entraron en la calle del Cid se sintieron

deslumbrados. Era una calleja corta devastada,

fraudulenta. Los adoquines desiguales torcian el

fino tobillo de Jeannine, que se arrimb mbs al

brazo de su acompaffante. Pero de todos los

portales salia luz. Y esa luz mostraba los

rostros horrendos, los mechones de pelo mbs

mustios y rojizos que Jeannine habia visto jambs,

las bocas y ojos mbs siniestros que podia haber

imaginado (114).

As a consequence of the new industry of pleasures, 203 there begins a new formulation of the relationships between men and women especially in the area of sexual relations outside marriage. Having a mistress and enjoying the company of dance hall young women becomes a normal part of social activity:

El tener una amiga habia dejado de ser pecado

mortal en un sector muy amplio. Y como es

natural, pronto la vistosidad y el chic de las

mujeres de mundo constituyd un estimulo y leccidn

para las amas de casa (88).

As the text insists, the relationship between the sexes, especially extramarital sex, had been clouded in the cloak of social taboos:

Las experiencias en este punto del joven Rius,

oomo la de todos los hombres de su condicidn,

estaban llenas de prejuicios y dificultades.

Habia franqueado esta muralla por las encrucijadas

m&s fAciles, pocas veces y a deshora, y le habia

quedado en las manos el dolor y la deshonra del

forcejeo con la herrumbre m&s vil (118).

The changes in the male-female relationship have an 204

influence on how female space is presented in Desiderio.

There is however no change in the fundamentally patriarchal nature of its definition. The events of the narrative explicitly show that this world of gender relations is both pariarchal and bourgeois and that the two are not always compatible.

4.7 The new female, the new Barcelona.

Feminine space as part of the emplotment of Desiderio gains an importance it lost in El viudo Rius. In Mariona

Rebull. marriage and women are part of the process of social mobility in the hierarchy of fin de si&cle

Barcelona. Moreover, the differences in behavior and character between Joaquin Rius and Mariona were the basis of a contrastive definition of the virile ideal of patriarchal Barcelona. It is however to El viudo Rius where we must go to find the pattern of conflict we now see in Desiderio.

In El viudo Rius. an important subplot is the conflict which Joaquin suffers as a result of his attraction to Lula

Yepes, an actress in Madrid. The struggle he goes through is taken up by the narration of Desiderio as part of the analeptic structures that connect the series. Indeed, the older and wiser Joaquin Rius of Desiderio is still prone to 205 seek comfort, once in a long while, in the company of Lula

Yepes with whom he develops a stormy if not regular relationship. The narrator actually refers to Joaquin's episode with Lula as a (46). Joaquin is fully cognizant of his responsibilities and so apart from his attempt to propose to Carmen Fern&ndez in El viudo

Rius. his relationships are purely physical. He feels no emotional attachment to Lula. In fact, Joaquin's single- mindedness borders on misogyny. The narrating conscience seems to be aware of this and attempts to soften judgement on Joaquin by evoking destiny:

Habia quedado sin compaftia definitivamente s61o.

En la par&bola de sus aftos, las mujeres se habian

desprendido una tras otra. Hay hombres cuyo

destino es esto; vivir sin mujer. Mariona, Lula y

Carmen, tres figuras, tres estilos, tres modos

distintos habian cruzado por su vida y habian

desaparecido. Joaquin Rius era el hombre sin

mujer, el viudo irremediable, una suerte de

mis&ntropo por vocacidn y por naturaleza, que

siempre insistentemente, implacablemente, como si

acabaran de ser, las palabras que Mariona le habia

dicho en uno de sus arranques: "No quieres a

ninguna mujer, no sabes por qu6 existen. En el 206

fondo desprecias a todas. No guisisteis a tu madre

y no me quieres a mi". Verdaderamente no podia

saber si detestaba a las mujeres. Lo que si podia

afirmar es que ellas no habian querido ocupar una

plaza en su vida, y que 61 era incapaz de luchar

por algo que no tiene remedio y que a lo mejor, no

merece tanto tesdn (52).

Mariona is basically right but it isn't that he is incapable of love. Joaquin has a very limited view of female space as part of his universe. Because of that, he basically fails to understand their point of view. The narrating conscience betrays itself by admitting that women and the kind of romantic things they do and like were just not worth the trouble.

In the case of Desiderio, the problem is not the affair in itself but rather his attitude towards it. It is after all the accepted norm in his society for men to indulge themselves. The problem as analyzed in the novel is created when Desiderio can't free himself for anything else. As presented in the text, this is a direct result of his own incompetence. The friends he moves with, as for example Pablito Inglada, do have affairs but at the back of their minds is the fact that they might have to settle down one day. In fact, Pablito actually promises to settle down 207

on his country estate after marriage to Crista. In the

same manner, Doctor Bruno, a friend of Evelina's, urges

Desiderio to try and separate the fact of his affairs from

his relationship with his betrothed:

Creo y a veces lo afirmo sin miramientos- claro

que s61o entre hombres- que el hombre es el linico

animal poligamo por naturaleza. Pero ...y ese

pero es importante el hombre se tiene que casar

(225)

For Desiderio himself, the vision of women is in terms of pleasure and marriage is an effort of will, a sacrifice.

When he decides to give up Jeannine and settle down, he expresses himself in terms of sacrifice:

En aquel instante vio con absoluta claridad los

tbrminos del aoto heroioo que se le exigia, pero

se comprometib desde el fondo de su corazbn. Por

sabrosas, por deslumbrantes, por incitantes que

fueran todas las mujeres de la tierra s61o Crista

debia de importarle. Todo lo demas eran

pasatiempos, abolladuras insensatas de

personalidad, de su yo mbs intimo (231). 206

Desiderio nevertheless betrays himself. Because even if he were to settle down, he would still be doing it not out of

any ideal notion of love but rather as a prophylactic

substitute for his own lack of will and character.

Desiderio does repeat elements of the already established patriarchal paradigm. Evelina Torra is the protagonist who represents the value system associated with

Mariona in Mariona Rebull. In Deaiderio. she is getting on

in years but she is described in the following terms:

Hay seres a lo largo de cuya vida se reproducen

periddicamente los mismos fendmenos, partiendo de

un perseverante origen. Evelina Torra, viuda de

Ferndndez, era uno de ellos. Evelina que fueran

cuanto fueran los afios que viviora no lograria ser

nunca una mujer venerable, conservaba la rara

facultad de pasar por toda su vida por una especie

de crisis de adolescencia (55).

Within the ideological intertext of the novel, the feminine principle is contrasted with the virile male virtues of people like the elder Joaquin Rius. The feeling then is that those like Evelina never will grow to know the meaning of responsible behavior. Together with the new morals of the Barcelona of Desiderio. the new space for women is 209

represented by the fleshpots of Barcelona.

Desiderio's problems stem partially from his incapacity

to correctly identify and assume the difference between the

two worlds. He fails to limit the relationship with his

mistress to the spaces within which the patriarchal class

society in which he lives relegates it. Everyone else

seems to ascribe to the general tone of patriarchal social discourse, even Asmodea or Silvia Romeu. Asmodea is a woman who is separated from her husband and living with

another. Even though her own life contradicts a few tenets

of the patriarchal ideal, she adheres to it in private.

She believes in the secondary role of women and their duty

to try and please their men:

Una vez que ha pasado en los hombres el delirio,

entonces, cuando se encuentran s61o con lo que ya

no les haoe enloquecer, hay que procurar por lo

menos que lo encuentren c6modo. Si, entonces hay

que resignarse a ser para ellos como las viejas

zapatillas o el mechero, que s61o les obedece a

ellos y s61o ellos saben hacer funcionar. Ese es

el secreto (397).

What this expression by Silvia Romeu, Asmodea, does is to add another dimension to the hitherto almost exclusively 210

male vision of female space in history. Her point of view

is incorporated into a value system that is not as much gender oriented as it is class oriented. This can best be

seen in the parallel created by the relationship Silvia

Romeu- Antonio Mira and the relationship

Jeannine-Desiderio. Silvia's relationship with Antonio is not regularized according to the normal practice that is, they are not married. The relationship is frowned upon by their class but endures anyway because they both belong to the same class. The problem with Desiderio and Jeannine is the disparity in their class. Men of Desiderio's class are not supposed to have permanent relationships with women of her class. In fact, this might even resolve the contradiction between Silvia's action, her life and the ideals she is ascribing to because these are the ideals of her class. In Desiderio. the patriarchal ideal of feminine space reveals itself as an eminently bourgeois one.

4.8 Contradiction in the representation of the other: the processes of the subversion of the ideal.

Contradiction as part of this particular novel and the others that follow, 19 .iulio and Guerra civil, follows two basic patterns. In the first place, contradiction has to do with the way history as such is understood and in the 211

second, the pattern of contradiction has to do with the

authoritative discourses of the literary text itself.

With respect to the first, the story of Desiderio

offers oontinuity through the analeptio discourses of the

text. But the way history is dealt with is partial and

problematic. From 1909 in El viudo Rius. we are

transported to 1914. Desiderio is a young adult already

and the War, not his education, is the most important

ingredient in the new social and historical conjuncture.

The impression is not of a continuous series, in spite of

the profusion of analeptic devices, but rather a series of

frozen stages or frames in the life of the city. The

technique is identifiably in the tradition of the 19th

Century 'slice of life' descriptivism of the realist and naturalist tradition. The concentration of attention on

the War and its effects on Barcelona, and the single-minded

attempt to place the blame for the moral 'decadence' on

external influences, leaves no room for the explanation of

Desiderio's motives. Ironically, the political bias and

the ubiquitous descriptionism which are practical tools for

the reduction of the possibility of any discursive dissonance are, in themselves, sources of conflict. The need to state political positions in a clear value oriented discourse comes into conflict with the narrating. The narrative structures fail in their effort to serve the 212

ideological positions of the narrator and the needs of the

narration.

In Desiderio. the selection is based on the temperament

and character of the narrator, of which there are several

personae. One narrator is the nostalgic self that returns

to the past in order to relive some of its glory. This is

the same voice that tries to explain away the strife of the

emerging other voices that enter into direct contradiction

with its own premise of history as the exceptional space of

the enterprising burghers of Barcelona. This is the

narrating voice that is bitter about the moral and social

changes that are taking place in Barcelona as a consequence

of the new prosperity. It is that same conscience that

refers to Jeannine's transplanted 'exotism' as "un garabato

de refinamiento forastero" (142). The other persona of the

narrating self seems to be the dutiful and admiring son of

the great bourgeois "heroes" who created Barcelona as a

modern cosmopolitan cultural and industrial space. This

narrator is so full of admiration for his father's

generation that he blames his own generation for the

problems that led to the crises of the 1930's described in

the next novel 19 .iulio. In addition, there is an

everpresent and dynamic patriotism which colours the nostalgic evocation, the incorporation of historical event,

and the explanation of history in the narrative. The other sources of contradiction have to do with the

literary medium itself. The text of "La ceniza fue drbol"

sets out primarily to be historical in the tradition of

Galdds and other novelists of the Spanish realist

tradition. In order to create the contrastive structures

that reinforce the definitions of the text's ideal, albeit

in a roundabout way, there is excessive use of melodrama and drama. This is done, in the first place, in order to

insist on the differences in the temperaments of the protagonists. In the second place, it is a practical way to get the reader emotionally involved in the text.

Sometimes, nevertheless, this fact creates the impression of contrived drama, such as, for example the "billet doux" which Desiderio sends to Jeannine through the waiter at the

Polo club. The ploy of the note is not necessary for

Desiderio had ample time and opportunity to speak to

Jeannine in person and indeed does. Nor was access to

Jeaninne for Desiderio as difficult as this episode might tend to suggest. He could see her at her work place or meet her at any of the places she frequents. Desiderio even has the key to her apartment in his possession.

Another is the whole effort to create a 'Mata hara-esque' aura about Jeannine and the "tragedy of her life". In the same way Hugtenhagen, the international merchant, is explained in a long digression which has more 214

to do with a literary presentation of the 'Errant Jew' than

any actantial function within the text of Desiderio. This

same gentleman is also described in terms of a degenerate

Caliban who is willing to suffer the emotional torments of

watching the object of his desire give her affection to

others.

A greater appreciation of the disconnections present in

the text can be aohieved by an examination of some of the

things which Desiderio does. The initial reaction to the news of Jeannine's departure is almost catastrophic. In a passage laced with copious amounts of melodrama, Desiderio

actually comtemplates and attempts suicide. The impression

is that this passage is more a recreation of the literary

tradition of fatal loves that unchain suicidal

tendencies. As part of Desiderio they don't quite fit the character profile of the character, nor do they fit into the logic of what the narrator reveals in his text about the events narrated. For example, Desiderio is depicted as someone who is looking for a way of saving himself from a rather addictive relationship which he knew was not going to go anywhere. All along, he is portrayed as someone who stays in the relationship only because of the weakness of his own character, the boredom of his regular life, the

inertia of habit, his frustrations with the glamorless example of his father and the dissatisfactions of an 215

unfulfilling relationship with Crista. All of a sudden, he

is taken up with a passion true of Othello or Romeo. While

it is not an impossibility, as a pathological state of mind

triggered by a traumatic event, there really is no

antecedent, no development narratively of the processes, psychological or otherwise, that would justify such a

reaction.

The same criticism goes to the manner in which

Desiderio returns to Santa Haria, the family's country estate. In a passsage reminiscent of the praise to bucolic

Spain of a Pereda, the narrator launches into a discourse of contrastive presentation of city vice and country peace. Incorporated into the panegyric of the bucolic are

languages of nostalgic evocation of the past, the romantic

"correspondences" of environment and psyche and the theme of escape back to the haven of one's beginings. There is no link to any other instance of expression of love of the country. The whole passage seems to be more of an excuse for the incorporation of a digression.

Crista's sexual surrender is neither justified by previous behavior nor is it explained within the text. It is more like the cannibalization of a scene of passionate surrender from the 'novela rosa' tradition. Pablito's behavior at the "merendero" when he tries to seduoe Crista is also out of character. Young gentlemen are supposed to 216 treat their lower class escorts that way but not the women of their own class. Pablito, scion of an illustrious family, it would seem, should share the values of his class, hypocritical though they may be. Even Anselmo

Durdn, the most cynical or'perverse' of the group of young gentlemen, limits his predatory behavior to women of the lower classes. In this particular passage, the narrator seems to be oarried away by his own fiotion of Pablito's impatient virility.

These problems can be characterized as discursive interferences and are the consequences of the narrator's effort to 'create text'. In this case the imperatives of writing, that is, the incorporation of drama and suspense, instrumentalize proven motifs for the same by borrowing from other kinds of literature.

The tendency to over-narrate or to do so redundantly is possibly a consequence of the ideological taboos entrenched in the narrating conscience that limit the possibility of straying from a certain lived experience, and the constraints of the self-imposed ideological frame that oblige all the incorporated social discourses to adhere to the political messages of "La ceniza fue Arbol" as a whole. The insistence on social class as the motor and sole subject of the history of Barcelona, blinds the text's own contemplation of history and leads to a history that 217 describes only those things that are relevant for the theses the text wants to defend.

Contradiction as part of the text of Desiderio is thus a consequence of the imperative the text imposes on itself to 'narrate' in the old tradition with all its baggage of totalizing vision of reality and its forms that insist on the linear development of cause and effect. The text fails to meet the horizon of expectation that it creates. This leads it to falsify the relationships of cause and effect.

At certain other times, the texts own fictionalization process breaks down and reveals the contradiction between history, fiction and the narrator's own interest in his political messages. The fictionalization of history is always problematic due to the intrusive nature of the schema of history that the texts tries to establish. The text is caught up in a dialectic of reading itself against its signified (that is the interpretation of history that it proposes). In this instance, Desiderio. is not only limited by previous texts, but also by the political intention or text to which the it constantly seems to try to adhere in its insistense on the link between continuity at the factory and the continuity of the family. This is visible in the intrusion of narrative commentary and evaluative systems into the discursive spaces of the

"other" actants of the fictionalized world. For example, 21B

the affair with Jeannine is the object of commentary of

several of the characters who participate in the events of

the novel. The failure to acknowledge the fullness of

history itself condemns the text to a reductionism in which

the whole history of decadence and loss is schematized into

a narrative of the prodigal son. The silences which in

effect are a means to achieving a unanimous and univocal

schema of history itself remain in the text and question the very structure that their absences make possible.

Paul Thibault affirms that:

The text is a social site, which is overdetermined

by a plurality of social discourses, each with

their own specificity, which are articulated in

and through specific social meaning-making

practices (1991, 120).

According to the thesis Thibault develops, text and discourse are semantic units that cannot be understood without recourse to an understanding of the social practices involved. In Desiderio. disconnectedness is a consequence of the destruction, so to speak, of the dialogical element of the novel's meaning-making processes. Because of this, it does not reflect text making as a dialectical meeting ground of diverse 219

discourses in interaction to make meaning. The operation

is reversed. Text as a unit of meaning preexists and

preempts the processes of its own creation as social event.

Text as the site of conflicting voices is, in itself, a

means for the creation of a coherent and cohesively

represented world. It is the attempt to modify the plural

voices and harness them into the transcedental voice of the

political intention that creates disfunction and disjunction. The very concern with control of the various discourses that make up the text and the attempt to nullify

their separate meaning-making processes, precipitates the

subversion of the ideological univocality upon which the

text is predicated.

5. El 19 .iulio: The definition of the other.

5.1 Preliminary Considerations.

The fourth novel of the series, 19 .iulio (1965) was

awarded the Miguel de Cervantes prize for literature in

1965. This novel works with Desiderio (1957) to define and give shape to the forces that individually and collectively subvert the history created by exemplary figures like

Joaquin Rius. It does this by depicting the conditions 220

which would nullify the work of the founders and threaten

the Barcelona they had created. In this series, 19 de

.iulio is, above all, a hinge that Justifies the franooist

rebellion. The novel describes the intensification of all

the sociopolitical problems that plagued pre-Civil War

Barcelona and Spain. This intensification is manifested in

the text by showing the various conflicting interests in

the Barcelona of the era. The problematic of the Rius

family saga, concentrated around the notion of continuity,

is compounded by the incorporation of wider national

problems. Violent trade unionism becomes, in this novel, part of a wider chaos of conflicting and violently opposed

forces that disintegrate the very fabric of Barcelona and

Spain. The story of 19 .iulio is rather schematic, much

like the emotions surrounding the period of history it deals with. Its importance lies in the pivotal nature of

the events it depicts and explains. The nineteenth of

July, 1936, is the date of the beginning of the Spanish

Civil War and the novel deals with the two year period

leading up to it. This novel concentrates attention on

those processes and conflicts which, in the understanding of the author, offer a justification for the Francoist putsch of July, 1936. The text is structured in such a way as to portray the rebellion as a necessary part of the dialectic of the history of Spain. 221

In regard to Desiderio. there is a time lapse of some twenty years. The silencing of the intervening period,

1916-1936, reflects the ideological biases of "La ceniza fue Arbol". 19 .iulio starts in the latter part of the second republic with conservatives and republicans in power in Madrid, goes through their loss of power to the leftist alliance, the Popular Front, and ends with the insurrection of nineteeth July, 1936. The years of Primo de Rivera are glossed over and only form part of the analeptic discourse that links 19 .iulio to the rest of "La ceniza fue Arbol".

As with Desiderio. the action of the novel is not constructed around characters but rather a specific event or process in history. In 19 .iulio, the characters simply bear witness to the radical changes that their society is going through. History is not just a general schema but rather an actively engaged phenomenon in the novel. It is present as the signified of the text while at the same time contributing to the signifying structures. This faot has an important influence on the way the text is put together because personal traits cease to be important as source of action. Characters appear and protagonize events in the story but these events are not focused as the result of any human failure on the part of the characters who participate in them. Individual character is thus not emphasized as an important element of the plot as was the case in previous 222 novels. The historical moment becomes the most important element and individual action is only imoportant as part of the creation of the critioal environment for the 19 July uprising. As we shall see later individuals are more representations of the social groups of Barcelona and provide access to the narration of the events that led up to the crises.

The climate of the republican years was one of progressive breakdown of civil order and political violence. All the various governments of the republic were characterized by a lack of clear political direction and will that made it all but impossible to implement policy consistently. This created internal frustrations, alienated allies and resulted in a tendency to use the parliamentary prerogative to stall or impede rather than help reform, further aggravating an already unsustainable situation. Problems with regard to the socialization of property, the relations between the church and the state, agrarian reform and labor relations were instrumental in creating an atmosphere of social upheaval.

Within these chaotic events, 19 .iulio concentrates on the uprising itself as the critical climax to which all is leading and functions around a premise of inexorability which depicts increasing tensions and disfunction in the social and political order until the narratively necessary 223

events of 19th July, 1936. The date itself is important in

that all the events of the plot are organized around it.

In other words, all events narrated, all the actions and

happeniings of the story as narrated in 19 .iulio can only

find their fulfillment in the uprising of 19th July, 1936.

The new narrative structure abandons Joaquin Rius as

the center of the narration and the Rius family saga only

participates tangentially in the events of 19 .iulio.

Agusti abandons his original novelistic logos in favor of a

new didactic and defensive posture. At the same time, the

family remains important in the total story by providing

the necessary element of continuity between Spanish nation

that is 'driven' to war and the 'pioneering'

entrepreneurial classes of Barcelona who are also obliged

by circumstance to take up arms in defence of their ideals

and the things that they had fought so hard to create.

In this novel, the binary oppositions of theearly texts

disappears and there is a process of disolution of the

coherent structuring of the previous novels. The linear

coherence of the history of the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries seems to come apart. Biographically

twenty five years have passed since the publication of the

first novel of the series, Mariona Rebull. Time enough for

the ideological and political certainties to undergo a process of modification and collapse. Agusti is also 224 writing at a period of European and Spanish history when traditional values and explanations of the world and history are breaking down. Agusti himself seems to be questioning the validity of the way he had interpreted history in his early novels. The effects of these pressures on the novel of Agusti is that it becomes more diffuse as a narrative and converts to a series of disconnectedand fragmented events.

The coherence of the story of history is suplanted forcefully in an attempt to rescue some semblance of order and continuity out of the chaos left by the disolution of those earlier premises of bourgeois history that governed the writing of especially the first two novels of the series. In his novel, 19 .iulio. Agusti mirrors, to a greater extent than in Desiderio. the process of disolution and fragmentation of history as he had understood it for the writing of Mariona Rebull.

The object of the narration of 19 .iulio is specifically the chaos resulting from the attitudes and lifestyles of people like Desiderio who, in his opinion, shirked their historical obligations for a life of pleasure. The irresponsible progeny of the patriarchs of Barcelona are joined by other children of the oligarchy who now support and promote a new concept of history (communism). By their actions they ally themselves with members of the hitherto 225

'disenfranchised' other that exists outside the spheres of the oligarchy. The new interest in history influences the way the text is put together and make it imperative to change some aspects of our reading of the novel to give more attention to history and ideology. Individual protagonists of the previous novels give way to a host of voices as the narrator tries to understand the processes that are taking place in his society. In other words individiual action is only important as part of the description of the historical and social processes that culminated in the Civil War: individual action is not the focus but rather the action in which the individual participated.

In this regard, the study of character becomes redundant so our analysis will pay more attention to the description of social groups like the political class of

Barcelona, the workers' movement and the part they played in the creation of the situations that led to 19th July.

19 .iulio continues to attempt to define otherness in the same contrastive terms that operate in the different novels of the series. "La ceniza fue &rbol" regards history as the exclusive space of the patriarchs of the

Barcelona oligarchy, so that the first relegation to otherness belongs to that part of the class that ignores and disregards its historic obligations as members of the 226 class. In the previous novel, this sector of Barcelona had been defined as the philandering, wasteful, and indolent members of the bourgeois class, especially, as just seen,

Desiderio Rius. In 19 .iulio. otherness is defined in clearly political and ideological terms this group is expanded to include various 'traitors' to the class in the persons of politicians who take sides with those who would destroy the interests of the group.

Otherness is also depicted in the organized labor groups that are very powerful in the political arena of the period. In this group we find the politicians of the republic, the Catalonian nationalists who allow themselves to be manipulated by the former, and irresponsible liberals and conservatives who supported them and enabled them to wield the power that would subvert the 'status quo' and threaten the very livelihood of Barcelona and Spain as defined by "La ceniza fue drbol".

These elements are present in previous novels of the series as part of the structures of conflict. Before, however, they were presented as obstacles in the path of progress. In El viudo Rius. Joaquin has to fight against them for the survival of his factory. In 19 .iulio, they gain protagonism in the various episodes in their own right as they, each in turn, contribute to the dynamic that will lead to the events defined in the text as July 19th. 227

This also implies the conflicts which make up the

representational world of 19 .iulio: labor and worker

revindications and Catalonian nationalism. These various

conflicts are woven together into the story of 19 iulio but discursively they are set up as independent narrative nuclei with their own stories, stories which go together to

create the atmosphere that will make the insurrection of

19th July a justifiable historical necessity. This is the sense in which these 'stories' will be regarded in our analysis of the text of 19 .iulio. In the first place, we shall look at how the plot of the novel is set up. This shall be followed by a short appreciation of the political class that intervenes in this novel to collectively create the image of the other. Then we shall look at other conflicts in the story namely, the struggles of regionalists and organized labor. The study will be rounded off with a look at how feminine space is incorporated. We hope to demonstrate that the ideological and political intentions that inform and permeate all aspects of "La ceniza fue &rbol" are even more active in 19

.iulio. but now the process has become depersonalized or fragmented among groups and classes rather than individuals because of the collapse of the premises of historical action present in earlier novels. 228

5.2 Aspects of the plot of 19 .iulio: invertebration,

rebellion and reaction.

The plot of 19 .iulio is different from the plots of the other novels of the series. Conflict is not established between well defined political and social spaces. Rather, the novel includes various discrete conflicts whose only connecting event is the military uprising of July 19. Then there are the already familiar need of Joaquin to maintain the factory and organized labor's fight for better conditions and pay by means of negotiations on the one hand and by acts of random violence on the other.

First, there is an ongoing struggle for more Catalonian autonomy from the central government and secondly, the leftist parties want to incorporate extremist political groups of the left as well as to represent the working poor of rural Catalonia. The text of 19 .iulio presents these political struggles as mutually exclusive. Thus, the insistence by some of the characters who intervene, like

BorredA and his friends, on the compatibilty of interests between radical worker's unions and the other political struggles is blamed for the violent disorders which made

19th July a political and historical necessity. According to this, if disaffected Catalanists had not aligned themselves with workers they would never have had the 229

political legitimization that they proceeded to abuse

throughout the period of the Republic.

The other source of narrative dynamism is the domestic

life of the Rius family and their factory. They play two

roles in the actantial structures of the novel. In the

first place, they are an element of continuity linking the

events of 19th July to the history of Barcelona back to the

late nineteenth century. In the second place, through the

movements of various members of the family and their

aquaintances, the scope of the narration widens to

incorporate new spaces in the geography of Spain. This

connection is not only thematic but also structural. In

this regard, there is a regressive and analeptic component

in 19 .iulio that links it to previous novels of the series. These links, however, present important changes reflected in the structuring of the text. An example is the figure of the self-made man, which is repeated here in the figure of Matias PalA. Evelina Torra the 'hostess' is also present when her rather loose morals are continued in her daughter, Crista. Doha Clotilde, the faithful servant,

is repeated in the person of Rita Arquer, a former servant, who returns to the service of Evelina Torra. The role of

Joaquin Rius also changes. An element of continuity in "La ceniza fue Arbol", he is very little involved in the political and social conflicts described in 19 .iulio. 230

The plot of 19 .iulio is organized as a series of conflicts sharing a final crisis, the moment enunciated by the title of the novel. The work is thus a mosaio of the remote and immediate causes which develop towards the violence of 19th July. This makes the novel different from a story with a problem which is resolved at the end. What we have are a series of effects which heighten each other individually and severally to create tensions and ruptures in the narrative world and discourse. In this regard lineality is replaced by a multiplicity of nuclei of narrative attention that function to widen the spatial and experiential scope of the narrated worldand also mirror the disolution of the narrative of history of "La ceniza fue drbol". The family saga acts as the unifying substructure for the various narratives which coalesce to create 19

.iulio. All the personalities around whom the different episodes are woven are connected to the Rius family in one way or the other. This multiple perspectivism in temporal and spatial terms works not only to create sequentiality and lineality but it also functions independently to create the effect of chaos and immediacy. For the first time,

Barcelona is not the subject of the story as such, but rather a passive spectator/participant in a history that stretches beyond her borders.

The novel's discourse makes effective use of the motiv 231

of the journey in order to provide a cross-section of the

tragedies that were ocurring and recurring in Spanish

society and the body politic. The center of narrative

attention shifts as the multiple protagonists or rather

centers of narrative movement travel around the geography

of Spain and bear witness to the signs of decomposition

affecting the institutions of the nation. In this sense,

an important locus of conflict is the animio responses of

the protagonists who have to suffer and bear the

consequences of the various events going on around them.

For example, the journeys of Matias Paid across Spain serve

not only to describe the crises of authority and the rule

of law, but also as the call to action Agusti felt in the

era.

19 .iulio is thus a novel which basically describes

choices that Spaniards are called on to make at a specific

time-space of their history, that is, the period prior to

the start of the Civil War. When PalA calls on Calvo

Sotelo and General Mola to think about reacting forcefully

to the crisis of authority, he is in effect calling on his

reader to legitimize his point of view. These choioes go beyond the textual universe of 19 .iulio and the text

legitimizes its own posture by involving the reader in the choice. This choice is textually predetermined by the description of the bankrupt political system, the 232

frustrated regionalist sentiment and progresive lawlessness

in the name of freedom and liberty on the part of the

working peoples of Barcelona.

5.3 The Liberal Politicians in 19 .iulio

The personalities of the Barcelona political class

presented in 19 .iulio are those linked to the leftist

republican alliance that came to power in Barcelona in 1934

during what was mentioned above as 'el bienio negro'.

Albert Balcells describes the period thus:

Como en Madrid gobernaba ya en 1934 las derechas,

mientras en Barcelona seguia gobernando el centro

izquierda, las relaciones entre los gobiernos de

la Repiiblica y de la Generalidad, que habian sido

buenas durante el primer bienio, se deterioraron

progresivamante hasta desembocar en el choque de

Octubre, 1934 (1974, 34).

Manuel Tufion de Lara defines the period thus:

Las elecciones municipales de Catalufia, celebradas

el 14 de enero, constituyeron un rotundo triunfo

de la Esquerra, valideciendo asi la autoridad del 233

gobierno autdnomo. Este tropezb con la

resistencia pasiva del Poder central para el

traspaso de algunos servicios (1974, 422)

This historical event is used to create the narrated world

and history of 19 .iulio. The problems between the two governments came to a head when the Generalidad in Catalufia declared itself independent of the central power in

Madrid. Initially the political class of Barcelona manipulated the question of autonomy and self determination for its own purposes in its fight with the central government. Then it used the defence of worker's rights in order to win the votes of the left in its efforts to consolidate its own power.

Within the text this class of liberal politicians is indicted in several ways. They are accused of betraying their class to their own political ambitions in what is presented as a veritable pact with the devil himself. The scions of respectable families of the oligarchy like

Nicol&s Borredd and Vicente Burgada consciously 'betray' their class and their family names to their own political and social ambitions. In the case of Nicol&s Borredd, militancy in regionalist politics and the failed rebellion of October 6, 1934, convince him that the regionalist flag cannot be defended alone and he is converted to marxism. 234

He becomes fully convinced that society needed a complete

change. From a position of using worker's votes to gain

ascendency in Barcelona, he is 'converted' to the belief

that empowerment of the workers was the only viable means

ofsocial reform or progress. This mentality leads him to

urge Desiderio to lend money to his allies of the CNT

during the strike actions of 1934.

In the mind of Borredd and his correligionists, the

working masses of Barcelona were a means to an end. They

also believed that once they had used the labor movement to

achieve victory, the necessary reform in labor and social

relations could be put in place:

La revolucibn tiene que ser social o fracasard

oomo fracas6 la nuestra. Ahora bien: una vez los

hombres en la calle, creo que se les puede

encauzar y dominar. La accibn puede ser del

proletariado pero la direccibn puede muy bien no

serlo. La politica pura puede eliminar todos los

riesgos (284).

What people like Borredd were looking for, as the text explains, was cooperation from the worker's organization for future social programs. Irene Salvat, Borreda's secretrary, opined that the cooperation from the workers 235

would facilitate attention to the serious social and

economic problems of the city of Barcelona:

La masa obrera votard en bloque, como en el 12 de

abril. Esto significa la amnistia, la

justificacidn del 6 de octubre y la puesta en

marcha de la repiiblica en un sentido

verdaderamente democrdtico. El fascismo y ese

cldrigo de Salamanca, los mondrquicos y las carcas

quedardn barridos para siempre (392).

Irene, like Nicolds, correctly identifies worker's power as

part of a strategy to overwhelm the conservative political

forces. In order to get the vote of the extreme left,

however, the more moderate left had to promise the release

of political prisoners from the previous regime and this

adds to the problems of the period because a blanket

amnesty implies the release of truly violent criminals.

The specific dynamics of the problem will be studied in the

section dedicated to the workers' movement and its

aspirations. Support for the workers' organizations

included legal and material support for striking workers.

In the novel, Desiderio's money was used to persuade

the CNT to vote massively for the Esquerra Republioana in

Barcelona by providing relief to striking workers. The 236

impossibility of governing with the participation of

workers' organizations is reiterated at different points in

the novel. One such line of opposition to the political marriage of convenience is used by the narrating conscience

to comment and evaluate the historical events of the period

in the Ateneo of Barcelona.

In the minds of the Atenienses, government reliance

on the votes of the extremist organizations like the FAI,

CNT and the communists, poses serious problems of loss of

control on the part of the government as well as serious breaches of public safety. Narcis Guimerans, a patron of the Ateneo, actually thinks that a Republican government, even an anticlerical one, is a possibility if the government is prepared to act firmly (423). The incapacity of the government to act decisively to put a stop to social and political violence is therefore blamed on the 'pact with the devil' which had effectively delivered the country

into the hands of lawlessness. As Matias PalA saw it:

Ni Azaffa ni nadie depende ya de las

configuraciones politicas y parlamentarias. Est&n

en manos de la casa del pueblo, de la UGT, y aqui

aun peor de los anarquistas pura y simplemente.

Pero quien acabarA dominando ya, es el comunismo

(423). 237

Lack of firm control of the body politic and consequent

escalation of social and political violence is, however,

the single most repeated indictment of the regime of the

second republican government. This is the most effective

leitmotif of the legitimizing discourses that culminate in

the justification of the military rebellion of 19th July,

1936.

The role of the Ateneo within the structure of this

discourse of legitimation is very important in the sense

that the conversations at this forum act as an anticipation

of the events that are narrated later. In this regard,

political violence and the consequences of the actions of

the politicians of Esquerra Republicana are discussed even

before they happen and then are again discussed after they

happen. By means of these discussions and the fears of the

politicians, the narrating conscience keeps the climate of

violence ever present. At the same time because the

politicians have differing experiences of the times, the

spatial continuum can appropriate more incidents and

experiences of the political climate of the period. Thus

the ambiance offers not only material for commentary by the narrating conscience but in itself is an informative

commentary on history. 238

As part of the redundancies that operate to create the

authoritarian structure of the text, the Ateneo is principally prophetic and proleptic. At other tines, it is

analeptic keeping ever present a cycle of self fulfilling prophecies. An example of analeptic commentary is offered by the commentary of Matias PalA that follows:

Aqui tengo una nota con todo lo que ha ocurrido en

Espafia desde el 16 de febrero hasta fines de

marzo. Y -ley6- ciento noventa y nueve saqueos

en esta proporcidn: cincuenta y ocho monumentos

ptiblicos, setenta y dos de establecimientos

privados, treinta y tres de domicilios

particulares, treinta y seis de iglesias. Adem&s

ciento setenta y ocho incendios, de ellos ciento

ocho de iglesias. Ciento sesenta y nueve motines,

treinta y nueve tiroteos y ochenta y cinco

agresiones, con un total de setenta y cuatro

muertos y trescientos cuarenta y cinco heridos.

Todo ello en el lapso de un mes y medio, como

festejo de luna de miel del Frente Popular (423).

There is no doubt that the blame for the instability, both in politics and in other activities, is placed squarely on the shoulders of the politicians of the 239

Esquerra in Barcelona and the Frente Popular alliance that was ruling from Madrid. And of course, the charges are similar for both: lack of political foresight that led them to think that they could carry out democratic and orderly reform in alliance with the extremist worker organizations. Leftist politicians are, in effect, blamed for creating the very conditions which would make it impossible for them to be effeotive as governors of

Barcelona and Spain.

In the case of Joaquin Rius, he sees his life's work in danger because of dishonesty on the part of the politicians. In his mind (and we must remember that part of his struggle in El viudo Rius is against the industrial and fiscal policies of the politicians in Madrid), these dishonest public figures are playing politics (in the bad sense of the term), in a situation where the greater national good should have been their guiding principle:

En el espiritu de don Joaquin no cabian

consideraciones ajenas a la f&brica, aunque

pudieran relacionarse con ella. Ni otro tipo de

consideraciones, ideoldgicas o politicas.

"D§jalos. Mangonean, se inquietan, buscan

secuaces, intentan engaflar. Se creen que pueden

dirigir a los obreros, pero a los obreros no 240

podemos dirigirlos mbs que nosotros (436).

The politicians are dishonest with the country and, what's

more, dishonest with themselves. In Joaquin's mind, it is a

mistake to try and politicize labor relations which after

all should be left to those who are really involved in

producing and selling goods. It should be a strictly

commercial operation determined (both wages and prices), by market forces and direct negotiations between labor and

employers with no interference from politicians. He also

thinks that the politicians were under an illusion if they

thought that they could effectively control the forces they

had unleashed. In the words of Desiderio:

Mi padre no cree ni una brizna en estas

cuestiones. Piensa que estais en manos de la

revolucibn, que le haceis el juego

descaradamente. La fbbrica se le revuelve; y ten

en cuenta que cuando en estas cuestiones se pierde

el control de las cosas ya no se vuelve a

recobrar. Si de lo que se trata es dar el mando a

los obreros, que lo tomen y listo, dice 61. Lo

que no puede soportar es la amenaza constante, la

sensacibn de ruina inminente y continua en que

vive. Las circunstancias de los trabajadores os 241

envuelven a vosotros, que os habeis convertido

simplemente en celestinas de una situaci6n que

nunca podreis resolver vosotros mismos, salvo a

costa de vuestra propia eliminaci6n (432).

It seems, then, that the leftist politicians' arrogant belief in their own power over the workers that they are supposed to represent is blamed for the ruin to whioh they bring the country and themselves. Desiderio himself has no illusions about the situation in which they find themselves. In fact he agrees to collaborate with the regime in Barcelona out of faith in the work of people like his father whom he would like to save from as much damage as he can.

As the events of 19 .iulio portray, there is progressive loss of control in Barcelona, on the part of the Esquerra

Repdblicana, and the rest of the country on the part of the

Frente Popular government. This leads to a situation where law and order breaks down and the civil guard and the police are ineffective and powerless against the rising tide of 'anarchy' both in the cities and in the countryside. In a way, the accumulation of violent incidents is a vindication of the recurrent theme that the politicians are victims of their own ambitions and their own shortsightedness. Strangely enough however, this seems 242 to be the attitude expressed towards almost all the players of this episode of Barcelona and Spanish national history.

This can be seen in the treatment of the other important players in this drama, namely the regionalists of Baroelona and the workers' movement.

5.4 Regionalist sentiment in 19 .iulio.

Historically, regionalist feeling understood as political action, only appealed to the middle and upper classes of Catalonia. These were the groups that had made it a part of their social and political agenda. The countryside though culturally homogeneous was not quite as committed to the political agenda of separatist and regionalist feeling. Catalanism as a political credo can be located within a primarily urban environment in

Catalonia. The industrial boom that made it posible for

Catalanist feeling to become more assertive also had other consequences in the changing demographics of the cities as more and more non Catalan speakers immigrated to places like Barcelona to find work.

Within the novel, the political problems of the

Generalidad and the Esquerra government are compounded by this new demographic fact. An important problem was the fact that immigrants to a place like Barcelona were not 243 overwhelmingly Catalonian and were therefore not susceptible to regionalist propaganda. The lower class industrial mass could identify neither with the ethnic aspirations nor with the class interests of the Catalonian upper and middle classes.

Regionalism, however, plays an important part in the historical infrastructure of the novel 19 .iulio just as it does in the series of "La ceniza fue Arhnl as a whole. It is exploited by the narrating subject to explain some of the processes that were going on in the body politic of

Spain and Catalonia during the republican years. In the first place, we must remember the love of Barcelona which served as the inspiration for the series. In this regard, regionalist sentiment can be found in the structure of nostalgic evocation of Barcelona's past that functions as a pretext in the genesis of "La ceniza fue Arbol". In the second place, the articulation of regionalist feeling and the 'fin de si&cle' renaissance of Catalonian letters was largely due to wealthy, self-made men like Joaquin, who had created the physical image of Barcelona as a city. "La ceniza fue irbol" proposes a history of Catalonia from a regionalist perspective. Catalonian nationalism is, however, not limited to any specific political current in republican Barcelona, for Nicol&s Borredd notes: 244

En Catalufia ser catalanista no signifies ser

nada. Lo son A la vez un reaccionario o un hombre

de extrema izquierda. Todos los partidos

politicos son catalanistas. Este es un pleito ya

superado colectivamente. Y por tanto, intentar un

movimiento revolucionario con la sola bandera del

catalanismo es perder el tiempo (243).

What BorredA seems to suggest is that mere regionalism is

not enough for political ascendancy in Catalonia. And this

feeling is what explains the way that Catalan regionalist

discourse is incorporated into the text in the explanation

of the political events of the second Republic. The

dichotomy and ambivalence of attitudes towards regionalist

aspirations are incorporated into the discourse of 19 .iulio

as part of the 'troubles' that lead to the breakdown of

civil order represented by the electoral victory of the

leftist alliance in February, 1936.

Thus the special aspect of 19 .iulio is that, though

Catalan regionalism was the triggering mechanism for some

of the events that constituted the political instability of

the republican years, the discourse of the text distances

it from the other struggles of the period. A good example

of this is the alliances formed to contest the elections of

1936. According to 19 .iulio: 245

De un lado se formd un bloque que concentraba al

viejo reptiblicano Lerroux, campedn en su dia de la

subversi6n oficial y anticatalana, con Francisco

Camb6, regionalista y conservador, partidario de

una democracia a la inglesa y rociado por los

efluvios del clasismo hel6nico. Del otro, las

izquierdas catalanistas se aliaban oon el

obrerismo y sus votos posibles, todos de

importaci6n (386).

Both sides of the electoral conflict are involved in strange marriages of convenience. The narrator who clearly possesses regionalist sentiments faults the leftists for aligning themselves with 'foreigners' while at the same time blaming the conservatives for aligning themselves with the anticatalanist Lerroux, who had been used by the central government to break the united front of Catalonian votes in 1910. The fragmentation of regionalist votes and therefore the impossibility of an authentic defence of

Catalonian self-interest seems to be the main focus of critique within the text. Most of the blame goes to the personalities involved. For example Nicol6s Borredd, representative of the Esquerra Republicana in the novel, has a strange political trajectory. He moves from being a 246 regionalist conspirator, in the 1934 Generalidad that led a failed separatist rebelion, to a communist ideologue in

1936.

The common fact of fragmented regionalist votes is explained and evaluated in the description of the text's ideal leader of Catalonian regionalist self-interest who is bypassed by the 'new' republicanism of the Generalidad of

1936. The figure proposed by the text is Francisco Macia, who is proposed as the man who could have harnessed the energy of Catalonia and her special qualities for the benefit of the whole nation. As the text puts it, he is the symbol of a new kind of Catalanist politician described as :

Hueste intelectual y progresista, catalanista y

cosmopolita a la vez, en la cual se confiaban las

esperanzas de una rApida evolucidn que enterrara

los siete afios de Dictadura y diera hombres nuevos

al pais (16).

Initially then, regionalist concerns are not divorced from universal national aspirations. But, this feeling is rapidly abandoned as the movement gets more radical in its demands, some of which are clearly presented by the text as unjustified. This is the case in the 1934 confrontation 247 between the leftist government of Catalonia and the central government in Madrid over the plans for agrarian reform in

Catalonia.

This conflict, which eventually leads to a rupture in relations and the abortive declaration of independence on

October 6, 1934, is presented in the novel as a manipulative operation on the part of the liberal political class of Barcelona. That is, they insist on politicizing something that was not susceptible to such manipulation.

In the words of Desiderio:

Lo que Campanys est& intentando en el campo es una

pura insensatez. Predicar la revolucidn es muy

cdmodo. Pero en mi finca y en todas las del

comarca no hay espacio para la revoluci6n. Tii lo

sabes tan bien como yo. Esta revolucidn

campesina, en nuestra tierra est6 hecha desde el

siglo XIV. Lo dem&s es simple propaganda

electoral (17).

Desiderio accuses the politicians of acting in bad faith.

In his condemnation of the intrumentalization of class differences in the name of regionalism, he also points out a regional particularism of Catalonia that separates the peasant farmers of the Catalonian countryside from the 248 tenant farmers and agricultural laborers of Castille and

Andalucia. The dilemma of the regionalist politician is nonetheless very real. In the confrontation with the central government, they seek the involvement of the

Catalonian countryside in their electoral base in order to diminish their reliance on the votes of the urban proletariat:

Lo que Campanys pretende es liberarse de esos

votos comprometedores. Piensa que en la prdxima

ocasidn, si la hay, esos votos de la ciudad nos

barrer&n a nosotros mismos. Por lo tanto busca

sustituirlo por un proletariado que no sea

forastero. Pretende edificar su fuerza sobre

bases nuevas, que son el trabajador del campo

(17).

The effort is not only to widen the Catalonian base of their political support but also to unite the Catalonian countryside to the regionalist feeling of the city. The effort however fails because there is not enough incentive for the rabasaires to become fully involved. The other source of Catalanist enthusiasism is a group led by Gaspar

Devesa. As we shall see, his nationalism, which is separatist in essence, is portrayed as the innocent victim 249

of the wily, political professionals such as Borredd.

The Devesa group's separatism is inspired by the principles of self determination sanctified in

international law after the first World War. They hoped to work for Catalonian autonomy and independence within the confines of international law. The group has its

ideological mouthpiece in a weekly newspaper called

L'Bmpenta. In addition to this they organize a aeries of meetings and excursions as an integral part of the education of their members. They hope to inculcate a love of their culture, language and homeland in the youth as a prelude and ancillary to the struggle for the independence of Catalonia:

La acci6n proselitista y la cohesibn del grupo se

efectuaba de hecho en las reuniones campestres,

que tenian una vertiente simplemente deportiva y

gimndstica y otra vertiente, mucho mds acusada de

ejercicio militar. Ellas respondian a una

ambicibn formativa global de los hombres que se

reunian (35).

In their methods and their modus operandi. the Devesa group is historically situated within the context of the nascent national self-assertion of the fascist movements in the 250

Europe of the period. The nationalist ideal as espoused by the Devesa group is exclusivist:

El castellano era una lengua extranjera s61o

utilizada por los empleados del estado que

acampaban en Barcelona como una plaga discordante

y refractraria, o por los inmigrantes de toda

especie, desconocedores de la higiene y plagadas

de lacras -la sifilis, el tracoma- que

patentizaban el atraso y la miseria de Castilla

(37).

They do not just want to create their own historical space within the concert of European nations but are also reacting to the problems of their own space in Barcelona itself. They feel the need to recuperate and nationalize the spaces of Barcelona. This attitude is both exclusionistic (with regard to Spain and Castille) and internationalist or cosmopolitan (with regards to the rest of Europe). This contradiction or what may be called selective universality is resolved dicursively when after the failed October revolution the disappointed separatists like Miguel Llobet begin to believe in a sort of integrationist Catalonian regional self-awareness. This integrationism, if we might call it that, is presented 251

within the text as a historical necessity in the face of

threats of lawlessness from the ranks of organized labor.

The same sort of operation takes place in the ranks of

the peasant farmers. After the declaration of independence

fails, they lose interest when they find out that they were

not being organized for their own interests. The 'Ley de

contratas agrarias' was only an excuse used by the

politicians to involve the oountryside in their power

struggles.

These two examples of manipulation by the political

class illustrate the tendency of the novel to separate

Catalonian nationalist feeling from the political chaos

which led to the war. This dichotomy is best expressed by

don Sebastian, Joaquin's neighbor at Santa Maria who states

categorically:

Por eso lo que ocurre no es una revolucidn

campesina, es una revoluci6n politica que nada

tiene que ver con las cosechas. El campesino no

quiere ser dueffo de la tierra. Quiere trabajarla

y tener casa. Si en eso va implicito el deber de

ser amo, lo aceptarA. Pero no lucharA por ello

(249).

In don Sebastian's mind, the participation of the peasants 252

in the October declaration was the obvious result of manipulation from the urban centers of separatist politicking. This opinion is repeated by one of his workers when he blurts out that they had been decieved by

the politicians of Barcelona (252).

The October revolution did not accomplish much in the area of separatist politics but it did leave a lasting effect on society. The text suggests that nationalist

idealism has been perverted into an erroneous expression for the benefit of those who are really enemies of

Catalonia, the anarchist and communist worker organizations who would destroy the very things that made Catalonia special, its industry. This they do by fomenting the progressive breakdown of public safety. Under cover of the restoration of political legitimacy and the rule of law, they collaborate in the breakdown of civil order. The

'October revolution' in Barcelona is only a symptom:

Bajo la aparente y sonriente calma de las

declaraciones oficiales se dejaba traslucir la

imposibilidad en que el gobierno se hallaba de

atender a la salvaguardia minima del orden piiblico

(279).

The ill-fated independence declaration is part of the 253 general breakdown of law and order that, the text argues, is inimical to the real interests of Catalonia. The events of 1934 are likened to those that lead to the tragic events of "La semana tr&gica" of 1909:

El viejo Rius, habituado a situaciones peores,

recordd los afios de los atentados y de las

huelgas. Aquellos afloat le habian dado una dura

leccidn (280).

The lesson in question is the fact that any time workers are politicized or agitated, there is a lot of arbitrary violence. The violent climate convinces some separatists of where their real interests lie, the preservation of civil order and progress for the whole Spanish nation.

They still maintain the belief in their own pequefta patria but this time within the larger frame of the political unity of Spain.

In the text, then, there is an effort to discredit separatism as an ideal by moving regionalist passion from the political to metaphysical sphere:

Catalufia era una tradicidn, mantenida no solamente

a trav6s de la lengua sino del car&cter, de la

iniciativa, de la secular supervivencia de una 254

serie de valores inmutables que en gran medida

eran incompatibles con cualquier suerte de

rebeldia agresiva, con cualquier forma de

revoluci6n (335).

These are words that the text puts into the mouth of

Francisco Camb6 who resolves in this manner the problem of two nationalisms. In this one stroke, separatism is de-legitimized along with all forms of political revolution

in the pursuit of the political identity of Catalonia. In another instance, the necessity of a single national history is reinforced. In Cambo's mind, the problems are not nationalistic but rather socio-economic in nature:

La cuestion social siempre podria tener arreglo,

pero amistoso; patridticos, porque nuestra hermana

Castilla la de los grandes heroes y los largos

harapos, podria, siguiendo el ejemplo de CatalufSa,

convertirse un dia en tierra prdspera y endrgica;

CatalufSa solo se singulariza por el trabajo y por

el seny, con lo que ejemplarizaria a EspafSa

entera (394-5).

The destiny of Catalonia, her historical vocation, according to this, is to be the mediator in the 255 modernization of heroic but destitute Castille. In this scheme of things, precedence is given to Catalonia and

Barcelona over Castille.

The exemplary nature of Barcelona is perhaps best

illustrated in the descriptions that are focalized through the mind of Desiderio. As he returns to Barcelona from

Madrid where he has witnessed the electoral victory of the

Frente Popular in February, 1936, the physioal evidenoe of proximity to Barcelona and its rural environs is noted in the change in the landscape:

La proximidad de Barcelona se advertia por la

secuencia ininterrumpida de pueblos y de casas de

labor. Habia ya cierta majestad en las figuras.

Las mujeres que, paradas en una fuente, llenaban

de agua sus c&ntaros, pudieran ser como im&genes

inmutables de la romanizacibn del pais (408).

The picture of tranquil, noble and millenial labor is contrasted with the monotonous semi-arid countryside of

Castille. This is the intention of another image of

Barcelona and Catalonia, the monastery of Montserrat:

Sobre el horizonte, clarisimo, se diseftaba ya,

est&tica y solemne, la piedra gris del macizo de 256

Montserrat. Era como una inmensa y grandiosa

estructura natural, simbolo de la propia

sobriedad, de la legitimidad, de la perenne fuerza

del pals. Contrast6 esta impresibn con la turba

de gentes encaramadas dlas antes en las techumbres

de los tranvias en la Puerta del Sol (407).

In this description the solidity of the monastery rock is

contrasted with the chaos and disorder of the celebration

of electoral victory in Madrid. In both cases there is a clear bias towards Catalonia and things Catalonian. There

is no doubt as to the preferences of the narrating subject. Even in Cambo's order of things, preeminence is given to Catalonia, the teacher who would bring warlike

Castille into prosperous modernity by her example.

Regionalism is also important in the novel as part of the historical background. In this, it is a part of the documentary infrastructure of the novel. Within the wider ideological intention of the novel, regionalist sentiment is the vehicle of what might be described as an excusing factor for the actions of certain Catalonian political groups. At the same time, the text argues for a tacit condemnation of regionalist sentiment when it is separatist, but where regionalist feeling materializes in the preeminence accorded to Catalonia in both spiritual and 257 material terms, it points in a different direction. By separating regionalism from the Frente Popular the author is identifying with his class interests over and above his

'Catalonian nationalism'.

5.5 Workers' movements in the presentation of the other.

The presentation of the workers' movement does not deviate from previous depictions. In fact, their struggle is incorporated into the discourse following the same pattern as in El viudo Rius. The initial reaction to the workers in Barcelona is that they are foreigners in

Catalonia. This enables a critique against Esquerra and the political class for pretending to mobilize them for their own ends. This Catalonian bias in the consideration of the workers' movement allows the text to disconnect the organized workers' groups from the October revolution in

Barcelona while presenting it, at the same time, as a failed nationalist insurrection. The novel makes a concerted effort then to separate the two movements, the workers on the one hand and the independentists on the other:

Muchos de ellos no eran ya de aqui, de estas

tierras, y traian costumbres y rutinas de otras 258

zonas, zonas de pedregal, donde unas miserables

ovejas sin pasto los habian condenado a una

mudanza implacable (282).

In the urban spaces of Barcelona, migrant workers are foreigners who have no feeling for the place and no

'seny' in the workplace. The other presentation of the workers associates them with the climate of political violence that characterized most of the republican years.

This violence is historically associated with the extreme left, the communist CNT and the anarchist FAI.

Historically, the failure of the October revolution varied in different parts of the country. In Barcelona the workers seconded the movement by a general strike. In other parts of the country, for example in Asturias, participation of the FAI and the CNT was more direct. In

19 .iulio, these groups are the only ones represented.

While this almost surely has to do with the particular strength of these two movements in Barcelona, it does also respond to a negative evaluation which is then extended to cover all the worker's organizations of the period.

According to the logic of presentation, the political violence associated with the extreme left was a consequence of the repressive rule of the Radical/CEDA government of the 'bienio negro' of 1934-1936. In this, there is a 259

national component and a specifically Barcelonian

component. Worker organizations of the extreme left were

repressed by the Madrid government, which was conservative,

but in Catalonia the local government allied itself with

these organizations in their fight against the hegemony of

the central government. Either way, violence begat more

violence in a vicious cycle.

The violence in Barcelona is exarcebated by the 1936

alliance of the two governments, in Madrid and in

Barcelona. They won the electoral campaign of 1936

because:

Las masas obreras, sindicados o no, habian ido a

votar con dos condiciones, las que recordaba la

octavilla: libertad para los encartados del 6 de

octubre y la abolici6n de la vigente ley de orden

piiblico (409).

The text suggests that most of the political prisoners were common criminals who dedicated themselves to rob and wreak revenge on those they perceived to be enemies of their cause.

The form of legitimate protest open to workers, strike action, is presented in the text as something that the workers are abusing for their obscure ends. The process of 260

negotiating a settlement is perverted by intransigence and

bad faith on the part of the labor unions:

La huelga del ramo del agua ponia a los

fabricantes en un callej6n sin salida. De hecho

era como si toda la fdbrica entera estuviera en

paro. Pero lo peor no era la huelga, sino el tono

de la huelga. Era un conflicto agrio, como un

juego de ardides para que ellos no pudieran

encontrar solucidn y los atentados y amenazas se

multiplicaban (446).

The suggestion here is that there is a malicious intention

apparent in the degeneration of the process of negotiation

on the one hand and on the other, the very tone and logic

of negotiation. This fact proves (according to the text),

that the unions are not really interested in a settlement

of the outstanding problems of labor relations. In

Joaquin's mind:

Piden mucho m&s de lo que ellos mismos se podrian

dar en caso de que fueran dueffos de la f&brica.

Eso es lo que piden, pero es solo un pretexto para

llegar a una situacidn insostenible (451). 261

The preoccupation of the employer class represented by

Joaquin is how to carry on with their productive activity.

However, they do not show any interest in the demands of the workers, which are dismissed as mere subterfuges to foment crisis. This attitude repeats motivs that have already been seen in El viudo Rius. where workers were defined in terms of their position in the chain of production. In both novels, workers are depicted as senseless automats too easily influenced by agitators who make a living by causing friction and fomenting trouble.

In El viudo Rius. agitators like Reg&s seem to want to humiliate the employers of Barcelona. In 19 .iulio. the ultimate objective is revolution, even though it is itself reduced to:

Nosotros queremos la revolucidn. Pero no es la

revolucidn rusa lo que nos servird de modelo. Lo

que necesitamos son llamas gigantescas, que puedan

verse desde toda la tierra; lo que necesitamos son

oleadas de sangre que tifian de rojo todos los

mares del mundo (427).

The intentions seem to be violent but the rhetoric reveals itself to be bombastic and pamphletary. The expression and its circumstance suggest a naive, childish (and thus 262

harmless) bravado or, on the contrary, a sense of

sublimated 'idealistic violence. The narrator seems to

undermine the validity of their positions and intentions.

Even Desiderio, who is presented as a negative version of

the Barcelona oligarchy, shares some of the paternalistic,

condescending, patronizing tone and stereotyping of the

working masses of Barcelona:

Pensaba en toda esta muchedumbre, que vivia de una

manera inconsciente rumiando su miseria, sin

nomas ni direccibn. Pero se sentia atraido por

ese trozo de humanidad convulsa cuya existencia

ignoraba las ataduras y los limites, la moral

burguesa, el sentido de cualquier obligacibn

perentoria, los deberes, que a 61, por ejemplo, le

atosigaban y mortificaban (428).

Beyond the paternalistic patronizing and the dehumanization that it implies, Desiderio actually has a perception of the working class that is akin to the myth of the noble savage, that innocent and yet violent creature of the bourgeois imagination. This violence is the essence of Nicol&s

Borred&'s own evaluation of the revolution which he had helped to trigger. In his own mind, however, violence was a necessary part of the new dialectic of history. The 2B3 common theme here is of a force out of control, an idea reinforced by the zoomorphic imagery:

En la safia y la furia que habia podido palpar

sobre la meseta albacetaria, veia el cuadro de lo

que era esta revolucibn social en la prActica: era

como un caballo salvaje que se desboca y al que no

se pudiera ya detener una vez lanzado en loca

tromba (484).

The overt intention of this discourse is to delegitimize the participation of new subjects in the political and economic spaces of Barcelona and Spain. To this end, there is no discussion of the logic that drives worker's demands. According to the text, the principal sin of the working masses is not their demands per se. but their will to participate in the historical process as subjects and not as mere factors of production or objects of external action.

The text's presentation suggests that social conflict stems not from inequality but from the actions of a few misguided individuals, political opportunists and violent individuals who take advantage of special situations to live out their drives. An example of this is FroilAn

PelAez, a violent man who is also favored by the general 264

amnesty of February, 1936:

Uno de ellos era FroilAn Pelbez, alias ,

personaje bronco y mal intencionado del ramo del

agua, que ya habia tenido frecuentes episodios con

la policia, al margen de su filiacibn social. Era

un tipo malcarado y jactancioso, al que sus

propios compafieros miraban con recelo (410).

Others like MAximo are misled by still others like the

semi-literate Feliciano, who are themselves victims of

their own ignorance and are taken in by the facile propaganda of political pamphlets. The ideal situation of

the worker, as the text suggests through Joaquin Rius, is

like the one described in the first pages of Mariona

Rebull. They are seen as not bounded by class distinctions

or consciousness. In Joaquin's mind, there is a clear

assimilation of the relations in the greater society to

relations within the factory:

Nosotros a trabajar. Ya sabbis que aqui dentro no

puede haber enemigos. Somos una misma empresa,

como una familia, una familia con m&s de cincuenta

afios de vivir en comiin. Por tanto el que quiera

serb atendido como un hijo. Pero ahora a 265

trabajar, a trabajar de firme por la prosperidad

de todos, que 6sta es mi teoria. Si la casa va

bien, todos vamos bien. Si no, nos vamos todos a

paseo (455).

5.6 Feminine space in the definition of the other

The appropiation of feminine spaoe in 19 .iulio is due to two main factors. It is part of the represented world in what is fundamentally a realist depiction of history.

It is also an important ingredient in the construction of the evaluative systems of the text. That is, feminine space is, in the first place, a product of the patriarchs of Barcelona, a passive other. Second, it functions as part of the supporting network of elements that describe

Barcelona as an eminently bourgeois historical and social space.

The spaces adjudicated to female action in this novel follow a trend already set up in the previous works. Some figures and archetypes are reiterated. For example, there is the motiv of the mild self-abnegating matron, which is repeated in the description of the women of the Llobet family. In the previous novels, those who did not fit this norm were judged negatively. Mariona in Mariona Rebull is compared unfavorably to her sister Mercedes because of her 266

refusal to conform. 19 .iulio does not change this general

scheme of representation. The epitome of feminine space in

the patriarchal society of Barcelona is Gertrudis Llobet,

who is described in these terms:

Gertrudis Llobet, madre de Higuel y de Isabel, su

hermana, era el prototipo de la mujer casera, s61o

ocupada en el gobierno de las cosas del hogar y

pendiente de que la vida de todos los dias se

deslizara sin trastornos. Ella sufria a veces por

el temperamento impetuoso y deportivo del

muchacho, por sus ideas, que consideraba un poco

atolondradas. Pero sabia que era bueno, cumplido

y formal, amante de los suyos, y procuraba no

contrariarle. Se miraba en el espejo de su

marido, aquel ser ecu&nime y serio que la habia

protegido y que la habia amado por cuya voz

hablaba ella (38).

This rather long quote shows all the important elements of

feminine space desired by the discourse. Gertrudis is a matron who dedicates all her attention to the family and domestic chores. Her main function is to make life

smoother for the rest of her family. Moreover, she has even given up her personality and individuality to speak 287 with the voice of her husband.

The question of personality and self-assertion is perhaps best illustrated by the description of her daughter, Isabel:

Era risueffa y timida y admiraba a su hermano por

todo lo contrario, aunque compartiera a veces la

inquietud de su madre (385).

Her temperament is the exact opposite of her brother's.

This seems to be the natural order of things in the novel.

The active qualities are reserved for men while the passive ones are made the exclusive preserve of women:

El viejo Rius contemplaba la sencilla belleza de

la hija de los Llobet. Lo que en el muchacho era

impulso y vitalidad, era en ella un sereno

semblante (401).

A somewhat different image of women is offered by the description of Carmen Fern&ndez. In El viudo Rius. she gave up the possibility of her own happiness to look after her father. She entered the convent and is now fully dedicated to the monastic life. She is different, however, from the other women in one important aspect, she is very 268

active and energetic in a way they are not. Her self

assertion is however limited to the activities within her

order:

Su vida en el convento habia transcurrido en la

oracidn, en la organizacidn, en la fundaci6n de

otras casas sobre la geografia espafiola. No habia

sentido fatiga alguna en esos veinte ahos de labor

continuada tenaz (132).

The ideal avenue for excess energy is holy orders where

female initiative seems to be a permitted virtue. Carmen

Fern&ndez organizes and founds new convents with an energy

that the text denies women in the secular world. The

definition of space according to gender works within the

text in such a way as to prescribe modes of social

behavior. The women who do not fit this pattern of conduct

are incorporated into the discourse of the text in its

negative evaluative structures. Those who like Crista and

Evelina spend all their energy pursuing their own pleasure,

and others like Irene Salvat who actually 'betray' their

class share the same negative space as the women of the

'popular' classes who don't fit into their role as domestics or parts of the production process at the

factory. 269

Crista, Desiderio's wife is the archetype in this novel of the upper class woman who places her own needs above those of her family:

Era una mujer vehemente que se parecia a Evelina,

y que empezd pronto a hastiarse de lo que

corrientemente se entiende como felicidad

oonjugal; es decir el deseo de tener hijos, de

vivir para ellos, de presidir una casa y

resignarse a una existencia pldcida al lado del

marido (137).

She is a direct opposite of Gertrudis Llobet. The negative characterization continues because she has a predilection for social events and dances surrounded by a band of sychophants. The social activities she participates in are also parts of the negative evaluation of her behavior and are linked, in most of the novels of the series, to licentious sexual behavior. At the base of all her misdeeds is the fact that she would have her own voice. In other words, she wants to assert her own individuality outside her domestic life. Blanca Maraval, who is having an affair with Desiderio, describes her thus:

Una figura femenina arrogante implacable, s61o 270

sometida a si misma, dominadora y tena2 , fria y

calculadora, y comprendia muy bien que un hombre

cono 61 no tuviera otra opcibn en su vida que

buscar la felicidad fuera de casa (10).

This assessment of Crista by her rival is important because it lists the negative qualities associated with the evaluation of her behavior that is, she is arrogant and implacable and only governed by her will. These are the same negative values assigned Mariona Rebull. Crista is condemned, then, for not conforming to the self-abnegating ideal of the matrons of her class. More important perhaps, in this text, is the way Blanca, who one might consider a victim of unhappy circumstances, excuses Desiderio's extramarital adventures. In her opinion, Crista is to blame for Desiderio's unhappy situation and therefore his philandering. This is not an isolated event bacause she finds the same Justification for her uncle Pali's own sexual advances:

La culpa ha sido de ella. Mi tio es un ser vital,

lleno de sangre. Le gusta vivir, comer y beber, y

supongo que todo lo demis, aunque lo disimule con

sus Jades. Es un temperamento, y necesitaria a

una mujer de su temple (105). 271

She suggests that her own aunt's lack of interest in the

physical component of the marital relationship is to blame

for her uncle's excessive libido. This facile belief is

shared by Evelina Torra who thinks that Crista, her

daughter, should be indulgent with her husband's

unfaithfulness. Her idea is that lower class women might

be able to provide pleasures which her upper class

upbringing would prevent her from providing. Evelina

thinks that adventures on the part of the man are a normal

part of marital life. In fact, her mortification and anger

over Desiderio's affair with Blanca stem not from the fact

of the affair itself but rather from an outraged

consciousness of class. Her advice to her daughter

nevertheless is:

Debes arreglar eso; d^jate de frialdades y

seducirle, como la primera vez. Cada dia hay que

ser atrevida con el hombre a quien se quiere

(157).

Even though Evelina thought that lower class women were

more attractive to the sefSoritos because they participated in prohibited sexual pleasures, her idea that

sexual favors were a means of controlling men's attention 272 is shared by the lower class women of La Torrasa. The advice to "la Cucharas, when she complains of her man's absence is:

A los hombres hay que seguirlos— aconsejaba una

mujer madura, cubierta con un pahol6n negro,

cejijunta con las manos entrecruzadas sobre la

cintura como un monje medieval siniestro y noble

a la vez--Cada hombre es un lobo hambriento sin la

mujer (307).

Sexuality plays an important part in the description of the other kind of women described in the text, those who not only contravene the norm but also break with their own class interests. This is the way the political activist,

Irene Salvat is depicted. Strangely her politically

'aberrant behavior' is indirectly linked to strange sexuality.

Irene is the daughter of an old country family who had come to Barcelona to attend University. At the University she becomes politically active and ends up adopting a political position that negates her class as the sole subjects of history. In the case of Irene, the criticism of her person is linked to an implied criticism of the

University system prior to the Republican years. The most 273 important aspect of her description, however, centers on the challenge to her very femininity:

Tenia una figura casi masculina -a la que por

consiguiente, se achacaban inclinaciones suspectas

y ambiguedades de mal cariz que no hacian mas que

aumentar su notoriedad- y el peinado corto, como

el de un muchacho, los ojos febriles, negros

vivaces, el estrecho talle y la malicia breve de

los senos, apenas apuntada bajo la blusa blanca

ejercian sobre los hombres un interns especial

(63).

As descriptions go, a strange paradox occurs in this negative judgement of Irene. In the first place her very sexuality as a female is questioned as part of her negative assessment. At the same time her negative qualities are amplified to include the traditional element of the temptress. This is obviously a case where the pursuit of categorically establishing her negativity seems to lead the text to contradict itself.

The organization of female space within the text of 19

.iulio contradicts the assertion made by Joaquin Rius when he advises his son Desiderio. According to Joaquin: 274

Tu mujer tiene mal carActer, es extrafia; su madre

tambiAn lo es y probablemente es la que lo ha

echado todo a perder. Pero casi todas las mujeres

son extrafios. Nosotros no las podemos comprender

nunca, porque ellas mismas tampoco se comprenden

(339).

The text of 19 .iulio and “La ceniza fue Arbol" give the lie to this statement by Joaquin. Within the text, women are assigned specific roles in society and they are evaluated and judged according to how they perform in this role or how they manage to adhere to it. Joaquin himself never got to understand Mariona because he was too busy with his factory and also because she did not conform to the pattern of expected behavior.

The women of 19 .iulio know what they want and they all seek to accomplish their objectives whether it be the care and support for the family that Gertrudis chooses or receptions and social events as Crista does. The fact is that the discourse of the text manipulates the actions of these women into the evaluative ideological project of writing the history of Barcelona as the history of its patriarchs.

5.7 Contradiction in the presentation of otherness: 275

Causation as absence in 19 .iulio.

The identifiable intention of the novel, 19 .iulio. is

to justify the events of 19th July, 1936, in Barcelona by

using the political and social events of the last part of

the Republican government as an alibi. The principal

problem, as one might assume, would be how to find the

hidden connections of those events and construct a viable

argument for the military "ooup" within the various

discourses of the triumphant nationalist 'restoration'.

The obvious problem would then be to establish what

kind of restoration it was historically. It certainly was not a restoration of the conservative republican government

of the bienio negro, which after all, had lost power to

the left at the ballot box. It was not a restoration of

the monarchy which had lost its prestige and stature after

the debacle of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The novel

settles this problem by establishing the principle of

restoration in another sphere. That is, as the restoration

of law and order, and the civil liberties which violent worker and peasant organizations had usurped.

While there are no ambivalences in the message of

restoration of law and order, there are paradoxes in the way the discourse of the text organizes itself to explain

the events that led to the armed uprising of 1936. For 276 example, narrative commentary is very intrusive and yet often has little to do with action, events or characters.

We have a situation where the evaluative element is so strong that Desiderio, the philanderer, is described in almost saintly terms when compared to Crista his wife.

This fact comes out clearly in Desiderio's concern for the education of his son, Carlos. In this, he demonstrates something which not even his father had shown. In El viudo

Rius. Desiderio's education is practically left to the servants in his father's house and Evelina Torra because his own father is too tied up in his factory. In the same way, Desiderio's philandering is almost justified by the presentations of Crista and Evelina.

Another source of contradiction is to be found in the reductive presentation of the political struggles of the period. According to this, the mass of the people of Spain were victims of a small band of violent miscreants. Within the definition of otherness, contradiction inhabits the inability of the text to treat the other as a subject of history. No one seems to be guilty of the ruin to which the country and Barcelona are brought. The politicians whose action binds together the various narrative nuclei that hold the text together are exculpated. The blame goes to their illusory belief in their own ability to control the forces they had unleashed into the political arena. 277

Regionalists and separatists alike are exonerated because

they happen to be objects of external manipulation. Even

workers like Feliciano are presented as faithful adherents

to a class self interest that they can't quite understand.

In the case of Feliciano the way he dies is illustrative.

He is cut down in the middle of Plaza de Catalufta when he

tries to stop the hail of bullets intended for surrendering

soldiers. The people who cut him down are faoeless blind

forces beyond his own history.

The source of these kinds of contradiction is the

narrator's desire to follow recognizable or agreed upon

historical events while giving them a Francoist

interpretation. In this regard the text fails to explain

how the influence of such small groups of extremists could

transform the social and political landscape in such a way. This explains why violence, the symptom, is described without narrating its causes.

Behind all this is the ideological project of denying

the possibility of historical and political difference. In

other words, it is consistent with the intention of

establishing the bourgeois class, understood as exclusively

reactionary, as the only source of coherent political and

historical action. There is a situation where anarchists

in Barcelona rob Banks to send money to starving miners in

Asturias while at the same time, the text denies the 278

validity of solidarity in the ranks of the opposition.

These factors or elements of structural contradiction

are however compounded by what may be the greatest source

of paradox in "La ceniza fue Arbol", the regionalist

emotion that informs it. Regionalism comes into conflict with the very fact of historical authority because in 19

.iulio. the problems cease to be localized in Barcelona and become national. The text tries to resolve this problem of the clash between its previously stated Barcelonian bias, the nationalist project of the military putsch and its opposition to the republican regime by insisting on the falsity and paucity of the political program of the leftist goverment. In the case of Barcelona, there is an attempt to show that regionalism was not the issue at stake and that Catalonian nationalists made the wrong choice by choosing to associate with organized labor.

The denial of the history of the left in the federalist discourses of the period cannot be sustained in the text.

As a result, the text condemns Catalonian nationalism in its separatist component but cannot avoid sympathizing with a certain separatist nationalism. For example, in its prescription for historical action, the novel proposes a state where the oligarchs who made Barcelona would take the rest of the country in hand. It is in this regard that the text justifies military intervention in the political 270 process in order to restore order in the whole country while at the same time rejecting separatist insurrection.

In a very strange reversal of roles, given the way the text disqualifies regionalist political expression, catalanization is part of the integrationist discourse of the novel.

What the text of the novel proposes is the universalization of Catalonian aanv in the whole of Spain as a prerequisite for national modernization. At the same time, there is a chauvinist element in Catalanist expression focalized through the members of the Devesa group. They consider non Catalonians in Barcelona as representatives of a 'foreign' colonial power on the one hand and as ungrateful parasites (this image assimilates to attitudes towards workers) on the other. This is because the other, defined in terms of Barcelona as part of

Catalonian self-awareness, is Madrid and the central government on the one hand and, immigrant workers and their non Catalonian political ideologies and work habits on the other. Textually however, otherness is defined in the terms of those forces that threaten the way of life of

Barcelona and in this sense, worker organizations are the real threat which the text will try to disqualify as viable actors in history. Such an assumption would explain the paradox behind the presentation of the politicians of 280

Esquerra Republicana as nationalists working under the delusion of being able to control the beast they have unleashed on society.

The presence of contradiction is not however an

impediment to serving the deeper intention of the text as a justification of events and actions that have already taken place. The history the text proposes functions not to

inform but rather to project a positive reinforcement to the self-image of those who took the 'right' side during the Civil War by justifying and legitimizing their choice.

The novel, from this perspective, does not explain the causes of the rebellion of 19th July. In medical terms, it does not offer a diagnosis but a description of the symptoms in order to justify, a posteriori, a particular course of action that is proposed as the cure. CHAPTER IV

Guerra civil or tying up the ends.

£.. 1 Introduction. Preliminary Considerations.

Guerra civil (1972) deals with a period of about two

years of the Civil War and then extends quickly over a

period of about three decades. Ideologically, the novel

raises various issues connected to the war but fails to

resolve any of them. The War is treated on an almost

abstract level in spite of the fact that scenes of violent

fighting are present here and there. Through the image of

the War, the novel exemplifies the struggle of the young bourgeois of Barcelona to reconquer the spaces created by

their forefathers. The formulas of the new historical conjuncture, as demonstrated in the novel, imply the continuity of the social and economic systems that existed before the crisis and the Civil War.

The novel continues the trend started in 19 .iulio of changing the focus of narration to include an

interpretation of national Spanish history. In the attempt to reconcile the affective pro-Barcelona intention and

281 282

national politics, Guerra civil foregrounds discourses of

reconciliation that have more to do with post-war Spain

than with the origins of the War or the War itself. The

Civil War, in this regard, is the most patent symbol of the

definitive nature of the interpretation of history that the

novel proposes. In the linear construction of the series,

Guerra civil culminates the processes of crisis in the

series while showing the final solution to the problems of

Barcelona. It is also a conclusion in that the death of

the protagonist of the family signals the passing of an

age. Other personal stories that began in other novels of

the series come to a close in this novel. Evelina Torra

passes away quite oblivious to the mayhem around her, and

Matias Paid finds a martyr's death at the hands of fleeing

Republican forces.

Structurally, the story is still one of struggle. The

task facing young Rius is the continuity of the family business in a situation where he has become separated from

Barcelona and his birthright. The story of Carlos is thus one of a struggle against alienation in spatial, moral and generational terms. He also has to fight against the temptations of the life styles of both of his parents. In this regard, the war is described in personal terms,

(Carlos) as a struggle for Barcelona. The other battles of the Civil War are almost nonexistent and are hardly ever 283

mentioned. The story of singleminded purpose nevertheless

creates other centers of narrative interest as different

personalities and characters intervene in the telling of

the story. The Riuses and the other characters of Guerra

civil represent the groups that coalesced into a 'crusade'

against the Republicans. Most had been seen in previous

novels. For example, Matias Paid, who played an important

role in 19 .iulio. reappears in Guerra civil- His niece,

Blanca, who was linked to Desiderio in the novel of the

same name, goes through several dramatic and painful

adventures. Mdximo, the anarchist, goes through a process

of infatuation, political disillusionment and finally death.

Other characters from previous novels also acquire new

status and stature in Guerra civil. The most remarkable is

Rita Arquer. Whereas in Desiderio. she is a rather quixotic and pitiable figure of impoverished gentry, she is

the heroine of Barcelona in Guerra civil. Carlos' parents,

Desiderio and Crista, still depict the indolent

self-serving portion of the bourgeois aristocracy of

Barcelona and Spain. Nicolds Borreda, separatist politician turned communist, rises to political preeminence

in Republican politics. New characters like Policarpo

Ordbfiez, command officer of Carlos Rius' unit, and Roland

Howes, an English idealist fighting on the Republican side, 284 justify, explain, and intensify the narrative of Spain's history. Several battles are described through the experiences of characters of the novel. These include, for example, the battles of Brunete, Belchite and Madrid. The main scenes of battle in the novel are nevertheless from the eastern front in Teruel, Barcelona and Valencia.

Thematically, the contrastive structures of the previous novels of the series are reiterated in a modified form. Carlos Rius indeed has to fight two battles, one against the Republicans and another against part of his own class. The struggles and confrontations of former novels are symbolically reduced to the War itself. In other words, the Civil War is part representation and part symbol. The novel is formulated with this in view and is thematically and structurally the culmination of severe national, personal, moral, and social crises. In this sense, the very victory of the nationalist forces is the recuperation of history itself as the exclusive space of the burghers who created the city of Barcelona and their counterparts at the national level.

The centrality of the war has led critics to define the series in different ways. Wenceslao Miranda in his Ignacio

Agusti: el autor v la obra (1982), finds it necessary to separate Guerra civil from the other novels for analysis.

In Miranda's interpretation, only Guerra civil tries to 285

analyze the significance of the 1936-1939 War in the

history of Spain:

Es 6sta una novela parcelaria o periddica en la

forma, intensamente hist6rica en el contenido y

ofrece el valor de un documento patri6tico con

tendencia a ahondar en el significado de la

contienda y a buscarle una interpretaci6n (15).

For Miranda the fact of the War itself is what

differentiates between Guerra civil and the other novels of

the series. Without denying this perspective, we will

emphasize the form and significance of the novel within "La

ceniza fue 6rbol" as a whole.

As mentioned earlier, the problematic cusp of the

series and the center of its narrative scheme is 19 .iulio.

the novel of consummated crises. In this regard, Guerra

civil is not the political and ideological focus of the

series, but the solution of the crises and the concluding

chapter of the Rius family saga. We are left with a

picture of a family firmly set on the path of progress and prosperity.

Narratively, Guerra civil is a story of restoration.

Ideologically, it is the recuperation of the history of the bourgeois classes of Barcelona that had been usurped by the 286

new political forces unleashed by the Republic on the

city. In relation to the other novels there is a sense of

internal return. Carlos returns to Barcelona, the

bourgeois take over their city, the factory goes into

production again and so on. In terms of the narrating,

there is also a return to the style of the first two novels

of the series, Mariona .Rebull and El viudo Rius. In

Desiderio and 19 .iulio. the subjects of "La ceniza fue

Arbol's history, the bourgeois classes, are mere

spectators in the macabre and chaotic ritual of their own

liquidation. Guerra civil places them firmly in control of

history. In the text, this is identifiable in the

attitudes and behaviors of the members of the Rius family.

The two Joaquin Riuses are creative, productive individuals

in Mariona Rebull and El viudo Rius. In Desiderio and 19

.iulio. Desiderio is an ineffective squanderer and Joaquin

can only watch as the Barcelona he had helped build falls

to pieces around him. Guerra civil has Carlos Rius, his grandfather and a host of others participating actively in the recuperation of their history.

The presence of an epilogue justifies the reading of

Guerra civil as the concluding segment of the series. It provides 'closure' in the same way that the prologue in

Mariona Rebull opens the series. The epilogue is thus significant as part of the circular structuring of "La 287

ceniza fue Arbol" because ideologically it contributes to

rounding out and 'finishing off' *La ceniza fue Arbol's

version of history. Everything in Barcelona and the nation

returns to its rightful place. It is meaningful, in this

regard, that though the last chapters of the novel deal with Barcelona, there is no place for the urban proletariat.

In the pages that follow, we shall start with a brief

acount of the plot of Guerra civil. This shall be followed by a discussion of the War and its importance in the narrative scheme of the series. Next, the reading will concentrate on Carlos Rius' story and character as part of the discourse of restoration and recuperation. We shall also look at the question of Catalonian nationalism and the treatment of feminine space in society, as has been done with the other novels of the series, in order to show how they participate in the text's simulation of wholeness.

This will be followed by a reading of contradiction as part of the text’s need to establish its authority.

6.2 The plot of Guerra civil: a brief outline.

Guerra civil depicts the process of the recuperation of that hard working 'seny' of the class that created

Barcelona and her history. Carlos Rius reproduces the 288 virtues of both his grandfather and his great grandfather, thereby symbolizing the ideal of men who take charge of their destiny and act to create their history. This same pattern can be found in other characters of the series.

The novel presents many interrelated personal stories in which different characters coincide and collaborate, at different times in the narration of certain events. In terms of space, the action is concentrated around the eastern front and deals primarily with the battle for

Teruel and the campaign of the Ebro of 1938. Behind this, however, Barcelona stands as the ultimate goal as the story moves progressively to integrate two spaces. The War action is mobile and organized around the movements of

Carlos Rius and Miguel Llobet on one hand and MAximo and

Blanca Maraval on the other. Matias PalA can be considered an intermediate element in this mobile spatial component because he shares in the other space, Barcelona, the fixed or immobile element of space in the narrative scheme.

Within the city, protagonism is divided among Rita Arquer,

Joaquin Rius and Evelina Torra. They share what is basically a description of the hardships of living in war-torn Barcelona. On one hand, we see their daily struggle for food and their preoccupation with their personal safety and, on the other hand, we see the heroism of Rita Arquer. 289

These representatives of the traditional oligarchy of

Barcelona are not the only ones whose story is told.

NicolAs Borreda, who was so instrumental in the political processes of the pre-war era, is also at the center of another story about the Civil War in Barcelona. In his case, we follow his efforts in the Republican enterprise, his progressive disillusionment and his death. It is an ailing and older Borreda, and, through him the narrator rationalizes some of the decisions taken by the Republicans during the War.

Carlos was in Switzerland at the outbreak of the War.

On the advice of his father, he joins his mother in San

Sebastian in the nationalist zone. Against the advice of

Crista, he enlists in the falangist forces and undergoes officer training after which he is posted to a unit behind the Andalusian front. His real desire, shared by Miguel

Llobet is to be in the trenches at the eastern front and help in the liberation of Barcelona. The latter was in

Barcelona during the early stages of the war and, deciding to cross over to the nationalist side, he enlisted at the urging of Joaquin Rius. When he finally reaches the nationalists, he delivers a letter of encouragement to

Carlos from Joaquin. The two young men swear to work together and enter a liberated Barcelona together.

Miguel's unit participates in some of the cruelest battles 290

at Teruel and then at the Ebro river. He meets up with

Carlos again when Carlos' unit is called to the front to

help hold the lines against the Republican counterattack.

The two friends decide to try and get Miguel reassigned to

Carlos' unit, but Miguel is killed by a stray shell.

Not all the stories told are of 'old' acquaintances from previous novels. A new character is Policarpo

Ordbnez, Carlos' commanding officer. Initially, this veteran of the African campaigns is depicted negatively as a hard drinking and frustrated career officer. He undergoes a dramatic change when his unit is sent to the battle lines and he dies heroically on the field of battle.

Guerra civil is also the story of M&ximo Garcia. We saw him in 19 .iulio as the young protege of Feliciano, the anarchist trade union representative at the Rius factory.

In Guerra civil, he is part of the anarchist detachment which is sent to Teruel to wrest the city from the insurrection. After the battle for Teruel, he is charged with the escort of nationalist prisoners back to

Barcelona. Already disappointed by the course of events, especially the communist repression of the anarchists in

Barcelona, he becomes violently infatuated with Blanca

Maraval and decides to flee the War in her company. Once they have evaded the convoy, MAximo forces Blanca to have sex with him. She later escapes from his clutches and ends 291

up penniless in a small town called Tarne. The

'charitable' innkeeper who helps her also demands sexual

favors. Blanca finally ends up working at a hospital for

the International Brigades. There she meets Ronald Howes,

an English idealist.

MAximo, chagrined at losing Blanca, finds himself in a

roving band of deserters from both sides who live by

robbing the peasants in the unstable area between the two

enemy lines. This group has to keep on the move to avoid

the advancing nationalist forces. Once they find

themselves behind the nationalist lines, most of the group

decide to take up their old lives. MAximo chooses to

remain in the wilds with a reduced group of fugitives.

Later MAximo accidentally discovers the whereabouts of

Blanca and he then carries out a daring kidnap, taking her

off with his group. From then on, he becomes an object of

persecution by a group of Civil Guards. After a series of

dramatic narrow escapes, both MAximo and Blanca die at the

hands of the Civil Guard.

The story of the two fugitives, MAximo and Blanca,

occupies a sizeable portion of narrative in the text.

Through their story the narrator describes the Civil Guard

in positive terms. It also justifies the inclusion of

costumbrista elements in the description it offers of a popular religious holiday. 292

Other protagonists such as Crista, Carlos' mother and

Desiderio, his father, continue to depict the same negative

characteristics of their class and, as such, they do not participate in the struggles of the novel. Their life

style is described in order to leave no doubt as to their negative values. Living in the nationalist zone, Crista participates in society life as if there were no War. She does take part in many charitable organizations but the

text implies that all are part of a social life oblivious to the miseries of war torn Spain.

Desiderio is described in the same terms. He is in self-imposed exile in France where he has taken up a bohemian life style. His one saving grace is the fact that he is still genuinely concerned for the welfare of his father and of his son. He is nevertheless still a symbol of the ineffective and egotistical progeny of the patriarchs who created the modern history of Barcelona.

Rita Arquer had been present in Desiderio. where she was the lady's companion and secretrary of Evelina Torra.

She was described as a fiercely proud but needy

'hidalga' who was often the object of fun because she was painted as a busybody curious about other people's affairs. She took a hand in the amorous life of Crista by encouraging Pablito de Inglada's efforts to woo her. In

Desiderio. she was dismissed by Evelina Torra in order to 293 keep Crista's pregnancy a secret and preclude any scandal.

In 19 .iulio. she finds her way back into the employ of an aging Evelina and in Guerra civil she attains her fullest development as a character. She is, in this novel, a representative of the simple folk and their easy Christian faith under attack from atheistic anarchists and the

Republican regime. She also represents those whose quiet and unassuming heroism took place behind the republican lines. Through her, two stories are told. One is of the struggles in war torn Barcelona for the elementary necessities of food and shelter. The other is the story of the spontaneous heroism of normally quiet citizens in support of their beliefs. She gains stature as a kind of

Joan of Arc or Florence Nightingale.

The war gains another dimension through Rita and her experiences in Barcelona. The whole experience of war is linked to the metaphysical struggle between believers and unbelievers, heavenly hosts and the furies of hell. For

Evelina and Joaquin, the War meant a long period of inactivity and a long wait for the liberation of Barcelona that Evelina does not live to see. The Barcelona component of the narration of the Civil War is thus protagonized by

Rita Arquer.

Matias Paid, who has been defined as an intermediate figure between the Barcelona nucleus and the 294 extra-Barcelona nuclei, works for the nationalist cause as a spy. He crosses the lines several times in the course of the war to get information for the nationalist command. He is finally caught and executed during the Republican retreat from Barcelona.

As is clear from the above, Guerra civil is fragmented among a number of characters. This fragmentation allows- the war to be seen from various points of view, not only in personal experiential terms but also in spatial and chronological terms. Whereas the main kernel of the novel deals with the period from the first battle of Teruel

(1937) to the liberation of Barcelona and Valencia (1938), the time span covers the period of the insurrection of 19

July through various military campaigns. Thus, the analeptic device of the flashback becomes important as a means of recovering earlier events. In the initial chapters of the novel, for example, an injured Matias Pala, rescued from the point of death, remembers the first battle for Teruel and also the events of the pre-battle days that had brought him to Teruel in search of his niece Blanca.

He recounts the escape from Republican lines of Dr. Foz and

Blanca and the final death of the latter in the advance on

Madrid. The postwar period, about twenty five years from

1939 until the mid sixties, occupies just four chapters

(XXI-XXIV) and the epilogue. 295

Discursively, the several stories seek to converge

finally into a presentation of the total experience of the

war and post-war period. The technique of multiple

perpectivism and changing narrative focalization is the

main technique for accomplishing this and is a continuation

of the story-telling method of 19 .iulio. As the various

protagonists live out their experiences of the war, they

coincide in space and time and share parts of the same

event. For example, the previously separate stories of

Blanca Maraval, Ronald Howes and MAximo coincide at Tarne.

After this, MAximo and Blanca share the same adventures.

The battle of the Ebro also leads to the reencounter of

Carlos and Miguel. At this same battle, Policarpo

0rd6fiez's story coincides with the stories of Miguel Llobet and Ronald Howes. On the one hand, the officer encourages

Miguel, who is overcome by the continuing carnage around him, to more heroism. On the other, he is responsible for directing the heavy machine gun fire that kills the English

idealist. During one of the calm periods between attack and counterattack, Carlos finds the white horse used by

MAximo and appropiates it for his own use.

Convergence and divergence operate somewhat as a dialectic underlying the weaving of the various

'narratives' of Guerra civil. The text maintains its thematic and structural unity with "La ceniza fue Arbol" by 296 tracing and crisscrossing the experiences of a restricted group of familiar figures. An example of the lengths to which the novel goes to maintain this thematic unity can be found in the adventures of the post-war generation.

Joaquin, the great grandson, comes under the negative influence of a certain Mara. As it turns out, Mara is the orphan son of the union between MAximo and Blanca. Under his influence, Joaquin (III) elopes with the daughter of

Basereny, the age-long manufacturing rival of Tejidos Rius in Barcelona.

Discursively, there are also many redundant elements in

Guerra civil. Personalities and characters are repeated and even episodes of previous novels and Guerra civil's own text appear more than once. A more detailed exposition of these discursive tendencies will be provided in the discussion of the ideological and political closure of

Guerra civil as a part of "La ceniza fue Arbol".

6.3 Closure and the centrality of the war.

The Civil War is not only important in material terms; it is also important ideologically as a discursive device.

All the actantial sequences are defined in relation to the dynamic of the war. Thus, while Guerra civil is a novel of fighting and battles, it also thinks about the War and 297

places it as a key event for reading the history of Spain.

The most accessible explanation of the War is that of a

conflict to end all wars. It is the radical defence of the

values of the patriarchs of the history of Barcelona and

Spain. The lessons it proposes oppose the perversion of

history that ideologues like Borreda and foreigners would

impose on a basically honest Spanish society. This appears

as a patriotic and almost chauvinistic nationalism which

is, however, a two edged sword that at times almost

overshadows even the class nature of "La ceniza fue Arbol's

" positions about history. Wenceslao Miranda comments:

Se observa desde el primer momento que Agusti al

embarcarse en la empresa de narrar la lucha y toda

clase de ideologias, pasiones y violencias unidas

a la misma, hace un gran esfuerzo por ser

imparcial, de suerte que reparte y a veces

equilibra entre los dos bandos virtudes y vicios,

valentias y pusilanimidades (31).

Miranda doesn't seem to give any importance to the amount of discursive space dedicated to elements of the two sides as subjects of history in the narrative. Far from being

impartial, Guerra civil demonstrates both political and

ideological positions in its discursive structures. As we shall see later these political or ideological positions

are not so much a defence of strongly held convictions as

they are concessions to the discourses of the hegemonic

institutions of post-war Spain. This is apparent in the

depiction of the personalities of the two sides and the

relative possibilities they have as subjects of their own

histories within the narrated world. The only members of

the political Republic who are given any space at all are

Nicol&s Borreda, the ideologue who sees the edifice of his

political action come crumbling down around him. The othe

is Ronald Howes, an impractical idealist who finally

decides to die rather than give up a hopeless dream.

Maximo the other protagonist does not represent republican

values. Thus, even in his choice of characters, the

narrator essentially "loads the dice" so to speak. In thi

regard, protagonism in the events of the War is limited to members of his class and the interests for which people

fight are those of this same class. There is no descriptive elaboration of the countless Republicans,

anarchists, socialists and communists whose actions, decisions and courage against overwhelming odds almost changed the face of Spanish history. Indeed, the

individuals of the Republican side are reduced to faceless personality-less 'rojillos' whose greatest defining characteristic is anonymous murder: 299

Mataron en una noche a mi padre y a mis tres

hermanos. El linico que queda soy yo. Mi madre se

fue a vivir en Barcelona (21).

Los rojos habian matado a su padre y a dos de sus

hermanos, y otros dos se encontraban, como el,

haciendo la guerra en la zona nacional (97).

The text's refusal to see Republicans as individuals stems from a failure and or refusal to understand the ideological and psychological motivations of the Republican side. More obviously, however, it is a consequence of the political position that the bourgeois classes are the only valid architects of history. This explains the anomalous situation of the episode at Carminal. The anarchist prisoners who are executed are given a more human dimension than Policarpo Ordbhez (148-9). Whenever individual soldiers of the Republican side intervene in the narration, they do so as passive objects of the actions of the nationalist forces and if they are victims, they gain sympathetic reaction. By a strange irony, it is by exclusion from history that they gain their human dimension.

Thus, the War is not only described, it is also 300 explained. This is problematic as an ideological project because the War is not the only object of analysis. The novel also raises questions about the role of foreigners, the place of the Church in Spanish politics and history, and the programmatic assimilation of Catalonian nationalism to the ideals of "Espafia una y grande". In this same regard there is an abundance of commentary linking the War to the defence of the purest Spanish Catholic tradition and faith.

The Civil War is textuali2 ed as an epic of the reassertion of the personality of the 'race' of men that created Barcelona and Spain's modern history. In relation to the rest of "La ceniza fue Arbol", is formulated as a quest for the restoration of authentic values. Authorial positions are clear and reiterative. For example the negative judgement on foreign involvement in Spain is voiced by two very different characters of the novel. In a passage that seems to be focalized through MAximo, the fugitive from justice, the text expresses a raw chauvinistic pride in the Spanish 'race'. Stefan another of the fugitives, had been needling MAximo for some time when he bursts out:

Alto, amigo, hasta ahi podiamos llegar. iQuA mal

podia decir de Al?, £que era indisciplinado?, ique 301

no era ruso?. iClaro que no!. El era espanol,

archiespafiol, y no se dejaria ougar una treta por

gente que habia venido a enredar la madeja (285).

In this short passage, MAximo expresses understandable

pride in his nationality. On another level, however,

within the contrastive structures of the series as a whole,

authorial commentary tinges the thoughts of the rather

simple-minded anarchist. The real comparison is in the use

of MAximo as an instrument for an overt expression of a

chauvinistic celebration of 'iberian' manhood. This

manhood, through MAximo, is expressed in animal-like

virility, a quick pride, and the refusal to be misled by

foreigners. In MAximo's mind, it is indeed foreigners who

are complicating a very simple issue to be settled among

Spaniards. MAximo might be said to represent an illiterate

version of Spanish feeling, but the gist of this feeling is

also captured in the words of Ronald Howes. Howes is an

English professor in Spain fighting for the Republican

cause. His analysis of the situation incorporates elements

of the description of Spanish history originating in noventavochista sentiment.

According to writers like Unamuno and Antonio Machado,

the history of Spain can be explained as the struggle between intractable traditionalists in the mold of counter 302

reformation Spain and progressive (liberal) political and

social forces. In Ronald Howes' thesis, even the violent

anti-clericalism of Spanish politics is only a symptom of

the fierce and essential Catholicism of the Spanish

people. Ronald Howe's vision of Spanish history

effectively disqualifies the hopes and aspirations of

people like Borreda who hoped to introduce communism into

Spain. According to this, the anarchists and libertarians

who burn churches and commit outrage against the Church are

driven by the same religious energies and beliefs that

drive the Catholic traditionalists on the other side:

Pues yo te digo que a pesar de haber quemado las

iglesias, o por el hecho de haberlas quemado

precisamente. Espafia, la Espafia recdndita y

verdadera sigue siendo catdlica hasta la m§dula.

Es un catolicismo que blasfema y dice cosas

horripilantes sobre Dios, la Iglesia y los

sacramentos; pero que late y pulsa en catolico sin

poderlo remediar (242).

This explanation of the essentially Catholic nature of the

Spanish nation seems to be influenced by the facile anthropology or psychology of the tradition of the romantic

'natural man' in its assertion of an inherent, genetic or 303

instinctive Catholicism. Moreover, it does also express

part of the political need for common grounds in the

reconciliatory discourses of the post-war regime that the

novel assimilates. This particular passage suggests that

the essential Catholicism of the people is a valid basis

for post-war social relations in Spain.

Religion as part of the explanation of the War is also

found in the expressions of Rita Arquer. An example of

this is an episode in which she tries to get the

descendants of Joaquin's brother, Fabian, to take him in.

In her vision the war has metaphysical implications for all

those involved. This formulation is as close to the paradigm of a crusade that the text explicitly states:

Se trata de creer en Dios o no creer en 21. fisa

es la tinica batalla (79).

Rita consistently states this even when she is incarcerated for helping nationalist sympathisers in Barcelona. But even Joaquin who had never been very religious comes round to this way of thinking as is shown in the following passage soon after his family's refusal to help him:

En efecto. Del curso de los acontecimientos no

quedaba mas que un esquema simple y elemental: 304

creer en Dios o no creer en 61. Ya no sentia la

inquietud de los primeros tiempos por la situacidn

en que habian quedado sus intereses personales

(80).

The religious theme is, however, not maintained

consistently throughout the text. It is limited to Rita

Arquer's outbursts and the occasional mention of the

anarchists' visceral hatred of crucifixes. In this refusal

to be drawn into a debate on the moral justification of the

'crusade', the text, at least, is consistent. It does not

examine the philosophical and ideological processes that conditioned the various dynamisms that led the nation to war. So, as we saw in the earlier debate on the culpability of the foreigners' involvement, the question of the religious justification of the War is not pursued strongly. This could reflect Agusti's attempt to articulate a certain reconciliation, or it could be a concession to the hegemonical voices of post-war Spain. It could also reflect the gradual quieting of debate in the

60's and 70's and a relaxation of strongly held positions due to external influence and the internal development of the regime itself. That is, though the matter in hand is the narration of an aspect of the Civil War, the writing is being done in the political and ideological atmosphere of 305

post-war Spain that it in turn mirrors.

Strange though it may seem, the possibility for

reconciliation is exemplified in a wartime prison camp.

Matias Paid is sent to a reeducation camp run by the

communists and there, he is surprised by the relationship

between the prisoners:

Era curioso que en aquella camaraderia pudiera

fraguarse una convivencia en la que no habia ni

ideologia ni castas ni modos de pensar. Le admir6

observar como uno de la FAI cargaba a cuestas

todos los dias con los pesados instrumentos -pico

o pala- que debia llevar un hombre ya de edad,

cogido por haberle encontrado en la casa un

crucifijo (31).

What this passage illustrates is the fact that, far from

the madding crowd of politicians and their inflammatory

rhetoric, Spaniards can recognize their common humanity and

act cooperatively. This reinforces the notion that

ideological differences are an imposition of self-serving

politicians in the service of a foreign ideology. This is

consistent with the depiction of labor unrest in El viudo

Rius and political violence in 19 iulio. In both novels violence is not a consequence of the economic and social 306

differences but rather the handwork of a misguided few led

by malcontents.

Restoration, reconciliation and the reestablishment of

the essential harmony of national life are the objectives

of the war as enunciated by the text. The novel wants to

suggest that the post-war world is far removed from the

bitter rancor and division occasioned by the civil war.

This desire is synthesized in the image of the leadership

of the nation after the war:

Por eso la victoria la tendra el que sea capaz de

sublimar el dolor de todos. Si, el dolor de los

rojos y el dolor de los blancos. Quien se levante

al final a resumirse el dolor que todos hemos

sentido, los de un bando y los de otro, habrd

ganado la batalla (271).

This passage and the figure of the victor is apocalyptic in imagery and vision. The figure is one of a hero who is to save the world by taking up all its pain in his person; but the victory spoken of here almost denies the importance of actually winning the war on the field.

The text simply states the necessity of a “pater patrias' capable of being everything to everyone in a nation devoid of difference. The narrator is expressing these desires 307

with the benefit of hindsight and also the imperatives of

actually living the post-war era.

As text, Guerra eivil fails in its attempt to reconcile

various discourses due to the tensions that exist between

them. In another instance the vision of post-war Spain is

given in terms of the rewards of peace. In the words of

the local' cacique', the Marqu6s de Carminal:

De toda esta sangria de hoy ha de nacer una

sociedad que en lo futuro ha de compensar todo lo

que estamos sufriendo (103).

In consonance with the ideal of a conflict-free national

life espoused by the text, the rewards of peace are not

limited to any of the factions fighting the war but rather extend to the whole country. The factionalism and the

ideological extremism of both belligerants are completely marginalized. Thus, in what remains a circular construct of history, the historical life of Spain is represented as an essentially harmonious one and the object of the war is one of restoration of peaceful and cooperative coexistence at the national level. The most forceful presentation of this is at the regional Catalonian level. The war, in this regard, is essentially depicted as a quest, a task to be accomplished in order to reap spiritual and material 308

rewards that are perceived in specifically Barcelonian

terms as the restoration of Agusti's own class. The

question of leadership is incorporated into the text in the

person of Carlos Rius and the problem of national

reconstruction and restoration is symbolically represented

by his fight to be a part of the liberation of Barcelona.

Thus contrary to the text's stated concern with national as

opposed to regional issues, the strongest and most

consistent message is structurally and thematically

organized in narrow regionalist and bourgeois terms.

Nevertheless, the commentaries on the War and its

result remain mere abstractions within the spaces of the

text. The real war is pursued relentlessly to its end.

Carlos Rius does symbolically unify in his person the

resolve of his class. More importantly, through Carlos,

the war is viewed as an ugly but necessary process, a job

to be handled as expediently as possible. These ideas come

out more clearly in the presentation of the main protagonist of the novel, Carlos Rius.

6.4 Carlos Rius: continuity in history.

Carlos Rius is important as a character of the novel

Guerra civil for several reasons. The adventures of MAximo and Rita Arquer occupy more space, but Carlos is the figure 309

who holds the text together, and in him, the war episodes

are invested with symbolic significance. Through him, the

War is more than a series of engagements; it becomes a

quest or task in the heroic and epic tradition. As the

conflicts get closer to his beloved Barcelona, he becomes

ever more mature till the moment when he has to take

responsibility for the factory and the family business.

The War is his apprenticeship and his rite of passage into

adulthood. The singleminded purpose of his involvement in

the War illustrates and exemplifies the virtues that the

ideological text of "La ceniza fue Arbol" proposes for

Spanish national life.

Generationally, his figure not only restores the family

fortune of the Riuses but also effectively symbolizes the continuity of those virtues that created modern Barcelona.

In narrative terms, his 'persona' performs the actantial role of closure just as the war is definitive for all the orises that plagued pre-war Spain, according to the text. He is the one Rius whose story begins the old structures and norms once again. Family loyalty, class

loyalty and 'seny' become the guiding light for him. The rejection of both of his parents' life styles is firmly established on the return to the old values. He even goes as far as to give up a possible romantic interest to this end. When he decides to separate himself from Pepa 310

Cortina, the young Marquesa, it is because her world is too

similar to that of his mother. Historically,

generationally and narratively then, Carlos Rius, in his

person and through his acts, unites all the elements of

Guerra civil into an illustrative example of history. The

reconquest of Barcelona (in which he participates), and his

reintegration into the social and economic life of

Barcelona, and the terms of this integration, symbolize a

return to the golden age of Barcelona's history. Through

Carlos, the problems of conflictively shared space are brought to term and resolved. For example, at the factory

the labor problems that plagued Joaquin's tenure are neutralized and the working environment reproduces the situation of the days of his great grandfather.

The model of history proposed through his person represents an aristocratic social education coupled with the constancy and dedicated hard work of the burghers of

Barcelona. He is indeed the archetypal figure of the conversion of the industrial heroes of Barcelona into the military heroes of the war. By means of the Civil War,

Carlos symbolizes the bourgeois class' collective recreation of themselves in the pioneering image of their

intrepid forebears. The restoration posited by the story of Carlos Rius is a restoration of the socio-economic and political status quo. At the start of the War, Carlos is 311 out of the country. When he does return to Spain, he becomes a dispatch rider in the nationalist zone.

Physically, he is a symbol of the youth of the new Spain, as the following idealized description shows:

Era un moceton alto y espigado; sus ojos negros

parecian asombrarse en un rostro juvenil, lampifio,

de facciones claras, bien diseffadas. Llevaba en

la cabeza su boina roja de requet6, inclinada

sobre una frente noble y alta (36).

He is also strong willed and resolute. His mother, Crista, is unable to make him stay in San Sebastian when he decides to meet Miguel Llobet in Burgos in order to receive news of

Joaquin and Barcelona. He is the complete antithesis of both his parents and is more like his grandfather.

Narratively, their circumstances are even similar, for both have to overcome obstacles to achieve something other than personal pleasure. Carlos breaks with the decadent aristocratic lifestyle of his parents, something which is easy to do in the atmosphere of San Sebastian:

Era aquel un mentidero multitudinario, desde media

noche. Habia un continuo trasiego de gente que

pululaba en uno u otro grupo (34). 312

It is more difficult for him to break away from the company of Pepa Cortina, whom he genuinely likes:

Perdona; esto no va contra ti ni contra tu padre.

Pero me parece que muchos de los de este lado

cre6is que la gente se est& matando para que

vuestra forma de vida pueda continuar como hasta

ahora (111).

In Carlos' vision of the future, there is simply no place for the decadent and lazy life of that part of the oligarchic classes that shirks its moral and historic obligations of leadership.

The Civil War is invested with Catalonian and

Catalanist sentiment through Carlos. Catalanist discourses are woven into the personalities and conversations between he and Miguel Llobet. In ideological terms, there is an effort to reconcile Catalonian feeling and the nationalist's war. Carlos Rius is a symbol of the success of this political intention and also of its failure. The war for the history of Spain is reduced to the war for

Barcelona. This is apparent in the physical spaces incorporated into the text and also its very syntax. In terms of space then, the novel deals with Catalonia and 313

Barcelona and, in Carlos, the national struggle is imbued

with a limiting specific regional significance. When

Carlos meets with Llobet in Burgos their main interest in

the circumstances of the War, is limited to their concern

for their city:

Dentro de la guerra, nosotros dos haremos otra

guerra particular y privativa, cuyos objetivos

recdnditos sdlo nosotros conocemos (51).

Through Carlos, the War is judged negatively in what it

has of arbitrary random violence and cruelty. When Carlos

finds himself obliged to command an execution squad, he

obeys orders but finds the event personally abhorrent

(150). Sometimes he cannot understand the motives for the

War and his pity goes to the opposing forces when, once in

a while, he catches a glimpse of a human face on the other

side. He is incapable of killing or watching people die in

cold blood (107).

Carlos, as a vehicle, permits the narrator to put some

distance between the events narrated and his own

personality. Through the reactions of his creature,

Carlos, he is able to narrate the War and belong to the

victorious side without glorifying the violence of war.

Through the image of post-war Barcelona perceived through 314

Carlos and the factory, the text proposes a return to

individual, personal responsibility. In addition, Carlos'

loyalty to the family tradition and his workers is offered

as a model for the conduct of economic and political

business in post-war Spain.

6.5 Catalanist sentiment in Guerra civil

The structural allegory created by the text points to

an inherently Barcelona-oriented interpretation of

history. The text, however, insists on the validity of

this orientation for the interpretation of national

history. An examination of the way catalanist sentiment

is portrayed should help determine whether the text

successfully formulates its quest for Spain or whether it gets stuck in a narrow interpretation of local history in

an atmosphere where Catalonian nationalism was generally

held to be incompatible with Francoist ideology.

Miguel Llobet is the symbolic and actantial space in which the author examines the ramifications of catalanism.

In 19 .iulio. he had been converted to Spanish nationalism

after the failed October revolution in Barcelona. In

Guerra civil, this conversion to the conservative position

is influenced by thoughts of national reconciliation: 315

Si se conseguia entrar en el pais, en Catalunya,

sin el 6nimo turbio y el espiritu de revancha, era

posible que todavia pudieran salvarse, al margen

de toda posible implicacion politics, los valores

sustanciales de la cultura catalana. £Qu6 mal

podia haber en que los catalanes estimaran su

lengua, se preocuparan por ella, la valoraran,

quisieran recamarla con las sutilezas y los

hallazgos de la poesia (314).

Miguel's quandary mirrors the dilema of catalonian

conservatives who had thrown in their lot with Primo de

Rivera in 1923 and with Franco in 1936. In Guerra civil,

the main preoccupation on the part of Miguel seems to be

the problem of the revaloration and affirmation of

Catalonian language and culture in a political culture in

which regionalism was generally seen to threaten the

Spanish nation State. In his mind, he manages to reconcile

his two allegiances -Francoism and Catalanism- by

suggesting that the survival of the positive valoration of

Catalan culture would have to be the personal

responsibility of individual Catalonians in their families:

Su misidn consistiria en comprometerse, a lo sumo,

a hacer que las generaciones futuras supieran como 316

61 valorar unos versos, valorar un paisaje y

resumir en ellos el valor de una cultura eterna y

muy antigua (314-5).

Through Miguel, Agusti seems to be solving the problem of continuity of the Catalonian language within the discourses of Castilian nationalism. The fact of the exile of many

Catalan intellectuals is taken into account by Miguel's thoughts on the war, but he believes that the ends of a real Catalonian nationalism are better served by adherence to the francoist creed (315).

The problem does not go away however, and Miguel is unable (as is Agusti) to resolve the quandary of fighting against the state that had already instituted political autonomy for Catalonia. In the end he lamely expresses his hopes for the future in the following terms:

El estado que habia de nacer de aquella guerra los

respetaria si le descubrian que hay una forma de

ser espafiol sin dejar de ser catalAn; y si,

desligdndose de cualquier solicitud politics, le

demostraban que eran profundamente espafioles en

lengua catalana y que no aspiraban a secesionismos

ni a desquites, sino a engrandecerse y a

engrandecer a Espaha (315). 317

Miguel fails to prove that the Catalanism of the Republican

side is injurious to the Spanish nation. He also fails to

demonstrate how the Catalan language would work within the

new system to create the affirmation of Spanish

nationhood. In this, the text follows the thesis developed

in 19 .iulio. The opposition to the Republic and Catalan

autonomy is not a problem of differing versions of

Catalanist expression but rather one of class. Agusti even

goes as far as to mitigate the culpability of the

Catalanists of the Republic by admitting that they are

having their problems with the communists and socialists

(315). The suggestion is that the Catalan intellectuals

made a wrong choice in their alliance with working class parties. This point of view is corroborated in Joaquin's

letter to his grandson:

Cuando reflexiono en los acontecimientos de mi

vida no veo m£s que un largo panorama de sangre.

Yo no odio a nadie. Para todos quisiera el

perddn. Pero de algun modo hay que recobrar el

sentido de las cosas (50).

In this apparently apolitical sentiment, Joaquin expresses his class perspective. The 'sentido de las cosas' he 318

wants to recover is the history of his class. The bloody

panorama he speaks of is the consequence, in terms of his

factory, of working class will to 'interfere' in the smooth

running processes of bourgeois national history.

In the end, in spite of the insistence on the

importance of Barcelona and Catalonia in the structural

scheme of the novel, Catalanism and ethnic pride reveal

themselves to be secondary in the face of the very real

expressions of class interest. The Barcelona the burghers

want to recuperate is not a Catalanist Barcelona to the

same degree as it is a bourgeois one. The doubts expressed

in Miguel's consideration of the place of Catalonia and

Catalanism in Spanish national history are symptomatic of

the way Catalonian nationalist thought was compromised by

the pact with the nationalist cause. As part of the discursive formulation of plenitude or completion, the use

of regionalist rhetoric demonstrates its bourgeois origins. consequently at the end of the novel, with the burghers of Barcelona firmly in control of the political and economic life of the city, Catalanism ceases to be an

issue. Catalanist feeling as expressed in the text reveals

itself as an eminently class interpretation of history in which regionalist expression is at the service of class interests. 319

6.6 The feminine element in Guerra civil.

In this novel, there is a persistence of the old

patterns in the depiction of the female element. Even in

the middle of a war, the refusal to see the other side as

an actor influences the way women are portrayed. The idle

life in the rearguard is likened to the life of salons and

cocktails of pre-war Barcelona. In this regard, there is

little change in the portrayal of feminine space as part

of history. Crista, Carlos' mother, is in the rearguard

surrounded by admiring beaus and leading a life like the

one she had in Barcelona before the war. Indeed the image of Crista in this novel is very much like the image of

Mariona Rebull in the first novel of the series. The descriptions of other young socialites reinforce this definition. For example, Fifi Campa, the daughter of a top civil servant in San Sebastian is described in these terms:

Fifi, la hija del vicepresidente de la diputacibn

donostiarra. Una criatura de veintitrbs afios m&s

ardiente que un mediodia del trbpico y a la que

cierto, agradaba agarrarse detrbs de 61 en la

Harley y, a ser posible, pararse un rato a

descansar en un claro del bosque (40). 320

Pepa Cortina, another socialite, is the daughter of an

Andalusian aristocrat who is connected by birth to grandees

of Spain. Through Carlos, the author criticizes an

aristocratic form of life which seems to thrive in an

ahistorical space that totally ignores or is unaware of the

real history of pain that the country is living. This form

of life is criticized by Carlos Rius. His war is partially against those of his class who live with their backs to their responsibilities to their class and its history. As

Carlos says to Pepa:

Perdona; esto no va contra ti ni contra tu padre.

Pero me parece que muchos de los de este lado

creis que la gente se estA matando para que

vuestra forma de vida pueda continuar como hasta

ahora. Esta es la sensacibn que ya tenia en San

Sebastian, y precisamente esa sensacibn fue la que

me hizo coger los bArtulos e ir a la academia

( 111).

A similar figure of the female associated with the idle life of social entertainment is Concha Cortina. She is an older person and she represents in the novel both the figures of Crista and her mother, Evelina. Like Evelina in her prime, she is surrounded by younger admirers. By means 321

of these female characters the text reveals and repeats the

old opposition between the intrepid and active part of the

class and the idle aristocratic sector of the same.

The depiction of feminine space also reveals its class

basis in an incident involving a peasant girl (427).

Carlos has social relations with girls of his class but

there is no sexual contact. In this episode, however,

there is casual sexual contact without Carlos learning the

girl's name. To a certain extent this reiterates a system

set up in earlier novels. In El viudo Rius. Joaquin had

met and seduced Lula Yepes, and now, Carlos repeats his grandfather's actions. The suggestion is that women of the

lower classes are mere outlets for sexual drives. Unlike

his father, Desiderio, Joaquin's grandson does not let this purely sexual encounter interfere with his responsibility

to his class and his family.

The extraordinary female figure of Guerra civil is nevertheless Rita Arquer. She becomes a heroine of

extraordinary proportions in Barcelona. Initially she just works out a supply network to feed and shelter a group of nationalist sympathisers:

Rita Arquer desarrollaba una actividad

desbordante, exhaustive. Sus pasos y gestiones

abarcaban los cuatro puntos cardinales, desde la 322

plana de Vich hasta Villanueva, desde Caldas hasta

los tinglados del puerto (67).

This network serves later on as a conduit for the relay of

information to and from nationalist forces outside

Barcelona. In Rita the text nevertheless repeats another

female figure from earlier novels, Carmen Fernandez, the dedicated and tireless mother superior of the novel

Desiderio. Rita shows more proof of her fortitude and

strength when she is caught and sent to prison for her

subversive activities. She is not only a vehicle for the

representation of the heroic participation of ordinary folk

in the outcome of the War; she is also an instrument for some of the religious points of view expressed in the novel. In Rita's mind, the War is reduced to a simple struggle between people who believe in God and those who don't. In a certain sense, Rita Arquer is not as much a representation of women as she is of the religious passion that inspired part of the nationalist forces.

Nevertheless, through her the text reveals its continuing patriarchal vision of the world.

Feminine space forms part of the discursive organization of completeness in that it also reproduces the thesis of restoration and continuity. Carlos' marriage to

Isabel Llobet is a symbolic return to the "golden age" and 323 is, to a certain degree, the epitome of domestic life advanced by both the patriarchal and bourgeois discourses of the text. This marriage represents the one that Joaquin was not able to have with Mariona. The new life and the new history it signifies is one that hopes to reproduce and perpetuate the static version of history inherent in the text's thesis of bourgeois monopoly of historical action and protagonism. In this same manner, the feminine element is part of the patriarchal system of succession and continuity because marriage, for example, is an important element of the transfer of functions from older to younger m e n .

6.7 Contradiction as part of the text of Guerra civil.

The ideological component is very important in Guerra civil and affects the text in various ways. This condition leads to the presence of contradictions in the narrative on various levels; from the purely syntactic to the semantic.

This is due to the ubiquitous presence of the author making characters and events respond to his politicized discourses rather than their own narrative selves. The problem is complicated by a more complex relationship between the narrator and the history that he is creating. The clear cut political vision of history seems to be replaced by a 324

more eclectic and pragmatic consideration. Without that

clear vision, the world in the text is divided into a

multiplicity of competing voices that the text mirrors and

tries to transcend by relying on ideology.

Consequently, all the fragmented visions that compose

the novel are held together by the political messages and

the ideological neccessities of the text. This affects the depiction and development of the various characters who protagonize the different episodes of the novel. The problems of the ideological reconciliation of catalanism with Francoism also affects the cohesiveness of the narration. In this the text mirrors the basic

contradictions of a certain Catalan conservatism. Finally, the text's will to create history in its ideologized version of the same interferes in its coherent structuring.

To the degree that various characters appear incoherent or 'disconnected' in the motivations and changes they show throughout the novel, we discover an underlying problem in the novel. The most extreme example of change is Policarpo

Orddnez. He first appears as an almost inhuman career officer. He puts Carlos in charge of an execution squad in order to break him in (147). When he finds it necessary to have prisoners shot, we find out later that there may have been an ulterior motive. After the executions, there is a perverse love scene between Policarpo and Rosaria "la 325

zarzamora", the widow of one of the executed anarchists,

Escarpin. He is painted as an impotent who derives sexual

pleasure from the pain of others. She scolds:

No ganar&s nada con haber raptado a las viudas de

los que primero has fusilado. Te gusta ver c6mo

palpitan ellas, despu6s de haber visto c6mo

palpitan ellos. Eso te pone cachondo (153).

In this episode, Policarpo shows himself to be quite cruel

and unfeelingly sadist. He actually terrorizes the woman by shooting at her, beats her violently and then makes love to her. This is the same Policarpo who advises Miguel in the heat of battle and distributes protective images of the

Holy Virgin before the battles for the Ebro (341). The

'two' Policarpos seem to be embodiments of very different actors in different narratives. The author seems to have, on one hand, a need to create a naturalist effect by representing the strange love of a simple brute, and on the other, the need to depict a violent man who is ennobled by war. These changes are however not explained by the text and contradict the reader's expectations about consistent behavior. The intention to create a hard drinking, whoring and foul-mouthed legionary comes up against the need to show the heroes of the war in positive terms. In fact, the 326

text at times seems to describe Policarpo, the seasoned

warrior, in the same machista terms that are used to describe MAximo, the fugitive anarchist. For example,

before the main battle of the Ebro, Policarpo says to

Carlos:

AlfSrez Rius, ha llegado la hora en que

demostraremos quiAnes somos y c6mo lo tenemos bien

puestos. Rece una Avemaria a la virgen y no

pienses m&s que en veneer (341).

These words out of the character's own mouth perhaps more than anything else demonstrate the ambiguous nature of many of the depictions of character in the novel. No reference is made to the real purpose, if any, of the war. It is reduced to being a mere testing ground for male chauvinism.

Other changes in the formulation of character obey purely narrative imperatives of an ideological or discursive nature. In Barcelona, the change that comes over Joaquin from active organizer to passive spectator cannot be explained completely as a consequence of fear.

The same is true of Evelina Torra. She had always lived outside the social and political problems of Barcelona in the parallel world the oligarchy had created for themselves. Her transition into senility is not dwelt upon 327 nor explained by the text. The text seems to suggest that this and many other changes are to be accepted at face value as the narrative develops.

Then there are the changes that MAximo undergoes in the novel from being a libidinous anarchist he becomes the romantic embodiment of 'iberian' manhood. This romanticization of his figure is also accompanied by the need to insist on the love-hate relationship between him and Blanca. In addition, the moorish soldiers on the nationalist side have their share of stereotyping.

Initially they are depicted in the literary and social tradition as hawkers on the streets of the big cities commercializing the loot of war. At the battle of the

Ebro, what we see are war-hardened veterans of many campaigns who face certain death stoically. The narrator seems to abandon the threads of his narration for the well trodden paths of 'oostumbrismo.

In general, Guerra civil leaves an impression of a narration that is winding to a halt because of political constraints. The narrator avoids direct confrontation with the problem of writing by taking advantage of existing formulas. This can also be seen in a close reading of

Carlos Rius, the main protagonist. Carlos reproduces the personality of his grandfather. At times his individual persona, and his education melt away and he is to all 328 purposes, at least actantially, the exact copy of his grandfather, Joaquin.

In the terms of what may be called ideological cacophony, the text at the same time assimilates the ideological messages of a) Espafia "Una grande y libre", b) the religious party in the power structures of post-war

Spain to whom the war was a crusade, and c) the burghers of

Barcelona to whom the war involves liberation and restoration. In this the novel mirrors the contradictory being of the Francoist regime itself in its tolerance of different political messages from the whole conservative political spectrum of Spain. Guerra civil is thus a

Catalan experience of the Francoist regime that it tries to salvage by attempting to reconcile all the dissonant voices into one text. The attempt to create homogeneity and coincidence and the failure to do so is due, in the first place, to the real differences between the centralist national ideal and Catalonian self affirmation on one hand, and Catalanism as a political position and the real interests of the oligarchs of Barcelona on the other. The historical differences are difficult and irreconcilable and the text's failure to create a successful illusion of continuity is a direct consequence of this essential contradiction.

Another factor is that the history of the events that 329

led to the War -that is the political will and activism of

large sectors of working people- is negated within the text

but stays in the wings and influences events of the textual

world. The Republican side, for example, is denied any

doctrinal or ideological authenticity and, ironically, the

sources of contradiction and the sympathetic depiction of

the 'rojillos' can actually be attributed to this.

A further consequence of this same denial of the

concrete is abstractionism in the discussion of the War and

has the same results. Ronald Howes' statements about the

Spanish psyche add to the creation of discontinuity and

paradox. Doctrinally, he is propounding the classless

ideal and while it is effective in negating the premises

behind the actions of people like Nicol&s Borreda, it also

subverts the text's own discourses of contrastive

definitions. In the attempt to find targets for criticism,

the War itself loses the legitimization and justification

that is the object of the narrative exercise. Reds and

Nationals turn out to be fighting on one side or the other

for very personal motives or by mere accident. This particular weakness has to do with the attempt to reconcile

the parties involved in the dispute under one national

imperative. With no narrative indication of the resulting change, the personalities of these protagonists are felt to be discontinuous and contradictory. This, in effect, is 330 what happens when the text sets out to justify both Catalan nationalist feeling and the centralist principles of the putsch. The very structure shows the subordination of national values to specifically Catalonian interests and thus, in spite of the party affiliation of Carlos Rius

(requet6 and falange), the War itself is the war to liberate Barcelona. The very plot then is one of a quest for Barcelona and, in this, the protestations of a Spanish national ideal that the text says it is promoting become suspect. At the same time, the Catalanist ideal that this fact indicates betrays itself as a class interest.

Catalonian nationalism as enunciated by the text is a peculiar creation of the bourgeois imaginary of the burghers of Barcelona. In this regard the contradiction inherent in Miguel's thinking about post-war Catalonia reflects the triumph of the bourgeois ideal as well as, to a certain extent, its failure.

Guerra civil is full of ideological positions although it incorporates professions of the unpoliticized nature of the Spanish populace's approach to history and the apolitical nature of its own engagement. Contradiction and self-subversion, as part of the text, are due to the presence of the different ideological imperatives both political and literary. CHAPTER V: C on clu sion .

Our reading of "La ceniza fue arbol" has been localized

within the spaces of what may be called 'the shaping

vision' of the text as identifiable in its discoursive

structures. This is indeed the space in which the critic

appropriates the text as a part of his or her own history

as an object of material scrutiny. This is helpful in that

it permits the use of objective criteria in the analysis of

the text. The only limiting factor would, in this case, be

the level of competence and the levels of compenetration of

reader in the multiplicity of discourses of the text.

In this regard contradiction, conflict or paradox, as defined by the analysis, is more than just recognition of

what one might call deficiencies. It is part of the

communicative process and may refer to a gestural capacity

of the text that escapes its materiality as object of

critical attention. Cohesion and coherence may exist in

the socio-political co-text and context which both the narrator and his specific readers share but that nevertheless lie outside the realm of the text's own

331 332

mimetic or representational materiality. History is thus

only important as the background against which the text

foregrounds itself and legitimizes its narrative

enterprise. It is both the recorded event and the mode of

operation of the recording, that is, it pertains to both

the selection of events and the vast intertext of previous

textualizations. According to Wolfgang Iser in an article

published in Mario Valdes (Editor) Interpretation of

Narrative (1979):

A literary text draws from two different systems

which exist outside the text itself: the system of

its historical situation and social norms and the

system of previous literatures and literary norms

(100).

Iser is concerned with the liguistic and conventional

linkage between the text and its audience. Nevertheless, the difference he establishes between the literary sphere and the purely social is interesting for our reading of contradiction. Even as narratives, they exist as two very different intertextual continuums of often very different objectives. These conditioners pre-exist and exist outside the text. Other determining factors are only possible 333

after the fact of the text. On one hand, the relations of

necessity that the text establishes, in itself, between the

elements that constitute its meaning making-processes, as a

particular text, are only available as part of the already

constituted text. On the other hand, the controlling

vision of the text or the ideological intention imposes

other relations of necessity. In both instances, as a

literary artifact and as an ideological structure, the text

itself is under pressure from two dissimilar intertexts.

This constant tension affects the text's process of self

constitution in what may be called a dialectic of

ideological self-referentiality in which the text

constantly analyzes itself and keeps a tight control of all

its meaning-making elements. In other words it is a text

that is painfully aware, at all times, of its

textualization as literature and more importantly as

history.

Self referentiality has been defined as a function of

the metafictional dimension of creative enterprise. That

is, narration not only recounts represented experience, but

also problematically incorporates in itself the very processes of its own representation of experience. This process of self awareness is the same in the authoritarian

fiction as defined by Susan Suleiman (1983). In the case 334

of "La ceniza fue &rbol", the structuring as a saga has the

effect of creating a situation in which the referential

object of the novels of the series is not only the

experienced world of history but also the intratextual

world of previous narrations and paradigms. In this

situation, there is a dialectic established in which there

is movement from the already created world-referred-to and

the narrative world in the process of being formulated. In

"La ceniza fue drbol", the first novels are the point of

departure for the other novels and necessarily refer to

them in their movement towards the constitution of their

own signifiers. Consequently, representation works in two

ways, towards the extranarrative world, and towards the

already constituted fictional world. In both instances the practical ideological intention imposes its structures on

the purely literary structures of the narration. The created world contitutes its own 'closure' and refuses to see beyond them. It also legitimizes, justifies and establishes relations of hierarchy between all the actantial elements of that created world. In "La ceniza fue Arbol", it is the logic of this 'closure' that is violated by the overly ubiquitous presence of ideological

intention. The compromise with extratextual political imperatives also constitutes a basis for internal 335

discontinuity in "La ceniza fue Arbol". Thus the

problematic relationship between the properly narrative

elements of the text's structuring is compounded and

complicated by the necessary relationship established by

its political needs. According to Andrew Gibson:

On the one hand, the novelist 'objectifies' a

world and presents it 'objectively' for his own

sorting and ours. On the other hand, he or she

provides a novel with its 'philosophical'

completion, a worldview that is contrasted with

the partial perspectives elsewhere in the book

(1990, 8-9).

Gibson is concerned with the way in which ideological

intentions organize discourses into a coherent whole. In

his opinion the doctrinal imperative creates its own needs

in the text. In the case of Agusti, regionalist and bourgeois intentions are moderated by the need to conform

to the ideological profile of the postwar socio-political situation. In this transaction he has to make concessions to other participants in the political discourses of his times. As a result, the problem of the ideology of form shows itself to be not only historical or political but 336

also one of literary and linguistic dimensions. "La ceniza gue drbol" has moments when it incorporates the structures of Romance Novel, The Novel of Action Adventures, and the drama of Romantic Melodrama. At other times, its discourses are invested with the regenerationist language of the beginning of the twentieth century, and the political positions of the Francoist state.

In his effort to define the limits of the critical enterprise and its relation to texts, Jameson insists on the limitations of the 'purity' of the interaction between critics and texts. He states:

We never confront a text immediately in all its

freshness as a thing-in-itself. Rather texts come

before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend them

through sedimented layers of previous interpretations,

or -if the text is brand-new- through the sedimented

reading habits and categories developed by those

inherited interpretive traditions (1981, 9)

Jameson's concern here is with the problematic of interpretation but it is our belief that when a writer is confronted with the writing of history he undergoes the same pressures. The writer is the first reader of whatever 337

he produces for the act of writing is also an act of

interpretation. In the case of "La ceniza fue Arbol", when

Agusti sets out to write the history of Barcelona and his

class, he suffers from the constraints of the sedimented

layers of the interpretation of Spanish history as

translated in literature by predecesors like Gald6s and the

noventavochentistas.

This experience of history is eminently rhetorical and

contributes to the subversion of the 'closure' proposed by

Agusti's text because each 'borrowed' motive or rhetorical

device has its own connotative universe that comes into

play to contest the new meaning-making situation. Jameson

defines the phenomenon by extending the concept of

ideologeme to the narrative level. He affirms:

A narrative ideologeme whose outer form, like a

secreted shell or exoskeleton, continues to emit its

ideological messages long after the extinction of its

host (151).

Thus, we find the notions of La Espana eterna incorporated

into the text when Agusti talks of milenary Catalonia. The

Galdosian division of the political sphere into liberal and conservative reappears as the division between the 338

impractical idealism of people like Nicol&s Borreda and the

pragmatic national self-interest of Matias Paid and the

Barcelona oligarchy. The political indictment and the distrust of politicians present in the last series of

Gald6s' Episodios and the writers of the Generation of 1898

is also present. The implicitly racist messages of the beginning of the century and the glorification of 'Iberian manhood' are also present. In "La ceniza fue &rbol", these motives are utilized to serve the changing needs of the text's axiomatic discourses, in literary as well as political terms. This leads to situations where the same element is used to make a literary statement in one situation and then used to make a political point in another and vice-versa. The imperatives of the axiomatic element lead to a disregard for the intermediate spaces between the presentation of states and situations and the linear development towards them. The willful and or unconscious falsification of history and the plethora of political messages have a propensity to subvert one another because the text is incapable of delimiting their areas of operation as signs. This situation firstly leads to the marginalization and disregard for some agents and secondly blinds the writing to their very nature as active agents or subjects in history. It becomes impossible to explain 339

events narratively after having banished the referential or

historical agents of these events into a limbo-like

ahistorical space. This explains the way the workers'

movement is incorporated into the text. The evident

providentialism that this produces in the narration becomes

problematic when it is read against the overall depiction

of history as the result of people doing things.

The axiomatic element reveals itself as part of a

process that seeks to justify and legitimize a specifically

Barcelonian experience of history in which the bourgeoisie

of Barcelona offers its experience as the experience of

Catalonia. This version of history presents itself as

Catalonian while at the same time it enjoys the privileged

position of interpreter of Catalanism before the national

history of Spain and then of the national history of Spain

before Barcelonian and Catalonian history. This complex

situation, more apparent in the last three novels of the

series, accomodates the glorification of Agusti's class and

the justification of their historical positions to the

formulation of an apology for the nation state. As a consequence, the necessary relation between already constituted signifieds in the narrative cosmos comes under pressure from the ongoing ideological needs of the text's structuring, as a signifier for new signifieds. This 340

influences the formulation of character in the generational

construction of the series, the patriarchal depiction of

feminine space and the transition from a primarily

Barcelonian interest to the national plane. Thus, the

bipolar evaluative paradigm established in Mariona Rebull,

breaks down when previously self imposed limitations come

into conflict with new needs. For example, MAximo Garcia

is an anarchist gunman in Desiderio and represents the

illiteracy and poverty of the immigrant subworld of

Barcelona. In that novel, he is a non-reflecting

illiterate. In 19 .iulio. he is part of the spontaneous

'heroism' of those who foil the military rebellion in

Barcelona. In Guerra civil, however, he is a reflective character who has been part of Republican educational programs and the object of his reflections is the betrayal of the revolutuionary enthousiasm of the anarchists by the communists in Barcelona. Rita Arquer undergoes the same narrative treatment. In Desiderio. she is the stereotypal celestina and ama de H a v e s and her greed and self-righteousness are ridiculed. In Guerra civil, when there is a need to voice the Christian point of view she is utilized for that purpose. These changes are possible in the evolutionary processes of characterization and change.

The problem is that these changes are not developed or 341

described narratively. There is no connection between the

illiterate MAximo and the reflective one nor between the

selfish Rita and the abnegated heroine of Barcelona. The

text provides no transition from one stage to the other.

In fact, the presentation of MAximo and Rita repeats something that the text does with quite a number of its characters. This would seem to suggest that, within the text, characters are not as faithful to themselves as they are to the circumstantial structural and ideological needs of narrating the history of Barcelona's burghers. This particular formula is used again with Ronald Howes.

Through him Agusti criticizes the class interpretation of the problem of Spain and the Republican's class based rhetoric of resistance.

Even the figure of Joaquin Rius suffers the effects of the subordination of the purely narrative to the doctrinal. He is the model of'seny' and perseveranoe but he is also the object of ridicule in Mariona Rebull for the clumsy ways of the upstart. This is the same man who is described as being obsessively meticulous in everything he does. In this instance, the narrator's own class interests seem to take great pleasure in holding Joaquin up for ridicule. This fact indicates that not all the ideological elements are convergent and even when they do coincide 342

consistently, there is a problem of overkill.

Susan Suleiman calls this the overflow effect:

The clearest manifestation of the overflow effect

is when a character whose value in the ideological

supersystem of the work is strongly negative

succeeds in becoming charming, that is in

exercising a certain seduction in the reader or

vice versa (1983, 206).

It is not only M&ximo who goes through a process of positivization. Ernesto Vilar, the seductor in Mariona

Rebull. is sometimes compared to Joaquin favorably in that novel. Considering that in the ideologically determined narrative all elements exist in order to predetermine interpretation, "La oeniza fue Arbol" suffers from a surfeit of ideological content and this is coupled with the fact that the narration presents a sum of ideological assumptions that belong to different spheres of the ideological map of Spain. Speaking of the necessary conditions of the authoritarian fiction, Suleiman affirms:

If there is to be a seamless fit between the story

and what it is supposed to demonstrate (its 343

thesis), the following condition has to be net: no

element in the story must be felt to be superflous

or irrelevant to the thesis. In other words, all

the elements of the fiction must have a clearly

percieved illustrative function (202).

The immediate problem with any narrative that tries to

fulfill this condition is that fiction has its own dynamic

that must be respected by the narrating conscience. Within narrative, not all the elements must individually be pertinent and actively involved in the ideological messages of the text.

This fact is apparent in the dissonanoes within the text of "La ceniza fue Arbol". There is a tension established between the consciously bi-polar contrastive system of the evaluative structures of the text and those necessary processes of narrative causality. The will to infuse ideological and value content to each and every actant of the novels, leads to a situation of 'gross imposition' of external logic on the internal processes of the novel. In other words, not only characters but also the grammar of the plot and the strategies of the narration are conditioned by a series of literary and philosophical transactions. Whereas the intertextual transactions 344

between literary precedent and narrative objective are

clear, for example, the use of the m6nage & trois in

Mariona Rebull, the nature of the transaction between the

narrative and the political is harder to define in

historical and political terms. Nevertheless, these

relations do exist as a potent force materialized in the

text in the will to incorporate all the disparate and

oftentimes differing voices of the institutions of power.

Nowhere is this transaction more obvious than in Guerra

civil. In this novel the author marginalizes the nostalgio

approximation to exclusively Barcelona history in order to

incorporate national history and national objectives.

Miranda (1982, 15) is illustrative, in this sense, when

read against the positions of the authorial prologue to the

series. Contradiction and paradox stem from the failure to

effectively make the transition from narrating a provincial

history to narrating a national history especially in the

last two novels, 19 .iulio and Guerra civil. In these two novels, there is an effort to create equivalence between

Barcelonian patriotism and Spanish nationalism. The effort fails because of the difficulties of reconciling Catalanism and specifically Barcelonian provincialism with Spanish national interests. The will to incorporate or recognize certain seotors of the politioal discourses of the postwar 345

era also influences the presence of contradiction or bad faith on the part of the text because the text is also a justification of a generation. In the author's own words:

Nosotros no teniamos miedo a nadie. Veiamos de

hacer la guerra del lado de Franco porque asi lo

habiamos creido justo; record&bamos escenas que no

nos har&n amedrentar (Ganas de hablar. 1974, 156).

What is significant here is that even though there is a lot of Catalanist sentiment in a novel ostensibly about

Barcelona, there is no regionalist justification for the

'asi lo habiamos creido justo'. The regionalist sentiment that seems to be at the source of the series as a whole, if we are to believe the prologue, weakens in the novel as it progressively deals with political and ideological issues and reveals itself as a mere sentimental force in the texts. At crucial moments in the text it is not regionalism that is in question but the preservation of bourgeois values. In "La ceniza fue Arbol" the bourgeois ideal of progress reveals itself as a restatement of the immobile aristocratic paradigm of sooial organization. And like it, has to struggle with the unstated silences of a pseudo-progress that can neither justify itself nor justify 346

its antecedents. In the case of Agusti, the text is

predicated on the static image of history that comes into

conflict with the temporary/permanent alliances of

nationalist postwar Spain. When the Barcelona ideal fails

to coalesce, the clear refuge is in the specifically

bourgeois aspirations of his class. The ideological and

political point of view that unites the various players on

the national scene, anticipates the class nature of the

conflict and subverts the metaphysical reasons advanced at

times by this text and others. Guerra civil beoomes the narrative of a war of convenience that is legitimized differently by the different components of the triumphant conservative alliance and, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, reveals itself as a purely bourgeois and specifically Barcelonian perspective on the history of

Spain.

LukAcs in his The theory of the Novel (1971), argues that the problematics of the novel are due to its fundamentally abstract nature. Among the dangers of this circumstnce is that the process of selection narrows and reduces history to such an extent that it becomes an

"idyll". It can be argued that in "La ceniza fue Arbol", this danger is intensified by two other factors; the evident nostalgic element and the desire for a lost 347

innocence and the ideologioal and structural imperatives of reducing Catalonian history to the reduced schema of

Barcelona's self-made men and their self-made city. The desire to link the life of the city exclusively to the life of its oligarchs conspires with the nostalgia to enhance the idyllic nature of Agusti's rendition of Barcelona history. The nature of the historical novel and its pretension of not just verisimilitude but also the veracity of its premises and its historicity are thus part of its conditions of structural imbalance. Primarily, by asserting the authority of its history while openly falsifying the terms and conditions of that history.

The dissonances that inhere in the text represent the dialectic that the text refuses to recognize in history.

With all the contradiction, the text is an account of the transactions in which it is involved as a oultural and historical artifact. As demonstrated in the text, the structure of historical knowledge is itself problematic and this makes the relationship between history and its representation, in our case, or that between the thing-in-itself and its signifier problematic. Some novels and novelists can attempt to mitigate this tension by an explicit recognition of the temporary nature of their own totalization of history. They can also reduce the tension 346

by an insistence on the dialogic or dialectical nature of the relationship between history as experience and as a node of representation. "La ceniza fue Arbol" and Agusti follow a different route by banishing the multiple voices of history and converting them into a single voice expressed in the authoritative structure of a historical novel. But not even the 'closure' of this "idyllic" reification can silence a history that surfaces in the contradictions in its discourse.

Agusti is an active apologist of his class and class interest that he interprets as the national interest. At the same time, the spontaneous ethnic pride and the love of his city come into contradiction with the deliberate construction of political positions. In a final irony, the choice of genre itself and the will to speak authoritatively are the principal source of contradiction.

In order for a text to be fully autonomous and authoritative and fullfil its ambition to be 'flawless' it would have to exist outside history. That is, the very link to history is a guarantee of failure to create an ideologically closed and authoritative version of history. BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Ignacio Agusti's work:

a. The novels of La oeniza fue Arbol.

Mariona Rebull. Barcelona: Destino, 1944.

El viudo Rius. Barcelona: Destino, 1945.

Desiderio. Barcelona: Planeta, 1957.

19 de .iulio. Barcelona: Planeta, 1965.

Guerra civil. Barcelona: Planeta, 1972.

b. Other work by Ignacio Agusti:

El veler. Barcelona: Altes, 1932.

Diagonal. Barcelona: Altes, 1934.

"Prologo" en Manuel de Cabanyes Poesla. Barcelona: Yunque, 1940.

Un siglo de Catalufia. Barcelona: Destino, 1940.

Los surcos. Barcelona: La Gacela, 1942.

Sobre el nuevo lazarillo y sobre Canilo Jos£ Cela" Estafeta Literaria (15 November 1944).

Catalufia entre tradioibn v revolucidn. Madrid: Ateneo, 1952.

"Buenas noches Arguelles de Antonio Prieto" in Autores aspaffoles contempor&neos. Barcelona: Planeta, 1956.

349 350 " Rebeli6n y continuidad en la novelistica espafiola" Huestro Tiempo XII (1960) p.515-533.

El autor en.iuicia su obra. (7-21). Madrid: Editora nacional, 1966.

Ganas da hablar Barcelona: Planeta, 1974.

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Alberich, Josb. "Mariona Rebull o la burguesia inutil". £0. 82 (Jan. 1970): 23-28.

Hornedo, Rafael Maria de. "El 19 de Julio en la tetralogia de Agusti". Razbn y FA 173 (1966): 91-99.

Horno Liria, L. "El novelists Ignacio Agusti". EL. 399 (Julyl968): 9-10.

Iglesias Laguna, Antonio. "Guerra civil de Ignacio Agusti". ABC. (Semanal) (17th.Aug. 1972).

Manegat, Julio. "En la muerte, en la presencia, en la obra de Ignacio Agusti". EL 536 (March 1974): 4-7.

Miranda, Wenceslao. Ignacio Agusti: El autor v la obra; Interoretacibn v realismo de ’Guerra civil'. University Press of America, 1982.

Sendra-Catafau, Jaime. "La novelistica de Ignacio Agusti en La ceniza fue irbol: Una saga catalana." DAI 39: 912A-13A.

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Alvar, Manuel. "Tbcnica cinematogrbfica en la novela de hoy". Arbor LXX (1968): 253-270.

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Baquero Goyanes Mariano. "La novela espafSola de 1939-1953" CHA 67 (July 1955): 81-96.

Estructura de la novela actual. Barcelona: Planeta, 1970. 351 Bosch, Rafael. La novela espafSola del sitflo XX Vol 2 New York: Las Americas, 1970.

Buckley, Ram6n. Problemas formales en la novela espafiola contenporAnea. Barcelona: Peninsula, 1968.

Castellet, JosA Maria. "Veinte afios de novela espafSola". CA CXXVI. 1-2 (1963): 290-295.

Castillo-Puche, JosA-Luis. "Libertad y servidumbre del novelista catdlico". EL 1 (August 1960).

Cirre, JosA-Francisco. "El protagonista miiltiple y su papel en la reciente novela espafSola". PSA 98 (May 1964): 159-170.

Domenech, Ricardo. "Meditaci6n sobre estAtica narrativa”. Insula 175 (June 1961).

Elizalde, Ignacio. "Clases y tAcnicas en la novela actual de EspafSa" . Letras de Deusto 1 (1971): 159-170.

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Gil Casado, Pablo. La novela social espafSola 1920-1971. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1975.

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Iglesias Laguna, Antonio. Treinta affos de novela espafiola 1938-1968. Madrid: Prensa espafiola, 1969. Knapp Jones, Willis. "Recent novels of Spain: 1936-1956". Hiapania 40, 2 (1957): 303-311.

Mainer, JosA-Carlos. Falantfe v literatura. Barcelona: Labor, 1971.

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Mancisidor, JosA. "La literatura espafiola bajo el signo de Franco" CA (May-June 1952).

Marfany, Joan Lluis. "Notes sobre la novel-la espanyola de postguerra". Els marges 6. 11(1976): 29-57.

Martinez Cachero, JosA Maria. La novela espafiola entre 1936 y 1980. Madrid: Castalia, 1985.

Marra L6pez, JosA R. Narrativa espafiola fuera de Espafia 1939-1961. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1963.

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