HISTORICAL VISION AND MAGICoREAUSM IN THE
WORKS 0F MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
ANITA WAGMAN

1977

IIIIIIIIIII IIIIII uifig’ifs’ll

3 1293074 4757

University

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

HISTORICAL VISION AND MAGIC-REALISM IN THE
WORKS 0F MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ

presented by
AN I TA WAGMAN

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

PH.D. degreein ROMANCE LANGUAGES

 

 

 

 

Major of

Date 2-22-77

 

0-7639

to.
4;

C.
C

 

 

 

.. f. ‘ . ,.

l r. ‘1; a. C .1 a. ... L“ .... ... .o.
\ A. C v. .1 . . 1. t C Q 0..

a e E u t . r T. .... C l
e H” ‘3 C a e 0 e S .2. ad a
r A. l .0 r r t C C. .3 a C

ABSTRACT
HISTORICAL VISION AND MAGIC-

REALISM IN THE WORKS OF
MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ

BY

Anita Wagman

The literary perspective known as magic-realism

 

marks a revival, notable in contemporary Latin American
literature, of the magical, mythical, and fantastic aspects
of life and nature. It is a return to a perception of
reality which had been denied validity and dismissed from
the realm of human experience as a result of Enlightenment
ideology. That ideology, which reflected the spirit of
bourgeois civilization, had emphasized materialism,
rationality, and historical progress. Its literary
reflections had been the genres of the novel and the his-
torical novel. Under the impact of changes in twentieth-
century societies, and of a deeper understanding of human
psychology, the themes of myth and magic have been intro—
duced into art with a new degree of sophistication.

In the work of Manuel Mujica Léinez, one can trace
an evolution from the composition of conventional histori-

cal fiction to the creation of magic-realist and fantastic

3 a. . . .

C C J 3 t t ..

a. a; .«e .. T‘ V‘ 3... .0. .6. t

r. r O S e C .3 1. S C. S .5 C .C
3 C r. L H. .3 Z 9 L O r l e 3
t t t. v o s a r .3 t A h a n r.

v
F‘E

Anita Wagman

narrative. Since he has maintained an interest in his-
torical themes, one can perceive the changes in his his-
torical vision which the magic-realist perspective has
produced. This dissertation analyzes his magic-historical
vision through a study of five representative works written
over a period of two decades: two early collections of

short stories, Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires,

 

 

and the novels Bomarzo, El Unicornio, and De milagros y de

 

 

melancolias.

 

While the collections of short stories grow out of
his initial interest in Argentine history and his attempt
to faithfully depict the social and historical roots of
Argentine society, Bomarzo represents a fusion of the
historical and magic-realist visions. It is conceived as
a historical novel of the Italian Renaissance, but the
need to capture the soul of the age which gave birth to
modern civilization leads to a concern with the occult.
The novel partakes of the magic-realist vision by unfold-

ing the existence of a magical univers imaginaire, a

 

spiritual inner dimension deeply rooted in the material

world of historical necessity. El Unicornio, the author's

 

novel about the French Middle Ages and the Crusades, con-
firms Manuel Mujica Lainez as a writer of magic-realist
narrative. His interest in historical accuracy involves
the psychological description of the men and women of the

age. This occurs on two levels: the Freudian perspective

Anita Wagman

of modern man and the self-understanding of medieval man,
the latter symbolized by the presence of a fairy as the
work's narrator. Thus, the limitations of modern histor-
iography lead to the inclusion of what Mario Vargas Llosa
has called the four necessary elements of the "real-
imaginary": the mythical-legendary, the miraculous, the
prodigious and the fantastic.

In the final novel treated, De milagros y de

 

melancolias, the author confirms his skepticism of

 

"objective" historiography by parodying historical treat-
ments of Latin American civilization, within the setting

of a mythical and archetypical city. He creates a unique
parody of literary styles and satire of social institutions
within which the mythical-magical dimension appears of
greater validity than objective description. In this work,
the author's literary evolution culminates by bringing

him to the realm of fantasy.

HISTORICAL VISION AND MAGIC-
REALISM IN THE WORKS OF

MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ

BY

Anita Wagman

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance Languages

1977

 

 

1977

I . [\(Il

IIIII.I\(.I

 

II‘!‘ . I’I’Fl‘rllrf

Copyright by
AN I TA WAGMAN

1977

ii

for my parents

for Jim

.o. 4 4
C h.

C
5. nu
r .rs.
a a»
my. a

{KI I

O ‘- u 4 Q . t u . r

L r .t c. C v .3
t .3 C s . e 1 r 1
S C t t C S
r C e .3 a C _ S
'0‘ H. ~ . S WVa s eh“ “be

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe many thanks to those who willingly shared
part of their life and knowledge with me. I gratefully
acknowledge the guidance of Professor Donald Yates, who
first taught me to appreciate Argentine literature and
who directed the research and writing of this dissertation.
The critical reading and suggestions of Professors Kenneth
Scholberg and Robert Fiore were most helpful. I am forever
grateful to my husband, who proofread all the English
sections, and to my daughter: their unfailing charm, good
humor, and patience made the completion of my work

possible.

iii

.
A-‘ol

a:

w;

 

 

rt

6. «.UULAL‘AJI .wfi
, V. _
_

v.‘ I!
H T
O O
I I
I 7;
YA

TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER Page
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l

I. HISTORY AND MYTH: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN
EUROPEAN AND LATIN AMERICAN FICTION . . . . 14

European Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Poetics of Aristotle: Fiction

and History . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Reality in History, Myth and
Fiction 0 O O O O O O O C O O O o o 25

Modern Historical Consciousness
and the Development of the
Novel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
The Decline of Modern Historical
Consciousness and the Revival
of the Mythical and Fantastic . . . 44

Latin American Fiction . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Development of the Novel and
the Historical Novel . . . . . . . . 51

II. HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE SHORT STORIES
OF MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ . . . . . . . . . . 76

Literary Antecedents of the Short

 

Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Geographical Setting and Historical

Framework in Aqui vivieron . . . . . . . 83
Human Psychology and the Supernatural

in Misteriosa Buenos Aires . . . . . . . 95

 

III. THE HISTORICAL VISION AND MAGIC-REALISM
IN BOMARZO O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 113

Literary Trends Responsible for the

Development of Magic-Realism . . . . . . 116
The Historical Vision in Bomarzo . . . . . 127

iv

 

n... a

— a
kl“! . -3

"O v;

". t-

cox» ~

VA .
\ruyy-»}‘

p
I.

0"

 

 

CHAPTER Page

The Magic-Realist Vision in Bomarzo:
The Esoteric Sciences . . . . . . . . . 139
The Place of Bomarzo in the Literary
Development of Mujica Lainez . . . . . . 160

IV. MAGIC-REALISM AND THE APOCALYPTIC VISION
OFMANINELUNICORNIO........... 164

 

Myth, Fantasy and Literary Tradition:

Medieval France . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
History, Miracle and Legend: The

Crusades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

V. PARODY AND MAGIC-REALISM IN DE MILAGROS
Y DE MELANCOLIAS O C O O O O O O O O O O O O 213

 

 

Mujica Léinez' Parody of History and

the Historical Vision . . . . . . . . . 217
Mujica Lainez' Satire of Political

and Social Institutions . . . . . . . . 243
Mujica Lainez' Fusion of Magic-Realism

and Parody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

CONCLUSION O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 2 6 5

BIBLIOGMPHY O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 27 O

.
.
' :T'er'

 

the Chart; 1 :‘
an- its f"s

‘

zagic-realz

been the la
as 05 lite:
fiCt that 1
Various cc:
9°“ as
art h'StOr
side his X‘.
only aVai;

Carsuzén '

'U
'1
H-
O
'1
r?
O
n r? 1
——|_

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The objective of this dissertation is to analyze,
through an examination of representative works of fiction,
the changing historical vision of Manuel Mujica Lainez
and its fusion with contemporary currents of Latin American
magic-realism.

Among the problems encountered in the study has
been the lack of biographical data on the author as well
as of literary criticism devoted to his works. Despite the
fact that he can claim authorship of twenty works of prose
various collections of poetry including the masterful epic

poem Canto a Buenos Aires, and numerous short essays on

 

art history or literary criticism, he is little known out-
side his native Argentina. In fact, until recently, the
only available study of his work was that of Emma Maria

Carsuzan, Manuel Mujica Lainez, which appeared in 1962,

 

prior to the publication of his best historical fiction.
The only subsequent work devoted to the author, Eduardo

Font's Realidad yfantasia en la narrativa de Manuel Mujica

 

Lainez, which was published in 1976, updates Mujica Lainez'
literary contributions as far as 1974 but does not deal

systematically with any of his novels after Bomarzo (1962).

Lav.oe {owe
.Lterat‘é

.0

5.3.3128

V

n u
Yu
"V.

.uu

 

 

I.
‘F
‘A.

CW

.51
esenta

1967)

el w
e
an: Lat'

Q

‘
d;m
rec:
PGISpectiv
(V

Asturias,

“AC.

00V ‘

 

The majority of literary critics have not treated
Manuel Mujica Lainez in conjunction with those writers who
have formed the so-called "mainstream" of Latin American
literature in the last quarter century. The term, used
by Luis Harss,l has been employed to categorize the con-
temporary literary trends which have won universal recog-
nition and a privileged position for the Latin American
novel within world literature.2 The "mainstream" has
included writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Angel
Asturias, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, and several others.
Most of these have introduced or dealt with the fantastic
dimension of human life in connection with their fictional
representations of Latin American civilization. It is a
perspective which fuses magic and reality, and is accord-
ingly styled magic-realism; perhaps the apex of this genre
was reached--if critical and popular acclaim is the

criterion-~in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Cien afios de soledad

 

(1967).
Eduardo Font argues that the very number of brilli-

ant Latin American novelists has caused critics to neglect

 

llt appears in the original title in the English
edition of Luis Harss and Barbara Dohmann's Los Nuestros
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1966), which was

published as Into the Mainstream.

 

 

2Jorge Lafforgue, cited in Eduardo Font, Realidad
fantasia en la narrativa de Manuel Mujica Lainez_fl949-
J TMadrid: Ediciones Porrfia, 1976), p. 2.

 

. ‘rv ‘mr- adult

 

 

53:8 CBP~
seezed ::
:13: to 4

9%

~e—re c‘
type: as
£32103 *.

Léinez' 1
current
emerge

recently '

 

some capable and original authors whose initial output
seemed to lie outside the "mainstream," in favor of atten-
tion to and anticipation of the novels produced by main-

1 It is, of course, quite clear that Manuel

stream figures.
Mujica Lainez' earlier works were definitely within the
genre of the historical novel; he is, in fact, regularly
typed as a writer of historical fiction. This classifi-
cation has prevented, until very recently, the recognition
that there is a strong affinity between Mujica Lainez
and major figures of Latin American magic-realism.

An appreciation of the latter side of Mujica
Lainez' literary vision, which unites him with the foremost
currents of Latin American fiction today, has been slow to
emerge. However, critics such as Pablo Rojas Guardia have
recently pointed out that Mujica Lainez' important his-

torical novel of the Italian Renaissance, Bomarzo, pre-

figures "e1 ambiente magico-mitico de Cien anos de soledad,"

 

which it antedated by six years.2 Similarly, George
Schanzer has documented several stylistic and thematic

comparisons between Mujica Lainez' De milagros y de

 

melancolias, published in 1968, and Garcia Marquez' Cien

 

 

lFont, p. 2.

2Pablo Rojas Guardia, quoted in Font, p. 20.

 

' .Q "
:fe '13-‘51:-
0
ant-
O
yH‘;:a La:

his:orical

fiction.

asst 1290}

Of the auI

this 910::

Entre
Aires,
de la
querre
POI oz
Poetas
de la

 

afios de soledad, which had appeared only nine months

 

previously.1

This dissertation undertakes to show that Manuel
Mujica Lainez' evolution from author of straightforward
historical fiction to cultivator of narrative techniques
of magic-realism and fantasy, still within the framework
of the historical novel, reflects his progressive under-
standing of the nature of man, of society, and of the
cosmos.

It is likely that Manuel Mujica Lainez' background
and education may have led him to begin writing historical
fiction. Among his forebears are included some of the
most important historical and literary figures of Argentine
society. Maria Emma Carsuzan, in her biography, tells us
of the author's genealogy and of his own predilection for

this glorious past:

Entre sus ascendientes se hallan un fundador de Buenos
Aires, don Juan de Garay, un virrey del Peru, soldados
de la lucha contra las invasiones inglesas y de las
guerras de la independencia, un periodista asesinado
por orden del tirano Rosas, ministros del estado,
poetas, hombres que conogieron hondamente el ajetreo
de las imprentas . . . .

 

1George 0. Schanzer, "The Four Hundred Years of
Myths and Melancholies of Mujica Lainez," Latin American
Literary Review, I (Spring, 1973), No. 2, pp. 65-71.

2Maria Emma Carsuzén, Manuel Mujica Lainez (Buenos
Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, 1962), p. 146.

 

with litera
classics cf

works Such

"“h‘ "A- .
Va.»‘e V

4 s
\
for ?aris

POraries if
in Paris f;
Its-821198,

talents.

 

[based on

Louis XVI

 

throne of

\
l

 

 

La rama materna--su madre es Lucia Lainez Varela,
escritora-- que cuenta entre sus antepasados a los
Lainez Cané, Bernabé y Manuel, fundadores de El Diario,
lo vincula con Miguel Cané, padre, cuya biografia
ha escrito, con Florencio Varela, e1 periodista
asesinado, y ion Luis L. Dominguez, diplomatico, poeta
y periodista.

 

It is little wonder then that Manuel Mujica Lainez was to
devote much of his literary career to exploring his affin-
ities with his ancestors, those men of arms and of letters
so closely linked to the political and artistic development
of his country.

Manuel Mujica Lainez was born in Buenos Aires on
September 11, 1910. From an early age the author admits
to a fascination with history and geography, as well as
with literary masterpieces which included the traditional
classics of Homer and Virgil, Cervantes, Dickens, and

works such as Gulliver's Travels, Lazarillo de Tormes, and

 

 

Uncle Tom's Cabin. At the age of fourteen, he embarked

 

for Paris in order to study, as did many of his contem-
poraries in the affluent classes of Argentina. He remained
in Paris for three years during the turbulent and creative
twenties, and it is there that he developed his literary
talents. He learned to write fluently in French and con-

ceived the plan of a first novel, to be entitled Louis XVII

 

(based on a hypothetical life of the dauphin, son of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who never reached the

throne of France).

 

lIbid., p. 145.

 

Pp

. fi
"- tne ance

c‘ Manse l .V.

Thus, the interest in history is clearly apparent
in the ancestry, education, and early literary ambitions
of Manuel Mujica Lainez. His subsequent literary career,
however, is far broader in scope. His works could be
classified under the following general categories. First,
he has written poetry, primarily in his youth, of which

the foremost example is Canto a Buenos Aires. Secondly,

 

he has been a prominent art critic, appearing frequently

in the pages of the Argentine newspaper La Nacién.

 

Thirdly, he is known as a historical chronicler and biog-
rapher of outstanding figures in the political and literary
past of Argentina. Representative of this facet of his

life are the works Miguel Cané(padre), un romantico

 

portefio (1942), Vida de Aniceto e1 Gallo (Hilario Ascasubi)

 

[1943], and Vida de Anastasio e1 Pollo (Estanislao del

 

Campo) [1948].1 It is these and similar but shorter his-
torical vignettes which have earned him the label of
"Cronista de la América Meridional."2

As we move into the category of prose fiction, we

 

can detect two more basic orientations in the literary

work of Mujica Lainez. First, a number of his novels lack

 

1For a complete bibliography, see the Appendix to
this thesis. Brief descriptions of these works according
to subject matter and style may be found in Carsuzan,
op. cit., and Font, op. cit.

2Juan Carlos Ghiano, "Mujica Lainez cronista de la
América Meridional," Sur, no. 316-317 (Jan.-Feb. 1969).

 

COlleCtic:

 

 

the historical dimension. They are, instead, purely
fictional works with either a sociological perspective,
documenting the dilemmas of the Argentine oligarchy in the
twentieth century environment in which Mujica Lainez grew
up, or else they are novels of reminiscence which treat,
in a Proustian manner, that same era in Argentine history
which the author remembered from his youth, and whose
personages and types he describes in his fiction.

The major examples of this dimension in Mujica Lainez'

work are Los idolos (1953), La casa (1954), Los viajeros

 

 

(1955), Invitados en el paraiso (1957), and various short

 

stories.

Lastly, and most significantly, Manuel Mujica
Lainez is known as a writer of historical fiction. This
dimension of his career is foreshadowed in the pseudo-

picaresque Don Galaz de Buenos Aires (1938), and is the

 

undoubted focal point of the stories contained in the two

collections, Aqui vivieron (1949) and Misteriosa Buenos

 

 

Aires (1951). It is represented in the sixties by a major
novel on the Italian Renaissance, Bomarzo (1962), by a novel
on the Middle Ages and the period of the Crusades, E1

unicornio (1965), by two novels in which the fantastic

 

element clearly overshadows the historical themes dis-

cussed, namely Cr6nicas reales (1967) and De milagros ygde

 

 

melancolias (1968), and by a historical novel which

 

retraces the themes of Don Galaz, namely El laberinto (1974).

 

 

 

.
A

o'e-
.0

C
A
0&-

reveals
nevels Cf ?

Q g ‘
e-e:en: C.

no 4
O! I vv- '-

S e 6'
5--& 0-...

’—
Ac.

‘4‘?
5......t 51:?
‘.

5-0:. :3
C

 

 

A study of Manuel Mujica Lainez' historical fiction
reveals that, as we move from his earlier stories to the
novels of his mature period of literary craftsmanship, the
element of history is more and more modified by elements
of the fantastic, the magical, and the mythical. In
Bomarzo, the perspectives of history and magic-realism are
still evenly balanced and fused. In the later works, the
dimension of the magical enters directly into the history
of the periods treated, as well as into the psychologies of
the men and women represented. It is this transition,
symptomatic of the author's changing historical vision,
which this dissertation intends to explore.

In the following study, only those historical
short stories or novels written between 1949 and 1968
have been chosen for examination, since these are the
works that demonstrate the evolution of the author's
historical vision under the impact of magic-realism. I

have excluded his non-fiction--the works of art criticism

 

as well as the chronicles and biographies of Argentine

figures--and fiction which lacks the historical dimen-

 

sion. To this latter category belong novels dealing,

from a primarily sociological or biographical perspective,
with Argentina around the turn of the century, a period
which Mujica Lainez may have known first- or second-hand,
and to which the talents of the observer rather than the

historical vision of the novelist are most relevant. It

I77»;

0
‘ .
~i
Ezra
‘ ' , .I In 'E 3-":
" ~ <.‘.VgptI1I—-v

 

 

‘
‘I‘

 

d5

is a category containing novels such as Los idolos, La

 

casa, Los viajeros, and Invitados en el paraiso. I have

 

 

 

also omitted from discussion novels which are purely

fantastic and non-historical (e.g., El viaje de los siete

 

demonios, 1974), and one undisputable historical novel,

 

El laberinto (1974), because it repeats themes treated

 

in the author's early Don Galaz de Buenos Aires (1938),

 

as well as in Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires.

 

 

It is not a novel which breaks new ground, and the anal—
ysis of style and thematic leitmotifs contained in
Chapter II of this dissertation, which deals with the
early historical vision of Manuel Mujica Lainez, would

be applicable to E1 laberinto as well.

 

I shall analyze closely five representative works
which demonstrate Manuel Mujica Lainez' literary pro-
gression: the early collections of short stories (Agni

vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires), Bomarzo, E1

 

 

Unicornio, and De milagros y de melancolias. By common

 

 

critical consent, the last three works represent the
best historical fiction which Manuel Mujica Lainez has
written. It is to them we must turn for an understanding
of his historical vision and its evolution over the
years.

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I shall

seek to portray the starting-point of Manuel Mujica Lainez

 

as a write:

fiction. .

10

as a writer of fiction and. specifically, historical
fiction. I shall demonstrate that the novel and the his-
torical novel are literary genres representative of the
world View of modern Western civilization and of the ration-
alist middle-class perspective which created that civiliza-
tion. This will be documented from the standpoint of both
European and Latin American fiction, and related to the
literary genesis of Manuel Mujica Lainez. I shall argue
that twentieth-century departures from the classical struc-
ture of the novel, in the direction of fantasy, surrealism,
and the occult, reflect the breakdown of the bourgeois and
scientific world view. This breakdown provides the setting
for the original contributions of Latin American writers
to the genre of magic-realist narrative.

The subsequent four chapters trace this evolution
within the literary career of Manuel Mujica Lainez.
Chapter II treats two groups of short stories with a his-

torical dimension. The first, Aqui vivieron, illustrates

 

the techniques through which the author presents important
geographic, historical, and sociological themes from

Argentine history; the second, Misteriosa Buenos Aires,

 

indicates his early attempts to portray the psychology of
Latin American man by introducing elements of the super-
natural into a historical framework.

Chapter III traces the fusion of these two per-

spectives in the novel Bomarzo, showing how the historical

«nut

 

7‘ .. “A
:C-E‘.’ I, raj-'3:
_-—-

«no

1OD§O the Sn. '-

3-“.
o

; introduc ‘. r.

§

F
o

is ‘
mk'thical c

11

elements combine with the magic-realist elements to give

us a deeper insight into the Italian Renaissance. Other
studies, for example the work of Eduardo Font, have treated
the stylistic aspects of Bomarzo. With respect to the
political and social history of the period, it cannot be
claimed that Mujica Lainez has made important discoveries.
However, Bomarzo is unique in providing original insights
into the spirit of the time, and it attains these insights
by introducing elements of the occult. It paints a picture
of the Renaissance with the skilful touch of the historical
novelist and then shows that this portrait falls short of
the reality. I shall focus specifically on the author's
treatment of the esoteric sciences, of astrology, demon-
ology, and alchemy, which enables the novel to transcend
the conventional limits of historical fiction and to rise
to a truer, more faithful, depiction of Renaissance man.
Chapter III will argue that the fusion of the two elements
of history and fantasy, which Bomarzo embodies, is char-
acteristic of the new vision of man and history which
Latin American magic-realism has discovered.

Chapter IV discussed El unicornio, a most uncon-

 

ventional historical treatment of the French Middle Ages
and the Crusades, in which the ascendancy of the magical
is signified in the very personage of the narrator, a
mythical fairy. I shall try to show how Mujica Lainez

is able to evoke the psychology of medieval man in a

 

nanv'7’~.-~ 3...:
I'V‘" -“v‘.‘3

'fi “"

o
5:: gt. 5“a-'

plie'I'ej' ‘L:

8'58: uses t”;

ooASuOrlans' a

aCCC‘Jnts. t.»
.0-

O h -- ..

. tae “3:9:-

(
E
p-
‘14
H
U,
0
'93

 

 

12

convincing manner precisely because he synthesizes the
supernatural, in which the men of the time so fervently

believed, with the historical. In El unicornio, the

 

magical dimension is even more prominent than it had been
in Bomarzo, entering into the very structure of the novel.

The fifth chapter deals with De milagrosy de

 

melancolias. In that work the historical vision has been

 

almost submerged by the fantastic. In fact, Mujica Lainez
even uses this work to parody the attempts of chroniclers,
historians, and novelists at writing "objective" historical
accounts. His parody is linked to a satirical treatment
of the major institutions of Latin American society, and

to a pessimistic historical vision of eternal recurrence.
In this work, history recedes to the background, and this
despite all the claims of the fictional narrators and

scholars of De milagros that they are tracing the rise and

 

fall of a Latin American society, a society, moreover,

with strong resemblances to the history of Mujica Lainez'
own Argentina. In the place of historical verisimilitude
there enters myth: myth both in the sense of delusion that
ensnares the masses, which is mercilessly satirized, and
myth in the sense of a deeper spiritual reality which is
related to some over-riding cosmic order which human civil-

ization cannot modify. De milagros yide melancolias

 

completes the author's pilgrimage from conventional his-

torical fiction to magic-realism and fantasy.

13

The dissertation hopes to show that Manuel Mujica
Lainez' writings and progression place him well within the
mainstream of Latin American fiction in the twentieth
century, and that he has anticipated or shared in devel-
oping many of the themes which have won Latin America a

respected place in world literature.

CHAPTER I

HISTORY AND MYTH: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN

EUROPEAN AND LATIN AMERICAN FICTION

European Fiction

 

Modern western civilization is distinguished from
all previous cultures by the unique place it accords to
the search for truth. Undeniably, this central value is a
product of the scientific revolution. But its ramifica-
tions have extended beyond science to the farthest shores
of politics, ethical standards, art, and literature.

Some have argued that our entire approach to
understanding nature and man has been colored by the "habit
of truth" inculcated by the scientific community.1
Through it, reason and the evidence of the senses became
windows Opening upon new vistas of human experience.

In some respects, we can scarcely comprehend the change
in perspective. We are, for example, brought up short by
the realization that the simple everyday word fagEe-our

term for information derived from empirical observation or

 

1Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values (New
York: Harper and Row, rev. ed., 1965), Chapter II.

 

l4

preseCEE
1:;332 C

 

 

15

experimentation--does not appear once in the King James
Version of the Bible.1 Surely our experience of life must
be very different from that of the Elizabethans and their
predecessors. According to Jacob Bronowski, however, the
impact of the truth culture went much further than defining
what counts for reliable knowledge. Transforming the social
and political realms, it deprived institutions hoary with
venerable age, monarchies and religious establishments, of
their legitimacy. It created a new fidelity in repre-
sentative art, pioneered by modern individuals such as
Leonardo da Vinci.2 And, in the realm of literature, it
produced a number of new genres, most notably the novel

and (later) the historical novel.

Recent decades have weakened the primacy of these
literary forms, and the literary landscape has become more
confused under the impact of trends associated with sur-
realism, symbolism, fantasy, magic-realism, and even science
fiction. It would be superficial to see the changes in
twentieth century literature as purely literary trends.
Rather, we should view these changes, especially insofar
as they affect our understanding of man and his essence,
as reflections and premonitions of growing doubts about

the basic verities of our scientific culture. Artists and

 

lRichard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1965), p. 214.

 

2Bronowski, p. 46.

16

writers have frequently anticipated the changing per—
spectives of their societies, charting a map of reality
which would only become apparent to the mass of mankind a
decade or even a generation later. Readers have learned
to recognize their experience of life in literature which

was avant-garde and shocking when first introduced; this

 

indicates that they are living in a cultural milieu quite
unlike that which produced the romantic, realist and
naturalist novels of the nineteenth century.

These changes in perception can be observed in the
literary development both of Europe and of Latin America.
Specifically, they can be followed in the literary evolu-
tion of the prominent Argentine writer, Manuel Mujica
Lainez. Beginning his career as a chronicler of Argentine
life and history, he wrote stories faithfully depicting
the society of his native land and its roots. In his
middle period, he composed a number of powerful historical
novels which sought to capture the spirit of the heroic
ages of western civilization. However, the more faithfully
he depicted periods such as the Renaissance and the Cru-
sades, the more he realized that his subjects transcended
the objective brush of the social historian, and that
traditional historical fiction could not grasp the spirit
of the times. He was led to the genre of magic-realism,
as were other contemporary Latin American writers, and

ultimately he came to the purely fantastic. This

17

evolution can be seen as an ever deeper understanding of
reality, and not as an escape from reality. This thesis
seeks to explain the progression in Mujica Lainez' under-
standing of man, society, and nature through his writings.

Manuel Mujica Lainez' journey from historical
fiction to the genres of magic-realism and fantasy is
related to a long-standing literary debate about the
nature of the reality portrayed by art. His writing, con-
temporary Latin American fiction, and western literature
of the twentieth century, in general, have all undergone
a metamorphosis in their view of the metaphysical reality
underlying life and literature. Thus, Mujica Lainez has
gradually changed his answer to the fundamental question,
”What 22?!" and his adoption of new literary forms reflects,
for him, an exhaustion of the philosophical possibilities
inherent in the old.

Eric Heller has perceptively described the "real-
istic fallacy" which underlies the great nineteenth century
novel. Its practitioners believed that they were offering
a new and more accurate portrayal of man and nature. They
believed that the art of a Zola or a Balzac had succeeded
in capturing the essence of man more fully than the mythical
tapestry woven by, say, Homer.l Unconsciously, they were

portraying the Weltanschauung deve10ped by modern science,

 

 

lEric Heller, The Artist's Journeyginto the
Interior and other Essays (New York: Random House, 1965),
pp. 89-900

 

 

2"2-

3 _ i a. .3 I 3
E 3 . . S e C. e

 

A

IViti.
ltSe

18

with its removal of occult forces, mystery, and super-human
heroism in favor of an empirical description of the unheroic,
everyday dimensions of human life. Addressing these writers,
Friedrich Nietzsche asserted that "realism in art is an
illusion," and that "all good artists imagined they were
realistic." And correlating every artistic vision with

some specific vision of happiness, Nietzsche argued: "What,
then, is it that the so-called Realism of our writers tells
us about the happiness of our time? . . . One is indeed

led to believe that our particular happiness does not

spring from what really is, but from our understanding of

 

reality . . . . The artists of our century willy-nilly
glorify the scientific 'beatitudes.'"1
The depiction of human existence by the social and
historical novelists of the nineteenth century led gradu-
ally to a loss of certainty about this scientific vision.
Stylistic perception of the craft only brought to the
foreground the question of the meaninglessness of life
lived on this plane. It produced a pessimism of outlook
and a search for new philosophical and literary perspec-
tives. Already Flaubert, having plumbed literary realism
to its depths, wondered whether it would not be more
appropriate to write "a book about nothing at all, a book

without any external connection, and which would support

itself entirely by the internal force of style."2 We see

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 97.

 

19

here the germs of surrealism, of James Joyce and Marcel
Proust, of Latin—American magic-realism, of a recovery of
the fantastic--in short, of writers' journey into the
interior of the human psyche in order to discover a reality
deeper than that provided by objective description.l

Manuel Mujica Lainez' literary evolution is part
of this journey. However, in order to grasp the nature
of his development, we must understand his starting point.
His early works in historical fiction and his historical
novels of the middle period represent a perspective by no
means traditional in the history of literature. The genre
of the novel and the historical novel was, in itself, a
major departure from the pre-scientific and pre-modern
vision of reality developed by Aristotle and the Greeks,
by Christianity, and by Romanticism.

It is one of the arguments of this thesis that the
novel, and even more so the historical novel which repre-
sents the starting-point of the literary evolution of
Manuel Mujica Léinez, exemplifies a distinctively modern
approach to reality. It is, in other words, not merely
any prose work longer than 50,000 words, as some recent
critics have surmised. Rather, it reflects the attitude
towards social and individual phenomena which came to be
accepted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and

is, in fact, the discovery of that period in European

 

11bid., p. 98.

3.

 

J‘. .b! in! a the Pi» 1 lull

31m A:
l-

0-.

fi.‘

Sal

20

history. Of course, the telling of fictitious stories is
as old as human imagination. But
the modern novel is a special form of story-telling.
It may be defined as a long fictitious narrative in
prose, in which the portrayal of clearly realized
characters and the vivid presentment of social manners
and customs are given an emphasis at least equal to
that given to plot and situation. If the reader's
interest is overwhelmingly concerned with plot, with
what is going to happen next, as in the detective-
story, the spy-story, and other yarns of breath-taking
adventure, what we have is a form of romance rather
than a novel.
Previous ages had their romances, whether of chivalrous
adventure or of courtly love, sometimes in verse and some-
times in prose. The novel, in contrast to those literary
genres, "gives us persons whom we recognize as unmistakably
human beings living in a world which is to our imagination
vividly real. We expect of a novel, first of all, that it

shall be 'true to life.'"2

The modern novel, in short,
was developed by authors and accepted by readers for whom
an interest in human nature and in social behavior was
primary. And the historical novel is a sub-species of this
genre, with a particular historical focus.

If recent critics diverge from this definition of

the novel, and include within its framework prose tales

containing fantastic or magical elements, this does not

 

lPaul Robert Lieder, Robert Morss Lovett, and
Robert Kilburn Root, British Poetry and Prose (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, third edition, 1950), Volume I,
p. 692.

 

21bid., p. 692.

I.\
N
'

‘

4

V

1

‘

D-
Q.‘
I.

n... .. .u 9 an .4 .L

.V.
a
l
a
t
I."
a
1'
f
C
1
5

 

21

mean that they have discovered a new and better definition
as a result of more careful research. To be sure, modern
prose tales--"novels"--do include fantastic, magical, and
mythical elements. In fact, the development of Manuel
Mujica Lainez has led in the direction of magic-realism
and fantasy also. What seems to be involved here is the
rediscovery of the irrational by modern novelists, includ-
ing Mujica Lainez and other prominent Latin American
authors. This rediscovery parallels the growing "irra-
tionality" of modern life in general. As a result, themes
which had been banished from the novel in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries have re-emerged, and superficial
resemblances can be detected between the medieval romances,
for example, and recent "novels." It is possible, of
course, to speak of "novelistic" elements in late medieval
literature, or in the early prose literature of colonial

Spanish America, if what one means is the resemblance

 

between the "fantastic" or "unrealistic" in the literature
of those periods and similar themes in contemporary litera-
ture. But this is to conduct literary criticism on the
semantic level. What we need to grasp is that the "reality"
perceived by pre-modern prose writers did contain important
irrational or mythical elements; that the social reality
perceived by the great novelists of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries excluded these elements, just as

middle-class civilization excluded them from its

.—u\ ‘A “a. 4‘ KW.
~-. has e s .l

 

22

consciousness; and that these same elements have begun to
pervade twentieth-century "reality" and also twentieth-
century literature. It is, in fact, an important cause of
the evolution of Mujica Lainez from historical fiction to
magic-realism and fantasy that he has perceived this
changing dimension of life.

Mujica Lainez began as a historical novelist. In
order to understand his starting point, we have to realize
that in any century previous to the nineteenth, the his-
torical novel would have been regarded as inferior litera-
ture and inferior history. Only against these earlier
standards can we appreciate its achievement, its literary
vision, and its limitations.

The Poetics of Aristotle:
Fiction and History

 

 

No work of literary criticism has been as influ-

ential as The Poetics of Aristotle. Embodying the clas-

 

sical canons of Greek theory and practice, it had a renewed
impact on the development of modern literature after it was
rediscovered in the seventeenth century.1 Of course,
Aristotle was unfamiliar with the novel as such, nor could
his time point to examples of the historical novel genre.
Still, his clear grasp of the craft of fiction and its

effects upon the audience enabled him to develop a set of

 

1John Herman Randall, Jr., Aristotle (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 272.

 

23

criteria under which we can subsume the evaluation of his-
torical writing. Speaking of "poetry," under which cate-
gory we would properly include "fiction" in general,
Aristotle wrote:

A poet differs from a historian, not because one
writes verse and the other prose--the work of Herodotus
could be put into verse, but it would still remain a
history, whether in verse or prose--but because the
historian relates what happened, the poet what might
happen . . . . That is why the writing of poetry is
a more philosophical activity and one to be taken more

seriously, than the writing of history; for poetry
tells us rather the universals, history the particulars.

1
It is apparent that Aristotle's standard for
assigning a lower place to history as opposed to poetry
is not moral-didactic (as in Plato), or scientific-
objective (as it might be in a modern empiricist), but
rather aesthetic. He judges a work of literature, a poem
or a song, and we would add a work of fiction in general,
as good if it is able to arouse in us spectators the same
feelings and emotions as would the comparable actions of a
man.2 By this criterion, Aristotle assigned the highest
place among literary forms to epic poetry and dramatic
poetry--because they are the most "imitative" (mimetic)

of men's actions. That is, they imitate men's actions in

such a living and functional way that they arouse pity and

 

1Aristotle' s Poetics, quoted in Walter Kaufmann,
Tragedypand Philosophy (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books,

 

2Randall, p. 289.

 

'9‘

(l. (l f)

U

(f

F!

f!

H

'9

'fl

24

fear most effectively, prior to purging, healing, lighten-
ing, and thereby delighting the soul of the spectator.1
However, our actual lives and actions are often
complicated by chance and accident. The potential which
our character embodies is often not realized, and the
dependence of our destiny on our character is often
obscured or prevented from fulfillment. For this reason,
the observation of real life is not as effective in mobil-
izing our emotions of pity and fear as is a work of art
created by a poet who understands the universal and is able
to abstract from the individual, accidental, chance ele-
ments which are unavoidable in life. (An ideal acorn
should always fulfill its potential of becoming an oak, but
many real acorns fall prey to squirrels, storms and cor-
ruption. Poetic justice should always apportion reward
and punishment more fittingly than the contingencies of
human justice and mortality are able to do.) Thus, whereas
life is filled with the accidental and contingent, art is
able to correct the "trembling hand of nature" by showing
us the probable, the necessary and universal. It follows
that history, being a record of actual events, can never
portray the deeper reality as effectively as fiction. Its
fidelity to "what is" prevents it from presenting "what
might have been"; the price it pays for accurate descrip-

tion of events is a lessened ability to move the emotion

 

lIbid.

.s, .

h... ?~.. ‘34 vs»

I IIIJ

25

of those who read it. History, in short, is inferior as

a form of literature. We can therefore deduce what Aris-
totle would have said of the realistic social novel of the
19th century and of the historical novel which followed it.

Reality in History, Myth
and Fiction

 

 

Although it stands at the beginnings of EurOpean
literary criticism, Aristotle's interpretation of fiction
(poetry) is a highly sophisticated understanding of litera-
ture which consciously rejects the truth-claims of two other
literary modes1 already well established in his time, namely
history and myth. First, Aristotle reflects the rational
temper of the Greek mind which could not conceive that
history could become an object of human knowledge,2 the
reason being that history dwelt in the realm of contingency
rather than in that of general principles, of which alone
knowledge is possible. Secondly, the same Greek rational-
ists rejected the traditional mythologies as permeated with
hateful falsehoods. In effect, both Herodotus and much of
Homer and Hesiod were demoted from the highest plane of the

literary art. And in their place, Aristotle placed the

 

1Northrop Frye refers to mythology as a "literary
mode which projects itself as theology." Northrop Frye,
Anatomy ofCriticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1957), pp. 64-5. This is part of a chapter dealing
with the "Theory of Modes."

 

2Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1963), p. 112.

 

26

free creations of the master artist whose fiction portrays
men as they ought to be, that is, as realizing the poten-
tial inherent in their characters on the field of action.
With respect to the denigration of historical
writing, we would have to acknowledge that pre-modern his-
tories fell short of achieving a creative reconstruction
of a living past. According to Edmund Wilson, these his-
tories were either biographies of great men, chronicles of
unconnected events, or sacred histories tracing the provi-
dence of God in shaping the destinies of his chosen
people.1 With respect to such documentary records, the
attitude of Aristotle is not so far removed from that of
modern philosophers of history. Benedetto Croce, for
example, who exemplifies the Hegelian attitude that ele-
vated historical writing to a high status, stresses that
chronicle as such is "dead history," a history which is
not understood even by the man who records it.2 History
can come to life only if it is "unified with an interest

3

of the present life." Only our contemporary interests

can justify the exploration of the past, and only those

 

lEdmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study
in the Writing and Acting of History (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday Company, 1940), p. 2.

 

2Benedetto Croce, "History and Chronicle" in Hans
Meyerhoff, The Philosophy of History in Our Time (Garden
City, N.Y.: DoubIeday Anchor, 1959). PP. 44, 51.

 

31bid., p. 47.

27

interests can make it come to life for us. Arnold Toynbee,
a distinguished twentieth century historian, is as severe
as Aristotle in giving the lowest place to the "ascertain-
ment and recording of 'facts.'" The historical perspective
on human life must proceed from such records to the
"elucidation of . . . general 'laws,'" and ultimately to
the "artistic recreation of the facts in the form of
'fiction."'1 Toynbee regards the novelist Sir Walter
Scott as a greater historian than some of the "Dryasdusts"
whose chronicles he may have employed, but whom he trans-
cended in making the past come to life for the contem-
porary audience.2 In this respect, our modern evaluation
is not far removed from Aristotle's strictures against
Herodotus.

Of course, the problem is not the lack of creative
writers among past historians. It is rather that the
status of history as literature remained questionable.
Aristotle lived before the "awakening of the historical
consciousness" in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and, more
importantly, prior to the propagation by Hegel and his
successors of the new mode of viewing reality and its

pattern.3 The historical novel as a literary genre draws

 

lArnold Toynbee, "History, Science and Fiction,"
in Meyerhoff, p. 114.

21bid., p. 115.

3Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 113.

 

28

on the new understanding of human reality which came with
the nineteenth century, and not upon Herodotus, to whom
Aristotle's aesthetic criticisms can continue in force.
The second form of literature which was repudi-
ated by Greek rationalism was the myth. (It should be
added that the Testaments of Judaism and Christianity,
however much they stressed the intervention of God in
human history, would have come under the general heading
of myth for Aristotle.) Eliade contends that the word
"myth” connotes a "fiction" in every European language
precisely because the Greeks declared their own "myths" to

1 The critique of the

be fictitious 25 centuries ago.
Greek rationalists began with Plato's insistance on taking
the poets literally, in much the same way as biblical
fundamentalists approach the Holy Scriptures today. By
this standard, it appeared that the Greek myths could not
be true, even that they insulted the conception of the
divine and sacred. The stories of the Greek gods and
goddesses thereupon became human inventions, and repugnant
inventions to boot. Already Xenophanes had written:
Homer and Hesiod ascribed to the gods whatever is
infamy and reproach among men: theft and adultery and

deceiving each other.

Mortals suppose that the gods are born and have
clothes and voices and shapes like their own.

 

lIbid., pp. 148-9.

29

But if oxen, horses, and lions had hands or could
paint with their hands and fashion works as men do,
horses would paint horse-like images of gods, and oxen
oxeniike ones, and each would fashion bodies like their
own.

This criticism was developed by Plato and Aristotle and

it became so effective throughout the pagan world that, by
the time Christianity became the religion of the Roman
empire, neither the elites nor the masses believed in the
ancient stories. According to Eliade, the Greek mytho-
logical heritage "could be accepted and assimilated by
Christianity because it no longer carried living religious

2 These

values. It had become a 'cultural treasure.'"
mythological traditions could be passed on to the
Renaissance and so to the modern world precisely because
they were only works of art, and appeared to contain no
truth value.

At the time of Aristotle, however, these mytho-
logical stories were still living religious dogmas, con-
nected with mysterious and state-supported rituals. It
is against them that Aristotle exalted an aesthetic which
gave the highest place to consciously created fiction,
fiction which emphasized the "probable" as opposed to the

"improbable," the "necessary" as opposed to the "acci-

dental," the "universal" as opposed to the "particular."

 

lKaufmann, p. 3.

2Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 156.

 

30

The dramatic unities were designed in the service of a
new, and more "real" fiction, which would be able to move
the souls of the audience better than the old religious
heritage.

Christianity replaced the old mythological pantheon
with a new one. Retaining the Greek myths since no one
believed in their literal truth any more, it insisted on
condemning as false any other beliefs which were not just-
ified or validated by the Old and New Testaments. Thus
it occurred, for example, that the mythologies of the

Aztecs and Mayans were perceived by the Spanish conquista—

 

dgrgg as pernicious forms of "devil worship." With every
effort made to extirpate them from the minds of their
believers and to expunge the records in which they appeared,
most of the sacred books of the peoples of Central America
were destroyed, and only a few copies survive in European
museums. A similar fate befell the primarily oral tradi-
tions of the pagans in Northern and Western Europe.

In Latin America after the Conquest, the Spanish
kings were fearful of false stories deluding the natives
into questioning the literal truth of the Christian
religion. Fiction was therefore banned, and the glorious
age of the Spanish prose masters found no echo in Latin
America until after independence. Literary critics and
historians have shown that this is not the whole story,

that the royal edicts were circumvented, and that some

31

"seeds of the novel" antedate the independence period.
However, the general intention of the ban on fiction is
apparent, and its relation to a particular view of religion
and truth cannot be denied.

Thus, we can conclude that two of the most important
elements in modern literature were not present until rela-
tively recent times. First, history was relegated to a
lower plane of reality because it consisted primarily of
chronicle and biography, and therefore lacked the awareness
of pattern and meaning which alone can give it a universal
interest, but which did not enter historical writing until
the modern period. Secondly, myth was condemned as false
and illusory by the Greek rationalists in whatever form they
encountered it, and by the Christian societies if contained
in any form but that sanctioned by the divinely revealed
Scriptures. It is clear that myth was understood in its
literal form, and rejected when that form could not be
squared with the socially accepted beliefs and values.
Myths understood as symbolic expressions of perennial human
concerns, of internal rather than external realities, were
beyond the awareness of these earlier cultures.

In tracing the development of the novel form and
of the historical novel, and its invasion by fantastic and
surrealistic themes in our own century, we are tracing a
changing orientation to the understanding of human life.

We must record first the birth of the modern historical

32

consciousness, which outgrew the stylistic restrictions of
Aristotelian criticism, and gave rise to the realistic
social novel and, in the nineteenth century, the historical
novel. We must then show how social changes made question-
able the "realistic" assumptions on which these genres were
based, and how, under the impact of literary experiment

and psychological theory, a new terrain was won for the
utilization of myth, fantasy, magic, and the occult.

These developments are reflected in the evolution of con-
temporary Latin American fiction and in the work of

Manuel Mujica Lainez.

Modern Historical Consciousness

and the Development of the
Novel

 

 

The historical novel could not develop as a liter-
ary genre prior to two changes in man's understanding of
himself and his environment. First, the social reality
had to be perceived in the same realistic manner as our
natural environment: occult purposes, improbable miracles,
and the notion of will as the decisive force molding our
destiny had to be abandoned. Secondly, the idea of man
as constituted by his history, and of history as the pro-
gress of men and institutions, had to be accepted. The
first change in perspective was the result of the scien-
tific revolution. The second, while indirectly indebted
to the same revolution, was also a product of the romantic

reaction to science and enlightenment. It was the

33

synthesis of these two currents in Hegel at the turn of
the nineteenth century that led to the great flowering
of historical literature that followed.

The first change, the new realistic approach to
social phenomena, was reflected in the birth of a dis-
tinctively modern literary genre, namely the novel. The
second change, the notion of progress in history, led to a
modification of the novel in the form of historical fiction.
Ultimately, however, the release of powerful uncontrolled
forces in nature and in human life led to increasing doubts
about both of the basic ideas mentioned. In some cases,
creative artists even foresaw prophetically the breakdown
of modern culture and the restoration of mythical, fan-
tastic, irrational elements in life. They reflected this
insight by the modification of the novel form into a variety
of genres that embodied these irrational elements. This,
in fact, can be perceived in the literary evolution of
Manuel Mujica Lainez, whose literary odyssey is represen-
tative of western literature in general as it confronts
the dilemma of modern culture and human nature.

As indicated previously, neither the classical nor
the Christian literary traditions assigned much importance
to the genre of history. Christianity, it is true, did
claim exception for one privileged series of events to
which it attributed historicity, namely that beginning

with Adam and ending with the life and death of Christ.

 

34

Aside from that, Christianity had agreed with the ancients
that no fundamental truth could ever be revealed by mundane
events, that history was useful simply as a storehouse of
examples. Both saw human nature as everywhere and always
fundamentally the same, and the rise and fall of states
as a cyclical process from which neither pattern nor higher
meaning could be deduced.1
This attitude is apparent as late as the sixteenth-
century Florentine Machiavelli, who in so many other
respects strikes us as a precursor of modern thought.
Machiavelli's writings emphasize the recurrent themes in
history and are not concerned with those particular fea-
tures which distinguish one epoch from another. Thus, he
lumps together examples drawn from the history of Greece

or Rome and those taken from contemporary Europe. In one

chapter of The Prince, discussing the foundation of new

 

principalities, he manages to combine descriptions of
Moses, Cyrus, Theseus and Romulus.2 While it seems strange
to the modern reader to see legend, religious tradition,
and history commingled in this way, Machiavelli asserts

that

 

1Hannah Arendt, "The Concept of History: Ancient
and Modern," in Between Past and Future (Cleveland:
Meridian Books, 1963), p. 66.

 

2Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1946), p. 125.

 

35

anyone comparing the present with the past will soon

perceive that in all cities and in all nations there

prevail the same desires and passions as always have

prevailed; for which reason it should be an easy matter

for him who carefully examines past events, to fore-

see those which are about to happen in any republic,

and to apply such remedies as the ancients used in

like cases . . . . But these lessons being neglected

or not understood by readers, or if understood by

them, being unknown to rulers, it follows that the

same disorders are common to all times.
This is obviously a distinctively pre-modern attitude.
However, it would be going too far to assert that such con-
ceptions of social and historical phenomena have ever been
entirely abandoned. In every age some writers, whether
of fiction or of history, continued to seek the "eternal"
traits of human nature. Their explanations might focus on
the influence of great leaders, or of chance events, or of
truths suddenly discovered, to account for such social
change as was observed against the perennially constant
background. From a "modern" standpoint, such conceptions
are simpleminded. Marx, a typical representative of the
modern historical consciousness, mocked such simpleminded-
ness when he polemicized against those economists who wrote
as if they had just laid bare the secret springs of all
human motivation-—almost assuming that, had one of them
been providentially at the side of Richard the Lion-Hearted,
that monarch would not have wasted his time on Crusades in

the Holy Land, but would instead have forthwith introduced

the principles of free trade, thereby enabling Europe to

 

1The Discourses, quoted in Cassirer, p. 125.

 

36

avoid some centuries of misery, backwardness, war and
superstition.1
The "modern“ attitude to social phenomena and to

history developed only in the wake of the scientific revo-
lution. The prophet of that revolution, Francis Bacon, had
inaugurated a perception of nature dispensed with monsters,
demigods, divine miracles, or unique events; instead, it
sought for the general laws of natural phenomena, now and
in the past, and in both the terrestrial and the celestial
spheres. When the progress of science and technology in
the next century demonstrated the success of the Baconian
approach, it struck some minds that the procedures of
observation and induction might be fruitfully applied to
the study of human history as well. This connection,
which was to become characteristic of Enlightenment thought,
was first explicitly made by the Italian Giovanni Batista
Vico, and creative writers of fiction were not far behind
in introducing its presuppositions into their work.
Demythologizing the social landscape, much as his model
Bacon had transformed the natural, Vico introduced a new
perspective into our understanding of man and society.
Edmund Wilson describes how, in the pages of Vico, for the
first time

the heroes and gods float away. What we see now are

men as we know them, alone on the earth we know. The
myths that have made us wonder are projections of a

 

1wuson, pp. 184-5.

37

human imagination like our own and, if we look for the
key inside ourselves and learn how to read them cor-
rectly, they will supply us with a record, inacces-
sible up to now, of the adventures of men like our-
selves.
In Vico, we have the beginnings of re-created social his—
tory, which was to transform both the historical and the
literary genres. In this perspective, the development of
societies is not the work of single great men or a pattern
laid up in heaven, but a process affected by its sources
and environment. "The social world," writes Vico, is

2 And the facts of known his-

certainly the work of men."
tory are to be "referred to their primitive origins,
divorced from which they have seemed hitherto to possess
neither a common basis, nor continuity nor coherence."3

The form of literature which developed in recog-
nition of the new understanding of man and society--the
most important and influential innovation of modern times--
is the novel. It is the genre which speaks to the great
majority of men and women in the modern world, and it
reflects their lives, hopes, and dilemmas most closely.
According to Walter Kaufmann, the novel is qualitatively,
and not merely quantitatively, different from earlier

prose works such as the romance, the short story, and the

novella.4 That difference is ultimately rooted in the new

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3.

3 4

Ibid. Kaufmann, p. 96.

38

understanding of man and man's social background which
arose out of the scientific revolution.

According to Kaufmann, the novelist, though he
appears to be creating fiction like the tragic poet rather
than recording actual events like the historian, is closer
to the historian than to the tragic poet. The historian
"tries to add to our knowledge and has time and space and
means to build up characters, situations, and experiences
remote from our own. He can bring to life lost ages."1
Similarly, the novelist creates a "huge epic that involves
a whole social structure, a huge cast, and a great many
incidents and interruptions."2 The emotional impact of a
novel is therefore very similar to that of a great history,
and qualitatively different from that of a tragedy, a
short story, or a novella, all of which deal with some
single, brief, climactic action or present some single
character portrait or dramatic incident.

Kaufmann goes on to argue that the broad sc0pe of
the novel gives it an emotional impact resembling that of
the epic, with its wide cast of characters and broad range
over time and space. The novel affects us emotionally in
the way in which the obsolete epic form affected the

ancients and medieval man.3 Again, while a superficial

 

1

Ibid., p. 96. Ibid.

31bid., p. 374.

39

reading would find the external difference between prose
and verse as the distinguishing mark of the two genres,
the more fundamental one is in the intellectual attitudes
which characterize novel and epic. Both genres portray
whole societies, but with a perspective drawn, on the one
hand, from history, and, on the other, from myth. The
epic assigns a high place to myth: the divine is ever—

present in The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, or the

 

 

Arthurian legends, both as a motivating and a directing
element in the action. The novel, on the other hand,
clearly reflects the background of the scientific revolu-
tion and the Enlightenment. The "habit of truth” is an
important criterion, and a measure of the extent to which
we moderns can "identify" with the characters in the
story. It is, of course, characteristic of the Enlighten-
ment attitude that it assigns the lowest rank among literary
genres to myth. Secondly, the novel is a far more demo-
cratic genre than the epic, portraying a wider range of
social types. And thirdly, conforming to Hegel's insight
that no man is a hero to his valet, the presence of so
many ordinary human types tends to reduce the heroic pos-
sibilities of the novel.

To what extent does the "habit of truth" reduce
the universal artistic possibilities of the novel form?
In other words, if the novel resembles history, do Aris-

totle's strictures on the inferiority of a form that

4O

accentuates the factual at the expense of the universal
retain their validity? Does the novel lose in emotional
force what it gains in social and historical verisimilitude?

This criticism is probably rooted in a misunder-
standing, but one which was shared by both the proponents
and the critics of the new "realistic" approach to human
phenomena. Of course, the novelist, like any artist, does
not merely depict a "slice of life"; nor does he tell the
"truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." In
effect, he stylizes reality: that is, he selects those
aspects of existence which he regards as metaphysically
important.1 Saying to the reader that this is the essence
of life as he sees it, concretized in images such as Don
Quixote, Tom Jones, Jean Valjean, or Nana, the author asks
the reader to agree with his judgment of the nature of
human life. But the literatures of the Greeks, of the
Middle Ages, and of the modern period represent contrasting
visions of man and nature, as captured by the creative
talents of different artists and echoed by the assenting
judgments of their contemporaries. They are, in effect,
literary images of contrasting social realities.

In particular, the novel's depiction of man and
society, emerging from the picaresque tale and growing to

maturity in the nineteenth century, reflects the world of

 

1Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto (New York: New
American Library, 1971), pp. 19421.

 

41

the middle classes, of urban civilization, or bourgeois
aspirations, of rationalism and science. Correspondingly,
it is a world in which the place of myth, of the improbable
and miraculous, the unforeseeable, is reduced.

As a genre, the novel precedes the historical
novel. The latter is a modification of the former in the
light of two conceptions: that man's present can be under-
stood only if we understand man's origins, and that the
transition from the past to the present is a progress.
Both conceptions are found in Hegel's enormously influential

Philosophy of History, written in the early nineteenth

 

century. According to Hegel, we cannot understand con-
temporary European civilization unless we view it as the
culmination of a long historical process, whose roots lie
in the ancient world, and which embodies an ever more
perfect realization of the concept of freedom. The Orient,
Greece, medieval Christianity, and modern Europe represent
progressive actualizations of freedom and self-
consciousness in the history of man. Thus, secular history
has meaning and pattern, and we can understand both if we
study the development of our institutions from their
origins.

Hegel's idea of progress in history was, in one
sense, already familiar to the eighteenth century Enlight-
enment, for which it was the logical extension to the

social realm of the undeniable progress in scientific

42

discovery and technological innovation. Enlightenment
thinkers from Montesquieu to Condorcet were surprised at
the variety of cultures which a study of history and
anthropology opened to them. But the eighteenth century

did not produce the historical novel, that is, fictional

 

depiction of previous societies with the fidelity of the
historian's brush. The probable reason is that the
eighteenth century considered itself unquestionably superior
to all previous civilizations. And it is doubtful that
anyone can be seriously interested in the past if he is
sure that the present is superior, in the decisive respects,
to everything that went before. It was the Romanticists,
who really questioned the superiority of the present, who
made the greatest contribution to the study of the past,

and thereby to the historical novel. And it was Hegel who
synthesized the insights of the Enlightenment and the
Romanticists.

The Romantic protest against bourgeois civilization
and rationalism sought an alternative in the study of the
past. Within the past, the Romanticists found something
missing in the normality of the bourgeois present: the
adventures, the heroic deeds, the sentiments of an age
that lived upon a plane different than that of enlightened
self-interest. From Hegel, Michelet, Savigny, and other
historians, the Romanticists learned the importance of a

close and accurate observation of previous societies as

43

reflected in their records and traditions. Thus, the fruit
of the Romantic opposition to the banality of modern life,
combined with the thoroughly modern understanding of what
constitutes the social reality, led to the historical
novel, exemplified in the great works of Scott, Dumas,
Hugo, Manzoni, the German Romanticists, and their progeny
in the New World.1

Whatever one may think of the romantic view of
life, its spokesmen did open new vistas of emotional
experience to readers stultified by the drabness and regu-
larity of the industrial civilization. Since such experi-
ences were absent from the everyday lives of both novel-
ists and readers, and yet represented a repressed longing
in their psyches, they could be located only in a distant
(sometimes imaginary) past. To have deliberately created
mythical regions where such experiences could be located
would have violated the historical consciousness of both
writers and readers. To locate them in the past was to
legitimize them, albeit as the emotions and experiences of
past societies. Arthur Koestler argues that the modern
industrial World had created a vacuum in the "self-
transcending" emotions of man, producing a taboo on

expressions of tenderness and a loss of participatory

 

1Erich Kahler, Man the Measure: A New Approach to
History (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1967), p. 486.

 

44

communion with one's fellow men.1 The historical novel,
utilizing the projective empathy of its readers, filled
that vacuum. In effect, it accomplished for a modern
audience what every great writer has sought to do. Whoever
can enter the streets of sixteenth century Verona in his
imagination, can also weep tears at the death of Juliet.2
Whoever can imagine the Paris of the Middle Ages, can
experience the sorrow, the longings, the ideals of Quasi-
modo and Esmeralda. And the reader who is able to re-create
the atmosphere of Renaissance Italy or of the Crusades is
able to share the emotions of the men who lived in those
times. Thus, the historical novel restored, with an
unparalleled richness, the world of myth and heroism which
had been almost suffocated by modern civilization.

The Decline of Modern Historical

Consciousness and_the ReviVal of
the Mythical and Fantastic

 

 

 

The creators of the historical novel perceived
elements of the human psyche which had been repressed by
industrial civilization. But the elements which they
correctly perceived in the past did not have a merely
antiquarian interest. If modern man could respond to the

themes of the historical novel, then the demonic, heroic,

 

1Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York:
Dell Publishing Company, 1967), p. 295.

 

2Ibid., p. 305.

4S

aggressive, and, in general, mythical forces depicted
therein still lingered in the depths of his soul. This
is what events of the twentieth century have shown with
respect to the political and social realm, and what the
literature of the century has foreshadowed and reflected.
Ernst Cassirer has described the process whereby
myths have reappeared in politics and reconquered the

l The particular dangers

rational fabric of social life.
which have led to a resurgence of mythical thought in our
times are the dangers which have afflicted western civil-
ization: devastating wars, uncontrollable economic

crises, the Faustian forces of science and technology, in
short, all those social processes which have thrown our
rational plans and life-long ambitions into the chaos of
uncertainty and unpredictability. Of course, modern man
understands these forces in a secularized form. He is
hardly aware of the role of myth--if he were it would not
be myth for him--in the phenomena of social life. But
when he turns, inexplicably, to fanatical leaders, when he
demands "charisma" (the divine gift of grace) from his
politicians, when he submerges his identity in a mass
movement, when he understands economic conflict as a
pageant of classes struggling for retribution and redemp-

tion, he is acting in ways which would have been interpreted

as "mythical" by pre-modern man. This is why Cassirer

 

1Cassirer, pp. 277-78.

46

concludes that the mythical elements which lurk in the

dark of man's soul had never been completely vanquished,

but merely awaited the loosening of the binding forces of

bourgeois social life in order to emerge once more.1
The twentieth century discovered the mythical or

the irrational in more areas than the socio-political.

Freud perceived it in the spiritual life of the individual,

and this caused him to question the primacy of reason in

man's self—understanding.2 Within the individual, Freud

asserted the importance of the irrational—-the sexual

drive, the forces of the idf-and he also saw history as

propelled more by will than by ”the cunning of reason,"

and subject to cyclical patterns of growth and decline

rather than unilinear progress. Freud's discoveries led

him to assign a new interpretation to the myths of antiquity,

to the dreams of man, and to the numerous fantastic ele-

ments that peopled literature. In particular, he concluded

that the key to the understanding of myth must be sought

3 This theme was to become

in the emotional life of man.
enormously influential in modern literature, and to justify
innumerable departures from the realistic conventions of

the novel.

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 280. Ibid., p. 31.

31bid., p. 30.

47

Others, such as the anthropologists Tylor and
Frazier, also sought the key to the understanding of myth,
whether in its ancient or modern incarnations, and they
concluded that the basic problem at the root of mythology,

1 This was revealed

religion and animism was that of death.
as the perennial human concern which modern civilization,
with its Faustian dream of immortality, had hidden from the
human eye. In previous civilizations it had been, they
argued, the function of myth to reconcile man with the
inescapable fact of death. Whether modern man could dis-
pense with the consolations of myth or religion was an open
question which they did not address.

Finally, some students of myth and religion con-
cluded that it was an objectification of man's social, and
not his individual, experiences. Among this school of
thought was Cassirer,2 who, like the others, gave a new
dignity to the study of the mythical elements in human
life and thought. Following in the tradition of Jung, he
argued that man's social experiences were reflected in
certain archetypes--age-old patterns of central human
experience which lie at the root of religion, poetry, and
art, and which possess special emotional significance.

Not many accepted Jung's hypothesis that these unconscious

primordial images, which transcend culture, time and

space, are a genetic heritage of the entire human race.

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 47.

48

But it was generally accepted that the archetypes or sym-
bols, however transmitted, represented certain basic human
experiences and carried meaning to a very wide audience.
If they were present in literature, they exist in the
writer and are echoed by the reader. For ancient man,
they generated the heroes and gods of mythologY; for modern
man they produce, on the one hand, private fantasies, and,
on the other, the symbolism of literature. In fact, it
could be argued that, in our times, literature is the most
potent disseminator of archetypes in our culture. Through
it, mythological or religious concerns, such as those
expressed in the archetypes of rebirth or immortality, of
heaven and hell, of devil, hero and god, have entered the
consciousness of readers who possess little contact with
formal religion or classical literature.1

While these themes are perennial, they are not
equally conscious to every historical period. Specifically,
the long period of industrial civilization and the reign of
the middle classes obscured the mythical aspirations and
terrors of man. Within the realistic conventions of the
social novel or the novel of manners, they were inapprop-
riate subjects. To some degree, the historical novel re-
introduced this dimension. To a much greater degree, the

evolution of literature in the direction of surrealism,

 

1Stanley Edgar Hyman, The Armed Vision: A Study
in the Methods of Modern Literary CriticismTTNew York:
Vintage Books, rev. ed., 1955): pp. 133, 136-37.

 

49

symbolism, magic-realism, the fantastic, and science
fiction has brought them to the foreground. And that
evolution is partly attributable to the decline of the
bourgeois social order, with its certainties and this-
worldly aspirations.

It is interesting to follow this literary develop-
ment in general, and in modern Latin American writing, in
particular. We know, for example, that the earliest Latin
.American writers were not able to record the Aztec and
Mayan legends, nor to create anything consciously fictional
for their readers. Only the historical record and the
truth of Christianity could be disseminated in the first
period of Latin American civilization.l In the second
period, following the wars of independence, we see the
emotional experiences of the Latin American cultures giving
rise to the picaresque tale and the novel. Later in the
nineteenth century, the various major forms of the novel
developed in Europe were copied in Latin America, but there
was also a strong emphasis on elements of folklore and
regional culture. Subsequently, in the twentieth century,
writers imbued with the Marxist ethos, as well as national—
ists, sought to describe the conflict between their cul-

tures and the North American colossus. In other words,

 

1Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Spanish American
Fiction (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press,
1972), Volume I, pp. 3-14.

 

50

the development appears to move steadily in the direction
of greater social realism.

However, most recently, writers of various political
persuasions have begun to see their people's aspirations
and their own self-understanding most closely mirrored in
the genres of magic—realism and the fantastic. Sometimes,
these emerge out of a tradition of the social or the his-
torical novel, as in the case of Vargas Llosa, Garcia
Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Manuel Mujica Lainez. If
this genre of literature is becoming increasingly prevalent
in Latin America, it certainly does not mean that the
roots of the Indian past are still alive and conscious to
the reading public, and at long last being given the
expression denied them in the colonial period. Surely,
the literate classes of Latin America have few direct ties
with the pre-Colombian civilizations. The work of the
Church was far too effective in destroying the native
religions, that of rationalism in undermining any religious
beliefs, at least among the literate classes of the con-
tinent. In fact, the literary rediscovery of the past is
often a painful work of research, as in the writings of
Carpentier or Asturias.

What we have, rather, is a quest within the soul
of contemporary Latin American man for the mythical,

demonic, spiritual elements which are part, however

51

repressed, of the human psyche. The literature of magic-
realism is a reflection of this search.

Manuel Mujica Lainez is a writer uniquely approp-
riate for the study of this trend. His literary career
has involved substantial contributions to the genres of
the historical novel, as well as to the literature of magic-
realism and the fantastic. His evolution, in fact, has
taken him from the first of these forms to the second, and
finally to the last. Thus, we can observe the creative
process at work in the individual whose perceptions of the
human condition are in a process of change and flux. That
change, moreover, is one characteristic of the major
trends of Latin American literature in this century, some
of which Mujica Lainez parallels and others which he fore-
shadows.

In the next part of this chapter, we propose to
examine the evolution of the Latin American novel, in
order to indicate the social climate in which it arose and
its distinctive features. Subsequently, we shall examine
the place of Manuel Mujica Lainez within this tradition

and his role in its evolution.

Latin American Fiction

 

The Development of the Novel and
the Historical Novel

 

 

There have been many explanations for the late

development of the novel form in Latin America. In fact,

52

few critics agree as to the reason for its late appearance.
If, in recent years, as a result of more research in the
field of literary history, some writers have proposed that
works of fiction with "novelistic elements" were written
prior to the nineteenth century, it is central to our
argument that most critics still settle on one particular

work, Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi's El periquillo

 

sarniento, published in 1816, as the first "truly American"

 

novel.

Several suggestions have been advanced for this
late appearance. We shall examine only some of the basic
theories, briefly, in an attempt to formulate a more
general perspective regarding the development of historical
fiction in Latin America. Broadly speaking, the theories
fall into four categories. The first, and oldest, explained
the late development of the novel by pointing to royal
Spanish edicts which sought to ban the export and writing
of fictional works in the first centuries of the colonial
empire, a restriction applied to Latin America but not to
the mother country. This theory has been challenged in
recent years. A second group of theories attributed the
lag between the literary evolution of Spain and Latin
America to the new and unexpected features which the con-
tinent presented to the Spanish explorers and colonists.
The European mind had first to come to terms with the

reality of the new lands before it could create imaginative

53

literature about them, before it could utilize the genres
developed in Spain to reflect the life in Latin America.
In other words, Latin American writers had first to ascer—
tain what was fact before they could venture to embellish
it in fiction. A third group of theories could be labelled
socio-psychological or historicist. According to this
perspective, the novel could not develop in Latin America
until the social, economic, and political conditions of
Latin American society had matured to the point of pro-
viding a wide diversity of human types, and a collection
of historical traditions, which could form the subject-
matter for the writer of fiction. Finally, there is a
fourth group of explanations. Critics of this school tend
to emphasize European literary influences, the ideological
currents of the Enlightenment, and the fusion of European

fictional models with Latin American experiences in the

 

era of national independence as the background for the
emergence of the Latin American novel.

The first of these perspectives is associated
with writers of the school of Menéndez y Pelayo and Pedro
Henriquez Ureha. It explains the dearth of fictional
narrative in the first centuries of the New World as the
direct effect of certain laws promulgated by the Spanish
Crown between the years 1532 and 1543, which prohibited

the shipment of any fictional prose to the colonies, on

54

the grounds that such works were “detrimental to the moral
health of the natives":

No hay razones 'psicolégicas,‘ ni 'sociolégicas'
para que en América no hayamos escrito novelas durante
tres siglos en que escribiamos profusamente versos,
historia, libros de religién. La razén es de hecho,
aunque raras veces se recuerde; en disposiciones
legales de 1532 y 1543 se prohibié para todas las
colonias, la circulacién de obras de imaginacién pura,
en prosa y en verso [que ningfin espafiol o indio lea
. . . libros de romances, que tratan materias profanas
y fabulosas, e historias fingidas, porque se siguen
muchos inconvenientes] y se ordené que autoridades no
permitiesen que se imprimiesen o trajesen de Europa.l

Opposing this theory, the eminent critics Fernando
Alegria, Irving Leonard and Rodriguez Marin maintain that,
even though works of fiction were forbidden by royal
decree, a fair number of fictional narratives were smug-
gled into the Spanish colonies. To support this point,
Fernando Alegria gives the example that, of Cervantes'

first edition of Don gpijote, published in 1605 and printed

 

in 750 copies, 184 were accounted for as having been sent
to America. Similarly, there is evidence that the reading
of chivalresque novels was widespread on the new continent.

Particularly, works such as Amadis de Gaula and its sequel,

 

.Las sergas de Esplandian, were thought to have influenced

 

some of the "earlier" chroniclers of the New World.

According to Kessel Schwartz, in his A New History of

 

Spanish American Fiction, it was Gonzalo Fernandez de

 

 

1Pedro Henriquez Urefia, "Apuntaciones sobre la
novela en America," in Juan Loveluck, La novela hispano-
americana (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria,
1972). p. 35.

 

 

55

Oviedo, author of the semi-fictional Historia general y

 

natural de las Indias (1535), who--with the publication of

 

Claribalte (1514-1519)--"may have produced the earliest

 

novel of chivalry in America."1

It is all the more paradoxical that, while Spain
was experiencing a literary and artistic renaissance
despite the presence of the (quite) prohibitory establish-
ment of the Inquisition, the Spanish colonies did not come
into contact with much of this intellectual revival.
However strong the moral, cultural, political, and economic
bonds between the mother country and the colonies, the
latter were restricted insofar as the publication and
distribution of any "profane" reading matter was concerned.
In fact, economic restrictions were placed on whatever
printing presses were established in the New WOrld, and
this, coupled with the fact that such presses were usually
in the hands of religious orders, served to insure that
works which saw the light of day in the colonies were
mostly of a serious, didactic, moral, or sacred nature.

However effective these restrictions were, it is
not difficult to see that they were imposed in order to
favor the evangelizing task of the Spanish missionaries.
The Spaniards came to the New World assured of both
religious and cultural superiority over the native inhabi-

tants of the New World. They saw the various

 

1Schwartz, p. 4.

56

manifestations of indigenous culture and cosmogony as a
threat to the propagation of the Christian faith. It was
through this intolerant attitude that a sizable body of
recorded pre-Colombian literature was destroyed, to the
detriment of posterity.

Concomitantly with the missionaries' zeal, con-
queror and colonizer alike found it necessary to forsake
and to condemn the newly discovered pleasures of their
brethren in Spain's great renaissance. While in Spain
itself religious mysticism and asceticism had given way
to humanism and its anthropocentric view of reality, the
asceticism of medieval Spain was transferred to the
colonies. For this reason, the spirit of medieval Spain
flourished in the sacred drama and the epic poetry of
sixteenth and seventeenth century Latin America. In the
context of a religious and cultural climate so totally out
of step with the Spanish renaissance, a recognizable body
of "profane" literature could not be written in the New
World as it was in Spain. Furthermore, one cannot say
that the colonies lacked knowledge and models of the
literary masterpieces produced during Spain's Golden
Age. Rather, the production of so insignificant a body of
fiction prior to the nineteenth century was due to
restrictions placed upon the colonies and to the evangel-

izing task of the conquerors of the New World.

57

While very few works of fiction were produced in

the colonies prior to the nineteenth century, there is a
variety of fictional (or "novelistic") elements to be
found in many of the New World's histories and chronicles.
Seen from the vantage point of our century, this may be
the source of the claim that prose fiction in Latin America
appeared much before the nineteenth century. To contem-
poraries, however, it may have appeared in a different
light. One aspect of the fictional ("novelistic") intru-
sions into historical accounts is understandable in the
light of the chroniclers' attempts to record a world
totally different from that of Western Europe. To the
Spaniard in America,

si todo era, en aquellos dias, sorpresa, revelacién,

deslumbramiento, prodigio, aa qué apelar a fébulas

si la fébula era la atm6sfera misma que respiraban,

si lo maravilloso estaba en narrar lo acaeciente, en

referir lo acaecido?1

The New World is an exotic "tabula rasa," the

truths it displays seem as strange if not stranger than
fiction itself to the inexperienced eyes of the Spanish
conquerors. One well-known example of the impact of the
histories of the New World had upon European man is

reflected in the disbelief which greeted Garcilaso de la

Vega Inca's Comentarios reales in Spain. However realistic

 

this work may have been in exposing the history, habits

 

1Luis Alberto Sanchez, Proceso y contenido de la
novela hispanoamericana (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1953),
p. 81.

 

 

58

and customs of the last Incas, the Spaniards mistook the
work for an example of fictional narrative.1
Fictional elements are frequently found in Latin
American historical chronicles. The supernatural and the
fantastic appear interlaced with the more serious plot
line provided by the Conquest itself. There are super—

ficially novel-like adventure stories such as Carlos de

Siguenza y Géngora's Los infortunios que Alonso Ramirez

 

padecié en poder de ingleses piratas (1690), the story

 

of an early Latin American Robinson Crusoe. Travelogues
abound in Concolocorvo's (Don Calixto Bustamante Carlos

Inga) El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes; there are humor-

 

istic as well as novelistic elements in Bernal Diaz del

Castillo's La verdadera historia de la conquista de la

 

Nueva Espafia; and Bartolomé de las Casas' indictment of

 

Spanish exploitation is his Brevisima relacidn de la

 

destruccién de las Indias (1552) does not lack such

 

literary appeals. Finally, it is still difficult to assess
the great importance of the two great "golden" myths which
are central to both the historian's and the fictional
narrator's account. For the themes of the man of gold,

"el hombre de oro," and the legendary city of gold, "e1
dorado," appear equally as truth and as fantasy throughout

the narrative of the New World.

 

1Enriquez Ureha, "Apuntaciones," in Loveluck,
op. cit., p. 38.

59

Of the various fictional prose genres that were
smuggled into the New World, two have been mentioned so
far: the chivalresque, with its multiple reproductions of

Amadis de Gaula, and the early precursors of the realistic

 

Spanish novel, as exemplified by Cervantes' Don Quijote

 

and the Novelas ejemplares. However, there is a third

 

type of narrative that also circulated in the colonies
but was not assimilated into the mainstream of Latin
American narrative until the nineteenth century. It is
the picaresque novel, so popular in seventeenth century
Spain, so strangely in tune with the decaying social fabric
of the Spanish Golden Age, and by the same token a genre
that could not reflect the heroic exploits and self-
understanding of the Spaniards in the New World. Thus,
while the picaresque tale flourished in Spain at a time
when Spanish life was undergoing a social restructuring,
the genres that were more appropriate to the exploits

of the colonies were the sacred drama and epic poetry.
To this effect, Fernando Alegria tells us that:

El sello misionero de la conquista espahola esta
patente en la literatura a que ella did origen: una
literatura cuyo objetivo no era divertir, sino informar
a Europa de lo que acaecia en América y defender e1
derecho de la gran empresa de ultramar. La tradicién
novelistica europea se forjé en el ocio y el lujo de
refinadas culturas. La América hispana de los siglos
XVI, XVII y XVIII era un campo de batalla en el terreno
politico como en el terreno moral y sus escritores
determinaron, con razén 0 sin ella, que el mejor
vehiculo literario para el mensaje que propagaban no

estaba en la narracién de picarescas o pastoriles
aventuras, sino en una prosa didactica 0 en una

'III I. II! T It'Il Tll'lIl' .Il Till {I'll- Ill-Ill III]

(II llllllrlT [ll'

 

 

60
poesia humanistica. Por necesidad politica e
intelectual, entonces, desdeharon la novela.

With the picaresque tale, developed in Spain but
not echoed in the Americas until two centuries later, we
are at a midpoint in the discussion of factors behind the
late emergence of the Latin American novel. We have
reviewed the factors stemming from the legal prohibitions
of the Spanish Crown, as well as those deriving from the
unprecedented features which the New Continent presented
to the imaginations of its first conquerors and colonizers,
and which prevented a clear demarcation between the fron-
tiers of factual description and fantastic imagination.

The mention of the picaresque tale brings to our attention
the importance of social and economic factors, as well as
political themes, in the genesis of modern literature. For,
just as in Spain, so in Latin America, when social, economic
and political conditions akin to the period of the Golden
Age made their appearance in the struggling nations of the
New World, we find the novel emerging as a fictional docu-
ment of a social, political and historical transformation.
As in Spain's Golden Age, the picaresque was the first
genre to document the waning of rigidly structured insti-
tutions and the breakdown of society, so we observe the

first Latin American picaresque, Lizardi's El periquillo

 

 

1Fernando Alegria, "Origenes de la novela hispano-
americana," in Loveluck, op. cit., p. 65.

4"! I! Tllliiilillilll

 

 

 

61

sarniento arising out of the author's need to document and

 

to combat the vices and follies of Mexican society.

This first of Latin American novels points to a
social-psychological and historical factor underlying the
late arrival of the novel in Latin America. Emphasizing
this theme, Pedro Grases argues that for the genre of the
novel to appear, the novelist must be able to draw his
subjects out of a vast number of existing human and social
types:

El género novelistico es exponente de afinado
sentido critico en todas las culturas. A mi entender,
podria trazarse un paralelo de equivalencia, en lo que
a este punto concierne, con el teatro. Las formas
dramaticas y las narrativas extensas en prosa se nos
dan en obras literarias que observamos finicamente en
civilizaciones ya elaboradas a lo largo del tiempo,
que han seguido extenso e intenso proceso evolutivo
en su propia formacién . . . . En la novela, e1
motivo central radica en el tipo humano, en la
riquisima y variada gama de sus sentimientos . . .

La novela, ya sea evasion de un mundo pluriforme, ya
como especulacién de la realidad, necesita siempre

un antecedente complejo y denso en la historia anterior,
que justifica, a mi modo de ver, su constante aparicién
en épocas de rico contenido pretérito.

We can agree with Grases' vieWpoint, which, inci-
dentally, conforms to the development of the novel in
European literature, that the absence of a large number of
human and social types in colonial Latin America—-or at
least of types which could plausibly interact with each
other on a regular social basis-~delayed the appearance of

the novel by withholding the requisite tools of the

 

lPedro Grases, "De la novela en America," in
Loveluck, op. cit., pp. 70-71.

62

novelist. There is an additional and closely related
factor peculiar to Latin America, namely that there was
no sizable recognized body of historical data in the new
continent which could have served as a springboard in the
development of prose fiction.

There is, therefore, a historical reason which

may explain the obvious anachronism of El periquillo's

 

appearance in 1816, almost two centuries after the
picaresque had ceased to be a novelty to Spanish readers.
In the New World, the Spanish conquistador and, later, the
settler had yet to live and write their history. The
American settler had to create his own traditions, produce
his own heroes and villains, before the modern bard could
draw on such themes and revive ghosts from his own past,
infusing them with life. A rich historical background and
a consciousness of separate identity was lacking in those
first two or three centuries after the discovery of the
American continent, and it is the lack of this particular
form of self-knowledge as much as the lack of literary
models which accounts for the dearth of creative prose in
the colonies.

A strong literary tradition often arises out of a
strong historical tradition. The example of the birth of
the Latin American novel is not an isolated one. Similar
periods of literary creativity were apparent in Periclean

Athens (after the Persian Wars), or, more recently, in the

63

Romantic German period of the Sturm und Drang and in the

 

great period of the Russian novel which we associate with
the names of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. All these periods

of literary creativity followed periods of national struggle
and rebirth.

In the case of the Latin American novel, the direct
literary antecedents which preceded the wars of independence
were the historical chronicle and the epic, rather than
the romances or other fictional writings. This, as explained
earlier, was in part due to the restrictive attitude on the
part of Spain towards literary expression in and for the
colonies. Consequently, a strong historical element was
inherent in the self-understanding of Latin American readers.
The great events of the wars of independence and the emer-
gence of new national societies reinforced this historical
element in the consciousness of writers as well as readers.
That the first form of prose fiction which developed on a
large scale in Latin America was the historical novel is
due, however, to one further vital influence. This is the
ideological and literary influence of Europe in the nine—
teenth century. Thus the Latin American historical novel,
which forms the literary mainstream exemplified by Manuel
Mujica Lainez, emerges as a synthesis of Latin American
content and tradition and European form.

It is Latin America's receptiveness to the ideo-

logical currents of the Enlightenment which is largely

64

responsible for the colonies' movement towards independence.
Just as the French Encyclopedists' writings of the eighteenth
century paved the way, ideologically speaking, for the

French Revolution, so did works such as Rousseau's Du Contrat

 

Social serve as the rhetorical tools in the Latin American
wars of independence.

With the wars of independence successfully concluded,
the emerging national societies of the new continent had to
be discovered and represented in imagination. Writers
adopted the European genre of the novel as a positive
vehicle for the aesthetic propagation of social and political
viewpoints. They saw themselves as the bastion of moral and
social standards. They believed in the effectiveness of the
literary "weapon" as a means of shaping the consciousness
and future direction of the new nations. For this reason,
the novel as we see it in the period immediately following
the wars of independence is social realist in form, while
retaining a romanticized (or idealized) vision of man as
portrayed against the naturally exotic settings of the New
World. The novel as a didactic and aesthetic tool conforms
to the standards set by its European literary models,
particularly the literary currents of England and France,
and it follows that our previous description of the
European novel of the period would be likewise applicable

to the nineteenth century Latin American novel.

65

The historical novel is an offshoot of the nine-
teenth century novel; its singularity lies in a perception
of past, often heroic, events, which it recollects in a
fictionalized form but one which conforms to our canons of
probability, verisimilitude, and causation. In Latin
America, however, the historical novel was not perceived
in isolation from other types of novel during the nine-
teenth century. Novels were generally "historical," and
the term was loosely applied to encompass a variety of
works, some of which dealt only tangentially with a his-
torical reconstruction of past and present trends. Kessel
Schwartz tells us of the divergent classification of some
nineteenth century novels by critics, offering José
Marmol's Amalia as an example. This is a work which
Schwartz identifies as a romantic historical novel, but
he notes that Enrique Anderson Imbert insists on classify-

1 It is

ing it as a political and autobiographical novel.
apparent that Latin American writers displayed greater
eclecticism in the historical genre, in their choice of
subject matter and style, than did their European counter-
parts.

Latin American novels of this period did generally

include elements either of the historical past or of past

trends which were working themselves out in the historical

 

lSchwartz, pp. 45-6.

66

present. Insofar as historical novels dealt with past
history--and in Latin America this might well be the
recent past, still fresh in the memory of the descendants
of the colonizers, or the seething drama of the national
birth--they often entailed a particular world view which,
while resembling the perspective of the historian, yet
transcended it in its romanticization of the past. Accord-
ing to Herbert Butterfield, the EurOpean historical novel
portrays a
love for the past for its own sake, and the fondness
for lingering over those things that endure as relics
or as symbols of the past, and the regret for the
things that are lost forever.
In Latin America, as in EurOpe, the main exponent and model
of this genre was the widely translated Walter Scott.
Butterfield contends that Scott did not have a
didactic purpose in writing his novels, that he
did not write historical novels because he wished to
teach history in an easy way or to get at a moral
indirectly, but because his mind was full of the past,
just as the mind of the musician is full of tunes; he
made for himself a world out of the past, and lived
in it much; and he paintedzthat world for his readers,
and turned it into a tale.

If this is the case, the Latin American novel certainly

diverged from its European counterpart, since moral,

 

1Herbert Butterfield, The Historical Novel (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 9. Origi-
nally published 1924.

 

21bid., p. 2.

67

didactic, political, and social themes were consciously
intended by historical novelists who aspired to shape the
new societies through these "ideological weapons." The
difference may stem from the relatively recent past which
came to life in the Latin American historical novel, a
past which had not yet receded into the shadows as had the
heroic events of much of European history. On the other
hand, one should not underestimate the political and
didactic elements present in the writings of Walter Scott.
It is not farfetched to portray Scott as the popularizer
of the political doctrines of the English conservative
Edmund Burke: according to Russell Kirk, the Waverley
novels carried Burke's ideas to an audience which might
have never read Burke's orations or pamphlets. They
showed "by concrete instances, most vividly depicted, the
value and interest of a natural body of traditions."1 In
other words, the political and social theme was also
present in the European models on which Latin American
writers drew; if it strikes us much more forcefully in
nineteenth century Latin American novels than in Scott,
this may simply indicate the greater urgency of such issues
in the new nations of Latin America, or alternately, the
greater ability of masters such as Scott to dissimulate

their intentions in the guise of historical tradition.

 

1Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (Chicago:
Gateway Editions, rev. ed. 1960), pp. 135-36.

 

68

A survey of Latin American historical novels would

probably commence with Jicotencal, a work of unknown author-

 

ship published in Philadelphia in 1826. Many of its suc-
cessors presented social-political commentary in the con-
text of a historical vision. Such is the case with Cirilo

Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés (published serially beginning

 

in 1839 and in final form in 1879) and Gertrudis Gomez de
Avellaneda's Sab (1841), both examples of abolitionist
literature. The previously mentioned work of José Marmol,

Amalia (1851), and Estéban Echeverria's E1 Matadero (1871)

 

are contemporary chronicles of the Rosas dictatorship in
Argentina. Still another theme is illustrated in Manuel

de Jesfis Galvan's Enriquillo, which Schwartz considers

 

"the best combination of historical novel, indianista and
indigenista themes," which dramatizes a thirty-year
struggle between Indians and colonists that shook the
island of Santo Domingo in the early sixteenth century.1
Just as in Europe, the Latin American historical
novel often served to document the movement of national
independence. It should not be forgotten that the his-
torical novel arose in a Europe that had just experienced
the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and the
subsequent national reactions in countries such as Germany,
Italy, Poland and Russia. Georg Lukécs has argued that

the historical novel registers in literature a parallel

 

1Schwartz, p. 67.

69

rise in the social and political consciousness of the
European nations. This is just as apparent in Latin
America, where the genre became popular in the period
following the wars of independence. The historical novel-
ists of Latin America fulfilled the need for an "appeal
to national independence and national character . . .
necessarily connected with a re-awakening of national
history, with memories of the past, of past greatness, of
moments of national dishonour, whether this results in a
progressive or reactionary ideology."l

In subject matter, the historical novel of nine-
teenth century Latin America appears as an amalgamation of
several themes important to the new societies. The por-
trayal of the recent historical events, the glorification
of a romanticized past, the depiction of folklore and
regional customs of the new societies, the analysis of
relationships between social classes and of individuals
thrust into a new environment--all these converged in
nineteenth century Latin America. Therefore, the histor-
ical novel can often be classified under related genres
such as the romantic novel, the costumbrista novel, the
realistic novel and the naturalistic novel.

For aesthetic ideas and inspiration, however, Latin

American writers looked to Europe. Thus, the novel was

 

lGeorg Lukacs, The Historical Novel (London: Merlin
Press, Penguin Books, 1962). P. 25. Translated from the
German by Hannah and Stanley Mitchell.

 

70

American in its documentation of New World values and
society; in all other respects it was as much a product

of European thought and ideology as was the French, German
and English novel. It was Latin American in content,
European in form. This is the two-fold tradition within
which Manuel Mujica Lainez begins his career as a histor-
ical novelist.

The novel is the specifically modern literary form
which was designed to mirror the physical and moral fabric
of Western society in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies. By the twentieth century its themes and narrative
techniques began to document the failures of western
civilization's search for truth and progress. The appeal
for a rational solution of humanity's varied injustices
and evils lost ground and gave way to skepticism and
nihilism. Within the social and political realm, order
gave way to war, unpredictable chaos and an irrational
quest for power. Waning faith in providence, and in that
secularized version of providence which saw man's progress
towards freedom guaranteed by the dialectic of history,
led philosophers and writers to search for the unchanging
verities of human existence, as for example in existential-
ism. These general western trends were echoed as well in
Latin America, whose literate classes were aware of their
cultural ties with European movements and receptive to

the malaise of war-torn Europe. Latin American writers

71

now began an inward journey, seeking to discover the
deeper roots of their lives and to create or recover a
lost identity. The formulas offered by costumbrismo, by
romanticism, and by social realism had been exhausted.
In their stead a new narrative form took over sometime in
the mid-19408, when writers finally "begin to explore new
techniques with great freedom and to allow their 'balloons
of fantasy' to slip further away from the ground."1

Realism had rarely produced the greatest novels in
Latin America. The treatment of the exploitation of the
Indians, the contrapuntal descriptions of civilization
versus barbarism in which the author maintained an external
verisimilitude, had long been exhausted. This thematic
exhaustion led a new generation of writers to turn in other
directions: they began to re-interpret the world of
empirical reality from the perspective of the less tangible
universe of spiritual experience.

The factors which contributed to the rise of the

literary phenomenon of magic-realism as it emerged in

 

Latin America in the mid-19408 are both existential and
stylistic. First of all, and this is a point not always
made in conjunction with the study of magic-realist
narrative, the writer tries to evoke that quasi-religious

experience which happens when man comes into contact with

 

1Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American
Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969),
p. 254.

 

 

 

 

72

hidden, unforeseeable forces in nature. Seeking to portray
this contact, magic-realism marks a return of the mythical,
prodigious, and magical aspects of life and nature in the
very midst of the twentieth century. As Alejo Carpentier
indicated in his exposition of the aims of magic-realism,

1 It seeks to confront

it involves an "act of faith."
twentieth-century man with the poignant problems of
uprootedness and loss of faith by reviving certain dimen-
sions of human experience common to both pre-Colombian and
European pre-Christian culture. It portrays nature as a
theophany. Consequently, one of the distinguishing
characteristics of this genre is the place it accords to
myth. Authors such as Carpentier and Asturias give a
prominent place to the pre-Colombian as well as to the
myths of classical antiquity. This resurgence of myth

has restored the dimension of the "epic" to Latin American

fiction.2

 

lAlejo Carpentier, Tientos y diferencias
(Montevideo: Editorial Arca, 1967), p. 109.

 

2We may be witnessing a reversal of the process
described by Scholes and Kellogg: "Ep1c poems are made in
cultures which do not distinguish between myth and history.
As soon as the distinction begins to be made--and this is a
gradual process at first but gains momentum in time--it
can be applied critically to the narrative of the past and
will become established in the aesthetic and intellectual
norms which influence current literary production. This
distinction between fact and fiction, once it is clearly
established, forces story telling to choose the rubric
under which it will function: truth or beauty. The result
is a separation of narrative streams into factual and
fictional, producing forms we have learned to call history

73

Among the stylistic factors behind the birth of
magic-realism are the literary influence of surrealism,
the impact of the psychological theories of Freud and Jung,
and the techniques and structures of modern narrative
(which include the use of Joycean "stream of consciousness,"
flashback techniques, and the disruption of spatial and
temporal unities). I shall be dealing specifically with
these factors in the third chapter of this work.

The works of Manuel Mujica Lainez provide a basis
for the study of many of the most interesting literary
trends and techniques which have been produced in Latin
America during the last three decades. Thus, the transi-
tion from social-realist narrative to magic-realism, and
later from magic-realism to the fantastic, is particularly
significant in this author's work. Beginning as a writer
of conventional historical fiction, he has subsequently
incorporated myth and psychohistory into the historical
account itself. This fusion of the historical and the
mythical modes is an aspect as well of the literary trend
which we have learned to label, for lack of a better term,
as magic-realism.

This dissertation intends to trace the literary

development of Manuel Mujica Lainez by concentrating on

 

and romance. In western culture the two streams both
spring from the fountainhead of Homeric epic and go their
separate ways until they reunite in the novel." Quoted
from Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of
Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968),

pp. 57-58.

 

 

74

five of his historical works. The next chapter analyzes
two collections of short stories by Manuel Mujica Lainez,

Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires. This will

 

 

serve to delineate his starting point as a historical
novelist, as well as pointing to thematic leitmotifs and
structural or stylistic techniques which are developed in
his subsequent novels. Chapter Three, basing itself on
the novel Bomarzo, will demonstrate how Mujica Lainez
employs the esoteric and occult sciences--a prominent
aspect of magic-realist narrative--to heighten our per-
ception of the historical events of the Italian
Renaissance. The fourth chapter will continue the search
for the mythical, magical and prodigious as it enters into
his reconstruction of the French Middle Ages and the

Crusades, in El Unicornio. And the fifth chapter will

 

analyze one of his most recent works, De milagros y de

 

melancolias, in which the author parodies conventional

 

historical accounts. The last-named work signals the
birth of the purely fantastic and imaginary account in the
work of Manuel Mujica Lainez.

While these works do not exhaust the literary
output of Manuel Mujica Lainez, they do represent the
major genres and styles which he has employed during the
course of his career. Secondly, they document the steady
progression in his understanding of the nature of man and

of the historical process. Finally, they parallel and

 

75

contribute to a general trend in Latin America and in
western literature, a trend which has transformed our view
of the relation between the real and the imaginary and

which, in the process, has radically altered the genres of

prose fiction.

CHAPTER II

HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE SHORT STORIES

OF MANUEL MUJICA LAINEZ

Aqui vivieron (1949) and Misteriosa Buenos Aires

 

 

(1951) were written within three years of each other.

They represent Manuel Mujica Lainez' most extensive col-
lections of short stories. They have been included in
this study insofar as they foreshadow the author's future
development of historical framework, thematic motifs and
stylistic elements. The framework of each short story and
the combination of all the stories mirror the historical
consciousness which is characteristic of most of Mujica
Lainez' longer narrative. They also provide an embryonic
setting for the author's cyclical vision of history which,
in his later works, is reinforced by a constant allusion
to the myth of eternal return.1 It is this myth of eternal

recurrence as it is formulated in the theme and structure

 

1Explicit discussion of the myth of eternal return
is postponed until Chapter Five, which deals with De
milagros y de melancolias. In that work, Mujica Lginez
very consciously proposes a theory of history which is
cyclical and anti-evolutionist. In the short stories, the
cyclical vision arises more out of a consideration of the
tenuous framework linking the stories together than from
the internal conflict.

 

76

77

of most of these short stories that will become a funda-
mental motif in the novels to be discussed in subsequent

chapters, Bomarzo, El Unicornio, and De milagros y de

 

 

 

melancolias. In addition, the short stories anticipate
the author's interest in the fantastic and the grotesque.
They predict his later concern with the esoteric sciences,
as well as his quest for a "secondary reality" which has
become a major consideration of magic-realist narrative
in Latin America.

Literary Antecedents of the
Short Stories

 

 

Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires are works

 

 

of transition in the narrative of Manuel Mujica Lainez.
With them, the author has evolved from the historical
sketches, essays, biographies or "cuadros de costumbres"
of his earlier years, to the short-story genre with its
predominant vision of historical phenomena and touches of
the fantastic. Practically all but one of the works
written by Manuel Mujica Lainez prior to these two col-

lections of short stories were non-fictional. The one

 

major exception is a historical novel published in 1938,

Don Galaz de Buenos Aires. As the title may suggest, this
first novel deals with a pseudo-picaresque character, Don
Galaz, as he traverses the labyrinthean social and political
strata of seventeenth century Buenos Aires. As a first

effort, it has been termed "una novela de iniciacién" and

78

"fruto sazonado de uno de los ingenios mejor dotados de

su generacién."1 Even if Don Galaz has not won many

 

laurels for its author, it does forecast his later pursuit
of this important and somewhat neglected historical period

in his very recent novel El laberinto (1974).

 

Manuel Mujica Lainez' interest in history has
remained a constant throughout his non-fictional and
fictional narrative. However, his introduction of the
fantastic or imaginary does not predate these two collec-
tions of short stories. Of the works that precede 5321

vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires, the most important,

 

insofar as offering a historical background to be followed
in both collections of short stories, are: (l) the master-
ful epic poem Canto a Buenos Aires (1943), a historical
account of the birth and coming of age of Buenos Aires;
and (2) Estampas de Buenos Aires (1946), a series of short
prose sketches with an emphasis on the geographical and
historical documentation of the city's glorious, but fast-

vanishing, past.2

 

lCarmelo Bonet, quoted in Eduardo Font, Realidad
fantasia en la narrativa de Manuel Mujica Lainez: 1949-
62 (Madrid: Ediciones José Porrua Turanzas, 1976 6), p. 8.

 

2For a bibliography of the works published by
Manuel Mujica Lainez prior to 1962, one can consult:
(a) Emma Maria Carsuzan, Manuel Mujica Lainez
(Buenos Aires: Ediciones culturales Argentinas, 1962).
(b) Eduardo Font, Realidad y fantasia en la
narrativa de Manuel Mujica Lainez: 1949- 1962 (Madrid.
Ediciones José Porrua Turanzas, 1976).

 

 

79

Both Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires are

 

 

primarily fictional chronicles of Argentine history. They
are masterful recollections of such historical eras as the
conquest, colonization, independence struggle, and post-
independence period. They are effective in describing
Spanish rule and the transfer of Spanish institutions to
the New World. In fact, the theme of Spain and the
Spanish legacy to Latin America is well worth exploring
through these short stories.

Manuel Mujica Lainez belongs to a generation of
writers who, in anguish over their own sense of rootless-
ness, turned to Spain, not as the culprit, but rather as
the originator of much of Latin American civilization.

As the modernist poet Ruben Dario (1867-1916) had done
earlier, Manuel Mujica Lainez introduces Spain as a positive
symbol in the growth of his Latin American city. It is a
search for hispanic sources which is mirrored in the works
of some of his contemporaries. For example, Jorge Luis
Borges has traced Spain's legacy in the streets of Buenos
Aires, in his poem "Espafia":

Espafia de los Inquisidores,

que padecieron el destino de ser verdugos

y hubieron podido ser martires,

Espafia de la larga aventura

que descifré los mares y redujo crueles imperios
y que prosigue aqui, en Buenos Aires . . . .1

 

1Jorge Luis Borges, "Espafia," in Obrapoética
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Emecé, 1967), p.7270.

 

80

Spain, the Spanish conquerors, and the values which were
brought to the New World by soldier and missionary alike,
as well as the various historical eras in the subsequent
development of the New World, play an important part in

the historical setting of both Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa

 

 

Buenos Aires.

 

A second fact which emerges upon a close-reading
of most of the short stories in these two collections is
that Manuel Mujica Lainez' conception of the historical
tale is an obvious descendant of the type of historical
fiction conceived by the nineteenth-century Peruvian
Ricardo Palma (1833-1919), which the latter termed
"Tradiciones Peruanas." Similar elements can be found
in a comparison of the two writers' shorter narrative,
notwithstanding the fact that Ricardo Palma was very much
a man of the nineteenth century. Palma's recipe for a
successful short story, his mélange of truth, fiction and
a faithful depiction of period traditions, is to be felt
throughout Manuel Mujica Lainez' tales. He sees his task
as that of a chronicler as well as a writer of short
fictions, but what remains once the fictitious protagonists
have gone their way is that bittersweet memory or recol-
lection of things past. As the author reminded us in his
previous work, Estampas de Buenos Aires, it is a writer's
faithfulness to history that remains behind well after the

completion of the fictional argument:

[tn

r?

81

Tenemos también la obligacién de ser fieles a una
tradicién que nos honra, y que va del indio del
desierto y el denodado capitan de la colonia, a la
gesta de quienes nos dieron la libertad con su sangre,
y a la de aquellos que forjaron con sus manos tenaces
y con su inteligencia avizora, nuestro progreso de
hoy. Una carreta detenida bajo un ombfi, una sala con
un mobiliario de jacaranda pulido, unas miniaturas,
una proclama, algunas fotografias, bastan como punto
de partida.

All the stories of Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa

 

 

Buenos Aires are chronicles of Argentine life. They are

 

traditionally historical in the sense that they are not
contemporary with, but rather predate, the author's own
historical experience. In this sense, they are akin to
archeological reconstructions of previous eras. Spe-

cifically, they represent the origin and development of
Argentine society over a span of three centuries. Thus,

the first story of Aqui vivieron is set in 1583, the last

 

in 1924; and the first story of Misteriosa Buenos Aires

 

is set in 1536, the last one in 1904. Each story includes,
annexed to the title itself, the date of the year in which
the action is supposed to have taken place. This gives
yet another indication of the author's intention to be
faithful to historical fact, to be accurate and truthful
in his communication of Argentine life.

In this chapter, we shall trace the historical and

geographical framework of the stories in order to

 

lManuel Mujica Lainez, Estampas de Buenos Aires
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1946), p. 146.

 

 

82

illustrate the view of history which Mujica Lainez brought
to his fiction. Once the importance of the historical
framework is established, we shall indicate the various
thematic motifs which anticipate the author's lengthier
narrative; these include the various fantastic elements,
the intrusion of myth, the marvelous and the prodigious,
in accounts which otherwise--according to conventional
literary classification--would have to be termed histor-
ical.

While Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires

 

 

are both collections of short historical fiction, there
are.a number of significant differences between them. In

Aqui vivieron, it is the geographic setting and the his-

 

torical framework which affect the reader most vividly.

The geographic setting, of course, involves both natural
landscape and human transformations of the environment;

the historical framework refers to the fictional portrayal
of the men of the past, the depiction of conflicts involved
in the development of Argentina, and the description of

the changing society and class structure of the country.

In Misteriosa Buenos Aires, on the other hand, the setting

 

is less important than the portrayal of "supernatural"
elements and the psychology of the inhabitants from which
these emerge. While the stories are still written within
a historical setting, the focus is more on the fictional

element. However, the various mysterious or supernatural

83

elements which enter the narrative do not originate within
the natural order as they do in the mature magic-realist
novels of Mujica Lainez. Some are artificially appended
to the elements of the stories; others strike us as the
efflorescence of human fears and wishes--in short, of
human psychology as understood within a realistic Freudian
framework.

Mujica Lainez' later novels fuse these two dimen-
sions: the geographical and historical which we find in

Aqui vivieron, and the supernatural and psychological which

 

predominates in Misteriosa Buenos Aires. Out of that

 

fusion we get his mature historical novels with their
magic-realist orientation.
Geographical Setting and

Historical Framework in
Aqui vivieron

 

 

 

The short stories of both collections are set as
self-contained paintings within the larger framework of a
particular environment as viewed through its various
metamorphoses. The changing human types are shown evolv-
ing against a backdrop provided by the immutable forces of
nature. Thus, Manuel Mujica Lainez contemplates San
Isidro, suburb of Buenos Aires and location of all the
stories of Aqui vivieron, first as a pure, virginal land-
scape, not yet subjected to the changes man usually
extorts from his habitat; in the following vision, a hut

is erected to meet the modest needs for shelter of the

84

poor peasants; next, a house is built and expanded by a
succession of wealthy landowners; finally, the downfall
of the aristocratic house signals the destruction of the
old order and the emergence of a new one. As a final
realistic touch of things to come, the lot is partitioned
into nine equal parts, symbolically reminding us of the
type of new class that is emerging from the ashes of the
previous oligarchy.

Geographical location plays an important role in
the development of all these stories. First, it provides
the larger spatial framework within which all the stories
are developed. Secondly, it allows the reader to perceive
a certain unity and continuity throughout the collection
of stories, even though the subject matter and the con-
flicts treated in the short stories are, more often than
not, totally unrelated. Finally, the same setting, as
viewed through three centuries of social and political
change provides a clue to the author's own view of his-
torical evolution.

In "Lumbi," the first story in Aqui vivieron, we

 

are given a description of the geographical terrain which
will become the permanent setting for all the stories of
this collection. It is 1583 and the Spaniards are waging
massive military campaigns against the native forces; it
is the beginning of Spanish colonization. The historical

focal point of the story is the decisive encounter between

85

the Indian "Querandies" tribe and the forces of the founder
of Buenos Aires, Don Juan de Garay. In the distance, the
sails of the Spanish ships flicker in the waters, while the
shores vibrate with the howls of ferocious Indian warriors:
Era que Juan de Garay, fundador de Buenos Aires,
viajaba hacia Santa Fé, embarcado. Paralelamente 1e
seguian por el antiguo camino de la costa, rumbo a la
fortaleza de Gaboto en el Carcarafia, Don Luis de
Sotomayor, hermano del gobernador de Chile, y el
capitan Francisco de Cuevas, con sus hombres de armas.
Los querandies calculaban que habia sonado la hora
propicia para el golpe definitivo contra los invasores.
Habian oido referir que Garay repartia los aborigenes
de estas provincias entre sus conquistadores: tal
cacique para éste, aquel para tal otro . . . .1
We have here a very human historical conflict between
native and conqueror. It is not reflected in the descrip-
tion of the geographical location; the environment is not
exploited, as would have been the case in a naturalistic
narrative, to sound a warning or a premonition of human
failure. As described in “Lumbi,” the setting is a gently
rolling coast,
donde la tierra no penetraba en el agua en son de
conquista armada de rocas, a modo de una amazona,

sino, blandamente, como si se entregara a su abrazo.
No habig ni bosques inmensos, ni animales crueles

.From this moment on, the author makes constant
references to this same setting, alluding sometimes to the

"montes grandes," or to the "barranca," or to other

 

1Manuel Mujica Lainez, Aqui vivieron (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1962), pp. 16-17.

 

2Ibid., p. 13.

86

topographical peculiarities already presented in the
first story. Thus, in the next story of the collection,
"El lobisén," the protagonists encounter the same setting:
Ya van entrando en la zona de los Montes Grandes.
A la vera del camino avistase una choza de barro y
paja. Mas alla, los talas grises, casi neblinosos

entrecortan la lamina fluvial con su ramaje de espinas.
Duraznefos, algunos sauces, crecen en la barranca

The steep ravine which had been introduced in the
first two stories becomes the scenario of a stormy fratri-
cide in the third story, "El cofre." Here, the geograph-

ical location barely contributes to the atmosphere of

horror which ensues toward the end of the conflict

depicted in the story:

Lucharon un instante, como dementes . . . .
Apagése e1 alboroto de los loros en el ramaje del
tala, y de las ranas en las charcas del bajo . . . 2
Hasta que los dos rodaron por la barranca espinosa.

A similar descriptive passage reappears again in
the next story, in which the protagonist, a deranged bull-
fighter, relives in the hour of his death his life-long
obsession with the bull (in its mythical form as "Isis" or
the "Minotaur," symbolic of his destiny). The hut of the
dying man is the same one which had figured in the pre-
vious story, one found

en la barranca de los Montes Grandes . . . donde

. . . se levantaba alli, a1 amparo de un tala robusto,
los rastros de una cabaha que nadie habitaba hacia

 

lIbid., p. 20. 21bid., p. 48.

87
mas de media centuria, desde que dos pescadores se
acuchillaron frente a su puerta . . . .1
Whereas in the first four stories the geographical
location is very much the same, with the passing of time
certain perceptible changes begin to accumulate. Trees
age and the landscape is affected, if only superficially,
as man builds, plants and destroys. A nature that can
harbor forces of good and evil is described in the story
"El camino desandado" (1755). Here almost a century has
elapsed since that first time when Lumbi stepped on the
soft sands of the riverbank. The tree ("e1 tala gris"),
perhaps a few centuries old, has grown comparable to a
sinister mythical being, setting the mood for a story of
nightmarish visions:
A cien metros de la casona, un tala tan torturado
y antiguo que parecia carbonizado por la centella,
elevaba su ramazén de viboras como un Laoconte negro.
The focus of many of the stories' settings does
not always rest on the natural habitat. Once the house is
built on the land, the house becomes an important barom-
eter of the material and spiritual condition of its
inhabitants. The natural environment itself participates
in certain man-initiated changes. New qualifying adjec-
tives are added to each subsequent description. The
environment assumes subtly differing moods according to

the conflicts portrayed, although it seldom reflects the

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 85.

88

violence man is capable of showing vis-a-vis other men.

 

The but of the early stories becomes a massive structure
in ”Los amores de Leonor Montalvo." It is the year 1748,
the future suburb of San Isidro is still an unimportant
village bordering the outskirts of Buenos Aires, when Don
Francisco de Montalvo, owner of the property of the
"Montes Grandes" commissions his friend to build him a

house:

Su amigo el capitan Don Domingo de Acassuso
edificaba a la sazdn una iglesia, cumpliendo un voto,
a cinco leguas de la ciudad, frente a1 Rio de la
Plata. Crecia en torno una poblacién titubeante,
que empezaba a llamarse San Isidro en homenaje a1
santo labrador a quien estaba consagrada 1a capilla.
En 1718, un aho después de su boda, Montalvo adquirié
alli una propiedad sobre la barranca . . . . Era un
sitio encantador en el que quince afios antes se habia
levantado la choza de un torero que murié hermitaho
en olor de santidad . . . . Bosquecillos de talas,
de espinillos, chafiares, sauces y durazneros cortaban
1a aspereza del pasto puna. Mas a115, hacia la
ondulacion gentil de las lomas, trepaban las huertas
con zapallos, con melones y sandias. En los contornos,
las chacras desplegaban sus sembrados irregulares con
algunos ranchos dispersos. Como grises tropas de
paquidermos, grupos de ombfies erguian su robustez
sobre la gracia de las margaritas, de las azucenas
silvestres de los cardos.

The mood of this passage parallels the activities
of the population. The house that is built overlooking
the ravine becomes the tacit scenario of the remaining
short stories in the book, to be seen, at the end,
crumbling, corroded and dejected as are its final aristo-

cratic owners. The house is symbolic of the rise and

 

lIbid., pp. 70-71.

89

downfall of the Argentinian oligarchy, a metaphor for the
evolution of a social class. A similar thematic motif
appears in other works of Manuel Mujica Lainez, notably
his 1954 novel La casa, which parallels the house of 5921
vivieron in being the scene of the glory and decadence of
a wealthy Buenos Aires family at the turn of the twentieth
century.

A succession of three historically known Argentin—
ian families owns the sprawling aristocratic property.
Their names—-Montalvo, Islas de Garay, and Ponce de Leén--
can be traced to a generation of founders who helped shape
and develop Argentina. When the last of the owners, Don
Diego Ponce de Le6n, abandons the property and sells its
priceless art collection to help pay his debts, we are
made to perceive one of the most poignant notes of social

commentary found in Aqui vivieron. The house crumbles,

 

signalling the decline of a decaying and inadequate social
structure. Nature, no longer controlled by man, rapidly
proceeds to obliterate the futile advances of "civil-
ization." All this happens in the year 1913, in one of
the final stories of the collection:

El parque habia crecido libremente en su torno,
borrando los caminos, devastando los canteros,
apoderandose de las estatuas y de los jarrones. Los
arboles entremezclaron sus ramas en el ahogo de las
trepadoras y de los parasitos tendidos de follaje
a follaje. Un agua turbia, zumbante de mosquitos,
envenené 1a fuente. La herrumbre comenzé a roer los
arcos de la glorieta. E1 edificio mismo, e1
desconcertante edificio construido por tantas
generaciones que multiplicaron en él afiadidos y

90

remiendos, adquirié la traza de un inmenso animal

peludo, bajo las enredaderas. Algunas ventanas fueron

tapiadas por la hiedra voraz. Habia hormigueros en

los patios y murciélagos en los corredores. Una

palmera, locamente, habia empezado a erguir su penaiho

en un hueco del mirador, junto a los v1dr1os rotos.

While nature or the natural habitat remains a
permanent unifying force throughout these short stories,
history shows human fluctuation and conflict. Perhaps the
most important of all the commentaries on Argentine society
emerge from those short stories where the personal con-
flict is accentuated by historical struggles. Manuel
Mujica Lainez does not always include elements of historical
strife in his short stories, but when he does, he tends to
depict particularly turbulent eras of Argentinian history,
such as the outrages of the dictatorship of Don Juan Manuel
de Rosas (1829-1852), or the British invasion of the colony
in 1806, during the Napoleonic wars. The latter, portrayed
in the story ”Los reconquistadores," is a good example of
the author's ability to interpolate a fictitious episode
within a larger historical framework.
The historical conflict depicted in this story is

as important as the fictitious conflict; and it is a
measure of the story's balance between the historical and

fictional levels that both conflicts are resolved simul-

taneously.

 

lIbid., p. 248.

91

The title, "Los reconquistadores," the date, 1806,
and the first two paragraphs of the short story introduce
the spatial and chronological elements within which ensues
the smaller portrait of personal conflict. It is the time
of Napoleon's rule over Spain, and French and Spanish
troops have assembled in the colonies in order to repel
the British invaders. The military parade, "una galeria de

l

cuadros histéricos," includes the renowned names of

Santiago de Liniers, Agustin de Pinedo, Juan Gutiérrez de
la Concha, as well as the Frenchman Frangois-de-Paul
Hippolyte Mordeille.

"Habian llegado a San Isidro dos dias antes,"
the author tells us in the second paragraph of the short
story,

calados hasta los tuétanos, famélicos, rendidos de
fatiga, pues la travesia iniciada en La Colonia habia
sido azarosa . . . . Desde 1a margen del rio del
Tigre, los soldados arrastraron con la lengua fuera
los viejos cafiones, por el camino de la costa.
Dijérase que el barro tenia manos que tiraban de los
ejes. Los chubascos, a1 transformarse en tormenta,
les obligaron a detenerse en los Montes Grandes.
Liniers y los oficiales se alojaron en la casa que
habia pertenecido a los Montalvo y que ahora, después
de una sinuosa testamentaria papelera, habia sido
adquirida por Don Fernando Islas de Garay, descendiente
del fundador de Buenos Aires.

Having presented the geographical and historical framework,
the author proceeds to develop a theme involving a love
triangle. The main protagonist of the short story,

Bertrand de Suliac, French soldier enlisted in the ranks

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., pp. 105-106.

92

of Mordeille's regiment, seduces a young peasant woman
the night her husband is away on some unspecified errand.
That same night, however, as Bertrand amuses his mistress
with stories of his worldly adventures, he hears a noise
in the hallway:

En la galeria se oy6 un ruido quedo, como el que
podria hacer una espuela a1 rozar sigilosamente una
baldosa . . . .1

Startled, and fearing that the husband may have returned
somewhat earlier than expected, Bertrand de Suliac rushes
out of the bedroom. The next morning, as his regiment
moves on towards Buenos Aires, the Frenchman perceives,
among the people assembled to bid them farewell, his
nocturnal companion and her husband,
un paisano alto y flexible . . . . E1 hombre tenia
algo de arabe y algo de indio, quizazpor lo curvo de
la nariz f1na y el t1nte de la p1e1.
This image of the Indian peasant returns to plague
Bertrand for the short remainder of his life.

The scene changes to the day of August 12, 1806,
when a decisive battle is being waged in the heart of
Buenos Aires. The British forces are losing ground to the
troops of the Spanish and French armies, which are aided
by the populace. At this point in the narrative, Bertrand
de Suliac once again meets the husband of his mistress.

He cannot escape feelings of foreboding as he senses the

danger awaiting him. His mind wanders off to the quiet

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 112.

 

 

93

night of the seduction, and he tries to recall and analyze
the distinctive footsteps he had heard in the hallway.
Next to him, the Indian phlegmatically discharges another
round of ammunition. Nothing in his face reveals any sign
of hostility. If anything, Bertrand perceives only con-
tained politeness and reserve in the face of his fighting
companion.

As the plot thickens, the British, now totally
surrounded, give up: the day has been won by the Spanish
and French. The scene flashes back to Bertrand de Suliac.
He is beside himself as he reflects on the day's victory.
Tears of happiness fill his eyes, and he

comprendié entonces cuanto amaba la libertad, cuan

hondamentf llevaba metida en la sangre su pasién

generosa.
Not only has the young protagonist rediscovered his long-
ing for freedom, but in his desire to wipe out all pre-
vious offense against his fighting companion he harbours
the possibility of becoming his friend. The Indian, taking
advantage of the Frenchman's now trusting lightheartedness,
raises his carbine and, in an act of final, unexpected
vengeance, kills the unassuming Bertrand de Suliac. This
act of vengeance appears all the more violent as it is
presented against a background of military victory and a

cheering happy populace, on the one hand, and since it is

 

lIbid., p. 114.

94

totally opposed to the nobler aspirations of the young
Frenchman, on the other.

This short story, in many ways a historical vig-
nette, is an example of the structural format employed by
the author in many of these historical short stories.

The historical phenomena are used to reinforce human con—
flict, and vice-versa. As distinguished from his lengthier
later novels, he does not attempt to show the limits of
modern historiography. Thus, it is important to stress
that, in these stories, historical data is accepted at

face value. It is used in conjunction with human conflict
in order to reveal particular periods in Argentine history.
Where the author does introduce the fantastic or the
imaginary (as, for example, in the story of the bullfighter
meeting his destiny), it is very clearly only an aesthetic
device, or else pertains to the realm of the human con-
flict within the short story.

This attitude towards the fantastic and the
imaginary is to change drastically in works such as

Bomarzo and El Unicornio, where Mujica Lainez portrays

 

the elements of the fantastic or the imaginary as belonging
intrinsically to the realm of historical reality, as
emanating from man's perennial dialectic with the forces

of good and evil, rational and irrational. The concern

for the historical as evidenced in Aqui vivieron precedes

 

the author's future involvement with psychohistory. His

95

delicate brushwork in the development of credible pro-
tagonists for his short stories later becomes more defined
through the adaptation of the canons of modern psychology,
specifically the theories of Freud and Jung. Together,
they will enable him to conceive complex figures such as
Pier Francesco Orsini, Duke of Bomarzo, and the fairy

Melusina, heroine of El Unicornio.

 

Human Psychology and the Super-
naturaI in Misteriosa
Buenos Aires

 

 

 

Misteriosa Buenos Aires marks a number of further

 

developments in Mujica Lainez' conception of the short

story. In Aqui vivieron, the author had placed an emphasis

 

on the continuity and interdependence of most of the short
stories within the framework of the book. This he sought
to achieve by locating all the conflicts within a par—
ticular geographical setting, through the chronological
representation of historical data, and also through the
use of recurring leitmotifs and recapitulatory vignettes
in which the author would allude to previous protagonists.

In Misteriosa Buenos Aires, he no longer attempts

 

to bridge the gap between the short stories in order to
portray continuity and homogeneity of action and char-

acter. Each short story can be seen as an autonomous

 

unit within the larger framework of geographic setting
and historical process. Here it is Buenos Aires, the

city, that serves as impartial scenario of a number of

96

self-contained stories. Any attempt at unity of narrative
and space-time continuity derives solely from the fact
that we are exploring the life of one city, from its
colonial birth to the twentieth century metropolis which
it becomes. Thus, Mujica Lainez avoids some of the pit-

falls which beset stories in Aqui vivieron, particularly

 

those which had bounded him too narrowly to the laws of
causality.

In Misteriosa Buenos Aires, it is the quality of

 

mystery which is essential to most of the short stories.
The accent is on what makes events stand out of the
ordinary within a background of political and economic
evolution. The search for a deeper reality and the
mysteries of human life within ordinary historical
dimensions—-these are the essentially masterful touches
which Manuel Mujica Lainez weaves into his otherwise
straightforward "cuadro de costumbres" or "historical
portrait."

In this collection of short stories the author
reveals some of the characteristic motifs which he later
develops in his longer narrative. In fact, many of the
stories indicate his growing interest in elements found
in much of magic-realist literature. For example, some
stories deal with the esoteric, particularly with
demonology; however, they are developed in a psycho-

logically realistic manner. They represent, often in

97

juxtaposition, elements such as the supernatural, the
grotesque and the erotic. Often they portray the human
psyche as it responds to the forces and pressures from
without and from within. Some stories show periods of
turbulence in the history of Buenos Aires, and these
historical phenomena are further enhanced by certain
aspects of human neurosis subtly uncovered by the author's
probing of the subconscious. Furthermore, the use of
dreams and dream sequences becomes an important way of
revealing basic human needs and drives. Finally, the
introduction of myths and archetypes--the Hermaphrodite

of Salamina, the Wandering Jew-~becomes symbolic of a
very important psychological dimension to be found in
these stories. We are exposed to a whole gamut of
aberrant behavior (incest, homosexuality, sadism and
masochism, etc.), much of it developed as symbolic

example of the very tenuous line which separates what
society chooses to call "normal" within personal relation-
ships from what can no longer be accepted according to
social norms.

All in all, it is a collection comprised of
thirty-two stories, remarkably balanced in structure and
subject-matter, which stand as self-contained, autonomous
units. Thematically, the stories give us the impression
of Buenos Aires' geographical and historical growth

through the growing self-consciousness of its inhabitants,

98

who gradually shed their colonial character and acquire
the traits of the twentieth century. Autochthonous ele-
ments (for example, dialogue and dialect, regional
description) are sparingly used in each tale to complete

a picture faithful in detail to the particular historical
era. Yet every bit of information seems to have been
carefully selected so as not to alter the inner harmony in
the poetic vision of the narrative. The plot is developed
and brought to its conclusion within a very short time
span, since most of the stories average a mere six to
seven pages, while the longest is sixteen pages.

These are mostly stories in which it is action that
determines the character and state of mind of the protag-
onist. The tales do not abound in moralization; the
didactic aspect of narrative is practically nonexistent.
Action as well as historical framework are stripped down
to the barest essentials. The main catalyst in most of
the stories is fear: the fear of death and of the unknown;
and, diametrically opposed to this fear, the attraction
of death, of darkness, and of the unknown, as the quest
for these elements takes shape in the imagination of the
protagonists. The motifs in those stories where the
supernatural plays an important role are generally greed
(as in "La Galera"), envy (in "La hechizada"), and
jealousy (as portrayed in "El espejo desordenado"). Other

stories deal with magical occurrences--enchanted mirrors,

99

the appearance of disappearance of talismans or objets
g;grp--which are exemplified in the very beautiful story,
"E1 hombrecito del azulejo," and in the dark and looming
tale, "E1 arzobispo de Samos." Ghosts and related super-
natural occurrences appear frequently in the stories of
Misteriosa Buenos Aires; such supernatural and fantastic

motifs had barely entered the stories of qui vivieron,

 

and then only dimly and lifelessly. In Misteriosa Buenos

 

Aiggg, they reinforce the historical dimension by uncover-
ing a mysterious essence involving the city and its
inhabitants.

The city of Buenos Aires grows by leaps and bounds
as the stories progress. It is but an ill-defended
garrison in 1536, but by 1904 has grown into a bustling
capital that has already experienced the trials and tribu-
lations of war and peace, affluence and decadence.
Throughout Misteriosa Buenos Aires, the author focuses on
some key landmarks and their development over a span of
almost four centuries. One of the repeatedly introduced
landmarks is the main townsquare, silent observer of the
comings and goings of the inhabitants. In the first
story, ”El hambre," the townsquare serves to display the
bodies of hanged men; the year is 1536. In the following
stories, new buildings are erected around both square and

fort until, by 1644, the makeshift camp has evolved into

100

a commercially thriving community and the townsquare into
a "plaza inmensa."

Life in colonial Buenos Aires is depicted much as
it would be in any comparable feudal city-state--rhythmically
slow and very much attuned to the social hierarchy. The
absolute rulers represented here are not the Spanish kings,
too far removed from the problems of the New World to be
of practical importance, but the governors and the tribunals
of the Inquisition, symbolic of Spanish oppression in the
New World.

In fact, the Inquisition plays an important part
in the historical framework of many of the stories set
prior to the wars of independence. For example, in "La
enamorada del pequefio dragon," the captured nephew of Sir
Francis Drake, John Drake, is sent to Lima to be tried by
the "Santo Oficio." In another story, "El libro," which
deals with the discovery of a clandestine copy of

Cervantes' Don Quijote, a Dominican priest fears it may be

 

a dangerous book: "Acaso sea un peligroso viajero y
convenga someterlo a1 Santo Oficio."l In the story, "E1
imaginero," the demented protagonist, Manuel Couto, had
been incarcerated by the Inquisition for a period of five
years on grounds of heresy. These and many other stories

present the Inquisition as symbolic of the worst and most

 

lManuel Mujica Léinez, Misteriosa Buenos Aires
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, third edition,
1968), p. 26.

 

101

demoralizing abuses which the Spaniards brought to the New
World. It serves as an important social and historical
commentary on the large quantity of human vice and folly
which underlies history.

With few exceptions, practically all of the
stories of this collection deal with some aspect of the
supernatural; but they do so from an aesthetic point of
view, where the supernatural does not emerge directly
from the natural or cosmic order. Rather, its existence
is ascribed to some deeply felt fear or neurosis on the
part of an overly sensitive protagonist. Thus, the
intrusion of ghosts and goblins, demons and enchanted
mirrors, invites the reader's skepticism. We know from
the way the supernatural motif is presented that it is but
an ornament, a symbol of the possibilities which fear can
instill in a deranged mind.

Fear is also the main catalyst which brings about
resolution of the plot in these stories. We know, of
course, that fear is one of the strongest motivating
forces in man. Fear results from man's inability to
explain some aspect of nature: the less man knows about
an event, the more he fears. Manuel Mujica Lainez, as a
good story teller, knows the value of this very human
catalyst, and employs it in most of the short stories
where the supernatural plays a very important role. He

explores and exploits this emotion with his protagonists

102

and with his readers, very much as had been done by other
great story tellers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon
Blackwood, and the Argentinian Horacio Quiroga. This
particular knowledge of the value of "fear" as an aesthetic,
poetic device, as a catalyst within the short story, is

used in a traditional manner in Misteriosa Buenos Aires.

 

In these stories, Mujica Lainez still remains
within the naively rationalist perspective which Peter
Penzoldt has described in his book, The Supernatural in
Fiction:

The short story of the supernatural is one of the
most effective devices for combatting that secret and
persistent faith in the unknown. As we close the
book we can feel delightfully certain that the horrors
we have been contemplating are naught but fiction.
The very word 'fiction' assures us that our fears are
vain. It is infinitely easier to vanquish the rem-
nants of ancient superstitions in half an hour's
pleasant reading than to apply a difficult philo-
sophical system or the principles of an exacting
religion in everyday life.

Thus, the modern weird tale meets a deeply rooted
psychological necessity. One could even say that it
has a sociological importance and a high moral value,
insofar as it actively contributes to the elimination
of ancient and modern superstitions, ind does not
preserve them as is usually supposed.

If in Misteriosa Buenos Aires, the author uses the

 

fear of the unknown as a form of combatting that "secret

2

persistent faith in the unknown," it is part of his

evolution as a narrator that in subsequent works he does

 

lPeter Penzoldt, The Supernatural in Fiction
(London: Peter Nevill, 1952), pp. 6—7.

 

21bid., p. 6.

103

not merely explore the fear of the unknown as an aesthetic
device, but traces this aspect of the human psyche through
the ages, to the past, in search of those archetypical
experiences where the fear first lodged in human conscious-
ness. The search for this particular archetype--the fear
of death--will be the source of his journey to the Middle
Ages, to the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem during the
Crusades, and to the Italian Renaissance.

Supernatural elements which appear in the short

stories of Misteriosa Buenos Aires are set in the context

 

of historical data in a fixed geographical milieu. The
function of this admixture of the historical and the fan-
tastic serves a multiple purpose. .It is, first, an aes-
thetic means of creating interest in the conflict which
surrounds protagonist and environment. Secondly, it
brings us to a confrontation with man's essence, par-
ticularly with the world of inner psychological conflict,
fear and repression. In addition, it is one of the narra-
tive elements which is found throughout the history of both
fictional and non-fictional literature in Latin America.
In this respect, Manuel Mujica Lainez is reflecting the
two dimensions often found in the cultural background of
the New World: Christianity and paganism, superstition

and religious idolatry, Spain and Latin America. That is
why we find in these short stories, in seminal form, of

course, that combination of elements which has served the

104

writers of magic-realist fiction: elements which involve
a balanced juxtaposition of two opposed visions--the
"ought-to-be" of the poet and the "has been" of the his-
torian.

One example of an interesting short story where
the historical and the supernatural dimensions are har-
moniously fused is ”El espejo desordenado." The protag-
onist of this tale is a converted Jew of Portuguese
descent, living in Buenos Aires at a time (1643) when both
Portuguese and converted Jews were very much in disfavor.
While Mujica Lainez presents his protagonist as a typical
convert, the emphasis is never on the issue of religion,
but on the personal character of the protagonist who has
hypocritically renounced all past allegiance to Judaism
in his wish for total assimilation:

Sim6n del Rey es judio. Y portugués. Disimula

lo segundo como puede, babeando un castellano de
eficaces tartamudeos y oportunas pausas. Lo primero
lo disfraza con el rosario que lleva siempre enroscado
a la muheca, como una pulsera sonora de medallas y
cruces, y con un santiguarse sin motivo . . . .
Pero no engafia a nadie . . . .1

His wife, although she represents to him the values of

the Catholic society to which he wishes to assimilate, is

also of an "hidalguia discutible."2

The sources of the personal conflict in this story

is the discovery of the infidelity of Doha Gracia, Simon's

 

1Mujica Lainez, Misteriosa Buenos Aires, p. 43.

 

21bid., p. 43.

105

young wife; while the two-fold source of the historical
conflict is Spain's religious crisis at the time of the
Counter-Reformation and the political turmoil deriving
from the war between Spain and Portugal. The catalyst in
the development of the plot is the presence of a super-
natural element, a unifying aesthetic element which pre-

cipitates the dénouément. This element is represented

 

by an exquisitely carved Venetian mirror which has been
sent to Simon del Rey as a present by his Chilean business

partner. The mirror, an objet d'art as often found in the

 

work of Manuel Mujica Lainez, calls forth to the poetic
imagination of the reader:

Todo el hechizo de Venecia . . . en cuyo
encuadramiento persiste la delicadeza de los
"margaritaios," y los sutiles fabricantes de perlas
de esmalte y de vidrio y de pendientes con granates,
que Marco Polo hizo enviar a Bazora y a los puertos
del Asia Menor, del Mar Negro y de Egipto, para que

de alli las caravanas los transportaran hasta China,
donde decorarian los botones de los mandarines . . . .

1
But the mirror is no ordinary ornament. It has

the quality of revealing the secrets of past and future

with equal facility. Thus, the mirror reveals to Simon

del Rey his wife's betrayal, while at the same time it

shows that he is fated soon to be taken prisoner by the

king's men. Fearing this fate, the protagonist perceives

that to avenge his honor--for example, by killing his

wife--wou1d precipitate the mirror's prophecy. Thus he

 

11bid., p. 46.

106

refrains from killing her. As it happens, the king's
messengers do come to Simon del Rey's home in order to
confiscate all his weapons, since he is a Portuguese
national. However, he does not know their limited
objective and thinks the men have come to kill him. And
so, in a moment of terror, he strikes one of the guards.
This offense is the one that turns out to be responsible
for his downfall; it is an ironic ending in which the
protagonist falls prey to his own fear.
Meanwhile, against the background of enchanted
mirrors and supernatural powers, we have been given a
historical account of the period. It is 1643, and the city
is turned against all its Portuguese inhabitants for fear
of political subversion:
Hace menos de dos afios, en 1641, fueron condenados
a muerte en Buenos Aires los pilotos del navio
Nuestra Sefiora de Oporto y dos lusitanos mas, que
trajeron del Rio de la Plata anuncios de la rebelidn
del reino portugués. iY que comunicaciones! Doha
Margarita de Saboya, Duquesa de Mantua y gobernadora
del reino, habia sido detenida; el pueblo se habia
levantado en masa y coroné al Duque de Braganza bajo
el nombre de Don Juan IV,lardia 1a guerra entre
Espafia y Portugal . . . .
What is important here is the amalgam of two
visions: one provided by the historical background, the
other by the supernatural element. The combination of

both results in a universal theme which indicates the

limited extent to which man can master his destiny. The

 

lIbid., p. 47.

107

supernatural element is not so much at war with realism
as it serves to enhance the story by contributing that
element of mystery which is so enjoyable to the reader's
imagination.

In another unusual story, the author probes human
psychology by introducing the reader to the dream-world of
a sensitive, dying young girl. “La princesa de Hungria"
focuses on a young beggar girl who, in the elusive world
that clouds her imagination moments before her death,
imagines herself becoming a Hungarian princess. This
story offers a veiled allusion to an incestuous relation-
ship in the strong affection between a brother and sister.
Lorenzo Salay, the twin brother of Isabel, has left his
sister in order to join a band of robbers. He pillages
villages until his luck runs out, and he is caught and
sentenced to death. While in jail he devises a plan to
save himself: he pretends that he has been mistaken for a
brigand, that he is actually a Hungarian prince, leader of
his people:

. . . 1e afirmé con voz ronca y triste mirada

que él no era tal~bandolero sino un principe potentido

conde de Buda, senor de vasallos en Hungria . . . .
Lorenzo almost succeeds in fooling first the priest, then
the prosecutor, but his story does not stand up under

closer scrutiny and he is sent to the gallows.

 

lIbid., p. 128.

108

Isabel, not knowing her brother's whereabouts and
fearing his death, has lost her will to live. Weakened
by sorrow, compounding her weakness by a continuous refusal
to take nourishment, she is brought close to death. In
her final coma, as death approaches, she imagines herself
entering the marvelous Hungarian kingdom, replete with
towers and castle walls, silent fountains and magnificent
sculptures, which her brother Lorenzo had uselessly forged
for his salvation. The lie of the desperate brother had
traveled unknown psychic distances to lodge in the sister
as a final death-wish.

The poetic tone the author here employs when
referring to one of the most sympathetic feminine char-
acters of the short stories is a tone highly reminiscent
of Valle-Inclén:

IMelancélica princesa de la Corte de los Milagros!

Simén e1 Bizco sé ha dormido a su vera y mas alla e1
negro Pesares y Francisca la Loca y Garrafén, el de
las llagas. El viento ulula en la recova.

The tale is a reflection of a sensitive brother-
sister relationship. They are twins and, as such, their
story enables the author to explore not only an ambigu-
ously defined physical link, but also the spiritual aware-

ness that twins are inseparable, that they are both

fractions of a whole, and that they can exist only as an

 

1Ibid., p. 129. This paragraph, in particular, is
highly reminiscent of Valle—Inclan's work La corte de los
mila ros, and also of his dramatic trilogy, Cara de Plata,
Aquila de Blasén, and Romance de lobos.

 

 

 

 

109

interdependent unit. They are also symbolic of a myth
which both ancients and moderns have forged with regard to
this unusual biological phenomenon. Because these twins
are spiritually inseparable, we are, poetically speaking,
ready to accept the sister's illusory entrance into the
fictitious kingdom of her brother's (imaginative) lie.

The story is also a variant of the "tale within
the tale," where fantasy enters the world of reality and
where fiction is of greater import than fact. It is a
symbolic and poetic rendering of impossible spiritual
salvation and physical union in the after-life.

But "La princesa de Hungria" is an exception to
the rest of the stories in this collection in that the
historical dimension is practically nonexistent. We are
more concerned with the fictional account than with the
geographical surroundings, such as the townsquare or the
various landmarks built around it. This is, however, one
of the few stories where the world of the imagination
triumphs over the crude realities of everyday life. For
the most part, the writer does focus on the customs and
habits of each age, and does give us a birdseye view of
the ruling class throughout important periods of Argentine
history.

As indicated previously, each story in both qui

vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos Aires includes, annexed to

 

the title, the date of the year in which the action is

110

supposed to have occurred. This has the psychological
effect not only of placing particular conflicts in corres-
ponding chronological eras, but also of giving the semblance
that what is being written about is actual "truth." Our
modern understanding of truth has accustomed us to expect
that the data given be as accurate as possible. In
addition, while a historical figure is never made the main
protagonist of a short story, those historical characters
which are observed in the background lend realism to the
tale. Even the most imaginative story in the collection
is always presented as conveying some historical truth.
There is no overtly moralizing tale in these two
collections of short stories; the author does not visibly
present a code of morality to be followed or a set of
values by which to judge social institutions. By this
criterion, it is a literature that could be considered
"escapist." The fact remains that Manuel Mujica Lainez
rarely concentrates upon the here and now, the present
political strife; the confusing chaos of political and
economic upheaval in post-war Argentina does not yet con-
cern him. These two collections of short stories, both
ending their accounts at the turn of this century, are
witness to this. Those fictional works which enlighten
us as to the political and social views of the author are

yet to come, as for example Crénicas reales (1967) and

 

De milagros y de melancolias (1968), but only after an

 

111

intervening period of magic-realism. However even these
last-mentioned two works are not true political and social
commentaries: they are set in totally imaginary environ-
ments and can be taken rather as parodies of history, or
as humorous accounts of man's "uncivilized" trajectory
through time. In this respect, of course, the work of
Manuel Mujica Lainez is not too different from that of his
contemporaries in Argentine literature. We are given an
inkling of the gravity of the political situation by the
very silence displayed in the narrative of the country's
writers.

It is Buenos Aires that is the continuing force

binding the stories of Aqui vivieron and Misteriosa Buenos

 

 

A1525. The city lends geographic unity to the tales and
is seen developing from various vantage points. Through-
out these two collections, we do not receive explicit com-
mentary regarding the historical development of Argentine
society. We can, however, deduce from them a negative
vision which intimates a destructive aspect to human
nature, one that does not permit man to raise himself far
above his limited destiny. As far as human society is
concerned, we are made to see that the upper classes, the
supposed carriers of culture, pose no questions and seek
no answers. They are portrayed as oblivious to the prob-
lems surrounding them. Their rule is ineffectual, inef-

ficient, and devoid of ener9Y: their lives are portrayed in

112

the context of a frivolous, parasitic existence. In
short, they are too indulgent, self-abusive and soft to
provide strong leadership for Argentine society.

As far as man in general is concerned, one emerges
with the feeling that the advances of civilization and the
progress of the industrial revolution have not brought man
to a better understanding either of nature or of his own
self. In the stories, man is dialectically pitted against
his environment. He seeks to control his milieu without
showing any appreciation of it. This is a vision which
Mujica Lainez transforms into a cyclical understanding

of history in his longer narratives, El Unicornio,

 

Cronicas reales, and De milagrosyy de melancolias. In the

 

 

short stories, we can simply observe that one generation
gives way to another, without providing for any liberation
from human weakness, foibles, and suffering. The positive
aspect of the stories is the aesthetic one: the author's
poetic imagination and the interest he shows in the
introduction of elements of the supernatural, the grotesque

and fantastic, as complements to historical fiction.

CHAPTER III

THE HISTORICAL VISION AND MAGIC-REALISM

IN BOMARZO

The decade of the sixties produced one of the great
Latin-American novels of all time: Gabriel Garcia Marquez'
Cien afios de soledad. Critical and popular reception
throughout the world indicated that, during this decade,
the Latin-American novel shed its parochialism and became
more universal in theme, while yet retaining some autoch-
thony in its style and content. Thus, for the first time
the novel could, with justice, be regarded as an original
and authentic contribution of Latin America to literature,
rather than simply as a pale imitation of literary currents
born in Europe or the United States.

Garcia Marquez' work succeeded in synthesizing a
number of literary themes and perspectives whose fusion

has come to be known under the rubric of magic-realism.

 

Other Latin American writers, drawing on the same roots,
and expressing a similar vision of man's destiny, have been
Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Angel Asturias, and Manuel Mujica
Lainez. The last of these came to the genre of magic-

realism out of the conventional school of historical

113

114

fiction, which he gradually transcended and deepened with
a more mature vision and a greater mastery of the literary
craft. The novel which exemplifies this phase of his
literary development most fully is Bomarzo, published in
1962. It is almost perfectly balanced between the tra-
ditional vision of the historical novelist and the newer
themes contained in magic-realist narrative. The latter
themes were to be increasingly predominant in Mujica

Lainez' later novels, such as Cronicas reales and 22

 

milagros y de melancolias. While the later works can be

 

clearly subsumed within the mainstream of Latin-American
magic-realism, and their resemblance to the great works of
Carpentier and Garcia Marquez has been acknowledged by
literary critics,1 Bomarzo comes before us as a historical
novel of the Italian Renaissance. It is therefore all the
more interesting to see how the internal logic of the work
leads inescapably from the world of the probable and
ordinary to the realm of the fantastic and the supernatural.
This chapter will examine the relationship between
the historical perspective and the magic-realist vision in
the novel Bomarzo. Of course, historical fiction is an

established genre while magic-realism is a relatively

 

1See, for example, George 0. Schanzer, "The Four
Hundred Years of Myths and Melancholies of Mujica Lainez,"
Latin American Literary Review, I, No. 2 (Spring, 1973),
65-71. Also, Gregory Rabassa, Review of Reasons of State,
by Alejo Carpentier, Saturday Review, May 29, I976, 36-37.

 

 

115

modern and uniquely Latin American contribution to the
novel. It will therefore be necessary, first, to indicate
the literary influences which gave birth to the new Latin
American perspective, and to define the essential character-
istics of magic-realism. We shall demonstrate that Bomarzo
possesses these defining characteristics. Secondly, this
chapter will delineate the historical vision that animates
Bomarzo: this will include the techniques of social and
political description which it shares with the classical
historical novel as far back as Scott, together with the
newer techniques of biographical verisimilitude which the
twentieth century has derived from psychology. Thirdly,
we shall show how a major turning point in Bomarzo coin-
cides with the introduction of a new tone, that of magic
realism. The use of magic-realist motifs will be traced
by focusing on Manuel Mujica Lainez' treatment of the
esoteric sciences--of astroloqy, demonology, and alchem --
as they entered into the civilization of the Renaissance.
We shall argue that this perspective, with its symbolic
implications for an understanding of the forces governing
man's psyche, aims to give a more accurate portrayal of
both Renaissance and modern man than was afforded by the
techniques of conventional historical fiction. Finally,
we shall indicate the place of Bomarzo in the further

evolution of Mujica Lainez' literary career.

116

Literary Trends Responsible
for the Development of
Magic-Realism

 

 

 

Although for the purposes of criticism we often
study literary movements within a generational scheme, the
group of writers which emerged in the years after the
second world war, despite their differences in political
ideology, social values and aesthetic penchants, proved
able to synthesize or syncretize themes and stylistic
elements belonging to past and present alike. As modern
writers they were, of course, well acquainted with literary
currents and undercurrents of the twentieth century. But,
in addition, they pursued themes and techniques which span
the centuries and treated human dilemmas which have been
the perennial province of literature. Finally, they sought
to define the meaning of the temporal and spiritual drama
of man as it has developed within the pre-Colombian (or
pagan) and the post-Colombian (or Christian) worlds which
are equally essential to the understanding of the Latin
American civilization.

The novel genre in Latin America has always devel-
oped in conjunction with European and North American
literary trends, usually following at least a decade, but
sometimes a whole generation later, the themes and forms
developed abroad. Specifically, the emergence of the con-
temporary Latin American novel can be traced to three

fundamental foreign influences. First, and most important,

117

was the surrealist movement of the beginning of the cen-
tury, with its liberating impact on many of the conven-
tional artistic forms. It is noteworthy that several
prominent Latin American Writers were living and studying
in Paris during the early decades of this century, at a
time when surrealism was at the height of its influence.
And while surrealism was originally thought to be an
elitist movement with only limited impact on popular cul-
ture, it is now clear that it also changed the narrative
perspective of the realistic and naturalistic novel and
thus introduced new forms of consciousness to the broader
reading public. The Latin American writers who grew to
maturity in the European environment shaped by the sur-
realists transported the new perspectives to Latin
America; they became the leading writers of the mid-
twentieth century.

An additional point should be stressed. Whereas
Europe had, by the turn of the century, long left roman-
ticism behind in favor of realistic and naturalistic modes
of expression in the novel, the slower development of Latin
American literature had led to the retention of much of
the romantic tradition, including its agonic vision of man,
nature and destiny. Thus, while the vision of Latin
American writers remained basically romantic, it was often
covered by a superficial patina of realism and naturalism

derived from the latest European literary styles. This

118

whole amorphous amalgam had produced a literary stalemate,
which it was the merit of surrealism to explode. Sur-
realism, and movements connected with surrealism in Latin
America, such as Ultraism, opened new vistas for both
readers and writers; through their influence on the novel
form, they gave surrealism a popular influence which the
original elitist aesthetic pioneers had lacked.

While the followers of Bréton's Manifesto experi-

 

mented in aesthetics, pursuing the perfect metaphor or
disclosing veiled subtleties of language, writers not
formally belonging to particular movements were showing a
new awareness of the possibilities of change within the
novel form. This is the second major influence behind the
contemporary Latin American novel. We are referring to
the process whereby disciples of James Joyce and his con-
temporaries were developing a number of original per-
spectives from which writers could legitimately present
their themes. Among the most widely used innovative tech-
niques derived from these pioneers could be mentioned
stream-of—consciousness, automatic writing, flashback
techniques, the disruption of chronological and spatial
unities, etc. They exerted their influence on Latin
American literature through the works of novelists such

as Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Mann and Faulkner, whose full
influence on writers of the continent still remains to be

assessed.

119

Thirdly, we can detect in the contemporary Latin
American novel the influence of newly acquired attitudes
with regard to the representational or mimetic purpose of
art. While this has some points in common with the second
factor, it refers to a different aspect of the creative
process. The second factor related to the stylistic tech-
niques which form the external scheme or cloak of narra-
tive; this one deals more specifically with the nature,
psychological or philosophical, of the themes and concerns
of the narrative.

It is with respect to these three fundamental
influences--the first, an offshoot of surrealism; the
second, a result of new developments in narrative technique;
the third, a new perspective from which art could be said
to mirror nature-~that the Latin American novel can be said
to have become independent of literary currents in Europe
and North America. It attained its independence not so
much in its reaction against the traditional regionalist
novel of Latin America, as in its creation of a new syn-
thesis in time and space, a synthesis which required a
re-evaluation of attitudes old and new, of concerns sacred
and profane, of history and prehistory, of magic and
realism. This new and original synthesis has been called

magic-realism.

 

The term magic-realism has been closely linked to

 

surrealism by a number of critics. It was first coined by

120

the German critic Franz Roh in 1925 and, after traversing
the realm of literature in Europe and America, it settled
as a characteristic element in the work of a group of
Latin American writers whose aesthetic vision entails an
unusual or unorthodox perception of reality.

Magic-realism is essentially "una actitud frente
l

 

a la realidad" --a perspective on reality which introduces

the prodigious, miraculous or marvellous as an aesthetic
category intimately linked with ordinary reality. As
such, the perspective is not a product of the twentieth
century alone, for it is observable in Cervantes' master-
piece, in which the "prodigious” enters in a great multi-
plicity of forms:

El secreto de la vision llamada mégica no es tanto
la invencion como el reconocimiento candido de lo
ambiguo, tarea artistica originada por Cervantes: la
idea de que la esencia de cada fenomeno es 0 puede ser
multiple . . . . Hemos pasado de la edad de la
mimesis representativa a la de la metamorfosis con-
templativa. El realismo magico, que dur6 un breve
momento como tendencia fundamental (e1 momento de
Asturias y Carpentier) fue punto de transicién entre
los dos. De las magias mitologicas de El reino de
este mundo, de Los pasos perdidos y de Hombres de
maiz, se ha pasado a una nueva sintesis de entusiasmos
que son los cuatro imperativos apuntados ya: lo
violento, lo onirico, lo absurdo, y lo prodigioso.

Con el tiempo se le atribuira al realismo magico una
significacion cada vez menor, y no es porque como
actitud y técnica haya carecido de importancia, sino

 

 

 

 

 

 

1Luis Leal, "El realismo magico en la literatura
hispanoamericana," Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, XXVI, No. 4

(Julio-Agosto, 1967), p. 233.

 

121
porque la novela hispanoamericana se ha aspirado a
una mayor universalidad.1
It is true that Professor Earle, in the above

passage, points to the short duration of the magic-realist
movement. Nevertheless, just as Cervantes, in a work that
marked the birth of the modern novel, had intimated a
possible multiplicity of essences, some conventional and
others extraordinary, so also can magic-realism refer to
a quality of vision or an aesthetic category not limited
to a particular localized trend or style, but related to a
more fundamental understanding of the human psyche which
emerged at this point in history. For magic-realism is,
indeed, a movement with a profound psychological vision of
human nature. It is a vision which seeks to reach through
the cultural strata of history and social process, and to
expose the archetypes which form the "collective uncon-
scious" of western man.

André Bréton, in his first Manifesto, gives to

 

the marvelous element in literature the status of an
aesthetic category corresponding to an important mode of
human life. It was he who recognized the importance of
the fantastic and the marvelous as an artistic category.
To be sure, the use of the fantastic and the marvelous is

apparent throughout the history of literature. But the

 

1Peter G. Earle, "Muerte y transfiguracion del
realismo magico," Otros mundos otros fuegos, ed. Donald A.
Yates (Michigan State University: Latin American Studies
Center, 1975), p. 69.

122

surrealists proclaimed that the fantastic did not need to
be justified by seeking to elucidate its "meaning," or
referring to its moral or didactic impact on the audience.
Previously, literature had always sought to justify itself
on the ground of mirroring reality; the surrealists recog-
nized that the fictional, the fantastic, and marvelous,
give us insight into a new and deeper reality of the human
psyche.

This is the lesson which the writers of magic-
realist narrative have taken from the surrealists. Alejo
Carpentier sees the importance of the marvelous not simply
as an aesthetic category, for he perceives the marvelous

as existing in historical reality. The term magic-realism,

 

which had existed since 1925, thereby becomes applicable to
a whole generation of Latin American writers twenty-five
years later, because it fittingly reflects the new vision
of Carpentier and his contemporaries:

Lo maravilloso en Carpentier responde a una
ontologia, a una forma de ser del hispanoamericano
que excluye la reflexividad para dar paso a la fe que
le permite vivir inmerso en la cultura y sentir la
historia como sino, no como un proceso causal anali-
zable intelectualmente (Ti Noel al final de El reino
de este mundo), estupefacto, anonadado por la creacién
as un estado que se ha implantado como orden social,
y que ha cambiado incesantemente a su alrededor,
destruyendo su mundo de mitos, leyendas y creencias.
Desde la perspectiva que ese modo de ser conlleva, la
fantasia deja de ser incongruente con respecto a1
mundo real para convertirse ambas en un mundo compieto,
esférico, sin fisuras ni desdoblamientos ironicos.

 

1Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, "Carpentier y el
realismo magico," in Yates, op. cit., p. 227.

123

Carpentier's work stands as a major example of
magic-realist writing, notable for the original and har-
monious fusion of historical reconstruction with the
deeper infra-historical determinants of the human psyche
which are expressed in myth and culture. He has captured
the psychological alienation of man from nature by his
vivid recollection of the lost myths and idols of the
indigenous inhabitants of Latin America. Other writers,
accepting the validity of this vision, have followed
closely in his footsteps and created examples of a novel
form in which a secondary reality is perceived to underlie
the historical process.

There are, to be sure, some difficulties attending
the study of magic-realist narrative. The term itself is
highly ambiguous, and has been used, sometimes indis-
criminately, to encompass a number of quite distinct
approaches. And as long as it remains ambiguous, there
will be different attempts to define it and multiple
diatribes arguing its demise or its survival. In its
various dimensions, it is a movement of far-reaching con-
sequences. Aesthetically speaking, it requires the juxta-
position of complex forms cf metaphorical language and a
stylistic complexity that occasionally deserves the
epithet of baroque. As a prose narrative, it often com-
bines in-depth character studies with a thorough knowledge

of religious and philosophical movements. And, lastly,

124

it combines more than one dimension of reality--the
possible "ought-to-be" of the poet, to paraphrase Aris-
totle, with the "has been" of the scientific historian.
For the purposes of this study, I shall maintain,
as the most appropriate and general definition, the one
given by Luis Leal. As a more specific definition which
has especial importance for the development of Latin
American letters, that given by Alejo Carpentier in

Tientos y diferencias (also to be found in the prologue

 

to El reino de este mundo) also deserves to be noted:

 

Muchos se olvidan, con disfrazarse de magos a
poco costo, que lo maravilloso comienza a serlo de
manera inequivoca cuando surge de una inesperada
alteracion de la realidad (e1 milagro), de una revel-
acion privilegiada de la realidad, de una iluminacion
inhabitual o singularmente favorecedora de las
inadvertidas riquezas de la realidad, de una ampliacién
de las escalas y categorias de la realidad, percibidas
con particular intensidad en virtud de una exaltacién
del espiritu que lo conduce a un modo de “estado
limite." Para em ezar, la sensacién de lo maravilloso
presupone una fe.

Magic and fantasy have always been associated with
the art of narrative fiction. They are to be found, time
and again, as illustrative of the human dream "come true."
But whereas the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries clearly
differentiated the realm of myth and magic from that of
history and social reality, the magic-realist narrative of
Latin America provides a new perspective through the fusion

of dream world and real world, a perspective which sheds

 

1Alejo Carpentier, El reino_de este mundo (Santiago,
Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1967), prologo, p. 12.

 

125

light upon the essence of man at this historical cross-
roads. Miguel Angel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos
Fuentes and Manuel Mujica Lainez are all writers of magic-
realist fiction. They have, without exception, evinced
an interest in the human psyche as it is shaped by his-
torical happenings. But, having made a thorough investi-
gation of the historical and psychological features of
their characters, they have concluded that the evolution
of western (and Latin-American) man cannot be grasped
without envisaging the world of pagan cosmogony and
religious idolatry which preceded it. These writers have,
consequently, shown varying degrees of interest in the
esoteric sciences. They are well read in eastern philos-
ophers and ponder the concept of transmutation or trans-
migration of the human soul and form, as they search for
that aspect of nature which can lead to a deeper knowledge
of the self and of human destiny.

The numerous references to the esoteric sciences,
and the allusion to an occult dimension of nature, form a

constant in all so-called magic-realist narrative. And

 

it is this dimension which is characteristically found in
Manuel Mujica Lainez' major work, Bomarzo. As a result,
one of the objectives of this chapter will be to assess
the author's intention in bringing this hermetic dimension

into a narrative that might, in all other respects, be

126

classified within the conventional genre of historical
fiction.

Bomarzo, Mujica Lainez' lengthiest novel to date,
was published in 1962. Set in sixteenth-century Italy,
it is a rare compendium of political trends, social con-
flicts and cultural life at the height of the Renaissance.
If any work should put Luis Leal's and Alejo Carpentier's
definitions of the term magic-realism to the test, it
would be this highly complex novel, in which the archeolog-
ical reconstruction of a historical era is further compli-
cated by the author's interest in the esoteric sciences.
Bomarzo describes a chaotic age that was not unlike ours,
and is indeed a pivotal point in the development of western
thought. It portrays man at a historical crossroads
where the roads to the past and to the future were still
open, and the development of the modern scientific age
was not a foregone conclusion. The sacred, the profane,
and the demonic were still competing for man's soul.
Bomarzo shows demons answering the call of the believers,
while unbelievers occupy the very throne of St. Peter. We
are witness to the discoveries of science in the alchem-
ist's den. We are confronted with man's spiritual malaise
as he desperately seeks for meaning in the esoteric
sciences. Bomarzo is, indeed, an example of the many

possibilities of magic-realism, fulfilling and absorbing

 

in its attitude towards reality.

127

Bomarzo begins on the plane of historical fiction,
but ultimately moves to the plane of magic-realism. Per-
haps no better illustration of this transition could be
found than the reflections which Mujica Lainez puts into
the mouth of his protagonist, the Duke of Bomarzo.

Musing about a particularly heroic exploit of his own

age, he compares it to the mythical time of the knights

of Charlemagne, and then expresses his belief in an under-
lying "marvellous" reality. In doing so, he employs
terminology which parallels closely Alejo Carpentier's
definition of magic-realism. He says:

Y lo mismo que el Orlando es un adios nostalgico
‘ a la edad en que la realidad y la fantasia eran

inseparables porque formaban una esencia finica,
sucesos minfisculos y maravillosos como el que motiva
estas reflexiones, al desarrollarse repentinamente y
encender de magica claridad reverberante la atmésfera
cotidiana del mercado prosaico del mundo, simbolizaban
también, con sus filtimos brotes esporédicos, la
despedida desconcertada de una época en la que lo
real y lo fantastico empezaban a clasificarse en
distintos ficheros para siempre, a una época en que
la generoia ilusion hizo flamear los estandartes
poéticos.

The Historical Vision in
Bomarzo

 

Historically speaking, much happens in the age
depicted by Bomarzo. The action of the plot commences
in Italy in the year 1512, shortly after two warring

families, the Orsinis and the Colonnas (whose fates

 

1Manuel Mujica Lainez, Bomarzo (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1968), Chapter VII, p. 409.

128

intertwine throughout the novel) participate in the sign-

ing of a Pax Romana designed to bring tranquillity to the

 

troubled politics of the Italian city-states. In the
larger European realm, the Spanish king Charles becomes
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1519. We know, of
course, that he shortly became embroiled in the bitter
religious disputes of the Protestant Reformation. In
Bomarzo, however, that struggle for the soul of Europe
occurs virtually off-stage. Whereas our historical hind-
sight tends to emphasize the religious conflicts which
afflicted the sixteenth century, the concerns of Bomarzo
and his Italian contemporaries dwell more on two other
dimensions, namely the secular and the demonic. Thus, the
novel portrays the gradual diminution of Charles's power as
a result of purely political conflicts and maneuvers. On
the Italian front, the rise of two dynasties, the Borgias
and the Medicis, to the papacy, also assumes a purely
secular dimension which is reflected in the increasing
corruption of church officials. And, while we tend to
look back to the sixteenth century as a golden age of
culture seldom surpassed in its creativity, Mujica Lainez
does not let us forget the shabby contrast provided by the
disunity and corruption in the political and religious
realms. He shows how government positions were often
bought or acquired at the price of human atrocity and

depravity. It is a fitting punishment for this state of

129

disunity that the Western Christian world became a natural
prey to the attacks of the Turkish Sultan. Once again,

as during the crusades half a millenium earlier, Christians
and Moslems confront each other in battle, culminating in
1571 at the great naval engagement of Lepanto. The pro-
tagonist of Bomarzo relives the military strategy and
ordeals of the naval battle in what is one of the most
exciting narrative sequences of the novel. But the battle
also represents one of the last aspects of historical time
depicted in the novel. The political conquests and achieve-
ments have failed to satisfy Bomarzo, and we are left with
an aged, unfulfilled protagonist still pursuing his dream
of immortality. But now he turns from the secular world
and opens his soul to Paracelsus, the alchemist, to Sandro
Benedetto, the astrologer, and to Silvio de Narni, the
demonologist. Turning all his attentions to the quest

for immortality, Orsini seeks to discover the meaning of
human life by a different path.

From Pope Julius II to Pius V; from the Borgias
through the two branches of the Medicis, the legitimate
and the illegitimate; from defeat to victory, Mujica
Lainez vividly reconstructs this historical era and endows
it with a life that only the pageantry of fictional prose
can add to the dry record of historically verifiable
truth. But Mujica Lainez believes that the real meaning

of these external events--of all the sufferings,

130

injustices, wars and other assorted evils--lies not on

the political surface, nor yet in the religious self-
understanding of the people of the time, but rather in

the exposition of the deeper irrational forces of the
human psyche. He carries historical description to its
limits in order to show that historical verisimilitude is
not finally decisive for the design of the novel. History
sets the stage for the protagonist, a realistically devel-
oped character whose search through the elemental world

of the esoteric sciences grows naturally out of his com-
mitment to the Renaissance world view.

Pier Francesco Orsini, Duke of Bomarzo, the main
protagonist-observer and autobiographer of the novel, pro-
vides a strong character study of an archetypical figure
of the Renaissance. His strength derives from the careful
preparation of the reader with a psychologically realistic
portrait of the man. Pier Francesco's account of his life
must be credible if the novel is successfully to portray
the era for the reader. For this reason, it is important
to describe the techniques by which the author relates the
development of his protagonist on both the historical and
the fictional levels of the story. These techniques, in
brief, fall into two categories. The first includes the
various devices developed since the time of Walter Scott
for the realistic depiction of a historical era. The

second involves applying the insights of twentieth-century

131

psychoanalysis in order to render a psychologically com-
pelling portrait of an individual life.

Walter Scott chose historically unknown protag-
onists as observers of history. This device lent his-
torical objectivity to his portrayals, while the fictional
element added not only a degree of personal interest to
the account, but permitted a free interaction between his
heroes and other characters from all levels of society.

Manuel Mujica Lainez' fictional character has been
developed along similar lines. Although a historical
"unknown,” Pier Francesco is high-born, and therefore close
to the political factions he is about to observe. As a
fictional character, he can interact with representatives
of diverse social and cultural strata, bringing renewed
interest to familiar historical events. However, Walter
Scott's heroes, removed from our time by more than a
century of narrative and literary development, do not enter
into that world of elemental essences—-of the irrational,
which forms the subject of contemporary magic-realist
narrative--of which Bomarzo is an example.y The Scottian
hero projects what is observable and verifiable, or at
least probable, but only very seldom does he glimpse past
the world of social convention and political history and
into the realm of underlying essences.

Conceived as a historical as well as a psycho-

logical being, Pier Francesco Orsini is not merely an

132

observer of historical data. He is given added credibility
by becoming part of the external world of the Renaissance,
observing and re-enacting the power moves of corrupt or
ambitious individuals within state and church. From this
world of the external event, the protagonist gradually
moves to the more elusive world of essences. He recon-
structs the puzzle of Renaissance history within the
narrative so that he becomes inescapably historical, but
once he has conquered his place as a historical arche-
type (by developing along the 1ines of the Machiavellian
Renaissance courtier) within the narrative, he moves into
the unfamiliar, speculative world of hermetism, a world
which historians so far have not included in standard
descriptions of the age.

We know, of course, that the hermetical world of
magic and early science was full of meaning for the men of
the Renaissance. The fact that our histories tend to
treat it as an aberration indicates nothing so much as
the encapsulation of the modern world within a purely
materialist perspective. It indicates that we have become
alienated from part of our own elemental nature. And by
re—emphasizing the magical side of Renaissance man in his
portrayal of Bomarzo, Mujica Lainez has utilized a
fictional medium to correct the one-sided portrayal not

only of Renaissance man, but of modern man as well, so

133

many of whose aspirations are rooted in the period of the
Renaissance.

The focus of interest of this novel, then, is the
first person protagonist, Pier Francesco Orsini, Duke of
Bomarzo. He is credible to us because he has been devel-
oped with the psychological realism which twentieth-
century literature demands. The author accomplishes this
through two techniques: first, as already indicated, by
choosing a relatively unknown aristocrat of the Italian
Renaissance who can both observe and participate in the
important events of his age without overshadowing or
diminishing the greatness of the era he represents;
secondly, and more importantly, by the use of a Freudian
approach to develop the protagonist as realistically as
possible, with his various complexes, sexual drives and
sublimations. '

The link between the conventional world of history
and social reality, on the one hand, and the mysterious
world of elemental essences explored by magicérealism,
on the other, is provided by the insights of psycho-
analysis. Man, in Bomarzo, is first of all historical
man. But in his desire to free himself from the chains
of time, that is, in his search for immortality, he is,
in the world of Norman 0. Brown,

. . . the discontented animal, unconsciously seeking
the life proper to his species, [man] in history:

repression transforms the timeless instinctual com-
pulsion to repeat into the forward moving dialectic

134

of neurosis which is history; history is a forward-
moving recherche du temps perdu, with the repetition-
compulsion guaranteeing the historical law of the

slow return of the repressed. And conversely, life
not repressed--organic life below man and human life
if repression were overcome--is not in historical
time. If we connect--as Freud did not--the repetition-
compulsion with Freud's reiterated theorem that the
instinctual processes in the id are timeless, then
only repressed life is in time, and unrepressed life
would be timeless or in eternity. Thus again, psycho—
analysis carried to its logical conclusion and trans-
formed into a theory of history, gathers to itself
ageless religious aspirations. The Sabbath of
Eternity, that time when time no more shall be, is an
image of that state which is the ultimatelgoal of the
repetition-compulsion of the timeless id.

 

 

Pier Francesco Orsini, the lame hunchback of
Bomarzo, sees the light of day on the 6th of March, 1512.
His horoscope destines him to immortality; his father,
proud and passionate, unfeeling for his son's physical
imperfections, though these are true reminders of his own
bestial nature, wishes his death. Such is the intensity
of the father's hatred that, in what is to become one of
the traumatic pivotal points in the protagonist's life, he
imprisons his eleven-year-old son, whom he hopes to render
insane, in a secret wall of the castle with only a
grotesque skeleton for company. The experience does not
lead the protagonist to insanity; however, it does pave
the road for the atrocities which Pier Francesco commits
as he becomes the future duke of Bomarzo. The young boy's

first contact with the terror of death remains a recurring

 

1Norman 0. Brown, Life Against Death (Middletown:
Wesleyan U. Press, 1972), p. 93.

135

nightmare throughout his life. It is the linking image
upon which hinge both the psychological frustrations of
the protagonist's life, as well as the ensuing sublimation
of his search for immortality.

The unkindness and sadism of Pier Francesco's
brothers, Girolamo and Maerbale, ends in their own death,
and even the protagonist's hateful father as well as his
loving grandmother die (perhaps indirectly, we are led to
believe) through the actions of the thwarted Pier Fran-
cesco. The traumas of the youth become the frustrations
of the adult. In suggestive language we are informed of
Pier Francesco's sexual ambiguity. He pursues pleasure
with both sexes. However, he is impotent in his initiation
by the prostitute Pantasilea, an act which becomes a
painful reminder of his "potential" impotence in his later
life. We are led to believe that his love for young
and beautiful men is but the result of a search for the
loving father-son relationship he never had. We detect
another sign of his inferiority complex when we observe
his impotence towards his virginal wife, a symbol of the
untainted, the pure, the "normal.” Pier Francesco's
marriage to Julia Farnese is not consummated until she
is cunningly corrupted by being encouraged to commit
adultery. Throughout, Manuel Mujica Lainez uses the
twentieth-century perspective in his psychological deline-

ation of Pier Francesco's impotence:

136

Un médico, un psicoanalista actual . . . podria
explicar qué era lo que me pasaba, . . . que’redecillas
habian puesto en marcha e1 mecanismo de mi inhibicién
frente a Julia . . . . Solo subrayaré para el lector
escéptico la circunstancia de que mis triunfos se
lograran sobre gente de categoria subalterna.

But proclivities of a sexual nature are never
ostentatiously displayed in the work. They are one of the

leitmotifs to the understandingof the young protagonist.

 

Once we are convinced that he has come face to face with
the traumas of his youth, we are brought to the final
stages of the book, which deal primarily with a reassertion
of the self. The protagonist has developed spiritually

to the point of condemning all previous acts of violence:

gSabemos por qué matamos? {Lo sé yo, lo sabe
Lorenzino? aPodemos asegurar que entendemos algo de
alguien, cuando atravesamos las capas obvias de la
superficie y nos adentramos en lo mas profundo? Nos
entendemos a nosotros mismos? Tantos elementos
sutiles, delicados, ignotos, juegan cuando cumplimos
cada accion--la de matar a un hombre o la de amar a
otro--que en verdad para comprender cualquier senti-
miento y cualquier actitud, afin las aparentemente mas
simples, deberiamos dedicar nuestra vida entera a
desmontar, pieza a pieza, el misterio de las razones
acumuladas, entreveradas y afin asi probablemente se
nos hurtaria lo principal.

Knowledge of the self comes at the same time as
Pier Francesco progresses from the external world of power
politics to the internal world of the spirit. The pro-
tagonist reaches a stage in life when he begins to yearn

for immortality, and in this quest he seeks to unlock the

 

1Mujica Lainez, Bomarzo, Chapter VII, p. 397.

21bid., p. 466.

137

secrets of nature. This stage in the book is the one

most readily identified with magic-realism. If we look

 

at the development of the protagonist, we see that he has
been traced on two levels, corresponding, respectively, to
the historical or external framework of the novel, and to
the internal, mythical, magical or fantastic world of
infrahistory or psychohistory. To enter the second level,
we must be led through the first.

Thus, the protagonist, through whom we have been
given a bird's-eye view of the Renaissance, is first
introduced as a historical being; he is shown as a victim
whose circumstances are closely linked to the state of
his birth and position in society; and as a psychological
being of depth, whose awareness and introspection leads
him beyond the deceitful external world of appearances to
a world of essences, a world where life revolves not around
externals or particulars, but around universal human
dilemmas and eternal life choices. He is then to discover,
as the alchemists believed and as the magic-realist
writers perceive, that the universe "posee un alma que
es menester despertar y una realidad que es necesario
perseguir."1

The protagonist's perception of the world which

surrounds him, once he has come face to face with the

 

lNelly Martinez, ”Realismo magico y lo fantastico
en la ficcion hispanoamericana contemporénea," in Yates,
op. cit., p.

138

traumas of his youth, discloses a fantastic universe which
lies within the reach of man, but to which man has lost
admittance. The key to this universe is lodged, iron-
ically enough, within the novel, in the rediscovery of

the rose-crowned skeleton, once the source of terror to
the young boy, now a symbolic messenger of the after-life
in the scheme of the novel.

The encounter with the skeleton is a poetic trick
of sorts, by which the author proclaims the duality or
ambiguity of everything which we conventionally regard as
possessing some fixed, unchangeable essence. Thus the
skeleton, generally conceived solely as a symbol of death,
becomes, ironically enough, also a messenger of life to
Orsini, a symbol of hope and immortality as well as of
deceit and suffering. The eleven-year-old child's experi-
ence is still present in the new dimension, for the grown
man still finds the image of death repulsive: "de él
emanaba un invisible vaho maligno . . . que envenenaba e1
calabozo."1 But this image is quickly overpowered by the
promise of eternal life, for the skeleton is that of the
fourteenth-century alchemist Dastyn, and within this now

frail image of death lies the formula for the elixir vitae,

 

the potion which will ensure the protagonist's immortality.

At this point ends the protagonist's life of "external”

 

1Mujica Lainez, Bomarzo, p. 497.

139

accident. He seems to conquer the nightmarish vision of
death, and a new reality takes over:

Yo, Pier Francesco Orsini, santifiqué e1
esqueleto que, de instrumento de pavor, usado con el
fin de torturarme y vejarme, se habia transformado
para mi en una alegoria de la vida eterna.

As Orsini spurns the political scene of his time
in favor of the permanence offered him by the occult,
the subject matter becomes more speculative. We begin
to move in the realm of fantasy, magic and religious
mysticism.

The Magic-Realist Vision in

§omarzo: The Esoteric
Sciences

 

 

In Bomarzo, Manuel Mujica Lainez projects certain
facets of Renaissance life through the extensive use of
historical data, and through numerous references to the
plastic arts and literature of the period. The novel
traces the literary and aesthetic currents of the age as
well as recalling important controversies regarding
issues of a philosophic, religious or political dimension.
But the main focus of the novel (given its subject matter,
namely the life and goals of the protagonist, Pier
Francesco) is placed not so much on the rational world--
of which the plastic arts, literature, and politics stand

as witnesses--as on the irrational world of astrology,

 

lIbid., pp. 500-501.

140

demonology, and alchemy: that is, the world of the esoteric
sciences.

Particularly noteworthy is the author's employment
of the esoteric sciences in his attempt at an archeological
reconstruction of a period marked both by great political
turmoil and by outstanding artistic and scientific

exploits. If scientia arbor vitae--if science is to

 

unfold the secrets of the tree of life-~then it is science
at its highest level, the pursuit of truth and beauty,
which is the predominant goal of the main protagonist,
Pier Francesco Orsini. But his quest, although almost
indefinitely postponed by the protagonist in favor of an
immersion in the affairs of state which form the other
focus of the era in which Orsini lived, is as important

to the novel's theme as are the various psychological and
historical details which crowd the narrative.

What decidedly sets the tone of the novel's magic-
realist dimension is the location of much of the plot:
Bomarzo and its environs; the castle of the Orsinis and
its garden of monstrous allegory, built upon the ruins of
what once must have been one of the prime centers of the
mysterious Etruscan civilization. It is a proper milieu
for the introduction of the occult:

Mas que en ninguna parte, mas afin que en los

sepulcros subterraneos, se sentia uno alli cerca de
la tierra y de su secreto . . . . Todo so volvia,
en esa zona hurana, mucho mas antiguo, como si el

tiempo no hubiera conseguido desalojar de ella a los
moradores que la poseian desde antes de la conquista

141

Etrusca, y que habian refugiado en su dédalo salvaje

a los dioses primeros, los dioses que gobernaban a la

region antes de que Charfin, Tuchulcha y los otros

>demonios mitad hombres y mitad bestias irrumpieran

en los ffinebres banquetes.
In such a surrounding, serving more the call of the pre-
historical than the historical, the preternatural rather
than the natural, we are further removed from the world of
actuality and of physical realism to plunge again and
again into the cataclysmic world of the unknown. It is
this world which history has continually veiled, a realm
of obscure, half-apprehended essences, which the pursuit
of demonology and alchemy seeks to disclose. It is,
paradoxically enough, this world of the occult to which
we are led by the historical fiction of Manuel Mujica
Lainez. He demonstrates that historical reconstruction of
an era, if conducted with sufficient care, leads to unre-
solved dilemmas of human nature and ambition. It is the
fate of history, of that which is verifiable, to lead to
prehistory and eternity, to that which is scientifically
unverified but perhaps possible.

If he concentrates on verifiable data, the

Renaissance historian is rather limited in his recon-
struction of the era. One might add that historians

generally place too much emphasis on the political scene

and too little on the spiritual meaning of historical

 

1Ibid., Chapter IX, "La desgraciada guerra,"

p. 556.

142

events. What ultimately remains from such a reconstruction
is a rather dry account of power struggles in Renaissance
Italy, an account which ignores the underlying principles
or objectives that caused men to act as they did during
this turbulent era. If the political historian's view is
limited, literature and the plastic arts stand again as
monuments to the cultural heights attained in this

hitherto unsurpassed century in which modern Western civil-
ization was born. But artistic achievement is the final
proof of the contact which some highly motivated great
mind made with the surrounding world. The work of art
stands at the end of a chain of events, and that chain
must be traced back to its origin.

The historian cannot indulge in random speculation
as he contemplates the final products of the period he is
investigating, its wars, its cultural monuments, its
philosophical distillations. The novelist, on the other
hand, can blend fact and fiction to rebuild the (possible)
chain of events and thereby to enlighten the reader as to
the prime mover or drive experienced by historical actor
and artist. The psychological or philosophical frame of
mind which might have existed at the roots of the creative
impulse can be revealed. On the other hand, the histor-
ian's need to be faithful to fact results, perforce, in
an incomplete vision of an era. Furthermore, as a modern

"man of science," the historian would feel reticence in

143

dealing with a symbolism that attests to the existence of

the irrational. This prejudice on the part of the scien-

tist against probing the realm of the sacred, the mythical
or the mystical, is part of the objectivism of most scien-
tific approaches of the twentieth century, not least that

of the realistic historian.

But in sixteenth-century Italy, scientific thought
itself was still linked to a divine dimension of nature.
The Pythagorean union of mathematical rationalism and
religious mysticism had not yet been sundered. Therefore,
a search for the truth about the sixteenth century would
entail a consideration of sacred elements, or a search for
the hidden "mystical" qualities which that era sought in
the elements composing nature. It is small wonder that, in
an age when the Church lacked strong spiritual leadership,
people would--as they also do in our day and age--try to
find answers to life's enigmas through hermeneutics.
Religious corruption as it existed in the Renaissance was
largely responsible for the formation of new orders and
movements, including those initiated by Erasmus and Luther.
As in our own age, skepticism heightened man's search for
some sustaining sacred principle which would unlock the
riddle of history and mortality. In our age, a man might
be motivated by this spiritual quest to seek the key to
the meaning of human life in the esoteric Marxist science

of history. In the sixteenth century, explanations were

144

sought from the esoteric domain of alchemy, demonology,
and astrology. We see in Bomarzo how Renaissance man,
alienated from traditional religious beliefs, looked for
answers pertaining to the cosmos and the spirit behind
the cosmos, and he sought these in latitudes beyond the
Greco-Roman or the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

The limited understanding provided by conventional
historiography opens the possibility that historical
fiction can supply a more complete, if perhaps less pre-
cise, reconstruction of an era. In an age of specialized
disciplines, others besides novelists have felt the limi-.
tations of a totally rationalistic approach, and have begun
to resurrect studies incorporating the "irrational." Thus,
modern psychology as well as literature seek to study both
the individual and the collective unconscious. Recently,
too, historians of science have begun to realize the need
to include "hermetism" in an approach to a self-
understanding of the origins of western history and its
distinctive ideas and preoccupations.

In literature, this concern for the irrational
element is essential to the study and understanding of
human behavior, and magic-realist narrative affirms both
the irrational and the occult as fundamental facets of the
real world. This is not so in the world of historiography

at the present time. However, Mircea Eliade affirms that

145

no less important and significant for the broadening
of the western historiographical consciousness are
some recent works on Hermetism and its relations with
Renaissance science, art and philosophy. We may quote
as an example the superb monograph of Frances Yates,
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago,
I965); it brilliantly illustrates the progress realized
in the last years in understanding a world of meaning
which was neglected, or despised, by the Renaissance
historiography of the previous generation. The
importance of the Hermetic "univers imaginaire" in the
victory of Copernican heliocentriSm and in the devel-
opment of Italian Renaissance philosophy is overwhelm-
ing.

 

 

Eliade expresses the hope that such studies, which opened
new vistas to the understanding of the origins of western
ciVilization, would be extended as well into the world of

2 In

meaning hidden in the writings of the alchemists.
subsequent years, a veritable revolution in the study of
the origins of science laid bare, among other things, the
Pythagorean background of Galileo's physics, the occult
world of witchcraft and astrology which impinged on the
life and astronomical revolution of Kepler, the theological
concerns which dominated nine-tenths of the writings

(many unpublished) of Isaac Newton and which he sought to
underpin by presenting a new vision of natural order, and

the reflections on transmigration of souls which lay at

the root of Benjamin Franklin's first formulation of the

 

1Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: The
Origins and Structure of Alchemy (New York: Harper Torch-
books, 1971), pp. 198-99. Quotation taken from the post-
script, "Metallurgy and Alchemy as Religious Phenomena."

 

2Ibid., p. 199.

146

l A spiritual dimension

principle of conservation of matter.
at the very heart of the scientific enterprise, which was
intuited by the writers of magic-realism, was brilliantly
confirmed in subsequent empirical studies.

Seen in this light, the originality of Bomarzo is
not limited solely to the portrayal of an interesting
protagonist, or to the complexities of plot, nor yet to
the archeological reconstruction of an entire era, but
resides rather in a combination of all three of these
factors and in their utilization to uncover such a
"univers imaginaire" at the heart of Renaissance life and
thought--an essence hitherto disregarded or unperceived
by scientists and historians alike.

Much if not all of the magic-realist narrative
of the last two decades in Latin America deals with some
form or other of hermeneutics, the study of the occult as
a primary category of modern man's consciousness. In
this respect, the themes of Bomarzo echo the perceptions
which writers such as Asturias and Carpentier have derived
from works devoted to Mayan or Afro-Caribbean cosmogonies.

Both Asturias and Carpentier have demonstrated
man's belief in the existence of a dualistic tendency in

nature, encompassing both good and evil. In Asturias'

 

1Among the pathbreaking works in which these rela-
tionships were established are Thomas Kuhn's The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, Arthur Koestler's The Sleep-
walkers and The Act of Creation, and Lewis Feuer's The
Scientific Intellectual. '___

 

 

 

147

work Hombres de maiz, man is forced to wander from human

 

to animal form in an endless dialectic of good and evil.
He seeks control of his destiny by appealing to equally
serviceable evil as well as good idols. Everything is
possible within Mayan cosmogony, for man never ceases to
exist. He is merely transmuted into one of the many forms
which exist in nature, a nature which is sacred and alive
with the myths of his ancestors. Similar spiritual trans-
mutations occur in Carpentier's Haitian saga, El reino

de este mundo. In it, the resurrection of Mackandal

 

serves as a foil to a dialectic of good and evil in which
the forces of nature acquiesce to the worshippers of
voodoo. This work, along with Graham Greene's The
Comedians, leads to the exposure of voodooism as one of
the fascinating enigmas of modern time: black magic, and
the belief in man's ability to control nature through the
worship of evil, emerges as a new spiritual dimension.
Manuel Mujica Lainez also examines that which is
termed "evil"--both in actions on the stage of profane
history and through an examination of the esoteric
sciences--in order to make the reader conscious of certain
questions regarding the symbolism of evil as perceived by
Renaissance man. Questions regarding the nature of evil
are first expressed through the development of the
Machiavellian protagonist, Pier Francesco Orsini. Accord-

ing to the author, Pier Francesco has all the potential

148

to lead what we would call a good and honorable existence.
He is capable of love--so we have been told--and he would
have deeply loved and respected both his brothers, Giro-
lamo and Maerbale; he worshipped his father who responded
by seeking to have him killed. In essence, he has all
the potential of a sensitive, artistic poet and philosopher,
and the inquisitive mind of the scientist. However, his
tragic flaw is symbolized in his physical flaw: he is
both hunchbacked and lame. To add insult to irony, he
lives at the height of the artistic fervor of the
Renaissance, an age which glorified man's form as the
center of the universe, whose masters--many of whom,
including Cellini, Machelangelo, Titian, Lotto, step from
the pages of the novel--expressed its beauty in immortal
works of art. Pier Francesco's artistic temperament is
imprisoned in what he believes to be a vile and ignoble
fortress, and the paradox of his love of perfection and
beauty and his lack thereof becomes the basis of a
psychological instability, and the source of the anguish,
remorse and hatred which afflict him throughout his life.
Since he is thwarted in his search for love and beauty,
since he is despised by those who surround him, all his
artistic creativity is turned to fuel for the acquisition,
first, of power, and second, of an immortality which will

outlive his more fortunate contemporaries.

149

This sensitivity on the part of the protagonist
is also basic to understanding his interest in the occult.
At the root of Pier Francesco's quest for love and power,
at whatever cost of human life, lies his experience with
a callous and indifferent society. Because of its callous-
ness, his innate potential for positive action is turned
to evil action. It is revenge and revolt, coupled with
an inner desire to attain a fulfillment denied by society,
which impels him to his various crimes. To the degree
that his love is stunted, he becomes hateful and destruc-
tive to those around him and, perhaps, also to himself.
Evil, rather than being merely the absence of
good, corresponds to potential human goodness which has
been thwarted and discouraged in its contact with the
material world. It is to this conception of the roots of
evil that the author alludes by quoting from Machiavelli's

Song of the Hermits, a passage which might function as a

 

leitmotif of the ethical theory contained in the book:

 

"He who truly sees the devil, does not see him as horny or

as black."1

Pier Francesco's search for "evil" stems from
an effort to control the destiny of those surrounding him

as well as his own. Having been taught the power of evil

by his peers, he proceeds to immerse himself in a study

of the occult in order to emerge, at long last, powerful

 

1Mujica Lainez, Bomarzo, Chapter V ("El duque de
los gatos"), p. 317. Translated from the Spanish.

150

in his knowledge, confident in his ability to tame,
through evil, the forces of nature. He thereby hopes to
gain acceptance in a world which had previously rejected
him.

Judaeo-Christian tradition denies to man the power
to prolong his earthly existence indefinitely. Pier
Francesco therefore directs his search for immortality
by appealing to the powers of the occult. He pursues
his quest through three avenues, astrology, demonology,
and finally, alchemy. Quite probably, for reasons having
to do with his life and traumas, Orsini's exploration of
the occult is more intense than it was for the generality
of Renaissance men. This dimension enters at the very
inception of his life, as Mujica Lainez indicates his
intention of fusing fact and fiction, magic and historical
verisimilitude:

Sandro Benedetto, fisico y astrologo de mi
pariente, el ilustre Nicolas Orsini, condottiero a
quien, después de su muerte, compararon con los héroes
de la Iliada trazo mi horoscopo el 6 de marzo de
1512 . . . .1

The horoscope, with its deceptive or ambiguous message,
foreshadows the ultimate destruction of the protagonist
even as it sets the ominous tone of the narrative:
. . . cuando yo naci, Sandro Benedetto sefialo
importantes contradicciones en la cartografia de mi
existencia. Es cierto que el Sol en signo de agua,

reforzado con mi buen aspecto ante la Luna, me con-
feria poderes ocultos y la vision del mas a116, con

 

1Ibid., Chapter I ("El Horoscopo"), p. 9.

151

vocacién para la Astrologia y la Metafisica. Es

cierto que Marte, regente primitivo, y Venus, ocasional,
de la casa VIII, la de la Muerte, estaban instalados,

de acuerdo con lo que Benedetto subrayé insistentemente,
en la Casa de la Vida y anulados para la muerte y que
en buen aspecto con el Sol y la Luna, parecian
otorgarme una vida ilimitada . . . . Y que Venus . . .
indicaba facilidad para las invenciones artisticas
sutiles. Pero también es tremendamente cierto que

el maléfico Saturno, agresivamente ubicido, me
presagiaba desgracias infinitas . . . .

The protagonist places his faith in his horoscope
just as did his pagan ancestors. This provides the link
between the pagan or profane and the sacred elements which
are fused in Bomarzo. As an opening paragraph, it sets
the tone for the rest of the novel, defining and presaging
Pier Francesco's worldly ambitions and his subsequent
quest for immortality. Ultimately, it is this mistaken
notion of the power of the occult which leads the pro-
tagonist to self-destruction.

If the horoscope is his first intimation of the
occult, the next encounter with the esoteric involves
demonology. Devil-worship belongs again to the realm of
pagan and pre-Christian substrata which survived through-
out the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In Bomarzo, Pier
Francesco relies on the power of the demonologist Silvio
de Narni to attain the love of his first wife, Julia
Farnese. However much he witnesses the rites of his com-

panion Silvio, he nevertheless cannot shake his skepticism

as to their efficacy. He can never concede that Julia

 

lIbid., pp. 9-10.

152

becomes truly his wife as a result of Silvio's pact with
the Devil, and neither is he totally convinced that his
father and brothers perish, indirectly perhaps, as his
servant Silvio invokes the demons Amon, Saracil, Sathiel
and Jana.

Demonology adds a certain flavor of the profane as
a counterpoint to the strongly moralistic historical
account of the era. It is a subterfuge the author employs
as a stepping-stone to depict his protagonist's last and
most important encounter with the esoteric sciences in
the novel: his study of alchemy, the close relative of
modern chemistry.

The alchemist we are brought face to face with in
Bomarzo is none other than Paracelsus. Paracelsus is
introduced as a sorcerer rather than as a man of science;
"En medio de los vapores amarillentos, su cara livida
asomaba, como la de un brujo."1 His character, ambiguous
function and philosophy of science is traced according
to the attitudes put forth by Eliade in his studies on
hermetism. But here we are faced with a man of legend
rather than a man of science. He contributes an element
of magic to the already fantastic tone of the narrative.
The historical Paracelsus, however, is still much shrouded

in doubt. In the history of modern medicine, he is the

 

lIbid-a Chapter VI ("El retrato de Lorenzo Lotto"),

p. 331.

153

rebel surgeon whose contribution to the treatment of dis-
eases such as gout, kidney malfunction and syphillis was
of unparalleled importance in the Renaissance. He is
remembered "for introducing chemicals as medicine, for
putting alchemy to work in healing . . . . His greatest
contribution was his endless asking of bold questions and
reaching for their answers. By his courage he made it
possible to sweep aside the curtain, drawn for a thousand
years, on all that was stagnant and stifling in the
ancient teaching about health and disease."1

Paracelsus is symbolic of the rational world of
scientific discovery and the irrational world sought out
through the esoteric sciences. As a historical character
in Bomarzo, he shares with the protagonist of the novel
an interest in the attainment of immortality. To some of
his peers, Paracelsus is a worthy follower of Hippocrates;
to others, he is but a quack and devil worshipper. He is
introduced as the leading influence in the second half of
Bomarzo, although one is much aware of his presence
throughout the book. We are first introduced to him
through hearing divergent opinions as to his character,
voiced by travelers at a roadside inn between Bomarzo and
Venice. He is the subject of a contrapuntal argument in

which both followers and enemies enumerate or question

 

lSarah R. Riedman, Masterstof the Scalpel (New
York: Rand McNally, 1964), pp. 44-5.

 

154

Paracelsus' knowledge and magic powers. To some he repre-
sents evil; to others, good, or the mastery of nature.
He is immersed in controversy as the argument draws again
upon the ambiguous nature of what is termed "evil." For,
if he uses evil means indiscriminately, he is responsible
for the well-being of many. What pragmatism must be
involved in the trials of the man who accepts the validity
of witches' brews if they serve the cause of science.
But such is the state of scientific research in sixteenth-
century Europe; and Paracelsus, as controversial a figure
as he must have been and as this fictional representation
suggests, ranked with Galileo and Celsus as one of those
”freaks" of nature who laid the foundations of modern
science.

This fitting contrapuntal argument (pp. 313-320)
does not clarify the ambiguous historical image we have
of Paracelsus. However, Pier Francesco, who had pre-
viously looked askance at the practices of his demon-
ologist servant, is no longer a skeptic in the presence of
Paracelsus, placing his confidence in the ”man of science."
Alchemy, unlike demonology, could bring immortality to
the protagonist and Paracelsus leads the way, in the
fictitious world of Bomarzo, to the uncovering of the
magic potion which will assure eternal life.

The dimension of the alchemist in search of the

philosopher's stone and the elixir of life brings Bomarzo

155

to the doors of magic-realism. This vision involves the
novelist's perception of hidden essences, of a complex and
multiple reality, rich in texture, unfolding through the
world of outer appearances an inner world of unperceived
reality.

Pier Francesco does not believe in the God of Old
or New Testament (nor, for that matter, does modern man,
heir to the Renaissance, have a deep religious commitment).
He is a pagan who relates to the Etruscan spirits of the
region of Bomarzo. His paganism is historically credible,
because it takes place against the background of the com-
monly known corruption which permeated the church hier-
archy during the Renaissance. But his cynicism is
directed solely at establishment ideology, and does not
preclude a belief in the existence of a divine dimension
in nature which can be the object of an intense faith.

He turns to the work of Dastyn and Paracelsus because he
believes that the two alchemists are closer to discovering
and taming the powerful forces guiding human destiny than
are the obsequious but shallow popes of the Renaissance.

It is through alchemy that Pier Francesco finds his

theism: for alchemy treats nature not only as matter alive,
but searches for the divine or sacred dimension which
transcends the purely material qualities of the natural
realm. The alchemist emerges as the most enlightened

"priest" of the Renaissance. Curiously, Mujica Lainez'

156

fictitious representation of these early men of science

is parallel to contemporary accounts of the emergence of
the science of alchemy, with its secret myths and esoteric
symbols, asa precursor of modern Western civilization.
The goals of Pier Francesco and Paracelsus are those
revealed in Mircea Eliade's study on the origins and
structure of alchemy:

If our analysis and interpretation are well
founded, alchemy prolongs and consummates a very old
dream of "homo faber": collaboration in the perfecting
of matter while at the same time securing perfection
for himself . . . . One common factor emerges from
all these tentative probings: in taking upon himself
the responsibility of changing nature, man put himself
in the place of Time; that which would have required
millenia or aeons to "ripen" in the depths of the
earth, the metallurgists and alchemists claim to be
able to achieve in a few weeks.

Furthermore, as we see very clearly in Bomarzo,
the alchemist is represented as the supreme priest or
worshipper, firm in the conviction that he is working in
conjunction with god-like natural essences:

The alchemists considered their work as a per-
fecting of Nature, tolerated if not encouraged by
God. Far removed though they were from the ancient
metallurgists and smiths, they nevertheless continued
the same attitude vis—a-vis Nature. For the primi-
tive miner, as for the western alchemist, Nature is
a hierophany. It is not only "alive"; it is also
"divine"; it has, at least, a divine dimension. It
is . . . thanks to this sacred quality of nature . . .
that the alchemist thought he could obtain his trans-
muting agent, the Philosopher's Stone, as well as
his Elixir of Immortality.

 

lEliade, The Forge and the Crucible, p. 169.

21bid., p. 170.

157

In his search for immortality, the protagonist of
Bomarzo seeks to free himself from the laws of Time very
much as the alchemist wishes to free nature from the laws
of Time--as evidenced in the desire to change base metals
into gold, or by reversing the aging process of the base

human metal through the Elixir Vitae.

 

According to Manuel Mujica Lainez, another form
of achieving immortality, equally a product of a vision
entailing the "magical" handling of words and concepts, is
the path of artistic creativity. But the protagonist of
his novel considers this path to immortality as futile
compared to the alchemist's promise of eternal life and
spiritual fulfillment. In other words, art which does not
mirror reality in all its complexity is futile and incom-
plete, and only an art which rediscovers the previously
veiled soul of things can stand the test of time.

Orsini muses:

Cuél era la auténtica de las dos verdades, y cual
la absurda fantasia: si el alquimista que, hundido
como un tOpo en el seno de la tierra, rodeado de
efigies de los supremos taumaturgos, mezclaba sus
filtros buscando la formula del oro y de la inmortali-
dad, o 103 hombres de letras que con bellas palabras
astutas, esforzandose para hipnotizarse entre si por
medio de metaforas y emblemas1 practicaban otra forma
de magia, preciosa y estéril.

To the modern mind it is, of course, art and pro-

creation, rather than alchemy, which are the only paths

to immortality open to man. But Pier Francesco, guided

 

1Mujica Lainez, Bomarzo, p. 511.

, [it‘ll-Ill I
llllll‘ll'll‘llll'l 6‘9!||l1||l|||.llil.ll1

158

by the light of the Renaissance, seeks for a true immor-
tality ”sin alegorias ni trampas retoricas." This search,
traversing all the realms of human endeavor and never
crowned by fulfillment, leads him ultimately to the world
of magic. Possibly presaging the sentiments of those
modern alchemists, the worshippers of science, Pier
Francesco finds in alchemy that which human contact could
not give him,

el calor de una atmésfera de arrebato, de real

maravilla cuyo origen espurio no disminuia Ial
intensidad de su estremecimiento vivificante.

 

With this search, Pier Francesco leaves the temporal age
of historical fiction for the world of essences, for the
realm of the divine, that which Manuel Mujica Lainez
terms "real maravilloso."

Since Pier Francesco dies an unexpected death,

poison having been added to the supposed Elixir Vitae,

 

the secret of immortality perishes with him. The reader's
curiosity is never satisfied, and we have a rather moral-
istic ending in which the very human villain must perchance
find his death as justification and punishment for pre-
vious acts of violence. Thus, from the perspective of
poetic justice, we are confronted with the problem of

human fate or destiny and what decides it. The astrologer
had predicted immortality at Orsini's birth; but his

search for immortality entailed a sacrifice of the

 

11bid., p. 488.

159

ethical dimension, and this sacrifice is what in turn con-
demns the hero to a violent, abnormal death. The unethical
being cannot attain immortality, according to the canons

of poetic or literary justice.

Whatever vision regarding twentieth-century man we
can extract from this, it must be tied in with the pro-
tagonist's self-examination as he confronts his circum-
stances and the dilemmas of survival. We recognize our-
selves in the portrayal of this complex and vulnerable
human being. He is archetypical man seeking for perman-
ence, where permanence does not exist. In Bomarzo, man
sees himself not only in the mirror of history, but also
in that of psychology. These two perspectives enable the
twentieth-century writer to endow the sixteenth-century
man with a greater richness or complexity of personality,
while at the same time indicating that the forces govern-
ing human destiny are universally the same, and that
technological or scientific advances do not provide a
solution to the same basic problems that transcend the
centuries. Man's inability to become the forger and
master of his own destiny is demonstrated. However, we
also perceive that this "powerless" or "impotent" man is,
simultaneously, the only center of the universe. We are
provided with a Renaissance view as well as with a

twentieth-century view of man's potentiality in a world

160

from which the gods have fled, but where the ancient myths
remain as symbols of the quest for eternal fulfillment.
The Place of Bomarzo in the

Literary Development of?
Mujica Lainez

 

 

 

Manuel Mujica Lainez began as a writer of histor-
ical fiction and certain recurrent themes can be traced
from his early short stories to his latest works. It
cannot be said that he wishes to teach through history.

He does tell us that history repeats itself and that man
will forever be blinded by power and artifice. He asserts
that history moves not so much in spirals as conceived

by Spengler, and certainly not in a unilinear direction
of progress as taught by Hegel, but in cycles. If the
names change, both human potential and the contingencies
of accident present themselves in monotonous repetition.

But in Mujica Lainez this vision of history is
deepened by the added dimension of psychohistory; and it
was the latter dimension of the narrative which led him,
in Bomarzo, to utilize a narrative form most appropriately

entitled magic-realism. Fact and fiction, truth and

 

beauty, aesthetics and history, serve to frame the dual-
istic tendencies of Bomarzo. The experiments with magic
and the occult are clothed in richly textured prose not
unlike the baroque prose used by Asturias and Carpentier
in some of the most important works of narrative in con-

temporary Latin America.

161

Bomarzo is an original example of a historically
based narrative in which divergent elements such as fan-
tasy, hermetism, art history, and historical verisimili-
tude are found harmoniously fused to recreate an era in
all its brilliance. The vision is plausible due to the
perception of a protagonist of great complexity who, we
are led to believe, is the archetypical Renaissance man.

In his later works, Manuel Mujica Lainez moves
further into magic-realism. Bomarzo still deals with a
historically based figure in an era illustrated by veri-
fiable historical data; with the protagonists of De

milagros y de melancolias and Cr6nicas reales, the author

 

 

moves decidedly into the realm of the fantastic.
In Bomarzo, history triumphs at the expense of

fantasy; in the following historical novel, El Unicornio,

 

fantasy triumphs over historical truth. In essence, the
author declares his predilection for ”beauty," not at the
expense of "truth," but of "beauty as truth." It is in
this vein that he comments in the semi-autobiographical
work Cecil:
éDestituir a la leyenda de su funcién de auxiliar
poética de la historia? éDesterrarla de un texto
en el que lo lirico ocupa amplio espacio? Seria 1
necio e infitil. Ella triunfa siempre con su seduccion.

Bomarzo sets the tone and style the author was to

make his own in future novels such as El Unicornio, De

 

 

lManuel Mujica Lainez, Cecil (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1972), p. 71.

162

milagros y de melancolias, Cronicas reales, and El viaje

 

 

 

de los siete demonios. The leitmotifs are woven in a
careful net of constants, which are provided by basic
literary topics: life and death; the search for immortality;
the attainment of self-knowledge through the esoteric
sciences or through an examination of the human psyche;
unrequited love, and love in all its many changing faces.
Each of these works is set in the past, and just as Alejo

Carpentier's historical novel, El siglo de las luces is

 

an amalgam of realism and fantasy, so also do history,
magic and demonology play an important part in recreating
the very imposing "univers imaginaire" of Manuel Mujica
Lainez.

It is fair to conclude that Bomarzo is a genuine
example of magic-realism if we accept Carpentier's defi-
nition of the term. It fits this category because of its
fundamental fusion of history and the fantastic, of the
plausible and the impossible. It differs from the magic-
realist novels of Carpentier and other Latin American
writers because they have dealt with the history and pre—
history of the pre- and post-Colombian cultures. Manuel
Mujica L5inez' narrative deals almost entirely with
European history, and therefore, with European man. But
this feature may only accentuate the relevance of Bomarzo
for the contemporary reader. The protagonist's frustrating

attempts to master himself and his destiny are symbolic

163

of the quest of twentieth-century man, and it is apprOp-
riate to witness these themes not in some remote past but
in the very heart of the century and the society that

gave birth to modern western civilization.

CHAPTER IV

MAGIC-REALISM AND THE APOCALYPTIC VISION

OF MAN IN EL UNICORNIO

 

A characteristic of magic-realist narrative is
that, while focusing, almost without exception, on some
aspect of historical reality, it does so through an incor-
poration of elements which are unquestionably "unreal."
The classification which Mario Vargas Llosa gives to the

real-imaginary in his book Garcia Marquez, historia de un

 

deicidio comes to mind. According to it, the real-

 

imaginary can be achieved by the use of four different

elements: the magic, the miraculous, the mythical-legendary

1

and the fantastic. These four elements are, in varying

 

1"Llamo 'mégico,‘ al hecho real imaginario provocado
mediante artes secretas por un hombre ('mago') dotado de
poderes o conocimientos extraordinarios; 'milagroso' a1
hecho imaginario vinculado a un credo religioso y supuesta-
mente decidido o autorizado por una divinidad, o que hace
suponer la existencia de un mas alla; 'mitico-legendario' a1
hecho imaginario que procede de una realidad historica
sublimada y pervertida por la literatura; y 'fantéstico'
a1 hecho imaginario 'puro,‘ que nace de la estricta inven-
ci6n y que no es producto ni de arte, ni de la divinidad,
ni de la tradicién literaria: e1 hecho real imaginario
que ostenta como su rasgo mas acusado una soberana gratui—
dad." Mario Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez: Historia de un
deicidio (Barcelona—Caracas: Monte Avila Editores,’1971),
p. 529. From Chapter VII, ”Realidad total, novela total."

 

164

165

degrees of importance, what constitutes the fictitious,
or real-imaginary, world in Manuel Mujica Lainez' histor-

ical novel, E1 Unicornio. Published in 1965, it follows

 

closely in the footsteps of Bomarzo, signifying a marked
progression effected by the author from the purely his-
torical account to the tale of the fantastic.

E1 Unicornio is unmistakeably historical in both

 

the author's vision of twelfth-century France and in his
perception of the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem at the
close of the Second Crusade, as well as in his account of
the spiritual turmoil underlying the historical phenomena
surrounding the crusades. Yet, for all the historicity
and descriptive verisimilitude found in this novel, one
cannot fail to observe that the intent no longer lies with
the faithful portrayal of an historical age, nor with the
realistic psychological development of the heroine, but
rather with the poetic rendition of an age of which hero
and heroine become prophetic symbols. That the fairy-tale
protagonist Melusina does not appear as human or as his—
torical as the protagonists of Manuel Mujica Lainez'
previous narratives is indicative of the author's emphatic
projection of poetic symbolism upon the world of historical
truth, of fantasy upon reality. In this novel, the ele-
ments previously termed as "real-imaginary" appear with a
clarity hitherto unperceived in the author's historical

works. We are indeed dealing with magic, miracle, myth

a

166

and fantasy; and these elements are fundamental to the
understanding of history, of social, moral and religious
consciousness in twelfth-century France.

The elements of magic-realist narrative are ele-
ments basic to poetry, and in particular to the epic and
lyric romances of wide distribution throughout the Middle
Ages. This concern for the literary antecedent--of which
the numerous legends woven around King Arthur and Charle-
magne provide ample proof--is found throughout the com-

position of El Unicornio. The author has fashioned his

 

heroes and their experiences as they embark on two pilgrim-
ages, one through the Poitou, and one to Jerusalem, accord-
ing to the romantic visions of the medieval bard. In so
doing, he has succeeded in juxtaposing two perfectly com-
plementary views of an era--that provided by the poet,
spiritual recorder of his age, and by the chronicler, his-
torical interpreter of his age. This juxtaposition or
interpolation of two worlds appears to reinforce a view,

as it did previously in Bomarzo, which is somewhat obtuse
to the historian. It implies that poetry holds as much
truth about the movement of man as does the historical
chronicle. Thus, in the context of the novel, the fusion
of poetic symbolism and historical data, rediscovered from
the medieval French epic, becomes as important a source

of knowledge as history, offering renewed interest in the

167

study of the psychological and spiritual dimension of
medieval man.

The purpose of this chapter will be two-fold.
First, using Mario Vargas Llosa's definition of the real-
imaginary as a point of departure, I shall attempt to show
how its four elements——magic, the miraculous or prodigious,
the mythical-legendary, and fantasy-—are here combined
with the objective reality provided by the historical event
to portray a multi-faceted era such as the Middle Ages,
and a particularly interesting spiritually-based movement
such as the crusades.

Secondly, there are some points of interest with
regard to the first-person narrator, the incidents of the
plot and the introduction of fantasy in the narrative of

El Unicornio which provide a marked contrast to the

 

stylistic and structural composition of the previous work,

Bomarzo. El Unicornio presents thematic leitmotifs

 

similar to those of the preceding work on the Italian
Renaissance. It answers Pier Francesco's call for immor-
tality in the face of human deception and political chaos
by showing that immortality is senseless where love is
denied. But it goes deeper than Bomarzo did in the sym-
bolic portrayal of the dialectical forces of good and evil
which stand at the heart of the historical event, implying
that these forces can be either of an external nature, as

medieval man believed, or of an internal nature, as part

168

of each and every man's own dualistic claim to self-
fulfillment or self-destruction.

In El Unicornio, the historical framework serves

 

to reinforce the real-imaginary world, the world of fiction
and poetic symbolism, of which the character Melusina is a
foremost exponent.

In order to expose the "real-imaginary" elements
in this work, we shall first look into the world of
objective-reality, of history, which forms the setting
for the development of this novel.

Myth, Fantasy and Literary
Tradition: Medieval France

 

 

As was the case in Bomarzo, so also in El Unicornio,

 

history cannot be separated from the concerns of man's
spiritual guests at a given point in time. The latter must
be incorporated as an important element, although not a
self-sufficient one, in the perception of an era.

The twelfth century marks an awakening in the
creative energies of European man, notably in the realms
of history and literature, and presents a sharp contrast
to the preceding "Dark Ages." This is particularly so in
France, and "the civilization of southern France in the
twelfth century was generally held to be the first notable

secular culture since classical antiquity."1

 

lLionel Gossman, Medievalism and theIdeologies
of the Enlightenment (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1968), p. 299. From Chapter 10, "The
Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours."

 

 

 

.M_Lq

169

Manuel Mujica Lainez focuses his attention on this

particular region of France. The Poitou becomes the

 

idyllic setting of the first part of El Unicornio: its
gently rolling countryside becomes the inspiration of the

troubadour, its language, the doux provencal, becomes

 

the language of the courtly poet. The Poitou was one of
Eleanor of Aquitaine's hereditary possessions. Poitiers,
one of the region's most important cities, became Eleanor's
residence in the year 1170, shortly before the narrative

time of El Unicornio. With Eleanor's eldest daughter,

 

Marie de Champagne, the prestige of the region was enhanced
as it became the literary center of France. And since much
of the crusader spirit originated in this region (for such
historical figures as William IX, Raymond of Poitiers and
Aimery of Lusignan were born in France's Midi), the action
of the plot fittingly commences in Lusignan's ancestral
chapel, home of Melusina, fairy of the Poitou.

The actual time-span of the plot in El Unicornio

 

is limited to approximately fourteen years. It corresponds,
historically speaking, to the time of Philip of Flanders'
pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the year 1177. In fact,

the second half of El Unicornio describes how Aiol and the

 

metamorphosed fairy "Melusin de Pleurs" enlist in Philip
of Flanders' crusading army. Their observations while in

France and, later, in the Holy Land, provide the historical

170

subject matter, the world of the real-objective necessary

to an understanding of El Unicornio's dualistic framework.

 

Melusina's narrative gegins in the year 1174, an
important turning point in the ever-violent encounters
between the Moslem East and the Christian West. It is the
year when Saladin proclaims a "jihad,“ a holy war which
has the political objective of uniting the various quar—
relsome Moslem principalities into a single force which can
successfully destroy the weakening Frankish kingdom of
Jerusalem. The fragmented leadership of the Christian
communities in the Holy Land increases the probability of
a Moslem victory. And in this same year of 1174, Amalric,
King of Jerusalem, dies, leaving his thirteen-year-old
son, Baldwin Iw,to face alone the Christian disintegration
and the Moslem onslaught.

The shadow of Baldwin the Leper is projected sym-
bolically as an image of pain, courage and dissolution

throughout El Unicornio. He is the last king of the male

 

line of Godfrey, the first crusader knight to establish

the Frankish dominion in Jerusalem. Historians speak
highly of him, and his life is tinged with the same heroism
displayed in the medieval epic:

Valiant the spirit that endured the growing pain,
without respite or hope--cherishing, like a dream, the
memory of that day when he had been still sightly . .

. . He moved like a man in pain, sitting upon a bench,
his hands hidden in his sleeves. Men awaited within
sound of his voice, but he did not call them. For he

 

171

was the son of Amalric, Baldwin, by the Grace of God
sixth king in the holy state of Jerusalem.

Another account describes Baldwin's struggle and
courage in a manner similar to Manuel Mujica Lainez'
fictionalized portrayal:

This descendant of Baldwin II and Fulk of Anjou,
of Gabriel of Melitene and Joscelin of Courtenay, was
born for action, and however genuine his piety he was
never, even at the end of his short life when his
limbs were literally falling from his body, to find
consolation in the mystic's exaltation or the peace of
prayer. Up to the last moment he wanted to be a king
and a general, and he wanted to be obeyed. It was his #

T?!

 

way of clinging to life and he was a terrible fighter.
King Baldwin is one of the most important his—

torical figures presented in El Unicornio. He belongs to

 

the realm of the real-objective, offering a contrast as a
"real," historical presence of painful struggle, to the
world depicted by the imaginative Melusina. As a character
within the novel, he emerges fully only during the second
half of Melusina's account, and even then we are aware of
his presence but marginally. He is but a point of lever-

age in the structure of the work, an allegory of spiritual

 

and physical destruction such as that mirrored by the fall

of Jerusalem.

 

1Harold Lamb, The Crusades (New York: Bantam
Editions, 1962), p. 295.

 

2Zoé Oldenbourg, The Crusades, translated from the

Frency by Anne Carter (New York: Pantheon Books, Random
House, 1966), p. 388.

 

172

Whereas the first four chapters of El Unicornio

 

deal chiefly with Melusina's wandering through the French
Midi, thereby constructing for the reader a romanticized
version of courtly France in the twelfth century, the
last five chapters follow the events leading up to the
destruction of the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem.

The difference between what we may refer as the

first and second halves of E1 Unicornio is simultaneously

 

one of geographical location, historical consciousness
and narrative "point of view." For there is a definite
structural rift in this work which stems primarily from
the literary concerns of the first half of the novel,
as opposed to the chronicle-like exposure of historical
events in the second half. At the root of this duality,
joining the two worlds of the real-imaginary and the real-
objective, stands the first-person narrator, the fairy
Melusina.

Melusina begins her account of the "true" Middle
Ages in the chapel of the Lusignans "en aquel verano del
ano 1174" (p. 34), and ends it with the loss of Jerusalem
to the hosts of Saladin in 1188. The first half of the
novel, that concerned with a vision of literary and courtly
France, covers the years from 1174 to 1177, and corresponds
to the time when the narrator is an invisible and omni-
present being. The second half of the book is narrated

first by Melusin de Pleurs, the transformed fairy who has

_ ‘ ‘ "’WEW‘

173

willingly lost her "magic powers" in her search for love.
Melusin embarks with Aiol to the Holy Land, serving as his
companion until shortly before the end of the narrative
time. During the battle of Hattin (1187), Melusin dies.
The account is thereupon resumed by Melusina, who is soon
forced to witness and record the tragic death of her
beloved Aiol. Thus, historically speaking, the second

half of El Unicornio spans more than a decade, following

 

the fortunes of the Franks from the victory at Montgisard
(1177) to the fall of Jerusalem in 1188. The novel's

dénouément occurs shortly after the fall of Jerusalem,

 

with a resolution in which Aiol dies and Melusina returns
to her fairy realm.

These are the main historical events in a consider-
ation of the novel's spatial and temporal structure.
These details are "real-objective" in nature and provide
the essential background for the unfolding of the "real-

imaginary" elements in El Unicornio. It must be stressed

 

that those elements which compose the real-imaginary
within the novel cannot be separated from that other real-
ity, here arbitrarily called "real-objective." For in
Mujica Lainez' portrayal the real-imaginary and the real-
objective coexist and complement each other towards a
poetic and historical synthesis of the Middle Ages.

The narrator-protagonist of El Unicornio, a

 

mythical-legendary being, is symbolic of the

 

174

real-imaginary. It is a fairy's account we are presented
with: we are to explore reality through the eyes of an
unreal, fictional being.

As a point of departure in the novel, Mujica Léinez
inserts a short quotation preceding the actual narrative.
It is from Victor Hugo's poem Une Fée, and reads "cachée
en tout ce que je vois." The account, as this poem implies,
is to be about a “hidden dimension,” a hidden soul at the

root of the external world of accident and contingency.

 

The novel is about things unseen: mythical, legendary
beings which are not part of our everyday experience but
which do, at least symbolically, exist in medieval literary
tradition and medieval lore, undergird objective-reality,
explain the inexplicable. This quotation is therefore a
fitting introduction for the fairy Melusina, a heroine

who, belonging to the world of the unreal, will proceed to
illustrate how the world of the objectively real partakes
of this hidden essence.

Out of the synthesis of Melusina's observations

1

and experience, we obtain a view of the historically real
medieval man, a view not too different from the faithful

historian's observations on the culture of medieval man.

For the historian tells us that

the first essential fact to be borne in mind is the
simple and obvious one that at this period man was
still the measure of all things . . . . Man was
therefore infinitely closer to physical reality than
we can be now. Tools and raw materials had a value
and immediacy not easy for us to understand. The

175

' direct contact with matter whose laws he knew only
empirically made man superstitious more than we are
today, and more skillful and enterprising.

Medieval man is then portrayed according to both
historical and literary sources in El Unicornio. The
introduction of a fantastic element in the narrative is
itself important to the understanding of medieval super-
stitions and pagan beliefs, however much the reader's
skepticism may resist this fantastic element. For this
reason, Manuel Mujica Lainez explicitly entreats the
skeptic to leave the book. To understand fully medieval
man's spiritual turbulence and physical quests implies
faith. The reader must, if he is to listen to this "true"
account, accept, if only symbolically, the validity of
the fairy's narrative:

Es la historia de un hada, la vida de un hada;

que quien no crea en las hadas, cierre este libro y

lo arroje a un canasto o lo reduzca a1 papel suntuario
de relleno de su biblioteca, lamentando e1 precio
seguramente substancioso que habra pagado por su gruesa
estructura. Al proceder asi y al no tener en cuenta

que todo, absolutamente todo, en este mundo inexplicable,
funciona por razones que se nos escapan, su escepticismo
anticuado, que tacharia de victoriano, de no mediar mi
respeto por esa reina, lo privara de enterarse de
asuntos de interés trascendente.

These "asuntos de interés trascendente" refer to affairs of

the spirit and indicate that this novel is concerned about

 

1Oldenbourg, p. 2.

2Manuel Mujica Lainez, El Unicornio (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1965), Chapter I, "El hada, el
caballero y el doncel," p. 13.

' ll...-

 

m— -~

176

recreating a past age through a re-enactment of human
motives and psyche. The relationship of Melusina and Aiol,
the human object of the fairy's love, stands at the heart
of the novel's structure. This romantic, never-fulfilled
relationship serves to portray the spirit of an age as it
was captured by the medieval bard. All the elements of
the medieval epic are here: the romantic longing for
meaning, purity and order; the display of courage in
chivalric tournaments as well as in that higher expression
of the chivalric spirit, the crusade; the sensual images
floating through the stream of the narrative; the presence
of the demon in the form of carnal temptation, and of the
angel in the form of final redemption. All these elements
add up to a romanticized vision of an age which resembles
the self-interpretation of that age as provided by its

chansons de geste and its courtly romances.

 

Melusina is a mythical-legendary symbol of pagan
life. The name is linked both to the region of the Poitou
and to the Lusignan family, members of the French nobility.

The Grand Larousse Encyclopédigue provides the following

 

information about the fairy:

Personage fabuleux, dont 1a légende a été contée
pour la premiere fois dans un roman de Jean d'Arras
(1387). Mélusine a re u de sa mere, une fée, le don
d'avoir, le samedi 1e as du corps en forme de serpent.
Elle épouse le comte Raymondin, auquel elle fait
promettre de ne jamais chercher a le voir 1e samedi.
Elle batit pour lui le chateau de Lusignan; un jour,
Raymondin surprend au bain le secret de Mélusine, qui
s'échappe par une fenétre du chateau en poussant des
cris affreux. On racontait qu'on l'entendait pousser

177
des cris chague fois qu'un malheur frappait 1e seigneur
de Lusignan.
Manuel Mujica Lainez establishes the identity of
Melusina by providing her with the traits ascribed to her
in the legends cited above. The myth of Mélusine forms

the subject matter of the first chapter in El Unicornio.

 

But it is literature, and not exactly history, that estab-
lishes the fictional authenticity of the fabled Melusina

of legendary tradition. As a mythical-legendary being, she
partakes of both a fictitious and a real world, in that she
is presented as an imaginary being with a historical past--
a literary history which stretches far back in time to the
hoary pre-historic past of which we know very little. At
the heart of this myth is an element of truth, but it has
been obscured, sublimated, exaggerated and even perverted
to the point where, as in so many myths besides Melusina's,
the kernel of truth can only be revealed in an overall
synthesis-of the figure's symbolic, metaphorical, and
allegorical nature.

Melusina's essence prior to the incidents of the
novel is traced and developed in various ways. First,
there is the description of the source from which the
winged serpent-tailed fairy emerges: her story belongs to
medieval lore and poetry--"esas son exageraciones de Juan

de Arrés, novelista que, trazando mi historia en el siglo

 

1Grand Larousse Encyclopédique (Paris: Librairie
Larousse, 1963), tome septiéme.

 

178

XIV para el duque de Berry, senor de Lusignan . . . ."1

This is followed by extensive summary of her engineering
accomplishments. This is rooted in the common practice
of folklore, according to which men sought to explain the

marvelously engineered medieval structures by ascribing

them to the ”magic" arts of the fairy.2

Further testimony of the symbolic strength of
Melusina's mythical being, as it evolved in the conscious-
ness of the French nobility, is her widespread appearance
as a symbolic motif on many a nobleman's coat of arms:

Cuando mis descendientes--entre ellos los de la
Rochefoucauld, tarde, en el siglo XVII--resolvieron
incorporarme a sus blasones, asomando mi torso desnudo
en cimera sobre las coronas y los yelmos . . . .3

Melusina's genealogical influence spreads far and wide,
and she became a recognized ancestor of the most important
aristocratic houses of Europe:

Mi linaje se extendié . . . . Principes y reyes de
Jerusalén, de Chipre, de Armenia y de Bohemia, se
dividieron mi legado sanguineo de hada catastréfica;
resulto de buen tono proceder del hada Melusina y, a
medida que el.érbol de mi progenie alargaba sus ramas
internacionales, los duques de Luxemburgo, los
Pembroke ingleses, los Parthenay, los Lézé, los Eu,
los Dié, los Saint-Valérien, los Saint-Gelais, los de
la Rochefoucauld, los Cabiere d'Aragon, los Sassenage,
los Candillat, los Saint-Séverin, los Chateauroux y
sus alianzas innfimeras.

 

lMujica Lainez, El Unicornio, Chapter I, p. 24.

 

21bid., p. 24. 31bid., p. 29.

4Ibid., p. 33.

179

Melusina's symbolism is far-reaching. As an
immortal fairy, she is both an omniscient and an omni-
present first-person narrator. She symbolizes the pagan
ideal--both pre-Christian and prehistoric. In the con-
text of the novel, she becomes the supernatural agent of
the fantastic, situated half-way between the demon and the
angel. As a supernatural being, she sees while remaining
herself invisible; she metamorphoses herself into any
possible form; and she has supernatural powers, as, for
example, to read the mind of Aiol. The psychological
development of both Aiol and Melusina is given at least
a semblance of realism, for the narrator is allowed total
control of the hero's motives. She is also the agent of
the magical and the fantastic elements in this novel,
while merely recording the miraculous-Christian elements
as they appear.

Manuel Mujica Lainez introduces Melusina's life
story in order to set the tone and character of the narra—
tive, following in the lines of the legendary-literary
figure. Not without humor, Melusina tells us that she is
highly qualified to tell her story: "era graduada en
fantasia." The narrative proceeds with an account of the
mythical-legendary past, the tone a parody of the medieval
romance:

Me 11amo Melusina y la sola mencién de mi nombre

deberia bastar . . . .

Mi padre Elinas, que otros apellidan Thiaus . . .
era rey de Albania, es decir, de Escocia; mi madre,

180

Presina, era un hada. Por aquel entonces, quien no
gozaba del privilegio de ser hijo de un rey, se
enfrentaba en la vida con serios obstaculos . . . .
La prueba es que la mayoria de los grandes personajes
de la naciente literatura fueron hijos de reyes. Sin
embargo, mi desgracia eterna procede del hecho de ser
1a hija de un rey. Y de un hada; no olvidemos al
hada, causa principal del infortunio que padezco.

As her father, King Elinas, does not honour his
liaison with Presina, Melusina grows naturally revengeful:

Llegé el dia que nos graduamos de bachilleres en
ciencia magica y, merced a un encanto, encerramos a
nuestro padre Elinas en la montafia de Brumbeloy,
para 963 precisi6n, en el frio condado de Northumber-
land.

When Presina discovers that her former lover has been
punished, she is overcome with tenderness and remorse,
and, in her rage at her daughter, devises a form of
punishment for Melusina:

Me sentencio a metamorfosearme, los sabados, en
un monstruo mitad mujer y mitad serpiente. Mi marido--
si me.casaba--no deberia verme bajo ese aspecto
desazonante; afin mas, deberia ignorar que esa trans-
mutacidn semanal existia, pues de lo contrario yo
sufriria para siempre, como mi desdichada hermana 3
Melias, la insoportable penitencia de la inmortalidad.

The fairy's account continues its description of her sub-
sequent marriage with Raimondin and Raimondin's betrayal
when Presina's curse is fulfilled:
Y por primera vez lancé mi grito destinado a ser
célebre e1 grito de Melusina, de la mére Lusine, la

mater Lucinia, la madre de los Lusignan. No me crei
capaz de tal estruendo . . . . Mi esposo me habia

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 13 Ibid., p. 17.

3Ibid., p.

181
descubierto, quebrandolel pacto, y el anuncio de mi
madre debia cumplirse.
To this point we have listened to the already
familiar fairy tale of Melusina. What remains is the
unusual physical presence of the fairy--one felt through-

out El Unicornio. As a supernatural being, Melusina is

 

pictured with vampire-like wings and a serpent tail. Her
body, half woman, half reptile, reminds us of other
mythical beings with which medieval lore was replete and
gwhich were, sometimes, derived from Greek antiquity. The
centaurs, the Chimera, and the sirens are versions, as is
Melusina, of beings juxtaposing beastly and human character-
istics. They all remind us of man's essentially dualistic
nature.

Melusina's domestic happiness ends with Raimondin's
betrayal: her ill-fated metamorphosis has doomed her to
an immortal life, a life she does not desire. No longer
is she visible to those surrounding her unless they be
creatures of her own fabled species. She resigns herself
to this monotonous immortal existence until rescued from
it by falling in love with Aiol, the impoverished knight

who is the main "human" protagonist of El Unicornio.

 

The unilateral love affair which ensues--for Aiol never
suspects even the existence of the fairy MeluSina--and

the confrontation of Melusina and Aiol with the

 

lIbid., p. 30.

182

real-objective "historical" world, form the synthesis of
medieval culture which is the subject matter of El

Unicornio.

 

One cannot fail to observe the complex fictional
world presented in this novel. It is highly ironic that
Melusina, a fairy conceived poetically and symbolically
in the work of a medieval troubadour should become the
narrator and main protagonist of another fictitious narra-
tive in which the world narrated is more "real" than the
narrator herself. Melusina, the dream and the fantasy,
holds here the key to a faithful interpretation of the
world of historical reality.

Once the symbolic status of Melusina is estab-
lished, once she is given psychological depth--in this
case achieved through the heroine's mythical-legendary
story--we can proceed to follow her account, and to dis-
cover the truth or the synthetic perspective which her
life and observations convey. The fantastic element leads
no longer to doubt, uncertainty, and ambiguity, but serves
rather to enhance, through the symbolism of poetry, qual-
ities which really belong to the world of observable
reality, the world of accident and contingency.

Que e1 sensible lector se convenza: hay, como en

la Edad Media, hadas y angeles, que eso fue 1a Edad
Media: el Hada y el Angel. Y el Demonic.

 

1Ibid., p. 14.

183

It is interesting to note that Melusina, as the
pagan, pre-Christian Element in the novel, identifies with
the Christian ideal both in her description of the chival-
ric spirit in France and with the development of the cru-
sading fervor that leads to heroic exploits in the quest
for the Holy Land. As an explanation of this, it may be
argued that the fairy in this novel is not so much repre-
sentative of the purely pagan or pre-Christian view of the
world, as she may be symbolic of the pagan cults and
traditions which the Christians incorporated into the
teachings of the Church for the benefit of the original
pre-Christian inhabitants of western Europe. These cults
were so deeply imbedded in the cultural and religious
traditions of medieval man that they surfaced in both the
literature of the time and in its religious ceremonies.
The lives of saints, and in particular, the life of St.

Brendan, mentioned in the first part of E1 Unicornio,

 

exemplify man's encounter with the supernatural. Thus,
the hagiographic tale is but one example of the blending
together of Christian and pagan elements to portray the
intercession of a higher order in earthly concerns. The
medieval epic and the medieval courtly romance are further
examples of this co-existence of the pagan and the
Christian. All these serve to enlighten the reader, as
intended by Melusina, about the intellectual and spiritual

climate of medieval life.

184

Melusina becomes an agent of the fantastic as the
fantastic partakes of historical reality. She is not only
psychologically credible; she also has a history, even if
only one based mostly on literary and heraldic antecedent.
The history which her numerous descendants endowed her with
in poem or coat-of-arms shows the tenacity of their belief
in the reality of the fantastic in their lives and
destinies.

Adding to the fantastic nature of the narrative
is the unexpected transformation of this mythical being,
half-way through the novel, into a knight of flesh and
blood--much against Melusina's wishes, for she would have
preferred to be changed into a maiden. The transformation
creates a particular form of ironic tension, deriving
from an impossible situation in which the lover cannot
accomplish the seduction of the loved one. This ironic
”tour de force" is basic to an understanding of the novel's
main theme. It shows that Melusina's search for happiness
is meaningless in a world moved by occult, unpredictable
forces. But she is also doomed to perpetual wandering,
and therefore perpetual suffering, as long as she seeks
for an elusive "happiness" in the external world of human
accident and human limitation. Both of these courses fail
to come to grips with the essential nature and meaning of

human life. It is Brandan, the lonely hermit whom Melusina

185

encounters in the Poitou, who holds the answer to the
riddle of man's eternal search for self-fulfillment.
Brandan

comprendié que el Paraiso se oculta dentro de cada

uno de nosotros y que, para hallarlo, el viaje no debe
realizarse hacia los peligros del exterior sino hacia

las cavernas y laberintos del interior. Y lo habia
descubierto entre unas piedras del bosque de Lussac.

Alli también abundaban los demonios y los prodigios;

alli aguardaba, cuando se habia vencido a las tentaciones
de la gloria y de la carne, el celeste y mundano Edén.l

Aiol, the object of Melusina's love, is the second

important character in the novel. Insofar as El Unicornio

 

offers an account of the Middle Ages, he is symbolic of the
spirit of knighthood. He corresponds in image to the
literary ideal of the perfect knight traditionally associ-
ated with the Arthurian and Carolingian legend cycles.
It is a literary tradition which created a model of exem-
plary behavior basic to the understanding of the medieval
crusader and to his conduct with regard to religion, kin-
ship ties, oaths of loyalty, and women.

But Aiol is also symbolic of the all-too-human

struggle against the devil. In El Unicornio, the devil

 

presents himself as a force inherent in the historical
process, as well as in the destructive power which devel-
ops when man's natural impulses are frustrated by man
himself. In Aiol's case, the devil is the eternal seducer,

the force which prompts the hero to succumb time and again

 

1Ibid., Chapter III, "En la ermita de Lussac,"

p. 120.

186

to the temptations of the flesh. To fight this force,
Aiol, the "perfect" knight, embarks as a crusader to the
land of faith, to the realm of miracle and redemption.
There, he hopes to cleanse himself from guilt and to
achieve that state of purity which, in Christian terms, can
only come out of sacrifice and martyrdom, deprivation and
self—immolation.

The two protagonists of this tale, Melusina and
Aiol, offer an interesting counterpoint of goals and
interests. One desires what the other denies; one acts as
a foil to the other's character and intimate needs. The
entire situation generates tension through irony, ambi-
guity, and the widespread use of "double entendres." It
is the magical element--the use of fantasy in the fairy-
1and atmosphere of the work--that saves the narrative
from the stalemate which ensues with the knowledge that
there is no such thing as an earthly paradise.

Melusina is the agent of the fantastic and magical

elements in El Unicornio. She holds the strings of the

 

narrative, fulfilling a function similar to that of the
gypsy magician Melquiades in Garcia Marquez' magic-realist

novel Cien afios de soledad. Melquiades foresees the his-

 

torical end of the dynasty of the Buendias, while at the
same time he is instrumental in educating them to the
eternal existence of prodigious elements in nature. Intro-

ducing them as "miracles," he gradually develops the

187

consciousness of the as-yet unsophisticated inhabitants
of Macondo.

Melusina is symbolic of that same "hidden" dimen-
sion of nature. Just as Melquiades does in Garcia Marquez'
novel, she is instrumental in the fusion of poetry and
history. Because of her uniqueness as an omnipresent and
omniscient narrator, she can interact with the two worlds
of the real and the imaginary. Because of her symbolism,
her existence as an allegorical, metaphorical figure, she
is able to present an eclectic, multidimensional view of
the Middle Ages.

Once the author has established Melusina's iden-
tity through the description of her mythical-legendary
being, he proceeds to guide us on a fantastic voyage
spurred on by the heroine's pursuit of self-fulfillment.
The voyage, an important theme in the structure of much of
Manuel Mujica Lainez' narrative, symbolizes man's internal
pilgrimage towards self-understanding and self-realization.
Used in this manner, it is a common theme in the magic-
realist narrative of Latin America. The musician-

protagonist-narrator of Los pasos_perdidos, Alejo

 

Carpentier's novel of primeval search, travels from a
North American city to the depths of the Venezuelan jungle.

In another of Carpentier's novels, El siglo de las luces,

 

the rise to power of Victor Hughes covers a pilgrimage

from Europe to the isles of the New World and then back

188

to Europe. Gabriel Garcia Marquez' saga of the Buendias
involves a family's exodus to Macondo, the mythical
Aracataca of the author's childhood. Julio Cortazar's
existential anti-hero, Horacio Quiroga, searches for a
reason for being, first as an exile in Paris, later as an
exile in his own homeland. The list could grow sub-
stantially longer if we were to trace the numerous voy-
agers who have journeyed on the spiritual seas first
charted by that mythical wanderer from Ithaca, Odysseus.
Thus, the voyage has been used as a literary device
throughout the history of fictional narrative. In El

Unicornio, the voyage, encompassing first the region of

 

the Poitou and later the Kingdom of Jerusalem, has a dual
purpose. First, on the realistic-objective level, it
portrays accurately the road taken by pilgrims and cru-
saders throughout the Middle Ages as they sought to create
or restore the Christian kingdom in the Holy Land;
secondly, it serves to illustrate an important leitmotif
whereby the physical aspect of the voyage symbolizes the
internal spiritual search, either for love, as in the case
for Melusina, or for freedom from evil (carnal temptation),
as in the case of Aiol.

Although some reference has been made already to
the type of conflict and the manner in which the main
themes (such as the search for self-fulfillment) are pre-

sented in El Unicornio, little space has been devoted to a

 

189

chronological study of the plot incidents and their result-
ing conflicts within this complex narrative.

Melusina begins her tale of the Middle Ages, half
history and half fantasy, after a long period of quies-
cence: "sola, en el campanario de Lusignan, no hablo con
nadie desde el siglo XII."1 Her retrospective account of
this important era in her life commences in 1174, when she
awakens from her legendary dream of centuries' vigil in
the tower of the Lusignan chapel, to follow two of her
descendants: Ozil, knight of the Unicorn, veteran of the
Second Crusade and impoverished cousin of the powerful
Lusignans, and his estranged son Aiol, born out of wedlock
in Jerusalem, and now a member of an itinerant troop of
troubadours en route to Poitiers. Father and son meet
after years of separation in the mysterious, dream-like
atmosphere of the forest of Lussac, in a scene reminiscent

of the prophetic encounters found in the medieval chansons

 

de geste, or in the epic outpourings of Chrétien de Troyes,
2.

 

the "best-seller del siglo XII."
The case for purity as a thematic leitmotif in

El Unicornio is introduced: Ozil is carrying with him his

 

sole earthly possession, the horn of a unicorn. As the
title of the book implies, the unicorn becomes synonymous
with the hero's search for purity and self-fulfillment; or,

if we consider the author's ironic reminder that symbols

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 35.

190

partake of dualistic tendencies in nature, the unicorn
would also bring to our attention those other, antithetical
forces (such as carnal temptations) within him which he
is seeking to overcome and which are at the root of Aiol's
search for purity.1

Melusina's interest in and subsequent love for

Aiol stems from the resemblance of the impoverished young
knight to her adored husband Raimondin:

El parecido era portentoso. Acaso ese muchacho
ganara en altura y flacura a los de Raimondin, mas su
rostro y él largo pelo negro que sobre él se volcaba,
sus pémulos salientes, su nariz fina y menuda y,
especialmente, increiblemente, 1a diferencia de sus
ojos, uno azul y el otro con un tenue tinte aureo,
chispa de una luz que acentuaban los reflejos temblones
de la antorcha, correspondian con exactitud a los
rasgos del hijo del rey de los bretones, de manera
que pensé tenerlo ahi redivivo, reencarnado, y el viejo
ardor que habia quemado mis venas en la fuente de la
Sed, la tarde de la caceria famosa, se desperezé y
torno a encenderme y sofocarme.

The resemblance of Aiol to Raimondin contributes

to the structural continuity of the legend within the novel.
This encounter, fantastic in nature, in which Aiol appears
to reincarnate the fairy's only love centuries later, pro-
vides a welcome element of coincidence that seems to
lighten the novel's serious outcome by giving the narrative

a sense of freedom and imagination so characteristic of

 

11bid., pp. 36-38.

2Ibid., p. 43. Aiol's description is highly
reminiscent of Percival, the "perfect knight" of the
Arthurian legends.

191

the traditional fairy tale. As the heroine often reaf-
firms, "para mi, lo magico, la atmosfera de magia, era
tan indispensable como el aire para un mortal."l
The reappearance of Aiol-Raimondin belongs to the
realm of the real-imaginary. The heroine is now to follow
her knight in pursuit of her lost youth, seeking to regain
the happiness she once experienced as the legendary founder
of the house of Lusignan.
Melusina never lets us forget that she is as real
as the age she is describing; that she belongs as symbol
to that age; that she is as essential as were the Angel
and the Devil in the triptych that formed belief and
idolatry during the Middle Ages: "La Edad Media pujante,
la Edad Media que yo y mi enigma y mi fantasia simboliza-
bamos con incorporal prestigio . . . ."2
As an incorporeal being, she follows Ozil and Aiol,
the itinerant troubadour Ithier, and Azelais, Aiol's
stepsister, to the town of Poitiers, where Aiol's mother
Berta has settled. Berta's story adds local color to the
narrative. In her youth, she had accompanied the armies
of the second crusade to Jerusalem, where she had been a
prostitute, and where Ozil of Lusignan had fathered Aiol.
Berta traced her ancestry to the mystic Peter Barthélemy.

It was Peter Berthélemy who had discovered, in St. Peter's

basilica at Antioch, through the miraculous intercession

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 45.

192

of St. Andrew, the spear known to have wounded Jesus on
the cross. This little bit of information, pertaining to

the miraculous element in El Unicornio, might pass unnoticed

 

were it not for its becoming important to the outcome of
the plot. Aiol is to embark to the Holy Land in search of
his great uncle's relic, and he fulfills his goal in the
novel's tragic ending.

In Poitiers, two incidents occur which add to the
netherworldly atmosphere of this tale. These incidents
further attest to the ever-present ironical twists which
remind us of the ambiguous nature of reality. The first
incident involves the tragic death of Berta's husband Pons,
thereby denying Berta's long claim to a normal existence.
The second incident of a miraculous nature involves the
demonic possession of Aiol's sensuous sister, Azelais.
There are two possible explanations for Azelais' demonic
possession. To begin with, Melusina hints at the possible
incestuous relationship that could evolve between Azelais
and Aiol. This fear of incest materializes in Poitiers,
where Azelais succeeds in seducing her stepbrother. To
the medieval audience, however--and this is, after all, a
novel about the Middle Ages--such a sinful act is neces-
sarily interpreted as the work of the Devil. The narrator
perceives a basic dualism in the interpretation of this
event, for while she shows medieval man's concern with

sin, she perceives, on a higher level, that the notion

193

of sin is itself unnatural and perverted, stemming from an
overly strict, superstitious adherence to Christian prin-
ciples. Of course, medieval man dared not question those
principles; to do so would in itself have constituted
heresy.
Azeléis' desire is therefore explained as demonic
possession. She appears not as a woman torn by the pain
of her impossible situation, but as a being whose body
has been appropriated by supernatural powers:
Hincaba los dientes en las briznas; tartajeaba
unas palabras ahogadas, en afiicos, como si hubiera
perdido la razén, y todo su cuerpo, luminoso de tan
blanco, se agitaba violentamente en la tenebrosidad
del improvisado pértico . . . . A Pons y a mi nos
parecio que encima de aquel cuerpo convulso se alzaba,
como si se desprendiera de la tenaza de los muslos
febriles, un negro vapor, que podia asumir la estatura
de un hombre y que, después de oscilar brevemente, se
desflecaba, desvaneciéndose en el aire . . . .1
éCabia 1a eventualidad de que un elemento diabélico
hubiera intervenido en un incidente tan herméticamente
obsceno? Cabia, sin duda, y ya dije que a la sazén
el Demonic se inmiscuia en todo . . . .2
Melusina, however, questions this superstition
"husmeando la paja, en la pesquisa de algfin rastro de olor
a azufre o a mixtura del Infierno. Pero nada especialmente
perverso oli . . . ."3 Hers is the position of the skeptic,
the contemporary point of view, and her "enlightened"

assessment of the event synthesizes the age as people saw

 

lIbid., Chapter II, "La endemoniada de Poitiers,"

p. 88.

2 3

Ibid., p. 89. Ibid.

194

it then, and as people see it today. Azelais is exorcised
by the bishop of Poitiers. We hear no more of her until
the end of Chapter IV, when she decides to go as a pilgrim
to the Holy Land. The cycle of Azelais' life closes in
Jerusalem. She is the mysterious woman in white, constant
companion to the leper king Baldwin IV, who has herself
contacted the disease. Just as her brother Aiol and count-
less others, she seeks to redeem her carnal, "sinful" self
through total devotion to a higher ideal.

From Berta's tragically torn household, Ozil and
Aiol, accompanied by the incorporeal Melusina, set out
towards the forest of Lussac. The idyllic setting of
Lussac reminds the reader of the forest frequented by King
Arthur and his supernatural preceptor, Merlin. In Lussac,
Melusina discovers that she has the additional magic power
of reading Aiol's mind, and thus, of entering his subcon-
scious. Her earlier suspicion of Aiol's lust for his
sister is confirmed. She gains knowledge of Aiol's desires,
guilty feelings, and of his need to become a crusader in
the Holy Land.

The forest of Lussac becomes, as it did in the
Arthurian legends, the meeting point between the pagan
and the Christian elements. Here our protagonists
encounter Brandan, the saintly hermit with a literary
antecedent, who gives them shelter. The author humorously

parodies the tone of the literary romance: ”Hace aqui su

195

entrada el santo ermitafio que invariablemente figura en

1 Brandan's figure is certainly modeled

estas narraciones."
after a hagiographical theme, perhaps referring to a St.
Brendan of Irish provenance. The encounter with Brandan
is also symbolic in the sense that it echoes the main

theme of El Unicornio: the protagonists are searching for

 

an earthly paradise very much as was the wish of the
original St. Brendan.
Brendan's story is typical of the "quest" type of

literature, of which El Unicornio is a modern echo.

 

According to the medieval tradition, St. Brendan, a monk
of royal Irish lineage, wished to see Paradise and Hell
before his death. As God granted him his wish, the monk
and fourteen companions set out to accomplish this mission.
They encountered numerous perils until, after roughly
seven years of hardship, they reached Paradise: "The
garden of Paradise is full of sweetly perfumed flowers

and many different fruits . . . ."2

The appearance of the earthly Brandan in El

Unicornio signals a welcome change from the atmosphere

 

of death and struggle characteristic of this novel.

Brandan's hermitage is propitious to the introduction of

 

l
p. 114.

Ibid., Chapter III, "En la ermita de Lussac,"

2John Fox, A Literary History of France: The
Middle Ages (London: Barnes & Noble, 1974), p. 36.

 

 

196

further elements of the fantastic. The heroes are sur-
rounded by a world of make-believe in which time is at a
standstill. This feeling of timelessness is important to
the evocation of the fairy-tale atmosphere, where hero and
heroine "live happily ever after." And this feeling of
timelessness, however brief, recreates the atmosphere of
magic and fantasy which is lost in the scenes of political
struggle and spiritual turmoil in the remainder of the
novel. Adding to the sense of the supernatural, Brandan's
hermitage offers magic potions for the cure of Ozil and
Aiol. Goblins such as "Fadet" accomplish the household
chores in the dead of night. Even angels seem to sur-
round the saint's retreat, thereby complementing the
serious political events with an atmosphere filled with
marvelous or prodigious elements.

Brandan's paradise is real in so far as it demon-
strates a man's coming to terms with himself and with his
surroundings. This, however, is contrary to the knight's
(i.e., man's) disposition, which feels the need to conquer
the paradise through feats worthy of human strength.
Therefore, the protagonists set out from Lussac to meet
their uncertain destiny.

On the way, they make a stop at Castel-Roussillon,
home of Aymé and Seramunda, and scene of the fourth chap-

ter of El Unicornio. This chapter, titled "El devorado

 

corazén," presents the state of love and courtship in

197

twelfth century France. Aymé and Seramunda are developed
very much according to the literary models of the age they
serve to illustrate:
Para ella [Seramunda] como para Alienor de Aqui-
tania y para sus dos hijas, Alix, casada con Thibaut
VII de Blois, y Maria, casada con Enrique I de
Champagna--a quieneslimitaba dentro de lo que permitian
sus recursos . . . .
As the narrator humorously suggests, Seramunda "estaba
enferma de literatura."2 Her total existence revolved
around, was bounded by the laws of love and courtship,
which, at the time, neglected the husband in favor of a
"literary" acceptable lover. Chapter IV offers a strong
counterpoint to Brandan's harmonious existence and to the

crusading spirit displayed in the last four chapters of

El Unicornio. In the court ofAymé and Seramunda, all is

 

passion and jealousy. The heroes encounter once more,
another facet of the Middle Ages, and they succumb to the
worldly pleasures offered them. It is here that Ozil and
Aiol learn of a code of courtship whose ceremonies seem
beautiful; but they discover that this courtly life is
aimless. The spiritual stalemate which characterizes
Aymé and Seramunda leads, in the author's moral view of

man's destiny, to their physical death. And our

 

1Mujica Lainez, El Unicornio, Chapter IV, "El
devorado corazon," p. 130.

 

21bid., p. 130.

198

protagonists continue on their pilgrimage of life by
following the crusaders to the east.
The episode at Castel-Roussillon is highly reminis-

cent of the second chapter of El Unicornio, set in Berta's

 

hostel at Poitiers. They are similar in dénouément as

 

well as in the thematic leitmotifs they serve to illus-
trate. Both settings provide an arena for the sensuous
element, forcing the heroes to engage in a confrontation
with the "Devil."

The tragic endings of these two chapters indicate
that the "Angel's" conquest of the "Devil" can be achieved
only at the expense of human sacrifice. If there is one
lesson to be learned from these chapters, it is found in
the antithesis of man, the sensual being, and religion,
censor and negator of this basic nature. Moreover, on
the political level, the sublimation of the sensual impulse
was at the root of the mysticism, the ideology and the
aspirations which resulted in the migrations of the cru-
saders. Man, taught by religion that it was sinful to
succumb to the temptations of the body, was ready to
embark eastwards in his desire to redeem himself from
worldly, material concerns. The medieval knight and cru-
sader who has denied physical love because he envisions
the carnal as destructive and corrupting--is personified

in Aiol.

199

It is at this point in the novel that Aiol and
Melusina decide to journey to the Holy Land. They have by
now lost Ozil, who has died needlessly in a tournament at
the hands of his blood cousin, Geoffrey of Lusignan.
Returning to the forest of Lussac, they have been confronted
with the death of Brandan, an earthly reminder of the tem-
poral nature of worldly happiness. It is after a number of
these catastrophic events that Melusina's metamorphosis
occurs. She had aspired to become a young maiden and thus
to accomplish her seduction of Aiol; but, ironically, she
is changed into Melusin de Pleurs, male companion to Aiol.
This twist is another example of the author's repeated use
of unexpected and ambiguous elements throughout the novel.
It is part of the fantastic dimension in the tale, and it
adds to the highly imaginative vision of the Middle Age
culture in which fantasy played so great a role.

The two knights decide to enlist in the armies of
Philip of Flanders. Before they embark, Aiol is formally
knighted by his dead father, in a ceremony not uncommon

to the medieval chanson de geste. Ozil's unicorn horn is

 

passed down to his son, suggesting continuity in the sym-
bolic search for purity. And Aiol now expresses interest

in his great uncle's holy relic: "He prometido recobrar

200

la Santa Lanza que mi antepasado Barthélemy descubrié en
Antioquia . . . ."1
Thus far, the wanderings of Melusina and her

entourage have taken them across France's Midi: from
Lusignan to Poitiers, from there to the forest of Lussac,
and from Lussac through Perpignan, Auxerre, Tours, Noblat,
Limoges, Autun, Beauvais, Clermont, until finally they
reach once more the forest of Lussac, ending their cyclical
voyage in Pleurs. Constant exposure to tragedy has imbued
them with cynicism. The devil, personifying the temptations
of the temporal world has--as Melusina comments-~taken a
heavy toll:

. . . muertes y muertes y muertes . . . . :Cuantas

muertes desfilan por este libro! . . . la de Pons,

la de Guilhem de Cabestanh, la de Seramunda, la de

Yolanz, la de Aymé de Castel-Roussillon, la de

Ithier . . . . Me quedo sin personajes. :Y todavia

me falta un cfimulo que recordar! Pero la vida esta
llena de muertes.

History, Miracle and Legend:
The Crusades

 

The second voyage begins in 1177, as Melusin and
Aiol embark towards the remote and threatened kingdom of
Baldwin the Leper. What follows in this second voyage
contrasts sharply with the quasi-pastoral surroundings of

the French Midi. It is true that, for the medieval French

 

1Ibid., Chapter V, "Un cuerpo para Melusina,"

p. 220.

2Ibid., Chapter IV, p. 187.

201

pilgrim, the Middle East discloses exotic secrets quite
different from the fairy-tale atmosphere of the French

Midi. But, in the second half of E1 Unicornio, elements

 

of magic and fantasy are overshadowed by real-imaginary
elements of a prodigious or miraculous-Christian nature,
as well as by real-objective historical elements.

The narrator focuses sharply on the historical
era he is about to describe. No longer is he merely an
observer as was the fairy Melusina, but a protagonist who
acts out his role according to historical circumstances.
On the one hand, the change in narrator halfway through
the novel is welcome, for he is able to be a full partici-
pant in all the events leading up to the battle of
Montgisard and ending with the fall of Jerusalem in 1188.
On the other hand, a mounting sense of irony accompanies
Melusina's transformation into a young knight. We are
constantly reminded of her love for Aiol, and confronted
by the awkwardness of her situation as a man. This dis-
proportionate love-relationship is once again basic to
the understanding of the author's cynical view of man's
nature, and reiterates the themes of wish-fulfillment in
an impossible terrestrial paradise:

. . . Nos hemos enamorado de un imposible. Pero, si

bien se mira, todo gran amor es imposible y en eso
finca su grandeza.

 

1Ibid., Chapter VI, "El rey leproso," p. 270.

202

If Melusin and Aiol had made their decision to
flee their native Poitou in order to escape the tempta-
tions of the Devil, they are soon to be disappointed.

The Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, as portrayed in this
novel, is disintegrating from greed and corruption, from
fragmentation and intrigue. The work of the "Devil" is
to be seen everywhere, as the young king Baldwin, whose
decaying body provides an allegory to the political situ-
ation of his kingdom, struggles to provide strong leader-
ship in the face of Saladin's challenge.

Due to the nature of the events described in the

last four chapters of El Unicornio, the narrative becomes

 

far more historical (that is, focusing on the real-
objective) than that of the first half of the book. Not
only are we now following factual historical detail,
together will all the intrigues and accidents that govern
this realm of contingency, but we also lose interest in
the heroine as a psychological study (a perspective that
had retained priority in the first half of the book) in
order to immerse ourselves in the world of pagan idolatry
and Christian morality which are striving for mastery in
the Holy Land. Because the author's interest in the cru-
sades and his treatment of the problems confronting
Christianity take precedence over considerations of a
fantastic nature, those elements dealing with the sacred

or the prodigious (of which the fight against the "Devil"

203

is exemplary) assume priority in this second half of El

Unicornio.
King Baldwin, constantly undermined by the agonies

1 0 a 0
in re51sting

of advanced leprosy, shows miraculous vigor
the advances of Saladin. The victory of Montgisard, the
last great battle won by the Christians before the fall
of Jerusalem, is one of the climactic points of the pil-
grimage. Mujica Lainez endows this historic episode with

vitality and enthusiasm which make it one of the most

evocative and emotive passages in El Unicornio:

 

. . . Me colma de alegria la perspectiva de
enfrentarme--por fin--con un tema tan alto y tan puro
como Montgisard, una ocasién que hermano a los con-
temporaneos de Baudoin IV con los mejores contempor—
aneos de Godofredo de Bouillon, y siento que mi pluma
corre, feliz, sobre las cuartillas, mientras las
figuras se levantan y se ordenan; los héroes se tienden
las espadas y 105 laureles; los angeles victoriosos
abren las alas de bronce, y el monumento entero crece
delante de mi, comparable por su calidad con los mas
dignos que esculpiera la Historia. Y lo que exalta
mas mi entusiasmo es el saber que yo fui parte de esa
empresa, no como un hada, sino como un hombre . . . .
Montgisard es un diamante que se incendia de luces de
maravilla en las manos trémulas de un leproso.

Montgisard becomes the point of highest achieve-
ment, the climax of the historical world portrayed in El

Unicornio. With respect to the structure of Manuel Mujica

 

Lainez' novel, it is parallel to the author's epic intro-

duction of the battle of Lepanto in Bomarzo, a historical

 

1Ibid., p. 291. The words are "milagroso vigor."

2Ibid., Chapter VII, "Azares de la guerra," p. 285.

204

landmark which also constitutes the high point of the novel
about the Italian Renaissance. From here on, the histor-
ical fabric of the kingdom of Jerusalem disintegrates, as
Baldwin IV succumbs to an inevitable death.

Melusina's metamorphosis, as well as the intrinsic
change of narrative pace provided by the turbulence of
historical struggle, are the two most significant elements
contributing to the novel's structural dichotomy. We see
this in the transitional Chapter V, in which Melusina is
changed into a young knight, and where both Aiol and
Melusin leave the pastoral French Midi for the Holy Land,
as crusaders in the ranks of Philip of Flanders.

With Melusin de Pleurs we lose, if only super-
ficially, the sense of objectivity provided by the invisi-
ble fairy's account. On the other hand, Melusina's incar-
nation in a time of historical upheaval is more desirable,
since she(he) is able to narrate a first-hand account of
the struggle between East and West--a struggle of which
she is no mere spectator-observer, but a protagonist-actor
who partakes of its emotions and actions. In one respect,
however, the narrative point of view is not altered as
much as might have been expected. It is still tinged with
that aura of magic, of potions, magic wands, fairies
and goblins which serves to retain the stylistic con-

tinuity and structural balance of El Unicornio.

 

205

The novel has a balanced but dualistic structure.
Its account of the two voyages or pilgrimages is in itself
symbolic of the dualistic world of the Middle Ages. Much
of the novel's dualism resides in Aiol's constant fight
against sin. The Devil and the Angel are perennially at
war, both in the political arenas of East and West, and in
the personal life of hero and heroine. Throughout the
plot, the hero's encounters with historical accident and
with his own urges symbolize this perennial dialectic of
Good and Evil. And this dualism, intrinsic to the fabric
of the Middle Ages, is to be found repeatedly in both the

first and second halves of El Unicornio. Aiol plans his

 

pilgrimage to the Holy Land, desiring to redeem himself

from previous sin, only to find that the familiar Devil

is everywhere, and particularly at war in man's inner self.
How the author synthesizes this dialectic of good

and evil, personified both in Aiol's personal nature and

his historical exploits, is basic to an understanding of

medieval man's spiritual dilemma. Because the angel,

the devil and the fairy are at the root of medieval life,

we shall examine a number of examples wherein Aiol

encounters this darker side of nature, as described in the

second half of El Unicornio.

 

In the Poitou, pastoral calm underlies a world
of seething passion, a world of ferment and dissatis-

faction which at times explodes into petty warfare. The

206

Devil runs rampant in the chapters preceding Aiol's pil-

grimage to Jerusalem. The France depicted in El Unicornio

 

corresponds to the image portrayed in the literature of

the period. Life at court shows man's inordinate preoc-
cupation with the frail, temporal world. By adding numerous
literary sources, the author focuses on literature's own
concern with the forces Operating in the world, in partic-
ular, the forces of good and evil.

The first voyage of Melusina and Aiol becomes a
time for the apprenticeship of the knight, in accordance
with ideals expounded through literature. The first four
chapters provide a propitious environment for the fashion-
ing of the "perfect" knight through his encounter with the
external forces of good and evil. Aiol follows the
romanticized vision of the medieval knight. A descendant
of the princely house of Lusignan, he bears upon his
shoulder a mark by which his father, Ozil, recognizes him
as his own son. Throughout his formative years, he proves
himself a knight after the traditional literary models.
Worthy of a title, he is knighted by his father. And
many times his spiritual integrity is put to the test as
much as is his physical courage. His training, however,
has one pitfall--he is to fight for the supremacy of good,
but he is taught that he himself--or, rather, his sensuous
self--is basically evil. This dilemma is at the root of

Aiol's problematic existence; for, to fulfill the ideals

207

of his "perfect" knightly upbringing, he must deny and
reject part of himself.

If Aiol hoped to flee from the terror of sin by
enlisting in the armies of Philip of Flanders, he is soon
to witness that, in the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem, the
same sinful existence lies at the root of the kingdom's
disintegration. After the victory of Montgisard, Aiol
and Melusin follow King Baldwin through a series of
defeats. While the Franks are losing ground before the
advances of Saladin, the royal family itself is faction-
ridden and engenders discontent among the various feudal
lords and religious orders of the kingdom. The narrator
does not lose the strings of the story as she comments on
the intrigue and gossip, and all the historical figures
reappear in her thickly woven tapestry. The details of
King Baldwin's sensuous mother, Agnes; the matrimonial web
spun around the life of Baldwin's two sisters, Sibila and
Isabella; Reginald of Chatillon's rebellious and treacher-
ous spirit; the life of the Leper-King himself and his
miraculous warrior feats at Montgisard--all these appear
in the narrative. And throughout the narrative, Melusin
and Aiol stand as two symbols of an historical era, an era
that cannot be apprehended without the participation of
four figures: the fairy, the knight, the angel, and the

devil.

208

Aiol's struggle against his sensual self becomes

as much a leitmotif in the second part of El Unicornio

 

as it was in the first. He is tempted by Sibila,
Baldwin's older sister, and in reaction to his vulnerable
self he vows to be chaste:

Una mafiana, delante del Santo Sepulcro, prometié
solemnemente que permaneceria casto hasta que le fuera
concedido el privilegio de hallarla [i.e., la Santa
Lanza] . . . . Ni siquiera daria un beso. Tales
eran sus anhelos de pureza, que hubiera querido que
la mitad inferior de su cuerpo fuera de marmol, como
la del joven hechizado del cual se habla en Las mil
y una noches,1para suprimir las tentaciones de la
carne . . . .

 

But Aiol's fight against sin does not cease with this vow
of chastity. He is cunningly seduced with the help of an
erotic potion while he sojourns in Antioch, and later he
cannot contain the ardent flow of his repressions:
El, tan austero, tan mesurado, se lanzé a hostigar
con su voracidad a las doncellas del castillo. I
Dijérase que la ruptura de su voto habia destruido
tambiéh e1 dique del desenfreno y que se dejaba
arrastrar por el tumulto de una inundacién liberadora.
The fight against carnal temptation continues in the measure
that the kingdom of Jerusalem disintegrates, as if both
struggles were directed at one and the same evil force.
But, while the kingdom of Jerusalem is lost to the Moslems,
Aiol is yet to vanquish his own personal version of the
Devil. A powerful, though somewhat anticlimactic, vision

of the hero's tragic death is presented, occurring some-

where during the flight from Jerusalem to the valley of

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 298. Ibid., p. 304.

209

Moses. It is appropriate to the formalistic structure of
the novel that Aiol should, at last, find his ancestor's
relic, Peter Barthélemy's spear, on his flight from
Jerusalem. It is even more ironic that this holy relic
be given to the hero by Pascua de Riveri, mistress of
Jerusalem's last Patriarch, and reincarnation of Aiol's
perennial temptation:

Imagen postrera del Amor obstinado, de la sensual-
idad vigilante, del mundo hostigador, cobra y pavo
real, Azelais, Seramunda, Sibila, Pascua de Riveri,
Aymé de Castel-Roussillon, imagen posible de mi misma,
de Melusina-Melusin, del hada--donce1 engendrada por
Eros.1

Aiol, however, does not succumb to this temptation. In a
final, desperate attempt to free himself from the chains
of his all-too-human self, relic in hand, he braves a step

towards a precipice, and falls to his death.

In El Unicornio, we perceive a vision of an era

 

through the juxtaposition of two separate sets of elements:
one, on the real-objective level, which pertains to the
hiStorical, geographic and literary reality; the other,

on the real-imaginary level, which pertains to the use of
imaginative elements from the categories of the mythical—
1egendary, the miraculous, the magical, and the fantastic.
It is this juxtaposition of the real and the imaginary

that makes El Unicornio an interesting addition to the

 

contemporary genre of magic-realist fiction in Latin

 

1
p. 387.

Ibid., Chapter IX, "El cuerno de Oberén,"

210

America. It offers a new, valid interpretation of a his-
torical era--an interpretation in which the poetic element,
rather than obliterating the importance of historical
accident, serves to enhance it by revealing these accidents
in the light of man's perennial quest for objectives which
transcend him, as well as in his perennial failure to
achieve his highest aspirations.

With this textual explication of the plot, I
have attempted to illustrate Manuel Mujica Lainez'
dualistic rendering of the Middle Ages. It is a vision
which seeks to understand the spiritual struggle between
man and his destiny, and the paths whereby man tries,
often mistakenly, to pursue an ultimate, life-sustaining
principle. The pilgrimage undertaken by Melusina for the
sake of her love; that of Aiol for the sake of spiritual
salvation; the incidents of the plot as they are given in
a chronologically developed historical space and time--
these make up the real-objective strata in Mujica Lainez'
study of the Middle Ages. However, his is an ”unorthodox"
study of a historical age, given the kind of hero chosen
to narrate the events and the generally ambivalent
descriptive passages necessitated by this fantastic agent
and the magical-miraculous world she inhabits. These ele-
ments, more appropriate to fairy-tales than to conventional
historical studies, have been purposefully selected by the

author in order to convey an intrinsic facet of the age.

211

With the introduction of the real-imaginary world through
its agent, Melusina, and through the use of medieval folk-

lore and literary symbolism, El Unicornio offers an

 

original and faithful portrait of the medieval spirit.
Furthermore, the structure of the plot with its

dichotomies--such as the contrast between life in the

Poitou and the historical struggles in the Christian king-

dom outremer, or the symbolic struggle between good and

 

evil which is evident throughout the narrative--provides a
foil to the study of the hero's own ambivalent nature.
Aiol synthesizes, in his search for Barthélemy's relic,
man's universal dilemma, the man-made dilemma that arises
from the notion of sin and that is deeply rooted in the
pervasive Judaeo-Christian consciousness of man's short-
comings. Aiol, the carnal--and therefore sinful--being,
is a representative of the inner struggle between good and
evil, between angel and devil, between those basic dia-
lectical elements which, in their struggle, create his-
torical phenomena. For Mujica Lainez has grasped that
history is not made by social or economic forces, or by
politicians engaged in the naked pursuit of power. Rather,
it is a product of man's noblest aspirations, values and
multi-faceted beliefs, as these impinge upon the nature

of man and the world. And these aspirations, values and

beliefs can only be understood symbolically as the men of

212

each culture understood them, lived for them, and gave
their lives for them.

El Unicornio abounds with symbolic passages illus-

 

trative of this dialectic. Perhaps Melusina herself can
best summarize the conflicting tendencies which make up the
texture of medieval life as it is shown to us in El

Unicornio:

 

Me gustan los simbolos y mas los oscuros y arduos
de descifrar. También yo soy medieval hasta la punta
de las unas, y me he movido en un dédalo mistico y
trovadoresco de emblemas pintados, de bordadas divisas,
de alusiones enigmaticas en las que la heréldica se
enlaza con la alquimia, de Cortes de Amor en las que
se pesaba e1 pro y el contra de lo puro y lo impuro.
Por eso me gusto el encuentro, en la desértica nada,
luego de la caida de la impfidica Jerusalén, de cuatro
personajes que se destacaban como cuatro alegorias,
como cuatro hojas de un poliptico amoroso: el Doncel
del Unicornio, hijo del Caballero y la prostituta, el
inmaculado permanentemente perseguido por los venablos
del amor; el Hada tierna, pasional, desprovista, a
causa del amor, de su poder magico; la mujer erotica,
que manché con su amor libertino la virtud de la
Iglesia; y el Execrable, que 1e neg6 la limosna de su
amor al cordero,lsublimaci6n del Amor, cuando la
requeria . . . .

 

lIbid., p. 382.

CHAPTER V

PARODY AND MAGIC-REALISM IN

DE MILAGROS Y DE MELANCOLIAS

Man is voyager through time and space. He is
impelled by a nature forever restless, his hopes forever
fixed on some insurmountable goal. Physically and spirit-
ually in quest of strange deeds and exotic places, peren-
nially dissatisfied with the present, he generally neg-
lects the past and thereby foregoes that legacy of his-
torical memories which stands as an Open forecast of his
future. Although history might teach man about his
potential destructiveness and forewarn him about his
ambivalent nature, a myopic disinterest in the past has
prevented that lesson from sinking in.

This image of man's weakness and of his perennial
shortsightedness has been the subject as well as the
regret of much of Manuel Mujica Lainez' fiction. The
problems resulting from man's inability to learn the les-

sons of history run as a leitmotif through the historical

 

novels treated in the two previous chapters, Bomarzo and

El Unicornio. In these two novels, the author recon-

 

structed a historical chain of events which showed how,

213

214

on the one hand, men's beliefs and values shape historical
phenomena and how, on the other, historical structures
influence man's encounter with himself, with his destiny.
The outcome of that encounter seemed to be inevitably
tragic, and was so portrayed in each of these novels.

However, since Bomarzo and El Unicornio were both far

 

removed, in space and time, from the experiences of
twentieth-century man—-one dealing with the Italian
Renaissance and the other with twelfth-century France and
the Crusades--the reader could feel less personally

threatened. When the same themes reappear in De milagros

 

yide melancolias, through the author's incorporation of

 

events not far removed from the contemporary Latin American
scene, he can no longer escape the confrontation with his
destiny. The message becomes all the more threatening in
the light of Mujica Lainez' perspective on the incurable
ills of Latin American society, indeed of society in gen-
eral, as studied in a fatalistic chronicle of its
inception, growth, and downfall.

There has been a surprising number of Argentinian
writers who have, whether purposely or subconsciously,
chosen not to write about their homeland's contemporary
political and social scene, but have instead reverted
either to works of a metaphysical nature, such as Borges,
or to existential concerns--such as Mallea, Onetti,

Sébato and Cortazar——or to works of sheer fantasy, such as

215

those produced by all of the above-mentioned writers.
Manuel Mujica Lainez, as was shown in the second chapter
of this dissertation, started out by portraying the images

of past splendor and present decadence of his homeland,

 

Argentina. Yet, novels such as Bomarzo and El Unicornio,

Crénicas reales and El laberinto, led him further away

 

 

from the realm of local politics and bitter power dis-
putes, and into a realm where the universal rather than
the particular, the past rather than the present, the
occult and immanent rather than the explicit, the subcon-
scious rather than the conscious, emerged against a back-

ground of remote history. No so with De milagros_y de

 

melancolias.

 

The differences between De milagros y de melan-

 

colias and the previous "historical" novels are many and
far-reaching. At first glance, the most salient dis-

tinction is one of tone. In De milagros y de melancolias

 

we are dealing with a parody of historical narrative

rather than with history itself. Secondly, an essential
characteristic which sets this work apart from the others
is its purely imaginary format: all the names, the dramatic
action, the geographical location, the customs, together
with the exhaustive account of human vices and follies—-
however much of human experience they may catalogue--are

totally fictitious. In addition, of course, we have the

216

fact that De milagros ygde melancolias offers a bitter

 

attack on Latin American society.

It is interesting to note that De milagros y de

 

melancolias was written roughly at the same time as

 

Gabriel Garcia Mérquez' Cien anos de soledad. However

 

different they may seem in structure, style and develop-
ment of subject matter, both partake of certain modern
ideological and aesthetic currents; and both develop a
detached, intensely ironical, pervasively humorous
approach to theme and conflict. This comparison is help—

ful in ascertaining whether De milagros y de melancolias

 

is an example of magic-realist narrative.

In this chapter, we shall first focus on the nature
of parody and its place in the narrative of Manuel Mujica
Lainez. By so doing, we hope to single out some basic
satirical elements in the style and structure of De

milagros y de melancolias. Specifically, we shall show

 

how the author parodies and satirizes historians and
historical chronicles, and thereby indicates his rejection
of the "objective" viewpoint of the observer. To a lesser
degree, the parody is also directed at his own earlier
work and historical perspective. Secondly, we shall
indicate Mujica Lainez' indictment of the institutions

and attitudes of Latin American society, by summarizing
his satirical treatment of politics, the legal profession,

the religious establishments, the educational system and

217

the social conventions of the mythical (and archetypical)
city of Apricotina. Finally, we shall trace some of the
magic-realist motifs which parallel those of Garcia Marquez'
novel, and which shed further light on the historical
process as envisioned by Manuel Mujica Lainez. In 23

milagros y de melancolias, the author uses real-imaginary

 

elements to document a "fictitious" history of the New
World. The vision which emerges, not unlike Jonathan
Swift's witty treatment of the world's vices and follies

in Gulliver's Travels, is in itself a sincere and powerful

 

condemnation of western values. But that message Manuel
Mujica Lainez leaves for the end. His first concern is

with the stylized construction of an anti-historia, a

 

mockery of history and of historical fiction; in other
words, a parody. It is the logical end-product of his

own literary development from historical fiction to magic-
realism.

Mujica Lainez' Parody of

History and the His-
torical Vision

 

 

 

In his semi-autobiographical novel Cecil,1

Manuel Mujica Lainez refers to the creative period
following the publication of his historical novels,

Bomarzo and El Unicornio, as one of anguish:

 

 

1Manual Mujica Lainez, Cecil (Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, 1972).

218

Recuerdo que cuando estampé la palabra 'fin' en
mi dilatada novela del Renacimiento italiano, luego
de mas de dos afios de redaccidn, me sobrecogié e1
desconsuelo de que ya no volveria a escribir, tanto
habia puesto de mi mismo en sus 650 paginas. Sin
embargo, a1 cabo de un periodo de opresivo tormento,
empezaron a agitarse en mi animo las figuras del
libro siguiente, el de la evocacién medieval, y
respiré a1 saber que una vez mas sobreviviria. La
siniestra etapa que vino después de su conclusion
fue agudamente mala.

The author proceeded to develop other themes for
a future historical novel. But his trials ended in fail-
ure and he became more disheartened. It was at this point
in time, perhaps as a reaction to the trials and tribu-
lations of writing another historical novel, that Manuel
Mujica Lainez turned towards the creation of two of his

most imaginative novels: Cronicas reales (1967) and De

 

milagros y de melancolias (1968). The following passage

 

from Cecil supplies us with further information regarding
the creative process surrounding these two satirical
works:

Y sfibitamente, en pleno desaliento, se presenté
ante mi con nitidez, casi de punta a punta, como un
tapiz completo, el libro que debia componer. Eran
los relatos, que unidos entre si, organizan una
novela, y que al referir las vicisitudes de una
dinastia imaginaria, en un imaginario pais del centro
de Europa, me facilitaron la ocasién reconfortante
de mandar al diablo el terror del anacronismo y de
desquitarme de los pavores que me habian comunicado
mis dos novelas histéricas, las cuales, si bien me
procuraron, como todos mis demas libros, intensas
felicidades, mazclaron a sus goces el permanente
miedo que suscita e1 trato con la verdad verdadera . .
. . Con [las Crdnicas] abriése para mi la puerta de

 

1Ibid., Chapter V ("Fracasos del escritor"), p. 48.

219

un mundo que habia entrevisto apenas: el de la ironia
pura, el de la sétira, rico en fecundas probabilidades.

Published in November 1968, De milagros y de

 

melancolias was written as a parody, an "antihistoria,"

 

 

"compuesta por un escritor que se vengé asi, alegremente,
de las torturas que le habian impuesto la celosa Historia
y su hijo bastardo el Anacronismo."2

De milagros is the story of an imaginary, but

 

recognizably South American, city, traced from its dis—
covery and foundation to the year 3000. The work is
satirical in both form and content. It imitates, through
ridicule, the historical chronicle and historical fiction.
However, its satire does not stop with the emulation of
traditional literary forms; the tools of satire are
directed against every possible or imaginable facet of
the political, social, religious, and cultural scene of
the New World. Nothing remains sacred in this work as
the author excels in proliferating the caricatures--
including one of himself--which people his account of
human vice and folly, stupidity and abuse, in the city of
miracles and melancholies.

Before proceeding with an analysis of the satirical

elements found in the novel, it would be in order to

 

11bid., p. 48.

2Letter from Manuel Mujica Lainez to George 0.
Schanzer, quoted in Schanzer, op. cit., p. 70.

1

 

 

220

formulate a definition of satire. The original meaning
of satire in English and other languages refers to a
literary work of a special kind, one "in which vice,
follies, stupidities and abuses, etc. are held up to

1

ridicule and contempt." A more modern meaning is pro-

vided in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: "the

 

employment in speaking or writing of sarcasm, irony,
ridicule, etc. in denouncing, exposing or deriding vice,
folly, abuses or evils of any kind."2

Insofar as Manuel Mujica Lainez' novel deals with
the regime and institutions Of a Latin American society,
it is a work of political satire, and it is perhaps the
author's most "political" work to date. This is an
interesting fact by itself, considering how little in the
form of overt political criticism has come out of Argentina
in the last two decades. The political dimension, the
essential butt of the satire in the novel, leads, in turn,
to a consideration of the validity of past and present
institutions, and ultimately to a confrontation with

Mujica Lainez' negative vision of the historical process

as a whole.

 

1Matthew Hodgart, Satire (London: World University
Library, 1969), p. 7. From Webster's New World Dictionary.

 

21bid., p. 7.

221

Insofar as Mujica Lainez deals with historical
writing and literary productions in his novel, the work
is a parody. According to Meyer Abrams, a parody "derides,
not its subject, but a particular literary work or style,
by imitating its features and applying them to trivial

1

or grossly discordant materials." In De milagros, the

 

parody of allegedly objective historiography is accom-
plished through the tone or attitude which the author
imposes upon the reader: the latter must follow the book's
natural, inevitable descent from the sublime to the
ridiculous. It is, as Northrop Frye argued, "the com-

pletion of the logical process known as the reductio ad

 

absurdum" of a particular model, but it "is not designed

 

to hold one in perpetual captivity, but to bring one to

the point at which one can escape from an incorrect pro-
cedure."2 In addition to historical writing and historical
fiction, Mujica Lainez also parodies classical and

romantic poetry, as well as certain artistic styles, by
applying them to “grossly discordant" subjects such as the
mediocre and obscene productions of tyrants, where power

exacts the applause that honest criticism would deny.

 

lMeyer H. Abrams, "A Glossary of Literary Terms,"
in Charles A. Allen and George D. Stephens, Satire:
Theor and Practice (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing
Co., 1962). p. 38.

 

2Northrop Frye, "The Nature of Satire," in Allen,
p. 30.

222

Perhaps the most extensively used satirical tool
in the novel is rrgpy. It is a standard tool of the
satirist. Irony, meaning dissimulation in its literal
sense,

is the systematic use of double meaning. It also
assumes a double audience, one that is deceived by
the surface meaning of the words, and another that
catches the hidden sense and laughs with the deceiver
at the expense of the deceived. This usually involves
a persona (literally, a mask), or fictional character
assumed by the satirist; and a narrative form which
will allow a double flow of meaning to be maintained,
such as parody, imaginary voyage, utopia or mock-
heroic . . . . Satire . . . is militant irony: the
satirist uses irony to make the reader uncomfortable,
to shake him out of his complacency and to make him 1
an ally in the battle against the world's stupidity.

Mujica Lainez employs irony quite systematically

in De milagros. The book is divided into six main parts,

 

supposedly written by six different "historians" whose
works Mujica Lainez is collating. The attitude of the
novel changes according to the focus of the attack in
each of these parts. But in each case Mujica Lainez is
far removed from the account he is editing, and under
this pretense of objectivity he can take the position of
the moral being whose "contemptuous" attitude leads, in
effect, to an assertion of certain superior moral prin-
ciples. He can point to absurd, incongruous situations,
even humorous ones, without ever letting go of the tone
of high moral principle. The barbs of the satirist, as

eloquently apparent in the case of Swift, are directed by

 

1Hodgart, p. 130.

223

a deeply moral purpose. It is as if "he is a prOphet

sent to lash the vices and follies of the time and he will
not stop until he has cleansed the foul body of the
infected world."1

Since De milagros yrde melancolias delivers its

 

satirical barbs both through its form and its content,

we shall first examine the elements of parody in the
structure of the novel. Through the use of a persona--
the fictional chronicler or chroniclers who account for
each particular stage in the development of the arche-
typical city, San Francisco de Apricotina--Manuel Mujica
Léinez achieves a certain detachment and superior vantage
point from his work.

The novel is divided into seven parts. Of these,
the first six deal with particular stages in the growth
of the city. They show, in the form of parody, the his-
torical progression (though the author sometimes implies
retrogression) of any sizeable Latin American community,
from its discovery and colonization, through the stages
of revolutionary unrest, independence, military dictator-
ship, tyranny, and ending in the final destruction of the
city. The seventh part is a sardonic account of the
tyrant's last vision, which takes place at a séance held
in the "Lider's" personal bordello. Titled "Epilogo

espiritista," it is a fitting introduction to the year

 

 

1Frye, "The Nature of Satire," in Allen, p. 19.

224

3000, and it stands as a permanent mockery of those his-
torical theories--past or future--which endorse progress
and ultimate freedom as the human condition which is the
goal of historical evolution.

The first part of the work, dealing with the
founder of the mythical San Francisco de Apricotina, was
supposedly written by Don Diego Cintillo, member of the
founding expedition and its imaginary chronicler. His
posthumous work is the source for another imaginary or
fictitious historian, the exiled twentieth-century journal-
ist who has composed the entire novel after drawing his
knowledge from several specific accounts such as Cintillo's.
Don Diego, the soldier in the line of duty, reminds us
very much of that "real" soldier, historian, and chronicler,
member of the expedition of Hernan Cortés, Bernal Diaz
del Castillo.

This is the first instance of a "twice-removed"
fictitious chronicler which is so essential to the sense
of irony in Mujica Léinez' novel. It allows him both the
pretense of objectivity and also the implication that
there is an ultimate bastion of morality undergirding the
tale. Furthermore, the fact that the events of the novel
are twice removed from the persona of the writer allows
some discrepancies of style and structure among the dif-
ferent parts: indeed, the author does incorporate the

nuances of the baroque, the neoclassical and the romantic

l-‘nF

 

 

225

styles during the course of the narrative. We have, then,
the use of double masks or personae; for the journalist
has fashioned a seemingly rectilinear account of the
foundation and evolution of the city, drawing material
from previous "fictionalized" chroniclers, or from other
incidental materials such as statistical records, letters,
and the like.

With Don Diego Cintillo's death, the exiled
journalist turns to the second chapter of his work:
"Gobernadores que tuvo San Francisco de Apricotina del
Milagro hasta su independencia." Here the parodic attack
is centered on the problems of scholarly erudition and
historical objectivity. The journalist is confronted
with a "serious" dilemma in his reconstruction of history,
namely, that there are so many rulers that his sources
have actually lost the count:

Tan extenso y complejo es el catalogo de los
gobernadores auténticos, gobernadores interinos,
gobernadores honorarios, tenientes de gobernadores,
delegados de gobernadores, gobernadores que no
asumieron el gobierno, gobernadores visitantes,
gobernadores ap6crifos y gobernadores fantasmas,
que gobernaron y desgobernaron.

Our apocryphal author humorously tries to keep his objec-

tivity amid the frustrations of the historian who cannot

trust his sources. Thus, he tells us that

 

lManuel Mujica Lainez, De milagros y de melancolias

(7::
‘W.

 

(Buenos Aires: Editorial SudameriEana, Second Edition,
1969), p. 121.

 

 

226

a nosotros no nos corresponde terciar en un debate
que contradice nuestra intencion de gozar de la vida.
Los gobernadores de San Francisco de Apricotina del
Milagro pueden haber sido sesenta y seis, como
demuestra irrefutablemente el Padre Quinones O.P.,

o cuarenta y uno, como demuestra irrefutablemente el
Padre Heiligenacht s.J.l

Nevertheless, however many and varied may have

been the governors of the city of miracles, our journalist,

disregarding the erudition of the above-mentioned sources
Quinones and Heiligenacht, singlehandedly decides to

mention only twelve. The remainder of the chapter, a suc-

 

cessive reading of the humorous and frivolous vicissi— g
tudes of the twelve governors of Apricotina, sheds some
light on the intended irony. For here the author neither
furnishes any truly important data nor does he mention
the dates for the period as a whole, or for the duration
of each governorship:

Hemos preferido no sobrecargar su memoria con
cifras fugaces, que no significan nada, ya que cada
vez se aferra mas en las modernas mentes, 1a nocién
de que el Tiempo no existe.

In this section, Mujica Lainez may be alluding ironically

to those twentieth-century literary movements which have

 

made a principle out of their disregard of order and
causality in the dimensions of time and space.

The third part of the novel deals with the era of
the "Libertador." A close reading would confirm a

definite change in narrative style, necessitated by the

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 121. Ibid., p. 141.

227

historical progression (which, the author implies, may
not have been without its regressive features).
Here again, the fictitious chronicler confronts

us first with the problems of documentation. He must
supplement fact with fiction where he lacks data pertaining
to this important era. As he very aptly puts it,

también la Leyenda, hada de la Historia, nos ha

secundado en la tentativa de reconstruir la fuente

de acontecimientos que tanto importan a la gesta de

la ciudad de Don Nufrio de Bracamonte. La Leyenda
suele ser la imagen poética de la verdad: embellece

y depura . . . .

‘

Since the chapter on the "Libertador" deals with
events associated with the first half of the nineteenth
century, the author refers to various philosophic and
cultural trends of the period. The names of Voltaire and
Rousseau, Robespierre, Marat and his executioner Charlotte
Corday, all are incorporated into the pages of De milagros

y de melancolias. We are given a brief glimpse into the

 

European ideological and political currents which, in the
New World, catalyzed the wars of independence.

The protagonist of this third part, General Xavier

 

Moncil, is presented as the archetypical hero of the
revolution; his portrait, however, is closer to that of
the modern anti-hero. Through him the author seeks to
parody, not so much the actual figures evoked by this

period of Latin America's struggle for independence--e.g.,

 

lIbid., p. 147.

228

Simon Bolivar, San Martin, O'Higgins--but the exalted, and
inaccurate, images which historians have forged of the
heroes of independence. For this reason, the use of
exaggeration and rhetoric in the narrative of the chapter
conveys an effective parody of the highly melodramatic,
highly adulatory historical chronicles much in vogue during
the years following independence. The following quotation,
taken from the final sketch of Xavier Moncil and concluding
the chapter, illustrates Mujica Lainez' use of hyperbole,
exaggeration, reduction and antithesis:

En medio de un charco de sangre, nos despedimos
del General Xavier Moncil, del héroe puro. Como
acerté Octaviano con aquello de: "Melpémene, 1a musa
de la Tragedia viene."! Vino, en la noche de la
Gran Equivocacién de los Atridas, y se quedd. Y
también se quedo para siempre nuestro Xavier, el
hermoso Xavier, el de los laureles de oro, el del
parpado inm6vi1, sangrante e1 corazén como el del
pelicano nutricio; el eterno, el eterno Moncil. Sofié
una Monarquia para la Repfiblica, y no la logr6; sofio
una Virginidad permanente, y no pudo lograrla; soné
un congreso infitil; sofié una Paz robusta, una Paz
Romana, y logr6 un disloque. Fue un hombre de accién,
como su genitora, y un hombre de obsesiones extrafias,
como su genitor: el caudal materno prosperd en
marciales triunfos, y el paterno maduré en errores
civiles. Una espléhdida ola de poesia (y no aludimos
aqui a la que inspiré a Panida Sistro) lo envuelve.
Esta de pie, en nuestra memoria, al hucaran los
pendones y los gallardetes, batallando y planeando,
amando y recatandose, entre e1 Inca y Socorro, entre
Casta Folia y Marte. éC6mo no estremecerse y
admirarlo? Bendito seas, General Virgen, Padre y
Madre de Santa Fe: cada uno de nosotros, tus hijos
y tus hijas, hubiera deseado ser la Vizcondesa dos
Assombros, para aliviar tus inquietudes y para colmar
tu exaltacién.

 

lIbid., pp. 225-25.

 

 

‘ T6111” _._ -—-‘*' __.-

229

Part Four deals with the corroding forces of
dictatorship. It is centered around the life and death of
the sinister "Caudillo" Gaspar Bravaverga. Gaspar's
takeover, partially ascribable to his mother's mastery of
voodoo, is the culmination of a long period of indecisive

struggle known as the "black anarchy" (La Negra Anarquia).

 

Gaspar Bravaverga is symbolic of the triumph of
barbarism over the civilizing, humanistic ideals which
impelled the revolution. We cannot but notice the intended

parallelism with the dictatorship of Don Juan Manuel de

 

Rosas. Although no dates are given, the allusions to
this dark period of Argentine history (1829-1852) are
unmistakeable. For example, the narrator describes an
incident which is often connected with the death of
Facundo Quiroga, a collaborator of Rosas:

Una mafiana, sali6 el Gobernador General Manlio In
Perlones a inspeccionar su provincia, sin mas
acompafiamiento que sesenta mutucos de Bronce de Moncil,
y en la proximidad de las minas de Chancaca, entregé
e1 ultimo suspiro, conlsus sesenta acompafiantes, a1

caer en una emboscada.

The author of this massacre, "un desconocido envuelto en

 

H‘ ““

un poncho violeta”--note that the color red had always
been associated with Rosas--is none other than Gaspar
Bravaverga. Describing Bravaverga's assumption of power,
the narrator indulges in an "objective" enumeration of

the caudillo's politics of barbarism. His law is the law

 

lIbid., p. 230.

230

of the jungle. For him, we are told, "no existen potencias
grandes o pequefias sino individuos fuertes y débiles."
Perhaps the most successful tool used in describing
the caudillo's life is irony. The omnipresent author,
Manuel Mujica Lainez, here seems far removed from the
narrative, while his fictitious journalist—historian
naively proposes to describe what happened realistically.
In fact, Mujica Lainez is so intent on showing the "mock
integrity" of his fictitious narrator that he stresses
his nonpartisanship. For example, at one point the
narrator cites the sources for his biography of Gaspar
Bravaverga:
E1 lector interesado puede recorrer [la enumeracién
de los titulos del caudillo] en la Historia del
Caudillo, del Dr. Atanasio Setira y Cepeda (pag. 606

y sig.) cuya filosofia no recomendamos, pues lo ubica
dentro de la maliciosa corriente revisionista.

 

 

The distances between author, narrator and reader are
essential to the ironic tension in the narrative. The
author's contempt for the vices and follies described as
evidenced not by an overt didacticism, but by his distance
from the narrative itself. This produced a constant
tension of implied attack; however, it is up to the reader
to choose between that which is seriously questioned and
that which constitutes a "satirical tease."

Since De milagros is a parody upon a string of

 

historical accounts, it also includes a series of stylistic

 

lIbid., p. 240.

231

imitations of popular verse forms, ridiculed and reduced
to the absurd.

A notable example of this type of imitation occurs
in Part Four, where the author mocks both gaucho and neo-
classical poetry to a point of exaggeration. Thus, on the
occasion of Bravaverga's double marriage to Ifigenia and
Electra, the friends of the caudillo regale a "night of
literary insomnia" with a vulgarized example in the gaucho
poetry style:

La suerte te ha regalao

dos estrellas, Bravaverga,

porque no se te posterga

el doblete afortunao.

Cuando estés bien encamao,

de un lao y del otro frito,

tené en cuenta que el maldito

al pancho con frio aqueja,

y a mas de su helada vieia

dale un nuevo calorcito.

Mujica Léinez parodies neoclassical verse in his
references to a tragedy written by the "Virgil" of San
Francisco de Apricotina, Octaviano Panida Sistra; this may,
incidentally, be a good-humored allusion to the well-known
contemporary Mexican poet, Octavio Paz. The poetry was
to be recited by Bravaverga, who had taken the lead role
of Nero, on the play's opening night. The constant lisping

sound, the gross admixture of the tragic and the prosaic

in a recitation by this "César analfabeto" who enters

 

Ibid., p. 256.

232

dressed as a "puerco espin con disfraz de Imperator"--all
these serve to delineate a tyrant in caricature:

Zi me amaraz un dia, yo te diera

laz perlaz de Popea emperadora,

puez erez por tu porte y tuz hechizoz
méz capaz de luzirlaz, Paba hermoza.
No 1a leche de burraz nezezitaz

para hazer de tu cuerpo zuave joya,
ni el mazaje eficaz de los eunucoz,
ni el licor que de Perzia dan laz rozaz.
Tomame: tuyo zoy. En cuanto abjurez
el credo zanguinario, tuya ez Roma.

A mi lado tendraz ezparzimientoz
agudoz, como zonlo miz zozobraz.

This particular eleven-syllable verse form (endecasilabo)

 

is generally used for subjects of a more serious nature.
Here it serves as setting for the antithetical juxta-
positions of sexually grotesque allusions and the sublime
form of classical tragedy. The situation which unfolds
within the drama is also exemplary of a double parody--

for the characters Nero (Bravaverga) and Paba (Bravaverga's
mistress Aleluya) are ridiculing on-stage their own incon-
gruous relationship offstage. It is a parodistic inter-
pretation of the "play within the play" theme.

In Chapter Five, the age of the industrial revolu-
tion, with its stress on scientific discovery and techno-
logical advance, comes to San Francisco de Apricotina.

As the main protagonist in the era of progress of the
Latin American city, the narrator introduces Cagliostro

Bravaverga. Cagliostro-—his name recalling the eighteenth~

 

lIbid., p. 269.

233

century magician, charlatan, social climber and habitué of
the royal courts of Europe-—is presented as an allegorical
embodiment of Progress. However, contrary to the image

we might expect from the idea of progress, he is no giant;
rather, he is a likeable, one-eyed dwarf. A magician and
agent of the element of fantasy in this chapter, Cagliostro
is nevertheless one of the more sympathetic figures of

De milagros y de melancolias. His Lilliputian stature and

 

his magical ability to actualize any of his thoughts merely
by concentrating on the object of his desire provide
amusing reading, somewhat reminiscent of Gulliver's travels
to the land of Lilliput and to the scientific utOpia of
Laputa.

Since Cagliostro Bravaverga's life spans the latter
half of the nineteenth century, the narrative echoes a
concern with the Romantic movement. Just as, in the pre-
ceding chapter, Manuel Mujica Lainez had parodied gaucho
and neo-classical poetry, so here he employs smatterings
of French in the dialogue. For example, after indulging
in the romantic story of Cagliostro and the young seam-
stress Franconia, he amusingly interpolates a French
expression, as follows: "Lo que hemos narrado es tres
joli y doloroso." Franconia herself is a symbol of the
romantic heroine. A nineteenth century tubercular Juliet,
she is in love with the dwarf-leader Cagliostro. The

juxtaposition of grotesque and sublime contributes visibly

234

to the tragicomic in the situation, which is presented as
a parody on the romantic, sentimental novels of the period.

Additional elements of parody within the framework
of this chapter center around the introduction of scien-
tific and technological discoveries to the people of the
mythical city. The Apricotinos get their first English
train, "El ferrocarril Jipi-Océano," and their dwarf-
leader, true to his vocation as "civilizer," invites four
European scientists to settle in his town. There is
humor in the exaggerated inventiveness of the scientists,
as well as in their names (pp. 339-340): for example, a
Dr. Kronos Verboten ("forbidden time"), who discovers a
red hammer-like stone with Germanic inscriptions. Recog-
nizing it as a r223, he considers it evidence that the
New World was first discovered by some early Germanic
people.

This discovery provides both a "magical" and a
"historical" dimension to the novel. How the stone came
to San Francisco de Apricotina remains a mystery until
the end of the work. However, the scientist's inter-
pretation of the inscription on the stone leads immediately
to dangerous speculation on the superiority of the Germanic
race. We cannot escape Mujica Léinez' vitriolic allusion
to the Nietzschean superman propaganda of early twentieth~
century Germany. In addition, however, the red color and

hammer-like shape of the stone invite speculation

235

concerning the revolutionary message and historical
theories of Karl Marx, who was, of course, very much con-
cerned with time. Thus the two dimensions of magic--the
inexplicable appearance of the stone--and history, to—
gether with man's often erroneous interpretation and use
of empirical evidence—-unite in this one symbol to give
us an insight into Manuel Mujica Léinez' understanding of
the historical process.

The progress of science and technology leads San
Francisco de Apricotina into the twentieth century.
Gradually, it transforms the culture, the vocabulary, and
the thought-processes of its inhabitants. In recording
spoken dialogue, the author now employs colloquial
expressions to mark the change in customs and manners. If
we compare the dialogue in the first chapter with that of
Chapter Six, we perceive an enormous change in social and
cultural development. Here, for example, are two pas-
sages, the first showing the peninsular inflections,
style and verb forms of the Spanish conquistador, and the
second illustrating patterns common to twentieth-century
Argentine speech.

(1) --Sé que voy a morir, Fray Serafico. Os imploro
que me perdonéis y que transmitais a Bracamonte la
sinceridad que os confio. Hacedlo con miramientos.

No olvidéis su caracter.
--Miramientos?

236

--Oid, que la respiracién se me va. Llevaos mi
sortija . . . mi esmeralda . . . . La daréis en mi
nombre a la Virreina . . . para auxiliar . . . a los
fines . . . de Nufrio . . . .1

(2) --Aqui me tenés--me dijo irénicamente Pifia--,
de capitén de los Vergas Bravas y de duefio de la
maldita ciudad del Milagro. Lo finico que me ha
incomodado, en el camino del triunfo, es que para
obtenerlo debi convencerme de que soy hermano tuyo.
--Mi hermano?
--A medias. El dia feliz de Plocoploco en que
mi pretendidido abuelo el Presidente aparecié mientras
jugueteébamos con unas damas, para comunicarme que
no soy su nieto, se dilataron frente a mi admirables
perspectivas. éTe acordas, Cagliostro?2

The fifth chapter ends with a parody of yet another
style, namely that of the obituary. The satirical elegy
on the death of Cagliostro includes superfluous and incon-
gruous elements, on which the narrative of the age and
chapter closes:

De esa suerte, en un mezquino charco rojo,
concluyé la vida del Dr. Octaviano Cagliostro
Bravaverga, del Gobernador Enano. Olvidemos su
extravio final . . . y recordemos . . . al hombre
excepcional que, si pequefio de cuerpo, tuvo e1 alma
eminente, y cuya manceba suprema no fue ni Franconia
Salmén, ni Electra Tejerina Moncil, ni Misiamis
del circg, ni Walkfire Verboten, sino la sublime
Cultura.

With Chapter Six, San Francisco del Milagro has

definitely evolved into a twentieth-century metropolis.
The style of the narrative, as in previous chapters, con-

forms to the historical time described. The author

delights in inventing prosaic expressions: "Hombre sin

 

lIbid., p. 73. 21bid., pp. 348—49.

31bid., p. 352.

237

siesta--dice un refrén lugarefio--, hombre sin testa y sin
fiesta." A stylish section of the city is labeled "e1
barrio chic de la Mandioca."

The age of mass production brings with it mass
populations and mass culture. The government builds
public housing in order to solve the problems of urban
sprawl, but it succeeds only in creating a blighting
environment of "monobloques":

Caravanas de hormigas treparon los catorce pisos,

pués los ascensores no funcionaban afin . . . .
Mostraron a parientes y amigos . . . los cuartos de
bafio minuciosos, las cocinas alertas; lo que calentaba
y lo que refrigeraba; las idénticas Bicicletas
minusculas, fijas sobre los lechos iguales; los
Ninos Ciclopes de celuloide; los muebles provenzales;
las flores de engomada cartulina; los espejos y su
adorno de borlas, todo ello reiterado de un domicilio
a1 siguiente con fotogréfica exactitud, y de un nivel
a1 otro, y de un bloque a su mellizo.
But the proletariat is not happy, engages in successive
strikes and, eventually, civil war breaks out.

At the other pole of the social world, it is the
era of sophisticated entertainment, exemplified by the
important role played by the "Apricotina Golf Club." At
night, party-goers, anxious to try new rhythms, spend
their time in a "boite." The distance between the Old
and New Worlds is diminished by.modern transportation, and
a whole generation of (wealthy) Apricotinos traverses

the sea to lively Paris. Among them is the future "Lider"

himself, Benicio Bracca Montete, later called Bracamén

 

lIbid., p. 395.

238

in imitation of the original founder of the city. He
also leaves for Paris as the cosmopolitan members of the
Apricotina Golf Club sing "For he's a jolly good fellow."
Once there, Benicio Bracca's political nature begins to
reveal itself and we follow him as he searches out those
who will eventually further his rise to power. Mujica
Lainez is here offering us a caricature on the common
Latin American history of mercurial governments and suc-

cessive coups d'état. The very name Bracamén, recalling

 

the founder of the city, reinforces the cyclical historical
vision of Mujica Lainez, where the more things change on
the surface the less they change in essence:

E50 10 llevé a intimar con ciertos grupos de
politicos sudamericanos, exiliados a raiz de distintas
revoluciones, en cuyo seno anudé amistades numerosas
y cambiantes, ya que quienes los integraban, a menudo
mudaban su posicién de proscritos por la de duefios
de la sartén del mando, lo que los obligaba a regresar
apresuradamente a sus capitales respectivas. Los
lugares que los ayer desterrados y hoy gobernantes
dejaban en los cafés, donde se discutia sin parar,
la situacién laberintica del nuevo continente, no
quedaban mucho tiempo vacios . . . .1

At times, the narrator presents a view of the age
through a collage. Such an interpolation of superficially
unrelated ideas can, in combination, give an overall
image of extreme realism. It is a technique used in

surrealism, in the nouveau roman, in Pop Art, and in

 

modern cinematography. Within the novel, one can exemplify

it through the following monologue, in which Benicio,

 

1Ibid., p. 378.

239

returning from Europe, formulates sentences of "uncon-
nected subject matter":
Dona Cleo ofrecio una comida para su ahijado, a
la que asistié el Gobernador, en el comedor presidido
por los retratos de Don Maximo Cochén y Rocaful y de
la renga Casilda Hambres, y Benicio la salpimenté
con frases polilingfies que dieron idea de su evolucién,
como "see you in church," "Aimez-vous Brahms?" y
"Davanti a lui, tremava tutta Roma."
The last comment is an ingenious allusion to Tosca's line
at the end of the second act of Puccini's opera, after she
has murdered the tyrant Scarpia. The irony results from
the author's intentional allusion to tyranny, as naively

spoken by a would-be-tyrant (Benicio Bracamonte) in a work

(De milagros) which is a bitter denunciation of Latin

 

American tyranny.

In the sixth chapter the journalist-historian
appears as both observer of the action and protagonist;
previously, he had merely recorded data or synthesized
historical sources. Manuel Mujica Lainez uses him in
this chapter to portray the travesty of the historian's
quest, and he achieves this by lampooning the sham
objectivity on which the journalist—historian prides
himself. Essentially, Mujica Lainez is saying that
objectivity in historiography is a myth, and that, more
often than not, historians cannot avoid taking sides.
They are, after all, products of a particular environment,

and their life experiences and values guide them towards

 

lIbid., p. 386.

240

a particular ideological interpretation of reality. In
this chapter, the journalist-historian is unwittingly
manipulated by the leader so as to produce a censored
history. But Mujica Léinez also warns against the pit-
falls of socialist-revolutionary history, towards which
some historians might be drawn by their desire to escape
the "establishment" interpretation. At one point, the
journalist has been accorded an interview with the pro-
letarian leader, and he seeks to obtain some badly needed
information regarding the latter's youthful trip to
Paris. He does not get much hard data, but he does get
a lesson in how to write revolutionary history. The
leader says to him: "A la Historia, como a lo demas en
la vida, hay que gobernarla. Me imagino que Usted sabra
ponerla con los fines de nuestra revolucién."1

While we cannot turn to De milagros in order to

 

learn how to write history or historical fiction, it is
worthwhile to study the use and manipulation of irony
throughout the novel. We can see how the journalist-
historian, the narrator and collator of the chronicles
which together form this complex account, emerges as the
object of attack precisely because of his closeness to
the historical account. Meanwhile, the author, Mujica
Léinez, has maintained a distance through witty

dissimulation and the use of a double persona. Through

 

1Ibid., p. 400.

241

this mask he has, in effect, mocked the narrator's sem-
blance of objectivity and constant assertions of profes-
sional "integrity." The latter emerges as an "esclavo
de la verdad."1 Time and again he asserts that his con-

clusions are based on bona fide documentation: "Hasta

 

ahora," he explains, "la elaboracién de este volfimen se
efectué sobre la base exclusiva de tradiciones y docu-
mentos."2 Since the journalist-historian has been por-
trayed as naive and certain of the honesty of his task,
he appears to the reader as an object of ridicule by the

"real" author, the true creator of De milagros y de

 

melancolias.

 

The seventh part of the novel, the short "Epilogo
espiritista," centers on the leader's vision of the future.
Mujica Lainez' cynical perception of world politics and
his vision of the historical process hinge on the outcome

of this final part of De milagros. The work can be seen

 

as a microcosm of the vicissitudes of all mankind, and,

in particular, of the destruction wrought by single—minded
political leaders. In this respect, the images developed
in the last part of the novel remind us of themes in

Boule's Planet of the Apes and Clarke's 2001: A Space

 

 

Odyssey. They are not comforting in the least.
The vision portrays a destroyed San Francisco de

Apricotina, perhaps in the year 3000, which is in the

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 400. Ibid., p. 401.

242

process of being rediscovered and founded once again. The
group of beings who form that future expedition, although
of human semblance, may be closer to apes in appearance
(the author mentions "monas"). In any case, they are
hairy beings: "Integraba el grupo ambulante medio centenar
de individuos hirsutos, cubiertos de pelos . . . que
aparecian y desaparecian bajo las estrellas metalicas."l
Just as the original expedition of Don Nufrio Bracamonte
had sported a soldier-chronicler, so this group includes
its own historian, another "Diego Cintillo," one whose
chronicles are written, not on paper, but are hammered

and carved into red stones. Here is the final irony of
the novel, for the red stone is linked to the rppg of
Chapter Five, which was supposedly the evidence that a
superior Germanic race were the first discoverers of the
New World. Here is a structural hinge which portrays,
symbolically, the myth of eternal recurrence. The red
stone--message from the future or relic of the past, we
never really find out which--is one of the fantastic ele—
ments in the narrative. Insofar as it implies a Communist
vision of historical progress, it is ironical to see the
future belonging to a race of beings who have receded

from the features we associate with humanity. In any case,
the red stone is a symbolic element indicative of man's

perennial voyage and eventual return.

 

lIbid., p. 421.

fill-I III II I

243

Since every work of erudition must contain a well-
documented bibliography, Manuel Mujica Léinez furnishes a
rather complete set of references for each of his chapters,
immediately following the "Epilogo espiritista." This
last gesture of humorous counter-erudition completes the
novel's parody of a "true" historical account. It is,
in its totality, an ironic summary of the imaginary
sources which an equally imaginary narrator has consulted
for the faithful documentation of his work.

Mujica Léinez' Satire of

Political and SoCial
Institutions

 

 

 

De milagros y de melancolias contains an incisive

 

parody of historiography and scholarly erudition. It also
satirizes the follies and vices of Latin American politics
and society, and the enormous distance between the aspira-
tions and realities of the various institutions. Among
the objects of the author's attack are political leaders,
the legal profession, the religious establishment, and the
modern intelligentsia in its educational and scientific
bastions.

It is worth mentioning that in the long line of
leaders of San Francisco de Apricotina, even those who
showed potential affinity for nobler ideals succumbed to
the dehumanizing forces of power as they reached the top
rungs of the social ladder. Perhaps the author is stressing

the corrupting effects of power, and the inability of man

244

to resist the corroding effects of leadership. But if the
political intention of the satire is evident, especially

in reference to many particularly disastrous events in

Latin American history, Mujica Lainez is also implying an
overall nullifying process of constant progression and
regression, which extends all the way to human knowledge
itself. One has only to witness the dehumanizing power

of scientific discovery in the light of man's inability

to learn, to transcend and conquer the vices and stupidities
of his character.

As an example of a potentially just and honest
leader, the author selects the "Libertador" Xavier Moncil.
He heads the movement for independence and clearly repre-
sents an allusion to Simon Bolivar. "El General Virgen,"
as he is humorously styled even after losing his virginity,
is presented as "un joven minado por el liberalismo
francés."l He is seen to pursue the ideals of independence
with a singlemindedness comparable to that of the resplen-
dent epic heroes:

. . . fue . . . un paladin medieval, persuadido

de la trascendencia sacra de su misién, que infligié
las derrotas personalmente, metiéndose a caballo en
el remolino de las ofensivas y matando a derecha y a
izquierda, y a filo y contrafilo.2

Yet this physical and moral leader of the Revolution under-

goes a change sometime after the wars of Independence. He

is repeatedly shown to flaunt and betray the very ideals

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 160. Ibid., p. 168.

245

in whose name the revolution was started. After the
fight, "ahito de sangre fraterna y adversaria,"l he is
shown to adhere to reactionary principles:

El general [now promoted to Jefe] decidié que la
Monarquia, lo mas parecido que hay a la Iglesia
Militante en este frégil mundo, protegeria con su
fe santa al destino de Santa Fe.

Moncil learns to deceive the public with the

charisma of the politician's rhetoric: "Se advertia con
exceso que era mas importante el embalaje retérico que

3 As his government takes shape,

la sustancia medular."
he promotes values responsible for the persistent ideo-
logical factionalism which is to plague all subsequent
governments. The city of miracles itself never returns
to the legitimacy of monarchy, nor yet does it achieve
the democratic self-rule of a republic. Finally, the
general is murdered, the implication being that only very
seldom can the political leader die a natural death. His
death, similar to and equated by the author with that of
Marat at the hands of Charlotte Corday, is the logical
culmination of his own political predicament.

An expansive satirical note marks the passing of
the "Libertador," as the author incorporates, in POp—Art

fashion, the elegiac notes of Borges and José Asuncién

Silva:

 

llbid., p. 171. 21bid., p. 174.

31bid., p. 182.

246

Adios, réprobo General Xavier Moncil.

Al fin me encuentro con mi destino sudamericano;
en esta noche toda llena de murmullos, de perfumes
y de mfisica de alas, Melpémene, la musa de la
tragedia, viene.

Amid the satirical strains of this "saga Apricotina,"
the author does occasionally unmask himself, and, in so
doing, disclose his moral-didactic stand. At least, the
sadness and bitterness of certain passages which comment
on the "true" state of affairs in the newly-formed Latin

American nations seems to betoken sentiments belonging not

only to the fictional personae, but to their creator,

 

Mujica Lainez, as well. The following is an example:

No fueron dias sino anos y afios de ominoso
desbarajuste, la Negra Anarquia, la Edad Media de
Santa Fe, la época para unos bizantina y para otros
barbara, de nuestro pobre pais. Los generales
convocaron a sus ejércitos y se repartieron a Santa
Fe la Nueva como un suculento pastel. Conchilla
asumié el gobierno de Tucla; Perasper, el de Santa
Isabel de Avila; Adastra, el de Miraflor de los
Batuques; e1 General Licenciado Ramsés Otero Otero
(que hizo popular e1 alias de Teruteru), maestre de
la Logia Masénica de Chango Pampa, empufié con firmes
manos las riendas de Santa Fe, la desvaida capital,

y a Octaviano Panida Sistro le concedieron San
Francisco de Apricotina, bajo la fiscalizacién severa
del ya General Manlio Perlones. Tras ellos se abatié
una nube de parientes codiciosos, reclamando fincas,
ganados, muebles, pesos, cargos, titulos, la Orden
del Mérito de Moncil, una pension, una invitacion a
comer, una sonrisa, un répido tuteo en pfiblico. En
verdad ha sido cosa de milagro--de milagros y
melancolias--que 1a integridad nacional no se des-
pedazase en republiquetas, vastagos de las provincias
antagénicas. 2El Derecho se evaporo y la Justicia

fue jubilada.

 

lIbid., p. 217. 2Ibid., p. 225.

247

In reading this novel, one is reminded of the old adage,
"He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword."

But Manuel Mujica Lainez seems to go even further than
this by cynically implying that he who rules is not only
bound to abandon the ideological dreams which originally
motivated his quest for power, but that he must eventually
also be overcome by the burdens of power and office. The
book's import is pessimistic and negative. If there is a
saving grace or glimmer of hope in the vision, it is

found in the author's ability to mock even the most serious
situation, that is, in the humor of the satirical vision.

In addition to the parody of history and his-
torians, and the satire at the expense of political leaders
and institutions, Mujica Léinez also directs his irony at
the major cultural institutions of Latin American society.
Among his tools in this enterprise are the standard
techniques of the satirist, namely hyperbole, enumeration,
repetition, magnification and reduction.

All of these are examplified in Mujica Lainez'
attack on the legal profession. In the course of it, he
creates a humorous situation through a sophisticated
juxtaposition of antithetical elements. The attack is
centered around the career of Don Baltasar, the son of
the founder of the mythical San Francisco, Don Nufrio
Bracamonte. According to the story, Don Baltasar was

supposed to inherit the government of his father's city

248

after Don Nufrio's death. However, he was deposed by Don
Mendo Desabrido de Acre, who had gained the favor of the
Spanish colonial government. Don Baltasar, terribly
naive in matters of politics "carecia de politicas luces,"
decided to take the matter to court for a judicial settle-
ment. Off he goes to Spain, where begins the account of
one of the most humorous episodes in the novel, and engages
the help of a lawyer. This worthy, "un extrafio personaje
centroeuropeo" by the name of Bar6n Kafka, leads Don
Baltasar through an insurmountable legal wrangle, a voyage
of no return that leads the plaintiff to plead his rights
(unsuccessfully, of course) through half the courtrooms
of Spain. Needless to say, governments change hands and
witnesses die before the verdict is ever formulated. The
absurdity of the whole episode bears unmistakeable allu-
sions to Franz Kafka's Trial, and it can itself be viewed
as a paradigm of the archetypical trial:
Murio Don Suero por fin, vomitando bilis; murieron

el conde de la Amargura y el valido de Su Majestad, y

se pudo inferir que la atmésfera cambiaria entonces.

Pero--como sefiald con acierto e1 Barén Kafka--el

Proceso se habia vuelto demasiado complicado, y lo

mas pfia, aprovechando la inanicién de los extintos,

era regresar a fojas uno, solicitar otros jueces,

otras audiencias. Dejése e1 preso arrastrar en el

laberinto Kafkiano (el Baron merece el adjetivo),

y recomenzaron los tramites, pero era tarde ya para

volver sobre tantas y tantas condenas y apelaciones,

y ademas, como dijimos, nadie se atrevia, por generoso

que su espiritu fuese, a internarse en el farrago del

litigio, cuyas hojas se numeraban por millares.

Hasta que muri6 Dona Llantos Pifia de Toro; murié el

Baron Kafka, a quien otorgan, empero, inmortalidad

peregrina sus escritos sutiles; murié prematuramente
el propio Don Baltasar, martir de burécratas, de

249

camarillas, de cohechos, de sobornos, de ignorancias,
de testarudeces, de abstenciones, de inercias. Y

e1 Proceso mégico los sobrevivié, porque continuo
reptando de tribunal en tribunal, como si hubiera
cobrado una vitalidad privada, independiente de la
desaparicién de su causa, y como si se nutriera y
tonificara con el vigor resucitado de tantos difuntos,
trémulos de pasién férvida, de modo que a menudo

los jueces desconocian el fallecimiento de Don Baltasar
y, hartos de revolver una papeleria ilegible, ordenaban
que los autos y el preso fuesen transferidos a otra
cércel y a otra jurisdiccién.

Far more complex is the attack formulated, within

the context of De milagros, against the religious insti-

 

tutions. First of all, one must bear in mind that the
attack is centered not so much on religious belief as it
is on the Catholic Church and the important role it has
played throughout the history of Latin America. Manuel
Mujica Lainez satirizes the hypocrisy of church officials
at several stages of the book, corresponding to different
periods in the development of the mythical Apricotina.

He excels in paradox, intertwining pagan and Christian
symbolism. For example, when Don Serafico, the first
priest in the chronicle of the foundation of the city, wit-
nesses the suicide of the fifteen-year-old lovelorn
Catalina del Temblor, notwithstanding empirical evidence,
he interprets the scene as the miraculous appearance of
an angel, an irrefutable messenger of God's divine inter-

cession in earthly affairs.

 

lIbid., pp. 110-11.

250

We are mockingly introduced to Fray Recato, the
young artist-sculptor brought to embellish the city's
newly planned buildings. He "disponia de tantos brazos
como una diosa Hindfi." Again, in another chapter, as the
city burns amid the chaos of political upheaval, the church
is satirized for its concern with frivolous matters, such
as the acquisition of a relic of the "blindwoman of Sape—
sape." We are shown how, amid the turmoil,

la iglesia continuaba su sereno camino, segura de su
raigambre perpetua, por divina, y al manejar cues-
tiones que pueden parecer de minima importancia al
desavisado heterodoxo, pero que atanen en lo profundo
a sus intereses espirituales y no a los problemas

que debate e1 vulgo, daba un ejemplo de estabilidad
conmovedora. E1 resto, lo humano, lo perecedero,
saltaba de agitacién en agitacién, buscandose,
contradiciéndose, desgarrandose, y ella seguia,
incélume, fundada sobre una roca.

Probably the event which surpasses all previous
satire of the religious establishment occurs during the
rule of the illiterate "Caudillo" Gaspar Bravaverga
(Chapter four), whose "ineludibles botones violaceos"
remind us of the Rosas dictatorship and its symbolic color.
Gaspar falls in love with two cousins, Electra and
Ifigenia: "am6 intensa y sincrdnicamente a ambas doncellas."
In his desire to marry both-—and here the author makes
veiled allusions to contemporary double standards of

morality-~Gaspar threatens to break away from the tra-

ditional Church and to found a new church ("La Nueva

 

lIbid., p. 173.

251

Iglesia de Santa Fe"), unless the established Church con-
forms to his desires.
"Y Gaspar se casé," states the author laconically,
"en Nuestra Senora de las Cenizas, con Electra y con
Ifigenia. Fue ése, a no dudarlo, de los espectaculos
del templo, e1 mas singular, y excedid a cuanto Enrique
VIII sofiara . . . ."1
The satire of the religious establishment is paral-
leled by the sarcastic barbs directed at the modern
secular intelligentsia, with its educational and scien-
tific establishments, and its fatuous faith in the idea
of Progress through historical evolution. There is pass-
ing mention of the feminist movement, which succeeds in
teaching men to embroider while women learn to ride horses.2
The author also alludes to the changing role of women in
politics, with its negative effect on a predominantly
male-oriented society: "Al establecerse el predominio
politico de las mujeres, afeminaronse los hombres."3
And, of course, he charts the rise to political conscious-
ness of the proletariat contemporaneously with the devel-
opment of technology, and then proceeds to symbolize the

process through its embodiment in their champion and

tyrant's promotion of the bicycle.

 

2

lIbid., p. 254. Ibid., p. 311.

3Ibid., p. 316.

252

Intellectuals and scientists, the high priests of
the new social order, are satirized on the basis of their
ridiculous names and superfluous activities. Although
the author's use of imaginative invented names aids in
the depiction of comic situations, it is sometimes overdone
to the point of monotony. This stylistic tool is used to
enumerate several European scientists and scholars whose
years of grueling research produce unnecessary discoveries,
or none at all. Some examples of such travesties on the
men of science include Professors Kronos Verboten,
Tranquille Jamaisplus, Gustav Aberg-Bruchmann, Ruggiero
Calotto, Simeon Nocturno y Martin Bartolomé Lindo Bambino.
The bearers of these proud names are described in glowing
terms:

Su inteligencia, su comprension, su minucia, su
firmeza para aislarse de cuanto se vinculara con la
realidad general, y concretarse a la realidad
particularisima, reconfortaron a Cagliostro
Bravaverga . . . . Enclaustrados como cenobitas,
entre mapas, herbarios, telescopios, y léxicos,
demostraron ser otros tantos fuelles pujantes que
alimentaron la fragua de la sabiduria milagrera.
Sus cerebros irradiaban tal calor, cuando se reunian
para intercambiar observaciones que afin en la estacién
de las lluvias invernales, debian despojarse de la
mayoria de sus ropas, para resistir al bafio turco de
su erudicién, y que sin cesar reclamaban alcoholes
que aplacasen e1 sapiente hervidero.

We have emphasized primarily the technical aspects

of Manuel Mujica Lainez' attack on the human condition.

He has proceeded in his task by transferring elements of

 

11bid., p. 339.

253

satire to both the form and content of his work. On the
level of form, he has conceived a parody of history and
cultural styles which offers the reader a realistic

account in the form of an antihistoria. On the level of

 

content, he has fashioned his attack by presenting suc-
cessive "tableaux of constant irony." The objects of his
attack, so varied that a fair treatment would have required
more space than can be afforded in a work of this nature,
include most aspects of Latin American society. They are
treated with the contempt of the satirist. Underlying

that contempt, as with all satire, is the reformer's
positive desire to expose man's folly and to appeal to

his common sense through wit, humor and irony.

Mujica Lainez' Fusion of
Magic-Realism and Parody

 

 

In addition, part of the novel's creative function
has been to counteract the sobriety of the denunciation
with elements of the real-imaginary. The novel's concern
with myth, magic, fantasy, the prodigious and the mar-
velous clearly raises it out of the realm of simple
satire, and brings the work into focus with contemporary
currents of Latin American magic—realism.

As had been said earlier, De milagros y de

 

melancolias was written around the same time as Gabriel

 

Garcia Marquez' Cien afios de soledad. However different

 

the two works may seem at an initial glance, both partake

254

of certain modern ideological and aesthetic currents.

A comparison supports the view that De milagros is an

 

example of magic-realist narrative.

In this regard, George Schanzer has subjected the
two works to a detailed study in the article, "The Four
Hundred Years of Myths and Melancholies of Manuel Mujica
Lainez."1 He indicates some of the narrative elements
which are shared by both Mujica Lainez and Garcia Marquez,

whose Cien afios is by common consent an outstanding

 

example of the magic-realist genre in Latin America. The
parallels between the two authors include the use of the
"utopia-épopée" and the "phoenix" myths, as well as the
age-old myths of the heroic leader, of unlimited virility,
of the conquest of death, and of eternal recurrence.
Schanzer also points out further stylistic and structural
similarities, including "the extensive use of enumeration
and exaggeration, . . . the employment of epithets or
'tags' to identify characters, . . . frequent images of
age, decay and destruction; strong female characters and
weak male personages obsessed with their extravagant
enterprises."2

Additional structural parallels between Cien afios

 

de soledad and De milagros y de melancolias include the

 

 

use of verbal tableaux, the "constant links between past

and present; e.g., the characters dream of devices which

 

2

1Schanzer, op. cit. Ibid., p. 70.

255

later would become part of modern life; the use-—and
perhaps overuse--of comical names; last, but not least,
an extraordinary linguistic creativity."1
Some of these parallels indicate a common satir-
ical intention in the two authors. Others, however, are
derived from the realm of magic-realism. Taken together,
they indicate that it is possible to achieve a brilliant
fusion of the dimensions of humor and magic. Perhaps the
most important evidence of a magic-realist framework in
the two works is the use of the myth of eternal recurrence
as "plot vehicle, unity device and cancellor of time."2
The myth of eternal return is an expression of
the traditional conception of history: at one and the same
time an analysis of historical change in terms of a cyclic
pattern, and a spiritual comfort to traditional man
against the terrors of history. This understanding of
history was not seriously challenged before the rise of
the scientific revolution, when Bacon and Pascal intro-

3 From the

duced the new "conception of linear progress."
seventeenth century on, the idea of progress in history
gained more adherents, almost becoming the faith in

infinite perfectability of the Enlightenment, the

 

11bid., p. 70. 2Ibid., p. 69.

3Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of
the Eternal Return (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959),
p. 145.

 

256

evolutionary optimism of the nineteenth century middle
classes, and the historical determinism of the socialist
movement.

We have indicated, in the first chapter, how the
modern understanding of history was related to the rise
of new literary forms, including the novel and the his-
torical novel, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
It is not coincidental that a loss of confidence in modern
industrial civilization should be accompanied by question-
ing of the idea of progress in history. Among the prophets
of the twentieth century should be ranked Nietzsche, who
revived the myth of eternal return as a respectable his-
torical perspective.1 He was followed by a considerable
number of writers, disenchanted with the abuses of
industrial society, and by philosophers of history such
as Spengler and Toynbee, who re-interpreted history in
terms of cyclical patterns.2 We have seen how this con-
ception of history has been characteristic of Mujica
Lainez from his early short stories up to his very latest
adventures in magic-realism and the fantastic.

This theme is also evident in Cien afios de soledad.

 

Both Garcia Marquez' novel and De milagros y de melancolias

 

are presented as chronicles or sagas, either of a family

(in the case of Cien anos) or of a city ruled by succes-

 

sive generations of "one-eyed" men (in the case of 23

 

1 2

Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 146.

257

milagros). Both combine the chronicle framework with an

 

abundant use of prodigious, mythical, magical and fan-
tastic elements. It is, of course, appropriate that a
return to the primitive conception of history should be
accompanied by a return to the primitive understanding of
reality, with its stress on the mythical and the magical.
My concern in referring to the parallels between
the two works of Garcia Marquez and Mujica Lainez stems
from an interest in the essentially similar world view
which emerges from a careful study of the two novels.
They were written around the same time, the first edition

of Cien afios de soledad appearing in May 1967, while 23

 

milagros y de melancolias followed about a year later in

 

1968. Schanzer has suggested that the unusual perspective

of De milagros would have won a wider audience had it not

 

followed so closely behind the publication of Garcia
Marquez' novel.1 In any case, it is apparent that the
similarities between the two works derive from a syn-
cretization or synthesis, by their respective authors, of
contemporary artistic and philosophical currents. Thus,
both authors deliberately incorporate historical data and
allude to recognizable institutions of the Latin American
scene as objects of attack. Both use irony extensively
throughout their novels. And both employ important

magic-realist elements.

 

lSchanzer, p. 66.

258

For satire to be a successful art form, it must
combine the aggressiveness of denunciation with the poetry
of imagination. An admixture of the didactic and the
aesthetic is essential if the author's work is to teach
and delight at the same time. Thus, in the words of the
literary critic Matthew Hodgart, "true satire demands a
high degree both of commitment to and involvement with
the painful problems of the world, and simultaneously a
high degree of abstraction from the world."1

Many of the imaginative elements which contribute
to the abstraction of the satire from the petty trivia
of the real world are derived from magic-realism. One
fundamental magic-realist theme, echoed in the rise and
fall of every sinister figure of the chronicle, and
recorded with particular vividness in the seventh chapter
with its apocalyptic vision of the city's destruction and
rediscovery, is that of eternal recurrence. The circular
movement of the plot with its repeated premonitions of
catastrophe; the beginning and end of successive leaders;
the sequences of clarity intermixed with others of
obscurity (mirrored in eras of light followed by eras of
darkness--"1a época de luz y la época de tinieblas");
the stylistic concerns which alternate between classical
and baroque--all these ultimately lead nowhere. In fact,

at times, the very exaggeration of this cyclic concept

 

lHodgart, p. 11.

259

of history, achieved through constant repetition and
innumerable allusions to man's folly, becomes overwhelming
and emotionally depressing.

Herein lies a drawback to an overall positive
critical evaluation of the novel: for monotony ensues
from the author's constant reiteration of the absurdity
of the human condition, of its perennial defeats in the
struggle against the determining forces of nature, both
external and human. Only the mythical vision can redeem
history.

In De milagros, the theme of eternal recurrence
1

 

is "plot vehicle, unity device and canceller of time."
Nowhere is the import of this Nietzschean theme more evi-
dent than in the description of a uniting physical char-
acteristic manifest in every one of the rulers of the
mythical city. For every ruler, from the founder Don
Nufrio to the Lider Benicio Bracca, is one-eyed; and
whether this condition resulted congenitally or through
violence, the important fact remains that by the time each
of these leaders reaches public office, he is endowed

with this defect. Thus, in the perennial legacy of one-
eyed men, the tuerto is an element of the fantastic, of
the "real-imaginary." Furthermore, and of interest with
respect to the author's insight into the genesis of myth,

this physical defect is recognized by the people as a

 

1Schanzer, p. 69.

260

prerequisite for holding office in the city. Originally,

the defect was seen to be a defect; however, man's easily

impressionable nature soon converted the ordinary into an

extraordinary trait. It became a characteristic which man
wished to link in some symbolic way to the divine order.

The Cyclops holds the key to the interpretation
of this myth. It may refer to some particular one-
dimensional characteristic of leadership. However, all
interpretations regarding the nature of this symbol
within Mujica Lainez' narrative can be regarded as only
tentative speculation. One thing is certain, and that is
the author's interest in the mythical beings of classical
antiquity. The Cyclops, the Minotaur, and the Centaur
are some of the literary devices which have been used,
throughout the history of narrative, to portray, often
negatively, the bestial elements in man's nature.

Once again, the use of myth takes us into the
pre—modern understanding of history and human nature,
where human activities are seen as participating in a
mysterious, transcendent, divine dimension, which both
symbolizes the explains the many contingencies and irra-
tionalities of human existence.

In De milagros yide melancolias, the author

 

focuses on the fantastic as an aesthetic element, an ele—
ment ever present in true satire, to develop a parody of

the absurdities he has encountered in real-life situations.

261

The use of fantasy and humor in the narrative enables the
author to avoid surrendering to the tragic side of the
events described. That would be very easy given the
nature of the trials and tribulations of the historical
process described. Fantasy and humor give the narrative
a certain freedom, fashioning an escape from the oppres-
siveness experienced by bitter attack while, concurrently,
directing our attention to the objects of attack. It
allows for the aesthetic fulfillment of a work which
might otherwise collapse under the weight of didacticism.
Elements of the "real-imaginary" enter Mujica
Lainez' parody of history, as they did in the two pre-
viously published historical works, Bomarzo and El

Unicornio. But there are essential differences with

 

regard to the function of the "real-imaginary" in the
previous historical fiction and in this satirical "anti-
historia." Perhaps the most important fact to be remem-

bered is that the first two works interpreted rather than

 

questioned man's fashioning and assimilation of myths.

 

Man was therefore shown as necessarily partaking of the

natural and supernatural orders. De milagrosy de

 

melancolias, however, mocks this very human longing for a

 

mythology. Here the satire is centered on man's super-
stitious nature and on his misinterpretation of natural
phenomena--all of which leads to a useless "mythification."

Here, in part, lies the originality of De milagros y de

 

262

melancolias--for it exposes the process of mythification,

 

so essential to the study of magic-realist narrative,
while at the same time it is critical if not contemptuous
of the very same process.

Thus, the critique of the process of mythification
is part of the novel's attack, while myth still remains
crucial to the aesthetic composition of the novel, but
for its poetic rather than didactic import.

In the process of demythification, Manuel Mujica
Lainez satirizes in particular those myths which deal
with religious superstition, or those which were incor-
porated by the Catholic Church for evangelical reasons,
as a compromise with the native inhabitants of the New
World. The author also excels in satirizing myths which
are commonly linked to the particular Latin American cul-

ture. For example, he mocks myths dealing with machismo,

 

virginity, virility and longevity. Throughout the book,
this is done humorously, the author's intent being to
deflate existing myths without moral indictments which
would overemphasize the absurdity of the said myths. This
allows for a certain pervasive aura of magic which seeps
through the whole narrative. The process of demythifi-
cation is serious in itself, for it serves to illustrate
the underlying forces of belief and faith at the root of
any civilization, but the manner in which it is done is

delightfully humorous and always interesting.

263

One further point is worth mentioning with respect
to the overall use of myth throughout the novel. It is
a fact that the process of demythification does not spread
to absolutely every facet of the "real-imaginary." Not
at all. There are abundant references to the magical
dimension for which the author offers no empirical
explanation. One of these elements is illustrated by the
dwarf-leader Bravaverga and his unaccountable magical
powers. Another is the mythical allusion to the Homeric
Cyclops, the symbol of the one-eyed rulers. It has a
long line of literary antecedents; reputedly, James Joyce
used parody in the Cyclops passage of his Ulysses to
explode the inflated pretension of nationalism. There is
also no explanation for the appearance of the red stones
(rppgg), except that one did appear during the leadership
of the "Caudillo" and that a group of them appears in the
last part of the novel. The last vision of the séance
also pertains to the realm of the real-imaginary, as do
the unquestioned practices of voodoo in the fourth and
sixth chapters of the novel. Finally, the_very city of
San Francisco de Apricotina has been founded at the site
of an enormous black stone (the Indians called it their
"fertility goddess"). The description of this stone
cannot help reminding us of the magnificant and mysterious
statues of Easter Island, whose presence remains unex-

plained to this day. Even the legend of El Dorado, the

264

goal of riches which spurred the original founder Don
Nufrio Bracamonte on his voyage, is still part of con-
temporary speculation; perhaps it will be forever symbolic
of man's quest for the unattainable. Thus, man's falsely
forged myths——a product of his inordinate desire to reduce
the supernatural order to his own field of vision--run,
side by side, in this saga of the archetypical Latin
American civilization, with that realm of secondary
essences which is still to be explored and discovered.

For no matter how successful Mujica Lainez is in his
satirical deflation of myth, his work attests to the
importance of that dimension of hidden reality which still
lurks, as yet undiscovered, in the secret enclaves of the

New World and in the hearts of its inhabitants.

CONCLUS ION

This dissertation has sought to trace the changes
and evolution in the historical vision of Manuel Mujica
Lainez under the impact of the perspective of magic-
realism. His literary odyssey reveals a movement from
conventional historical fiction towards an understanding
of man which is tinged with elements of the irrational,
the mythical and the fantastic. It parallels a general
re-emergence of mythical elements, which had been rele-
gated to a secondary position by social realist writers
and historical novelists alike, within twentieth-century
literature. Latin American writers have been prominent
leaders in this movement, and the development of magic-
realism has raised the literature of the continent, per—
haps for the first time, to world stature.

It was argued that the introduction of fantastic,
mythical and surrealist elements in twentieth century
literature reflects a fundamental re-orientation in the
self-understanding of western civilization. It is related
to a breakdown in the self-confidence of the scientific
perspective and of the middle-class society which rested

upon it. Just as the rise of that perspective and that

265

266

society had produced the new genres of the novel and the
historical novel, so its decline has turned writers back
towards a pre-modern orientation to man's nature, to the
possibilities of historical progress, and to man's place
in the cosmos. Contemporary literature clearly emphasizes
the irrational forces governing man, as opposed to those
of enlightened self-interest; it has replaced the faith
in progress and human perfectability with the pre-modern
theme of eternal recurrence; it has abandoned the picture
of an orderly cosmos progressively revealed by science
and technology with a vision of a mysterious natural order
which affects human destiny in unpredictable ways.
Because of these changes, contemporary man can more readily
interpret his life and its meaning by using the symbols
of mythology, whether in its classical, or pagan, or pre-
Colombian forms. This is a discovery of Latin American
literature. It also represents the culmination of the
changing historical vision of Manuel Mujica Lainez.
Literature presents in concrete images the impli-
cations of these philosophical and metaphysical changes.
That is why a study of the themes and the characters in
the novels of Mujica Lainez has an importance beyond the
purely stylistic or literary dimension. In tracing the
geographical, historical and sociological motifs of Agpi

vivieron we discover the starting-point of a traditional

 

historical novelist who sought to chronicle the roots and

267

essence of his society. In Misteriosa Buenos Aires these

 

realistic elements are supplemented by, but not integrated
with, elements of the supernatural-—elements such as
ghosts, visions, magic mirrors--which are interpreted as
epiphenomena deriving from human psychology.

With Bomarzo, Mujica Léinez moved away from a
study of Latin American society or history and sought to
trace the emergence of the brilliant civilization of the
Renaissance. He was able to integrate the historical
techniques developed by writers such as Scott for the por-
trayal of the events of an age, with the psychological
insights of thinkers such as Freud and Jung. The key to
this fusion is his treatment of the esoteric sciences of
astrology, demonology, and alchemy. The nineteenth cen-
tury novelist might have treated these as idle curiosities
or as superstitions which prevented man from attaining his
historical destiny. Manuel Mujica Lainez, on the other
hand, shows this element to be an ingredient indispensable
for grasping the aspirations of the age, even after objec—
tive historiography has exhausted the political, military,
and artistic dimensions of the period. Bomarzo is an
important application of magic-realist insights, not upon
some undiscovered tribe or pre-Colombian civilization, but
to the very century which gave rise to modern Western

culture.

268

The novels which follow Bomarzo continue this
evolution in the historical vision of Mujica Lainez. In

El Unicornio, and much more so in Crénicas reales and Be

 

 

milagros yide melancolias, the author subordinates his

 

historical vision to the magical or mythical dimension.

E1 Unicornio does this in the course of a re-creation of

 

medieval life which incorporates four elements: the
magical, the miraculous, the mythical-legendary and the
fantastic. These four elements constitute the real-
imaginary world of medieval France and of the Crusades
which the author sets against the real-objective world

of conventional history and historical fiction. That the
former world clearly dominates the latter is reflected in
the character of the main protagonist and narrator of

El Unicornio, the fairy Melusina. Yet the entire por-

 

trayal is, at the same time, faithful to the psychological
insights of the Freudian school, and the reader is asked
to balance these two visions, that of medieval man as he
understood himself and as we wish to understand him.

Finally, in De milagros y de melancolias, the

 

author parodies the quest for a historical understanding
of man and indicates his preference for a fantastic vision.
He indicates the impossibility of reconstructing the
events of the past with the tools of the chronicler or
historian. Myth and illusion are shown to be fundamental

in understanding the evolution of an archetypical Latin

269

American civilization, whose progress from barbarism to
civilization is revealed as subject to the myth of eternal

recurrence. De milagros y de melancolias culminates the

 

literary development of Manuel Mujica Léinez from histor-
ical fiction to magic-realism and fantasy. It succeeds

in deflating the historical element in fiction. However,
it does not fully succeed in explaining away the mythical
dimension of human life. After the many illusions and
superstitions which have afflicted Latin American civili-
zation have been exposed, there still remain important
unexplained elements which must be understood as mythical
symbols of a mysterious cosmos and of a human nature which

even magic-realism has not plumbed to its depths.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works of Manuel Mujica Lainez
(Chronological Order)

 

Glosas castellanas. Buenos Aires: Editorial "La Facultad,"
1936.

 

Don Galaz de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, 1938.

 

Miguel Cané (padre): Un romantico porteno. Buenos Aires:
C.E.P.A., 1942.

Canto a Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, 1943.

 

Vida de Aniceto el Gallo (Hilario Ascasubi). Buenos Aires:
Emecé, 1943.

 

Poetas argentinos en Montevideo. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1943.

 

Lira romantica sudamericana. Nueva edicion. Buenos Aires:
Emecé, 1946.

 

Estampas de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 1946.

 

Vida de Anastasio e1 Pollo (Estanislao del Campo). Buenos
Aires: Emecé, 1948.

Aqui vivieron. Primera edicién, 1949. Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, 3era edicidn, 1962.

 

Misteriosa Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 1951.

 

Los idolos. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1953.

 

La casa. Primera edicién, 1954. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 2da edicidn, 1966.

Los viajeros. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1955.

 

270

271

"El retrato amarillo." Ficcion, No. 3 (Sept. - Oct., 1956).

Invitados en elparaiso. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 1957.

 

Bomarzo. Primera edicién, 1962. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 4ta edicién, 1967.

Bomarzo. Libreto de la 6pera de Alberto Ginastera. New
York, 1967.

"El ilustre amor." Cuadernos del congreso por la libertad
de la cultura. Paris, November 1963. Cuento de
Misteriosa Buenos Aires.

 

 

 

"La amistad de Shakespeare." Sur, No. 289-290 (Jul/agost-—
Sept/oct 1964).

El Unicornio. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1965.

 

Crénicas reales. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana,
1967.

 

"La larga cabellera negra." Mundo Nuevo, No. 13 (Julio
1967).

 

"Amanecer." La estafeta literaria, No. 381/382 (Oct--Nov.,
19677:

 

Autobiografia. Grabacién fonografica. Buenos Aires:
Editorial Sudamericana, Julio 1967.

 

De milagros y de melancolias. Buenos Aires: Editorial
SudameriCana, 1968.

 

"La bella durmiente del bosque." Cuentos recontados.
Seleccién de Piri Lugones. Buenos Aires:
Editorial Tiempo Contemporéneo, 1968.

 

Cecil. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1972.

 

E1 laberinto. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1974.

 

El viaje de los siete demonios. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 1974.

 

272

General Bibliography

 

Allen, Charles A., and Stephens, George D. Satire: Theory
and Practice. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub-
lishing Co., 1962.

 

 

Alonso, Amado. Ensayo sobre la novela historica. Buenos
Aires: Imprenta y casa editora com., 1942.

 

Ara, Guillermo. Los argentinos y la literatura nacional.
Buenos Aires: Ed. Huemul, 1966.

 

Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. Cleveland:
Meridian Books, 1963.

 

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. Translated by Willard R. Trask.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Bronowski, Jacob. Science and Human Values. Revised
edition. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965.

 

Brown, Norman 0. Life Against Death. Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1972.

 

Butterfield, Herbert. The Historical Novel. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971. Originally
Published 1924.

 

Carpentier, Alejo. El reino de este mundo. Santiago,
Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1967.

 

. Tientos y diferencias. Montevideo: Editorial
Arca, I967.

 

 

Carsuzén, Maria Emma. Manuel Mujica Léinez. Buenos Aires:
Ministerio de Educacién y Justicia, 1962. Serie
"Argentinos en las letras."

 

Cassirer, Ernst. The Myth of the State. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946.

 

Castellanos, Carmelina de. Tres nombres en la novela
argentina. Santa Fe: Ediciones Colmegna, 1967.

 

 

Croce, Benedetto. My Philosophy. New York: Collier
Books, 1962.

 

Eliade, Mircea. Cosmos and History: The Myth of the
Eternal Return. Translated from the French by
Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1959.

 

 

273

Eliade, Mircea. The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins
and Structure of Alchemy. Translated from the
French by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1971.

 

 

. Myth and Reality. Translated from the French
by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1963.

 

 

Font, Eduardo. Realidad y fantasia en la narrativa de
Manuel Mujica Lainez. Madrid: Ediciones Porrfia,
1976.

 

Fox, John. A Literary Historyof France: The Middle Ages.
London: Barnes & Noble, 1974.

Franco, Jean. An Introduction to Spanish-American Litera-
ture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

 

 

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1957.

 

Gossman, Lionel. Medievalism and the Ideologies of the
Enlightenment. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1968.

 

Grand Larousse Encyclopédique. Paris: Librairie Larousse,
1963. Tome septiéme.

 

Hauser, Arnold. Introduccién a la historia del arte.
Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1961.

 

Hegel, Georg W. F. The Philosophyof History. Translated
from the German by J. Sibree. New York: Dover,
1959.

 

Heller, Erich. The Artist's Journey into the Interior,
and other essays. New York: Random House, 1965.

 

Hodgart, Matthew. Satire. London: World University
Library, 1969.

Hyman, Stanley Edgar. The Armed Vision: A Study in the
Methods of Modern Literary Criticism. Revised
edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1955.

 

Kahler, Eric. Man the Measure: A New Approach to History.
Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1967.

 

Kaufmann, Walter. From Shakespeare to Existentialism.
New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960.

 

274

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. New York:
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969.

 

Kelly, Amy. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings.
New York: Vintage Books, 1957.

 

Kirk, Russell. The Conservative Mind. Chicago: Gateway
Editions, 1960.

 

Koestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation. New York: Dell,

 

 

1967.

Lamb, Harold. The Crusades. New York: Bantam Editions,
1962.

Leal, Luis. "E1 realismo magico en la literatura hispano-

americana." Cuadernos hispanoamericanos, XXVI
(Julio -- Agosto, 1967), No. 4.

 

Lieder, Paul Robert; Lovett, Robert Morss; and Root,
Robert Kilburn. British Poetry and Prose. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1950. Third edition.

 

Loveluck, Juan. La novela hispanoamericana. Santiago,
Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1972.

 

Lukécs, Georg. The Historical Novel. Translated from the
German by Hannah and Staniey Mitchell. London:
Merlin Press, Penguin Books, 1962.

 

Meyerhoff, Hans, ed. The Philosophy of History in Our
Time. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1959.

 

Oldenbourg, Zoé. The Crusades. Translated from the
French by Anne Carter. New York: Random House,
Pantheon Books, 1966.

 

Penzoldt, Peter. The Supernatural in Fiction. London:
Peter Nevill, 1952.

 

Rabassa, Gregory. Review of Reasons of State, by Alejo
Carpentier, Saturday Review, May 29, 1976, 36-37.

 

 

Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto. New York: New
American Library, 1971.

 

Randall, John Herman, Jr. Aristotle. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1960.

 

Riedman, Sarah P. Masters of the Scalpel. New York:
Rand McNally, 1964.

 

275

Sanchez, Luis Alberto. Proceso y contenido de la novela
hispanoamericana. Madrid: Editorial Gredos,
1953.

 

 

Schanzer, George 0. "The Four Hundred Years of Myths
and Melancholies of Mujica Lainez." Latin
American LiteraryReview, I (Spring, 1973), No. 2,
65-71.

 

Scholes, Robert, and Kellogg, Robert. The Nature of
Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

 

 

Schulman, Ivan A.; Gonzalez, Manuel Pedro; Loveluck,
Juan; and Alegria, Fernando. Coloquio sobre la
novela hispanoamericana. Mexico City: Tezontle,
1967.

 

 

Schwartz, Kessel. A New History of Spanish American
Fiction. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of
Miami Press, 1972.

 

Torre, Guillermo de. Historia de las literaturas de
vanguardia. Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1965.

 

 

Vargas Llosa, Mario. Garcia Marquez: Historia de un
deicidio. Barcelona: Monte Avila Editores, 1971.

 

 

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley, Calif.:
University of California Press, 1962.

 

Weaver, Richard M. The Ethics of Rhetoric. Chicago:
Gateway Editions, Henry Regnery Company, 1965.

 

Wilson, Edmund. To the Finland Station: A Study in the
Writing and Acting of History. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday Company, 1940.

 

 

Yates, Donald A., ed. Otros mundos, otros fuegos
(Fantasia y realismo mégico en IberoameriCa).
Memoria del XVI Congreso Internacional de
Literatura Iberoamericana. East Lansing, Mich.:
Latin American Studies Center of Michigan State
University, 1975.

 

"IWfliiiflljlfiflmfliwlfljflii