Transoceanic Studies Ileana Rodríguez, Series Editor
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TRANSOCEANIC STUDIES Ileana Rodríguez, Series Editor Transatlantic Correspondence MODERNITY, EPISTOLARITY, AND LITERATURE IN SPAIN AND SPANISH AMERICA, 1898–1992 JOSÉ LUIS VENEGAS THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2014 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number 2013037461 ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1256-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1256-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9359-1 (cd-rom) ISBN-10: 0-8142-9359-X (cd-rom) Cover design by Thao Thai Type set in Adobe Sabon Typeset by Juliet Williams Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Chiki CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION Engaging Correspondence 1 CHAptER 1 Epistolarity and the Rhetoric of Hispanism 49 CHAptER 2 Quixotic Correspondence 70 CHAptER 3 Postal Insurgency 103 CHAptER 4 Transatlantic Transitions 123 CHAptER 5 Failed Deliveries 181 CONCLUSION Crossing Letters 215 Works Cited 223 Index 238 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS URING THE YEARS that it took me to complete this project, I have D incurred many debts that I must acknowledge now. I would like to thank, first of all, Wake Forest University for providing a grant from the Archie Fund for the Arts and the Humanities that allowed me to travel to Madrid, where I spent two intense weeks at the Biblioteca Nacional in the summer of 2010. I would also like to express my gratitude to Mar- garet Ewalt, José María Rodríguez García, and Brian Price, who have remained outstanding interlocutors, firm supporters, and tough critics throughout the whole process. Alejandro Mejías-López and Sebastiaan Faber shared their valuable insights on the project at a crucial moment, for which I am extremely grateful. I am also indebted to several col- leagues at Wake Forest, who read early drafts of some of the chapters and generously provided useful feedback. Many thanks to Dean Franco, Mary Friedman, Candelas Gala, and Kathryn Mayers. My appreciation also goes to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their thoughtful recommendations and strong endorsement as well as to Sandy Crooms and the rest of the editorial team at The Ohio State University Press for the professionalism with which they handled the evaluation and production of my book. My largest debt of gratitude is owed, as always, to my family, espe- cially my father, José Luis, and my sisters, Ana and Inmaculada, who have shown enthusiastic interest in the book’s central ideas from its ix x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS very inception. John and Lynn have continued to support me selflessly and unconditionally. Eva Isabel, my darling daughter, brings brightness, love, and hope to my life on a daily basis. My wonderful wife, Jessica, to whom this book is dedicated and who read every word of it, is not only my most incisive and perceptive critic in academic matters, but also my rock and the person who makes me who I am. Her rare intelligence is only matched by her incredible kindness. And, last but not least, some recognition is due to lovely Sugar Bear, who has been a loyal companion and quiet supporter for over a decade now. Earlier versions of some parts of this book were previously published in Modern Language Notes, Revista Hispánica Moderna, and Hispanic Review. I am grateful to the publishers for their permission to reprint material. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. INTRODUCTION Engaging Correspondence Correspondence: . 1. The action or fact of corresponding, or answer- ing to each other in fitness or mutual adaptation; congruity, harmony, agreement. Also said of the relation of one of the corresponding things. 2. Relation of agreement, similarity, or analogy. 3. Concordant or sym- pathetic response. 4. Relation between persons or communities; usually qualified as good, friendly, fair, ill, etc. 5. Intercourse, communication (between persons). 6. Intercourse or communication by letters. (Oxford English Dictionary) N FEBRUARY 2, 1894, Senator Santiago de Liniers, newly Oinducted into the Spanish Royal Academy, gave a speech in front of his fellows on the utility of epistolary writing for the revitalization of Spain’s social life and historical reputation. At a time when Spanish intel- lectuals were looking for solutions to the country’s social deterioration and international decline, Liniers suggests that writing personal letters may renew an authentic national identity that he traces back to the med- ieval origins of the Castilian language. This authenticity survives, in his opinion, in the unpretentious epistolary prose of the popular classes, who have remained impervious to foreign “invasions” into the native culture (78). Just as writing letters can regenerate the lost vitality of Spain’s tradi- tional society, so the nation’s epistolary archive can provide the necessary evidence to refute the international vilification of Spain and its imperial past. Liniers discusses private letters by Queen Isabella (which reveal her exemplarity as a wife and ruler), Phillip II (which portray the king as a caring father, a dedicated monarch, and a lover of Castile’s landscape), 1 2 INTRODUCTION and other prominent figures, such as Cardinal Cisneros and the Duke of Alba, all of whom participated actively in Spain’s imperial mission dur- ing the sixteenth century. The agents of Empire, Liniers suggests, were first and foremost admirable people brimming with humane qualities. The national epistolary archive is therefore a repository of documen- tary proof, unparalleled in its testimonial authenticity, against those who demonize imperial Spain as a backward, brutal, and benighted nation led by a host of cruel and sadistic rulers. In his response to Liniers’s address, fellow academician Francisco Silvela, soon to become Spain’s Prime Minister, goes on to urge Spanish historians to compile and edit epistolary collections of illustrious peninsular rulers and artists in order to “rebuild our history, without a doubt one of the most castigated ones by the preoccupation of the legends and the prejudices of men, the insti- tutions, and the customs passed along from one age to the next because of the lack of documentation, original studies, and criticism” (104).1 Only a few years after Liniers and Silvela embraced letter writ- ing as a fundamental building block for the regeneration of decadent Spain, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz discussed in his conten- tious La reconquista de América: reflexiones sobre el panhispanismo [The Reconquest of America: Reflections on Pan-Hispanism] (1910) the importance of postal communication for the construction of mod- ern national identities in Spanish America. Offering a counterpoint to the Spaniards’ imperial nostalgia, Ortiz rejects the neocolonial implica- tions of what he calls “postal Hispanism,” that is, the postal agreements proposed by influential peninsular scholars such as Rafael Altamira and Adolfo González Posada in order to stimulate the “mutual correspon- dence of ideas” across the Atlantic (Altamira, España en América 367).2 1. See Hazel Gold (“Postdata”) for a discussion of the literary and historiographical uses of letter writing in Spain during the nineteenth century. 2. In La reconquista de América, Ortiz sets out to dismantle the pan-Hispanic pro- posals that Altamira and other fellow University of Oviedo professors presented at the Hispano-American Conference celebrated in Oviedo in October 1900. Besides establishing postal agreements between the Peninsula and Spanish America, these scholars promoted the transatlantic exchange between college professors and students, the creation of an exclusively Hispanic cable for the relay of news without foreign interference, and the reduc- tion of tariffs to stimulate Ibero-American commerce, among other measures. What these professors saw as means to encourage the intellectual and financial traffic between Spain and the Spanish American republics, Ortiz interpreted as a Spanish crusade, a “spiritual reconquest of America that covers up a campaign of mercantile expansion” (Reconquista 105). Altamira further discussed the philosophical and material foundations of this pan- Hispanism in publications such as Mi viaje a América (1911), España en América (1910), and España y el programa americanista (1917). ENGAGING CORRESPONDENCE 3 This pan-Hispanic “postal union,” Ortiz contends, is all but an innocent proposal. By promoting “the exclusive exchange of thoughts between nations of the same raza” (160), he claims, this bureaucratic measure seeks to strengthen Spain’s “imperialistic tendency,” restore its spiritual influence over the New World, and compensate for the country’s recent loss of its last colonies in America and Asia. Ortiz suggests that Span- ish Americans should clamp this bidirectional postal cord and open up their region’s epistolary communications and, by extension, cultural and economic commerce to nations beyond the pale of the former Spanish Empire. Far from the basis for national purity, postal exchange for Ortiz is a social practice that helps articulate a collective identity that is never given or straightforward, but rather a matter of exchange and dialogue. When compared to the discourse of the peninsular academicians, Ortiz’s reflections manifest the rifts between Spanish and Spanish American defi- nitions of modern national identities. For Liniers and Silvela, national regeneration involves the restoration of imperial prestige and a lost ancestral identity. For Ortiz, to be modern means to reject all forms of metropolitan control and to embrace a cosmopolitan, transcultural out- look. This brief comparison also reveals the productive ambivalence of postal communication and epistolarity—“the use of the letter’s formal properties to create meaning” (Altman 4)—in nineteenth- and twentieth- century Hispanic society and culture, specifically its capacity to gener- ate a given cultural position and its opposite, thus becoming a common ground where the conflicts among imperial, postcolonial, and national cultural projects play out.