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T h e voices of irony in the poetry of Angel Gonzalez

Fisher, Diane Ren£, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1990

Copyright © 1 9 9 0 by Fisher, Diane Ren£. All rights reserved.

UMI 300 N. Zceb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE VOICES OF IRONY IN THE POETRY OF ANGEL QCNZALEZ

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate

School of the Ohio State University

By

Diane Renfe Fisher, B.A., M.A.

The Ohio State University

1990

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Stephen Sunmerhill

Dr. Salvador Garcia Adviser Department of Spanish Dr. Donald Larson and Portuguese Copyright by Diane Rene Fisher 1990 To My Family, Especially Jeff

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I express my sincere appreciation to Dr. Stephen Sunmerhill for the benefit of his scholarly guidance in my research. No less important were the hours in conversation which excited my enthusiasm for this field of endeavor and helped me to sustain the effort. Thanks also go the Drs. Salvador Garcia and Donald Larson for their suggestions and support. To my husband Jeff I offer thanks for patience and flexibility above and beyond the call of duty. The role of my daughters, Sarah and Amy, cannot be underestimated: they make it all worthwhile.

ill VITA

December 20, 1957 ...... B o m - Columbus, Ohio 1979 ...... B.A. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1979-1987 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1 9 8 1 ...... M.A. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1988-1989 ...... Visiting Instructor, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio

1989-Presen t ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese

iv TAELE OP CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... 11

. V I T A ...... ill

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE VOICES OP MYSTIFICATION AND DEMY STE FI CATION .... 21

Introduction...... 21 Irony as T h e m e ...... 22 Dual Linguistic Codes...... 49 Alternating T o n e s ...... 55 Signs of D u a l i t y ...... 67 Parabasis and Self-contradiction...... 84

II. THE VOICES OP LOOOCENTRISM AND DECENTERING...... 93

Introduction...... 93 Irony as T h e m e ...... 97 Self-reflective T e x t s ...... 118 Textual Punning...... 135 Collage...... 149 III. SPEECH AND SILENCE...... 166

Introduction...... 166 Second-person Discourse...... 168 Dramatic M o n o l o g u e ...... 185 Apostrophe...... 205

CONCLUSION...... 221

SELECTED BIELIOGRAPHY...... 226

v INTROCKJCnCN

Angel GonzSlez, b o m In Oviedo In 1925, Is rapidly being

recognized as a major voice, not only of his own generation, but of

the whole of twentieth-century Spanish poetry. Gonzfilez' production

— he has published nine books from 1956 through 1985— spans a

significant time in both the cultural and political history of Spain,

including the early repressive years, the slow liberalization of the

sixties, the turn to modem consumer society, and the transition to

democracy. Gonzfilez was among the first In Franco's Spain to manifest a fundamental commitment to poetry for Its own sake, and yet he has been one of the most tenacious believers In the social nature

of poetry.

For Angel Gonzfilez, as for many of the poets of the Generation of

Mid-century, irony is a major source of poetic diction. The presence of irony In his early books is due, by his own account, to the presence of an active censorship which plagued all aspects of cultural life during the early years of the Francoist regime. What began, however, as a tactic for evasion of censure soon became much more. As Gonz&lez comnents in the introduction to his edition, Poemas:

Imped ir la pretenclosa fornrulaci6n de las pretend Idas verdades absolutas, introducir en la afirmacion el principio de la negacifin, salvar la necesaria dosis de

1 2

escepticismo que hace tolerables las Inevitables — aunque por mi parte cad a vez mfis debiles— declaraciones de fe: todo lo que la ironia facilita es lo que yo trataba de conseguir desde que erapece a escribir poeaia . . . Asl se explica mi fidelidad a unas f&rmulas ir6nicaa que m&s que rasgos extemos del poema son en si mismas una parte Importante de lo que quiero expresar.

Ibus, the ironic mode of writing soon came to be part of the message itself.

The purpose of this study is to examine irony in Gonzfilez' poetry both thematically and technically in terms of a duality of voice. This particular aspect of ironic language — variously referred to as multiplicity of perspective, complexity of experience, etc.— has been dealt with briefly by those who have written most perceptively about Gonzfilez' poetry: Qnilio Alarcos

LI orach, Andrew Debicki, Douglas Benson, and Nancy Mandlove, among others. This study tries to think through the question of why such modes of duality are ironic and how they demonstrate the varying degrees of ironic response in Gonzfilez' production. Because, however, the word "irony" has come to be used for so many and so disparate purposes, it is necessary to specify our understanding of the issues at hand before turning our attention to the poems themselves.

Towards a Definition of Irony

Although ln its most basic sense, irony is the consciousness of a discrepancy between an appearance and a reality, the term has actually undergone many changes over the last two centuries. In the 3 twentieth century, Mueeke tells us, It has tended to be understood as

acceptance of multiple Interpretations of human experience and of our

Inability ever fully and certainly to comprehend human destiny:

The dominant twentieth-century concept seems to be that of an irony that is relatlvlstlc and even non-coirmital. We read that irony is "a view of life which recognizes that experience is open to multiple interpretations, of which no one is simply right, and that the co-existence of incongruities is part of the structure of existence" . . . a way of writing designed to leave open the question of what the literal meaning might signify: there is a perpetual deferment of significance. The old definition of irony — saying one thing and giving to understand the contrary— is superseded; irony is saying something in a way that activates not one but an endless series of subversive interpretations.2

At the eye of this epistemological breakdown is human

temporality; the provocation of what we are calling irony is the m od em concept of time. Octavio Paz points out that what he calls

the m o d e m tradition differs radically in its conception of time from previous ones which included an ideal time of unity — an immemorial past, a Golden Age— or a "time beyond time" of identity such as oriental cyclical time or the Christian heaven. The m o d e m age has kept the personal, unilinear, and irreversible aspects of the

Christian concept of time, but has done away with the Christian idea of an eternity which premises unity and timelessness:

Our time breaks abruptly with these ways of thought. Having inherited the unilinear and irreversible time of Christianity, it adopts the Christian opposition to cyclical conceptions but, simultaneously, denies the Christian archetype and affirms one that negates all the images and ideas of time that man has made for himself. The modem age is the first to exalt change and convert it into a foundation. Difference, separation, otherness, plurality, novelty, evolution, revolution, history — all 4

these words condense Into one: future. Not past nor eternity, not time which Is but time which Is not yet and which always will be to come: this Is our archetype.3

Thus What was In the Christian tradition faith in the eventual

timelessness of eternity becomes in the modern tradition faith In the "perfectibility of the future." Such a situation does not offer the

comfort of the Christian heaven with its premise of human experience of perfection and eternity. As Paz says, the future is to us

difference, separation, otherness, for we cannot really be a part of

it: "Our future, though the repository of perfection, is neither

resting place nor end; on the contrary, it is a continuous beginning, a permanent movement forward . . . Prom one point of view our

perfection is always relative; from another is is unattainable and untouchable."1* The future is unattainable because we live lnmersed

in the present and because by choosing the future (as opposed to some

form of eternity) as our temporal archetype we have condemned ourselves to mortality. Through our conception of human time as

personal, rectilinear, and finite we have excluded ourselves

essentially from full experience or understanding of our world — the

natural or cosmic world which does not seem to share our

consciousness of mortality. We have condemned ourselves to irony

because this perception of temporal difference from the world creates

a sense of otherness which precludes understanding of its complexities. As Paz says:

Irony is the wound throu^i which analogy bleeds to death; It Is the exception, the fatal accident (in the double meaning of the term: necessary and deadly). Irony shews that if the universe is a script, each translation of this 5 script is different and that the concert of correspondences is the gibberish of Babel. The poetic word ends in a howl or in silence: irony is not a word, nor a speech, but the reverse of the word, noncornunlcation. The universe, says irony, is not a script; If it were its signs would be incomprehensible for man, because in it the word death does not appear, and man is mortal.^

The individual Who perceives the world ironically — that is to say, whose experience of the world is colored by such a sense of

otherness— becomes a divided self. Hence Baudelaire's example of

the man who trips and falls on the street. At such a moment the

extraordinary, ironic Individual houses two selves simultaneously: the self which has undergone the embarrassment of finding itself

sitting on the groud, and the self which feels itsef to be separate

and superior to the first: "Ce n'est point l'honme qui tombe qui rit de sa propre chute, a moins qu'il ne soit un philosophe, un homne qui

ait acquis, par habitude, la force de se d£doubler rapidement et a'assister cornne spectateur desinteresse aux phencmenes de son

moi."6

In his comments on Baudelaire's essay, Paul de Man reformulates

the opposition in more abstract terms: there is "an empirical self,

immersed in the world, and a self that becomes like a sign in its attempt at differentiation and self-definltion.He uses the word

sign to refer to the second self because language is the only means be which that self can act. De Man elaborates:

Language is their material, just as leather is the material of the cobbler or wood is that of the carpenter. In everyday, common existence this is not how language usually operates; there it functions much more as does the cobbler's or the carpenter's hamner, not as the material itself, but as a tool by means of which the heterogeneous 6

material of experience Is more-or-less adequately made to fit. The reflective disjunction occurs not only b£ means of language as a priveleged category, but It transfers the self out of the empirical world Into a world constituted out of, and in, language — a language that it finds in the world like one entity among others but that remains unique in being the only entity by means offtwhich it can differentiate itself from the world.”

To be aware of the limitations and incomprehension inherent to the human experience Is not to transcend or escape them in reality. Hie ironic statement may be a sign pointing toward authenticity because

It is a recognition of inauthenticIty (understood as everyday ways of being and thinking which shut out consciousness of the limitations of human temporality) but it can never itself be authentic. As de Man says:

The Ironic language splits the subject into an empirical self that exists in a state of inauthenticIty and a self that exists only in the form of a language that asserts the knowledge of this inauthentlcity. This does not, however, make it into an authentic language, for to know Inauthentlcity is not the same as to be authentic. °

Herein lies the duality of the ironic self and its langage: in Its recognition not only of inauthentlcity as such but also of its own participation In that inauthentlcity.

For this reason — because It can never reach a state of authenticity, a state of completion— the temporal structure of Irony is repetitive, "the recurrence of a self-escalating act of consciousness."I® De Man further explains:

Hie act of irony, as we understand it, reveals the existence of a temporality that is definitely not organic, in that it relates to its source only in terms of distance and difference and allows for no end, for no totality. Irony divides the flew of temporal experience into a past that is pure mystification and a future that remains harassed forever by a relapse within the inauthentic. It can know this inauthentlcity but can never coercome it. It can only restate and repeat It on an increasingly conscious level, but it remains endlessly cau#it in the impossibility of making this knowledge applicable to the empirical world. It dissolves In the narrowing spiral of a linguistic sign that becomes more and more remote from Its meaning, and It can find no escape from this spiral. Hie temporal void that It reveals is the same void we encountered When we found allegory always implying an unreachable anteriority. Allegory and Irony are thus linked in their cocnnon discovery of a truly temporal predicament. They are also linked in their cannon demystification of an organic world postulated in a symbolic mode of analogical correspondences or in a mimetic mode of representation in which fiction and reality could coincide.

Thus, far from being anything so static as a trope, irony is instead a continuous "act of consciousness" with its own dynamic. In the next section we will see how the parameters of the ironic duality change with the "escalation" of the Ironic consciousness.

The Process of Irony

Irony, then, understood as a response to the world — a reaction defined in terms of a sense of otherness— is changeable with the vicissitudes of the world and of consciousness. Alan Wilde thus Garments on the mutability of the Ironic response:

The sense of a fluid and shifting horizon, of a world outside the self that both impinges on consciousness and is In seme way determined by it, has, to start with that, helped to confirm my conception of irony neither as a fixed tropological device nor as a static way of apprehending the world but rather as a mode of consciousness variably responsive to changes in man’s ongoing, necessarily creative history.1” 8

He goes on to elaborate on the nature of the change in ironic response to the world:

The characteristic movement of ironic art in this century describes a double and seemingly contradictory progression which, on the one hand, recognizes the increasing disintegration of an already disjunct world and, on the other, not only submits but (again in some cases) assents to it, or to its inherent possibilities . . . IVentieth- century irony siirultaneously and progressively calls into question the possibilities of order and, coming to accept the inescapability of a world that is necessarily unfinished, achieves at times a kind of accomodation with that world. ^

In Wilde's description, epistemological crisis is still, we migfrt say, the basic ingredient of irony. He notes, however, a change in the consciousness' response to a world so complex that it escapes apprehension. Rather than the sense of frustation, anxiety, and even bitterness often associated with the ironic perception, he points toward a greater acceptance of the uncertainties of the world.

Paz remarks a similar shift and relates it to a change In our temporal archetype from the future to the present:

In recent years there has been a sharp change: people begin to look fearfully toward the future, and what only yesterday seemed the marvels of progress have become Its disasters. The future is no longer the storehouse of perfection, but of horror . . . It is significant that in a country like the United States, where the word "change" has enjoyed a superstitious reverence, another has appeared which refutes it utterly: "conservation." The present has bec^e critical of the future and is beginning to replace It.

This transposition Is due not only to the failure of history to evidence the passage of time as a process of perfection, but also to 9 the unwillingness of the present generation to forego its own

realization in favor of a potential perfection of the future for

coming generations:

The young people want to end the present situation precisely because it is a present which oppresses us in the name of a chimerical future. They have the Instinctive but confused hope that the destruction of this present will bring about the sudden appearance of the other present with its corporal, intuitive, and magical values. Always that search for the other time, the real time. In rebellions of ethnic or cultural minorities, demands for econanic redistribution are not the only, nor often the central issues . . . it Is not so much a question of erecting the city of the future as the emergence, within contemporary society, of groups searching for Identity or struggling for recognition . . . The background for these rebellions is the changed sensibility of the age. Decay of the Protestant and Capitalist ethic with its moral code of savings and work: two ways of shaping the future, two attempts to get the future Into our p o w e r . ^

Thus, Paz perceives this re-possession of the present as a

renunciation of the mystification of the future. As such, it may

constitute a more forthright dealing with the world and human

experience of it. As Paz points out, "To live In the present is to

live facing death. Man Invented eternity and the future to escape

death, but each of these Inventions was a fatal trap. The present

reconciles us with reality: we are m o r t a l . "Reconcile" is the key word. This does not mean that we are no longer aware of, or have

resolved the problematics of human teraporaltiy — for this reason

irony persists. It is, however, irony that is "reconciled" to

Itself, irony that no longer posits Itself as a way of dealing with existential angst (operating on a metaphysical level), but rather, perhaps as a way of responding to the world on a more concrete, 10 irrmedlate level.

This change In temporal archetype affects the parameters of the

sense of duality experienced by the Ironist. As we Initially

remarked, the ironic divided consciousness is provoked by a sense of

otherness with regard to the world. This experience of otherness

derives from the perception of the world as sane thing too complex to

be fully understood, given the limitations of human temporal ty. The

complexities of the world become even more difficult to nave gate as

the reduction of human experience to the present is accepted. For

Jameson, the shift in temporal archetype severs us from previously held ways of thinking the world. He remarks on:

Hie disappearance of a sense of history . . . Our entire contemporary social system has begun little by little to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual present and in a perpetual change that obliterates traditions of the kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or another to preserve. '

Such a loss of constructs with which to approach the world in combination with its exponentially increasing complexity intensifies

the ironist's sense of otherness, radicalizing the terms of the

ironic duality.

As ironic consciousness of difference frcm the empirical world

Intensifies, so does it feel increasingly separate from that part of its being which continues to function in the world. Hie complexities of the world strain the sense of connection nearly to the point of the disappearance or total ineffectiveness of the empirical self. Baudrlllard points to present-day technology as 11

bringing about the near superfluousness of the body:

Tills Is the time of miniaturization, telecommand and the microproeession of time, bodies, pleasures. There Is no longer any Ideal principle for these tilings at a higher level, on a human scale. What remains are only concentrated effects, miniaturized and Immediately available. This change frown human scale to a system of nuclear matrices is visible everywhere: this body, our body, often appears as simply superfluous, basically useless in its extension, in the multiplicity and complexity of its organs, Its tissues and functions, since today everything is concentrated in the brain and genetic codes, which alone sum up the operational definition of being.18

With the body no longer able to bolster a sense of self, the

individual's sense of being and Identity — Interiority— is also weakened. Baudrillard explains this effect: "It is the end of

interiority and intimacy . . . He can no longer produce the limits of his own being, can no longer play nor stage himself, can no longer produce himself as m i r r o r . " ^ Thus, the ironist's experience of self-duplication, of simultaneously housing an empirical, inauthentic self and a highly conscious self is radicalized to such a degree that it seems no longer self-duplication but rather division into two scarcely connected beings: an empirical self undergoing a process of degradation and an Ironic consciousness which suffers its own measure of loss of sense of identity.

Paradoxically enough, as the focus on the present increases the ironist's sense of otherness from the world, it also intensifies awareness of his connection to the world. As Paz remarked, to live in the present (without the protective interface of some future, perfect time) Is to live in the face of mortality. To consider an 12

extreme case, we may note Jameson's comments on the schizophrenic experience of time:

The schizophrenic will clearly have a far more intense experience of any given present of the world than we do, since our own present is always part of same larger set of projects which force us selectively to focus cur perceptions. We do not, in other words, simply globally receive the outside world as an undifferentiated vision: we are always engaged in using it, in threading certain paths through it, in attending to this or that object or person within it. Hie schizophrenic, however, is not only "no one" in the sense of having no personal identity; he or she also does nothing, since to have a project means to be able to ccfimit oneself to a certain continuity over time. The schizophrenic is thus given over to^an undifferentiated vision of the world in the present.*®

With such an experience of time, the world clearly reaches the

individual in an umediated fashion. This intense sense of

proximity of the world, of vulnerability to it, is facilitated by the loss of the body Just referred to. Baudrlllard describes this loss

as contributing to "this state of terror proper of the schizophrenic:

too great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiscuity of

everything which touches, Invests and penetrates without resistance,

with no halo of private protections, not even his own body, to

protect him. •*- We see, then, that with the intensification of

ironic perception, the consciousness feels itself to be more and more

distinct from the empirical self (as the world becomes Increasingly

incomprehensible) and yet more closely tied to it as assent to the experience of the present intensifies awareness of mortality. The process of irony, therefore, draws the two terms of the ironic duality further apart in essence, closer together in existence. Our 13 next task, than, as we turn our attention to Gonzalez' poetry is to consider the implications that this process has in Gonzfilez* use of language.

Ironic Language and Duality in the Poetry of Angel Gonzfilez As we begin, in Chapter I, to look through Gonzfilez* poetry for the presence of irony, we are first struck by a number of poems which thematically treat ironic awareness and the sense of otherness and separation which it engenders. They indicate that the ironic perception creates a sense of alienation, not only from the natural world, but also from those facets of the self — physical and mental— which necessarily continue to function in the world. This experience of self-alienation is expressed technically in many of Gonzfilez* poems by the presence of two voices: a voice of demystification which states or demonstrates its awareness of the inauthenticities inherent in human experience; and a voice of demystification which reveals the ironist's nonetheless continued participation in mystified ways of thinking and being. This infiltration of the empirical, inauthentic component of the self compromises the ironist's use of language as a means to self-differentiation. Ultimately, of course, it introduces doubt into the notion of language as a faultless means of cornnunication truth.

We may recall that de Man describes the development of ironic language as a spiraling away from meaning. The straining of the connection between language and meaning has its source In the ironist's awareness of his condition of duality. As this 14 awareness grows, the presence of mystifications and inauthenticities in his language becomes more apparent. That is to say, as ironic language develops, the limitations of language are increasingly foregrounded. This is the process we see in the poems considered in the first chapter. Mystified or everyday ways of perceiving and expressing reality are set forth and then undermined by the presence of another, demystifying perception and language. This undermining is increasingly apparent — typographical devices come to be used to explicitly signal irruptions of the demystifed perspective which, in turn, deviates more and more from the mystified vision. Thus, the presence of the demystified perspective points, ever more explicitly, to the fallibility of language, to its failure to carry meaning unequivocably.

This doubt regarding the possibilities of language is not, however, fully expanded at this point. The demystified perspective reveals the falsity of the mystified vision. It is to a degree called into question by the presence of the mystified perspective in the text yet these poems leave us with the very strong sense that the demystifying view of things is the right one. We can account for this, perhaps, by recalling that the language of interiority (i.e., consciousness) is traditionally considered the medium of lyric poetry and so may naturally be accorded priority by the reader. At any rate, the ironic, demystifying voice In these texts Is left largely intact — a more "truthful” linguistic mode against which to measure the fallibility of other kinds of language. The poems considered in Chapter II demonstrate a change In the focus and in the Interaction between the two voices of ironic duality. Those texts which deal thematically with the ironic experience of alienation from the natural world and from the empirical side of the self show a more extreme experience of duality: extreme In the sense that the awareness of difference between the two terms is intensified; and also extreme In the sense that the fusion of the two Is more intimately felt. Duality, after all, both distinguishes and joins. With the intensified awareness of duality, the ironist is more aware of the purely linguistic nature of his

Ironic self and so attention focusses more specifically on the linguistic aspects of the empirical and the ironic self. Thus, the

Ironic duality of voice manifests itself now in terms of a contrast between a logocentric voice which posits the power of language to fully convey meaning, and a decentered voice which manipulates language in order to reveal Its limitations. Questions regarding language — its possibilities and its limitations— are now explicit and central.

Whereas the poems seen previously alternated between mystified and demystified ways of seeing the world and of using language, the poems now to be considered demonstrate a superimposition of the two voices and visions. The words of the text simultaneously support both the experience of the text as an embodiment of meaning, and the experience of the text as an undoing of meaning. This takes several forms — self -ref lectiveness, textual punning, collage— all of which ultimately leave the reader at an impasse. Neither the logocentric 16 voice nor the decentered voice Is definitively discredited within the text. Neither has, so to speak, the last word.

Thus, doubt regarding the powers of language continues into

these poems, but it is a more "balanced" doubt. In the poems in the first chapter doubt regarding the capabilities of language is

relatively certain. That is to say, the texts leave us relatively secure in the belief that the language of the text is untrustworthy and that that untrustworthiness is the ultimate message of the text.

Not so in the poems to be considered In the second chapter. They demonstrate what we might call "doubt to the second degree" — doubt turned in on itself. The duality, the presence of two ways of using language undeniably raises questions concerning the viability of language and those questions are now left to a greaterdegree unanswered. Doubt indicates the possibility of failure, but also the possibility of success.

■Finally, in Chapter III we see duality in Gonz&lez* production in its at once most schismatic, and most intimately experienced manifestation. The poems looked at in this chapter all make use of second-person discourse — whether explicitly or not— as a means of positing the two facets of the Ironic self as wholly separate subjects. In nearly all of these poems ("Hecho," perhaps being the only exception) the poetic voice speaks from a position of knowledge and/or wholeness to a dispossessed, uncomprehending "tu" mired In the experiences of the empirical world. Although only one voice speaks, the Ironic duality is nonetheless maintained while the other remains

In the text as interlocutor and as such conditions the discourse. 17

Whereas the poems seen In Chapter II demonstrate the radicallzation

of Ironic duality on the level of language, these do so on the level

of experience: the experience Which is thematiclzed; and also the

experience which is the reading (and also, one supposes, the

creation) of the text — the fusion of the speaker and Interlocutor.

Thus, the other, empirical facet of the self is posited as completely

exterior to the poetic speaker through the use of second-person discourse, even as the dynamic of the poem reveals a process of

interior!zatlon of the other (on a real rather than on a linguistic level) by the speaker which culminates in the fusion of the two.

With the further intensification of the experience of duality comes a change in the poet's use of language. All along, indications of the fallibility of language by the demystified or decentered facet of the self have carried the seed of Its negation: silence. In these poems that negation occurs In the denial of voice to the empirical aspect of the self and also In those moments in which the speaker also assumes his condition of silence. These presences of silence in the text represent the break between language and meaning that all of the preceding tensions have been pointing toward insofar as the absence of voice In these moment conveys a plenitude of meaning of which linguistic expression Is apparently Incapable. Clearly, however, language Is not rejected out of hand, for the text that surrounds It and in fact creates It, remains. The terms of duality present themselves In these poems in the most basic, yet most extreme articulation thus far: speech and silence. 18

Thus, It Is with the understandtrig of Irony as a variable response to the world, provocative of a sense of otherness and self- divlsiveness in the Individual, that we now turn our attention to

Gonzfilez' poetry in order to consider the expression of that response as duality of voice in the text. Notes

I Angel Gonzfilez, Poemas (Madrid: Ed. C&tedra, 1980) 13.

^ D. C. Muecke, Irony and the Ironic (London: Methuen, 1970) 31. 8 Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire: Modem Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde, Trans. Rachel Phillips (Cambrldege: Uhiv. of Harvard Press, 1974) 17.

4 Paz 30

5 Paz 79

^ Charles Baudelaire, "De 1 'essence du rlre," Oeuvres Completes (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1968) 373*

? Paul de Man, "Rhetoric of Temporality," Blindness and Inslgit (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983) 213.

8 De Man 213 9 De Man 219

10 De Man 220

II De Man 222

Alan Wilde, Horizons of Assent. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination ^Philadelphia: TRiiv. of Pennsylvania Press, 19577 T9. 13 Wilde 15-16

14 Paz 150-151

15 Paz 159-155 16 Paz 158

Predric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," Tie Anti-Aesthetic Hal Poster, ed. (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983") 125.

19 20

Jean Baudrlllard, "The Ecstasy of Carmunlcatlon," The Anti- Aesthetic Hal Poster, ed. (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983) 13-14.

19 Baudrlllard 133

2® Jameson 119-120

21 Baudrlllard 132 CHAPTER I

THE VOICES OF MTSHFICATICN AND DEMYSTIFICATICN

Introduction

Scattered throughout Gonz&lez' production are poems in which the poet takes as theme his dual condition as my stifled/demy stifled being. Poems 3uch as "Reflexidn prlmera" and "A que mlrar" contain explicit statements of ironic awareness. Such awareness is Informed by a sense of otherness, for the ironist perceives his temporal nature to be distinct from the world in which he exists and which he is therefore prevented from understanding or experiencing fully. This sense of alienation is extended to facets of his own being: his physical being, and also that region of his consciousness which must function on an everyday level or which has became inculcated with mystified modes of perception. It does not escape him that he is inextricably emeshed In those very phenomena he feels so keenly to be distinct from his consciousness. All of these manifestations of separation, otherness, and self-divisive ness are present as themes In Gonz&lez' work in poems such as "Lecciones de cosas," "Prueba," and

"Cumpleafios." By looking first at several poems which deal thematically with the duality Implied by Ironic awareness and then at some which deal thematically with the symptoms of that duality — a sense of separation from nature, from the body, and from mystified

21 22

consciousness— we will see the conceptual source of a poetic device

pervasive In Gonzfilez' work, that is, the presence in a single text

of a duplicity of voice.

Irony as Theme

"Reflexion primera" belongs to section II of Sin esperanza, con conveneImlento. The title establishes reflection as the particular mode of Ironic awareness which will be created and re-created by the rest of the text. The poem will therefore be Informed by a sense of otherness which, as Paz points out, is a condition of reflection:

Reason tends to spilt off from itself. Every time it reflects on Itself, it discovers it is other. Reason aspires to unity, but, unlike divinity, neither comes to rest nor identifies Itself with unity . . . If unity becomes reflective it becomes other: it perceives itself as otherness.1

The text will be therefore a meditation on what the poet is not — a definition of the self, not in terms of its substance, but in terms of that which controls its parameters. Reflection also implies a certain spontaneity, a measure of flexibility with regard to the treatment of its object — a personal meditation rather than a systematic, scientific exposition. We should expect, therefore, that this text will be a definitive statement. The second term of the title corroborates this. This is the "first" reflection because there will be a second, indeed an indefinite number of reflections to follow. Hie implication of otherness and of provisional!ty to be created by the text are thus expanded Indefinitely, both in range 23

and depth, beyond it. And there is a deferment of significance, the

implication that this is a tentative, first try and so its message

much also be taken tentatively. The reflection itself thus becomes a

form doubly empty: empty because it has at its center the hollow left

by the external limitations of the self; empty because its temporal

contingency removes even that hollow from the sphere of

significance.

The first two strophes of the poem develop the title's

Indications of otherness and contingency in terms of the everyday human routine of waking up and starting the day:

1 Despertar para encontrarme esto: la vida asi dispuesta, el cielo 5 turbio, la lluvia que lame los cristales.

Abrir los ojos para ver lo mismo, poner el cuerpo en marcha para andar 10 lo mismo, comenzar a vivir, pero sabiendo el fracaso final de la hora ultima. (75)

Prom the first word of the text, ''despertar," we are reminded that the matter at hand is one of awareness, and the verb phrases that follow — "abrir los ojos," "poner en marcha," "comenzar a vivir"— confirm and widen the sense of new awareness. The object of that awareness is suggested in line 3 as 'the true disposition of life,' but its specific content is not confirmed until the last line of the second strophe: "el fracaso final de la hora Gltima." "La vida as! di spues ta" has an ominous tone of irrevocability which removes from the subject the possibility of intervention. This sense of

powerlessness and hence separation is confirmed by the references to

the natural world which follow. The sky is dark and impenetrable,

and he is separated from the rain by the windowpanes. He is on the

inside looking out. The normal values of that phrase are inverted to

create a feeling of exclusion but at the same time of enclosure, with

the self occupying an unelaborated space defined only by the

pressures exerted on it fran the outside. The sense of entrapment is

enhanced by the repetition of the verbs in the infinitive form (we

cannot conceive of change except in time” and by “the repetition of

the object of the verb phrases as "lo mismo." Referring to them in

the abstract is perhaps a way of refusing to focus on the concrete

realities of human life. Such evasion however is disallowed by the

conclusion of the second strophe. The disposition of life that the

poem is dealing with is its nature as something that ends: "el

fracaso final de la hora ultima” leaves no doubt but that what the

self is concerned with expressing is his awareness of the finality of

death.

Although he gives voice to such awareness, that is, of course,

all that he can do with his knowledge. The complements of all the

initial infinitive phrases belie he nevertheless continued

functioning in the world, the incapacity of his knowledge to affect his experience of the world. He wakens "para encontrarme esto"; he

opens his eyes "para ver": both imply a search for meaning, an

intention on the part of the subject is suggested by the preposition para. He rouses his body "para andar," and begins to live. Life may 25 be "asl dispuesta" but the subject is clearly living it anyway. We

are necessarily aware of this subtle contradiction present since the

beginning of the text at the close of the strophe where the poet

gives us the definitive formula: living with the knowledge of death, awareness of life as an empty exercise.

The poet now directs himself to God — certainly a notion which could stand between human consciousness and the reality of death, or

perhaps a means of escape for those who wish to deny their awareness.

The poet addresses the deity in order to refuse him:

Si esto es la vida, Dios, si 6s te es tu obsequio, 15 te doy las gracias — graclas— y te digo: Gu&rdalo para ti y para tus Sngeles.

Me hace dafto la luz con que me alumbras, me enloquece tu musica de p&Jaros, 20 pesa tu cielo demasiado, oprlme, aplasta, bajo y gris, como una losa.

Todo est6 bien, lo se. Th orden 25 se cumple.

He identifies life as God's gift and by imnediately refusing it, negativizes the notion of divine generosity. In the following strophe, therefore, those things generally viewed as God's gifts to the world — light, birds, sky— are presented as harmful. The sense of oppression created by the allusions to sky and rain In the first strophe is now expanded to other phenomena associated with the sky and with God: the ligit hurts, the music of the birds is ennervatlng, the sky itself, merely "turbio" in the first strophe, is 26 now heavy and "oprime, aplasta, bajo y gris, como una losa." Again there Is a sense of containment, of outside pressure being exerted on

the self. The response of the subject Is diminished In this second sequence. In the first two strophes, the actions of the self gave at least the Illusion of an ability to affect his reality — he was aware, he was moving, he was beginning to live. In the third strophe, however strong the emotion behind his words, they don’t pretend to be anything other than words, not very effectual but merely sarcastic words. After reading the first strophe we know that it is not so simple a matter that the poet can Just refuse to participate in life because he doesn't like its rule. Everything In the first sequence of the poem created a sense of closure in spite of the will of the subject, so the declaration of the third strophe can hardly be perceived as more than an angry yet futile response. This is confirmed in the next strophe by the repeated positioning of the poetic voice as object in the sentence. Likewise, the use of

Intangible phenomena — light, music, sky— as oppressive elements lends them a material quality while at the same time it lets us imagine that material pressure as limitless. Like the first sequence, this one ends with an explicit statement of awareness of his predicament: "Todo est& bien, lo se. // TU orden // se cumple.” The final sequence of the poem attempts to focus on the interiority of the poetic voice:

Pero alguien envenen6 las fuents de mi vida, y mi corazon es pasion Inutil, odio 27 30 ciego, amor desorbitado, crisol donde se funden contrariedades con contradicciones. Y ml voluntad sigue, lnutllmente, 35 empeflada en la lucha mfis terrible: vivir lo mismo que si tu exlstleras. (75-76)

His enumeration of the substance of his interior!ty —passion, hate,

love, contrarities and contradictions— suffers the samenegative

conversion that occured in the previous sequences. Those forces we

think of as the essences of life and self are marked as tainted

before they are recounted and further emptied of meaning by their

qualifiers: the passion is empty, the hate is blind, the love is

exaggerated. These forces continue to exist but they are contained

within the speaker and cannot move outside him to effect the world.

He himself perceives them as closed forms, empty of meaning. Again,

not he but rather sane unnamed cruel power is the agent of this meaninglessness — "alguien enveneno las fuentes de mi vida." The

last strophe gives us the text's final definition of "la vida as!

dispuesta" and its consequences for the individual. Life is the

struggle to live as though God, and not death, were the ultimate human reality. The poon's sense of divisiveness is continued in the first words of the strophe with the reference to "mi voluntad." We know that the consciousness of the poetic voice does not function as

though death did not exist, as thou^i there were an identification between God, the self, and the world. His will, then, must be a different entity which struggles to continue functioning in a system of belief. Two beings are clearly Indicated within the self: a 28 consciousness which possesses an ironic awareness, and a ’’will" which continues to desire and pretend to an existence of identification and wholeness. The divisiveness is also created by the adverb

"inutilmente," for the consciousness must be separate from the will in order to reflect on it and to make such an assessment of its activity. Hie use of the hypothetical construction in the last line constitutes a final assertion of awareness — that the truth is that

God does not exist.

Poems like "Reflexi6n prime raM are truly central pieces in

Gonz&lez' production for they provide a key to that large part of his work which is informed by irony. In Its most basic sense, Irony is a matter of demystification, of the awareness and identification of certain ways of thinking and being as false, built up form a desire to avoid the facts of human temporality as we perceive them. Such a process of mystification is expressed explicitly also in "A qu6 mirar" of Aspero mundo:

Preferible es no ver. 10 Meter las manos en un oscuro panorama, y no saber qu§ es esto que aferramos, en un puro af§n de lncertidumbre, de mentlra. 15 Porque la verdad duele. (22)

One facet of irony Is the division of consciousness. Hie ironist recognizes himself as a divided being: a duality with one eye turned outward away from the truth In order that the self be able to 29 continue to runetlon In the world and one eye turned Inward, always

aware of the self's true, mortal nature. This simultaneity of vision

has its corollary in the voice of the self — even as he speaks the

truth (and speaking it is the only contact he can have with the

truth) he reveals his voice as also false because it is part of the human world. So, as Gonz&lez concludes in the Introductory poem to

Grado elemental, "Lecciones de cosas": "Sucede entonces, // que si habla, el hembre, aunque no quiera, miente." (133)

The ironist’s sense of separation from the natural world derives from his awareness of human mortality in a world that does not share such consciousness of being mortal. The Impossibility of identity with the natural or cosmic world slg-ials the impossibility of somehow "sharing" or "borrowing" the a temporality of the natural world. Unlike the Romantic response to nature, the ironist of more recent times can neither project his interiority onto nature not interpret its phenomena as lessons or messages to aid in his introspection. It is instead the entity against which he defines himself and which in some ways may define him. In this latter sense, nature may exercise a process of reification on man, touching on only the physical being which is subject to the laws and dangers of the natural world without regard for his assumed position of superiority above the other creatures of the world. Baudelaire's example of the man falling In the street Is particularly illustrative, as de Man coments:

As a being that stands upright . . . man comes to believe that he dominates nature, Just as he can, at times, 30 dominate others or watch others dominate him. This is, of coarse, a major mystification. The Pall, in the literal as well as the theological sense, reminds him of the purely Instrumental, reified character of his relationship to nature. Nature can at all times treat him as if he were a thing and remind him of the factitiousness, whereas he is quite powerless to convert even the smallest particle of nature into something human.’

Nature gives the measure of man's possibilities and limitations. It is man's way to measure and define what he is not, testimony to his condition of difference and otherness.

"Lecciones de cosas,” the introductory poem of Grado elemental, takes as its theme man's relationship to the world around him. The title suggests that man may learn a lessen from those things which conprise his world. The reading of the text does bring us along to consider the relationship of humanity to the natural and cosmic world, but the lesson it provides is not one drawn by analogy. It does not offer a greater understanding of the natural world and of our place in It, but rather creates an experience of separation and otherness.

In the first two strophes of the poem, the poetic voice offers two pictures of the world: on a cosmic level the movement of the sun, and them on a terrestrial level the activity of the ants. In the first strophe, what Is being contemplated Is an autumn sunset:

1 Por encima del campo paso el mes de septiembre. Qulz& el ultimo sol del otoffo — antes de que las lluvias lleguen— sea este 5 sol en periplo rfipido (entre rosadas nubos) hacia su lejano destino, arrebatado de todos los espacios 31 por la clega atraccion de otro cuerpo celeste. 10 (Consultense estos nambres en una enclclopedia: galaxla, paralaje, azlmut, Newton, auge.) (131)

Typographical devices foreground the presence of a second voice which

adds to the primary depiction in line 3-4, 5, and 10-11. Each of

these interruptions represents an attempt on the part of its speaker

to maintain same grasp of the processes of nature. The reference to

the arrival of the rains suggests man's ability to predict the ways

of nature; the added detail of the pink clouds, points to his ability

to perceive natural beauty and to capture it in words. We must

recognize, though* that being aware of the change of seasons and of

the colors of the sunset are hardly remarkable feats of awareness,

but rather pathetic shows of knowledge of the natural world. The

final reference to an encyclopedia is a bolder show of control,

suggesting as it does that the volumes written by men — even the

names given to those phenomena by men— are sufficient to understand theworkings of the universe. The language which depicts the natural event, quite to the contrary, pretends no sense of control over or understanding of the natural world it describes. The month of

September, signalling the changing seasons, occurs "por encima del campo" — clearly beyond the terrestrial level of man. His statement about the sunset is given as conjecture, introduced by qulz&, and depicted as the result of mysterious, powerful forces: the sun's destiny is "distant," it is "whipped away" by a "blind attraction" to another heavenly body. This certainly is not language which professes to understand the machinations of the cosmos. Indeed, did 32 this strophe not lead us to question what we think we know about the world, we might be tempted to say that it is plainly wrong, that is is not the departure of the sun which creates our experience of the sunset, but rather the rotation of the Earth. We see in this strophe, therefore, the two voices of the ironic consciousness: a demystified voice which expresses the natural phemonena of the sunset in a language which reveals it as a mystery to humanity, and a mystified voice which speaks in apparently objective language, but which nonetheless constitutes a major mystification because it professes an understanding of how the world works.

In the second strophe and the line which follows it, the poet turns his gaze away from the cosmos and onto the Earth, onto the activity of the ants:

De cualquier forma, no es preciso mirar hacia lo alto para maravillarse. Sorteando las — para ellas— corpulent as 15 briznas de hierba, m&s cerca de la tierra aun que nosotros, he aqul a las hormigas (Hormigas: insectos himenfipteros que viven asociados. Vease tanibiSn: abejas.) 20 esforzSndose por llevar otro grano a su granero. Conscientes — me parece— de la proximidad de la estaci6n lluviosa, intensifican 25 su actividad, con IntenciSn, sin duda, de aprovechar al mSximo el tiempo que les queda.

Imi tamoslas.

The first two lines of the strophe continue the established pattern of self-contradiction (a manifestation of duplicity of voice) in that the poetic voice here denies the value of what he has said thus far 33 — the first example of the cosmos now seems gratuitous. He also here gives a name to the mode of the lesson: "maravillarse." With its connotations of contemplation and wonder, this verb defines the relationship of the reader/student as one of otherness and even of inferiority with regard to the natural world, subject of the lesson referred to in the title. The depiction of the ants’ activity which follows both confirms a sense of the mysterious and the unknown and demonstrates a pretention of knowledge of, and even superiority to, what is being contemplated, once again through the presence of two voices in the text.

As in the first strophe, typographical devices make obvious the presence of two voices as the description of the ants' struggles is

Interrupted by: "— para ellas— "Hormigas: insectos hlmenopteros que viven // asociados. Vease tambien: abejas.)1', and "— me parece— ." The insertion of "— para ellas— " demonstrates a mystified perception on two counts. "First because it carries an implication of superiority on the part of the speaker — the grass is an obstacle for the ants given their miniscule size relative to man.

Even more basically, such a comnent is a mystification because it establishes a mode of analogy between man and the natural world, as two terms of a comparison possible only because they are alike. Hie parenthetical, dictionary-type entry on the ants boasts man's ability to Identify and understand the life workings of the ants (i.e., nature). Likewise the conjecture ("— me parece— ") about the ants' intentions demonstrates the speaker's confidence in his ability to interpret their activity. 34 In addition to these obvious interruptions, there are other more subtle intrusions of this mystified voice in the text. The fifth line of the strophe ("m&s cerca de la tierra afin que nosotros") continues the mode of analogy initiated in the "— para ellas— The presence of this voice is evident in his presentation of the ants for contemplation ("he aqui a las hormigas") with its implications of control over the creatures. The mystified voice is also able to

Interpret "sin duda" the Intentions of the tiny creatures and projects onto them a very human concept of time: making the most of

It.

The actual description of the ants' activity is expressed In another language whose tone, rather than pedagogical, Is one of marvel. Marvel, in the first place, that the ant3 fine their way through the thick grasses. The reader is plunged into a mysterious, unknown world with the perception of the grasses as a thick wood.

The ants' instinctive awareness of the impending change of seasons is evidenced by their increased activity but it is not explained except by the mystified voice with Its expression of certainty. We hear In this strophe, therefore, one voice which assuredly interjects its

Interpretation of the natural event into the expression of another, which describes this natural phenomenon in a tone of wonder.

Following the second strophe is a single line: "Imitemoslas."

It Is a rather paradoxical admonition in that it at once expresses otherness and encourages analogy. We can imitate them only after contemplating them, reflecting on their activity, a process which, of course, requires a differentiation of the two terms we and them. 35 This contradicts the suggested possibility of an analogical relationship between the two terms — we can be like them only if we are other to them. This line condenses into one word all that has cane before — man’s desire to be like nature, to be part of nature, to understand nature; and his relationship of otherness and separation frcm nature, the impossibility of his understanding the workings of the natural world and his place in it.

The fourth strophe continues the pattern of self-contradiction which has pervaded the text thus far:

Pero como los dias son cortos (el sol se pone 30 hacia las diecisiete y treinta y cinco, y la luna, aunque llena hoy y en Libra no brlllarS. en el cielo hasta muy tarde) utilicemos 35 la Gltima luz para llenar los ojos con tanta realidad abrumadora: (131-132)

The ’'Pero” which begins the strophe refuses the adnonition to imitate the increased activity of the ants. Though intended to make the most of the time that remains, it confirms the mode of activity open to man which was first expressed in the second strophe as

"maravillarse." What we must do is "llenar los ojos.” We can see and be aware of natural phenomena, but we cannot be likened to them through Imitation. The language of this admonition does not profess to understand, nature remains for this poetic voice a "realidad abrumadora." It Is interrupted, however, by the other, mystified voice, tenacious in its desire for understanding and control of the natural world. It expresses Itself in this strophe as 36 knowing precisely how much light Is left — the sun will set at 5:35,

the moon will be full although It will not shine until very late.

Once again, typography emphasizes the duplicity of voice in the

text.

The fifth strophe is an enumeration of sane of the components of

the "realidad abrumadora" which surrounds man:

cosas que son y que no son, como este rio distlnto cada instante 40 a su imediato proximo pas ado fluvial cadfiver que en la mar descansa; cosas que sobrevlven en su forma siempre provisional, mas sin embargo tenazmente buscada, 45 igual que esa lejana cordlllera pullda por ventiscas y glaciares; vidas que se desviven poco a poco vlvificando con su lenta muerte nuevas muestras de flora y de palsaje.

In this strophe there Is no attempt to explain, to evidence knowledge of why the natural world occurs,as It does (except perhaps In the philosophical allusion to Heraclitus.) The first line of the strophe, "cosas que son y que no sen" establishes the paradoxical mode in which the natural world is depicted, consonant with its description as "realidad abrumadora." The river Is the river, yet It differs at every instant; the form of the mountain range is carefully elaborated, yet always provisional; life drains away from the countryside even as death gives it life. This voice is aware of the processes of the natural world, yet proffers no understanding nor explanation of them beyond simple observation. The voice Is demystified, yet beset by mystery. 37 The fusion of the mystified and demystified voices recurs in the sixth strophe, in a more subtle form than in earlier strophes:

50 Hostil y sometido, entregado y violento, 6ste es el escenario y el soporte del hombre.

This statement represents a mystification in that it appears to conclude and to confirm that what has come before has been a complete and accurate exposition of man's reality. This attitude is further expressed in a series of words {"sometido," "entregado," "sorporte") which suggests that man has control over nature and that its powers are at his disposal, delivered up just as the mystified voice now claims to have delivered to the reader/student an adequate understanding of the world, of the "things" referred to In the title.

Also present, however, Is the demystified voice, aware of the mysterious powers of nature, which does not perceive nature as something controlled by man, but rather as a separate force, hostile and violent, the scene against which man's existence transpires.

The next to the last strophe of the poem offers a kind of history of man of the Earth:

Aqul vlvi6 su oscura, 55 su dolorosa infancia, reci§n llegado apenas a este recinto despiadado y hums do, invitado del azar y de nadle, 60 lnesperado hu6sped de los bosques, usurpador del reino de las fieras y de los ciegos tercos vegetales, fiera insaciable 61 mismo que consigulo matar cuanto negaba 38

65 su deseo, que aupo rescatar de los lncendios el calor y la luz, y oponer a los vlento las extensas y blancas velas de las naves, 70 y detener o derramar las aguas sobre la tierra exhausta y arafiada, mordida, rota, transformada, doc11 como un cuerpo vencldo o disfrutado. (132-133)

These lines also contain mystified and demystified language, sanewhat more difficult to distinguish than in the earlier moments of the poem. Hie explicit message of these lines is one of mystification —

they depict man as the conqueror of the animal and vegetable world, and of the four elements fire, wind, water, and earth. The first seven lines, however, retain the tone of mystery which evidences the voice of the demystified speaker. These initial lines portray the genesis of a humanity at the mercy of natural and supernatural powers beyond its control and understanding. Man’s experience of the world is obscure and painful; the scene in which it occurs is pitiless and dank. His reason for being there remains a mystery — nan came to

Earth "invitado // del azar y de nadie." This presentation of the human experience is negated in the rest of the strophe which chronicles in epic language man's gain of control over all that comprises our world.

The final stroihe of the poem constitutes an explicit statement of ironic awareness, the moment in which the demystified voice tells us that it is aware of its dual condition, of its failure to carry out a purely demystifying function:

Esta es, en fin, la clara piedra 75 donde su incierta historla queda escrita. 39 y si a veces lo olvida, si vuelve su mirada hacia otra parte lntentando extraer de lo ya abstracto una idea conereta que lo explique, 80 todo es lo mismo ya. Sucede entonces que si habla, el hombre, aunque no quiera, miente.

The first two lines of the strophe echo the attempt of the speaker in

the sixth strophe to offer his words as a truthful perception of

reality. Hence the presence of the mystified voice even at this final moment of revealing the falsehood of man's belief in his knowledge of and control over the natural world. Hie second sentence of the strophe expresses awareness of man's creation of metaphysical constructs which turn his attention away from the natural world, the contemplation of Which leads to the painful realization of the difference between cyclical, apparently Infinite natural time, and the unilinear and finite human time. The final line of the poem expresses the poet’s awareness of his own dual condition, evidenced in all that has come before in the continual presence of two voices in the text. Man cannot understand the natural world because its temporality is essentially different from his cwn. He therefore cannot give expression to the natural world in words without scmehow falsifying it. Since the natural world ^s his reality, the reality with which his words must deal, all words, including his own, are lies.

The moment of ironic perception is "the instant at which the two selves, the empirical as well as the ironic, are simultaneously present, Juxtaposed within the same moment but as two 40 Irreconcilable and disjointed beings. "** The ironic consciousness, while recognizing its indissoluble bond to the body, perceives it as essentially different. It desires, therefore, to treat It as a separate entity. As de Man points cut:

Almost simultaneously with the first duplication of the self, by means of which a purely "linguistic" subject replaces the original self, a new disjunction has to take place. The temptation at once arises for the Ironic subject to construe its function as one of assistance to the original self and to act as if it existed for the sake of the world-bound person. This results in . . . a betrayal of the Ironic mode. Instead, the ironic subject at once has to ironize its own predicament and observe in turn . . . the temptation to which it I3 about to succumb. ^

The relationship to the body (which signifies continued participation

In an inauthentic world) is thus continued and acknowledged by the

Ironic consciousness at the same time that the body Is relegated to a status of difference and alienation.

The relationship of the ironic consciousness to the body Is the theme of "Prueba," In the section entitled "Lecclones de cosas" of

Orado elemental. The title of the poem immediately establishes the ambivalence with which the text will treat the matter. Is the text being offered as a "proof" of the relationship between body and consciousness as the poetic voice perceives It? Or Is this a try, an attempt at establishing that relationship, with all the connotations of failure, or at least of provisional!ty that this other meaning of the word "prueba" carries?

The first strophe of the poem does not resolve, but rather confirms the confusion provoked by the title: ill

1 De todas formas, tengo todavla este papel, la pluma y la mano derecha que la aprieta, 5 y el brazo que la llga con el cuerpo para que no se quede — tan distante y lejana— corao un desarraigado objeto extrafio — clnco dedos movi6ndose, 10 marchSndo por el suelo, igual que un suclo animal acosado por la escoba . . . (142)

The literal message of the strophe is of the connection of the consciousness with the body, most specifically the hand: "tengo todavia . . . la mano derecha." It is nonetheless infused with language which denies the value of the connection and also its directness and strength. The first line negativizes the possessions that the poet goes on to enumerate by referring to the loss of something else apparently held by the poetic voice to be more valuable. The hand is mentioned third in importance, after the piece of paper and pen that remain to the poet. And, although the arm is mentioned as the connector between the hand and the rest of the body, more than an instrument of unity it seems to emphasize the distance between the hand and the central body. The remaining eight lines of the strophe depict a complete disjunction between the hand and the consciousness by referring to it as distant and as "un desarraigado objeto extrafio," and also through the image of the hand moving autonomously across the floor. The likening of the hand to a dirty animal swept away by a brocm completely negativizes the hand/body facet of the poetic voice, as well as revealing that 3ense of 42

superiority that the ironic consciousness desires to assume.

Although these last lines are not presented as fact (the arm links

the hand to the body so that such a disjunction is not the case)

such an impression is nonetheless achieved.

The second strophe creates the same ambivalent attitude

expressed in the first:

Esto es algo, 15 repito, si se tiene en cuenta esa admirable prueba de la existencia de Dios constituida por el perfecto funclonamlento de mis centros nerviosos que transmlten las ordenes que emite mi cerebro 20 a las costas leJanas de mis extremidades.

The significance of the connection lies in its Interpretation

as prueba of God’s existence, that is, in the possibility of viewing its organic quality as symbol of a larger world totality. Although

the voice seems here to be claiming that the connection is proof of

God’s existence, it nonetheless repeats the rather negativizing "De todas formas, tengo todavia’’ of the first strophe with a similarly pejorative "Esto es algo," suggesting perhaps that this body/consciousness connection is all that remains by way of proof of

God’s existence. As such it seems a solution somewhat tainted by desperation. The rather grandiose language with which the connection is depicted contributes to the reader's perception of exaggeration, as well as the contrast between "esa admirable prueba de la existencia de Dios" and the reference to the very same thing in the first strophe as "un sucio // animal acosado por la escoba." Were 43

this not enough to subvert a literal acceptance of what the voice

says, the ambiguity of "prueba" remains. Are the workings of the

human hand "proof" of God's existence, or are they a means of testing

the validity of the organic view of the world here placed in doubt?

The third strophe is the axis of the poem:

Pienso: la tarde muere y ml mano escribe: la tarde 25 muere. Ergo Dios existe.

The literal message of the strophe is that there is a connection

between body and consciousness (with an appeal to cartesian logic)

and that this connection is evidence of the existence of God. As in

the previous strophes, however, the literal message is systematically

subverted. The two different subjects in the first sentence express

a distinction between the consciousness which thinks and the hand

which writes. This distinction is reinforced by the written

separation of the thought into two lines by the hand. The hand is

apparently functioning in a spatial dimension not applicable to the

consciousness, or at least foreign to it. The consciousness does not

belong to the physical world and the hand does, hence the faultiness

of the connection and the mystification of the subsequent conclusion:

"Ergo Dios existe." With this strophe the question of the meaning of

prueba is resolved. In fact, this strophe is the "prueba" — a test of the connections between body and consciousness whose results

disprove a perfect, organic relationship. 44

The next strophe of the poem, while apparently accepting the

explicit conclusion of the preceding strophe repeats the test carried

out just previously in a process of gradual degradation:

Que f&cil es, ahora, lntegrarse en un mundo ordenado y perfecto, cuando se dispone de una mano tan vail03a, 30 tan materia de prueba, tan cuerpo de delito. Mano, fr6tame la cabeza. Mano, acercame la si11a. Desabr6chale 35 el cors§ a esa muchacha — y tG, la otra, no te quedes quieta. Coge todo el dinero, mano: lncendia, 40 mata. (142-143)

The initial statement that it is now easy to see oneself as part of an ordered and perfect world belies a note of bad faith by recalling that same anteriority referred to initially in the first and second strophes in which other realms (other than the hand) were searched in hopes of finding proof of God’s existence, a search apparently fruitless (since the hand is all that remains) and so abandoned. The value of the hand now referred to has already been qualified by its performance in the previous strophe and is here further questioned as it becomes the instrument of actions which range from the mundane to the blatantly sexual to the most violent of possibilities. Thus it is demonstrated that even though the consciousness/body connection may be as direct as the corrmands to the hand seem to suggest, the connection itself is not inherently good, but rather can be quite destructive. Hie direction to the hand at the end of the strophe to 45 rob, bum, and kill clearly contradicts the initial characterization of the ordered and perfect world of which it supposedly forms an organic part. So, at the same time that the voice in this strophe offers up the hand as a valuable instrument of integration into a perfect world, it offers evidence of its ability to carry out destructive, or at least non-constructive actions. Whereas previous strophes subverted the literal meaning in order to show the faultiness of the consciousness/body connection, this last strophe questions the inherent value of such a connection.

The last strophe of the poem reiterates, on a literal level, assertions made previously concerning the significance of the consciousness/body connection:

Por lo tanto se prueba una vez m£Ls, como decla, 45 el orden natural y preexistente, la amonica hermosura de las cosas. this strophe, in combination with the preceding one, is a repetition of the "prueba" of the third strophe: the actions depicted in the fourth strophe being a kind of test of the value of the consciousness/body connection (with clearly negative results), and the fifth strophe an attempt to conclude logically that the evidence presented indicates the organic nature of the world as including man.

Again there is reference to an anteriority ("el orden natural y preexistente") whose presence has punctuated the entire text, and which relegates this "test" of God's existence and of man's inclusion in the organic workings of the world to the status of a 46

last-ditch effort at affirmation.

We have seen throughout the text therefore a duality of vision.

Present in the repeated reference to an anteriority and in the demonstration of the faultiness and nejptivity of the

consciousness/body connection is a demystified view of the world which does not perceive the human as forming part of the totality of

the world. There is also a mystified vision, present in the literal message of the text that the body/consciousness connection is complete and plausible as evidence of God’s existence and of man's inclusion in the organic totality of the world.

The individual who perceives the world ironically is unique in a world of everyday matters and common perceptions. The ironic perception is a vision of difference and otherness. The modern ironist therefore sees himself as separate from the world around him and from his own physical being. The sense of 3e If -alienation experienced with regard to the body may extend even further inward, leading to a sense of otherness with regard to that region of consciousness which necessarily continues to function on an everyday level. This divided consciousness is expressed thematically in

"Cumpleahos,” in the first section of Aspero mundo also entitled

"Aspero mundo":

1 Yo lo noto: como me voy volviendo menos cierto, confuso, disolvi6ndome en alne cotidiano, burdo 5 Jir6n de mi, deshilachado y roto por los pulos.

Yo comprendo: he vivido un afSo m&s, y eso es muy duro. 47 [Mover el corazon todoa los dlas 10 casi clen vecea por minutol

Para vlvlr un afto es necesario morlrse muchas vecea mucho. (15)

The title of the poem refers to a temporal occasion (time being a central matter of irony) often experienced as a moment of reflection, an activity also central to the ironic mode. The reflective mode

(with its necessary implications of otherness and separation) thus suggested by the title is confirmed by the first line of the text: the poetic voice is contemplating its own way of being. The duality of the speaker is immediately established in his function as both speaker and subject of the discourse to follow. The speaker (the linguistic, ironic self) can speak critically about his subject (his own empirical self) only if he perceives it as somehow distinct from his own consciousness. Such a distinction is made in the contrast between the marked awareness of "yo lo noto" and the description of the consciousness of the other self as "menos cierto, confuso." The empirical self is depicted as experiencing a progressive degradation

(as opposed to the apparently unchanging observational stance of the speaker) in which that region of consciousness becomes unstable, existing as it does in the medium of "aire cotidiano" until it is reduced to the condition of "burdo // jiron de mi," barely responding to that other facet of itself, the ironic consciousness. The final

Image of physical disintegration links the everyday consciousness to the body in its separation from the ironic consciousness. The first line of the second strophe repeats the foregrounding of the duality 48 of the poetic voice in its presentation of the voice as both speaker and subject of the discourse. Whereas the first strophe expresses

the poetic voice’s awareness of his dual condition as

mystified/demystified being (i.e., ironic/empirical being), this strophe and the remainder of the poem are statements of his

awareness of the source of that self-divisiveness. The observation

about the empirical self here is: "He vlvido // un afio m&s y eso es rnuy duro." What the linguistic self understands is the temporal nature of the empirical self and the destruction involved in its

temporality. The allusion to the heartbeat links again the physical

body with the empirical self, referring perhaps to that part of the

consciousness which controls involuntary (unconsciousness) body movements. The final sentence of the poem constitutes an explicit

statement of ironic awareness. The "morirse muchas veces mucho" heralds back to the hundred heartbeats per minute referred to at the end of the second strophe. Hence a connection of the physical being (the empirical self constituted by the everyday consciousness and the physical body) with death. With the last sentence, the ironic consciousness is stating his awareness of the everpresence of death in the human experience, as opposed to the confused, unaware state of the everyday consciousness and the involuntary physicality of the body which together constitute the empirical self — to which he is nonetheless tied. U9 Dual Linguistic Codes

The Ironic experience of self-alienation, expressed thematically in poems like "Prueba" and "Cumpleafios" is the informing principle of a great part of Gonz&lez' production. Hence the pervasiveness in his work of a duplicity of voice and vision within a single text.

Although not necessarily chronological, there is a perceptible gradation regarding the ease with which the duplicity is detected, an index perhaps of the degree to which the self-alienation is experienced. The duplicity may be relatively subtle, as in poems like "Igual que si nunc a" and "Para que me llame Angel Gonz&lez," where different linguistic codes are intermingled in a single text, or in texts like "Crisis," "El momento este," and "I. Inventario de lugares propicios al amor" in which there is a shift in tone from the ironic to the non—ironic, or vice-versa. On a second level are clear interruptions, very often signalled by dashes or parentheses. These interruptions may add to a primary depiction or narration apparently superfluous details (often regarding the weather or seasonal changes) which nonetheless bring into question the completeness and reliability of the primary voice. Such is the case in numerous poems, sane striking examples being "Aqui, Madrid, mil novecientos" and "2. Parque con zoologico." In poems such as "Interpretacion metaflsica," this kind of interruption clearly offers an alternate vision to the primary picture. And thirdly, there are poems which draw attention to the duplicity of the poetic voice — the ironic/linguistic self Which speaks Its awareness of the empirical self, subject of its speech— through parabasIs and patterns of self- 50

contradiction. Poems such as "7 • PreSmbulo a un silencio” go a step

further as the intrusive voice explicitly contradicts what has been

said by the primary voice. We see in Gonzfilez* production,

therefore, an extensive range of the possibilities and limitations of

language when it is used to express the ironic experience. We recall

that de Man describes ironic language as being progressively emptied

of meaning. Itiis Is the process that we see in the range of ironic

language in Gonzfilez' production. From texts that evidence a

relatively mild undercutting of the linguistic conventions of which

they form part to texts which are blatantly self-contradictory,

language is increasingly called into question. The Increased

foregrounding of the fallibility of language is a response to the

escalation of Ironic awareness — as the Ironist is more and more

focussed on his dual condition as mystified/demystified

(empirical/linguistic) being, he is increasingly aware of the limitations placed on his use of language by the empirical, mystified

component of the self.

The Juxtaposition of two linguistic codes within a single text

is fairly cannon to GonzSlez* poetry. It has often been indicated as

one of the means by which Gonz&lez creates complex experiences for

his readers, guiding the reader to consider various ways of thinking

and being, as they are represented by their linguistic codes. Benson

points out, for example, that the introductory poem to Aspero mundo.

"Te tuve," contains a double parody of the romantic and the empirical modes of approaching the world such that the reader Is forced to

examine the validity of each and ultimately to decide that neither is 51 sufficient In itself.^ Such a poetic device clearly responds to the

Generation of Mid-Century’s conception of poetry as a Journey of discovery, a mean3 to new perspectives on reality. It is also, in essence, an ironic device for it bespeaks a duality of vision on the part of the poetic voice — a duality which responds to the divisive nature of the ironist who perceives not only the inauthenticities of the empirical world (inauthenticities which grow from the avoidance of the facts of human temporality) but also his own participation in its ways of thinking and being.

This device is the major source of poeticity in "Igual que si nunca" of the section 11 Sob re la tarde" in Prosemas o naenos (group of poems which, although very recent, resemble strikingly the poems of time in the third section of Sin esperanza, con convenelnviento published In 1961):

5 £Es algo m&s que el dia lo que muere esta tarde? El viento iqu£ se lleva, que arenas arrebata? Desatadas de golpe, las hojas de los firbole 10 degas van por el cielo. P§.Jaros altos cruzan, se adelantan a la luz que los guia. Sanbria claridad ser& ya en otra parte 15 — por un ins tan te tan solo— madrugada.

Con banderas de humo alguien me advierte:

— Miralo todo bien; eso que pasa 20 no volverfi Jam&s y es ya Igual que si nunca hubiese sido eflmera materia de tu vlda. (328) 52

Two linguistic codes are melded in the first strophe: one which

portrays the sunset as emblematic of death and destruction and one

which portrays it as an occasion of absorption into tlmelessness,

symbolized by the sky. The initial interrogative of the poem sets up

the reader's expectations for a meditation on the destructive power

of the passage of time, melancholy in the best Machadlan tradition.

This mode is carried throughout the strophe in a series of allusions

with negative connotations: the wind which apocalyptically whips

things away, the blindness with which the leaves disappear, the

gloominess of the last light of day. The response to the initial

question: Is something more than the day dying?, and its variation:

What is the wind carrying away?, is an enumeration of the

disappearance of the leaves, birds, and daylight. The language with which these disappearances are portrayed , however, is neither negative nor melancholy. The leaves of the trees are released, untied, and they don't fall to the ground but rather are drawn to the

sky. Likewise, the birds are hif£i creatures, guided by a light in relation to which they eagerly "se adelantan." The last daylight disappears in order to become dawn elsewhere. In the first strophe, therefore, a linguistic code is present which portrays the passage of time as destructive, and also another linguistic code which, almost celebratory, posits it as a means of liberation.

The remainder of the poem suggests the relationship of the two modes of language and of the visions they imply without, however, offering a resolution to their contradiction. The nature of the relationship is suggested by an "alguien" who (as we saw in 53 "Reflexion primera") provides a demystified perspective. This

"someone" establishes that that which the poetic voice has alternately portrayed as dying and as liberated (the leaves, the birds, the light) is dead to him now — with the passing of the day its momentary part/participation in his life is empty of meaning.

Hius, the negative linguistic code does respond validly to the human consciousness of mortality. Hie voice of this someone confirms that negativity; however, it does not completely deny a relationship between man and the world but rather redefines it in terms of awareness and contemplation of the world: "Mlralo todo bien." Hence the poetic voice perceives the beauty and the celebratory aspects of the passage of time which the realm of the natural and cosmic world to be as necessary and as valid as awareness of its negativity within the human realm. Hie juxtaposition of the two linguistic codes — one which elicits a whole tradition of melancholic meditation on the passage of time, and one which celebrates the ineffectualness of time with regard to the natural world, responds to the duality of the

Ironic vision whose awareness of the difference between human and natural temporalities differentiates it from the inauthenticities of everyday human experience, but which is nevertheless limited by its humanity.

Another striking example of the intermingling of linguistic codes is "Para que yo me llame Angel Gonz&lez," the first poem of

Aspero mundo:

1 Para que yo me llame Angel Gonz&lez, para que mi ser pese sobre el suelo, 54 fue necesario un ancho espacio y un largo tiempo: 5 hombres de todo mar y toda tterra, fertlles vientre3 de nrnjer, y cuerpos y mSs cuerpos, fundlendose Incesantes en otro cuerpo nuevo. Solstlcios y equinoccios alumbraron 10 con su cambiante luz, su vario cielo, el viaje rallenario de mu came trepando por los siglos y los huesos. De su pasaje lento y doloroso, de su huida hasta el fin, sobreviviendo 15 naufragios, aferr&ndose al ultlmos susplro de los muertos, yo no soy m&s que el resultado, el fruto, lo que queda, podrido, entre los re8tos; tan s6lo esto: 20 un esccmbro tenaz, que se resiste a su rulna, que lucha contra el viento, que avanza por camlnos que no llevan a ningun sltio. El 6xito de todos los fracasos. La enloquecida 25 fuerza del desaliento . . . (13)

Douglas Benson has described the language In the first half of this text as alternating between the romantic/heroic and the mitigatingly auto-ironic with this alternation intensifying to the point of fusion in the second half. ? He has described very clearly the dynamic of the poem in its combination of grandiose and vulgar or even pathetic language: the romantic nature of the first six lines, the animalistic portrayal of the bodies fusing to ultimately create his own, the pomposity of the suggestion that the cosmos participated in his coming into being, the anguished tone of the body's Byzantine voyage to birth, and the conclusion of that journey which, beginning with line seventeen, fuses both the grandiose and pejorative linguistic codes that preceded such that at the conclusion of the poem they present a paradox. One of the effects of such a use of language is 55 certainly that which is the point of Benson's essay: that the touches of "Irony” allow the modern reader to accept to same degree the other, romantic, component of the vision portrayed In the poem. In

Benson1s words, "Lo lr6nlco nunca permlte que lo her&ico aleje al lector mode mo, y por eso se mantlenen vivo, aunque mltigado.The

"Ironic” of the poem, however, Is not limited to those portions of the test which, with their pejorative tone, create the effect described by Benson. As the last six lines of the text demonstrate

(with their fusion of the two codes), the linguistic codes which were easily perceived as distinct in the first two-thirds of the poem are different, yes, but not separable. They do not constitute a polarity but rather a duality, responding to the divided consciousness of the ironist who perceives the futility of humanity's struggle to find meaning for its place in the world but cannot release himself from the part of himself which continues to participate in that struggle.

Herein lies the irony of this entire text and of the device of the juxtaposition of two linguistic codes — in the very creation of duality, of contradictory voices and visions.

Alternating Tones

There is another, similar mode of duality common in Gonzalez* poetry with much the same effect as the mixing of two linguistic codes within a single text: the presence In a text of both ironic and non-Ironic language, that which expresses the dual, contradictory nature of the Ironic vision, and that which is more immediate in the sense of dispensing with the reflection on meaning and simply dealing 56 with the world directly. As Muecke has said:

I expect life can be relied upon to provide everyone with crises of passion from which Irony retreats, in which there is no roan for ref lection, detachment or balance . . . Art then Is acceptably non-ironic when the appeal is simplest, most imuediate and most absorbing, whether by approaching the aesthetic opacity of pure sensuousness or pure form or by approaching the aesthetic transparency of the purely sublime, where Intensity of feeling carries us swiftly through and beyond all consciousness of the medium . . . The non-ironic, therefore, need not be restricted to what the ironic corrects or redeems or authenticates . . . We might Instead see the ironic and the non-ironic as, In part, complementary opposites, as reason and emotions are, each desirable and necessary by neither sufficient for our needs.° This device is a fairly common means to closure in GonzSlez ' poetry

(although the non-ironic language may precede the ironic language)

and creates sane of the most powerful moments of his work.

Such a shift In tone, from the ironic to the non-ironic, occurs

in the poem "Crisis," from section II of Sin esperanza, con

convenclmlento. Following the title, which denotes an lmnediacy of

experience, the Ironic tone of the first eleven lines is unmistakable:

1 Lo ideal en estos cases seria morirse de muerte natural, hacer un gesto agrio, estirarse 5 deflnltivamente, y marchar con cuidado para que nadie pueda darse por ofendldo. Pero ello no es posible 10 sin contar con Dios Padre — y los restantes. (77)

The very first words, "lo Ideal", cue the reader that what follows is not, as the title would seem to indicate as actual response to crisis 57 but rather conjecture as to what the best response would be. Mundane reference the crisis alluded to In the title as one of "estos casos" mitigates the extreme circumstances one usually associates with such an event. The positing of a "natural death" as a appropriate response 13 consonant with the title but that consonance is irrmediately destroyed by the following enumeration of gestures and attitudes which should constitute "morirse de muerte natural." The romantic response of mortal collapse in the face of seme action or knowledge too painful to bear is emptied of meaning if it is first choreographed in order to have the correct impact on others who may be present. The validity of the crisis (its immediacy, which defines it as crisis) which brings about such a response is certainly thus called into question.

The last sentence of this section begins by reiterating the message of the first words — what has been said is not a response to the crisis, but only a desirable response which is not possible. The reference to the need for the participation of God the Father negates the idea of personal control over response to crisis (another mediation) and the last line, which refers in a very mundane way to the other members of the trilogy suggests that even a divinely- directed response to crisis cannot be taken certainly as meaningful.

Throughout the first eleven lines of the poem, therefore, the experience of crisis alluded to in the title is consistently mediated by the ironic vision in that it is dealt with in indirect terms, and in language which ultimately questions its meaningfulness. 58

These mediations disappear In the remaining seven lines of the

poem:

Por eso — frlo en la calle, tedio en los que pasan— 15 permanezco en ml sitio, y vivo — corazfin asedlado por el 1lanto— ml hora la terrible: la que aun no ha sonado.

In these lines there is a shift away from the abstract and impersonal modes of dealing with the crisis In the first part of the poem to a concrete and personal depiction. The initial "Por eso" signals the failure of the prior, mediating abstraction, rejects "lo Ideal" and turns to the real. Lines thirteen and fourteen fix a concrete context in which the poetic voice must experience his crisis: the cold in the street and the indifference of the passersby contrast with the void in which the gestures of the first part seem to occur and with the voice's previous concern with not offending anyone. The remainder of the poem focuses more intensely on the moment of crisis.

With line fifteen there Is a shift from the conditional of the first part to the present tense. The verbs "permanezco" and "vivo" testify to the Immediacy, the inescapabllity, and the Impossibility of mitigating what must be experienced. In contrast to the artificial gestures proposed In the first part of the poem here the interior!ty of the poetic voice Is unprotected and vulnerable to the facts of the crisis: "— coraz6n asedlado por el llanto— ". The concluding two lines are an allusion to the severity of the crisis — what he is experiencing not only permeates his present,the hour that he Is now 59 living, tut also "la que aun no ha sonado." We see, therefore, in

this part of the poem a response to the crisis alluded to in the

title, urmitigated and unmsdiated by the Ironic vision of the first

part. The combination of the two distinct tones in this text, like

the juxtaposition of two linguistic codes in "Igual que si nunca"

and "Para que yo me llamo Angel QonzSlez" constitutes it as an Ironic

text based on the duality of vision to which it responds: the Ironic perspective which questions the meaningfulness of the experiences of

the empirical world and so desires to differentiate itself from them, and the empirical being irrevocably ermeshed in the experiences of

the world.

A shift in tone also occurs in the first strophe of "El momento este," this time going from the non-ironic to the ironic:

1 El momento no es bueno. Ya se sabe que los viento tampoco. Una tromba de agua arrasa a Catalufla. 5 5 La lluvia no moja desde meses la tlerra de Almeria. Aqul, en cambio, los hielos ennegrecen los frutos y m&s allS. los huracanes 10 derriban bosques, y en otro lugar no tan lejano un lrxnenso trigal fue pasta de las llamas. No vamos a quejamos por tanpequeha cosa. No vamos a quejamos desde ahora por nada. 15 Desde ahora scmos invulnerables de tan vulnerados, insensible de haber sentido tanto. y si un nifSo muere o una ilusifin se quiebra no hay por que preocuparse: 20 estamos perfectamente disculpados. Son los vientos, los tiempos, las desgracias que corren como arafias hambrientas sobre nuestra inocencia. Es el momento ests que nos pesa en el pecho 25 igual que una gran piedra, 60

y nos inmoviliza. (144)

Hie first seventeen lines deal In a direct, unquestioning way with

those events which comprise "el momento este." Hie first line imnediately defines the nature of the moment referred to in the

title, the negativity of which is confirmed and also extended into the future (with the reference to "los vlentos") by the second sentence. What follows is the enumeration of a series of natural disasters referring to either concrete, specific places or to places in direct relationship to the speaker: "CatalurSa," Almerla," "aqul,"

"m&s allfi," "en otro lugar no tan lejano." Hie events are spoken in a vivid language not out of keeping with the nature of the circumstances portrayed — flood, drought, loss of crops to ice and to fire. Hie statement, "No vamos a quejamos por tan pequefia cosa" may seem momentarily to the reader a lapse into the ironic, for the events described would not normally be perceived as small concerns.

Such, however, is not the case as the immediately following lines show. Hie speaker does, in fact, perceive the natural disasters as unworthy of much response. A much greater disaster is alluded to in the next two sentences, a disaster so apparently devastating as to leave the poetic voice (now speaking collectively) in a state of total silence and paralysis, truly insensible to the natural disasters previously described.

A change in tone occurs with the sentence beginning on line seventeen: "Y si un nlno se muere o una ilusi6n se quiebra // no hay por que preocuparse: // estamos // perfectamente disculpados." Hiere Is a shift from the reality and specificity of the first part of the

from to the hypothetical and the abstract. With the statement that there is no reason to be concerned by the losses referred to, the

reader Is aware of the change In tone — there Is no way to reconcile

"nothing to be concerned about" with the loss of things so

quintessentially human as our children and our hope. We cannot

assent to a mode of living in which humanity limits responsibility

for Its own responses to the world on the basis of an abstract notion

of "los vientos, los tiempos, las desgracias que corren."

Hie second strophe returns to the non-ironlc vision of the first

part of the poem and puts it into context:

Eh el a ire quedaron vestlgios de palabras: — supervivientes todos de inclinada postura: serla 30 preferible fallecer intentando enderezar los huesos . . .— y paso un aeroplano y ya no se oye nada.

The insensibility to the violences of nature referred to earlier Is here put into perspective by the reference to suffering of a more psychological nature, to violence done to human dignity. Hie agent of the trauma so great that it reduces humanity to silence is here represented by an airplane, more destructive than flood, drought icy cold, or fire. Grado elemental has a strong element of social criticism, and the reference to the airplane almost certainly carries with it a whole range of associations with the war, and the silence afterward with the depth of the trauma and the repressiveness of the

Franco regime. 62

In "El momento este" we see an alteration, therefore, of the ironic and the non-ironic. The non-ironic portions at the beginning and end of the poem deal with the moment referred to in the title in a concrete way, in language of an absolute tone which does not question and thus mitigate the validity of the human response to the tragedies described. It portrays In an inmediate way real experience. The last nine lines of the first strophe, In the ironic mode, deal with empirical experience Indirectly, as hypothetical and abstract. In contrast to the absolute language of the non-ironic parts of the poem, this section exhibits duality — the disasters portrayed previously are also present here and are not denied, but human response to them is called Into question in a way it was not In the first sixteen lines. The two modes are Juxtaposed without being resolved; the text denies neither the devastation of the disasters nor the unacceptability of non-response In the face of certain circumstances. Thus, GonzSlez' poem leads the reader to recognize the insufficiency of either mode of approaching the world in Itself and to search for sane new perspective.

In "I. Inventario de lugares propicios al amor," the first poem of the section "Ciudad uno" of Tratado de urbanlsmo, the shift to the non-ironic (slightly less abrupt than in the two poems discussed above) is again a means to closure. The title itself signal Irony.

Hie reman numeral which precedes the words of the title is inmediately disconcerting — one does not usually expect a poem about love to be a number in a series (or at least, if numbered to have no other title) but rather a spontaneous expression. Likewise, the 63 notion of inventory, with its connotations of materiality and boundlessness associated with love. The focus on places brings into question the nature of the love referred to, for love as an emotional circumstance would normally be considered as unaffected by physical surroundings. The first fifteen lines of the poem continue the mode of dealing with the matter of love established by the title — mediated by ironic, critical awareness:

1 Son pocos. La primavera estfi. muy prestigiada, pero es mejor el verano. Y tarribiSn esas grietas que el otoffo 5 forma al interceder con los domingos en algunas cludades ya de por si amarillas como pl&tanos. El in vie mo elimina nruchos sitios: quicios de puertas orientadas al norte, 10 orillas de los rlos, bancos plblicos. Los contrafuertes exteriores de las viejas iglesias dejan a veces huecos 15 utilizables aunque caiga nieve. (187)

The initial statement, "Son pocos," is very abrupt, even abortive considering that the reader has been led to expect an inventory, an enumeration of places suitable for love. It is not, however, misleading for the only place that is mentions as such are the abutments of old churches. The speaker is actually less concerned with places for love as he is with times: the inventory begins not with a list of places, but with a consideration of the suitability of spring, sumner and fall. It is only in the mention of these times that love is present in these lines. It is present in a very indirect, oblique way: in terms of natural phenomena, with the human 64 dimension completely absent. Only with the mention of winter do we return to the notion of place suggested by the title and again, the

speaker gets to the matter at hand (naming places suitable for love) as indirectly as possible by mentioning first three places that are not favorable before finally giving us a single example of what the title had promised. Every step of the way the speaker has avoided dealing directly with the matter of love, and by limiting his consideration to the possibilities of meeting places for lovers, he puts love on an entirely pragnatic level and brings into question lt3 very essence.

The speaker now turns his attention away, presumably, from looking for places Where love can occur and toward reasons for its difficulty:

Pero desengafiemonos: las bajas temperatures y los vientos humedos lo dificultan todo. Las ordenanzas, adem&s, proscrlben 20 la caricia (con exenciones para detennlnadas zonas epldermlcas — sin interns alguno— en niftos, perros y otros animales)

In the first sentence there is a clear attempt at some deeper awareness, expressed by the "Pero desengafiemonos." The speaker stays, however, focussed on the same exterior, non-human factors through which he had dealt with love in the preceding lines. With the reference to the ordinances which proscribe touching, he adds a human, social dimension heretofore absent, but the parenthetical statement which follows makes the ordinance seem ridiculous and thus 65 not a serious threat, not the real hindrance to the existence of love.

In the last twelve lines of* the poem the speaker's treatment of love and its difficulty is unmediated:

y el no tocar, peligro de igncmlnla 25 puede leerse en miles de miradas, iA d&nde huir entonces? Por todas partes ojos bizcos, corneas torturadas, imlacables pupilas, 30 retinas reticentes, vlgilan, desconfian, amenazan. Queda quizA el recur so de andar solo, de vaciar el alma de temura y llenarla de hastlo e indiferencia, 35 en este tiempo hostil, propicio al odio.

Finally, love, which is a human phenomenon, is being dealt with in human terms. The real cause of the absence of love is neither low temperatures nor ordinances but humanity itself and its fears of closeness — physical or otherwise. The absence of love is now felt by the speaker directly: he feels the need to flee as he Is surrounded by censuring, threatening eyes which constitute the absence of love. Love Is no longer portrayed in terms of clandestine meeting places for lovers but rather as a matter of "alma” and

"ternura." Its value is neither questioned, nor mitigated by a critical consciousness but felt and expressed directly by the speaker as Its presence in his life is threatened.

In these three poems — "Crisis," "El momento este," and "I.

Inventario de lugares proplcios al amor"— GonzSlez combines the duality of the ironic vision (empirical experience, mitigated by 66 critical consciousness which deals with that experience indirectly and in such a way that questions its meaningfulness) with the more absolute language of unmediated experience. This device is perhaps slightly more obvious to the reader than is the Juxtaposition of two contradictory linguistic codes for it depends more on the reader's intuitive response to the text than on his recognition of certain associations (literary or otherwise) elicited by contradictory

(sometimes not clearly so) words in the text. As any rate, these two devices constitute a first grade in the range of ironic language in

Gonz&lez' work. Both are constituted by a duplicity of voice which projects a duality of vision responding to the ironic and empirical components of the ironist. The unresolved, unsynthesized state of the two visions (neither is ever denied, nor presented as dispensable) calls into question the reliability of each voice and points to the fallibility of language itself, the underlying message of every ironic text. In texts such as the ones described above, the duplicity of voice manifests Itself in a relatively subtle manner for

Its detection depends almost entirely on the reader's perception of moments in the texts which cannot quite be reconciled with each other, whether those contradiction occur because of the use of words which belong to opposing linguistic codes (e.g., the combination of romantic or epic language with everyday or vulgar language) or whether the language suddenly shifts from a mediated, critical mode to an immediate and unquestioning mode. In the poems we will next consider, the text i3 more direct in its guiding of the reader, offering clear signals as the duplicity of voice occurs. 67 Signs of Duality

Very common throughout Qonzfilez* production Is the use of parentheses or dashes to signal the presence of another, second voice

in the primary depiction or narration. In many poems, a striking example being "Aqul, Madrid, mil novecientos," allusions to seasonal

changes or to weather are In this way Inserted into the text. Also in many poems, such a3 "2. Parque con zool6gico," parentheses and dashes are used to insert apparently superfluous details or commentary into the text. The ironic nature of this device lies In tits creation of a duplicity of voice, responding to the divided consciousness of the Ironic speaker. "Aqul, Madrid, mil novecientos" has been pointed to by Mario Benedetti as an example of the social aspect of Gonz&lez' poetry, his concern that he be faithful in his work to his cwn (and his generation’s) historical circumstances.9

This is undeniable, and certainly laudable, for Gonzalez* tenacious belief in the social nature of poetry is, I believe, one of the greatest sources of its power. He Is not, hcwever, a "social poet" as the term came to be understood with regard to many of the Spanish poets of the forties and fifties, that is, with an emphasis upon prosaic or melodramatic style. "Aqul, Madrid, mil novecientos" is an excellent example of the progress of Spanish poetry because it echoes

Bias de Otero's well-known poem, "A la inmensa mayorla," but shows both a strong social awareness and a more subtle poetic construction, in this case throu^i the insertion of an ironic perspective. Hie poem deals with historical time and the larger matters of human temporality: 68

1 Aqul, Madrid, mil novecientos cincuenta y cuatro: un hombre solo.

Un hombre lleno de febrero ivldo de domingoa lumlnosos, 5 camlnando hacla marzo paso a paao, hacla el marzo del viento y de los rojos horlzontes — y la reciente primavera ya en la frontera del abrll lluvloso . . . —

Aqul, Madrid, entre tranvlas 10 y refleJos, un hombre: un hombre solo.

— M&s tarde vendrS. mayo y luego Junlo, y despues Julio y, al final, agosto— .

Un hombre con un afio para nada delante de su hastlo para todo. (14)

The use of the dashes in the first four strophes to set off portions of the poem emphasizes the difference of voice and vision in those lines, relative to the larger portion of the text. The first strophe, the first part of the second strophe and the third strophe speak from the human perspective — Including the social— , while the last line of the second strophe and the fourth strophe interject the wider vision of the natural world in its seasonal changes.

The first strophe fixes the historical time and place of the central figure of the poem, a solitary man, concrete in his individuality. The place and time mentioned elicit a whole picture of associations for those who possess the most basic knowledge of

Spanish history: a time of isolation on a national level, created by

Franco's autarchical policies and also on an individual level due to the scars left by the Civil War; a time of apathy and stagnation due perhaps to the desire for peace at any cost and to the nearly absolute exclusion of the Spanish people from control over the 69 political, social and even religious structures of the country. The man seems trapped in the experience of an unchanging present and his

solitude is an Indication of the bleakness of the moment.

If the first strophe conveys the sense of one aspect of human

temporality (that is, man's limitation to the experience of the present), the first four and a half lines of the second strophe depict another limitation of human experience of time — linearity.

Ihe man here seems to be going along consuming his time. His tiring

of February and avidness for sunny days marks a desire for change, for future, the possibilities for which have already been impoverished by the static quality of the first strophe. Lines five

through eight, before the first interruption, convey the futility of his attempts to reach such a future. "Camlnando hacia marzo paso a paso" emphasizes the linear nature of man's experience of time as well as Its futility — he is going along literally spending his time, yet the use of the gerund, "hacla", and "paso a paso" Indicate his continued not reaching his goal. Likewise, the reference to the wind and the horizon for one can never reach the wind, nor arrive at the horizon.

The third strophe returns to the historical time referred to In the initial lines of the text, reaffirming the sense of stagnation and solitude not only by miking the same historical allusions, but be the very fact of the repetition, which negates the illusion of movement attempted by the first part of the second strophe. The repeated emphasis on the solitude of the man constitutes an association of the experience of the present with isolation, an 70

association which is reinforced by the contrast between the stillness

of the man and the movement of the streetcars and the reflections

they cast around him. These three parts of the poem (lines on

through seven and nine and ten) are a depiction of human temporality

in both its historical and metaphysical dimensions.

The two interruptions sigialled by dashes insert a vision of

natural time which serves as a counterpoint to the depiction of human

temporality. They convey the cyclical and realizable quality of

natural time. In the first interruption the reference to the change

of season as well as the mention of the month is unmistakably a mark

of the cycle. In contrast to man’s unending walk toward the wind and

the horizon, the 3pring here is realized, actual: "ya en la frontera

del abril lluvioso . . . — ’’ The ellipsis likewise signals

continuity, cycle. The second interruption contains the same signal

of the months of the year to Indicate cycle. Again in contrast to

the unendingness and futility of man’s walk toward the future, the use of the future tense of the series of adverbs indicates the certainty of the arrival of the future within the natural sphere.

The reference to August as occurring ”al final" is not so much an

indication of linearity and finality as of the return to the period of cold (the end of simmer) which the man Is now experiencing apparently endlessly whereas nature experiences it cyclically. These references to the cyclical quality of natural time explain the isolation which is emphasized with regard to the human figure. It results from man’s essential difference from nature (that is, the very world) due to his temporal difference — his limitation to the 71 experience of the present and his linear experience of time.

The final strophe is restatement of what has come before: man

exists in time, but futilely, "para nada," given his temporal

limitations. For those conscious of this basic human dilemna the

experience of the world is thus reduced to "hastlo para todo." In

the poem therefore, Qonzfilez fulfills the need to be both

historically and poetically true to his vision of the world. The

poem is a conjunction of the visions of a historical time of

stagnation in which time did not bring change, and also of an ironic vision of human temporality in which time as instrument of change

cannot be, given the limitation of human temporality to the experience of the present.

In "2. Parque con zoolSglco,” from the section "Ciudad uno" of Tratado de urbanlsmo, the Insertion of apparently trivial details and commentary into the main body of the text through parenthetical statements and the use of dashes creates a subtext, foregrounding the duality of vision which Is present in the main text, though not explicitly. As we saw in the case of "1. Inventario de lugares propicios al amor," the numbering of the text's title alerts the reader to the probability of an Ironic text. This Is confirmed by the first strophe:

1 Aqul todo sonrle. (Perd6n: el hipcpotamo hembra del zoo piensa y bosteza.) En esta breve estancia soleada, defendida 5 de la prisa, del humo y de los ruidos por macizas de hortenslas, por muros de alignstre, por rejas de enramada, 72

hay como una parodia del humano genulno 10 en su version original, antes de que Incurriese en pena de destierro por lndeblda aproplaclon de fruta. Prohibida coger flores. (191)

There are various Indications that the poet Is speaking on more than one level within this segment of the first strophe. The most obvious

Is, of course, the parenthetical statement. Although it seems simply the addition of a somewhat comical detail, it nonetheless reveals that the poet is operating on two levels. The first level is defined by the initial blanket and clich£ statement "Aqui todo sonrle." In contrast to this facile observation is the ccmnent regarding the hippopotamus. In spite of its rather silly tone, it evidences a more careful observation In Its detail, a more thoughtful and significant consideration of what is observed in the attribution of human quality

(thought) to the animal. This contrast, In addition to the fact that the parenthetical statement is an outright contradiction of what had come before, very clearly calls the reader’s attention to the unreliability of the voice of the main text. This leads the reader away from acceptance of the literal message of the main text — the positing of a relationship of parody between Eden (as a perfect, uncorrupted natural environment in which humanity had an integral place) and the city park (as a corrupted, degraded version of Eden)

— and toward the recognition within the main text itself of contradiction which reveals the ironic duality of a mystified and demystified vision of the edenie paradise. 73 The rest of this segment of the poem manifests such a duality.

On a literal, mystified level it proposes an equivalence between the

city part as a place where humanity is protected and Eden, the

supposition being that in both spaces man exists, or existed, in a

state of peace and protection. The protection offered by the city

park is, however, faulty in its brevity. Even if we accept that

flower beds and greenery can shield one from non-physical phenomena

such as hurriedness, smoke, and noise, the protection is limited to a

"breve estancia soleada." We could perhaps see this as a parody (as

is explicitly suggested by the text), as the degradation of a perfect

Eden, did it not suffer the same fault, given the reference to "pena

de destierro." There is also a certain sense of precarity in the

reference to Eden. The equivalence of the original sin with picking

wildf lowers trivializes the sin and makes the punishment of

banishment seen unexpectedly brutal and arbitrarily cruel.

Humanity's presence in Eden is thus presented not as an experience of

secure unity but rather a precarious situation contingent on the

approval of an arbitrary deity.

The rest of the strophe continues the comparison of Eden and the

city park. Again, the interruption of the text at the initial moment of the segment draws attention to the ironic nature of the

text and guides the reader towards the perception of duality also within the main body of the text:

4N0 es casi igual 15 que entonces — tal como nos lo cuentan? Y la mano indefensa de la nifSa que lleva sin temor pan y temura hasta las fauces humedas del oso, ino evoca 20 aquella deseable promtsculdad la hermosa convlvencla de tigres y gacelas, jirafas y leones, 25 buttres, serpientes, cisnes y alacranes, conseguida bajo la penetrante mlrada del nt&s extraffo blpedo, de la m&s asanbrosa 30 arctlla reflexiva y semoviente?

The Interruption "— tal coroo nos lo cuentan?" qualifies the speaker's acceptance of the story of Eden. It points to the fact that the speaker at the least has reservations about the fact that his only contact with the "entonces" he refers to is what they tell him. "The way they tell it" does not necessarily equal "The way it was." The speaker thus calls into question the reliability of the account of the story of Eden that he received, a move which opens the possibility of multiple interpretations and indicates the limitations of language in the communication of experience. The reader is thud guided to look carefully at the speaker's own portrayal of Eden and to perceive In It the same duality present in the Initial question. The speaker is operating on two levels — one which accepts unquestioningly the story of Eden as It has been handed down, and one which recognizes the fallibility of the linguistic mode of transmission and so qualifies acceptance.

The first level is manifested in the text by language which portrays Eden as a faultless paradise and the city park as a parodic version of that paradise. The references to "la mano indefensa de la 75 nlfia," "deseable //prcmiscuidad," "la hermosa convlvencla //de tigres y gacelas, Jirafas // y leones" are part of tills linguistic code.

Likewise, the notion of creation as "conseguida // bajo la penetrante mirada" of man confirms the traditional allocation of man to a place of privilege with regard to the rest of creation. There are, however, other elements In the text which cannot be reconciled. The

Innocence and defenselessness of the little girl cannot comfortably coexist with the Jaws of the bear. Likewise the grouping of vultures, serpents, swans, and scorpions Is too disparate in normal experience to be perceived as a desirable combination. The reference to man as "el m&s extraflo blpedo" and "la mSs ascmbrosa // arcllla reflexiva y 3emoviente" places man clearly on a level with all of the other creatures (a confirmation of the melding of the human and the animal In the initial reference to the hippopotamus.) All the elements of this linguistic mixing of codes work to subvert the notion of an original paradise created for man by introducing an element of danger into Paradise (mention of the vulture, the serpent most especially, and the scorpion) and its variant, the city park

(mention of the bear), and by removing the distinction between the human and the animal. This indicates a relationship more of equivalence than of parody between Eden and the city park, to the detriment of the traditional notion of Eden as an earthly paradise.

The first part of the second strophe of the poem continues to explore the possible relationship between the two spaces:

TSambiSn descansa todo, aqul. Acuden los parfuelos 76 con frecuencia a enjugar el sudor que brota de las frentes, 35 pero esa mancha hflmeda (que aslmlano destifSe las ropas de mujer por las axllas, dejando alll la saribra y el misterio de una creclente medlaluna amarga) 40 no surge del esfuerzo necesario para ganar el pan: mfis blen la causan la reverberacion del mes de junio, su deslumbrante peso, 45 el cegador desmayo de sus luces que penden (aureas, verdes y rlzadas por la C&1 Ida brisa) de las dens as ramas de los cipreses y los pl&tanos. Vegetaclon y oclo, cachorros 50 de cocodrllo y de contribuyente: he ahl la CreaciSn municipal. (191-192)

The first strophe had explicitly posited a relationship of parody, with its connotations of difference and degradation, between the city park and Eden. It then continued on to focus on the similarities between the two spaces, all the while subtly subverting the notion of parody by introducing into the text elements which negate the notions of a perfect, edenic paradise. In the second strophe, this same effect is achieved through the reverse procedure. Here the text posits a relationship of equivalence ("Tambien de scans a todo, // aqul") and then seems to continue on to focus on differences in an extended statement that the sweat that is wiped in the city park is not from the effort to earn one’s dally bread, but rather from the heat of the early suirmer sun. This difference is marked as degradation in the parenthetical reference to underarm stains.

Again, the parenthetical statement subverts the literal message of the text (equivalence), this time by proposing a relationship of 77 parody/degradation contradictory to the explicit statement of equivalence. The nature of the sweat of the brow is apparently presented as a point of difference between the two spaces but is in fact a point of contact. Although the "pero" of the text suggests otherwise, the "sweat of your brow" alluded to does not belong to man's stay in Eden but rather to the period following his exile from the garden. The relationship of equivalence is stated explicitly as the last lines of the strophe meld the two spaces: "Vegetaclon y ocio, cachorros // de cocodrilo y de contribuyente: // he ahi la

Creacion // municipal." Fused in the phrase "CreaciSn municipal, neither space can be seen as a true paradise — "ocio" carries connatations of emptiness and waste, and "cacharros de cocodrilo y de contribuyente" brings an element of danger into both realms throu^i the reference to the crocodile, and it refuses humanity a place of privilege in creation with the reference to human children as

"cachorros." Additionally, the use of the word "contribuyente" signifies the peripheral or at least conditional presence of man.

If the language of the text has thus far worked subtly to reveal the falsity of the traditional vision of Eden, it now shifts to a blatantly ironic tone:

El edilicio ingenio dispuso esas fragrantes bambalinas 55 y colocfi en su centro al cludadano empadronado para Jfibilo, y gloria y goces mutuos. Y asi ha vuelto a ser rey — si no arrogante al menos come dido y respetuoso— 60 de lo creado el hombre, los domlngos. A veces, entre horas, cualquier dia laborable 78

tambien regresa y mide, incognito y fugaz, con levea pasos 65 su dominio, comprueba el orden de todos sus bienes (bancos, sauces, paloraas, fuentes, pgtalos, estatuas, urlnarlos, marlposas), deja 70 su lumlnoso cetro entre las ramas

In these eighteen lines the poet Juxtaposes two clearly contradictory

linguistic codes. One code is exultant in its portrayal of the

creation of the 200: "ingenlo," "coloc6 en su centro," "para Jubilo,

y gloria y goces mutuos," "asl ha vuelto a ser rey . . . de lo creado

el hombre," "su dominio" "comprueba el orden de todos sus bienes,"

"su lumnloso cetro." The other, in its mundane ness and

qualification, denies not only the possibility of a paradisiacal

interpretation of the city park but also has the effect of ridiculing

the biblical account of creation by reason of its melding of the two

accounts. The God-figure is referred to as "el edlllcio ingenio."

The use of the theatrical term bamballnas belies the falsity of the

creation and in combination with the dehumanizing and de-

lndlvlduating reference to man as "el ciudadano empadronado," man's

placement on Earth 3eems hardly more significant than that of a puppet on a stage. This reinforces the notions of the precarity and

arbitrariness of man's presence in Eden expressed earlier in the poem. The phrases set off by dashes: "— si no arrogante, // al menos comedido y respetuoso— ", underscore the duality present in the main body of the text, but at this point are hardly necessary to alert the reader to the presence of such a duality, echoing as they do the qualification which apply to acceptance of the place traditionally 79 assigned to man in creation. The second sentence of tills segnent is

also filled with indications of man’s tenuous contact with paradise,

whether biblical or present-day: his contact is limited to "a veces,

entre horas," and his presence is "inc6gnito y fugaz." Hie Inclusion

of the man-made in the parenthetical enumeration of his goods

negatively marks man's dominion, most obviously with the reference to

urinals. The last two lines signal departure from the Illusion of

paradise, be it Eden or the city park.

With the destruction of the traditional notion of paradise, the

text also denies the possibility of a temporary, albeit qualified,

return to paradise through the city park. Humanity is left in the

dehumanizes and dehumanizing world of its own creation. In these

last lines, Oonz&lez breaks abruptly with the thus far ironic mode of

the text:

y vuelve hacia su sitio de cosas entre las cosas, dirigido por rotulos y luces, acosado por claxons y sirenas, cerrada la esperanza, y el miedo ablerto, 75 y el deseo tambien, y la nostalgia de tod as las mentiras que crey6 cuando niflo . . . (192-193)

There is an imnediacy of experience here not seen previously,

indicated by the imnersion of man "entre las cosas" and his weakness, as referred to In his being controlled and almost Invaded by "rotulos y luces," "claxons y sirenas." Likewise, the Ironic language of the rest of the text is replaced by an explicit, non-Ironic statement of

the text's message — in the reference to "todas las mentiras que creyfi cuando nifio," earthly paradise is revealed as a falsehood. 80

'Ulus, even the nostalgia of a time when humanity had an integral part in a divine, beneficent plan is but a delusion. We see, therefore, in "Aqul., Madrid, mil novecientos," and in

"2. Parque con zoologico" (and in many other of Gonzfilez' poems) that the insertion into the main body of the text of seemingly unnecessary details or cocmentary is in fact very significant. These element signal a duality of voice present to a more or less easily detectable degree throughout the poem. The use of typographical devices to foreground these interruptions makes them readily perceptible as such by the reader. Their nature as manifestations of a duality of voice and vision is even more apparent when, as in "Il.Interpretacion metafislca," the separated parts of the text offer an alternate interpretation to the message of the main text.

"II. Interpretaclon metafisica" belongs to the section "Ciudad uno" of Tratado de urbanlsmo and Is, in fact, the partner poem of "2. Parque con zoolSgico":

1 El pino extiende al sol sus ramas basculantes, deliberadamente hirsutas, y hace gestos al viento para que sople norte, o mejor nor-nordeste y, a ser posible, humedo. 5 Obedece consignas.

Un grillo riguroso eleva su chirrido contra las golondrlnas que vienen por la Izqulerda. Rigor JustifIcado.

Escuadrones de hormlgas exploran Incesantes 10 la tierra casi polvo bajo las hierbas lacias. Mision JamSs cumpllda.

Esto si es acinirable: adecuaciones raras, docilidades unlcas, 151 llevan hasta el clavel el polen adherido 81

a laa patas de un p&Jaro eflcaz y constante. iAlondra? iGolondrina? iQue imports! 20 Gorrion sea el mensajero lucido que transmlta las 6rdenes que ml cuerpo aun espera: De parte de Dios, vete . . . (Hace frlo en la calle 23 y en esta sociedad las cosas son tremendas. Recuerdo un aeroplano sobre un firbol simbSlico. y Coventry, y Hamburg©. E Hiroshima.)

No merece la pena. Serfi. mejor volver a casa 30 y empezar a pensar por nuestra cuenta. (190)

As Is the case with all of the poems of "Ciudad uno," the numbering

In combination with a title signals Irony — the subversion of the

traditional way of titling poems reveals a critical, reflective bent

of the text. The notion of interpretation, with its connotations of

reflection and hence of separation, reinforces the same. To name a

specific mode of interpretation implies the possibility of others and

precludes unqualified acceptance of that which follows.

The first three strophes of the poem recount the natural

conditions which make possible the pollination of a flower. Each element of nature which plays a part in the process is imbed with purpose, everything working together precisely to a creative end.

The brief sentences or phrases which conclude each strophe confirm that sense of order. The perception of nature's amazing ways is also

reaffirmed in the first five lines of the fourth strophe where they are referred to as "adecuaciones raras" and "doeilidades unicas."

After this point, however, that sense of purpose begins to break down. 82

It Is only with the next sequence of the poem (11. 20-26) that the matter of metaphysics makes its entrance for* as unique and amazing as the ways of nature may seem to man, they belong squarely in the realm of the physical. It is at this point that a metaphysical power behind the physical one Is posited — posited in the use of the bird as a vehicle of pollination as a metaphor for a comnunication between Qod and man. With the shift into the metaphysical realm there is also a shift away from the precise terms which came before. Thus far the text has been composed of declarative statements consistently affirmed and reaffirmed. The first three lines of this strophe are each encased in question marks or exclamation points and certainly look nothing like the solid statement of "fact" which precede them. Before this point, each element of nature appeared to be precisely the way it was for a very specific reason. Such details, such purposeful precision, are no longer the point. Likewise, the use of the subjunctive over the next three lines removes the event they describe (the arrival of a message from God) from the realm of reality. This is reinforced by that state of expectation alluded to "las ordenes que mi cuerpo aun espera." The order that is awaited: " De parte de Dios, vete . . . " would seem, paradoxically, to be a release from that very state of expectation.

The parenthetical statements which follow offer a vision of the world which clearly differs from one in which each component of the world works in an integral way towards a conmon creative goal. It depicts instead human experience: an experience of exclusion (the 83 cold in the street Is a leitmotif in GonzSlez' poetry to this effect); a world of extremes rather than of balance — "las cosas son tremendas"; of Impending doom — "un aeroplano sobre un firbol simb&lieo"; and of real, apocalyptic destruction: "Y Coventry, y

Hamburgo. E Hiroshima." All of these allusions constitute a confirmation of the breakdown subtly evident in the inmediately preceding lines. These are the results of " Interpreted on metaflsica" and they clearly signal the failure of a mode of thinking which assumes divine order behind the ways of nature ans waits for that order to be visited upon humanity. The ultimate message is thus an alternative to the metaphysical interpretation indicated by the title, that is, non-reliance on metaphysical constructs: "pensar por nuestra cuenta."

In all of the poems considered in this section a variety of typographical devices is used to create another facet to the main body of the text. A variety of additions are made to the text in this way — apparently trivial details, observations about the weather or seasons, clearly alternate visions to that offered by the main text— which may be more or less significant in themselves but are of real significance In that they create a divided text which contains in itself the seed of doubt regarding its explicit message. Thus doubt regarding the validity of the words of the text becomes the real message of the text. In this questioning of the reliability of language the ironic nature of Gonz&lez' poetic language is constituted. 8/4 ParabasIs and Self-contradiction

The clearest most marked cases of Ironic language to be

considered in this chapter are those poems in which the poetic voice

draws attention to its role as speaker, as linguistic self, in the

typically narrative device of parabasls. De Man explains the

relationship of parabasis to irony:

Far fran being a return to the world, the irony to the second power or "irony of irony" that all true irony at once has to engender asserts and maintains its fictional character by stating the continued impossibility of reconciling the world of fiction with the actual world, well before Baudelaire and Hoffmann, Friedrich Schlegel knew this very well when he defined irony, in a note from 1797, as "eine permanente Parekbase." Parabasis is understood here as what is called in English criticism the "self-conscious narrator", the author's intrusion that disrupts the fictional illusion . . . the effect of this illusion is not a heightened realism, a affirmation of the priority of a historical over a fictional act, but it has the very opposite aim and effect: it serves to prevent the all too readily mystified reader from confusing fact and fiction and from forgetting the essential negativity of fiction. The problem is familiar to students of point of view in a fictional narrative, in the distinction they have learned to make between the persona of the author and the persona of the fictional narrator. The moment when this difference is asserted is precisely the moment when the author does not return to the world. He asserts instead the ironic necessity of not becoming the dupe of his own irony and discovers that there Is no way back from his fictional self to his actual self.

In the Gonzalez poems which employ parabasis the linguistic self

speaks awareness of its role as speaker and of that of th empirical

self as subject of its speech. These intrusions foreground the fictionality of the text, its relationship pf difference with regard to the "reality" it portrays and thus draws attention to the

limitations of language as a means of comnunication of experience. 85 This is accomplished through the mere presence of the device and its effects are Intensified when the substance of the intrusion frankly contradicts what the rest of the text says. Of course the use of so typically narrative a device in a poetic text provides an added dimension of Irony to a device already ironic in Itself. In this sense these texts are metapoetic for they raise questions not only about the efficacy of language in general but also specifically about poetic language. (This is a common notion in Gonz&lez' work: many of the poems belonging to the fourth section of Sin esperanza, con convenclmiento gave titles which allude to narrative-type discourses as do the titles of several of his books.)

Perhaps the clearest examples of parabasis in Gonz&lez ’ poems are those occasioned by the appearance of his name in the text. We have already seen one such text, "Para que yo me llame Angel

Gonzalez," in which duality set up by the intrusion of the author'8 name Is developed In terms of a dual linguistic code. It occurs again In the second strophe of "Me basta as!" of Falabra sobre palabra:

si yo fuese Dios, 20 podria repetirte y repetirte, slempre la mlsma y siempre diferente, sin cansarme Jam&s del Juego id§ntico, sin desdeftar tampoco la que fuiste por la que Ibas a ser dentro de nada; 25 ya no se si me explico, pero quiero aclarar que si yo fuese Dios, harla lo posible por ser Angel Gonz&lez para quererte tal como te quiero (176) 86

It is also present in "Siempre lo que quieras" of Breves acotaclones para una blbliografla:

1 CUando no tengas dinero reg&lame un anillo, cuando no tengas nada dame una esqulna de tu boca, cuando no sepas que hacer vente conrnlgo — pero luego no digas que no sabes lo que haces.

5 Haces haces de lefla en las marlanas y se te vuelven flores en los brazos. Yo te sostengo asida por los petalos, como te muevas te arrancare el arcma.

Pero ya te lo dlje: 10 cuando quieras marcharte esta es la puerta: se llama Angel y conduce al llanto. (239)

As love poems, these two texts differ somewhat from the kinds of

texts we have seen thus far. The ironic vision is not, I don’t believe, the central message of the texts. The inclusion of the

author’s name does, however, foreground the fictionality, the

textuallty, of the poems in the way previously described. This

responds, perhaps, to the desire for a measure of obliqueness in the

expression of certain sentiments and experiences. As Gonz&lez

conments in the introductions to his own edition, Poemas: ”La ironla

facllita un tono de distanclamiento que aligera la peligrosa carga

sentimental de ciertas actitudes, algo importante para una persona que, como yo, lntenta escribir poesla desde sus experiencias conservando un minimo de pudor."^

"7* Prefimbulo a un silenclo" is the last poem of ’’Ciudad uno" in

Tratado de urbanismo. Parabasis Is the major source of poeticity in this poem and is evidenced by a variety of textual strategies which include the appearance of the author’s name. The sense of 87 divisiveness thus created Is Intensified as the poetic voice not only divides but also contradicts itself.

As we lock at this text, It will be helpful to recall the

concepts on which we have based the analyses of texts in this

chapter. Muecke has explained that the most basic definition of

irony is the awareness of a contrast between appearance and reality.

Those terms appearance and reality have particular meanings in the

twentieth century. Appearance is understood as our perception of the

world, limited by the nature of human temporality. Reality, on the

other hand, is understood as something ultimately too complex to

understand fully, but in any case definable as more than appearance.

The ironist, therefore, is the individual who is aware that his is

the finite and limited experience of an immensely complex world.

The person who perceives the world ironically becomes a divided self.

He is simultaneously an empirical being existing and participating in

a world of Inauthenticity (inauthentic because it suppresses

awareness of human temporality) and as an Ironic self which asserts

knowledge of this Inauthenticity through language. This statement of

awareness is an attempt of the ironic self to differentiate Itself

from the empirical world, but because reality exceeds comprehension,

the Ironist cannot transcend the human condition by understanding all

things. Once irony is discovered, the Ironist must also view himself

Ironically, and all that he can do with his awareness is to voice it.

What the ironist says to assert his awareness therefore betrays his

dual condition as mystified/demystified being, for even in the realm

of language he cannot completely disassociate himself from his 88

empirical self. Thus, the ironic nature of much of Gonz&lez' work

manifests itself in many of his poems through a duality of voice and

of vision.

In "7. PneSmbulo a un silencio," this duality presents internal

contradictions which explicitly bring into question the notion of

language as a vehicle for truth:

1 Porque se tiene conciencia de la inutilidad de tantas cosas a veces uno se sienta tranquilamente a la sanbra de un &rbol — en verano— y se calla.

CiDLJe tranquilamente?: falso, falso: 5 uno se sienta Inquieto haclendo extrafios gestos, pisoteando las hojas abatidas por la furia de un otoffo sanbrio, destrozando con los dedos el cart6n inocente de una caja de f6sforos, mordiendo in jus tame nte las ufias de esos dedos, 10 escupiendo en los charcos invemales, golpeando con el puflo cerrado la piel rugosa de las casas que permanecen indiferentes al paso de la primavera, una primavera urbana que asana con timidez los flecos de sus cabe11os verdes all& arriba, detr&s del zinc oscuro de los canal one 3, levemente arralgada a la materia eflmera de las tejas a punto de ser polvo.)

15 Eso es cierto, tan clerto como que tengo un nonib re con alas celestiales, arcangelico nombre que a nada corresponde: Angel, me dicen, 20 y yo me levanto disclplinado y recto con las alas mordidas — quiero decir, las uflas— y sonrlo y me callo porque, en ultimo extremo, 25 uno tiene conciencia de la Inutilidad de todas las palabras. (212)

The first strophe Is an explicit statement of Ironic awareness. The 89 reference to "la inutilidad de tantas cosas" constitutes a rejection

of the inauthenticity of the empirical world. Expressing himself in

markedly impersonal language — "se tiene conciencia," "a veces uno se

sienta," "se calla"— and in a tone of rationality and serenity, the

speaker clearly aims to differentiate himself from the world of so

many useless things. His presence in the scene is minimal. It is

suggested perhaps only through the allusion to sunmer — the only

element in the first strophe which lends it concreteness and specificity.

The speaker energetically Interrupts the calm detachment and

acceptance expressed in the first strophe with a violent protest of its falseness. The very fact of the interruption reminds the reader

of the fictionality, or at least the literariness of the previous

description and weakens the claim to truth made by the rational

structure of the first strophe. This effect is Intensified by the

substance of the Interruption which blatantly contradicts the initial

statement. If In the first strophe we hear the voice of the Ironic

consciousness with its desire for detachment and differentiation from

the empirical world, what is now affirmed is the tie of the Ironic

self to that world, and a depiction of the nature of that

relationship. It is not the tranquil renunciation posited in the

first strophe. It offers Instead a vision of humanity's inescapable

temporal dilenma. The strophe evidences a keen sense of temporality.

The speaker is clearly suffering and the backdrop and source of this

suffering is the change of seasons. This is reinforced by the

reference to the leaves swept away by the wind an in the reference to 90 spring as passing and as ephemeral — a spring "que asoma con timidez

los flecos de sus cabellos verdes . . . levemente arralgada." His

attitude in the face of this cyclicality of nature is one of

frustration and impotence. His emotions are violent as indicated by

the use of the words "pisoteando," "destrozando," "mordiendo,"

"escupiendo," and "golpeando." His actions are, nevertheless,

useless: stepping on leaves, tearing apart a matchbook, biting his

nails, spitting on puddles, and pounding with his fist on the sides

of houses — this last gesture explicitly in protest of indifference

to the passage of time. This strophe not only contradicts the first

strophe, but also manifests its own contradictions in its portrayal

of violent protest contained in futile gestures.

The third strophe produces a simultaneity of the two selves,

apparently separated in the first two strophes (the voice of the

ironic self in the first strophe, the vision of the empirical self in the second strophe.) It begins with an affirmation of certainty, but

it's not clear what is being affirmed — the statement of calm acceptance of the first strophe, or the emotional protest of the second. The certainty is explicitly stated, yet qualified by its basis — it is as certain as something that means nothing: "tan cierto

// como que tengo un nombre con alas celestiales, // arcang^lico nombre que a nada corresponde." In the next seven lines the speaker identifies himself with the personae of both the first and second strophes. The reference to the bitten nails identifies him with the empirical self portrayed in the second strophe, and the description of himself as "disciplinado y recto" and his response to the world, 91 "sonrlo y me callo" with the reasoned tranquility of the Ironic self of the first strophe. This pretended detachment contrasts almost cruelly with the extreme bitterness of the last lines: "porque un ultimo extremo, // uno tiene conciencia // de la inutilidad de todas las palabras." This strophe also contains its own contradictions, in the speaker's pattern of association/disassociation with the angel figure. The introduction of the historical author's name Into the text is, of course, a blatant example of parabasis. This uselessness of words Is the ultimate message of the text, perhaps the ultimate consequence of Irony and it corroborates the unresolved patterns of self-contradiction which have appeared throughout the text. Thus, the text Is a preamble to a silence — silence being understood here as the inability of the words of the text to convey truth, an inability proceeding from humanity's Inability to understand Its world given its essential temporal difference.

With "7* PneSmbulo a un sllencio," self-duplication, expressed

In the alternation of the voices of empirical experience and ironic perception reaches a state of maximum tension. This poem points toward the next level of ironic response In Its explicit and central concern with language. However, language maintains a certain stability insofar as It Is able ultimately to convey a message even though that message Is one of self-doubt. In the poems to be considered in the next chapter, this measure of stability will be lost. Notes

^ Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire* Modern Poetry from Rcmantlclan to the Avant-Garde. 'TransXacheT Wlllips (Cambridge: Univ. of riarvard Press, 1974)25.

Angel Gonz&lez, Palabra sobre palabra (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1986) 75. All citations of Gonz&lez poetry come fran this edition and will be indicated by the page number in parentheses.

3 Paul de Man, "The Rhetoric of Temporality," Blindness and Inslpftt, (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 19835 214.

4 De Man 226

5 De Man 217 f. Douglas Benson, "La ironla, la funcifin del hablante y la experiencla del lector en la poesla de Angel Gonz&lez," Hispania 64 (1981): 570-581. 7 Benson "La ironla," 570-581

® Benson "La ironla," 574

9 D.C. Muecke, Irony and the Ironic (London: Methuen, 1970) 5- 6 •

10 Mario Benedetti, "Angel Gonz&lez frente a la realidad abrumadora," Sobre artes y oficios (Montevideo: Alfa, 1968) 229- 233-

11 De Man 218-219 ^ Angel Gonz&lez, Poemas, (Madrid: Bdiciones C&tedra, 198O) 19-

92 CHAPTER II

THE VOICES OP LOOOCENTRISM AND DECENTERING

Introduction

Irony, as we have already indicated, is a mutable response to the world. De Man, for example, refers to the tendency of irony "to gain momentum and not to stop until it has run its full course. This "full course" which irony has to run involves a turning in on itself. Caimenting specifically on Baudelaire’s essay, "De 1*essence du rlre," De Man explains this process:

Almost simultaneously with the first duplication of the self, by means of which a purely "linguistic" subject replaces the original self, a new disjunction has to take place. The temptation at once arises for the Ironic subject to construe its function as one of assistance to the original self and to act as if it existed for the sake of this world-bound person. This results in an immediate degradation to an Intersubjective level, away from the "comlque absolu" into what Baudelaire calls "cotnique signlficatif," into a betrayal of the ironic mode. Instead, the ironic subject at once has to Ironize Its own predicament and observe in turn, with the detachment and disinterestedness that Baudelaire demands of this kind of spectator, the temptation to which It Is about to succumb.2

Thus, by nature the ironic consciousness carries within It its own necessary process of radlcalization. The intensified sense of otherness responds, however, not only to the internal processes of the consciousness but also to a changing perception of the world.

93 94 Paz explains this change In terms of a shift in temporal

archetype from the future to the present. He accounts for it on the

basis of the failure of history to evidence itself as a process of perfection, such that the future could be locked toward as a time, so

to speak, worth waiting for. Consequently, Paz perceives a refusal on the part of contemporary generations to defer their own quality of life in favor of the betterment of future ones. Along these lines he describes the liberation movements of our time (involving, for example, matters of gender, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, etc.) as a kind of reclaiming of the present: "Today's struggle Is for recognition here and now of the concrete and individual reality of each and every o n e"3 . paz goes on to explain that such attitudes signal a change In our perception of time:

All these rebellions appear as a breach in the idea of linear time. They are the irruption of the offended present and thus, explicitly or implicitly, postulate a devaluation of the future. The background for these rebellions is the changed sensibility of the age. Decay of the Protestant and Capitalist ethic with Its moral code of savings and work: two ways of shaping the.future, two attempts to get the future Into our power.

This shift in temporal archetype brings the limitations of human temporality into the foreground:

The present has become the central value of the temporal triad. The relation between the three times has changed, but this does not imply the disappearance of the past or of the future. On the contrary, they gain more reality: they become dimensions of the present — both are presences in the now . . . The present reveals that the end is neither different nor opposed to the beginning, but Its complement, its inseparable half. To live in the present Is to live facing death. Man invented eternity and the future to 95 escape death, but each of these Inventions was a fatal trap. The present reconciles us with reality: we are mortal. Only facing death, life Is really life. Within the now, death is not separated fron life. Both are the 3ame reality, the same fruit.5

As we have previously established, awareness of human mortality

within a world which does not seem to share the same experience of

death Is a principle ingredient of irony — the source of the sense of otherness which provokes the ironic duality. Thus, as awareness

of mortality intensifies, so does the Ironist's experience of duality

become keener. It is now our task, therefore, to consider how the

Intensification of the Ironic response affects the parameters of the

relationship between the two terms of the Ironic duality (the ironic and the empirical self) and how the Ironist's use of language

consequently changes.

With the intensified awareness of the limitations of human

temorality, the Ironic duality is experienced in more extreme terms.

On the one hand, this means that the ironic facet of the self feels

Itself to be increasingly distinct from its empirical counterpart —

the distinction between the two selves being specifically defined in

terms of that awareness. On the other hand, as the individual

necessarily views himself more closely through the lens of irony connection to the empirical aspect of the self is also increasingly foregrounded. That is to say, the connection Is experienced more

Intimately, with a heightened consciousness of vulnerability to the experiences to the world. As Ironic consciousness escalates, the

individual feels at one more different from the empirical world and 96 more closely tied to it. This change in the parameters of the ironic duality affects the ironist’s use of language. Sharper awareness of the condition of duality puts into the forefront the purely linguistic nature of the ironic aspect of the self. Thus, the ironic duality is cast in more specifically linguistic terms: a logocentric voice which uses language uncritically, with the expectation that it will fully embody meaning; and a decentered voice which manipulates language in order to convey its fallibility. The questioning of language which was largely implicit in the poems seen in the previous chapter is now explicit and central.

Questions regarding the possibilities and limitations of language are now more radically left open. In the poems we have already seen, in Chapter I, mystified and demystified perspectives, while never fully separated, alternated in the text in the guise of different linguistic codes and tones, and were signalled typographically and linguistically. Mystified perspectives were always revealed as such by the demystified voice in the text which, while not offering an alternate truth, always revealed the falsity of the mystified voice. Thus, the voice of interior!ty (ironic consciousness) took a position of superiority over the voice of exteriority (empirical experience) although it could not itself provide the missing authenticity. In the poems we are about to consider neither the voice of logocentrism nor that of decentering can be recognized as having priority. They are superimposed In such ways that the words of the text simultaneously support both ways of 97 viewing language and the world: neither Is ultimately discredited.

Paz refers to this kind of ironic response as meta-irony:

Irony belittles the object; meta-irony is interested not in the value of the objects but in how they work . . . Meta­ irony shows how mutually dependent are the things we call "superior” and "inferior," and forces us to withhold Judgment. It is not an inversion of values but a moral and aesthetic liberation which brings opposites into conmini cation. ®

Wilde also detects such a change in the workings of irony and thus

describes its effect on our perception of the literary work:

We manifestly and Increasingly look at a novel or a poem, even a painting, not simply as the resolution of maximal tensions or as a perfection of structure but, instead, as an interwoven and tensive structure of beliefs, which may (but also may not) resolve themselves Into an aesthetic whole but which, In any case, reveal the sign of their author's connection with being: the emblem of an intentional relation to the world.'

Both of these characterizations of the changing act of Irony are

illuminating with regard to the poems to which we are now ready to

turn our attention. As we shall see, they leave open questions regarding their ways of perceiving the world and language such that both the logocentric and the decentered ways of using language — although clearly contradictory— remain as possibilities.

Irony as Theme

"Palabras del Anticristo," the fourth poem In the section of

Prosemas o menos entitled "Tteoelegla y moral" is in many ways a continuation of "Reflexion primera," a deeper delving into the 98 sources of humanity’s mystified ways of being and thinking. Here, as the title indicates, the poetic voice takes on the Identity of the

Antichrist to voice his knowledge. The word ’’antichrist” contains in one word the polarity from which the text derives. It will recreate not only the Christ/Antichrist polarity, but also the fusion of the two exemplified in the word of the title. As the title might suggest, we should expect the words of the text both to create meaning (the Word of God being the source of our world) and to decreate it (the Antichrist being an apocalyptic force.)

The initial strophe seems at first reading to be a forthright declaration of the nature of the Antichrist:

1 Yo soy la mentira y la muerte (es decir, la verdad Gltima del hombre.) (3^6)

The beginning strong sense of identity expressed in the initial "Yo soy” Is imnedlately made problematic by the first predicate: "la mentira." The schism in the identity of the speaker Is thus established, for, as Lacan, In reference to puzzlement over the statement "I am lying" reminds us:

A too formal logical thinking introduces absurdities, even an antimony of reason In the statement I am lying, whereas everyone knows there is no such thing. It is quite wrong to reply to this I am lying — If you say I am lying, you are telling the truth, and therefore you are not lying, and so on. It is quite clear that the I am lying, despite its paradox Is perfectly valid. Indeed, the jl of the _ enunciation is not the same as the I of the statement.

This Is, of course, true for discourse in general; nevertheless, the 99 immediate identification (if indeed we can use such a word) of the

poetic voice with the lie foregrounds the duplicity of the speaker

and warns the reader not to take for granted that the speaker is who

he says he is, nor that his words can carry any meaning.

The voice Is not only "la mentira" but also "la muerte". The

association of these two things with the Antichrist, generally

perceived as the epitome of falseness and negativity is not

surprising. Because, however, we now perceive the speaker as a

divided being, we might suspect that there Is not an identification

of falsehood and death, but rather that the two terms refer to the

two contradictory aspects of the speaker. The "mentira" could thus

refer to the mystified component of his nature (the Christ) while the

"muerte" could refer to the demystifying Antichrist. The

parenthetical statement which follows this declaration reveals that

his use of language shows a similar duality. The initial statement

seems an absolute statement, given all the weight of the

supernatural. This apparently powerful language Is, however,

compromised — trivialized by the parenthetical aside which diminishes

its impact. The use of the phrase "es declr" also detracts from Its

absolute quality insofar as It shows them to be, not unique, but

rather replaceable by other words. Nevertheless, at the same time

that these things belle their contingency, they profess to be "la verdad ultima del hcmbre." The words of the Antichrist both pretend to an ultimate meaning and betray Its impossibility.

The second strophe defines the nature of the lie referred to In the first: 100

5 Se que no hay esperanza, pero te dije: espera, con el Onlco fin de envenenar la vida 10 con la letal ponzofia de los aueflos.

No hubo resurrecci&n.

There is no hope because there was no resurrection: the hope of imnortality held out by Christ’s rising from the dead is void. The call to faith is deception, the hope is the lie. the words of this strophe evoke the temptation of Eve by the serpent. The use of the first and second persons in the second line of the strophe Indicates dialogue. Likewise, the single word "espera" conjures the image of whispering into another’s ear. The use of ’’envenenar" and "letal ponzofia" to describe the voice's Intervention in human existence completes the pi chare. The identification is so apparent, that one is tempted to perceive in this strophe only the presence of the

Antichrist, the demystified entity. Viewing Christ and the

Antichrist as an absolute polarity allows the possibility of salvation through the Christ figure. This, however, is not the case.

They are fused, they exist as a duality housed in one being. It is not the demystified being who bids humanity have faith and hope but rather Christ who is the one who offered the hope and assumed the role of redeemer. The equivalence of Christ with the serpent negativizes the gift of hope represented by Christ — the ultimate gift of God— just as in "Reflexifin primera" the gifts of Ood were tainted by "alguien" now identified perhaps with this dual creature, the Antichrist. The mystifler and the demystifier are distinct yet 101 Inseparable.

The third strophe expands the notion of death Introduced In the first:

Una gran pledra sell o mi tumba, en la que solo habla 15 silenclo y sombra. Nada hallaron en ella, salvo scmbra y silenclo. (346)

We seem to have the voice of Christ speaking here. The sealing of his tanb by the rock signified despair; its subsequent removal resurrection, inmortality, hope. The rest of the strophe emphasizes the darkness and silence of the tanb which, although they are generally perceived as negative qualities (God and Christ being associated with light, and the power of the word) must in the last line of the strophe, where they signify (in the mystified system) the absence of Christ from the realm of death, be perceived positively, as evidence of resurrection. A first reading may leave us with the impression that this strophe is a statement of mystification. The last line of the strophe, however, is not a mere repetition of the third and fourth lines. The first sentence of the strophe indicates that when the tomb was sealed, all that it contained was "silenclo y sanbra.ft This empties of its usual meaning the following statement that they (the women who visited the tanb the next morning) found in the tanb only darkness and silence. If nothing was in the tanb to begin with, its subsequent emptiness cannot be Interpreted as resurrection. Just as we had been warned by the line preceding the strophe: "No hubo resurrecci6n." 102

The following two lines are a reformulation of the voice’s

Identity:

Yo soy el que no fue ni ser& nunca.

As in the initial statement of the voice that it is "la mentira," its statement of non-existence here foregrounds the necessary duality of the speaker. The Antichrist is non-existence projected endlessly through time (death) just as Christ represents the possibility of existence projected endlessly through time. Hie source of this existence /non-existence duality, its true nature, is stated first in the first strophe as "la verdad ultima del hombre" and is clarified here:

en la oquedad vacia, 30 la turbla resonancia de tu miedo.

Christ and Antichrist, existence and non-existence, inmortality and death: all are creations of man, projections of his fears onto reality. The words of the Antichrist are the words of the ironist who has created out of his own conception of time his own death, his own separation from the natural and cosmic world, and even from that part of himself that functions in the world. His words continue to exist in reality and yet they are his only possible response to reality — a verdict of meaninglessness, destruction of illusion. He experiences therefore a division in his being: he exists as a duality composed of an ironic self which uses language as its only means of differentiating itself from its empirical counterpart. Although it 103 attempts througi its language to reveal inauthenticity, it cannot separate itself completely fran that other aspect of itself. There will be present in his words, therefore, manifestations of his inauthentic and mystified condition.

In "Reflexion primera" there is no obstacle to the reader's concluding along with the voice of demystification that the life struggle consists of persisting in mystified modes of behaviour in spite of awareness of their falsity. Their falsity is the ultimate message of the poem. The reader's experience of "Palabras de Anticristo," however, is very different. The voice of demystification, which could be assigned a kind of relative truth- value in "Reflexi6n primera" is in this text associated with the lie and the fusion/confusion of Its language with that of the mystifying voice is pervasive. The reader can in no way filter out demystifying, "true" words with which to satisfy his expectation of authentic inner experience as the business of a poem. This very expectation Is what leads the reader to side with the voice of interlority whenever allowed to do so, as in "Reflexi6n primera." In

"Palabras de Anticristo," however, the Interior, demystifying voice is blocked from meeting that expectation and the result is a wide open text which presents two clearly contradictory perspectives without definitively subverting either, nor yet without giving definltve suuport to either. Language appeared as fallible In the earlier poem because the language of demystlfcation was tainted with mystified ways of thinking and being, but it nevertheless conveyed a message. In the second poem the function of language lies less in 104 conveying a message than in mounting a process — an ongoing state of

irresolution in which contradictory versions of reality are

superimposed.

With the returned focus on the experience of the present, the

sense of alienation from the natural world becomes more extreme and

the experience and impact of irmedlate surroundings is Intensified.

It is more extreme because of the unmitigated quality of the

perception of the world (our uncertain place in it without dreams of

a bright future) and by the intimacy or even invasiveness with which

that perception is experienced — admittedly imnersed in the present

we are more susceptible to the messages and pressures of the world,

one such message being the reminder of human mortality within the

irrmortal natural world.

Such an experience of the world is the theme of "Mundo

asombroso," In the first section of Sin esperanza, con

convenclmlento. The first strophe of the poem expresses the uniqueness of the world with regard to the human:

1 Mundo asombroso surge bruscamente. (66)

The qualification of the world as astounding or amazing points to it3 basic Incomprehensibility for the poetic voice. The sudden appearance of the world also contributes to the poetic voice's sense of being overwhelmed by it. Both of the qualifiers in the strophe

("asombroso,” "bruscamente”) point to a divergence between the 105 human and the natural world, a mutual lack of Influence and

involvement. This is reinforced by the stark, declarative nature of the statement whose human quality Is minimal.

With the second strophe, the human perspective arises:

Me da tniedo la luna embalsamada 5 en las aguas del rio, el bosque silencioso que arafia con sus ramas el vientre de la lluvia, los p&Jaros 10 que aullan en el tunel de la noche y todo lo que sGbitamente hace un gesto y sonrle para marchar de pronto. (66)

The human perspective brings with it a kind of fusion/confusion of

the natural and the human which was suppressed in the first strophe.

This strophe begins with an enumeration of the natural phenomena

which elicit the human reaction of fear with the lack of

understanding and control, expressed In the first strophe. Different

from the first strophe, however, Is the positioning of the poetic voice now explicitly presented as object in the sentence and

implicitly as susceptible to the workings of the natural world.

Thus, there is now established a relationship. The last four lines

of the strophe go a step further. They provide not only a conclusion

but apparently also a summing up of the preceding enumeration. Their

reference, therefore, to a wave and a smile encompasses the entire enumeration in a human sphere and confuses the natural phenomena

referred to with the human (moon, river, wood, rain, birds), as 106

though they belonged to the category of that which "hace un gesto y

sonrle." Two more references to suddenness ("sfibitamente," "marchar

de pronto") reaffirm the voice's lack of control over the object of

Its reflection and for the first time the reason for Its fear Is

Indicated. What the speaker fears Is the experience of passing

("marchar de pronto"), an experience which he relates directly to the

human (because they are things that smile and wave) and indirectly

with the natural world (because they are indirectly Included in that

category.) The relation of temporal limitation to the human

evidences the ironic consciousness, the voice of demystification.

Likewise, the backdrop of the natural world to this perspective.

Nevertheless, the very Indication of interrelationship between the

natural and the human and their identification at the end of the

strophe is in stark contrast to previous indications of separation.

In the third strophe there is a furthering of the sense of

alienation, but also an absorption into the world of the poetic

voice:

15 Eh medio de la cruel retirada de las cosas precipitSndose en desorden hacia la nada y la ceniza, mi coraz6n naufraga en la zozobra 20 del destlno del mundo que lo cerca. donde va ese viento y esa luz, el grito de la roja amapola inesperada, el canto de las grises 25 gaviotas de los puertos?

On the one hand, the vision of humanity as totally susceptible to the workings of the world testifies to man's powerlessness over nature. 107 The linage of a shipwreck certainly epitomizes the smallness of man in contrast to the grandeur and power of nature. The voice's perception of the movement of the world as one of "desorden" and "zozobra" expresses its awareness of his incomprehension of the world as does the posing of the last lines of the strophe as a question. On the other hand, the attribution of cruelty to the workings of the natural world constitutes a confusion of the human and the natural. This strophe also echoes the third strophe's confusion of human mortality with the natural world. Instead of Identifying death ("la nada y la ceniza") primarily with humanity, It is associated principally with the world, and the apocalyptic destruction which Is described Is perceived as the world's destiny, with the Individual accidentally caught up in it.

In the last strophe, the notion of humanity's destiny as determined by the world is carried to its inevitable end:

lY qu§ ej§rcito es ese que me lleva envuelto en su derrota y en su huida — fatigado reh£n, yo, prisionero sin nunero y sin nombre, maniatado 30 entre escuadras de gritos fugitivos— hacia la sanbra donde van las luces, hacia el silenclo donde la voz muere?

Here the individual is presented as prisoner and the world as his captor, just as the Ironist views the natural world as the means of defining his temporal limitation. The nature of his imprisonment is very specific — he Is constrained "sin numero y sin nombre, maniatado

// entre escuadras de gritos fugitivos." His absorption into the world results in the loss of language, whether as word (name) or sign 108

(number). The non-linguistic nature of the world Is Indicated by Its being constituted by "gritos fugitivos," expression but not

intelligible "language." The ultimate consequence of absorption into the empirical world is, therefore, the annihilation of the

linguistic, ironic self — the individual's only means of defense

(albeit Imperfect) against the inauthenticity of everyday human

non-response to the reality of death. This consequence is expressed

in the last line of the poem as the world takes the individual "hacia

el silenclo donde la voz muere."

This text offers several significant changes in focus with

regard to the poem "Lecciones de cosas" which also takes as its thane

the ironic experience of the world. Both are ironic texts, not only

in their theme, but also in the presence in each poem of a duality of

voice: on the one hand there is a mystified voice and vision which

reveal the individual's ties to the empirical world with its

suppression of the limitations of human temporality. On the other,

we find a demystified voice and vision which express awareness of the inauthenticity of the empirical world in an adnittedly futile attempt

at self-differentiation. In "Mundo asombroso," however, one need not

go so far to arrive at what constitutes a mystified perspective. In

"Lecciones de cosas" the mystification consisted of a pretense to understanding and control, even dominance over the workings of the

natural world whereas in "Mundo asombroso" the very assumption of any kind of relationship or Influence of nature to trie human is presented as mystification. The demystified perspective, on the other hand, goes further In

"Mundo asombroso" than in "Lecciones de cosas." In the latter, the

ironic individual experiences a sense of wonder with regard to the

natural world and advocates contemplation and reflection on the

world, that Is, a relationship, even if severely limited. In the

former, the Ironic Individual's sense of alienation from the world is

much more radical — it Is presented as the agent of his annihilation. This constitutes a much more lnmedlate recognition of the

implications of nature' s irmortality than does the Implicit message

of "Lecciones de cosas" to the effect that nature Is different from

humanity. The conclusions of the poems show a similar relationship.

The end of "Lecciones de cosas" points to the fallibility of

language as a result of the empirical component of the Ironist whereas In "Mundo asombroso" the world explicitly brings silence, the loss of the linguistic self, the very obliteration of speech. In

"Mundo asombroso" we therefore see a more radical sense of alienation from the natural world: a sharper awareness of the negative

significance of that difference for humanity, and an intensified feeling of susceptibility and defenselessness In the face of the

temporal limitations of humanity.

The ironist's sense of separation from the empirical world penetrates to affect his own physical being. The feeling of self- alienation is now so extreme that the body seems almost to disappear.

Comnenting on the technology of our time, Baudrillard observes that the body Is now "basically u s e l e s s "9 and thus hardly seems even to 110 house the consciousness — "house" In the sense of both containment and protection. Baudrillard sees this mlnimallzation of the significance of the body as Increasing the Individual's susceptibility to the world to such a degree that the consciousness can be described as schizophrenic:

We are now In a new form of schizophrenia . . . this state of terror proper to the schizophrenic: too great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiscuity of everything which touches, Invests and penetrates without resistance, with no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him anymore.10

This constitutes a radicallzation of the ironic experience of self- duplication. On the one hand, the sense of difference from the body so great that it now seems almost a foreign object. On the other hand, awareness of the tie to the body — with all Its vulnerability to the laws of nature— is also intensified.

"Miro," from Aspero mundo, explores the relationship between the body and the consciousness. The poem begins with the voice’s contemplation of his hand:

1 Miro mi mano. Esta que tantas veces olvido sobre los objetos 5 m&s infimos. Ahora es como un p&Jaro bruscamente caldo desde mi cuerpo hasta ese sitio. (20)

The distance/difference between the consciousness and the body is established with the voice as subject and the hand as object in the Ill

first sentence. This expression of self-alienation continues through

the use of the demonstrative pronoun beginning the second sentence:

the voice specifies which hand he is talking about, as though the reader should not assume a connection between the two. His statement

of forgetfulness with regard to the hand is an obvious gesture of

self-distancing as is the degradation of the hand by its association with "los objetos mSs Inflmos." The identification of the hand with

the bird represents another distancing of the voice from the hand

through associating the latter with the non-human. The last sentence of the sequence also widens the distance between the voice and the hand by mentioning the central body as interposed between the two and by the final location of the hand as "ese (with its connotations of distance) sitio."

The next sequence of the poem continues the suggestion to distance with regard to the whole body:

Otro hallazgo: aqul estfi mi cuerpo. Vivo en 61 sin saber de 61, casi sin sentirlo. A veces tropieza 15 de lmproviso contra otro cuerpo inevitable. Y es el amor. Sorprendido, lo siento entonces aislado, entero, distinto. (20)

The first four lines explicitly state the consciousness’ feeling of alienation from his body. The next two sentences give a sense of the consciousness' lack of control and susceptibility to the events involving the body. They are filled with references to chance or 112

inevitability. Even the experience of love, generally perceived as

one which Joins mind and body, falls to bring the interior!ty of the

self into conjunction with the body. Such distancing, explicitly and

emphatically confirmed by the last lines of the sequence, continues

the initial, mystified perspective which presents itself as separate from the physical self.

The next sentence of the poem shifts in focus from the body/consciousness relationship to the relationship of the body to the natural world, and Is the axis of the poem:

20 Otras veces el sol le dlbuja un tiblo perfil, o el viento lo rodea de un llmlte cefiido y concreto. (20)

The body is presented in a relationship of otherness to the natural world, which not only defines it ("perfil") but also establishes its limitations ("un llmlte cefiido // y concreto"). The sun certainly is one of the clearest examples of the cyclicality of nature and its use here to define the parameters of the body keys the reader to the voice's motive for the preceding self-differentiation — the contrast between the mortality of the body and the apparent infinity of natural cyclical time. It also explains the explicitly stated moment of awareness which follows:

Pero ahora es un frio presentimiento. 113 Hie contemplation of the body within the context of the natural world, with its Implications of mortality shakes the distanced position which the voice has taken thus far with regard to the body:

lArbol erguido frente a ml, sGblto cuerpo mlo! La sangre lo recorre. [C6mo 30 desciende! Oldlo: este es el coraz6n. Aqul se duerme el pulso, igual que un rlo en un remanso. Alii est& el llmpio 35 hueso bianco en su cauce. La piel. Los largos mGsculos tenaces y escondidos. (20-21)

In these lines there are several indications that the poetic voice 13 nearing the body. A change in tone is signalled by the exclamation points — a mark of emotional response absent in the first part of the poem. There is a certain privilege implied in the specific subject of contemplation — blood, heart, pulse, bone, etc.— elements of the physical body which are not perceptible to the eye but can only be experienced from within it. The consciousness now seems to be speaking with the awareness of its containment within the body. This is a step toward the demystified, Ironic viewpoint. It Is not, however, a complete shift. The voice's continued association of his body with nature (his blood and pulse "igual que un rlo") evidences a desire to deny the contrast between the body and cyclical nature Just recognized.

Such a denial is refuted by the conclusion of the poem:

Sobre la tierra estS.. Sobre la tierra: alta espiga de trigo, 114 Joven &lamo verde, vleJo 40 olivo. EstS sobre la tierra. Estaba. Yo lo he visto. Un momento tan s6lo. . . . Su estatura 45 entre yo y esos campos amarillos.

The identification with nature is mitigated here by the introduction of linear temporality in the progression from the tender stalk of wheat to the young oak to the old olive tree. Likewise, the presence of the verb estar in the past tense admits to the temporal limitation of the body, its brevity emphasized by the single moment referred to and the probable realization on the part of the reader that the voice’s words are motivated by a glimpse of his long-cast shadow.

The last statement unites the voice with the body in contrast to the natural world — the physical, mortal aspect of the ironic individual forming a barrier between the ironic consciousness and the infinity of natural time.

"Miro," in comparison with "Prueba" demonstrates the same continuum we saw regarding ’’Mundo asombroso and "Lecciones de cosas."

It shows a much more extreme sense of alienation from the body and an increased susceptibility to its limitations. Whereas "Prueba" articulated the ironic duality around the matter of the perfection

(mystified perspective) or imperfection (demystified perspective) of the body/consciousness connection, in "Miro" the poetic voice In Its mystifed state feels no connection at all with the body and as the process of demystification occurs the relationship of the consciousness to the body Is revealed as one of betrayal, with the 115 body as the agent of death, standing between the consciousness and the immortality exemplified in nature.

"Yo mismo” carries the notion of self-alienation further inward, to touch on that part of the consciousness that functions in the empirical world. The apparent message of the poem is the separation of the ironic, linguistic self (that is, the speaker) from the empirical self he encounters in the world. Here the double use of the first person pronouns 3erves more to emphasize the distinction between the two selves than to identify them. The first two strophes of the poem express that separation:

1 Yo mismo me encontre frente a ml en una encrucijada. Vi en mi rostro una obstlnada expresion, y dureza 5 en los ojos, como un hcrnbre decidido a cualquier cosa.

El camlno era estrecho, y me dije: "Ap&rtate, dejame paso, 10 pues tengo que llegar hasta tal sitio".(65)

The desired distance between the two selves is emphasized by the confrontational nature of the encounter described. The situation at hand, the explicit resistance on the part of the empirical self, and the linguistic self’s use of command forms all contribute to this effect. With the reference to obstinance, hardness, and decision, a realm of consciousness corresponding to everyday experience is indicated as a component of the empirical self from which the speaker wishes to separate himself. 116

In the second two strophes the speaker remarks his failure to

avoid the empirical component of his self:

Pero yo no era fuerte y ml enemlgo me cayfi enclma con todo el peso de ml came, y quede derrotado en la cuneta.

Sucedio de tal modo, y nunca pude 15 llegar a aquel lugar, y desde entonces mi cuerpo marcha solo, equlvocfindose torclendo los deslgnlos que yo tra20 . (65)

Hie third strophe explicitly confirms the relationship of the body and everyday consciousness as constituting the empirical self, and also the ultimate control of the empirical self in determining the fate of the ironic individual. The Ironist Is aware of the inauthenticitles of the world but, as De Man says, "endlessly caught

In the Impossibility of making this knowledge applicable to the empirical world. Thus, the complete lack of control of the empirical self by means of the "deslgnlos" created by the Ironic self, and the definitive defeat of the linguistic, ironic self which concludes the poem, a defeat which takes the form of recognition of the duality of the ironic/ empirical individual.

There is a marked change in tone between "Yo mismo" and

"Cumpleafios," which also explores the relationship of the ironic to the everyday consciousness. In the latter, the separation of the two facets of consciousness Is achieved throu^i the foregrounding of the duality of the poetic voice as both speaker and subject, through the contrast between the apparent clearheadedness of the voice as speaker and the confusion of the self as subject, and through the 117 identification of the everyday consciousness with the body. Both

selves are expressed in the first person, but with the interior view

of the empirical self Which is given, this seems more to draw the two

selves together than to separate them. This tone of closeness is

reinforced by the sympathetic, (at moments even pathetic) portrayal

of the empirical self by the ironic consciousness. In "Yo mismo" on

the other hand, the relationship between the two selves is

confrontational and roles are reversed. Hie ironic self can no

longer pretend to a relationship of superiority with regard to the empirical self but is explicitly and definitively brought down by

that facet of himself which is completely unresponsive to the

consciousness. Hie fact that the empirical self seems hardly to even

contain the ironic consciousness, signals that we have reached a disjunction so radical as to be characterized as schizophrenic by Jameson:

The schizophrenic, however, is not only "no one" in the sense of having no personal identity; he or she also does nothing, since to have a project means to be able to conrmit oneself to a certain continuity over time. The schizophrenic is thus given over to a completely undifferentiated vision of the world in the present, a by no means pleasant experience.12

The radical separation of the ironic consciousness from the empirical self weakens the interlority of the individual and makes difficult any lntentionality on the part of the individual. Hence, for the subject of "Yo mismo,": "mi cuerpo marcha s6lo, equivocfindose, // torciendo los deslgnlos que yo trazo." 118 Self-reflective Hexts

The duality of voice Which characterizes tills portion of

GonzSlez' work then, manifests Itself In new textual strategies in

which neither the voice of empirical experience nor that of ironic

consciousness has, so to speak, the upper hand. Rather than forms of

Juxtaposition, whose linearity may allow for a kind of conclusiveness

(that is, a discovery of a truth), these devices are better

characterized as a superimposition of the two perspectives in such a

way that neither prevails. The superimposition of reflections about

the text and Its language upon the poem itself is one of the forms

that duality of voice takes at this level of ironic response in

GonzSlez' production. In self-reflective texts such as "Luz llamada

dia trece" and "Slmbolo," GonzSlez brings the Infinite shiftings of

language, the Instabilities of the slgnifier/signified relationship

into conjunction (or disjunction) with the finite text. Another

manifestation of duality of voice Is present In those texts which, in

a pun-like manner, superimpose a use of language which is both literal and Ironic. In texts like "E&loga," and "A veces, en

octubre, es lo que pasa ..." among others, language is

simultaneously used in ways both concrete and allusive. And finally,

the collage technique In texts like "Palabras desprendidas de pinturas de Jose HemSndez" combines a variety of language in an

open relationship of mutual influence. Stated in another way, the duality of the texts considered in this chapter occurs In terms

of a contrast between a logocentric voice — an empirical perspective which uses language uncritically, as an effective embodiment of 119 meaning, and a decentered voice which manipulates language In order to convey Its fallibility. Tills Ironic duality is characterized by a greater essential distance between the terms of duality, and yet a more Intimate co-existence and a greater balance of "power” between

the terms.

The tendency toward metaliterature and self-reflective texts over the last twenty-five years has certainly not gone unremarked, especially with regard to the Generation of Mid-Century. Debickl relates this mode of writing to the generation's concept of poetry as a means of discovery:

More often yet, a text alludes to Its cwn process of composition or Involves the reader in an interplay with Itself or with some of its premises. This Is, of course, one way In which these poets can infuse deeper dimensions Into a seemingly ordinary reality. It Is also an exemplification of their belief that writing is an act of discovery. If the process of writing a text is a way of finding fresh meanings, then the poet is necessarily conscious of the process itself and expects to gain Insigit by reflecting on It . . .Quite clearly, the vision of poetry as a gradual act of knowledge both stresses and complicates the whole question of the relationships between reader and poet and between reader and text. It makes it even more necessary to combine an analytic sense of the text with a concern for the Interactions and suggestions produced by it and by its contexts.1-^

This idea, I believe, does not wholly ring true with regard to the kind of poems by GonzSlez that we are about to consider. The notion of discovery seems here to Imply a latent truth (even if that truth is the difficulty or impossibility of finding a truth) to which the experience of the text will lead the reader. It implies process, 120 but also a kind of closure. This does not occur in the following

poems, which carry to an extreme the implications of a self-

reflective text in the simultaneous affirmation and denial of their

own language. Debicki comes closer to these particular poems when he remarks more generally "a larger movement away from a purely

logocentric view of literary works."^

An intriguing example of such a movement is the sonnet "Luz

llamada dia trece" in Section III of Sin e3peranza, con

convenelmlento. The combination of the title with the sonnet form sets up the network of self-affirmations and self-negations which

comprises the text. The "llamada" of the title creates a disjunction between its two terms. The light is not day thirteen, it is only

called day thirteen — the title thus establishes a clear distinction

between what a thing is and what it is called. This distinction, however, still does not actually make present the referent — we may

believe that "luz" conies closer than "dia trece" to the referent but ultimately both are words and as the disjunction of the title

indicates, words and reality don’t necessarily conjoin. The title

therefore reveals the relativity and arbitrariness of the word with

regard to the referent; but at the same time it affirms the possibility of a conjunction of the signifler and the signified

through its linearity insofar as the first word, "luz" appears as the signified and "dia trece" as its slgnlfier. 11113 slipperiness of the title hovers over the entire poem, Immediately recognizable as a sonnet, traditionally a form with a strong sense of linear development and closure. The strong consonant rhyme serves a similar 121 function. Title and form seem almost to challenge each other in their respective moves to open and to close the text.

The first cuartet continues to manifest a tension between language which claims to capture reality and language which reveals its arbitrariness and Instability:

1 A cada cosa por su solo nambre. Pan signiflea pan; amor, espanto; madera, eso; primavera, llanto; el cielo, nada; la verdad, el hombre. (93)

Interestingly enough, the text begins with the evocation of the proverb "llamar al pan, pan y al vino, vino," the suggestion that each reality has a corresponding and correct word. This idea is explicitly put forth in the first line (this time without the disturbing "llamar" although It is conspicuous in Its absence) and the first half of the second line explicitly evokes the refrain. So, GonzSlez doesn't use the refrain but different words to make the same proposal. Therefore, the words of the first line and a half of the poem propose a logocentric vision at the same time that their relationship with the traditional refrain reveals the multiplicity of the signlfier/sigpiifled relationship. That relationship Is also foregrounded by the use of the word "signifies."

The couplings which comprise the rest of the strophe refute the mandate of the first line. They also repeat the dynamic of the title in their obvious distinction between the two terms (the thing and Its name) and the simultaneous proposal of the first term of each pair as the signifler and the second as the reality to which it 122 corresponds. Hovering over these tensions Is the probably ambivalent response of the reader: recognition on the one hand that what is presented In each pair can not be seen as an equivalence as is suggested by the first line and, on the other hand, an assent, on a purely intuitive basis, to the proposed conjunctions. Thelanguage of the text seems therefore to be clearly decentered, but also to be logocentrically successful.

The next two strophes begin with an Idea that could be offered as a way of mitigating the arbitrary and relative facet of language:

5 Llamemos luz al dia, aunque se asombre quien dice es martes hoy, ayer fue santo Tam&s, maiiana serS fiesta. jCufinto mfis verdadera que cualquler pronontbre

es esa luz que cuaja el aire en dia! 10 Hoy es luz llamada dia trece de materia de mayo y sol, digamos.

The first sentence of the strophe proposes and denies the ideal of language as social contract. It is proposed in the "Llamemos," although this suggestion does ring of arbitrariness. It Is denied in the reference to another speaker who uses language differently and who will be perplexed by the speaker's usage. The role reversal of the words of the title (where light was the signified called day) demonstrates a shifting which contrasts and interferes with the apparent determination of the speaker to conmunally fix a name to the reality with which he is concerned.

The words in quotation marks introduce the idea of linear time into the text with names for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. There 123 is some tension in this signal of linearity, in contrast to the identification of a day with ligit (cycle) in the initial Joining of light to day as signifler. The contrast is made explicit in the following exclamation which degrades the logocentric notion of naming by the use of the word "pronombre.” As in the series of couplings of the first strophe the reader may intuitively assent to the "truth" of the statement that "light" better captures the day than the proceeding words (that is, s/he may assent to the view of the natural world as cyclical over the human experience of time as linear).

However, this is complicated by yet another shifting in the search for a signifler to attach to the referent: air now appears as the word to refer to what constitutes a day. The last sentence of the first tercet returns to the title, a return which should effect a sense of closure. However, we are still only in the first tercet and it manifests the same duality of voice (logocentric and decentered) which has been present in a state of tension throughout the text.

Within the repetition of the title, the arbitrariness of language is repeated in contrast to the unabashed identification of "today" with

"the ligit called day thirteen": even in the first strophe which explicitly proposed an equivalence of signified and signifler the verb slpyilflcar was chosen over ser. The statement of identification is further compromised by the introduction of two new words to signify day "mayo y sol." They constitute another indication of the multiplicity of the sign if led/signifler relationship, and yet probably come closer than the previous ones in capturing the texture and quality of the referent and so constitute another logocentric 124

"success," a moment in which words more fully evoke the reality to

which they are applied. This moment is, of course, immediately

followed by "digamos” which suggests simultaneously the

capriciousness of the assignation of those words to the reality and

also the urge of language toward community.

The second tercet struggles with the idea of language as

comnu nl cation:

Y si hablamos de ml — puesto que hablamos de algo hay que hablar— , digamos todavla: pasion fatal que como un firbol crece.

Its initial disclosure that the subject of the text is the speaker

himself comes as a surprise since the text thus far seems not to have

touched on the interlorlty of the poet. Likewise the following

statement that we need to talk about something. Both abruptly

provoke a questioning of what has come before: Were we talking about

the speaker? Weren't we talking about something? The end of the

poem shows the same move to open and to close which constitutes the

process of the text. "Digamos" repeats the possibility of stability

for language through social contract, as well as characterizing the

arbitrary nature of language. "Tbdavla" suggests the multiple

possibilities and/or inadequacies of the signifler/signified

relationship: that after having said something (after having assigned words to a referent) there Is still something else to say, and there

Is another way to say it. On the other hand, the final line of the poem effects a degree of closure In its semantic similarity to some of the terms in the couplings of the first strophe. Of course, the 125 return to those couplings Is also a return to the disjunction between

language and reality.

Hils text, then, Is an amazingly complex network, a series of

overlays of one language which allows an Intuitive grasping of

reality through words, and another language which, In its shlftings,

reveals the basic unreliability of linguistic activity in the

ccmiunication of reality and experience. Thus the duality of voice

which characterizes the ironic text is present in this text in terms

of a logocentric and a decentered voice. The logocentric approach to

language supposes the ability of humanity to apprehend reality and to

successfully communicate it while the decentered voice denies such a

capability. References to temporality within the text link the

problematics of language to the essential temporal difference between man and the world — the provocation of the ironic consciousness*

sense of difference with regard to the world and those aspects of his

being which function in the world (here, the linguistic aspect of the empirical self). Both types of language function in the text, so the

reader can settle on neither as the "truth" of the text and experiences it Instead as a process in which two contradictory modes of thinking and writing co-exist in a state of unresolveable tension.

The terms of the duality are poles apart, yet they co-exist in the text most intimately. Their unresolvable tension provokes an assent, resignation or at least acconmodation with the co-existence of such incongruitites on the part of the reader — since the textual experience makes futile any effort to make one of the two terms prevail. 126

"Slmbolo,” in Section IV of* Sin esperanza, con convenelmlento, speaks even more explicitly about the disjunction between words and their referents, althou^i at the same time it proposes a logpcentric vision and functions along the lines of a logocentric text. This tension Is rather intensely embodied in the title itself. Hie word symbol pulls the reader in two contradictory directions.

It veers toward the logocentric approach to language and literature on two levels. First of all, the symbol, long viewed as the fundamental mode of romanticism, corresponds to an analogical

(rather than an ironic) view of the world. Along these lines, De

Man cocrments on the widespread critical perception of the predominance of the symbol In the Romantic poets: "There is the same stress on the analogical unity of nature and consciousness'. . . Hie same tendency to transfer onto nature attributes of consciousness and to unify it organically with respect to a center that acts, for natural objects, as the identity of the self functions for a consciousness.”^ This analogical view of the world can be conceived in temporal terms, as De Man points out with regard to Wordsworth:

Wordsworth is more clearly conscious of what is Involved here when he sees the same dialectic between the self and nature in temporal terms. Hie movements In nature are for him instances of what Goethe calls Dauer im Wechsel, endurance within a pattern of change, the assertion of a metaphysical, stationary state beyond the apparent decay of a mutability that attacks certain outward aspects of nature but leaves the core intact . . . Such paradoxical assertions of eternity in motion can be applied to nature but not to a self caught up entirely within mutability. Hie temptation exists, then, for the sell* to borrow, so to speak, the temporal stability it lacks from nature, and to devise strategies by means of which nature is brought down to a human level while still escaping from "the 127

unimaginable touch of tlme."*^

Ihe symbol would therefore constitute an evasive tactic with which to

avoid recognition of the temporal differences between man and nature.

It Is apt In this regard because of its synechdocal structure, "for

the symbol Is always part of the totality It represents.Thus the

symbol came to be valorized during the nineteenth century, De Man

continues, as a device "which refuses to distinguish between

experience and the representation of this experience,"*^ "as an

expression of unity between the representative and the semantic

function of language,"*9 and poetic language came to be accepted as

"capable of transcending this distinction and thus transforms all individual experience directly Into truth. Thus on both a

metaphysical and a linguistic level, symbol promises a experience

which will provide the reader with some measure of truth about the world, and it therefore stars as the logocentric device, par

excellence. On the other hand, the symbolic mode 13 a mode of

indirection to the extent that it is figurative language which does

not actually say what it means, even though Its relationship to the

referent Is one of congruity and even identity. There is still distance between the two. The title therefore leads the reader to expect both an ultimate arrival at a "true" meaning through the words on the page, and a disjunction between the words and their referents which prevents, or at least Impedes such a conclusion.

The first strophe declares the deception of the symbol and of the logocentric vision it epitcmizes: 128

1 Slmbolo oscuro disfraz del destino. (105)

As we have said, the symbol corresponds to an analogical vision of

the world — a metaphysical position which connects the human and the

natural thus denying the temporal limitations of humanity: our mortal "destino." The initial repetition of "Slmbolo," however, reiterates the tensions of the title. These lines also posit a relationship

between "symbol" and "destiny," for however obscuring the

relationship may be, the text still proposes that destiny can be

reached through the symbol. The first twelve lines of the second strophe deal with several symbols:

Ocho quiere decir: 5 Amor. Nueve, jquiSn sabe! Serla preciso dejar de ser hcmbre. Pero 10 es sabido -y a todo el mundo consta- que detr&s del color amarillo se oculta una tralcl6n: 15 la mSs frecuente. iCuidado!

The first symbol and its referent are "ocho" and "amor." The use of

a number instead of a word (although the number is given in word form) seems to offer an alternative to language as a means of conveying meaning, weakening the logocentric argument per se, but nevertheless affirming the bond of the signifler to the signified.

The everyday usage of "quiere decir," — to mean, to signify— at once 129 Identifies the two terms "ocho” and "amor" and distinguishes them as

signifler and signified, as essentially different phenomena. A

literal interpretation of the phrase may indicate a less perfect

connection between the two. The assignment of "ocho" to mean love

is especially significant in GonzSlez * work and should catch the eye

of anyone familiar with his production. In GonzSlez* poetry love is

often a unique phenomenon which is experienced in a plenary rather

than ironic way. In "La palabra" he attributes an enduring

lrmutability to the word amor:

Igual que un pSjaro salta desde una rama, de ese modo 45 surgio en el aire limpio de aquel dia la palabra: amor. Era suficiente.

70 La palabra fue dicha para siempre. Para todos tambiSn. (172-173)

This absolute quality encompasses the relationship between the word

and its referent. In "Palabra muerta, realidad perdida" he refers to

the word amor as:

20 la Gnica palabra irrefrenable que mi sangre entendla y pronunciaba: una palabra para estar seguro, talismSn Infalible significando aquello que nanbraba. (108)

The presence of the word therefore conjures up a unique incidence of explicit logocentrism In Gonzfilez' work although such an acceptance 130 of the word is complicated by its coupling with another signifler.

Nueve Is the signifler for a referent beyond the reach of human comprehension. There is a certain logical progression here: If eight means love, the human experience which most closely approaches the absolute, that is, Which approaches an experience of unity and identification, then nine goes one step further and actualizes such an experience. The tension created by the initial declaration that eight means love is thus extended. The unlntelligiblllty, the

Inability of language to convey meaning Is emphasized by the explicit statement of Incomprehension, likewise the limitations of the human apprehension of the world as the source of that fallibility of language. However, by attributing a superhuman quality to the referent, it endows the symbol with a greater profundity and the symbol's logocentric power is strengthened and expanded.

The sense of mystery associated with "nueve” is abruptly broken by the affirmation of the meaning of the color yellow. The Idea of language as social contract is positedhere as the force which holds together the symbol and its referent. The firmness is, however, compromised in a way that echoes the first strophe — just as symbol was presented as the mask of destiny, the referent associated with yellow (betrayal) hides behind it. The referent itself poses a difficulty here in that if one successfully discovers it through the symbol, one has not discovered a truth but rather seme thing which is not what it seems to be.

The tone of the first twelve lines of the strophe is relatively light — an apparently simplistic enumeration of symbols (almost 131 superstitious, or at least folkloric In nature) and their meanings.

In this sense, the final "iCuidado!" is pivotal. At first reading

it seems to apply to the referent, to the betrayal which lurks behind

the color yellow. It becomes more significant, however, with the

change in tone of the next eleven lines:

Ehgafian las palabras las clfras, los sonldos. Nada es lo que parece. El peligro 20 est& detrSs de todo. HarS. falta moverse con mucho sigilo para no tropezar 25 con el hierro que nos desgarrarla el alma fatalmente.

The warning now seems to apply to awareness of the deceptive nature

of slgniflers. The first three lines make this deceptiveness explicit. Their effect, however, Is much the same as that of the paradoxical statement "I am lying” in that they provoke an endless back-and-forth reflection on their possible truth-value: If words deceive and they say that they deceive are they not then truthful?

Thus, doubt Is established as to whether the slgniflers really do deceive. This Is compounded by the rather noticeable absence of colors from the enumeration of unreliable slgniflers which otherwise encompasses the kinds of slgniflers dealt with In earlier lines. Are we to understand, then, that yellow really does mean betrayal? As the strophe continues the threat becomes increasingly ominous — from mere deception, to danger, to a weapon capable of inflicting a mortal wound. If in the previous sequence symbol was presented as a 132

folkloric, superstitious system, it is now the determining force of a

whole way of being, a matter perhaps of life and death. Uiis

attribution of power to the symbol corresponds to the logocentric voice, to the belief that words are the medium through which we experience life and death, and so the means to arrival at their meaning. However, the sane statement which attributes such

importance to words ("Har§. falta moverse // con mucho // sigilo // para no tropezar // con el hierro// que nos desgarraria el alma

fatalmente.") declares them to be a means to evasion of reality. The key to survival is not to successfully decode the symbol but rather

to avoid the referent which is its other side, to stay on the surface

of words and to not connect them with reality, for reality contains death. Words therefore appear in these eleven lines as deceptive and as having truth-value, and the symbol appears as a means of experiencing the world as well as a way of avoiding its reality — another fusion of the logocentric and decentered voices in the text.

The remaining lines of the strophe expand on the proceeding

statement, suggesting how to "moverse con mucho 3igilo":

El secreto es sencillo: confianza y desconfianza, olvidar lo aprendido, 30 cerrar los ojos si lo evidente se ensafta con nosotros, pronunciar las palabras elementales, llorar de cuando en cuando, vivlr ccmo si nada 35 hubiese sucedldo. (105-106)

On the surface, these lines affirm the symbol as the way of making one’s way through the world. A process of discovery must occur (that is, the secret of the symbol must be decoded), but the

first line of the sequence premises success; and success, life.

These lines nevertheless repeat the dynamic of the proceeding

sentence. The way an individual deals with words, signs, or symbols

is posited as the most significant aspect of the individual.

However, the suggestions as to how to discover this secret to life

correspond not to a symbolic or analogical mode but rather to the

ironic or decentered way of viewing the world and the potential of

language as an instrument for understanding it. The admonition to

simultaneous confidence in and mistrust of the ways of the world

corresponds to the basic empirical and ironic duality. The two

following admonitions to forget what is known and to ignore what is

seen harbor that same duality. With line 32 the matter of language arises. "Pronunciar las palabras elementales'1 voices both a

logocentric and a decentered notion of language. It is logocentric

in its offering up of words as a way (almost magical) of discovering

the secrets of life. Such a proposition is, however, complicated by

the word elementales which, while it points to a language which Is able to embody, to actually be what it means, differentiates such words from those that we normally use, from language as we know it.

"Llorar de cuando en cuando" goes one step further as it eliminates language with Its promotion of urmediated experience. Finally, the

"como si nada" mode of being suggested at the conclusion of the strophe (as in the conclusion of "Reflexifin primera") is the ironic structure par excellence — simultaneous awareness and deliberate denial of reality. 134 The final strophe most Intensely embodies the tension between the logocentric and the decentered voice which constitutes the poem:

El agua clara signifies: espera. Restos de luz en el atardecer: olvldo.

It is decentered in that the couplings of the two terms in each line establish a signlfier/signified relationship thus emphasizing the disparate nature of the two — one as sign and one as reality, much the same as in the series of couplings that occur In "Luz llamada dia trece." The logocentric vision appears here at its most alluring.

The abstract symbols considered before (eight, nine, yellow) were easily perceived as arbitrary, but these are different. Intuitively, they make sense. It Is not difficult to associate the imnobillty of waiting with the stillness of clear, undisturbed water, nor the slow retreat of llgit at dusk with the surrender of memories. The waiting and the forgetting, signalled by nature, also allow for a relinquishing of concern for the present and for the past, and promise a future. The temptation is great, as De Man commented, to believe it is possible for one to "borrow" the timelessness of nature, the ultimate symbol. Once again however, the superimposition on this logocentric pull of the clear distinction (also signalled typographically by the colons) between the symbols and their referents which decenters the text makes it impossible for the reader, on the basis of the text, to settle on the truth of one or the other of the two ways of seeing the world and language. Just as in "Luz llamada dia trece," in "Slmbolo" the ironic duality is 135 manifested In the superimposition of two voices — a logocentric voice which posits language as a way of understanding reality and does succeed in that project at times In the text, and a de centered voice which explicitly and implicity raises (but does not answer) questions about the possibilities and limitations of language.

Textual Punning

Poems such as "Luz llamada dia trece" and "Slmbolo" fairly explicitly raise questions concerning the validity or truth-value of their own linguistic medium. Texts such as "Adlvlnanza," "Egloga," and "A veces, en octubre, es lo que pasa" represent another textual strategy through which the logocentric and the decentered views of the world and of language pull at each other In a state of unresolveable tension. Jameson, as we may recall, connects Lacan’s theory of schizophrenia as failure to fully access speech and language with the kind of radical sense of otherness we are considering in this chapter. He posits an Intensified perception of the materiality of language as a result of this linguistic incapacity:

It is because language has a past and a future, because the sentence moves in time, that we can have what seems to us a concrete or lived experience of time. But since the schizophrenic does not knew language articulation In that way, he or she does not have our experience of temporal continuity either, but is condemned to live In a perpetual present with which the various moments of his or her past have little connection and for Which there is no conceivable future on the horizon. In other words, the schizophrenic experience is an experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material slgniflers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence . . . As temporal 136

continuities break down, the experience of the present becomes powerfully, overwhelmingly vivid and "material": the world cones before the schizophrenic with heightened intensity, bearing a mysterious and oppressive charge of effect, glowing with hallucinatory energy. But what might for us seem a desirable experience — an increase in our perceptions, a libldinal or hallucinogenic intensification of our normally humdrum and familiar surroundings— is here felt as loss, as "unreality.” What I want to underscore, however, is precisely the way in which the signifler in isolation becomes ever more material — or better still, literal - ever more vivid in sensory ways, whether the new experience is attractive or terrifying. We can show the same thing in the realm of language: what the schizophrenic breakdown of language does to the individual words that remain behind is to reorient the subject or the speaker to a more liberalizing attention towards those words. Again, in normal speech, we try to see through the materiality of words (their strange sounds and printed appearance, my voice timbre and peculiar accent, and so forth) towards their meaning. As meaning is lost, the materiality of words becomes obsessive, as is the case when children repeat a word over and over again until its sense is lost and it becomes an incomprehensible incantation.

Nancy Mandlove has perceived such a tendency toward liberalization in the poetry of Angel Gonzfilez, and also in that of Gloria Puentes.

She considers this matter mainly in terms of the insertion of poetic cliches (although she also mentions their use of advertising slogans, street language, and other forms of language not traditionally considered to be poetic) into new poetic contexts in such a way that, while they are still readily perceived as cliches, their literal meaning is also acceptable and meaningful:

Fuertes and GonzSlez . . . take this process still one step further by manipulating such clichSs so that they must once again be taken literally. The expression has come full circle: frcrn new, to convention to irony or parody, to old and new at the same time. In these contexts, the expressions contain and transcend the irony of stage three. Fuertes and Gonz&lez, then, create new language out of old. They return used expressions, Where meaning has worn thin, to pristine condition. This can only happen because the language Is trans-parent, allowing the reader to perceive and integrate the three prior stages of expression along with its present status, to see the ancestors in the offspring. The cliches are self-referential and Incorporate the entire poetic or linguistic tradition. Their new meaning is a product of lntertextual space, and development. 0Ihe expression does and does not mean exactly what it says. 2

This is the second textual strategy for the superimposition of a

logocentric voice and a decentered voice that we will consider in

this chapter: the logocentric voice is present in the possibility and

acceptability of the traditional, established, or everyday use of words, but this acceptability is counterindicated or decentered by

the possible meaningfulness of a non-traditional, unusual, or literal

reading of the same words or phrases.

This use of everyday language in new contexts so that it becomes poetic language has been widely remarked with regard to the

Generation of Mid-century and it is often referred to as ironic language. Some clarification is necessary, nevertheless, as to why such a strategy constitutes irony, and also as to the particular nature of the irony. It is ironic because it contains the duality basic to all ironic structures. It functions on two levels: on an everyday, empirical level which assumes the functionality of language and uses it uncritically to comnunicate experience; and also on a more conscious, ironic level which denies the possibility of language as a means of true and complete communication and so uses language in a way that reveals this fallibility. It differs, however, from the kinds of structures seen in the previous chapter in that its function 138

Is not simply one of demystification, of revealing the Inauthenticity of ways of thinking about the world and language (ways which repress the facts of human temporality and difference from the natural world.) Instead of replacing one "truth” (one way of seeing the world) with another, two ways of seeing the world and language

(mystified/demystified; logocentric/decentered) are housed in the same words with much the same dynamic as the pun, so that they cannot be separated in the text and the reader cannot, on the basis of the text, decide the truth or the falsity of either. Nothing Is ultimately denied or demystifled, so the ultimate effect of the text

Is to show, not necessarily and not always the fallibility or functionality of language, but rather the instability (without the negative connotations that this word often carries) or the multiplicity of the signifier/signlfied relationship.

Many of the texts based on this strategy are short pieces, especially concentrated in the second stage of GonzSlez' production which he describes thus:

Aunque en principio sin dellberaci&n, creo que el afSn de acabar con el vieJo personaje influyS en mi reiterada apoyatura en lo mfis impersonal y ajeno, es decir, en las formulas y en los rfitulos e3tllistlcos: calambures, f&bulas, apotegnas, gLosas, etc., pensando en asimilar "las actitudes sentimentales que habitualmente ccmportan." En cierto modo, estaba tratando de inlciar la escritura a parti r no de experlencias, sino de esquemas, aunque no he podido -ni querldo- evitar cast nunca que los esquemas se llenasen con mis experlencias.^

Some of these texts are constituted on word play, as the title "Adlvinanza" indicates: 139 1 Decla que habla un delfln debajo de su cam. SI no vlvla en un barco nl escribla poeraas surreallstas, 5 nl estaba loco nl ebrlo icfimo era, Dios mlo, c6mo era?

Era senclllamente — dentro de lo que cabe en tlempos tan barrocos— , Luis XV, rey de Pranela. (301)

Here the various uses of the word delfln create a pun which,

seemingly Innocuous, is nonetheless significant In that it points to

the multiplicity of the slgnifier/slgnlfied relationship, the acceptance of which allows for both a logocentric vision of language

(the speaker means what he says) and a decentered one (the speaker cannot say what he means.)

In other texts, conmonplaces are put Into new contexts so that a more literal reading, as well as the everyday acceptance, becomes possible. "Apotegna" Is such a text:

No hay otra soluclon: SI de verdad amas a Eurldice, vete al inflemo.

Y no regreses nunca. (299)

"Vete al inflemo" sounds here not only as a voicing of condemnation and disapproval or anger, but also as a direct, concrete command through the allusion to Euridice, goddess of the underworld.

Likewise this section of "M&ximas mlnlmas":

Eudosa superlorldad: La virtud paga. Eh cambio el vicio cobra. (356) 140 In "Final conocido" the doings of Pontius Pilate are the source of a duplicity of vision:

Despues de haber comido entrambos doce n£coras, alguien dijo a Pilatos: iY que hacemos ahora? El vacilo un Instante y respondla (educado, dlstante, lndiferente): — Chico, tu haz lo que quleras. Yo me lavo las manos. (257)

Washing one's hands appears in the text both as allusive (to the reader's knowledge outside the text of the significance of the words) and literal (in the context of this text itself.)

All of these poems are oriented toward the problematics and possibilities of language, rather than onto the comminlcation of experience, Just as Gonz&lez pointed out. The tension present In the texts between the logocentric and the decentered use of language is mirrored In their titles — all refer to some genre or structure not usually associated with the traditional vision of the business of poetry, the cocnnunication of authentic inner experience.

This strategy is not always the major source of poeticity in the text but may be present incidentally to contribute to the tension in a text between a logocentric and a decentered view of language. Such a case is that of "Realismo mSgico" (very similar in theme to

"Slmbolo".) The poem begins thus:

Ese medium marica (y si lo llamo asi, no es porque fuese un poco afemlnado -que lo era-, 5 slno porque, adem&s de otros contactos, tenia relacion con los e3piritus. 141

Pero en fin, a lo nuestro:) ese marica y medium me predijo con ayuda del naipe 10 las peores desgracias para agosto. Y realmente acerto. (254) the parentheses signal that the speaker is operating on two levels,

and the substance of the statement explicitly attributes that duality to the first line of the text, pointing out that it could be read as either medium (adjective) marica (noun) or medium (noun) marica

(adjective.) While the speaker claims his Intention to be the latter meaning (Which in itself is an indication of multiplicity: words’ meanings modified by intention), he affirms the acceptability of the other reading. Thus is established the multiplicity of the signlfier/signlfied relationship, a multiplicity which the rest of

the text expands upon in terms of superstitious omens. The speaker both endows these signals with tremendous power over him and his destiny (as the signs by which he must live), and sees his perception of reality as misleading and blurred: "todo lo que en la scmbra manipula, // compromete, corrompe, traza, borra // el devenir de la existeneia.”

In "Egloga," of Procedimlentos narratlvos, Gonz&lez also foregrounds the multiplicity of language use by superimposing through context a logocentric and a decentered vision of language within the same words:

Me eduque en una comunldad rellglosa que contaba con monjas muy lnteligentes. Los Jueves se exhibian en los claustros. — Dame la manita, les declan los vlsitantes 142 ofreclendoles bombones y monedas. Pero ellas no daban nada: al contrario, pedlan continuamente. (251)

At first reading, offering one's hand is apprehended on the empirical

level - understood in its normal usage as a mode of greeting. When,

however, the phrase Is counterpointed with pedlr as Its opposite, dar

Is understood also in the literal sense of physically relinquishing

sane thing. The second strophe contains a corment of the beauty on

the runs and then a similar process occurs in the third strophe:

Habla una, sobnetodo, que era muy cazadora. Persegula a las niftas mfis allfi. de las tapias 15 y las trala sujetas por el pelo hasta los breves pies de la madre abadeaa. (251)

Again, on first reading, cazadora is understood in Its everyday,

colloquial usage as meaning charming or fetching, especially given

the preceedlng reference to the nuns' beauty. What follows in the

rest of the third strophe, however, brings out the literal meaning,

referring to the hunt or the chase. Both readings are meaningful within the context of the poem and thi3 duplicity foregrounds the multiplicity of the signifler/ signified relationship without positing either the literal or the colloquial usage as the "right"

one.

GonzSlez said about these poems that their point of departure was formulaic or schematic rather than experiential, but that he never tried to keep experience fran filling those schemes. It is when the two ingredients (scheme and experience) come together that this device of overlaying the literal and the allusive or the 143 everyday usage of words Is the most striking.

In "A veces, en octubre, es lo que pasa ..." this punning effect is the major source of poeticlty:

1 Cuando nada sucede y el verano se ha Ido, y las hojas comienzan a caer de los &rboles, y el frlo oxida el borde de los rlos 5 y hace mS.s lento el curso de las aguas;

cuando el cielo parece un mar vlolento y los p&Jaros camblan de palsaje, y las palabras se oyen cada vez m&s leJanas, como susurros que dispersa el viento;

10 entonces, ya se sabe, es lo que pasa.

Esas hojas, los p&Jaros, las nubes, las palabras dlspersas y los rlos, 15 nos llenan de inquietud sGbitamente y de desesperanza.

No busqueis el motivo en vuestros corazones. Tan solo es lo que dlje: lo que pasa. (274)

The phrase "lo que pasa" is the axis of the poem and already in the title there are Indications of its dual significance. In the everyday usage of the phrase the title of the poem indicates that its subject matter is what happens, sometimes, in October. Signals of normality 3teer the reader in this direction. "A veces" indicates a repetitious and/or expectable event rather that the unique or surprising, and It even adds an air of nonchalance to the title.

"Octubre," as an indication of cycle has much the same effect. Ihe phrase "es lo que pasa" is thus easily read as a conment proceeding from an uncritical (empirical, quotidian) view of reality — the kind 1HH of conment given with a shrug of the shoulders. It Is the final

ellipsis which disturbs this reading. It introduces a contemplative

tone in its Indication that there Is more to the matter than the

words present In the title convey, something perhaps beyond the reach

of the words. It also creates a linearity which perhaps compels the

reader to look again at "octubre" and to realize that while it Is an

indication of the cyclicality of nature, It Is also a time associated with death — a notion which in turn Jars the air of nonchalance In "A veces." With the addition of this linear dimension, It becomes

reasonable to read "es lo que pasa" also as "It Is that which passes"

— "pasa" understood in the more temporally specific usage.

The dual significance of "pasa" in the title Is further evident

In the first line of the text. The use of the verb suceder corresponds to the everyday "what happens" but doesn't encompass the other term (what passes) of the "pasa" duality. If we are tempted, though, to believe that this means that suceder is the unequivocal meaning we must recall that, nevertheless, the possibility of using the verbs suceder and pasar toward the same meaning "to happen" is an indication of the multiplicity and Instability of the signifler/signified relationship. Ihe certainty of its meaning is also confounded by what follows In this strophe and In the next. The first line establishes a temporal context — a moment in time In which nothing happens— and then goes on to enumerate a series of events occuring within that context. We have to wonder what the poet meant by "nada sucede" and therefore cannot take it as a certain signal to read "lo que pasa" simply as "what happens." 145 With the enumeration of events In the first and second strophes, temporality is confirmed as the principal subject matter of the poem.

Ihe first strophe repeats the dynamic of the title in the Impression that it conveys of time as both cyclical and linear. The passing of sunnier, the falling leaves, and the advent of the cold are all easily associated with the rotation of the seasons. This particular seasonal change (to winter) however, is also often a metaphor for death or aging — aspects of linear time. Likewise, the reference to the slow course of the waters of the river. Not only is the journey of the river to the sea a traditional image of death, but the very physical/visual linearity of the image, as well as the reference to its slowness (its "ongoing-ness”) has much the same effect as did the ellipsis in the title.

The second strophe continues the tension between a cyclical and linear experience of time, and also introduces the human element into the scheme. The reference to the sky, sea, and movement evokes the natural cycle of water as it passes from the sky to the earth and back again. The migration of the birds to warmer climates is a yearly signal of the coming of winter. The human element appears with the reference to words. Like the other images in the strophe, words seem to belong to the realm of the sky, but they lack both the substance attributed to the sky by its likeness to the sea and the permanence of the birds whose migration means departure but also eventual return. The distancing experienced with regard to words promises not more return, but only greater and greater distance. The words are not only distant but also dispersed — separated from each H 6 other, without context, their ability to carry meaning is extremely minimal 1 zed, If not altogether eradicated. The instrument of this loss of meaning is the natural world, specifically the wind. (Here we return, then, to one of the most basic aspects of the ironic experience — nature as the measure of man's temporal limitations.)

This last reference to words repeats the elliptic effect at the end of the title and at the end of the first strophe. The prolonged distancing of the words creates a linear effect and the dispersion of the words by the wind doesn’t mean disappearance (that is, it is not termination or closure) but rather recession into some sphere beyond the mediations or the reach of linguistic apprehension.

The contemplative tone created by the elliptic effect is broken by the matter-of-fact tone of the third strophe. The "entonces" of the first line of the strophe configures a logical formula, positing a reasonable conclusion regarding what has come before. The next line ("ya se sabe") confers a note of certainty to what follows —

"ya" seems to indicate a moment of insight while the impersonal se- construction with the verb "to know" widens the scope of the knowledge (that "lo que pasa" is common knowledge) as well as

Introducing what follows with an air of objectivity. Likewise, the colon at the end of the strophe promises a predicate to the key phrase "es lo que pasa." The phrase Itself, however, remains ambiguous — within the context of this third strophe the everyday meaning "what happens" is consistent and meaningful, but the more literal or specific usage "what passes" is also well supported by the allusions to temporality and distance in the first two strophes. 147

The fourth strophe, predicated on the third, provides another context for the ambiguous ,fes lo que pasa*’ which also supports both

readings of "pasa.n Within the first two lines the leaves, birds, and clouds recall the linages of cyclicality presented in the first

two strophes (the simple observation of nature being part of everyday life with its things that happen) while the dispersed words and the river in the next line recuperate the notion of linearity which punctuates the text (awareness of the linearity of the human experience of time, the experience of passing.) It is awareness of this linearity in contrast to the cyclical temporality which creates the disquiet and desperation of the last lines. The poetic voice now seems very much vulnerable to the signs and significance of the nature he has been considering. They seem almost invasive (Mnos

Henan") and unpredictable, unmanageable ("sGbltamente") much the same as the sudden movements of the world which frightened the speaker of "Mundo asombroso." Such a reaction to the difference and separation of humanity from the natural world supports the reading of

"lo que pasa" as "that which passes." However, it is also possible to read this portion of the text as indicating that what happens,

(that is, the normal, usual occurence) Is that we are disturbed by the ways of the natural world. The last strophe of the poem offers no conclusion for it is charged with elements that convey both meanings of "es lo que pasa."

An unquestioning acceptance of the situation (the situation being the emotional condition described In the previous strophe) Is explicitly indicated by the first line. This, in combination with the casual, 148 even nonchalant tone of the second line of the strophe indicates an

uncritical use of language, the everyday usage. On the other hand,

the first line can also be read as an Indication of ironic awareness

— that the source of humanity's emotional suffering is not internal

but is rather provoked by something external -by the measure of human

mortality provided by the observation of the natural world.

Likewise, the shift to first person discourse may constitute an

attempt at self-differentiation (from the "nos" of the previous

strophe) through language ("lo que dlje") on the part of the speaker.

Such evidence of an ironic mode of thought supports the more literal

acceptance of "pasa" — passes— on the basis of the ironist's keen sense of temporality.

In texts like those considered in this section two voices are

present, corresponding to each reading of this pun-like strategy.

This duality is constituted by the superimposition of a logocentric

and a decentered notion of language. The strategy functions

logocentrically insofar as on one level it "means what It says," but

it is decentering in that it "means" two different things even when

the saying is a single act. Since two readings are supported by the

text, the reader Is left with an open text In which the two views

represented by the readings exist in a state of unresolved and unresolveable tension. This punning strategy is possible because of

the materiality of the words — because they are seen or heard or

spoken Identically, and foreground the multiplicity of the signlf ier/slgnlfled relationship. 149 Collage

Ihe collage technique also manipulates the materiality of the words In order to decenter the text. Ihe book Collages defines the technique as having the following effect:

Its heterogeneity, even If It Is reduced by every operation of composition, Imposes itself on the reading as stimulation to produce a signification which could be neither univocal nor stable. Each cited element breaks the continuity or the linearity of the discourse and leads necessarily to a double reading: that of the fragnent perceived in relation to Its text of origin; that of the same fragment as Incorporated into a new whole, a different totality. The trick of collage consists also of never entirely suppressing the alterity of these elements reunited In a temporary composition. Thus the art of collage proves to be one of the most effective strategies In the putting ihto question of all Illusions of representation. 2

Peter Burger’s comments regarding this technique point to its connection with the ironic mode: "The man-made organic work of art that pretends to be like nature projects an image of the reconciliation of man and nature. According to Adorno, it is the characteristic of the non-organic work using the principle of montage that it no longer creates the semblance (Sehein) of reconciliation."2^ And finally, Derrida distinguishes conventional collage from what he calls postcritical collage (referring specifically to his book Numbers) on account of full release of the components of collage from the text of origin:

They textual samples are not being applied upon the surface or in the interstices of a text that would already exist without them. And they themselves can only be read within the operation of their reinscription, within the graft. It is the sustained, discrete violence of an 150

Incision that is not apparent in the thickness of the text, a calculating insemination of the prolific allogene through which the two texts are transformed, deform each other, contaminate each other's content, tend at times to reject each other, or pass elliptically one into the other and become regenerated in the repetition, along the edges of an overcast seam.

This allows for another kind of composition created by Gonzfilez,

poems constituted by multiple texts not necessarily taken from other

texts, that we will call collage. These poems are comprised of a multiplicity of texts easily distinguishable by reason of strophic form, spacing and/or typography. They contain the same basic duality which informs all of the poems considered in this chapter: the fusion

of a logocentric and of a decentering voice within the text. They are clearly contradictory although both provide meaningful and acceptable readings. The logocentrism lies in those elements which

tend to point to the text as an organic whole. The decentering of

the text is provoked by those elements which indicate a fragmentary nature of the parts and the distinctions between them. An especially clear example of this technique is "Palabras desprendidas de pinturas de Jose Hemfindez," the last poem (or poems) of Procedimlentos narrativos. The dynamic of the poem begins with the title. The very presence of a title is a signal of coherence, likewise the mention of

Jose HemSndez as the single source of the words which comprise the text. The allusion to painting is also an indication of homogeneity and with its notion of framing lends a note of closure to the title. Nonetheless, the title also refers to a fragmentation: the plurality of "palabras" and "pinturas" and the fragmentation of "desprendidas," 151 perhaps with a suggestion of* the breakdown or decay of the representational (that Is, logocentric) mode of writing.

Interestingly, the listing of this composition In the Index of the latest edition of Palabra sobre palabra duplicates this tension. It appears thus:

Palabras desprendidas de pinturas de Jose Her­ nandez: 1. Alborada...... 261 2. T^in del ultimo acto...... 262 (410)

Each section of the poem Is listed as a separate composition with the same indication of page as each of the other (complete) texts of

Procedlmlentos narratlvos, althougi what appears as the title on page

261 is in line with the other titles on the page. The relationship between the three elements of the entry (just as with the three elements of the poem) Is unclear. It is possible to perceive this spatial distribution of the entry as an indication of the separation and distinction of its three components and also to see it as an indication of the relationship of parts to a whole. The text Itself continues this duality.

What imnediately follows the title at the top of the page is

"1.-Alborada." This single-word title Is easily to perceived as one of the "palabras desprendidas" referred to in the first title.

Nevertheless the relationship of this title to the earlier one provokes the same tension with regard to their relationship (i.e., separate texts or parts of a whole) as noted above. The text of this first section continues the same tension: 152 1 Un gallo canta piedras: amanece. (Luna delgada, pfilida, traslficida, con el cielo se funde, irmSvll, yerta,)

5 Contra las tejas, contra los cristales, un gallo canta sangre.

(EL viento zarandea a los Srboles dormldos.)

10 Canta crestas un gallo, canta agallas, escupe sus mollejas contra el cielo.

(Por las laderas ruedan frutas verdes preclpltadas hacla los barrancos.)

15 Golpeando las puertas, las ventanas, el gallo con su canto lnsiste, advierte.

(Los bultres en lo alto de las rocas desentumecen sus enormes alas.)

Un gallo pone su surtidor de fuego 20 en el llmlte bianco de la noche. Nada m&s puede hacer: grita, amenaza. Anuncla que la tregua ha terminado. (262)

The organic forces of this text (both Internally and with regard to the first and second titles) are manifested in several ways. There is certainly coherence between the daybreak described in the body of the text and its most inmediate title. Likewise both that title and

Its text are somewhat reminiscent of the early morning departure scene of the initial moments of Martin Fierro. There is also a certain organic quality within the text itself. The increasing urgency of the rooster's crow is matched by the movement of other elements of the scene: the rising crow in the second strophe is followed by the rising wind of the third, and the more violent call 153 of the fourth strophe seems to precipitate the separation of the fruit (unripe fruit requiring a greater force) from the trees.

Other elements of the text pull apart. The notion of fragmentation in the first title is maintained throughout.

"Alborada" refers to a moment of divisiveness — night into day, a division confirmed in the penultimate strophe when a stream of fire separates the night from the day. The rooster's crow is shewn as something material which establishes its own separate existence in an increasingly violent way that seems to culminate in dismemberment: from stones to blood to his crest and temples and gizzard. This is followed by the green fruit shaken from the trees. This type of action and the divisive state of being links the text conceptually to its main title and is also a demonstration of consistency within the text. In both of these ways the imagery works toward the coherence of the text. The substance of the text is, however, obviously disjunctive and although It does connect with the first title it does so in a way that calls attention to the f ragnentatlon, to the inorganic or decentered pole of the title.

This same dynamic occurs with regard to the parenthetical statements in the text. As we have already seen, this device serves a variety of purposes in Gonzliez' poetry and it Is uniquely effective here. Although it does not offer an alternative vision to that of the main body of the text, there is inherent in the device an implicit duality, an indication of the inability of the main body of the text to clearly and fully communicate. This foregrounding of the fallibility of language is not consonant with the mimetic mode of 154 writing which assumes the ability to perceive reality correctly and

then to portray it faithfully. In this sense this text seems truly

to belong to the category of "palabras desprendidas" — with its connotations of breakdown or decay— from the realist tradition exemplified by HemSndez and thus paradoxically to be a force of cohesion within the text as a whole. Nevertheless, as we pointed out before, these parenthetical statements do not add a contradictory or alternative vision to the main body of the text. Instead, they complement it in a particularly organic way, seeming perhaps an effort to approach the immediacy and simultaneity of the visual, that is, to strengthen the illusionist or at least representationalist effort of realist writing. The parenthetical statements therefore are antithetical to the realist mode at the same time as they enhance its desired effect.

The structuring of the elements of this part of the text also lends it coherence. As the text progresses, allusions to the roosters' crow and to other elements of the natural world are increasingly violent and threatening. The rooster's crow goes from song to Insistence and warning in the seventh strophe and ultimately to shout and threat In the last. This crow also seems to do

Increasing violence to the rooster as It tears from him stone then blood, and finally pieces of his body. Likewise the parenthetical allusions to other elements of the natural world move from a silent dead moon to a rising wind and menacing vultures. This consistent sense of increasingly ominous disturbance lends cohesion to the text, and Its last line creates a strong sense of closure, alluding as It 155 does to another kind of ending. However, while this development and closure point toward an organic text (which purports to convey a set meaning) they also have a decentering effect. As the text progresses it moves further and further away fran the positive and lyrical poem that the title ("Alborada") would lead us to expect. Also, the final line of the strophe, in addition to its marking of closure, alludes to a beginning — the end of a truce is the beginning or at least the restarting of a conflict. This introduction to a new state of affairs opens the text, makes it seem incomplete and fragnentary.

The sense of incompletion is reinforced by the subsequent placement of the next part of the poem, clearly marked as distinct by its own title: "2. Pin del ultimo acto:

iQue grandioso final la 6pera acaba 25 se desploma una ovacl6n parte de la tarlma estalla contra el muro rasgando los papeles decorados 30 el teldn no desclende se abre, crece casl visible un grlto una grieta del ultimo cantante 35 (lagarto de eenlza permanece un momento hormlguero de polvo en la respandeclente arafta 40 crlstallna invasora nada que llega a todas partes desllz&ndose al fin 45 con sus flexibles patas por la partlda cupula desde la oscuridad mSs lnquietante a otra nada m&s amplla 156 la del cielo) 50 donde se desvanece para slempre. (262-263)

Each piece of the strophe exhibits an Internal tension between the organic and the fragmentary. On the left-hand side, parentheses formally divide the section into two parts. Although often throughout Gonz§lez' poetry this device signals an alternate or contradictory vision to that of the main body of the text, here the relationship is one of apposition. The Images of pervasiveness through the allusion to the lizard, the anthills and the spider are certainly consonant with the slow and Insinuating, yet also menacing extension of a crevice. The last four lines especially of the parenthetical statement, therefore complete the initiation of the crevice in the first part. The language, however, differs in tone.

That of the second part leans toward the flgural and that of the first part is more representstionalist. The parentheses and difference in language divide this part of the text, while the substance of its own two parts is cohesive.

The right-hand side of the strophe shows the same tension, but from another direction. Here there Is no formal division of the text, In fact, the ten last lines form a single thought. These lines, however, are full of Indications of incompletion and fracture.

The initial reference to the ending of an opera draws attention to the absence from the text of any reference to the opera Itself. The shattering of the ovation is a sign of fracture. The ending itself

(of the opera) appears as Incomplete — the curtain does not fall and the last note lingers on. The space is also broken — "la part Ida 157 cupula." The final lines of the strophe also signal both closure (an organic quality) and openness (a result of decentering.) 'Ihe allusion to disappearance lends a sense of closure while the disappearance into a wider space opens it.

The relationsip between the two parts shows the same dynamic.

This is evident in the spatial organization, in the materiality of the text. The distinct typeface (the ri^it-hand side appears in italics) and the consistent indentation of every other line are divisive forces which cut the text into two easily distinguishable parts. Their sli^it overlapping nevertheless signals (however minimal) a connection. Punctuation, and also the lack of it, are manipulated to create the same ambiguity. The initial exclamation point marks a definitive beginning (missing on the right-hand side) just as the period at the end of the right-hand side signals a closure formally missing on the left-hand side. To read these signs as enclosing the strophe depends upon reading the text fluidly, complete from left to right, perceiving the ri^it-hand side of the text as merely indented and not as a separate text. Lack of internal punctuation facilitates such a reading, and it is logically possible.

All of the signs of Incompletion within each side of the text urge the reader to see the strophe as organic (that is, to let each fragjnent complete the other) while those which internally unify the parts tend to fragnent the strophe.

There is also a semantic relationship between the two sides which, through the depiction of contrary movements, unites the text.

Both sides deal with the end of a theatrical experience, mentioned 158

specifically In the right-hand side and presented in the reference to

a scaffold or stage and decorations on the left. Hie substance of

the experience is the disappearance of the last note and the darkness

in the theater after the spectacle. Hie left side maintains a fairly negative tone and describes the collapse of the theatrical — perhaps

the revelation of the illusion— and the pervasive downward seeping of

the night into the theater. The right side maintains a more positive

tone, focussing more on the lingering presence of the illusion

(embodied in the singer's last note), although it ultimately escapes upward into the night "a otra nada m&s amplia." Thus each section would appear as one side of the same coin.

Hie remainder of this second part portrays the transition, from the human perspective, out of the theatrical experience, that is, out of Illusion and into reality:

Imprevista trlsteza se desprende del techo, manchando levemente trajes, m&rmoles, flores, frentes, sanbras. Ya nada es como antes. 55 Ningfin cuerpo regresa a su ser verdadero. Los ojos no reconocen lo que buscan. El hueco (que fue piedra 60 ((la piedra que fue came (((la came que fue grito ((((el grito que fue iamor, miedo, esperanza?))))))) se agranda, se desforma, estalla en mil pedazos de vacio 65 que golpean los rostros ya lmpasibles.

Erases voladas de unos labios mustios, ecos de difilogos banales, vagan por el vestibulo desierto como semlllas secas suspenses en el aire.

70 — &D5nde est& la sallda? 159 — Aun falta mucho para ayer. — Perdone. — Pero el frlo perslgue. — No, no es nada.

75 como el homo dormido de una hoguera extingulda, que la brisa Implacable deshace bruscamente. (263-264)

The first sentence hangs like an umbrella over the whole strophe, establishing a kind of melancholy, with a slowing and even a deadening effect on what follows. This tone Is carried through the poem In allusions to the Impassibility of the faces and the mustiness of the lips, the image of dry seeds, smoke, and the ashes left after a fire. This unity of tone combined with the sense of closure provided by the destruction (or at least disappearance) alluded to in the last line, tends to draw the elements together into an organic whole.

Other elements, however, have a fragmenting effect. The tone may be fairly uniform throughout the main body of the strophe but the source of that melancholy is fragnentation. The sadness comes in the wake of the final note of the song. The objective correlative of that change is that moment of transition out of the theatrical experience, perhaps the moment when the house ligjits come on, when the illusionist mode of theater lingers and lends a note of unreality to everyday surroundings. Thus, the actual surroundings appear in a strange, harsh light and nothing is as it was before the illusion was so abruptly stripped away. Still awash with illusion, the body is unable to connect with its reality and the eyes unable to grasp the meaning of what they see. This failure does not, however, have its i6o only source in a human desire to avoid its own realities. The series of embedded parenthetical clauses pretends to meaning as it uncovers layer after layer of analogies, but at the bottom of it all there are only question marks. With so many words pointing toward a meaning which cannot ultimately be determined the idea of language is implicitly brought into the text. Its Inability to convey meaning is expressed in terms of a spreading or dispersal and deformation of meaning which is ultimately f ragnented to the point of nothingness

— "estalla en mil pedazos de vaclo.'1 Bnptied of meaning by its multiplicity and inaccuracy no response Is possible so that there Is a kind of death, an impassiveness on the part of the departing audience.

The last eleven lines turn explicitly to language, heretofore absent from the scenes described. Signals of disconnection and dispersal permeate the strophe. This disjunction is given a physical dimension. Through the words "voladas,” "ecos," and through the actual absence of the speakers, the Images of dry seeds suspended In the air, and the lingering smoke of an extinguished fire the words of the people are presented as separated from their speakers, and thus from the source of their meaning. Disconnected as It is, the source of meaning is further degraded as being musty, banal, and extinguished. The insertion of samples of such language Into the strophe with a distinct typography reinforces its state of separation. Already a series of non sequlturs, none of the phrases by themselves carry information — the first because it is a question; the second because of Its relativity and Its assumption of a known l6l subject; the third because it is pure convention; the fourth and fifth because their meaning lies in the contradiction of something unknown which came before. Ihe fragoents nevertheless belong here.

In a relationship of apposition to the main body of the strophe they certainly exemplify the kind of language it describes, most especially the last statement "No, no es nada" which is confirmed by the conclusion of the strophe.

Ihe fact of a relationship between the two parts of "Fin del ultimo acto" is clear but Its nature Is nonetheless problematic.

Ihe tie between the two parts lies in their thematic, expressed by the title and treated in both parts of the section. Ihe re Is even a kind of chronology between the two parts — the first treating the final moment of the performance and the second the departure from the theater. Ihe materiality of the two parts, however, Is dealt with differently — the first to create a superimposltion or at least the enmeshing of two sets or images, and the second to create a linearity

(such as that which occurs In "Alborada")— with a fragmenting effect.

As is the case in the second section, "Fin del dltimo acto," the internal tensions of each "piece" of the poem draw it together toward an organic wholeness at the same time that they pull It apart, disperse it, open It. Ihese forces within each piece have repercussions for the text in its entirety. Ihose elements which provide internal coherence for each piece tend to Isolate the piece and to intensify the fragmentation of the entirety. Likewise, those elements which open up each part render it more accessible to 162

Incorporation Into a reading of the entire text as an organic whole.

In addition to these more formal aspects, there are semantic forces at work which also create a tension between the unity and the fragnentation of the text. Certain motifs are present in more than one part of the poem. Ihe notion of breakage is present in each piece of the poem, progressively as "barranco," "grieta," "partida cupula," and "hueco." In this same vein indications of disturbance, often violent, are nearly everpresent throughout the text in words like "zarandea," "escupe," "golpeando," "se desploma," "rasgando,"

"estalla," "invasora," "deslizSndose," "se desprende," "se agranda, se desforma," and "deshace bruscamente," among others. Wind Is present in each of these parts, first sis wind that "zarandea" and then as a breeze that "deshace bruscamente." Also fire, which separates night and day in "Alborada" and appears sis extinguished in

"Pin del ultimo acto." There Is sound in each part: the rooster's crow, the crash of the scaffold, the ovation of the final note of the opera, the words of the departing audience. These motifs sire like strings running through each part of the poem and holding It together, or at least leading the reader to look for symbolic relationships between the pieces. There is also a certain similarity between the moments depicted in each of the two parts of the poem: both moments of closure which open up onto new situations. A chronological relationship — a beginning and an end— is formed by the titles of the two parts. Each of these characteristics of the text pulls together the pieces of the text while each meaning that can be found in each piece as a single unit fragments it. Thus, In 163 ’’Palabras desprendidas de pinturas de Jose HemSndez" the tension within each piece of the text as well as between the pieces of the text effects the superimposltian of a logocentric and a decentered vision within the text.

The textual strategies we have seen in this chapter — self­ reflectiveness, textual punning, collage— superimpose two contradictory uses of language: a logocentric approach which posits the ability of the individual to perceive reality correctly and to then portray it faithfully in words; and a decentered approach which supposes limitations to our ability to apprehend reality and so uses language in ways which reveal its fallibility. Ihe logocentric use of language responds to the empirical facet of the ironic individual, immersed uncritically in the experiences of the world; the decentered voice, to the ironic consciousness with its awareness of difference (essentially temporal difference) from the world. This superimposition is effected in such a way that the words of the text simultaneously support both a logocentric and a decentered experience of the text. The result is an open text in which doubt regarding the viability of language readily encompasses the possibility of success as well as the possibility of failure. Notes

1 Paul de Man, "Ihe Rhetoric of Temporality," Blindness and Insight. Essays In the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism ^Minneapolis; Univ. of Minnesota Press): 214.

2 De Man 217

3 Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire. Modem Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde Trans. Rachel Phillips (Cambridge: Univ. of Harvard Press, 1974): 155.

11 Paz 155 5 Paz 157-158

6 Paz 112 7 Alan Wilde, Horizons of Assent. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1987): I1*. Q 0 Jacques Lacan, The Pour Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Trans. Alan Sheridan, CLondon: Hogarth Press, 1977) : 139. 9 Jean Baudrlllard, "Ihe Ecstasy of Camnunlcation," The Antl- Aesthetlc. Essays on Postmodern Culture, Ed. Hal Poster, (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983)7 129.

10 Baudrlllard 133

11 De Man 222

^2 Predric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," The Anti-Ae3dietic. Essays on Postmodern Culture, Ed. Hal Poster, (Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983): 119-120.

Andrew P. Debickl, Poetry of Discovery (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1982): 10.

^ Andrew P. Debickl, "Metapoetry," Revista canadlense de estudlos hispSnlcos 7 (1983): 300.

15 De Man 196-7

164 165 16 De Man 214

De Man 188

18 De Man 188

19 De Man 189

20 De Man 188

21 Jameson 119-120

22 Nancy Mandlove, "Used Poetry: The Trans-Parent Language of Gloria Puertes and Angel GonzSlez," Revista canadlensea de estudlos hlspSnlcos 7 (1983): 302. 28 Group Mu, eds., Collages (Paris: Uni6n Generale, 1978): 34- 35. ^ Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984) : 78.

1=0 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, Trans. Barbara Johnson, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981) : 355* CHAPTER 111

SPEECH AND SILENCE

Introduction

In the previous two chapters we have viewed a segment of the range of the ironic mode througiout Gonzfilez' production. At a first moment in his use of irony a duality of voice within the poetic text derives fran the Ironist’s awareness of his own participation in (and implicit assent to) a world which he believes to be Inauthentic because constituted by the continued struggles of humanity to better the future In spite of the certainty of death. The voice of mystification reveals the participation of the self In the world's inauthentic modes of thinking and being while the demystifying voice remarks its awareness of that inauthentic 1 ty as a means (acinitted as futile) of separating itself from daily existence. The poems belonging to this stage present the two voices In relatively linear fashion, so that the demystifying voice (appearing as the voice of interiority) Is easily recognized as prior by the reader and Is thus perceived as delivering the "true" message of the poem.

As Ironic awareness intensifies, repercussions occur in the inodes of duality of voice within the text. The ironist at once feels more keenly the contradictions of his existence: that Is, he feels

Increasingly different from his everyday self and yet Increasingly

166 167 vulnerable to the empirical facet of his being and its place in the

ranks of the mortal. As the unresolvable nature of this

contradiction becomes certain, focus turns away from the immediate

questIon of transcendence and toward the possibilities and

limitations of language as a possible means to transcendence. As the

two sides of the ironic experience develop (awareness as indicative

of difference; empirical and quotidian experience as undeniable) so

do their contradictory linguistic modes gain in credibility. In the

poems corresponding to this stage the duality of voice manifests

itself in terms of an opposition between decentered and logocentric

ways of viewing and of dealing with the world. Ihe logocentric voice

posits the ability of language to capture reality and to comnunicate experience but the decentering voice denies such a capability. In contrast to the previous stage, the opposed voices in these poems as superimposed in such a way that neither is ultimately denied and the question of language (and by implication, transcendence) is left radically open.

Perhaps the image which best describes this dynamic and what is to follow is that of the eclipse. At first, two spheres are

Juxtaposed, as apparently separate entities that are inexplicably drawn and held together. As a second moment, the spheres move closer together, a process that brings them Into increasing contrast, perhaps as between li^it and dark. This movement corresponds to the greater fusion, yet increasing awareness of the difference of the two aspects of the Ironic self. As the movement of the eclipse progresses, one sphere Is entirely blocked from view — visually 168

silenced we might say— by the other. This then brings us to the

third phase or mode of irony, one in which only one voice speaks while the other is relegated (with no connotations of secondariness)

to the role of interlocutor. The language of the text is nonetheless

ironic, for Just as the sun is still present during an eclipse — even visually by reason of its light around the silhouette of the moon—

the second, non-speaking voice remains present in the test as

interlocutor or narratee, thereby maintaining a duality of voice.

This curious state of presence/absence is achieved through a variety of means, all of which are, in truth, forms of second-person discourse: second-person discourse per se, dramatic monologue, and apostrophe.*

Second-person Discourse

In texts such as "El derrotado," "Si serenases" (both from the first section of Sin esperanza, con conveneimlento) and "‘Pragmentos"

(in "Poemas epicos y narrativos" of Muestra) second-person discourse

Is used in a completely undisguised way, with one facet of the poetic speaker addressing his other side. In "El derrotado" the logocentric voice speaks from its perspective of knowledge and wholeness to a dispossessed, demystified, and decentered interlocutor: its own silenced, other voice. This represents a somewhat curious role reversal with regard to the poems seen in the first chapter in which the demystified voice attempts to separate from Its mystified or quotidian self. These poems are very similar to the earlier ones, except that the mystified or logocentric voloe goes to a greater 169 extreme In Ita attempt at self-differentiation by externalizing the other as Interlocutor In an lntersubJective (versus intrasubjective) exchange. Paradoxically, this extemalization evidences the link between the two aspects of the ironic speaker all the more keenly, as the speaker must new acknowledge, In a voice explicitly set forth as his and his alone, the connection to his other self.

In the first two strophes of "El derrotado" the speaker's intention to differentiate himself fran his dispossessed interlocutor is clear:

1 Atrfis quedaron los escombros: bumeantes pedazos de tu casa, veranos incendiados, sangre seca sobre la que se ceba — ultimo buitre— 5 el viento.

Hi emprendes viaje h a d a adelante, hacia el tiempo blemn llamado porvenlr. Porque nlnguna tierra posees, 10 porque nlnguna patria es nl serS JamSs la tuya, porque en ningfin pais puede arraigar tu corazon deshabitado. (64)

The use of second-person discourse is, of course, the primary means to separation but there are other elements in the text which reinforce its effect. The speaker seems to be both spatially and temporally removed from the situation of his Interlocutor. He Is not implicated in either of the statements which localize the dispossessed voice between the rubble which remains behind and an unreachable time to come, for the subjects of those sentences are

"los escombros" and "tu." The speaker thus establishes a spatial 170

relationship between "los escombros," "tu," and "porvenlr" without, however, locating himself within the scheme. He seems also to command knowledge of the repercussions of temporality for his

interlocutor without submerging himself in the flow of time. He declares the "tu" to suffer from the temporal parameters of humanity which we have seen so often: the irreversibility of human time and

the limitation of humanity to the experience of the present. The first strophe refers to the destruction of the individual’s past, and the second to the futility of the individual's attempts to ground himself (literally here) in the flow of the future. The speaker is removed from such a plight not only by reason of the reiteration of second-person markers ("tu casa," "posees," "la tuya," "tu coraz6n") but also because of his professed ability to know the future (a pretension to control or possession) — "porque nlnguna patria // es ni serS JamSs la tuya"— , a perspective clearly outside that of the dispossessed interlocutor mired in the present. The speaker thus locates himself outside of the physical and temporal limitations of his listener. Such a presentation places the speaker within a perspective of wholeness and comprehension, Identifying him and the logocentric voice and lending credibility to his words.

Although the speaker presents himself as distinct from his interlocutor, the latter nevertheless conditions his discourse and in this way is present in the text. Of course, the most obvious way in which the "tfi" conditions the discourse is in his role as subject matter. He also, however, colors the tone of the discourse in spite of the speaker’s marked desire for distance. The magnitude of his 171 dispossession is such that the speaker 13 not able to recount It

dispassionately. He is unable to limit himself to the relatively

objective tone of the initial declaration ("Atr&s quedaron los

escombros") and goes on to enumerate and to elaborate on the nature

of the destruction. The language of the first strophe is

elaborated in an increasingly poetic way. He moves from the

realistic image of the smoking remains of a home to the metaphor of

charred summers in order to base its value on the memories it housed,

and finally to the metaphor of the wind as a vulture which carries

away even the memories, absolutely depriving the individual of any

access to those things associated with his home. This gradual change

in the speaker's use of language reveals a dynamic which undermines

his position of self-differentiation with regard to the linearity of

the interlocutor's experience because it reveals a development on his

part, a change within the flow of time. Similarly, the interruption

of the main body of the text by "— ultimo buitre— " is, as we have

seen before, an indication that the speaker is working on two levels: a certain distanced view of the interlocutor's experience, but also a more affective perspective, conditioned by it. With this carment, in other words, the speaker takes sides with the interlocutor.

In the second strophe the speaker turns his attention away from

the past and onto the interlocutor's present state of dispossession.

With the first two lines of the strophe he emphasizes the totality of his dispossession. The past in unrecoverable, heme cannot be reestablished because the other is now on a track of constant movement, — a Journey to a distant "porvenir" which Gonzfilez 172 describes thus in another poem of Sin esperanza, "El futuro":

al porvenir que se adivina leJos, terre no mfigica, dilatada esfera que el largo brazo de deseo roza, 5 bola brillante que los ojos sueflan, compartida estancia de la esperanza y de la decepclSn, oscura patria 10 de la ilusion y el llanto que los astros predicen y el corazdn espera y siempre, siempre, siempre estS. distante. (90)

Once again the enormity of the other's disaster causes the speaker to

expound on the rather distant, sentence-like initial statement, "TG

emprendes viaje hacia adelante." As with the reference to the

vulture in the preceding strophe, the "bien llamado" of the second line of the strophe constitutes an injection of the speaker's

personal attitude regarding the other's plight. The reiteration of

the other’s hotnslessness shows a dynamic as it did in the previous

strophe. From a state of not owning land, to the definitive loss of a homeland, to the vacating of the heart of any possibility of establishing such roots again, the speaker reveals an increasingly emotional perspective, undermining his efforts toward self- distlnction. In the first two strophes, therefore, we see initial stances of difference and distance eroded by a further delving into the other's situation, a delving which brings into question the speaker's difference from the other by reason of the evolution it shows, and hid distance by reason of an increasingly emotional tone. 173 In the last strophe, the actual nature of the relationship

between the speaker and his Interlocutor becomes apparent:

Nunca — y es tan 3encillo— 15 podrSs abrir una cancela y deeir, nada mfis: buen dia, madre. Aunque efectivamente el dla sea bueno, haya trlgo en las eras 20 y los &rboles extiendan hacla tl su3 fatlgadas ramas, ofrec!6ndote frutos o sombra para que descanses.

The Initial objective stance seen In the previous strophes all but

disappears here. Perhaps the Initial "Nunca" Is reminiscent of the

definitive tone seen in the beginning of the other strophes, but it

Is so colored by what follows as to carry that tone only most

fleetlngly. The interruption of the text by "— y es tan sencillo— *"

and also the "nada m&s" reveal again the speaker’s second, emotional

level of response to his interlocutor's experience. With the

obliteration of the home, Its smallest details become intensely

precious, as symbols perhaps of a certain unconscious expectation of

all that home offers, of a natural and ingrown belief (because never

contested) in home as a source of permanence and certainty. For the other to be denied the gesture of entrance into the home and a simple greeting, therefore, Is for him to lose everything believed to be

true and certain in the world, to lose everything. Following these four lines, the speaker's tone momentarily shifts, his attention moving fran the pain of the other to his objective surroundings. The claim to objectivity lies in the "efectivamente" although like the initial "Nunca" of the 3trophe, its effect is short-lived. In the 174 last lines of the poem the speaker's perspective is entirely subjective and his relationship with the "tu" as facets of the same self becomes clear. The language of the last four lines of the text

Is decidedly romantic in the projection of human fatigue onto the branches of the trees and in the ascribing of intent onto their offer of food and shelter. Such language is certainly in keeping with cur identification of this voice as logocentric, as proceeding from a perspective of unity and so enabled to enter into a process of seeing his own experience in nature and in Interpreting nature to aid in introspection regarding his own experience. The experience at hand, however, Is that of fatigue proceeding from an endless Journey provoked by the loss of home, and until this moment the speaker, although responsive to it, has not claimed this experience as his own. His projection onto nature of the experience of the other represents, then, an internalization of that experience — he is now speaking from within it. With these lines, therefore, we see that the "tu" is in effect part of the speaker himself, separate and self- contained but internalized by the speaker. The speaker is thus ceding, in his own voice, his connection to the dispossessed other and "El derrotado" is not only the homeless other addressed in the poem but also the speaker who, by his very nature (his mode of unity encompassing even the dispossessed other) Is ultimately unable to differentiate himself from his defeated, other self.

In "SI serenases" Just a few pages later the poetic voice again chooses second-person discourse to address a driven, dispossessed other. The speaker begins, however, with a much stronger sense of 175 connection to the condition of his interlocutor:

1 Si serenases tu pensamiento, si pudieses detenerte y pensar, mirar en tomo, tocar las cosas 5 entre las que pasas, acaso te serla sencillo reconocer rostros, no se, lugares, gentes 10 que hablen tu mismo idiana y te coraprendan. Si fueses capaz de hallar un sltio donde echarte boca aba,lo, y cerrar los ojos, 15 mirar, despacio, dentro de tu vida, qulzfi te resultase f&cil averiguar algo, saber a que lugares quieres ir, de donde vienes, para que estfis aqui, cu&l es tu nombre. (67)

As in "El derrotado" there are elements in the text which create

difference and distance between the speaker and his interlocutor. Of

course, the use of second-person discourse inroediately separates and

distances the two. Secondly, the if-clause mode indicates that the

speaker is also functioning on a second, hypothetical level above the

imnediate experience of the other. Likewise, the logical structure

of the sentences which constitute each strophe is at a remove from the emotional distress associated with the displacement and confusion

suffered by the "tfi." These indications are strongly countered, however, by other signs that the speaker*s stance with regard to his interlocutor is as uncertain as the other's perception of his own 176 existence. The If-clause may be a logical structure, but it is nevertheless a mode of indecision in that it fuses both the expression of possibility and the denial of possibility. This fundamental mode of uncertainty is reinforced by more explicit admissions of doubt: "acaso," and "no se" in the first strophe;

"quizS." and the indefinite "algo" in the second. The use of the subjunctive in the final adjective clause Indicates the speaker's uncertainty, also emphasized in the ending of the second strophe in the form of questions.

Hie difference which the speaker establishes with the use of second-person discourse and the hypothetical framework is eroded by a gradual involvement which draws the speaker down into the temporal flew of the other's experience. Within each clause of the first strophe, the speaker follows his initial point with an enumeration of phrases which expound and elaborate on it, mimicking the process of understanding recorrmended to the "tu." A similar process occurs in the relationship between the two strophes. As the suggestion shifts from undertanding gathered from outside the individual to introspection as a means to understanding, so does the tone of the speaker change. The questions become more urgent and more basic, and his uncertainty greater, as indicated by the use of the past subjenctive Instead of the conditional as in the first strophe. We see, therefore, within a framework of logic and distance, and increasing closeness to the other on the part of the speaker. 177 With the beginning of the last strophe, this process is abruptly

cut off:

Pero el tiempo no existe, 25 y tienes prisa: no hay sitio para ti en el descampado donde habitas, el llanto puede llegar de pronto, la luz cae 30 en la sombra — casi in vie mo, el otoffo se vuelve lluvia y f rio— nadie mira hacia ti, anda, apresGrate, 35 tu cuerpo fatigado necesita descanso, es ya de noche, corre, aqul tampoco, 40 es preciso llegar, no te detengas, sigue buscando, muevete, camina.

The effort toward self-differentiation and distance is markedly

strengthened. The abruptness of the initial ""Pero" (so cotrmon in

GonzSlez* poems) quickly does away with the somewhat wistful tone of

the immediately preceeding lines, indicating a shift away from the

hypothetical and onto hard reality. This establishes a more

objective and matter-of-fact tone, furthered by the punctuation at

the end of the second line — a colon presaging a tersely cold factual

account of how things are. What follows is, in fact, a statement of

radical isolation and vulnerability. There is no place for the other

even in the wide open spaces; pain strikes suddenly; the world

withdraws its light and warmth. The speaker is unable now to maintain his objective stance and again the tone changes, becoming urgent, colored by the urgency of the other in his search for safety 178

and rest. This change in tone represents an internalization on the

part of the speaker of the emotions of the other. His voice is

still the only one present in the text (this section is especially

full of second-person markers) but he seems now to be speaking from

within the experience of the other, his somewhat disjointed words mimicking the stream of consciousness of the fugitive. He himself now follows the flurried pattern of thought for which he counselled calm in the first lines of the poem. The use of second-person

discourse throughout the poem, of course, posits the text as an intersubjective exchange. That this intersubjective relationship is

in fact posited as between two facets of the same self becomes undeniable in the last lines of the poem where the statement "aqui

tampoco" places the speaker in the same spatial relationship with the world as his interlocutor, his silenced and isolated other self. His words seem less the directions given to another than the internal urgings to one’s cwn self to press on. In "Fragjnentos," similar sh if tings occur in the relationship between the speaker and his interlocutor. The first fragment encapsulates much of what will follow in the rest of the poem:

I

1 Te toco un tiempo amargo. Paso el tiempo. Pero la huella de sus manos suclas permanece en tu frente: 5 grasa espesa de amor, incorruptible al odio. 179 This summarizing puts the speaker In a temporal sphere beyond the immediate experiences of the Interlocutor. Such extreme condensation and the use of the preterite In the first two sentences also indicates an an apparent unwillingness to involve himself in the details of the other’s experience. With the next sentence, tense shifts to the present and speaker and interlocutor are now drawn together in the same time. Correspondingly, the speaker’s claim to distance suffers erosion. The initial "Pero" signals a change in vision and in tone. The somewhat belittling and dismissive tone is replaced by an admission of the continuing effects of the "bitter time" endured by the other. As the speaker expresses the residue of bitterness the text slows. The physical spaces between "grasa,”

"espesa," and "de amor" signal pause, as though the speaker were suddenly caused to stop and consider the wealth of experience behind each of the words he sets forth. In these pauses, then, the speaker seems to be absorbed in the situation of the other and the identification of the two (suggested by the shift in tense so that the share the same temporal space) is furthered as the speaker momentarily share the other's condition of silence.

Hie second fragment deals with the condition of the "tu" in a time of unawareness of the impending bitterness: II

Jugabas entre muerte. 10 Crelas que los muertos eran objetos rotos que alguien habia tirado en las aeeras. Eras la vida pura que lo igioraba todo. 15 Un aire helado, a veces 180

— como un suspiro yerto, como una leve gasa hecha de hllos de f rlo— te acarlclaba el rostro. No sablas que era, 20 invisible y tan pr6xima, la mano de Ella la que lo movla.

In the first three sentences of the fragnent the speaker retreats to

the distanced position from which he had just faltered. He Is again

distanced In time. He is likewise distanced In perspective as he, from a position of knowledge, refers to the unconsciousness of the

other. In these lines, as in the initial lines of the first fragment, there is an apparent desire to simply make a statement about the nature of the other without delving into the corresponding experience, so as to maintain his distance and difference. It is perhaps the magnitude of the implication of the difference between

"la vida pura" and the "todo" of which it was unaware, that shakes

the speaker again from his position of distance, into the details of experience which make It poignant and painful. In the remaining lines of the fragnent, then, the speaker repeats what he has already stated, but the vision he now offers is clearly from within the experience itself (although he maintains the retrospective point of view with its wider knowledge than that provided by the in-mediate experience.) He now deals in detail — cold air that the other felt on his face. Hie mention of the detail, along with his concluding cornnent on its significance brings him closer to the interlocutor's experience. It is the interruption of the main body of the text, however, which goes furthest in Identifying the speaker with his addressee. Hie setting off of these phrases by dashes indicates that 181

the speaker is now working on another, more affective level. With

this aside, the speaker seems to have assumed, to have lnterlorized,

the experience of the interlocutor, telling in words pointedly his

own what it felt like, and thus identifying himself with the other

and his experience.

In the third fragment the speaker turns his attention to the

revelation of death to his interlocutor:

III

Lo supiste muy pronto. Desde entonces ya nunca dejarlas 25 de verla, acech&ndote siempre entre dos sombras, delatada por la luz corrosiva 30 de los amaneceres imprevistos, mal oculta en los pliegues de las tardes de lnviemo cuando el dia se acaba sin que llegue la noche y hay un tiempo de nadie, un vaclo creciente 35 — bajorrelieve en polvo de un volumen de viento— que pretende atraparte en sus bovedas sucias.

Ihe speaker begins with the same abrupt, factual tone and temporal

distance which initiated the first two fragments. This tone is

almost immediately neutralized, however, by the pause that follows

It. the first experience of death is a powerful moment in every

individual's life and the silence that follows Its reference here

allows its implication to resonate and to grow for the speaker so

that he 13 drawn Into the experience of his interlocutor to such a

degree that he again shares his condition of silence. The "Desde entonces" Which follows brings the account through the past and into 182 the present, once again uniting the speaker and the other In the same temporal sphere. The clause that It introduces Is followed by another moment of silence which, much the same as In the first fragnent, signals reflection on the permanence of the change effected by the sudden insight Into death — an Irreversible, omnipresent awareness of mortality. Within the space of that silence the speaker again seems to assume the other's experience as his own as he goes on to elaborate on It: "nunca dejarias // de verla." The "t£i" all but disappears from the lines that follow, signalled only by two object pronouns: "acechfindote" in the first line of the enumeration, and

"atraparte" In the last. Rather than addressing the interior experiences of the "tu", the speaker seems to have followeed the track of his own consciousness, exploring his own perceptions of mortality in the changing faces of time, ihe implication of his change in tone (Increasingly meditative and introspective) is confirmed by an interruption near the end of the fragment: "— bajorrelieve en polvo de un volumen de viento— ", which, as did that in the second fragment, indicates an interiorization of the other and his experience, the knowledge and expression of how It feels. We see in the third fragnent, therefore, a more extensive joining with the other than had come before, a Joining facilitated and evidenced by moments of silence on the part of the speaker and also Indicated by his meditative tone and internalization of the other's experience.

In the final fragnent, the speaker draws conclusions regarding what has come before: 183

IV

Tal vez por eso, todavla, como un fellno hambrlento que dlsputa su presa a los caimanes, 40 persigues ferozmente, entre el asco y el miedo, a la alegrla. Depredador de instantes, ya para siempre es tuya: 45 goza al fin plenamente, sus restos degradados, su tristeza.

In several ways, the speaker returns to a marked attitude of distance and difference. He posits the statement of the first strophe as

conjecture, thus positioning himself not within the experience of the

other, but rather separate from it and therefore uncertain of Its repercussions. His presentation of the other Is also distancing —

depicted as a ferocious predator, he is certainly at an opposite pole

from the speaker who expresses his experience In words from a

position of rationality. This imagery is distancing In yet another

way. It connects all the fragnents which constitute the poem and is a constant which unifies the speaker's vision of the other and his

experience. The speaker has consistently viewed the interlocutor and

his world in basely material terms, for example: "tiempo amargo,"

"grasa // espesa // de amor," "los muertos // eran objetos rotos,"

"alre helado," "Suspiro yerto," "luz corrosiva," "bajorrelieve en polvo," "b6vedas sucias." As a unifying force, this language

indicates a perspective of wholeness on the part of the speaker, his

apprehension of the totality of the other's experience above and beyond Its immediacy and in contrast to the fragmentary (before / 184 after) nature of that experience.

This very language, nevertheless, also fuses the speaker and his

Interlocutor in the final fragnent, establishing that the speaker Is addressing the silenced, other facet of his own 3elf. Especially In the second and third fragnents, the other Is perceived as existing in a realm structured by Instinct alone ("Eras la vida pura"), guided by a kind of primal perception of danger and drive for survival. This depiction continues even after awareness of death occurs, death being perceived as a dangerous animal stalking the other in the third fragment, threatening in a very animalistic and primary way. To the degree that the other is thus dehumanized (although not necessarily with a negative moral charge) the speaker is separate from him. In this last fragment, however, this dehumanized, animal-like mode of being is fused with human desire and Intention. Simple survival is no longer the goal. The motivation of the Individual is no longer escape from death, but rather happiness, and happiness Is sought as a need as primary as the predator's need to feed and In a mode as basic and instinctive as that of the predator. The significance of this melding is that the speaker internalizes the Interlocutor as a separate subject whose primal, irrational, purely biological mode of being is integrated into the human (his human) sphere of needs and emotions.

As in "El derrotado" and "Si serenases," the speaker of

"Fragnentos" attempts to differentiate himself from a dispossessed, driven other in search of wholeness and belonging. Such differentiation requires a distance that each of the speakers creates 185 through the use of second-person discourse, (which posits the other a separate entity) and through a variety of elements In the text which contribute to the creation of an objective perspective. Although silenced by reason of its role as interlocutor, the "tu" is nonetheless given voice in the text to the degree that it conditions the discourse of the speaker. This conditioning is evident in those moments when the speaker is unable to maintain his objective tone and responds subjectively to the plight of the other. As the speaker assumes the experience of the other as his own, speaking from within it, it becomes clear that the "tu" whom he addresses is within his own self, the empirical side of the ironic duality which continues to struggle within the world.

Dramatic Monologue One of the guises that may be taken by internal second-person discourse is that of the dramatic monologue. Stephen Summerhill thus sunmarizes the basic characteristics of the genre:

Basically, a fictional first-person narrator who is not the poet speaks from within an Imaginary or unreal situation to a listener or second party who, however, remains silent throughout . . . Whereas the character-narrator and fictional situation provide the basis for a story that stands on its own apart from the author; the poetic diction, verse form and appearance of first-person lyric create a strong sense of artifice and through that, an underlying apprehension in the reader that an author is fabricating the whole, perhaps even using it to express his own views obliquely. There are, let us say, objective and subjective elements at work simultaneously, and the consequence for the reader In the best dramatic monologues is what Sinfield calls a "divided consciousness," an awareness of both the speaker's *1' and the poet's ' I.' ^ 186

The dramatic monologue is thus very much a mode of duality. It becomes even more Interesting to our reading of GonzSlez If we bring that notion of divided consciousness down a step and situate its point of origin totally within the poetic voice rather than In the perceived relationship between the poetic voice and the historical author. Robert Langbaum, in Poetry of Experience, supports such a reading of the dramatic monologue in his comenta on Eliot's "The

Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock:"

Prufrock is clearly speaking for his own benefit. Yet he does not, like the soliloquist, address himself; he addresses his other self — the "you" of the first line, "Let us go then you and I," and the second party of the "we" in "We have lingered." Pmfrock's other self figures as the auditor who watches Prufrock's performance at the tea party and to wham Pruforck tells what he learns through the performance about his ife. In introducing the speaker's other self as auditor, Eliot makes explicit what is implicit in all the dramatic monologues. All those inadequately motivated and Ineffectual utterances are addressed ultimately across the dramatic situation and across the ostensible auditor to some projection of the speaker for whom the superfluous element of the utterance is intended. That is why It makes so little difference, as long as the speaker's attention is directed outward, whether the dramatic monologue has or has not an ostensible auditor; for ultimately the speaker speaks to understand sane thing about himself. (190-191)

Herbert J. Tucker describes the dynamic of a text generated by such a divided consciousness:

Character . . . emerges as an interference effect between opposed yet mutually informative discourses: between an historical, narrative, metonymic text and a symbolic, lyrical, metaphorical text that adjoins It and jockeys with it for authority. While each text urges its own priority, the ensemble works according to the paradoxical logic of the originary supplement: the alien voices of history and of feeling come to constitute and direct one another. 187

GonzSlez, In poems like "Campo de batalia" and "Ehtreacto" takes the form of the dramatic monologue as a vehicle for the Ironic duality so prevalent throughout his production. As we look at these poems we see that this duality Is now given In terms of a narrative/objective voice and a lyric/subJective one. The narrative voice Is the only speaker, the "yo" of the text. As each speaker assumes the role of narrator the objectivity of his language separates him from the events he recounts. As in the other poems we have seen in this chaper, however, the speaker Is ultimately unable to completely differentiate himself and at times speaks from within the experience that he narrates. Thus the subjective, lyric voice is given expression althougi it Is not itself allowed to speak. Thcker describes the phenomenon thus: "Lyric In the dramatic monologue is what you cannot have and what you cannot forget . . . and as an organizing principle for the genre, lyric becomes present through a recurrent and partial overruling. What Is ultimately effected, therefore, Is a fusion of the subjective and the objective voices in a process of self-knowledge on the part of the speaker. Langbaum describes the experience of dramatic monologue in this way: "As in all poetry of experience, the final perspective Is a fusion of subject and object, an Instant when the speaker sees and understands the object because, seeing it through his own perspective, he sees and understands himself in lt."^ This dynamic is clearly similar to that we have seen in the other poems considered In this chapter.

One such text is "Campo de batalla," the last poem of the first book of Sin esperanza, con convenclmiento. Douglas Benson, in a very 188 detailed analysis of the poem, identifies various codes within the

text and suggests that Gcnzfilez then proceeds to undercut those codes

so that the reader is caused to consider the limitations of each

fixed mode of perceiving the world.? This is certainly one of the

effects of such a procedure. It also, however, works in this poem to

reveal the duality of a voice initially pretending to objectivity and

narratlvlty. In the first strophe of the poem the speaker establishes his topic and his role as narrator:

1 Hoy voy a describir el campo de batalia tal como yo lo vl, una vez decidida la suerte de los hombres que lueharon 5 muchos hasta morir, otros hasta seguir viviendo todavla. (69)

The narratlvlty of the text i3 established in several ways. The

retrospective position taken by the speaker is in contrast ot the

spontaneity and lack of distance traditionally associated with lyric. Likewise, "tal como yo lo vi" is a marked claim of objectivity. Not

only does it claim to present factual material, but it also seems to

indicate that the speaker was an observer, rather than a participant

In the events he is about to recount. The reader Is thus set up to

expect a narrative text, not only because of the position taken by the speaker but also because of the topic, clearly harking back, as

Benson points out, to the social poetry of the fifties, well-known for its anti-lyrical qualities. Althou#i it is, to use Ihcker’s

phrase, overruled by the narrative voice (overruled to the degree

that it is not allowed a first-person voice) the lyric voice is 189 nonetheless present In several ways. To begin, the narrative mode Is undercut by the speaker's explicit Intention to "describe." Also his

temporal vantage point — after destinies have been determined— takes away from the tension and the drama of the battle scene. These

subtle ah if tings away from the narrative mode prepare the way for the sudden change in tone that ocurs with the fifth line. With a device frequent in his poetry, Gonz&lez effects a reversal of the natural perception of things by suggesting that death (rather than life) Is the desirable state. It is precisely In the gap between the normal valorization of life and the valorization of death in the text that the lyric voice of the poem has Its moment. As Tucker says:

"Dramatic monologue Is cur genre of genres for training in hew to read between the lines . . . In the reading of a dramatic monologue we do not so much scrutinize the ellipses and blank spaces of the text as we people those openings by attending to the overtones of the different dlscouses that flank them."® The "voice of feeling" is filled In by the reader as s/he travels the distance between the almost unquestionable value of life and the recreation of a situation so intense that a man would struggle to die with the same effort he would normally put to survival.

The second strophe focusses more directly on the struggle:

No hubo eleccl&n: mjrio quien pudo, 10 quien no pudo morir continuS andando, los &rboles nevaban lentos frutos, era verano, inviemo, todo un afto o m&s quizfi.: era la vida 15 entera aquel enorme dia de combate. 190 The first three lines repeat the dynamic of the preceding strophe: within a narrative framework they reiterate the valorization of death over life, provoking a subjective response on the part of the

reader. As in the first strophe, though, there is a sudden change in

tone within the strophe, beginning with the fourth line. The tone of

the first three lines is narrative, objective, abrupt. This tone is

created by the use of the preterite and also the colon at the end of

the first line which seems to promise a listing of factual

observations. Nonetheless, this language is also reminiscent of the overstated language of the social poets of the previous generation,

lb the degree that these lines bring to the reader's mind that whole

code, the language of these lines is metonymic. In contrast, the language of the remainder of the strophe is metaphorical. As Benson

points out, Gonz&lez takes the life-as-war metaphor and reverses it, presenting war-as-life.9 This has the same effect as the previous

valorization of death over life. The life-as-war metaphor presents

life as a struggle for survived. Its reversal, however, presents death as the primary experience: if the Whole of life is filled with

the experience of war, then the struggle for life is merely a

struggle to continue that experience. Again, the feeling arises as

the reader is caused to consider the implication of such a reversal.

It guides the reader to consider the scene In terms of individual experience.

The third and fourth strophes consider the war experience within an apocalyptic linguistic code: 191

Pop el oeste el viento trala sangre, pop el este la tleppa era cenlza, el norte entero e3taba 20 bloqueado pop alambradas secas y pop gritos, y flnicamente el sur, tan s61o el sup, se ofrecla ancho y libpe a nuestros ojos.

25 Pero el sup no existla: ni agua, ni luz, nl sanbpa, ni cenlza llenaban su oquedad, su hondo vaclo: el sup era un enorme precipiclo, un ablsmo sin fin de donde 30 lentos, los poderosos bultres ascendlan.

This apocallptic vision Is consonant, again, with the overstated language of the social poetry of the fifties. Benson suggests that the Inclusion of the compass points subverts the gravity of the situation described. I® Read as part of a dramatic monologue, it may contribute to quite the contrary effect, provoking a subjective response on the part of the reader. The situating of the speaker within a fictional situation is a basic ingredient of the dramatic monologue. It lends a concreteness to the speaker which aids the reader in perceiving the speaker as an individual, as another subject with whan the reader might establish a relationship. The use of the compass points in these strophes situates the speaker within the scene he describes and so the reader is caused to see the scene through the eyes of someone experiencing it first-hand. Other elements contribute to introducing into the text a lyrical, subjective quality. Ihe temporal structure of the two strophes has the same effect as the concrete situation of the speaker within the scene. The third strophe of the poem describes the destruction and 192 chaos surrounding the speaker and presents the south as a way to retreat and to safety. The fourth strophe shows that retreat to be false: In the absence of war all that Is left is the void. The delaying of this second vision of the south causes the reader to experience its loss in the same way that its promise of safety is lost to the speaker. Also, the speaker here identifies himself explicitly for the first time with the scene he describes by bringing the first-person plural possessive adjective into the experience.

All of these things — the concrete situation of the speaker, the temporal structure of the strophes and the first-person involvement in the scene— bring the speaker within the experience he is recounting and so cause the reader to consider the scene in terms of individual experience.

The next two strophes use the cinematic code, the motifs of the war movie:

Nadie escuchfi la voz del capitfin porque tampoco el capitSn hablaba. Nadie enterro a los muertos. 35 Nadie dijo: dale a mi novia esto si la encuentras un dla.

Tan solo algulen remato a un caballo que con el vientre abierto, f»0 agonizante, llenaba con su espanto el aire en scmbra: el aire que la noche amenazaba. (70)

The first of these strophes includes a variety of motifs typical of the glorifying mode of war movies. They are presented, however, only to be negated, undercut by the "Nadie" which is the subject of each 193 sentence. This strophe, therefore, provides little information as to what happened on the battle scene. It does, however, deny the glorified vision of war evoked by these motifs. In the void that is left by this dneial the reader is left to imagine the scene in terms of real human experience. Although not given voice, the subjective element is present in the realization of the enormity of an experience in which previously cherished and honored ideas — loyalty between a commander and his men, honorable treatment of the dead, thoughts of a loved one at the moment ui death— seem Just to disappear fran consciousness, as though they had no connection with the reality. The next strophe guides the reader to imagine Just such an experience which has no connection with the "glories" of war. It depicts an atmosphere of animal fear and repeats the Idea introduced earlier of the valorization of death over life. Hie fearful predicament of the horse is extended throughout the whole scene as his fear fills the air. The death close behind the fear might be said to be suffocating as the very air supply Is threatened: "el aire que la noche amenazaba."

The speaker's focus changes with the seventh strophe of the poem:

Quietos, pegados a la dura tierra, 45 cogidos entre el pSnico y la nada, los hcmbres esperaban el momento ultimo sin oponerse ya, sin rebeldla.

He is now concerned with the individual’s experience of the battle. 194 Everything in the strophe is in contrast to the overstated inodes of

expression (Spanish social poetry, apocalyptic language, war movies)

that we have seen metonymically alluded to throughout the poem. It

depicts the moment of crisis at the end of the battle as a moment of paralyzed quiet, filled only with waiting, somewhere between panic

and the void. The men's clinging to the ground and their complete

lack of will Is certainly a less than heroic vision, but one which

neverhteless conveys very well the moment of confrontation with

lnxninent death.

The next to the last strophe begins with a return to the methods

and Ideas of the beginning of the poem:

50 Algunos se murieron, como dije, y los dem&s, tendidos, derribados, pegados a la tierra en paz al fin, 55 esperan ya no se que — quiz& que algulen les diga: amigos, podeis lros, el combate...

The speaker returns to his objective, unemotional tone abruptly with

the first line, so bland In contrast to the intensity of experience

portrayed In the previous strophe. As he reiterates his role as narrator In the second line he takes another step away from the experience itself. With the third line of the strophe a reversal occurs which supports the desire for death over life that began with the first strophe. It is not those who died who are the focus of the speaker's attention (they seem to be the more fortunate) but rather those who survived. Their survival is depicted as a kind of living 195 death: surviving yet stretched out and peaceful on the ground. As the speaker contemplates the survivors he agains moves within the experience and Identifies with it. The identification occurs on several levels. Most Imnediately apparent is a change in tone to an attitude of intense compassion. This is effected in several ways: for example, the reiteration of the physical disposition of the survivors: "tendidos, derribados, // pegados a la tierra." Their state of waiting extends that depiction of defeat into the present.

And finally, the sense of helplessness on the part of the speaker reveals his compassion: his inability to offer a resolution to the survivors in his admission of confusion and also in the way his words of comfort stop short of telling them that the battle is over. The identification in time with those survivors apparently suspended within the experience of the battle is, I believe, the axis of the poem. It negates the retrospective position pretended to by the speaker and envelopes him in the scene. One is reminded of another text of Gonzfilez', "Camposanto en Colllure" in which he expresses more explicitly these ideas which capture the pain of the defeated during the Franco years:

Se paga con la muerte 35 o con la vida, pero se paga siempre una derrota.

iQue precio es el peor, Me lo pregunto *10 y no se que pensar ante esta tumba, ante esta paz. (150) 196

The last strophe confirms the extension of the battle experience

into the present and so the inclusion of the speaker In the

experience:

Entretanto, 60 es verano otra vez y crece el trigo en el que fue ancho campo de batalla.

The time expression "entretanto” creates a continuity between past

and present. That the speaker has such a perception is clear in the duality of his vision of the field as both a natural space and a battlefield: he sees the past behind the present. In this way the objective perception of the present is fused with the subjective experience of the past.

We hear, In "Campo de batalla," a first-person, narrative voice which pretends to distance and objectivity. The speaker’s efforts toward such an effect are furthered by his use of a variety of narrative codes familiar to the reader. The enormity of the experience he is recounting, however, conditions the discourse by undercutting the reader’s expectations of the messages carried by such codes. Without directly expressing the subjective experience, these reversals create a void, a silence in which the reader supplies the lyric counterpart to the story being recounted.

In "Entreacto," also of Sin esperanza con conveneimlento, the speaker takes on the persona of spectator at a theatrical event and seems to direct himself to other members of the audience. The first sequence of the poem shows the same kind of reversal procedure that 197 we saw In "Campo de batalla":

1 No acaba aqul la historia. Esto es s&lo una pequefia pausa para que descansemos. La tensiSn es tan grande, 5 la emoclfin que desprende la trama es tan Intensa, que todos,

bailarlnes y actores, acr6batas y distinguldo publico, 10 agradecemos la conveneional tregua del entreacto y comprobamos alegremente que todo era mentira, mlentras los muslcos afinan sus viollnes. (113)

Willing acceptance of the Illusion provided by the drama is traditionally an Important aspect of the theatrical experience. That convention Is reversed here. Normally, the suspension of disbelief is a step In allowing the message of the story to come through, for it creates a kind of transparency between the audience and the action which allows for a continuity between the two spheres. What is described in these lines could be more accurately termed a

"suspension of belief" and this focussing on the illusion itself sets up a barrier between the events represented on stage and the audience. It is in the distance and difference between the two responses to the drama (suspension of disbelief, suspension of belief) that the subjective element arises: the reader Is caused to conjecture on the subject matter of a plot so Intense that the emotions and tensions it produces must be so avoided. Thus, the subjective element is present, although Its specific nature is left to be imagined by the reader (which Is not to say that It is not of 198 great weight In real terms) while the words of the speaker refer to everything around the source of those emotions (the sense of relief

Is in its absence). The very situation of the poem — intermission— guarantees the absence/silence of the feelings and experience depicted on stage. It is, however, an cmlnous silence, this tone being established by the beginning line ("No acaba aqul la historia) and reiterated at the end as the violinist's music prepares the way for the action to begin again.

The next sentence continues the tension between distance and

Identification In the relationship between speaker and audience, and the events depicted on stage:

15 Hasta ahora hem os vlsto varlas escenas r&pidas que preludiaban muerte, conocemos el rostro de ciertos personaJes y sabemos algo que incluso muchos de ellos ignoran: 20 el movil de la tralc!6n y el nambre de quien la hlzo.

These lines also focus on the theatricality of the experience, referring to scenes and to characters. The effort to separate spectator fran drama is likewise evidenced in the superior position attributed to the spectators who are privileged to information not held by the characters. Several elements in the text, however, reveal a greater sense of involvement with the drama. "Hasta ahora" surrounds the speaker with the events on stage to the degree that it refers not only to what has already happened but also to impending events. The rapidity of the scenes points to a sense of loss of 199 control on the part of the spectators, as though they had been caught

up In events happening too quickly — too quickly perhaps to be

escaped. These rapidflre scenes also configure a future (death)

which, again, like "hasta ahora" seems to enclose the speaker and the

others within the reality of the play. The spectators' knowledge of the secrets of the plot adds another dimension to their experience of

the play. The reiteration of the verbs "to know" emphasizes a

certain awareness on the part of the audience of underlying

motivations behind the events represented on stage. This pointing

out of a discrepancy between the way things may appear to the

characters and the way the events of the play are truly occurlng

prepares the way for the spectators to operate on yet another level:

to Interpret the experience of the play as representing their cwn

reality (the postwar reality already hinted at in the use of "tregua"

to refer to the intermission.) It can have much the same effect for

the reader by guiding him/her to establish that same kind of

relationship with the poetic text, that Is to say, to cause the

reader to consider the "reality" versus the "textuality" of the poem,

Just as the speaker Is struggling between the fiction of the drama and Its underlying, motivating realities. The reader is also encouraged to feel Implicated In the experiences of the players and

the spectators by the way the speaker voices his awareness.

Expressing merely his knowledge of the information without, however,

sharing it with the reader places the reader in the same position of ignorance as the speaker and pulls him or her Into the experiences being represented on stage. 200

With the next lines the speaker turns abruptly to a mode of

denial:

Nada definitivo ocurrio todavla, pero 25 la desesperacifin est& nltldamente dlbujada, y los Int^rpretes lntentan evltar el rigor del destino poniendo demaslado calor en sus exuberantes 30 ademanes, demaslado carm In en sus sonrlsas falsas, con lo que — es evidente— disimulan su cobardia, el terror que dlrlge 35 sus movimlentos en el escenario. (113-114)

Just as the first line of the poem ("No acaba aqul la historia") and the fifteenth ("Hasta ahora hemos vl3to") did, the first line of this

sequence has a dual effect. On the surface It denies that anything

substantive has happened and yet it establishes a tone of dread,

setting the reader up to expect that sane thing definitive is about to happen. The evasive quality of this first line Is supported by the

speaker’s subsequent emphasis on the falsity of what he sees on

stage: the desperation of the players seems contrived, their gestures

are too heated and exaggerated, their smile false. His emphasis on

this falsity may be read as an attempt to deny the message of the play. There Is, however, something In these lines slightly different

from the proceeding sequence. Previously the speaker referred to

those on stage as characters and here he refers to them as actors,

"interpretes." By doing so he removes them from the realm of fiction

and the futility of their efforts to avoid "el rigor del destino" becomes part of the real world shared by all those experiencing the 201 play. The drama Itself undergoes a similar transformation as Its

actions are now described as being determined by the cowardice and

terror felt by the real people on stage rather than by a flctioanl

script. What is occurring on stage Is real and actors and audience

seem to be conspiring together to deny that something definitive

which hasn’t happened yet but which seems Inevitable when the action

resumes. As with what has come before, the speaker allow his words

to express a surface reaction to some experience which remains

undefined except as betrayal, and unexplored from within. Thus the

lyrical, subjective element is left in silence but certainly present

as the reader is stimulated by the tone of dread and mystery so

painful as to cause the audience and even the players representing it

to turn away.

The next ten lines refer more specifically to that subjective

element, but still do not give it voice in the text:

Aquellos ineficaces y tortuosos dl&logos refiriendose a ayer, a un tiempo ido, 40 completan, sin embargo, el panorama roto que tenemos ante nosotros, y acaso expliquen luego muchas cosa3, sean la clave que al final lo Justifique 45 todo.

The dialogues referred to constitute the subjective element thus far skirted. "Ineficaces” suggests that they lack structural Importance within the narrative or dramatic story. (We are reminded of Langbaum's comments above on the under-motivation for certain 202 passages within a dramatic monologue, referring to "all those inadequately motivated and ineffectual utterances.") The emotional content is clearly indicated by the description of the dialogues as torturous and the source of the pain in the losses that occur with time. In fact, we might even suggest that "Aquellos // ineficaces y torturosos diSlogos" refer to more lyrical compositions in Gonz&lez' own production, now silenced by the dramatic monologue form. Despite the 3ilenced situation of the lyric voice in the text the speaker explicitly asserts its importance, presenting it as a necessary counterpart to the story represented on stage. He also suggests what the reader has probably come to expect: that the subjective experience behind those dialogues Is so extreme as to Justify all of the falseness and evasion upon which the speaker has focussed. The reader still, however, is not exposed to those dialogues.

Hie speaker's focus shifts again with the next segment of the text:

No olvidemos tampoco las palabras de amor Junto al estanque, el gesto demudado, la violencia con que alguien dijo: 50 no, mirando al cielo, y la sorpresa que produce el torvo Jardinero cuando anuncla: Llueve, sertores, 55 llueve todavla.

He returns to the theatricality of the spectacle by enumerating a series of dramatic moments, more or less recognizable despite their particularities. He moves us cut of the realm of the lyric Just referred to, back Into the dramatic fiction which perhaps does not seem now so artificial, colored as it is by the proceeding allusion to lyric Justification.

In the concluding lines of the poem the fiction of the drama and the reality of the subjective experience fuse:

Pero tal vez pronto para hacer conjeturas: dejemos que la tramoya se prepare, 60 que los que han de morir recuperen su aliento, y pensemos, cuando el drama prosiga y el dolor fingido se vuelva verdadero en nuestros corazones 65 que nada puede hacerse, que est& pr6ximo el final que tememos de antemano, que la aventura acabarS., sin duda, como debe acabar, como estfi escrito, como es Inevitable que suceda.

The speaker returns briefly to a mode of denial in the initial hope that the sense of impending doom which has pervaded the poem Is merely unwarranted conjecture. This hopeful tone is quickly dispelled, however, by the reference to those on stage as "los que han de morir." Identification of audience and drama is made explicit and the bridge between the reality of the audience and the fiction of the drama is the subjective experience at the core of the dramatic story. This identification extends to the audicence a situation of powerlessness which enfolds and entraps the characters/actors whose destinies are predetermined by the script that they follow, ("como est& escrito.") Thus, the ending that is referred to in the last lines Is not only the tragic ending of the play but also the implication of the speaker (and the other spectators) in the tragedy. 204

We should note, however, that the conclusion of the poem does not definitively negate the speaker's earlier depiction of the falsity associated with the stage representation, as tragic as it may be.

That the audience's acceptance of their situation of powerlessness is perhaps an inauthentic response is suggested in the use of nosotros- conmands. The first ("deJemos") explicitly portrays the choice of a passive role while the second ("pensemos') suggests the possibility of deliberate self-deception. This mitigates the legitimating role given to the voice of subjective experience with regard to the behavior of the players and audience by suggesting, however obliquely, the possibility of response on a more objective, concrete level. Thus the conclusion of the poem demonstrates the duality of the "alien voice of history and of feeling" (although the "voice of feeling" is never really exposed to the reader) without placing either in a position of primacy.

In both "Campo de batalla" and "Qitreacto" Gonz&lez uses the dramatic monologue as a vehicle for the duality of voice so central to ironic expression. It is not surprising to find two such compositions in Sin esperanza, con convencimiento, one of Qonz&lez' earlier books with a closer temporal connection to the social poetry of the fifties. Certainly a poetry in which the voice of objective, historical realities overwhelms the voice of individual experience is consonant with the experience of the "Franco years and with the social poetry that gave it expression. What separates OcnzSlez from those earlier poets, however, Is his creation of a poetry that derives Just as much of its pcwer from what is left unsaid as from what is said. 205 Apostrophe

Throughout Qonzfilez' production there are a large number of texts of an apostrophic nature, in which the poetic voice addresses in second-person discourse a separate subject, sanetimes hunan, sometimes not. Jonathan Culler has the following to say about the traditional (i.e., Romantic) aim of apostrophe:

The vocative of apostrophe is a device which the poetic voice uses to establish with an object a relationship which helps to constitute him. The object is treated as a subject, an 1^ which in?)lies a certain type of you in its turn. One who successfully Invokes nature is one to whan nature mlgit, in its turn, speak. He makes himself poet, visionary. Thus, invocation is a figure of vocation . . . If asking winds to blow or seasons to stay their coming or mountains to hear one’s crie3 is a ritualistic, practically gratuitous action, that emphasizes that that voice calls in order to be calling, to dramatize its calling, to summon images of its power so as to establish its Identity a3 poetical and prophetic voice.

This poetic power is achieved through the peculiar temporality of apostrophe which configures the text as event rather than story, thus releasing the Interlocutor from the constraints of narrative time and allowing the addressee to be conjured up more or less at the will of the poetic voice:

If one put into a poem thou shepherd boy, ye blessed creature, ye birds, they are irrmedlately associated with what might be called a timeless present but is better seen as a temporality of writing. Even if the birds were only glimpsed once in the past, to apostrophize them as ’ye birds' Is to locate than In the time of the apostrophe — a special temporality which is the set of all the moments at which writing can say 'now.' This Is a time of discourse rather than story. So located by apostrophes birds, creature, boys,, etc., resist being organized into events that can be narrated, for they are inserted in the poem as elements of the event Which the poem Is attempting to be.12 206

The exercise of this poetic power is not always a matter of the

relationship between the poetic self and the world. As Culler

further explores the nature of the relationship between the speaker

and his addressee, the understanding of apostrophe as a mode of

duality becomes clear:

One must question the status so far granted to the thou of the apostrophic structure and reflect on the crucial though paradoxical fact that this figure which seems to establish relations between the self and the other can in fact be read as an act of radical interiorization and solipsism. Either it parcels out the self to fill the world, peopling the universe with fragnents of itself, as in Baudelaire's apostrophes to his pain, his mind, his soul, his living matter . . . or else it internalizes what might have been thought external (things, says Rilke, ''want us to change them entirely . . . into ourselves.")1^

Culler thus points out that the addressee of an apostrophe may well be another facet of the poetic self and that the dynamic of the apostrophe may be one of exteriorization or interiorization of that other self. Although not all of QonzSlez apostrophic text3 function in this way, there are several poems in which the addressee is easily recognized as an extension or perhaps as an alter-ego of the speaking voice, and the textual dynamic is one of exteriorization and interiorization. As in a game of mirrors, however, the roles which the speaker and addressee assume — who, in fact, is speaking and who is silent— are not always clear.

In "Hecho" of the last book of Sin esperanza, con convenelmlento, the speaking voice addresses the text itself. This act sets into motion a fascinating set of problems. Let us consider first the Invocative nature of apostrophe. The will of the 207 apostrophisizing voice to call same entity into presence, to actually make it present in order to constitute Itself as "poetical and prophetic voice" (i.e., logocentric) is realized, according to

Culler, by placing that entity within a unique "time of discourse."

Such an actualization, when referring to most entities is, to say the least, a rather abstract phenomenon. When the addressee of the apostrophe, however, is the text itself, then the invocative actualization takes on a very concrete reality and it is not, as

Culler refers to the invocation of the seasons or the mountains, "a ritualistic, practically gratuitous action." Quite the contrary, the voice has here succeeded in giving a much more convincing display of its power by reason of the very existence of the text.

This kind of power is the central issue of the text. In more traditional approaches to apostrophe, the addressee is made present

In an abstract way, at the will of the poetic voice. The poetic I has, so to speak, the power of the word; the addressee does not speak, it is given expression through the words of the _I* conjure up a text, however, Is to conjure up words. By addressing the text

Itself, the apostrophic voice of "Hecho" invokes another poetic voice which, one would assume, shares Its same pretensions to logocentrism, to power. This power struggle, the struggle to speak, Is the theme as well as the dynamic of "Hecho."

Already in the title, there is some ambiguity as to where the weight of the composition lies. In Its meaning of completeness and certainty (i.e., fact) the title seems to support a vision of internal validity, of a closed text standing on its own immune to any 208 penetration of its boundaries. This impression is counterbalanced by

the verb form of the title — a past participle which implies an

agent, opening the text and expanding its boundaries to include the will of a creator. This tension continues in the first strophe:

1 Redondo objeto quieto, terminado, acabado perfil, fruto 5 del olvido o del llanto — no recuerdo— , estfis asi porque yo quise, eres ya para siempre — aunque te mueras pronto— para tu fr§gil siempre sin mafiana. (118)

The initial presentation of the text focusses on its closed nature.

The roundness and the state of completion and the view of the text only in terms of its silhouette set up formidable, apparently physical boundaries. Other kinds of boundaries also exist. The text is removed intellectually and emotionally from the speaker (and also implicitly from the reader who enters the poem through the poetic

"yo,f)* Explicitly presented as an object and distanced from its inspiration ("— no recuerdo— ") the text is stripped of its subjective quality, and so made more foreign to the speaking or reading subject which comes into contact with it. The attribution of quietness furthers this sense of impenetrability as it testifies to the lack of conrrrunlcation proceeding outward from the text. There is paradox, however, in the first four and a half lines revealing the power-struggle which generates the text. The text is posited as whole, separate, and impenetrable with regard to the speaking subject and this wholeness constitutes its claim to logocentrism, to power. 209 Such textual autonomy should almost completely overshadow the poetic voice's role as creator of the poetic yo. Cast in the role of invoker, however, the poetic voice enhances its claim to power by calling into presence and by apparently silencing such an entity — invocation being a way of breaking down the boundaries between the invoker and his addressee. This paradox which is implicit in the first four and a half lines becomes explicit with the "— no recuerdo— " of line five. This phrase set apart by dashes, as well as the one to follow in the next to the last line of the strophe are clear interruptions of the main body of the text by incidental comnents on the part of the petic voice. As such, they break into the "acabado perfll" of the text, opening it up to Include the conjecture of the poetic "yo." This demonstration of power on the part of the speaker is expanded in line six as he claims control over the degree of autonomy held by the text: "est&s as! porque yo quise" — at once confirming the autonomy of the text and denying it. Ihe case for textual autonomy and superiority is further supported by the attribution of timelessness to the text, a "frSgil siempre sin mafiana," certainly consonant with what Culler refers to as a

"timeless present" and in contrast to the linear temporality associated with the poetic speaking subject. Hie intrusion of the poetic voice in the next to the last line, however, in an almost godlike way, Inserts the notion of death (and, by implication, silence) into the realm of the text. We have witnessed, then, in the first strophe of "Hecho" two conpeting claims to logocentric power.

By casting the text in the role of interlocutor the poetic voice 210 claims as its awn the power of the word and relegates its addressee

to a state of silence. This is counterbalanced by the apostrophic

nature of the text. If the "tfi" Is in fact the text Itself then it

contains the poetic "yo", as the source of the poetic "yo" and not vice-versa. From this perspective it is not the text/"tu" that Is

silenced but rather the "yo" whose voice is enclosed within the larger voice of the text.

The second strophe, posited as conjecture, deals with the content, or the truth, of the text:

10 iQuien es capaz ahora de negar lo que afIrmas, de afirmar lo que niegas, de borrar tu verdad — cierto:dudosa— que solo por ser tuya est& tan clara?

On the surface, the strophe supports a notion of something like textual sanctity, the notion that the content or message of the text is self-legitimating. Although posited as a question the apparent thrust of the strophe is to support such a concept. It is not, however, simply a rhetorical question for it contains within itself a clear response: Who is capable of refuting the truth of the text Is the poetic speaking voice. It accomplishes this with the intrusive aside "— clerto:dudosa— " which not only explicitly raises doubt concerning the message of the text, but also does so implicitly by the very fact of the interruption which destroys the self- legitimating power in the organic nature of the text.

The third strophe begins with a similar conjecture: 211

15 SI todo lo que eres se reduce a tl mismo, si el tiempo que has de vivlr el todo el tiempo tuyo, si 20 la nada que te rodea te define ccmo algo icfimo va a ser poslble que tu dejes 25 de ser mientras exlstas, que no vivas tu tiempo, que la contradlccion muerda en tu alma?

The rhetorical question normally seeks no response, but rather suggests confirmation of what it proposes: here, the notion of textual autonomy and wholeness. Although in the guise of a rhetorical question, these lines raise a real question, apparent at least by the final reference to the matter of contradiction. The implication that the text is not an isolated, organic whole is present in the phrase used to raise the question of contradiction:

"que la contradlccion muerda en tu alma." The idea of soul confers a human dimension onto the text, certainly in contrast to the depiction of the text as "objeto" in the first line. Also, the text thus far has been full of contradiction, a mixture of testimony to the autonomy and truth of the text, and intrusions and insertions of doubt into the text by the poetic voice. Given this experience of the text the reader is now caused to try to answer the how and why of the contradictions of the text. This question is, in effect, that of the relationship between the text and the poetic voice in its role as creator: which of them has, so to speak, the last word? Does the poetic voice have the , ower to implant contradictions into the text 212 and so make its voice heard above that of the text, or do those contradictions, once inserted into the text become separated from the poetic voice so as to form part of the whole which is the text and so become one of the constituents of its truth? In this poem, is the poetic "yo" silencing the text by relegating it to the role of

Interlocutor or does it effect its own silence by calling into presence an entity which surrounds and eclipses it?

The remaining lines of the poem deal more explicitly with the relationship between the addressee/text and the poetic voice and seek to answer the contradictions Just raised:

Estas ahi, y yo soy impotente — hasta yo mismo, date cuenta— si pretendo 30 negarte. Y pese a que me dueles y desgarras mi came con tu presencia pavorosa, ya ves, 35 estoy contento porque siento que te hice yo contra mi vida, enemigo Implacable de mis suefios, roedor voraz de mi destino, 40 asesino en la scmbra insospechada...... Pero hecho por ml — canto, sonrlo— , hecho — como me haces sufrir esta marlana— para que con tu luz ciegues, demuestres, 45 para que con tu error confundas, salves. (122-123)

These first three lines begin with a reiteration of the dynamic occasioned by other interruptions of the text by the poetic "yo" — a claim to the irrefutability of the text and the powerlessness of the poetic speaker which includes, nevertheless, a clear interruption of the text on the part of the speaker: a very casual and conversational 213 "— hasta yo mlsmo, date cuenta— With the next ten lines, however, this demonstration of power on the part of the speaking voice is overshadowed by his recognition of the power of the text whose presence is contrasted to the physical dimension of the poetic speaking voice ("me dueles y desgarras // mi came // con tu presencla pavorosa") — a reference, perhaps, to the atemporality of the text, not denied here as It was earlier. This Idea Is supported by the voice's assertion that the text was created "contra mi vida," which does not share that atemporality. Such a move Is lmnedlately negated, however, as a means to the poetic voice's Joining in the atemporality of the text as the "yo" goes on to depict the text as the agent of his anonymity and silence: enemy of his dreams, devourer of his destiny (poetic destiny or fame, one might suppose) and ultimately murderer In the unexpected shadow — the shadow cast over the poetic voice by the notions of textual autonomy. This reference

Is even followed by a lapse into silence on the part of the speaker, signalled by the use of ellipsis and the spacing of the text. The final lines of the poem present a series of paradoxes — the text produces joy and suffering in the speaker, its light both blinds and illuminates, its errors both confuse and show the way to salvation.

These final paradoxes of the last two line respond to the question of contradictions raised earlier In the text.

By identifying contradictions as the mode of the text, the way in which it points to truth, the text incorporates the previous contradictions as Its own. They are removed from the sphere of the poetic "yo" by incorporating them as constituents of the truth of the 2m text. Thus, the text (exteriorized by the poetic "yo" form itself through the use of second-person discourse) reaches back and, in its own claim to power, interiorizes the "yo." The question as to which ultimately has control over the poem 13 unresolveable. What Is clear, however, is that the speaker of the text (whoever that may be) exists as a duality. The "yo" is the voice of the creative poetic process and the "tu" is the voice of the poetic product. The use of second-person discourse posits a necessary supremacy of one over the other — one being given the power or the word and the other being silenced. As the dynamic of exteriorization and interiorization shows, however, the "tu" and "yo" of the text are but two aspects of the same voice, each attempting to define itself against the other, to constitute itself as logocentric by testifying to the decentered nature of the other, and by attempting to silence the other. While neither succeeds, neither is ultimately denied and so we are left with a vision of the text which is both open and closed, process and product, decentered and logocentric.

Another poem in this same section of Sin esperanza, con convenclmlent, "Orador implacable y solitario," deals with similar problems of discourse. This time, however, the interlocutor is another speaker and the overall tone is sympathetic:

1 Orador Implacable y solitario: no imports que tu palabra caiga como una piedra sob re el agua 5 y se hunda.

No inporta que el silencio de los que no te escuchan 215 aloe ana barrera fria e Implacable 10 en to m o a tl. (117)

In the first two strophes, the speaker addresses the orator regarding

his language. The aim of oratorical language is, of couse, to

provoke an iranediate, active response In the audience. The depiction

of his language, therefore, as a rock sinking in the water Is

contrary to its desired uplifting effect. Likewise, the description

of an unbreachable barrier between the orator and his audience

negates the sense of unity created when a room full of people Is caught up and swept away by the words and emotions of a successful

speaker. These images, therefore, point to a painfully failed

language. The failure of his language is compounded by his apparent

role in this poem as silenced Interlocutor, present not of his own accord but by reason of the speaker's successful exercise of linguistic power (apostrophe.) This contrasts with the speaker's position. He comes from a position of authority by reason of the act of apostrophe and also by reason of his claim to know what is important. This knowledge also lets the speaker function In a legitimating way which, in fact, mitigates the sense of failure by claiming that the lack of response and the solitude don’t matter.

Even more significantly, the speaker begins to speak from within the oratorical tradition. The anaphora "no Imports" is immediately

Identifiable with the oratorical tradition. The logic of the anaphora also governs the rest of the two strophes in their parallel structuring of elements and their reiteration of their point. The 216 concreteness of the Imagery also contributes. More importantly, the essence of the strophes is oratorical in that the speaker, through his reassurance to the orator that his immediate failures don't matter, wants to provoke a response in the addressee, to insure his continuance. We see in the first two strophes, therefore, two conflicting dtractions on the part of the speaker. On the one hand, he differentiates himself from the orator through the use of second- person discourse and his postton of superiority (he speaks as a legitimating and apostrophic voice in contrast to the silenced position of the orator.) On the other hand, his legitimating use of language vindicates that of the orator and he identifies with the orator to the degree that his own language and experience mimics oratory. That is to say, he is absorbed by the other's language and experience and speaks from within it.

The depiction of the orator changes radically with the third strophe:

Espect&culo ardiente y abnegado, llama que te consumes en tu esfuerzo, arde un momento, y calla. Y luego, 15 tras el instante enorme del silencio, cuando la tarde se convlerta en sombra, ver&s brillar contra los imprecisos pabellones leJanos la roja luz, reflejo de tu aurora.

The picture of an "orador Implacable y solitario" is pathetic at best. The vision of an "Espect&culo ardiente y abnegado" is, quite the contrary, an exalted and, more importantly perhaps, inspiring image. It depicts a brilliance and an all-consuming passion, a sense 217 of cause absent In the first depiction. Likewise, the notion of self-sacrifice (in Christian culture at least certainly the most influential of acts) implies interaction between the speaker and his audience. This portrayal is supported by the speaker’s continued encouragement of the orator ("arde un momento y calla"). The last sentence of the poem premises the response, the lack of which constitutes the failure described in the earlier strophes. The response is depicted as a distant reflection of his light. The language of this sentence is hybrid. It continues in the oratorical vein in the classical tone of "pabellones" and "aurora." There is, however, a distinctly modem note in the "ins tan te enorme" of silence and perhaps in the imprecision of the perception of the pavilions. We see in this last sentence, then, a blending of types of languages: the language of classical oratory and that of the poetic speaker.

The speaker’s words therefore have a relationship of sameness and difference with the language of the orator. They are, in fact, the reflection of which he speaks. Hence, his ability to assure that the missing imnediate response is not crucial — his text is the desired response althouj^i it comes on a delayed basis. The cycle signalled in the last line indicates that the poetic speaker now assumes the position Just held by the orator, awaiting now his own rejoinder

"tras el instante enorme de silencio." We see in the third strophe, therefore, an identification of the orator and the poetic speaker within certain parameters of difference. Such a relationship is certainly consonant with the vision of ironic duality from which we have been working: one facet of the ironic consciousness separating 218

and differentiation itself from the other (here by the use of second-

person discourse with its silencing effect.) Ultimately unable to

separate, however, the poetic voice speaks from within the tradition

of his Interlocutor and even assumes his same position.

Both ,rHecho" and "Orador implacable y solitario" use apostrophe

to deal with the nature of the relationship between creator and text,

between the text as creative process and the text as product. The

apostrophisizing of the text in "Hecho" supports a vision of the

creator/poet as all powerful with regard to the text. Nevertheless,

with the conclusion of the poem, the poetic voice, with its

demonstrations of control over the text is integrated, absorbed as a

component of the text. In "Orador implacable y solitario” the poetic voice apostrophisizes a kind of language which pretends to an

imnedlacy of response, a kind of language in Which words become deeds, emotions, reality. This language is presented as successful,

but on a delayed basis and in such a way that is is clear that the

voice of the poet shares (or is to share) that same condition — a separation of process and product/response. The result in both poems

Is a vision of the text as housing simultaneously its process and its

condition as product: a text which allows the poetic consciousness to

speak cut while recognizing the existence of the text in the world

Independent of the consciousness and intentions of the creator — a

divided text which corresponds to the divided consciousness of the

Ironic experience.

The poems seen In this chapter shew the Ironic duality in the most extreme terms In which it appears in Gonz&lez* poetry. Rather 219 than dealing with competing approaches to language, the issue at hand is more basic and more radical: the competing powers of language and of silence. As we saw in Chapter II, where both logocentric and decentered ways of using language were supported by the text, a choice is not possible. The ultimate interlorization of the silent interlocutor melds language and silence so that neither can be recognized as superior to the other. Notes 1 It is perhaps worth noting that Gonzfilez probably derives elements of what follows from the poetry of Luis Cemuda and G§sar Vallejo, among others. Cemuda has long been recognized for his explorations of dual voicing and dramatic monologue while Vallejo's Intense suffering of dispossession and personal displacement remains the most complete expression of duality in twentieth-century hlspanic poetry.

2 Stephen Sumnerhill, "Luis Cemuda and the Dramatic Monologue," The Word and the Mirror: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Luis Cemuda7 Ed. Salvador .Jlmerigz-T^aJardo (Cranbury NJ: Associated Ifriiversity Presses, 1989): 142-165.

3 Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience. The Dramatic Monologue in M o d e m Literary Tradition (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1957): 190-191.

** Herbert J. Tucker, "Dramatic Monologue and the Overhearing of Lyric," Lyric Poetry. Beyond New Criticism Eds. Chaviva Hosek and Patricia Parker (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985): 229-230. 5 Tucker 235

^ Langbaum 209

^ Douglas Benson "Linguistic Parody and Reader Response in the Worlds of Angel GonzSlez," Anales de la literature espafiola contemporSnea 7,1 (1982): 11-30. ® Hjcker 231-232

9 Benson, "Linguistic Parody" 18-19

10 Benson, "Linguistic Parody" 18

Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs. Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruetlon (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1981): 142. *2 Culler, Pursuit 149

Culler, Pursuit 146

220 CCNCLUSICN

As stated at the outset, my purpose has been to think through the processes of* irony as they are manifested in various inodes of duality throughout Gonzfilez* production. We found that one group of poems expresses the ironic duality in the alternating of mystified and demystified voices in the text. Irony in these texts is largely a matter of the demystification of Inauthentic ways of being, based on the suppression of awareness of the limitations of human temporality.

Another group presents a more intense expression in which the Ironic component of the self is brought to the forefront and consequently the ironic duality is manifested in terms of contradictory ways of using language: logocentric and decentering voices. The more intense ironic awareness sharpens the experience of duality so that the two terms (the ironic and the empirical selves) are experienced as more distinct, yet also more intimately connected.

Thus, the voices in the poems corresponding to this group are superimposed in such a way that neither prevails; that Is to say, the words of the text support both such uses of language. This greater balance between the terms of the Ironic duality causes the uncertainty which Is at the root of irony to more readily allow for the possibility of success as well as the the possibility of

221 222

failure.

Finally, the duality is manifested in the more basic and radical

terms of speech and silence — the latter being negation. There is a

single speaker in these texts corresponding to a first-person voice

who addresses a silent, second-person interlocutor. Although denied

a voice, the interlocutor nonetheless remains in the texts to the

degree that it conditions the content and tone of the speech of the

poetic "yo." Again, the terms of the duality co-exist as an

unresolveable contradiction, for both the speech of the "yo" and the

silence of the "tu" configure the message of the text.

What can we say, then, about where irony takes us in the reading of GonzSlez' poetry, and where it leaves us? The initial moment of

ironic response, as we have described it, is essentially negatlonal

and brings us to the brink of a nihilistic silence. In this regard,

"PreSmbulo a un silencio" is pivotal. GonzSlez has the following to

say about this text:

El poema "PreSmbulo a un silencio" viene a ser la negacion de mi Intermitente pero hasta entonces sostenida iluslon en la capacidad actlva de la palabra poStica. En aquellos affos personalmente — y objetivamente— difidles, cuando la esperanza en un cambio durante mucho tiempo deseado 3e habla convertIdo prime ro en impaciencia y luego en decepcl6n, nada se me presentaba mSs InGtll y m&s ajeno a los actos que las palabras."1

In its refusal of language, this poem certainly figures as one of

GonzSlez' most bitter and most powerful texts.

Within the body of poems by GonzSlez that are informed by irony, however, such negation is met, in at least equal measure, with 223 possibility. Wilde associates the development of ironic perception

with not only a growing sense of disjunction in the world, by also

with a widening of the Individual's sense of ability to intervene and

to find meaning in the world. He thus remarks on the need to recognize:

The potential for affirmation within even the most self- conscious of ironies and to see that, in this respect as in others, the disunities of irony suggest not only the world's absurdity but, whether through language, action, or gesture, the creative and redemptive forces of consciousness as well.

GonzSlez makes such an affirmation, confirming explicitly what we have already seen demonstrated in his poetry:

Mi creencia en la ineficacia de la palabra poetica respondia mSs a una decepci6n transitoria que a una conviccion profunda. En efecto sigo creyendo que la palabra poetica, si logra alzarse hasta el nivel de la verdadera poesla, no es nunca inGtil. Porque las palabras del poema conflguran con especial intensidad ideas y emociones, o a veces incluso llegan a crearlas . . . Pero aun sin ambiciones de transf ormar al mundo, con la mSs modesta pretensi6n de clasificarlo (o de confundirlo) o s implements de nombrarlo (o de borrarlo), la poesla confirma o modifies nuestra percepci6n de las cosas, lo que equivale, en clerto modo, a conflrmar o modif1car las cosas mismas.3

Gonzalez' comments about "classifying or confusing" the world and

"naming or erasing" it express extra-textually, I believe, the tension that we saw in the second moment of ironic development between language which creates meaning and language emptied or meaning. Ihe negational aspect of irony appears as more strongly counterbalanced by the creative possibilities of language. At any 224

rate, it Is clear that Oonz&lez conceives of language — in both its

creative and destructive capacities— as a means of intervening in

the world. Even the arrival at silence does not ultimately deny such

a possibility, for within those silences there arise the expression

of seme of the most human, most participatory responses to the world

that we see in GonzSlez’ poetry.

In one stage of development In GonzSlez1 poetry, it is true that irony is largely concerned with the denial of humanity's ability to apprehend and give expression to the world. As the ironic mode develops, however, It becomes increasingly clear that the other face of irony — the option to search for and to create meaning In the face of its apparent absence— is also an essential component of Gonz&lez' poetry. Notes

1 Angel GonzSlez, Poemas (Madrid: Ed. C§.tedra, 1980) 21.

2 Alan Wilde, Horizons of A3 sent. Modernism, Postroodemlan, and the Ironic InB.ginatiori (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1987) 6. 3 Gcnz&lez 23

225 BIELIOGRAPHY

I. Modem Poetry, Selected Readings.

Baudelaire, Charles. "De 1'essence du rlne." Oeuvres Completes. Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1968. 370-378.

Baudrlllard, Jean. "The Ecstasy of Communication." The Antl- Aesthetlc. Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend: Bay Press, 19837 126-134.

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Shocken, 1969« Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973* Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 197A.

Bradbury, Malcolm, and James McFarlane, eds. Modernism. New York Pelican Books, 1986.

Bruns, Gerald. Modem Poetry and the Idea of Language. New Haven and London: YaleIJnlv. P'res's, 197A.

Buchloch, Benjamin H.D., Serge Guilbaut, and David Solkln, eds. Modernism and Modernity. The Vancouver Conference Papers. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983. EUrger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Cock, David, and Arthur Kroker. The Postmodern Scene. Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aesthetics. New York: St. Martin's Press, I 9BS: ------

Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975* ------. The Pursuit of Signs. Semiotics, Literature, Deconstuctlon. Ithacar- 'Cornell Ifrilv. Press, 1981.

De Man, Paul. Blindness and Inslgit. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983. 226 227 Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981.

Easthope, Anthony. Poetry as Discourse. London: Methuen, 1983-

Poster, Hal, ed. The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend! Bay Press, 1983.

------Recodlngs. Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics. Port Tcwnsend: Bay Press, 1985.

Friedrich, Hugo. La estructura de la llrlca modema. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1966.

Frye, Northrop. Ana tony of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton Unlv^ Press, 1957*

Graff, Gerald. Literature Against Itself. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Prers, 1977*

------. Poetic Statement and Political Dogma. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 198O.

Group Mu, eds. Collages. Paris: Unidn Gene rale, 1978.

Jakobson, Roman. Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time. Ed. Krystyna Pcmorska and Stephen Rudy. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1985.

Janescn, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Anti- Aesthetlc. Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983* 111-125*

Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota "Press, 1982.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates. Trans. Lee M. Capel. London: Collins, T96f>.

Lacan, Jacques. The Language of the Self. Trans. Anthony Wllden. New York: Dell, 1968.

------. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London:Hogarth Press, 1977*

Langbaum, Robert. Poetry of Experience. New York: Random House. 1957* Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massuml. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984. 228

Muecke, D. C. Irony and the Ironic. London: Methuen, 1970.

Newman, Charles. The Post-Modern Aura. The Act of Fiction In an Age of Inflation. Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press," 1985-

Paz, Octavio. Children of the Mire. Modem poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde. Trans. Rachel Phillips. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974.

Rifaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1978. Tucker, Herbert J. tfDramatic Monologue and the Overhearing of Lyric.'1 Lyric Poetry. Beyond New Criticism. Eds. Chaviva Hosek and Patricia Parker. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985. 226- 243. Wilde, Alan. Horizons of Assent. Modernism, Postmodernism, and the Ironic Imagination. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1957^

II. Spanish Postwar Poetry.

Aleixandre, Vicente. Algunos caracteres de la nueva poesla espafiola. Madrid: 1966. Bary, David. "Sobre el nanbrar portico en la poesla espafiola contemporSnea." Papeles de Son Anna dans 44 (1967): I6I-89. Badosa, Enrique. "Prlmero hablemos de JGpiter (la poesla como medio de conoclmiento).11 Papeles de Son Armadans 10 (1957)** 32-46; 135-59. Battlo, JosS. "An Introduction to 'New Spanish Poetry1." Mundus Artlum 2 (1969): 66-71. Beltr&n Peplo, Vicente. "Poetica y estadlstica: Nuevos y novlstmos poet as espafioles." Revlsta Llterarla 44 (1982): 123-44.

Bosch, Rafael. "The New Nonconformist Spanish Poetry." Odyssey II (1968): 222-34.

Bousoffo, Carlos. "Poesla contemporSnea y poesla postcontemporSnea." Papeles de Son Armadans 34 (1964): 121-84.

------"La sugerencia en la poesla contemporSnea." Revlsta Occidental, 7 (1964): 188-208.

Cano, Jose L. Poesla espafiola del slglo xx. Madrid: Guadarrama, I960. 229 Carnero, Guillermo. "La corte de los poetas." Revl3ta Occidental 23 (1983): 50-5*1. CIpli jauskaite, Blrutfe. El poeta y la poesla. Madrid: Insula, 1966. Carrefto, Antonio. La dialectics de la Identldad en la poesla contemporSnea: La persona, la m&acara. Madrid: Gredoa,1982.

Castellet, JosS Marla, ed. Nueve novlslmos poetas espafloles. Barcelona: Barral, 1970.

Collnas, Antonio. "Notas para una poetica de nuestro tlempo." Insula (Apr. 1971) : 1+* Concha, Victor G. de la. La poesla espafiola de posguerra: Teorla e hlstorla de sus movlmlentos. Madrid: PrenaaEspafiola, 1973.

- . "Espadafia (19*1*1-1951) : Blografla de una revlsta de poesla y crltlca." Cuademos hlspanoamerlcanos 236 (19&9): 380-97. Correa, Gustavo. "Temporality and Commitment In Spanish Poetry after 1936." Ventures 10 (1970): 33-36.

Debicki, Andrew P. Poetry of Discovery: The Spanish Generation of 1956-71. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1982.

- . "Metapoetry." Revlsta canadiense de estudios hlspSnicos 7 (1982): 297-301.

Diaz, Janet W. Main Currents in Twentieth Century Poetry." Romance Notes 9 (1968): 19*1-200. Diaz Castaflon, Carmen. "Un cuarto tlempo para una metfifora." Papeles de Son Armadans 68 (1973): 167-76.

DurSn, Manuel. "Poets and Patriots In Today’s Spain." Chicago Review 27 (1975): 107-11. Glmferrer, Pere. "Notas parclales sobre la poesla espafiola de posguerra." Trelnta afios de poesla. Barcelona: Kairos, 1971.

GonzSlez Martin, J.P. Poesla hlsp&nlca, 1939-60. Estudlo y antologla. Barcelona: El Bardo, 1970.

GonzSlez Muela, Joaquin. La nueva poesla espafiola. Madrid: Editorial AlcalS, 1973-

Grande, Eelix. Apuntes sobre poesla espafiola de posguerra. Madrid: Taurus, 1970. 230 Hernandez, Antonio, ed. Una prcrnoclon desheredada: la poetica del 50. Madrid: Zero-Zyx, 1978. Ilie, Paul. "The Disguises of Protest:Contemporary Spanish Poetry." Michigan Quarterly Review 10 (1971) : 38-48.

Jimenez, Josfe Ollvlo. Cinco poetas del tlempo. Madrid: Insula, 1972.

------. Dlez arlos de poesia espafiola (1960-1970). Madrid: Insula, 1972.

------. "Los estilos poeticos y el problems de la mode mi dad en la llrica espafiola contemporSnea." Cuademos hispanoamericanos 299 (1975): 405-22. ------. "Medio siglo de poesla espafiola (1917-1967)*" Hispania 50 (1967): 931-46. ------. "PoStica y poesla de la Joven generacIon espafiola." Hispania 49 (1966): 195-205. La Rica, Carlos de. "Vanguardia en los aflos cincuenta." Papeles de Son Armadans xxxvil, iii-xvi, xxxv-xlviil, iii-xv.

Lechner, J. El compromlso en la poesla espafiola del siglo xx. Leiden: Univ. of Leiden Press, 1975*

Ley, Charles. Spanish Poetry since 1939. Washington: Hie Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1962.

Lopez, Julio. "Eh busca de la poesla epica: del nuevo estilo a la nueva moral." Nueva Estafeta 9-10 (1979): 126-32. Mangini GonzSlez, Shirley. "Ehtre la experlencia y la revelacion: la metapoesla en la Espafia de posguerra." Anales de la llteratura espafiola contemporSnea 10 (1985): 31-40.

------, Jaime Gil de Bledma. Barcelona: Edlciones JGcar, 1979-

Mantero, Manuel. Poesla espafiola contemporSnea. Estudio y Antologla (1939-1965). Barcelona: Plaza y Jan§s, 1966. Marin, Diego. "La naturaleza en la poesla espafiola actual." Cuademos hispanoamericanos 314-315 (1976) : 249-82.

------. "El palsaje urbano en poesla espafiola de hoy." Revlsta de estudlos hlspSnlcos 8 (1974): 437-72. 231 Martinez Ruiz, Florencio, ed. La nueva poesla espafiola: antologla crltica: Segunda generacIon de postguerra. 1955-1970* Madrid: BiblTdteca Nueva, 1971.

Per sin, Margaret. Recent Spanish Poetry and the Role of the Reader. Cranbury N J : Bucknell Univ. Press, 1987-

Polo de Bemabe, Jose M. "La vanguardia espafiola de los afios 40 y 50: El postismo." Cuademos hispanoamericanos 374 (1981): 397- 412.

Ponce, Fernando. "La nueva poesla espafiola. Segunda generacifin de posguerra. 1955-1970." Arbor 327 (1973): 129-32. Quiroga Clerigo, Manuel. "A plena luz, un mundo ignorado: La poesla de posguerra." Cuademos hispanoamericanos 332 (1978): 277- 98. Rubio, Fanny. "La poesla espafiola en el marco cultural de los primeros afios de posguerra." Cuademos hispanoamericanos 276 (1973): 441-67. ------. "Teorla y pol^mica en la poesla espafiola de posguerra." Cuademos hispanoamericanos 361-362 (1980): 199-214.

Rubio, Fanny and Jose Luis Falco. Poesla espafiola contemporSnea: Hlstorla y antologla (1939-1980). Ifedrid: Alhambra, 1981.

Siebermann, Gustav. Los estllos poetlcos en Espafia desde 1900. Madrid: Gredos, 1973*

Silver, Philip. La casa de anteo. Madrid: Taurus, 1985*

------. "New Spanish Poetry: The Rodriguez Brines Generation." Books Abroad 42 (1968): 211-214.

Sunmerhlll, Stephen. "Luis Cemuda and the Dramatic Monologue." The Word and the Mirror: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Luis Cemudail Ed. Salvador Jimenez-Fa Jar do. Cranbury N J : Associated Itoiv. Presses, 1989. 142-165.

Valverde, J.M. "Lo modemo en la llrica espafiola, segGn Gustav Slebermarm." Insula 22 (Oct. 1977): 10.

Zardoya, Concha. Poesla espafiola contemporSnea: Estudlos tem&tlcos y estlllstlcos. Madrid:Guadarrama, 1961.

III. Books and Articles about Angel GonzSlez.

Alarcos, Llorach, Qnilio. Angel GonzSlez, poeta. Oviedo: Archivum, 1969. 232

Alfaya, Javier. "Un nuevo libro de Angel GonzSlez." Triunfo (28 Aug 1976): 51-52.

Benedetti, Mario. "Angel GonzSlez frente a la realidad abruraadora." Sobre artes y oflcioa. Montevideo: Alfa, 1968, 229-33.

Benson, Douglas K. "Angel GonzSlez y Muestra (1977) : Las perspectives multiples de una sensibilldad ir&nica." Revlsta Hispanic a Moderna: Columbia University Hispanic Studies '40 (1982')': -1*2-59. ------

------"Linguistic Parody and Reader Response in the Worlds of Angel GonzSlez." Anales de la Literatura Espafiola ContemporSnea 7 (1983): H-30. Brower, Gary. "Angel GonzSlez: A Portrait." Mundus Artium 7 (1974): 145-51• ------. "Breves acotaciones para una blo-bibllografla de la 'vidobra' de Angel GonzSlez." Hester 5 (1974): 10-12.

Caballero Bonald, J.M. Review of Grado elemental. Insula 195 (’Feb. 1963): 4. Debicki, Andrew P. "Transformalon and Perspective in the Poetry of Angel GonzSlez." Revlsta Canadiense de Estudios HispSnicos 6 (1981): 1-23. Delgado, Bernardo. "Las tres voces de Angel GonzSlez." Jugar con Fuego 3-4 (1977): 77-86.

Diaz Plaja, Guillermo. "Palabra sobre palabra, de Angel GonzSlez." Clen llbros espaffoles^ Salamanca": Anaya, 1971, 105-8.

Gonzalez-Gerth, Miguel. "Angel GonzSlez: Thirteen poems and seme Drawings." The Texas Quarterly 20 (1977).

GonzSlez Muela, Joaquin. "La poesla de Angel GonzSlez en su primer perlodo." (F 49) 1972, 189-99*

Izqulerdo, Luis. "Plenitud de Grado elemental." El Pals (17 Apr 1977): 23. Kolker, Marielena. "Con Angel GonzSlez: Primer eneuentro." Prisml / Cabral: Revlsta de Literatura HlspSnica / Cade mo Af ro- Brasllelro A3lStlco Lusltano 3-4 (1982) : 47-59.

LeCertua, Patrick Josef. "Angel GonzSlez: Poetry as Craft and the 'Word upon Word' Experience." DAI: Dec. 1983; 44(6): 1809A. Michigan State University. 233 Mandlove, Nancy. "Used Poetry: The Transparent Language of* Gloria Fuertes and Angel GonzSlez." Revlsta Canadiense de Estudios HispSnlcos 7 (1983): 301-306. Martino, Florentino. "La poesla de Angel GonzSlez." Papeles de Son Armadans 57 (1970) : 229-47. Miller, Martha La Follette. "Literary Tradition versus Speaker Experience in the Poetry of Angel GonzSlez." Anales de la Literatura Espafiola ContemporSnea 7 (1982) : 79-95.

------. "Political Intent versus Verbal Play in 'La palana' by Angel GonzSlez." Perspectives on Contemporary Literature 11 (1985): 93-99* Miro, Qnilio. "Palabra sobre palabra.M Insula 231 (Feb 1966): 5 .

------. Review of Tratado de urbanismo. Insula, 250 (Sept 1967): 7. ------. Review of Palabra 30bre palabra. Insula 270 (May 1969): 6*

Palley, JuliSn. "Angel GonzSlez and the Anxiety of Influence." Anales de la Literatura Espafiola ContemporSnea 9 (1984): 81-96. Rodriguez, Gracia. "Hhtrevista con Angel GonzSlez: Angel, fieramente humano." Qulmera, Revlsta de Literatura 35 (1984): 23-29.

Rodriguez Padron, Jorge. Review of Tratado de urbanismo. Cuademos hispanoamerlcanos 216 (1964): 674-80.

Rovira, Pere. "Los prosemas de Angel GonzSlez." Insula 40 (Dec 1985) : 1+. Singleterry, Gary A. "The Poetic Cosmovision of Angel GonzSlez." DAI: 33: 5149A. Michigan State University. Villanueva, Tino. "Censura y creaci5n: Dos poemas subversivos de Angel GonzSlez." Hispanic Journal 5 (1984): 49-72.

------. "Aspero mundo de Angel GonzSlez: De la contemplacion llrica a la realldad histories." Journal of Spanish studies: TVentleth Century 8 (1980): 161-80.

Wood, Michael. "The Insulted and Injured." The New York Review of Books 20 (21 Dec 1978): 50-51. 234 IV. Bocks and Articles by Angel GonzSlez.

A. Poetry

Aspero mundo. Madrid: Adonais, 1956.

Sin esperanza, con convenelmlento. Barcelona: Colliure, 1961. Grado elemental. Paris: Ruedo Iberico, 1962.

Palabra sobre palabra. Madrid: Poesla para todos, 1965.

Tratado de urbanismo. Barcelona: El Bardo, 1967; 2nd ed. 1972; 3rd ed. 1976.

Palabra sobre palabra. (Complete poems). Barcelona: Selx Barral, 1968; 2nd ed. Barral Editores, 1972; 3rd ed. 1977, 4th ed., 1986. Breves acotaclones para una blografla. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Inventarlos provisionales, 19697

Procedlmlentos narratlvos. Santander: La Isla de los Ratones, 1972.

Muestra de algunos procedlmlentos narratlvos y de las actltudes sentlmentale's que habltualmente cornportan. Madrid: Turner, 1967; 2nd ed., corrected and expanded, 1977* Harsh World and Other Poem3. Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Princeton Univ. Press, 1977- Poemas. Author's edition. Madrid: Ediciones C&tedra, 1980.

Prosemas o menos. Madrid: Poesla Hiperi6n, 1985.

B. Other Works

Antonio Machado. Gijon: Jucar, 1979*

"Antonio Machado y la tradlclon rcmSntlca." Cuadernos para el dl&Logo (Nov 1975): 22-27. "La elegia como forma poetica en Machado." Papeles de Son Armadans 87 (1977): 23-51. Gabriel Celaya. Madrid: Alianza, 1977.

El grupo poetlco de 1927. Madrid: Taurus, 1976.

Juan Ramon Jimenez. 2 vols. Madrid: JQcar, 1974. 235

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