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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,