it}; It. . . « ,Va!az,.rd.7 .. . A u 53. :65; .le9. nil-.3 . 1'4}: {NH-H . :- 3... Lulu", . l. ... I. :aaal... . 3 i. .1 . 5:1; ‘65. . . .z 5...... 3..- i . 13 I... n . u :3 Iii... a. ‘52:... I7: 1!. 50:61.3. :anavn... .f? Rimnign a! . .13. . . .. it... ova .. «sunrsfivn. . L? “.1: 3. Java... ; . 1.. 3.. . cl... .5 .. 5?»: : . i 2. .r :. rt...‘ 4.7.0.15... . x . Ex . .. an . 2.73.”... r! v .1: . Is 11 II 95.011 2 . t. .5 .. . ‘ I .. .2. an... , . . . ,3.» y c: V 6* 'tfifl: .x . s. {up 35. n.“ V 5%.mflmihmt.‘ H . .- .2; 3., } . a ,. at: \ x (‘43.! 1!.“ .r 3.: t. a 3. i: 151...! 2.! 2.! . 1. >919: .1 A. 13:: 2. .3. s: i. x» . :1. .9232} .. . 2 it. w 1.1.3.3.. .3 I ‘ 1.1:: .. .5251?) x. (i: i! T'H “792’ S n C1 LIBRARY Michigan Siam- University W ' This is to certify that the dissertation entitled GRISELDA GAMBARO AND THE GROTESQUE: A CRITICAL READING OF SELECTED NARRATIVE WORKS presented by Dianne Marie Zandstra has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for PhD degree in Spanish _. 1/2477” 7 Major professor Z Date 8-20-01 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 042771 PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. To AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE 6101 c:lCIRC/DateDue.p$5-n15 GRISELDA GAMBARO AND THE GROTESQUE: A CRITICAL READING OF SELECTED NARRATIVE WORKS BY Dianne Marie Zandstra AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Romance and Classical Languages 2001 Professor Maria Eugenia Mudrovcic ABSTRACT GRISELDA GAMBARO AND THE GROTESQUE: A CRITICAL READING OF SELECTED NARRATIVE WORKS BY Dianne Marie Zandstra This study traces narrative strategies in Griselda Gambaro’s novels to the grotesco criollo and to the broader grotesque tradition from which it emerged. The grotesque serves in her work to ridicule authority figures in the family and beyond and to expose repression by presenting its ultimate consequences in the broken bodies of its victims. By alienating the reader through the disintegration of reality in the text, she achieves what Kayser calls the estranged world. By demonstrating a lack of reciprocity between characters she depicts the breakdown of a social system, and by estranging the reader from the narrator she creates a critical distance from which to evaluate the discourse of authority. The first chapter provides an overview of the grotesque as literary technique and effect through a summary of the grotesco criollo and the general grotesque tradition as interpreted by Kayser, Bakhtin, Harpham, and Kristeva. The second chapter analyzes Nada que ver con otra historia, where Gambaro employs a twentieth-century Frankenstein’s monster to question what it means to be human during Onganfa’s Argentine Revolution of 1966-1970. The third chapter examines Gambaro’s strategies in Ganarse la muerte, where through the text itself she simulates the disorientation and alienation of the individual in a totalitarian regime by combining identification with a victim and historically accurate details with a narrative style clearly not to be taken at face value. The fourth chapter analyzes Una felicidad con menos pens and Lo impenetrable, multilayered texts in which male authoritative discourse contradicts itself and is contradicted by body language. The fifth chapter studies Dias no nos quiere contentos and Después del dia de fiesta, which span the transition from military dictatorship to democracy restored, and Gambaro’s scrutiny of the significance of art as response to human suffering. Through texts that are often painful and always conflictive, Griselda Gambaro de-anesthesizes the reader. Her alienation of the reader through the inner contradictions of the text or the debasement of the powerful reshapes perspective and priority. The grotesque as technique and effect in her works communicates not only the inhumanity of society but the profound humanity of the writer. Copyright by DIANNE MARIE ZANDSTRA 2001 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to many for the completion of this project. Dr. Marla Eugenia Mudrovcic’s perceptive reading and wise counsel have greatly improved the final product. The faculty and staff of the Department of Romance and Classical Languages at Michigan State University, as well as my fellow students, have been consistently helpful and encouraging. My colleagues in the Spanish Department at Calvin College have offered their support as well as flexible scheduling, particularly during the past five years. A special debt of gratitude, however, is due to my family. My parents, Sidney and Mae Rooy, have provided an example of dedication and vision. My children, Anita, Daniel, Carla, and Laura, have adjusted cheerfully to my diminished presence at home; and my husband, Duane, has shouldered many additional responsibilities and always offered a listening ear and an attitude of interest in my writings. To all who have helped me to reach this milestone, I am deeply thankful. Soli Deo Gloria .I' NWPHuT-LUIUIFQme [WAIIAINIFAFC FL~ICTIAUBUC TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 GROTESQUE AND GROTESCO CRIOLLO ..................................................... 11 Essential Traits of the Grotesque ....................................................................... 12 The Grotesco Criollo and the Dehumanization of the Victim .............................. 19 Wolfgang Kayser and the Estrangement of the Familiar .................................... 30 Mikhail Bakhtin and the Uncrowning of Authority ............................................... 34 Geoffrey Galt Harpham and the Contradictory Word ......................................... 38 Julia Kristeva and the Abjection of the Feminine ............................................... 43 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 51 MAN AND MONSTER IN NADA QUE VER CON OTRA HISTORIA ................. 55 A Monstrous Society .......................................................................................... 57 Monster as Man ................................................................................................. 62 Monstrous Doubles ............................................................................................ 70 Man as Monster ................................................................................................. 77 A Camivalized State .......................................................................................... 84 A Camivalized Text ............................................................................................ 89 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 93 DISTORTION AND DISTANCE IN GANAFISE LA MUEFITE ............................. 98 The Distortion of Society .................................................................................. 100 Distorted Humanity .......................................................................................... 1 12 The Grotesque Body and Distance .................................................................. 119 Distance as Estrangement ............................................................................... 126 Distance and the Text ...................................................................................... 131 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 145 WORD AND BODY LANGUAGE IN UNA FELICIDAD CON MENOS PENA AND L0 IMPENETRABLE ............................................................................... 148 Una felicidad con menos pena ......................................................................... 149 Authority and Self-Contradiction ...................................................................... 151 Lack of Control and Futility .............................................................................. 154 Textual Authority and the Narrator ................................................................... 158 The Grotesque Body and Authority .................................................................. 160 L0 impenetrable ............................................................................................... 1 72 The Male Grotesque ........................................................................................ 173 The Impenetrable Word ................................................................................... 181 The Body as Text ............................................................................................. 185 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 192 vi APT INC DlOS ART AND SUFFERING IN DIOS NO NOS QUIERE CONTENTOS AND DESPUES DEL DIA DE FIESTA ............................................................. 194 Dias no nos quiere contentos .......................................................................... 195 Grotesque Characters: A Portrait of the Artists ............................................... 195 Grotesque Lives: Creating Expectations ......................................................... 203 Argentina as Grotesque Circus ........................................................................ 207 The Deformation of Reality .............................................................................. 212 Art and Suffering .............................................................................................. 216 Después del d/a de fiesta ................................................................................ 225 Tristan and Giacomino ..................................................................................... 226 Tristan and the Whiner ..................................................................................... 230 Style and Structure .......................................................................................... 233 Art and Society ................................................................................................ 239 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 249 AFTERWORD .................................................................................................. 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................. 259 vii Ha": I I her . aces: “eve' botv ' a“ Sr f.A 31:5; INTRODUCTION Griselda Gambaro, born in Buenos Aires in 1928, is primarily known for plays like EI campo (1968), Los siameses (1967), and Nada que ver(1970), and thus her dramatic works have attracted most of the critical attention. Nevertheless, her first published work, Madrigal en ciudad (1963), was an award- winning collection of three novellas, and she has since published ten additional narrative works, several of which have appeared in translation.‘ The reading of her novels elicits conflicting emotions in the reader due to the coexistence of the physically abnormal or the exaggeration of violence with a matter-of-fact, almost jovial narrative tone. Gambaro herself has said that her writing does not find acceptance because women's writing is expected to be sensitive, intuitive, and never crude in subject matter or in language (“Mujer y literature” 473). In fact, both physical and social conditions in her narrations often seem unrealistically cruel to the point of distortion, yet the victims of cruelty accept their treatment as inevitable and even “normal.” Gambaro's works provoke a mixed reaction of laughter and horror by their simultaneous evocation of the laughably exaggerated and the terrifyingly or disgustingly monstrous. If, as Gambaro claims (“Mujer y ‘ Gambaro has received a National Endowment for the Arts award for Madrigal en ciudad, the Emecé Publishers Prize for El desatino (1964), honorable mention from Sudamericana Publishers for Una felicidad con menos pena (1967), a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 1982, and numerous prizes, including awards from the Municipality of Buenos Aires, Talia magazine, Theatrical Broadcast News, and the Argentores Prize more than once, for her plays. She has been appointed to juries for drama competitions such as the National Endowment for the Arts prize and has lectured extensively in the United States, Latin America, and Europe (Picdn Garfield 55). Her works have been translated into French, German, Czech, Polish, Italian (Betsko and Koenig 184, 197), and English. Gambaro's other narrative works are Nada que ver con otra historia (1972), Ganarse la muerte (1976), La cola magica (1976), Bios no nos quiere contentos (1979), Lo impenetrable (1984), Después del dla de fiesta (1994), Lo major que se tiene (1998), and El mar que nos trajo (2001); she has also published Conversaciones con chicos (1976) and Escritos inocentes (1 999). literatura” 471 ), she depicts life both as it is and as it could be, the latter is suggested chiefly by default. Gambaro’s familiarity with life as it is began with her childhood in a working-class family where her father was a sailor and later a post office employee, in a home where there was no surplus money for books. She discovered reading at the public library (Betsko and Koenig 185) and entered the workplace herself immediately after high school (Picon Garfield 55). Gambaro has frequently expressed her commitment to the society in which she was raised, and sees her art as anchored in and responsible to that society: creo que un artista es un producto de una sociedad y trabaja para esa sociedad. Si bien el arte nunca ha servido para impedir los horrores del mundo, si ha servido para tener conciencia de esos errores. (Castro and Jurovietzky 43) Gambaro’s novel Ganarse la muerte, consistent with that vision, was banned by the Executive Branch in 1977, within months of its publication. Recognizing the personal threat that such a measure signified, she and her family moved to Spain for three years during the most dangerous period of the military dictatorship. Her return to Argentina even before democracy was restored reflects her intense identification with her country and the depth of her social ethics. The body of work analyzed in this study belongs to a period of political turmoil in Argentina. Military coups in 1955, 1966, and 1976 claimed to be restoring Argentina’s Western Christian values while in fact subordinating the individual’s rights to those of the state (Hodges, Dirty War 157-58). As early as 1960, the govemment’s CONINTES Plan, a response to Castro’s coming to power in 1959, organized the country into military zones and awarded sweeping Err pner VETEC “357.. powers to military commanders to combat “terrorists” and their “sympathizers” (Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror 8). Political activism typically arose in reaction to an economic crisis including unemployment, inflation of prices, and the devaluation of currency, and the state responded with increasing militarization and repression (Duhalde 25). Juan Carlos Onganla’s Argentine Revolution of 1966 forms the backdrop and intertext to Nada que ver con otra histon'a, while both Ganarse la muerte and Dios no nos quiere contentos were written during the Military Process of National Reorganization of 1976-1983. In this time of habitual violation of human rights, what Diana Taylor calls a “criminalized society" (Theatre of Crisis 96) gave rise to a discursive phenomenon peculiar to the repressive state. According to Alain Rouquié, “the vertical character of social relations and the almost cosmic distance between institutional ideologies and social conduct produce a political culture of deception” (Theatre of Crisis 4). Francine Masiello summarizes Argentine narrative works during this period as deconstructive of the dominant narrative and the official discourse associated with it, often by means of the inclusion of multiple discourses of resistance; the exploration of spaces allowed to the individual; and particularly the human body as object of the regime (Balderston et aI. 23-24). In the texts of opposition to the dictatorship, the body takes center stage to speak the truth regarding its own oppression (26). Gambaro, in fact, not only acknowledges openly the political content of her works (Betsko and Koenig 186), but states that she sought to bring to her banned novel, Ganarse la muerte, the difference between what is said and what is experienced (Castro and 9V9." DOVE". Sr» .1. Cr The 76; Jurovietzky 43). Rather than acquiesce to “that perverse system of thought in which people become abstractions” (Feitlowitz, “Griselda Gambaro” 54), she presents the concrete suffering of the human body, broken and distorted. Griselda Gambaro is recognized as an interpreter of a society in crisis.2 She examines in her works the dynamics of power and victimization, both within the family and in a larger social context. Gambaro characterizes her novels, even more than her plays, as a personal search for answers to her own questions about Argentine society and how she fits into it (Magnarelli 127-28). In Nada que ver con otra historia, for example, she examines what it means to be human in a dehumanizing society; in Ganarse la muerte she exposes the family as basic unit of the dictatorship; and in Después del dia de fiesta she decries the lack of progress since the reestablishment of democracy in terms of crushing poverty and social bigotry. She has told Nelly Schnaith that in today’s society life is undervalued and the public anesthesized to social disregard for humanity: Nuestro destino ha tenninado por ser abstracto La imaginacién no funciona, no podemos imaginar Ia “corporeidad” con todo lo que la corporeidad significa Tal vez el destino ultimo del arte sea éste; desanestesiar. (49) The reader is to reject as immoral what takes place in the text: “esto que presenta esta obra no puede ser: no debe ser asi” (Durafiona 409). As a granddaughter of Italian immigrants, raised in the lower middle class (Betsko and Koenig 185), Gambaro discovered a model for socially conscious 2 See especially Taylor, 96 ff., which analyzes how her dramatic characters view their predicament and gradually become aware of how their own passivity led to it (97); and David William Foster, “Los parametros de la narrativa argentina durante el ‘Proceso’," in Balderston et 3!, 103-04, where he calls her perhaps the most solid of women writers to interpret the Process (103). W716 writers in the plays of Armando Discépolo, principal author of the grotesco criollo, a theatrical tradition dating from the late twenties and the thirties (Betsko and Koenig 195). The grotesco criollo appeared during a time of severe social crisis including overpopulation, unemployment, and repression of political dissenters, and depicted the dehumanization of the immigrants unable to provide for their families and torn between their social code and its denial in the reality of their existence. The grotesco criollo’s tragicomic presentation degraded the pretentiousness of the foundational myths of the social system by depicting the degradation of the individual. It derives from the general tradition of the grotesque as delineated by Wolfgang Kayser and Mikhail Bakhtin by way of the commedia dell’arte and its twentieth-century descendant, the Italian grottesco theater that produced Pirandello. For Gambaro, Discépolo’s theater is a metaphor for Argentina itself: “el teatro de Discépolo es un espejo donde nos reconocemos el grotesco es una condicion del caracter argentino y por lo tanto sigue proporcionando material” (“Discépolo” 44-45). Gambaro carries over techniques and patterns from this tradition into her novels as well as her plays, for example the failure of the grotesque protagonist, the inability to control one’s own body, the breakdown of language as communicative device, and the use of animal imagery to describe human beings. The grotesco criollo’s literary antecedent, the general grotesque tradition, includes the use of specific structural and stylistic elements which result in abnormalities or unresolved tensions within the work itself, in order to elicit a clash of incompatible emotions in the reader. Its reception by the reader is, ac: l-Ihn UV addr leans reel; according to Kayser, an essential component of its grotesque nature (181); the unresolved nature of the contradictory elements in work and response is indispensable in achieving an effect of alienation or estrangement in the reader (Thomson 27). The grotesque has proliferated in times of crisis when the predominating world view was being called into question, specifically the belief in a “perfect and protective world order” (Kayser 188). It has often served as a subversive device to question the discourse of authority; Bakhtin explicitly addresses this issue in his study of Rabelais, where he characterizes grotesque realism as the debasement of the ideal by bringing it down to the material level through references to the “material bodily lower stratum,” that is, the digestive and reproductive organs or acts such as defecation, copulation, and death (19, 21). The grotesque inherits its sense of humor and its patterns of debasement from medieval folk humor, and it destroys the official picture of events (439) through festive uncrownings and depictions of the grotesque body, hyperbolic and porous. Gambaro borrows heavily from both the general grotesque tradition and the grotesco criollo. She deploys the Bakhtinian grotesque body to ridicule the figures of authority in the family and beyond and to expose repression by presenting its ultimate consequences in the broken bodies of its victims. By alienating the reader through the disintegration of reality in the text, she achieves what Kayser calls the estranged world (184). By demonstrating a lack of reciprocity between characters she depicts the breakdown of a social system, 393 fie" eta: ll‘. six lea; and by estranging the reader from the narrator she creates a critical distance from which to evaluate the discourse of authority. The first chapterof this study proposes to provide an overview of the grotesque as literary technique and effect through a summary of the views of Kayser, Bakhtin, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, and Julia Kristeva. It will examine the salient characteristics and effect of the grotesco criollo, particularly as seen by Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir and David Vii'ias, and will indicate which aspects of Gambaro's novels will be examined in the light of that theory in the following chapters. These techniques and their effect on the reader will then be examined in six of Gambaro’s novels, with an emphasis on these works as critique of social relationships within the Argentine political system and within the male-female relationship. The second chapter analyzes Nada que ver con otra historia, where Gambaro employs a twentieth-century Argentine version of Frankenstein’s monster to question what it means to be human during Juan Carlos Ongania’s Argentine Revolution of 1966-1970. Bakhtinian theory accounts for how Gambaro subverts official structures by camivalizing them and for the effect of the grotesque body in pointing indirectly toward social change. The estrangement that Kayser associates with the grotesque is present in the uncanny fusion of man and monster in both Toni and his human creator, Manolo, and in the deformation of the narrative text to reinforce the sensation that both society and its victims have become monstrous. ln Ganarse la muerte, Gambaro's strategies resemble the treatment she gives the previous novel: she simulates through the text itself the disorientation and alienation of the individual in a totalitarian regime by combining identification with a victim and historically accurate details with a narrative style which clearly is not to be taken at face value. The third chapter identifies structural and stylistic elements described by Bakhtin (the debasement of authority figures and official discourse), by Kayser (estrangement due to the disintegration of reality) and by Harpham (contradictory strategies of communication). Abnormality is prevalent in social institutions, particularly the family, and victims elicit simultaneous pity and contempt. The grotesque body in this novel inhibits reader identification with cruelty and repression in various ways: the physical repulsiveness of authority figures increases the horror of the victim’s abuse by them and distances the reader from their actions and the justification offered for those actions. In Kristeva’s terms, the reader transfers abjection of the broken body of the victim to the cause of the brokenness, particularly since decay and death are associated with abusers. Una felicidad con menos pena and Lo impenetrable present a multilayered text in which male authoritative discourse contradicts itself and is contradicted by body language. The fourth chapter examines themes and techniques also present in other works by Gambaro, such as the complexity and dysfunctionality of human relationships, the problematic nature of male commentary on those relationships, and the female body as yet another text, which transforms perception of the written word by recontextualizing it. In Una felicidad con menos die 0 lastr‘ U." ' 06v pena, the narrator is progressively weaned from identification with a bourgeois male who fails to carry out his plan to share his wealth with the poor due to his obsessive hoarding. Strategies of contradiction and abjection figure prominently here, as well as grotesco criollo patterns of failure, all of which render problematic the centrality of the male authoritative word as interpretation of social reality. In La impenetrable, a parody of the erotic novel, Gambaro undercuts the phallocentric pursuit narrative by her use of the body as text. The reader's vision of both male and female bodies moves from abstract and idealized within male discourse to concrete and flawed within the female narrative text. The male body is subjected to increasing abjection, while the female body is celebrated with all of its flaws as worthy of desire and male conquest is supplanted by female discovery. The fifth chapter studies Dios no nos quiere contentos and Después del dia de fiesta, which span the transition from military dictatorship to democracy restored. In both of them Gambaro examines the significance of art as response to human suffering. Their scrutiny of an artist’s relationship to society make them perhaps her most self-conscious narratives. The almost unbearable tension between the beauty of art and the ugliness of cruelty and pain is largely responsible for the grotesque nature of both works. In Dios no nos quiere contentos, techniques from the grotesco criollo illustrate the breakdown of humanity and human relations under the military dictatorship, and the interweaving of dream sequences and the waking moments of the characters underlines the transformation of reality into a Kayserian nightmare. The birth of art as testimony from suffering and the reclaiming of crumbling, shattered spaces offers a paradoxical vision of hope in the presence of death. In Después del dia de fiesta, its sequel, a series of contrasts polarizes the text and reflects the tensions of society. Despite the return of democracy, prejudice and misery characterize the social setting. Sharp divergences between two pairs of doubles, and ruptures in time and space, pull the text in the direction of incoherence while a circularity of theme and structure move it toward coherence. The presence of incompatible elements throughout the novel reinforces the paradox that is art. Griselda Gambaro de-anesthesizes the reader through texts that are often painful and always conflictive. Her ethical commitment to society leads her to expose its cruelties on the corporeal level and to offer her art as testimony to its victims. Her alienation of the reader through the inner contradictions of the text or the debasement of the powerful reshapes perspective and priority. The grotesque as technique and effect in her works communicates not only the inhumanity of society but the profound humanity of the writer. 10 incc est“ rec V3” M. 33“.. am. tb’c GROTESOUE AND GROTESCO CRIOLLO The grotesque, according to Philip Thomson, is “the unresolved clash of incompatibles in work and response” (27). This brief phrase embraces the essentials posited by Wolfgang Kayser when he defines the grotesque as an esthetic category including the creative process, the work of art itself, and its reception (180). In creating a work of visual or literary art, the artist employs specific structural and stylistic elements identified with the grotesque tradition, which result in abnormalities or unresolved tensions in that work, such as comedy and horror. It is impossible, however, to define the grotesque in a vacuum: it must be perceived and felt by the reader or spectator in order to exist (Kayser 1 81 ). The unresolved nature of the contradictory elements is paramount in achieving an effect of alienation or estrangement in the reader (Thomson 21), whereby “something which is familiar and trusted is suddenly made strange and disturbing” (59), so that accepted categories that constitute a world view no longer apply (Kayser 185). It should be noted at the outset that an effect of estrangement causes readers to reexamine their assumptions regarding society or the world around them, but can also move them to question the authority of the text as it presents what may seem to them an impossibility. When that text reflects official discourse and is discredited by its inner contradictions or by grotesque images in opposition to it, it becomes subversive in its effect. The necessity of a general definition like Thomson’s will soon become apparent. Geoffrey Galt Harpham observes that the very force of the grotesque 11 EXIT aSlN: prOVi CO":: 0V8”; causes it to resist being confined to its proper sphere (86) and that there is “no single quality constant through the range of generally accepted grotesques” (xviii). It may be noted that Thomson specifies no concrete characteristics, preferring to speak in terms of dynamics (contradiction) and effect (alienation), which is why his definition applies to most theory of the grotesque. It also applies to the dynamics and effect of the narrative works by Gambaro examined in this study. Despite her acknowledgment of indebtedness to the grotesco criollo virtually to the exclusion of the more general grotesque tradition, she makes extensive use of techniques detailed by Bakhtin, Kayser, Harpham, and Kristeva as well as of those developed by Discépolo. It will therefore be necessary to provide an overview of these techniques and their effect on the reader in the context of the theories of the grotesque with which they are associated. This overview will begin with the form of the grotesque with which Gambaro most readily identifies, the grotesco criollo, and then place that form within the context of the other theories, together with specific applications pertinent to Gambaro’s narrative works. The groundwork for this survey of theory will be laid by means of a characterization of the most generally recognized traits of the grotesque: the presence of incongruities or incompatible elements in the work of art, a degree of abnormality in what is represented, and an ambivalent, often emotionally charged response to the work. Essential Traits of the Grotesque The “unresolved clash of incompatibles” which is the sine qua non of the grotesque for Philip Thomson (21) has been present from its beginnings: 12 theorists and historians of the grotesque generally trace the concept to the discovery during the Renaissance of delicate paintings on the walls of Nero’s Domus Aurea (Golden Palace).‘ These decorative frescoes depicted beings of indeterminate nature, part human, part animal, part plant, so that “the borderlines that divide the kingdoms of nature in the usual picture of the world were boldly infringed” (Bakhtin 32).2 The shocking effect of this transgression of categories in the ancient world has been documented in Vitrivius’ De Architectura (ca. 27 8.0.), where he denounces these “bastard forms,” which correspond to nothing in nature (Kayser 20).3 In spite of their mixed reception during the Renaissance, they were widely imitated throughout this period (Barasch 24, Kayser 20).‘ During the sixteenth century, these ornamental forms spread north of the Alps, where they became known in France as scrollwork or moresques and eventually developed in Germany, by 1600, into KnorpeI-Omamentik or Knorpelgroteske.5 ‘ Mikhail Bakhtin (31 -33); Kayser (19-20); Frances Barasch (17-19, 26); and Harpham (23-27), although Harpham insists that cave art and the mythic mindset it reflects already expresses a fusion of separate realms (48ff). He also presents as pre-Renaissance manifestations of this type of grotesque forms the man-animal hybrids condemned by Bernard de Clairvaux in the twelfth century (34), the monstrous marginal figures in thirteenth-century Psalters (34-35), and the gargoyles in Gothic cathedrals, which for Ruskin exemplified the emotional ambivalence of the grotesque (36-37). Since the designs were first viewed upon their discovery by descending into the excavations of the palace beneath the baths of Titus, a procedure much like spelunking, they became known as grottesche. Harpham observes that although this was originally a misnomer, “this naming is a mistake pregnant with tnrth, for although the designs were never intended to be underground, nor Nero’s palace a grotto, the word is perfect. Grotesque, then, gathers into itself suggestions of the underground, of burial, and of secrecy" (27). Particularly the association with the underground may be seen as compatible with the grotesque as an unofficial, hence subversive phenomenon. According to Vitruvius, “such things neither are, nor can be, nor have been” (Harpham 27). ‘ The most prominent imitations were carried out by Michelangelo (Barasch 24-25), Raphael, and Giovanni da Udine, the latter in the decoration of the Vatican Loggias under Raphael’s direction (Harpham 28). This style, which lasted longer in Germany than elsewhere, is described by Kayser as "the heads and limbs of fantastically distorted animals and monsters, often in masklike stylization, [which are] intertwined and give rise, at numerous points, to new shoots, limbs, or excrescences” (22-23). 13 Hybrid forms, or the juxtaposition of the mechanical, the vegetable, the animal, and the human reappear in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and of three generations of Pieter Breughels, all heavily indebted to Bosch for their imagery (Kayser 33, 36). For Harpham a grotesque thing is a “non-thing”, a hybrid or bastard (4, 5) which “refuses to be taken in whole because it embodies a confusion of type” (6), and Bakhtin approvingly relates Pinsky's stipulation that the grotesque combines mutually exclusive elements (32). The English Restoration critic John Dryden was among the first to draw a systematic analogy between the ornamental grotesque paintings of the Renaissance and street plays: “a farce is that in poetry, which grotesque is in picture” (Barasch 125). The fact that the grotesque was recognized as a visual phenomenon first is reflected in the fact that there remains at the core of grotesque imagery in literature an essentially visual element, so that in Gambaro’s novels one can “see” the military officer’s false eyelashes or the fat lady’s head like an orange with a face.“ Similarly, the visual impact of Hoffmann’s Adventures on New Year's Eve, which features a dream described by Kayser as “a perfect grotesque” in which a child becomes a squirrel and human beings turn into candy figures which creep around ominously, is like that of a painting by Bosch. Another dream in Hoffmann’s tales contains human heads on crickets' legs, a man with a violin for a chest, and another with a lizard’s face (Kayser 69). Montaigne, in an essay written before 1574, characterizes his own writing style by comparing it to the painted grotesques, l4 he' JOFR here in the sense of strange, monstrous, or disorderly (Barasch 34-35). Grotesque was also understood to have the connotation monstrous in Germany during this century (39). Thus from the beginnings of its use in art criticism, grotesque has connoted an unnatural, even monstrous confusion of type which elicits at best a mixed response.’ According to Pinsky, “the grotesque in art is related to the paradox in logic” (Bakhtin 32);” although the grotesque was originally perceived in visual terms, it has by extension applied to nonphysical but violent contradiction between concepts presented simultaneously or even between content and form. Prominent eighteenth-century writers such as Joseph Addison and Samuel Johnson betrayed their ambivalence toward such a phenomenon in their essays; Addison called tragicomedy, often considered grotesque, “one of the most monstrous Inventions that ever entered into a Poet’s Thoughts” (Barasch 133). Harpham, in the twentieth century, expands the paradigm by relating it to the leap which takes place in metaphor (46) and focuses his study on the coexistence of opposites such as the civilized and the natural (51), the sacred and the unclean (55), the real and the unreal (64), the Many and the One (111), or life and death (118). ° From Ganarse la muerte and Una felicidad con menos pena, respectively. One might speculate whether this abundance of visual images derives partly from the habit of visual humor and strategies of contradiction in her theatrical works. 7 For a detailed look at the related seventeenth-century English expressions antick and chimera, see Barasch, 57-70. In general antick connoted an ornamental character and a strange mixture of living creatures and was associated by theologians with sinfulness, deceit, and fear. Chimera referred to unnatural monsters and was closely associated with the word grotesque. 'Susan Corey observes that the grotesque allows the writer to present a paradoxical vision of the world (Adams and Yates 229). 15 jun—'1' W72; Jo; For Bernard McElroy, grotesque art is any art that makes self- contradiction into an artistic principle (8).9 The painter Francis Bacon refers to life simultaneously as “marvelous” and “a horror”; he calls human beings “meat potential carcasses” (Adams and Yates 183). It is in this context that he depicts the Crucifixion as a side of beef. The image is shocking because in its juxtaposition of the crass and the sacred it seems a desecration of the holy, which is generally approached with awe. Similarly, the grotesqueness of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal resides not only in the shocking idea of raising human children in order to eat them but in its contrast with the reasonable tone in which it is conveyed (Thomson 4-5). Gambaro also seems to intentionally shock the reader when her narrators joke about death or depict helpless victims in repulsive terms. To shock the sensibilities implies departure from a norm. Susan Corey emphasizes that the grotesque “breaks the boundaries of normalcy in some way” (Adams and Yates 229), while Thomson insists on abnormality as essential to the grotesque since it contains simultaneously both the comic and the disgusting or terrifying (25). He illustrates this point amply with many descriptions of deformed or perverted characters, from Dickens’ caricaturesque Mrs. Pipchin (39-40) to Beckett's sickly Lynch family (1 -2), pointing out in each case the reader’s fascination or amusement coupled with horror or disgust. Gambaro in her novels denounces deformed political institutions and warped human relationships through her exaggerations of their abnormality. ° McElroy analyzes the work of Dostoevsky, Kafka, Joyce, Grass, Nabokov, Pynchon, Beckett, O'Connor, West, and Garcia Marquez. 16 9X31 fer; 0th E!- We 20(; 8X. l Mary Russo stresses early in her characterization of the grotesque that “it emerged only in relation to the norms which it exceeded” (3); her exploration of the phenomenon focuses on carnival freaks and mutants, among others. Flannery O'Connor asserts that the writer of grotesque fiction will take “the way of distortion” (42), and points out the source of our discomfort when confronted with it: “the freak in modem fiction is usually disturbing to us because he keeps us from forgetting that we share in his state” (133). That is to say that our tendency to identify with what is human or sympathetic in the grotesque image—in fact, a certain self-recognition—is balanced by a rejection or repulsion equal to it. In Thomson’s words, the grotesque is “ambivalently abnormal" (27). It is this ambivalence of emotion, this mixed reaction, which identifies the experience of the grotesque. Harpham calls it a “civil war of attraction and repulsion” (9), a “sense that things that should be kept apart are fused” (11); in other words, a sense of appropriateness which has been violated, creating a sensation of contradiction or dissonance (191). Similarly, McElroy observes that we are simultaneously fascinated and repelled by the monstrous (1, 16), which focuses our attention on “the undignified, perilous, even gross physicality of existence” (11). The grotesque inner life of characters in modem fiction causes a self-rejection based on humiliation (21 -22) which can at the same time give rise to a perverse pleasure (24) causing guilt and fear (25). This portrayal is a direct attack on the reader which shocks his sensibility and questions his values (29). For Kayser the mixture of emotions tends more heawa toward surprise and horror (31); he explains that we are affected ambiguously by the grotesque 17 fro;r hale K."' C": With as we see a world familiar to us, which then falls apart (52). We feel that the characters’ understanding of the world is insufficient to explain it (138). We are afraid because we suddenly recognize that our position is precarious (154). Kayser‘s fearfulness stems from his emphasis on human alienation in the midst of impending chaos; Wilson Yates reiterates this feeling of lostness yet points toward something beyond it when he characterizes our reaction as readers or viewers of grotesque art to a “strange and disordered world tumed upside down.” We are caught off guard, he says; we laugh; we are fascinated yet threatened; we feel manipulated and judged; we repudiate it as we sense “its denial of our canons of truth while glimpsing a truth that our canons deny us” (Adams and Yates 2). This glimpse of truth makes our experience of the grotesque more rather than less ambivalent as it balances our fear and disgust with incipient understanding. Harpham refers to this possibility as “the prospect of another kind of Word” with which the grotesque disturbs us (69), a unity toward which it points us (70). It is readily apparent that the balance of these ambivalent feelings differs from one reader to another, from one critic to another. Harpham and Bakhtin have a different appreciation of the nature and effect of the grotesque than do Kayser and McElroy. The assessment of the grotesque’s effect is intertwined with the philosophy of each thinker, as is the purpose each attributes to this type of art. The grotesco criollo, Gambaro’s most direct inspiration, will be seen to relate directly to the three most comprehensive studies to date of this highly ambiguous phenomenon—Kayser, Bakhtin, and Harpham—which are also the 18 three most germane to the elucidation of Griselda Gambaro’s use of the grotesque. The Grotesco Criollo and the Dehumanization of the Victim In her article on Armando Discépolo, Griselda Gambaro captures an essential image of the grotesco criollo: a piece of noodle hanging from the mustache of a weeping face, which she interprets as an instance of how the ridiculous can undo the deepest sorrow (42). The most easily identified feature of the grotesco criollo is its tragicomic presentation, so that Luis Ordaz can say that the grotesque elements of these plays are the tragicomic ones (“Amanda Discépolo 0 el 'grotesco criollo’” 411). Tragicomedy is grotesque in that it elicits conflicting emotions (amusement, pity), but there is considerably more to the grotesco criollo than this first impression indicates. Gambaro herself claims that this “genre” is a metaphor for Argentina, her history and her people (44), and she has captured many of its facets in her plays and novels to portray Argentine characters caught, like Discépolo’s protagonists, in impossible situations. The plays strictly considered grotesco criollo were written and produced between 1921 and 1950, with most of them appearing by 1934. Virtually all of them were written by Armando Discépolo, sometimes in collaboration with Enrique Santos Discépolo, except the 1950 play by Juan Carlos Ghiano. '° They portray the precarious situation of the millions of immigrants encouraged by the 1° Kaiser-Lenoir 12. Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir focuses her study on those works that clearly reflect the dynamics and stylistic elements that she considers fundamental to the grotesco criollo: the unbearable tension between the inner man and external reality, the idea of man controlled by an uncontrollable and inscrutable force, and the fusion (rather than coexistence) of the comic and the painful. She therefore excludes works by Alberto Novion, Francisco Defilippis Novoa, Rafael Di Yorio, Rogelio Cord6n, and Carlos Goicoechea, as well as earlier works by Discépolo and 19 Ono ' Argentine government's Liberal Project in order to enrich Argentina’s culture with representatives of western European countries. Between 1856 and 1916 some six and a half million immigrants were added to a local population of one million two hundred thousand (Kaiser-Lenoir 52). About three fourths of the newcomers worked in urban areas, where the oversupply of labor allowed employers the luxury of paying low salaries and making high profits. As immigrants continued to arrive, unemployment became rampant and the employed could not afford to feed their families (52-53). An increasingly repressive govemment crushed union efforts to improve the workers’ situation; the confrontations culminated in the bloody “semana tragica” of January 1919, when hundreds of metal workers were massacred (54). Life in the “promised land” (53) had become a struggle to survive. The working classes during this period lived in constant tension between their own moral codes and changing social standards (55)," between their ideals and their need to survive, and between their humanity and dehumanizing external reality (62). This tension is reflected in the characters of the grotesco criollo, destined to fail as moral, social, and economic beings (64-65). Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, in her comprehensive study of these works, elucidates the basis of their grotesque nature: ¥ Carlos Pacheco, although these are admitted to the category by critics such as Luis Ordaz, fin96|a Blanco Amores de Pagella, Blas Raul Gallo, and José Maria Monner Sans (13-14). In Discépolo's Relojero, there is an extended discussion of changing moral standards, SpecIfically surrounding the watchmaker’s daughter, Nené, a talented pianist who goes to live the man she loves in order to escape her farnily’s poverty. According to Kaiser-Lenoir, “Se Ciebate el enfrentamiento de dos ideologies diferentes, de dos generaciones, de dos momentos Vltales que no pueden coexistir en un mismo ser. El planteo es de orden ético, mucho mas que °°°m5mico. pero también es sintomético de una sociedad que se resquebraja en sus bases, cuyo detenoro exige un replanteamiento en todos los Ordenes.” (88) 20 3P 3% H Los personajes aquf se convierten en grotescos por el choque constants entre su interioridad sensible y la realidad extema que los deshumaniza. El teatro grotesco esta poblado de vlctimas con las que nos identificamos afectivamente en mayor o menor grado. Dirfamos mas: es precisamente la delicada y profunda humanidad de estos personajes lo que da la medida de la deshumanizacion del sistema. (62) Her mention here of the system points to a fundamental component of her analysis and that of David Vifias: the sociopolitical criticism in the plays. As she points out, both Armando and Enrique Santos Discépolo, descendants of Italian immigrants themselves, were politically active and members of the Boedo group of socially militant artists (51 ). According to Vii'Ias, “el grotesco aludira cada vez mas a una denuncia sorda de la unidad social. El transito del sainete al grotesco es el sintoma teatral de la crisis de un codigo” (100). For Kaiser-Lenoir the disintegration of the individual demonstrates the failure of the social system, which makes the grotesco criollo profoundly political: ...este estilo teatral constituye una vision degradada del sistema social, un indirecto enjuiciamiento de los pilares en los cuales se apoya, los mitos de los que se alimenta y la forma en que se valida sobre el hombre. (8) Although the degradation of the system is a source of humor (162), this is ambivalent humor since the debasement of the system grows out of the debasement of the individual (169). Societal structures diminish and reify man (10) until he is no longer able to function humanely within them (11). The hollowness of a social code held up to ridicule may be laughable; the dehumanization of its victim is not. The origins of this dramatic style may be traced to the Italian grottesco and the sainete criollo, an Argentine comedy of manners connected with the 21 ties Vac. Spanish tradition. Grottesco theater, published between 1916 and 1925, inherits the importance of the mask from the commedia dell’arte. Jacques Callot’s eighteenth-century sketches of this Italian folk spectacle show the mask’s addition of animal qualities to the human figure as well as the eccentricity of movement and general distortion that increased the dehumanized or hybrid appearance of the actors (Kayser 39). Kaiser-Lenoir agrees that there is a blurring of categories or loss of naturalness in the actors as they don their masks, which also relates them to marionettes (31). In the teatro grottesco, Chiarelli’s title “The Mask and the Face” (1916) captures the dynamic that will eventually control the grotesco criollo: the lack of correspondence between the social mask and the true face, which represents personal identity (35). Many of these plays were performed in Argentina, and in 1933 Pirandello himself paid a visit to direct and act in several of his plays as well as to give a series of lectures (55-56). In these works, man has emerged exhausted ‘and disoriented from World War I, traditional bourgeois moral values no longer apply, and society has become self- contradictory. Human beings are prisoners of their social masks, imposed upon them by their need to live in relationship, but any attempt to rebel is useless. Removal of the mask leads to ostracism or death (56-57). Kaiser-Lenoir contends that the grottesco and the grotesco criollo share a basic situation in which social myths are deconstructed and questions of humanity and morality are posed. The mask-face duality operates on various levels in both cases and the outcome is alienation and defeat. Nevertheless, in the grotesco criollo there is a struggle to survive on the economic level in which 22 ar ire lea (“a UFO} 1181 role, Kais 90:. Was haw an injust system forces the characters to violate their moral standards or give up their humanity and leads eventually to alienation or death, whereas the grottesco leaves the struggle at the ideological or moral level. (59-60)12 The sainete is a short dramatic piece presented originally between the acts of a larger production and given its definitive form by Ramon de la Cruz in the seventeenth century. lts intent since then has been to portray segments of reality in a humorous light, although its characters have become stereotypical in order to increase its comic content (38). In Argentina, as immigrants arrived, they were added to the repertoire of comic characters. The sainete criollo was typically set in the conventillo (a housing complex filled with memorable characters) or in the urban neighborhood (39). Set plots and personality types provided much of the humor, and even the costumes followed a formula so that the audience would recognize the character types. This assignment of social role, psychological type, profession, dialect, and costume corresponds, as Kaiser-Lenoir correctly observes, to a mask for the character (43). What the grotesco criollo added to the sainete criollo was another dimension; the former became a problematic version of the latter (45). David Vifias’ assertion that the transition from sainete to grotesco criollo was politically driven explains plausibly the change from a romanticized, harmonious view of the lower classes in which human beings are reduced to amusing stereotypes (Kaiser-Lenoir 46) to a depiction of those same classes in 12 Osvaldo Pellettieri distinguishes the grotesco criollo from the Italian grottesco as follows: the grottesco is driven by sentiment and the grotesco criollo by a desire to communicate; the mask in the former is voluntary and in the latter involuntary; the grottesco transgresses the conventions of 23 crisis as real, self-conscious persons with a dark, irrational side (46-48). Where a social law was broken in the sainete criollo, order was eventually reestablished and the crime punished according to the social code (47). In the grotesco criollo, Vir‘ias notes, there is no such neat resolution. He summarizes the contrasting patterns as follows: “la arquitectura esencial del sainete en los tres momentos clasicos de planteo, nudo y desenlace, se toma en otros tres mas interiorizados como aspiracion, proyecto y fracaso” (102). Failure becomes the central theme in these plays and occurs at multiple levels: social, linguistic, corporal, and psychological. The key to the lack of harmony is a loss of reciprocity (Kaiser-Lenoir 63), whereby the characters fail to interact with and act effectively upon their surroundings. As reality becomes demythified by the events surrounding them, they are nevertheless incapable of breaking the bonds that tie them to their masks (66), which have a double effect on them: the masks dictate how they appear to others and how they see themselves (65). The sense of the grotesque comes from an inner tearing apart of the character (87), unable to separate himself from what he has become in an inhumane system even as it destroys him. As life becomes impossible for the grotesque protagonist, due to the bankruptcy of the social system, the categories with which he has been taught to organize his world fail, producing estrangement and inability to account rationally for the forces at work (100, 106). A world shom of certainties produces irlGOherence on the intellectual and linguistic level, so that his language no longer \ glglodrama, and the grotesco criollo those of the sainete and of realism and naturalism (55-56. 24 0". $23 ex is l COL inn 00’: 9a: corresponds to reality (127). Since a linguistic code expresses the social system, its myths and ideology (111), its breakdown mirrors the deconstruction of that system. For Kaiser-Lenoir the breakdown is evident in two ways: first, in the chasm that has opened between the ethical and moral context of the ideology and the socioeconomic reality in which the characters live, and second, in the gap between what the characters profess and what they do. The symbolic system functions as a sort of mask beneath which their true condition lurks (113). A society in crisis is reflected in a linguistic code in crisis: Al no responder mas a los contextos reconocidos, al substraerse el héroe grotesco a la coherencia social de la retorica, al quebrar su orden con la irrupcion de la incoherencia expresiva y del gesto extraviado, el lenguaje del grotesco se convierte en la expresion teatral de la crisis de un codigo. (114) The failure of language as the instrument of social interaction is portrayed on stage by means of a number of concrete mechanisms. The lower-class urban slang, lunfardo, which originated in criminal circles, functions as a secret language and a barrier to communication (Vifias 122); deep emotions are expressed in a series of cliches which clearly do not suffice to communicate what is felt (Kaiser-Lenoir 132-33); polished rhetoric and vulgar language are counterposed as a metaphor of rupture (133). The word itself is presented in its inherent ambivalence (Vifias 125), so that its usefulness as tool of communication is questioned, and language is cynically manipulated for personal gain, which empties it of real meaning (Kaiser-Lenoir126). Apart from the ambiguity of the word itself, the way grotesque characters contradict themselves reflects their inner conflict. In Relojero, the daughter's 25 ac: , Do it Wei cohabitation with her lover is a denial of her parents’ entire moral framework. When her mother visits her and accepts the gift of a hat, it is deeply offensive to the father since it represents acceptance of the situation. He alternates conciliatory language (“gPor qué no queries darle ese gusto?”) with outbursts of fury DANIEL (Para no sol/czar.) Si si estas churrasca, Irene. (Grita.) rSacate ese (Logra dominarse.) sombreritol (Kaiser-Lenoir 1 40) Finally, in Cremona, the gap between word and action or expressed intention and action widens to the breaking point: HUMBERTO Me voy. (Se sientasobre el cajon.)13 Vir‘ias summarizes the grotesque hero as follows: “la esencia del héroe del grotesco reside en su carencia de arrnonia corporal y linguistica” (127-28). As he fails to control his own actions he demonstrates his inability to act effectively upon his surroundings (Kaiser-Lenoir 136). For instance, Stefano, the failed musician and composer, has been fired from his orchestra and never has managed to compose the opera that was to be his life’s work, although his family has been deprived of necessities so that he can compose. Finally, when he can no longer manage his own body and dies, unable to extricate himself from a kitchen chair and bleating like a sheep (Kaiser-Lenoir 73), his body expresses his utter dehumanization. 13 From Discépolo, Cremona (1970), qtd. in Kaiser-Lenoir, 135. Similarly, Stefano, in the aWhilmous play, attempts to comfort his wife and instead sticks his finger in her eye (135-36). 26 Stéfano’s sheeplike bleating conforms to a pattern that underlines the loss of humanity, which has been noted particularly by Vifias: the use of animal imagery applied to human beings, who not only sound but, in their clumsiness, act like animals: “como hombres, resultan animales que solo controlan su terror" (101). For Vifias the imagery is appropriate since a human being, when unable to work and provide for his family, is no longer human because he has no power. “Si por definicion el hombre es un animal politico, carente de politica se queda an animal” (140). A further visual portrayal of loss of control comes in the aging process: “la humillacion de los hombres de Discépolo se encama en lo corporal, de la fuerza se va pasando plasticamente a la 'vejez’” (117). The monstrous fusion in the grotesque protagonist of mask and face and his complete estrangement from the world are complemented in the grotesco criollo by the use of humor. The comic aspects of misunderstandings, puns, double entendres, and pratfalls transcend the farcical but conforrnist humor of the sainete and imply ridicule of the official code and its formulas (147-48). This is humor in the Bakhtinian sense, closely tied to the debasement of official culture and authority figures (149). Characters who express their value system in ridiculous, overblown terms or continue to adhere to that system with laughable results degrade the values themselves (154). When Bautista in Fielojero insists on working for the sake of working, although he is losing money in his enterprise, and justifies it with pretentious rhetoric, his brother calls him grotesque (156-57). Laughter in the grotesco criollo would not contribute to a grotesque effect were it not fused with horror or pity. When the comic treatment strikes the 27 treat Eafin 3 adi'iz readers or spectators as inappropriate, a “comic distance” is created which does not permit them a total identification with a character otherwise deserving of compassion. This distance can be between an action and the words used to refer to it (159) or by means of mispronunciation or even the comic appearance of a character (160). When Daniel, seated at the piano, executes a maudlin interpretation of “The Virgin's Prayer,” his style of playing denies the seriousness of the values the song expresses, even as his daughter's living arrangement is an offense to the family’s beliefs (158). This mocking treatment of those beliefs may offend the spectator and interfere with his or compassion for Daniel. Kaiser- Lenoir summarizes the dynamics of grotesque tragicomedy as follows: mas bien de una risa tei'iida de légrimas 0 un llanto acompar‘iado de sonrisa. De la inicial percepcion de lo opuesto se ha pasado a un sentimiento de lo opuesto. No se trata de una risa que luego se convierte en llanto sino de similitud o yuxtaposicién, estan presentadas en conflicto: cada imagen o grupo de imagenes evoca o atrae su contrario y esto es la base de toda asociacion de incompatibles dentro del grotesco. (178-79) To situate the grotesco cn'ollo within the general context of the grotesque tradition is to recognize that there is a Kayserian estrangement due to the disintegration of reality as the protagonist knows it as well as a disorienting mixture of humanity and inhumanity in that protagonist. A further clash of incompatibles derives from the incongruence of the subject matter and its treatment as well as conflicting emotions this elicits in the spectator. The centrality of the word as self-contradiction is reminiscent of Harpham’s focus on language as grotesque. Finally, the use of humor to deflate the importance of authority figures and to debase the social system together with the body humor 28 that degrades the nobility of its values reflects Bakhtin’s concept of the subversive nature of the grotesque. Kaiser-Lenoir points out that, beginning in the late sixties, a new generation of Argentine playwrights has revived the grotesco criollo and enriched it with the incorporation of techniques from avant-garde theater, the plays of Bertold Brecht, and the theater of the absurd (196)." Gambaro, within this tradition, makes ample use of grotesco criollo patterns and techniques within both her plays and her novels.'” For example, the failure of the grotesque protagonist may be seen in Ganarse la muerte’s Horacio and in Dios no nos quiere contentos’s Tristan, who simultaneously inspire pity as victims of society and arouse disgust for their lack of initiative and clumsiness. Eustaquio in Una felicidad con menos pena and the orphanage authorities in Ganarse la muerte both contradict themselves frequently and respond inappropriately, thus demonstrating a breakdown in language as communicative device. The powerful political message of the grotesco criollo makes it a particularly appropriate vehicle for what Gambaro achieves in her novels. The failure of the military dictatorship to effect the healing of society through the 1‘ Kaiser-Lenoir mentions specifically Osvaldo Dragun, Enrique Wemicke, Oscar Viale, Ricardo Talesnik, and Juan Carlos Ghiano. It is surprising that Gambaro does not figure in her update of the grotesco criollo, since she began publishing plays in 1965 (El desatino). Eduardo Romano speaks of a neogrotesque theater and adds Roberto Cossa, especially his La nona (1977); he also mentions screenplays by Viale and Jorge Goldenberg as well as a 1985 film, Esperando la carroza, based on a play by the Uruguayan Jacobo Langsner (34-37). Ordaz also uses the term ‘nuevo grotesco,” which he distinguishes from the grotesco criollo since in the sixties the milieu was typically the middle (rather than lower) class. He lists Talesnik, Viale, Cossa, Julio Mauricio, and Ricardo Halac. He apparently groups Gambaro with the theater of the absurd. (“Autores del 'nuevo realismo' de los arms ’60 a lo largo de las tres L'Iltimas décadas” 41-48) ‘5 Gambaro herself insists in an interview with Kathleen Betsko, Rachel Koenig, and Maria Irene Fomes on her continuity with the grotesco criollo tradition: “We come from Argentinian dramaturgy, a genre called grotesco [grotesque] created by a playwright named Armando Discépolo” (195). 29 drastic means it proposed and its result, instead, in a warped society that dehumanized its citizens is denounced both by the breakdown of social codes and structures through humor and by graphic evidence of dehumanization. The offensive discrepancy between the tragedy of the context and the flippancy of the text qualifies the reader's compassion, creates critical awareness, and calls for a reaction against the status quo. Wolfgang Kayser and the Estrangement of the Familiar When Wolfgang Kayser published The Grotesque in Art and Literature in 1957 there had been to date no study of that magnitude published." Kayser is widely recognized as the foundational theorist of the grotesque (Bakhtin 46, Adams and Yates 14-15) who established it as a basic esthetic category or, as he puts it, a comprehensive structural principle with its own creative attitudes, contents, structures, and effect on its viewers or readers (Kayser 179). Although the grotesque for Kayser cannot be judged solely by its effects, neither can it be judged apart from our experience of it (181), and what we experience is estrangement in an absurd world (78). The type of grotesque to which Kayser addresses his attention belongs predominantly to the Romantic period and beyond. Romanticism ushered in the modern concept of the grotesque as a subjective phenomenon, wherein the world becomes terrifying and alien (38-39). During this period, the grotesque gradually came to be seen as an individual feeling of isolation and madness, represented visually by a mask beneath which lurks a terrible vacuum (Bakhtin 3O i9 1.". ”it I';/ 7 .CI 3 39-40). Kayser characterizes nineteenth-century grotesque literature on the whole in terms of “the disintegration of order in a spatially unified social group” as described by Jean Paul (67). For example, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nachtgeschichten (1817) exemplify the grotesque for him in a narrative presentation of humor, estrangement, and horror in which the reader identifies with the protagonist who goes mad at the end of the story (76). In his analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” Kayser presents what he calls “perhaps the most complete and authoritative definition” of the grotesque (78). The elements essential to this category are listed here as the distortion of ingredients in the narrative, a fusion of different realms of reality, the coexistence of the beautiful, the bizarre, the ghastly and the repulsive, and a withdrawal into a ghostly, nocturnal world (79). Kayser posits that the grotesque inspires in us “the fear of life rather than of death” as it makes the categories of our world view inapplicable (185). To illustrate this dynamics of disintegration he cites as typically grotesque the fusion of realms, the abolition of laws, the loss of identity, distortions of shape and size, the suspension of categories, the destruction of personality, fragmentation of historical order, and intrusions of the demonic (the incomprehensible, the inexplicable, the impersonal), all of which cause us to lose our bearings in the physical universe (1 85). Kayser identifies specific motifs as inherent to the grotesque, for example monsters, “creepy" animals such as snakes, owls, toads, spiders and bats, '° Bakhtin began his study of Rabelais in 1934 and submitted it as a thesis to the Gorky Institute of World Literature in 1940. It was not published until 1965 (Michael Holquist, Prologue to 31 tangled jungle-like vegetation, mechanical inventions which come alive or the fusion of the mechanical and the organic, a lack of proportion, human bodies which become puppets or faces turned into masks, and insanity (182-84). What these elements share is the destabilization of reality through some sort of intmsion or disintegration, and it is this type of process which Kayser identifies in the visual arts and literature he surveys at length. When he describes Raphael’s grotesque creatures inspired by the ruins of Nero's palace, he notes that there is a “sinister quality inherent even in this playful world” (21). He finds evidence of a disintegrating world in Bosch’s paintings (33) and the terror of the unfathomable in Breughel's irrational nocturnal world (35-36). One source of horror is Vischer's whirlpool principle, a mechanism by which a segment of reality is gradually disintegrated by an accumulation of incidents of demonic origin, culminating in - total chaos (1 15). ‘ Although the comic or the playful in combination with the fearful constitutes the grotesque for Kayser, he is careful to distinguish between the comic and the grotesque. One can feel secure and indifferent in the presence of the comic, whereas there is genuine involvement with the grotesque (118). Kayser indicates that distortion cannot be grotesque, either, if it makes sense as part of moral instruction or critique, but only if it appears to exist for its own sake and inspires terror (133). Thus Pirandello in Six Characters in Search of an Author keeps a world on the verge of estrangement from being truly grotesque by appealing to rationality. The grotesque creeps in only when the categories Rabelais and His World, xvii-xxi). 32 ma circ die: invoked by the characters are shown to be insufficient to explain their world and to ward off the interference of abysmal forces. (138) Ironically, exposing the presence of these abysmal forces through art opens the possibility for liberation: the grotesque is, in the final analysis, “an attempt to invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of the world” (188). For Kayser the humorous or whimsical aspect of the grotesque serves to combat the terror which its horrific side inspires, yet for him the emphasis is clearly on the fearful, the alien intrusion which opens a window on his vision of our world as estranged (1 84). The estrangement of the familiar world appears in Gambaro’s novels as a means of portraying the complete disorientation of the individual in a repressive regime. In Nada que ver con otra historia, the lack of distinction between man and monster demonstrates the general lack of humanity in such a society and makes it nearly impossible to define what it means to be human under such circumstances. In Ganarse la muerte, the family as microcosm of the dictatorship causes Cledy to lose her identity as complete strangers are forced upon her and identified as her parents, children, and husband. As the reader follows her life story, he or she is as unable as Cledy to discern what is reality and what is nightmare, because Cledy’s world has disintegrated, condemning her to live among strangers. As a result the familiar world of the novel also disintegrates for the reader, leaving him or her lost in the text and estranged from it. 33 5% at: he I' Mikhail Bakhtin and the Uncrowning of Authority According to Bakhtin, on the other hand, estrangement should not be the final result of an encounter with the grotesque. Bakhtin takes issue with Kayser, while expressing great respect for his work on the grotesque, because he considers Kayser to have lost track of its roots in medieval folk humor. For Bakhtin, the grotesque, based as it is on laughter and the carnival spirit, precludes true seriousness while liberating human consciousness to consider new possibilities (49). What for Kayser is a terrified attempt to invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of the world is for Bakhtin a festive unmaking of that world in order to recreate it (48). The role of festive laughter for Bakhtin cannot be underestimated, because what stands in the way of a brighter future is fear and weakness (95). Laughter not only liberates from fear but opens the eyes to new truths (94) and ushers in equality (92) and progress: Laughter created no dogmas and could not become authoritarian; it did not convey fear but a feeling of strength. It was linked with the procreating act, with birth, renewal, fertility, abundance. Laughter was also related to food and drink and the people’s earthly immortality, and finally it was related to the future of things to come and was to clear the way for them. (95) The essential humorous principle of grotesque realism as defined by Bakhtin is the degradation of the spiritual from the ideal to the material level (19) in order to destroy the official picture of events (439). This degradation is related to the material bodily lower stratum, that is, the digestive and reproductive organs together with acts such as defecation, copulation, conception, pregnancy and birth (21). The downward movement of many of Rabelais’ images is for Bakhtin a fundamental artistic principle signifying the decentralization of the universe 34 boo from the heavens to the underworld (369-370), which allows us to embrace rather than transcend the material. Thus Bakhtin illustrates not only the ambivalence but also the regenerating properties of the material bodily lower stratum with an example from a parody of the Gospels where the flatus—rather than the breath of the mouth—proves Epistemon’s resurrection. The anus, in a reversal of medieval topography (378), is associated with the resurrection and beatitude of the soul (382). The Epistemon episode exemplifies several essential interrelated characteristics of the grotesque as described by Bakhtin: its violation of the dominant esthetic norm, its humor centered on the “lower” organs of the body, and its countercultural nature. During the Renaissance, according to Bakhtin, the human body was represented as a finished product isolated from all other bodies, smooth, self-contained and noninteractive; moments of change such as conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and dying were hardly ever depicted (29). The grotesque body violates Renaissance esthetics, based on the canons of antiquity, and thus would have been considered hideous, monstrous and fonnless (25, 29). It undergoes constant transformation, eating, defecating, dying and giving birth, hence the Rabelaisian emphasis on those parts of the body which are open to the world: the open mouth, the genitalia, the breasts, the phallus, the potbelly and the nose (26). Bakhtin cites the example of the Kerch terracottas of laughing senile pregnant hags, a highly unstable image of decaying flesh about to give birth (25). The inner contradiction attributed above to the grotesque in general is frequently embodied here in a birth/death or 35 affection/abuse dynamics where the violence of the images points nevertheless to change and renewal and humankind as an organic body is fertilized by the dead (403-04). The material bodily lower stratum has already been described as continuous with the material renewal of the world, and Epistemon’s flatus is evidence of his continued participation in the great bowels of “one single superindividual bodily life that devour and are devoured, generate and are generated” (226). Emphasis on the “lower" organs is often achieved through gross exaggeration of size and function (303): Gargantua swallows pilgrims with his salad (311), phalli become long enough to be wound six times around the waist (328), and Pantagruel’s urine floods the countryside and drowns an army (334). Further connections with the cosmos include animal images for human behavior (331, 333) and the symbolic link of bodily elements such as urine and dung with non-human substances—the sea and the earth (335). The juxtaposition of the human and the non-human leads not to alienation as it does for Kayser but rather to the defeat of cosmic fear by laughter through Renaissance man’s awareness of the cosmos within himself (336). Rabelais “in the language of images and on the plane of laughter” embodies a new philosophy (365) which contradicts the medieval hierarchical picture of the world. The lower stratum is now on the same plane as the higher, and progress becomes horizontal (363). This nontraditional attitude was anticipated, as Bakhtin carefully delineates, by the comic spectacles and rituals associated with most medieval Church feasts as well as with civil and social 36 E) ii: Ur Cir: Re lee ceremonies.17 These comic rituals and spectacles belonged to a sphere independent of the Church (7), a second world inhabited by all the people during specific times of the year (6) in which life itself followed a pattern of play (7). Unlike the official feasts of the Middle Ages, which sanctioned and reinforced the existing structures (9), carnival and popular festivals suspended temporarily the ranks, privileges, norms and prohibitions typical of hierarchy in favor of equality, liberation from the usual norms of etiquette and decency, freedom and frankness of speech and gesture (10). Carnival symbolism is permeated with reversal: logic turned inside out, comic crownings and humiliations, parody (11). Camival laughter—festive, universal and ambivalent (11)—removes the celebrants from the limits of their circumstances and situates them in the universe as an evolving whole (12). Removing awareness from present reality to a larger context had the effect of relativizing the dominant authority structure. As Harpham aptly puts it: “By the logic of the cosmos-as-body metaphor, popular culture relentlessly ‘degraded’ the authorities, demonstrating not only that they had feet of clay, but that they stood in dung” (72). The ambivalence of the grotesque image is indispensable for Bakhtin because it reflects transformation and therefore contains both of its poles: old and new, death and procreation (24). The grotesque body with its shifting dimensions and deformations is perceived through language. Bakhtin in his final chapter situates the Rabelaisian image “on the confines of languages” (473) to highlight its political significance. ‘7 In addition to the carnival festivities preceding Lent, there was the feast of tools, the feast of the ass, Easter laughter, parish or agricultural feasts, and the festive atmosphere surrounding the 37 Although tolerated by political and ecclesiastical authorities, folk culture “at all stages of its development has opposed the official culture of the ruling classes and evolved its own conception of the world, its own forms and imagery" (473). Grotesque realism in its countercultural dimension is the subversive discourse of the laughing people which contradicts the official ideologists of each age (474). Gambaro in her novels follows two strategies in particular that are outlined by Bakhtin: the carnival uncrowning of authority figures by means of debasement and the opposition of the grotesque body as text to the official version of events. In Nada que ver con otra historia, for instance, she holds up to ridicule the family, the Catholic Church, and the military dictatorship, which constituted the core of the Western Christian civilization the dictatorship claimed to defend, through her treatment of the grandmother, the priest, and the soldiers sent out to maintain order. Likewise in La impenetrable Jonathan’s grossly exaggerated male organ makes a mockery of the male-generated and male- centered erotic text. The festive sense of humor manifest in these texts along with a general lawlessness in key scenes reinforces the carnival spirit. Geoffrey Gait Harpham and the Contradictory Word Possibly the most ambitious attempt after Kayser and Bakhtin to address the grotesque as esthetic phenomenon is Harpham's exploration of both visual and literary art. While Bakhtin focuses on Renaissance subversive discourse originating in medieval folk humor and Kayser on Romantic and Modernist alienation, Harpham applies the tools of late twentieth-century literary criticism to the grotesque. The subtitle of his study contains the phrase strategies of ‘ production of mysteries and sotr‘es (5). 38 it? me at: him lliTT", contradiction, which aptly describes his approach to the grotesque within a series of contexts, in all of which it does in fact appear as contradiction. Harpham presents initially his reading of the basic problem encountered in the grotesque, which he characterizes fundamentally as a psychological event (xv) or “a figure for a total art that recognizes its own incongruities and paradoxes” (xvii). These incongruities are symptomatic of the way in which the grotesque questions our organization and classification of the world (3). Rather than a distinct identity we find a hybridized and bastardized image which “refuses to be taken in whole because it embodies a confusion of type” and engenders the “paralysis of language” (6). In addition to being indescribable by means of current vocabulary, the grotesque image causes the uncomfortable sense that “something is illegitimately in something else” (11) so that “the unifying principle [is] sensed but occluded and imperfectly perceived” (14). Harpham exemplifies this basic conflict variously as a clash of center and margin, of metaphor and metonymy, of primitive myth and civilization, of the sacred and the unclean, of id and ego, of attraction and repulsion. Within the spectrum of existing critical thought, Harpham seeks to place himself in a centrist position between Kayser and Bakhtin. Kayser's bias and limitations stem from his inability to step outside the familiar world into the mythic “’0'“. whose regenerative capabilities he is unable to discern (71). Bakhtin, on the other hand, denies both the alienation implicit in the experience of the Q'OtGSque and its dualism."3 Harpham agrees with Derrida in accusing Bakhtin of \ 18 Kaaegmding Baudelaire’s association of the grotesque with the primordial, Harpham says of 5'39? and Bakhtin, respectively. “those less mythic-minded than Baudelaire [when exposed to 39 an unspoken nostalgia for origins (73) and insists on the paradoxical nature of the human condition (75)." He quotes Coleridge to drive home the possibility of a hidden order beyond our discerning: “No sound is dissonant which tells of Life” (76). Harpham's textual studies of Bronte, Poe, Mann, and Conrad are richly inflected revelations of the inner contradictions so often present in writing, and this attempt to transcend the period limitations of both Kayser and Bakhtin is to be commended. Harpham suggests the possibility of contradictions within identity and worldview, such as the lurking presence of paganism within Christianity and of evil within the law.20 He focuses on the ambivalence of the written word, which may lead to an unsettling confusion of categories and identities.21 Harpham situates the clash of emotions within the act of reading itself, where equivocal words, metaphor, puns, multiple and mutually contradictory narrative voices, and the reduction of reality to polarities all corrupt the text, creating simultaneous sympathy and antipathy toward language (174).” the grotesque] betray themselves by their “distinct feeling of repulsion’; those more so, by their 0 n-armed enthusiasm” (71 ). 1 Harpham finds Auerbach’s scheme of the rise and fall of systems of decomm useful. According to Auerbach, the dominant system of decorum will gradually become less meaningful as meaning migrates to that which the dominant system considers low or marginal. “Grotesque is a word for that dynamic state of low-ascending and high-descending” (74); that is, the state of flux when the marginal trades places with the dominant. 2° ln Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff, cast as the Other, is a creature of boundaries: between outdoors and indoors, between nature and culture, between individual identity and fusion with Cathy (94-95). 2‘ In “T he Masque of the Red Death,” the text is represented alternately as mask, as plague, and as parody. Harpham posits a sharing of essence between the revelers, the Red Death, and the narrative (118). 22 The risk Harpham takes is that his approach to the grotesque can become so abstract and general as to make a practical definition very difficult. It is one thing to make a case for “T he Masque of the Red Death” as grotesque based on contradictions, masks, and alienation, but quite another to say that the grotesque consists of the text as disease or in the blurring of distinctions between characters and narrative. lf mutually exclusive meanings evoked by the same word constitute the grotesque, many texts otherwise ineligible would be included in that 40 The elevation of a discussion of the grotesque to a category this abstract involves removal from the immediate—almost visceral—reader reaction of horror or disgust usually associated with it. What we see instead in Harpham is often a bemused or intrigued search for the answer to the puzzle. Harpham argues that a perception of the grotesque may be due to a simple difference in point of view (18). It is often part of our “processes of making and unmaking meaning” (40), a paradigm crisis which occurs in the course of scientific discovery (17) in the “middle of a narrative of emergent comprehension” (15). Disorder may often be the price of the enlargement of the mind and the grotesque may well imply discovery, but it is not the only insurance that there is something left to discover in the text (191); otherwise grotesqueness would be the only yardstick by which to measure literary richness and lasting value. Harpham makes a significant contribution as he applies poststructuralist criticism and strategies of deconstruction to the field of the grotesque (McElroy 7). His quest for a less historically and ideologically constrained vision, although hampered by excessive generalization, enlarges our critical boundaries and makes the valuable point that the grotesque is part of life and not strictly an artistic invention. Bakhtin clearly has this in mind when he states that “the essence of the grotesque is precisely to present a contradicting double-faced fullness of life” (62). Although Kayser prefers to say that “the grotesque world is—and is not—our own” (37), he indicates that it is our world which is breaking apart (31, 33, 37): his idea of invoking and subduing the demonic aspects of the category. As McElroy observes, “Harpham at times seems to betray an uneasy sense that his subject is in danger of disappearing into the endless proliferation invited by his theory” (8). 41 world implies that these aspects exist in the here and now, whether or not they are exaggerated and stylized in art and literature. Griselda Gambaro clearly makes use of techniques outlined by Kayser and Bakhtin, such as the gradual disintegration of the reality she portrays in order to estrange the reader as well as the characters, and the use of uncrownings or the grotesque body to contradict the discourse of authority. Harpham, however, indicates another opportunity to undermine authority: incongruities within the text itself, which contradicts and parodies itself, creating profound mistrust and alienation. In all of the works analyzed within the present study, the text itself is as problematic as any other aspect. The callous narrative tone of Ganarse la muerte, which identifies with the victimizer and portrays him as a victim, while expressing contempt for the actual victim, provokes horror and disgust. Furthermore, the deceptive nature of the chapter titles, which create expectations soon disappointed within the body of the narration, denies the conventional role of these literary guidelines. When Cledy is suddenly supplanted by her mother- in-law, the fabric of language itself, in this case nouns and pronouns, begins to tear, making it impossible to determine their referents. The relationship between text and reader deteriorates to the point where the only legitimate reaction is rejection, yet the reader depends on the words on the page in order to “read” the story. The inner tensions of such a text can hardly present a more immediate way to depict the brokenness of the situation. 42 Julla Kristeva and the Abjection of the Feminine A constant in the novels of Griselda Gambaro is the female body as deeply ambivalent. Cledy‘s body, like Madame X’s in Lo impenetrable, is penetrated by many, valued yet held in contempt, desired yet feared, and the fat lady in Una felicidad con menos pena elicits fascination and disgust. Julia Kristeva accounts for these feelings of attraction and repulsion in terms of abjection, a primal repression of the ego, its desires and representations (Powers ofHon'or10-11). Because personal and cultural identity are established by differentiation from the maternal (13), sexual difference enters the struggle for an establishment of boundaries (Reineke 27). The abject being the opposite of the self (PH 1), what makes a woman female, her “marks of maternity" (Reineke 30), can become for a man that alter ego which according to Kristeva elicits loathing (10). The dynamics by which male characters altemately abhor and idealize women has a long history. Margaret Miles in her review of literature and art from antiquity through the Renaissance shows that from a collective male perspective, especially in sixteenth-century literature, the figure “woman,” rather than exotic monsters, presents the most concentrated sense of the grotesque (Adams and Yates 88). Miles finds that in Bakhtin the degradation of the high or spiritual to the low is usually brought about by the conversion of a male function to a female reproductive body: the grotesque body, in the act of becoming, is best exemplified in sexual intercourse, pregnancy and childbirth (93).23 Three '5 Miles cite the example of Hariequin acting as midwife in the “birth” of the word, where the stutterer reenacls the throes of labor (89); she observes that Bakhtin calls this image a 43 9'}? / i!" .1- rhetorical and pictorial devices commonly associated with the grotesque, caricature, inversion and hybridization, have specific implications for the female body; if the male body is normative and stable, the female body is a deformation (thus grotesque) and unstable, threatening (96). Imperfect because they are an inversion of the male reproductive organs (100-101), female genitalia signal moral inferiority (102); the female body is “simultaneously fascinating and terrifying” (103). Although Bakhtin includes the phallus in those parts which typify the grotesque body through their protrusion into the world, he singles out distinct connotations for the female image: in popular comic tradition, woman is the incarnation of the material bodily lower stratum, the ambivalent “bodily grave of man” (240). A woman’s bowels were seen as insatiable (242); higher-level soothsaying was traditionally debased on a grotesque level through predictions of the hazards of matrimony (244). On the other hand, the earth’s regenerative powers are embodied in childbirth, a female function, and woman is “organically hostile to all that is old” (242). Thus the female is more ambivalent than the male, embodying both good and evil. Mary Russo associates the female body with both the “grotto-esque” in terms of its cave-like inner cavities and affinities with the primal elements and the grotesque through bodily fluids more properly female than male (1-2). Where “'female grotesque' threatens to become a tautology” (12) it remains to be seen degradation of “a highly spiritual act” as it is transferred to the grotesque life of the body. “Unremarked by Bakhtin,” says Miles, “the debasement of the act is brought about by a gender inversion.” Lest this be seen as benign or neutral, Miles points out that the subversion of order what constitutes a “normal” female. For Russo, as for Bakhtin, male grotesques are identified by association with the feminine (13); female grotesques can be seen as such either because of bodily abnormalities (the Bearded Woman, the Fat Lady, the Vampire, the Siamese Twin, the Dwarf) or because of departures from the typical female role (suffragettes, “bra-bumers,” harridans), in addition to more usual female complications such as secretions, bloating, lumps, prostheses, and so forth (14).“ Miles makes the valuable point that what seems grotesque to a person or to a society flows out of their “anxieties, fears, and fantasies” (112). The female body has been caricatured and fetishized throughout history, and the vagina has traditionally appeared as the mouth of hell (97). A woman’s mouth, dangerous when open, has often been associated with loose morals (99); thus both tongue and body must be strictly governed (108). Woman must be enclosed (109) and covered with clothing (110). The anxiety about woman comes from their nature, both similar and different (112), much as the grotesque for Kayser synthesizes the familiar and the alien. According to Kristeva, the familiar becomes the alien as the self emerges from the disjointed imaginary world of the infant and takes its place within the symbolic order. Kristeva follows Jacques Lacan in positing that a human sense and rationality “signals the insidious omnipresence of evil, the confusion of an orderly creation by an irreducible undertow, a bleeding of 'high’ into 'low’” (90). 2" In the chapter on Dias no nos quiere contentos, this study will note that the Bareback Rider as aerialist transgresses the limits of traditional femininity: the aerialist occupies “outer space” as opposed to the traditional feminine milieu, “inner space” (Russo 26). Natalie Davis makes the Bakhtinian observation that the image of camivalesque woman in early modern Europe “undermined as well as reinforced” the renewal of existing social structure (Russo 58); according to Victor Turner the woman who participates in the reversals of camival passes from the 45 of identity is possible only by differentiation from another (Reineke 18). The symbolic order consists of a social system of laws and language that is embodied by the father and necessitates the abjection of the mother (PH 13). The subject feels the impulse toward its own demarcation as an imperative (68), yet since its insertion in the symbolic order is unstable, the nonbeing which is abjection looms fascinatingly yet dangerously at the border of subjectivity (67). Both Michael Payne and Martha Reineke observe that for Kristeva the subject is profoundly social (Payne 190, Reineke 27). Kristeva calls the abject and abjection “the primers of my culture” (2) because each culture defines exactly what is subject to abjection, typically specific foods, corpses (2-3), urine, blood, excrement (53), and menstrual blood (71). Since religion shapes culture, abjection is also woven into the fabric of religious systems with their taboos and rites of defilement or purification (17). As Kristeva puts it, “abjection, when all is said and done, is the other facet of religious, moral, and ideological codes” (209). Conversely, cultural attitudes are manifest in religion; for her the prohibition of Judaism against blood contamination or consumption also refers to women, fertility, and the assurance of fecundation. It thus becomes a fascinating semantic crossroads, the propitious place for abjection where death and femininity, murder and procreation, cessation of life and vitality all come together. (96) We note that here the feminine is associated with life. Kristeva states that the fear of the archaic mother is a fear of her power to procreate (77). In societies where there are power struggles between male and female, it can be reflected in taboos concerning menstrual blood, for example; where there is overpopulation, “indicative” world to the “subjunctive" or possible worid, which is a dangerous transgression 46 incest is prohibited (78). Taboos such as incest and homosexual desire account for literature such as Proust's, where the object of love—the abject—becomes an unmentionable double of the subject (21). What is of particular interest here is the nature of the conflicting reactions inspired by bodily fluids and functions, especially those that are feminine. The concept of abjection is another way to understand the deep ambivalence felt toward the body and its secretions, because they fascinate and repel us. They are—and are not—us. Homosexual love or incest is—and is not—“natural” human desire. The woman is—and is not—man. The body itself can become “the utmost abjection” when it is a corpse, that is, “death infecting life” (4), at which point it is seen as an equivalent to excrement (71). It is in this sense of the abjection of that which is most intimately bound up with the self that Kristeva can affirm that abjection is a way of living the grotesque from the inside (165). Terry Eagleton points out that for Kristeva as woman the Lacanian concept of the symbolic order, which is in fact rooted in an oppressive patriarchal system, is hardly cause for celebration. He sees her focus on the semiotic, a space within language that retains a certain femininity since it is bound up with the mother’s body, as her way of subverting the symbolic order (187-88). Reineke, although she agrees that the semiotic, like the abject, subverts language, sees Kristeva’s concept of the formation of selfhood functioning in quite a different way: for her it helps explain the predominance of violence against women (32). She interprets Kristeva's exposure of the processes by which the self is constituted by means of the sacrifice of the feminine as a (Russo 60). 47 ("I challenge to those processes (41 ). When a symbolic system fails and threatens to retum the subject to chaos, this thetic crisis or boundary failure leads human beings to reenact the defining moment of their identity. They prepare to abject, once again, the maternal body and its material debris in order to avoid being subsumed by the maternal matrix, since “the maternal space displays multiple marks of mimetic terror: it threatens as abyss, dividing wall, or suffocating vise” (27). The extreme consequences of what Kristeva calls the death of the maternal body so that the subject may live is murder (28). The notion that intimate and family relationships as well as factors such as economic and political chaos or cultural and social conflict can lead to boundary failure and ultimately to violence against women (27) is of particular relevance to this study. Eagleton's observation that in Kristeva's work the political and the psychoanalytical meet (187)” confirms that relevance: Gambaro’s use of the female body and its secretions as a graphic display of the consequences of inappropriate male authority constitutes a powerful political statement. Cledy’s splintered arm and flow of blood and tears, the fat lady's abundant mucus due to her weeping and, eventually, her purplish crushed head, N'Bom’s staring eyes floating in the bathtub, and Madame X’s physical pain as she seeks to force her body to adapt to societal standards of beauty, all speak a language that “5 Eagleton deduces that Kristeva's theories of language, specifically the idea of a disruptive semiotic force that undermines stable meanings and institutions, imply anarchism or libertarianism, and thus finds her arguments “dangerously forrnalistic and easily caricaturable.” He concludes, however, by allowing that these are “not the only kind of politics which follows from her recognition that women, and certain ‘revolutionary' literary works, pose a radical question to existing society" (190-91). 48 :4 0f simultaneously elicits compassion and provokes abjection.” The originality of her strategic use of abjection, however, goes beyond the female figure. It is transferred to the male authority figure, such as Eustaquio or Jonathan: in Una felicidad con menos pena the narrator’s revulsion toward women and children is progressively directed toward Eustaquio; in Ganarse la muerte infection, perversion, decay, and death are associated with the abusers of the helpless; and in L0 impenetrable the introduction into the narrative of numerous uncontrollable secretions and references to excrement and death move the reader away from the male body as desired object in the direction of the female.27 Beyond the mistreatment of women generated by social structures and their dysfunctionality, Kristeva explores the relationship between abjection and another social attitude with political repercussions. In her study of pamphlets by the French author Céline, she accounts for their rabid anti-Semitism in terms of tension between the subject and the symbolic order.” She identifies two common features in all of the pamphlets, namely rage against the symbolic and the attempt to substitute another law in the place of the existing symbolic one. Since for Kristeva the moral and religious institutions of Céline’s France are founded on Jewish monotheism, his hatred of those institutions becomes hatred of the Jews; the more reassuring law for which he yearns “will be embodied in 2‘ These examples are taken from Ganarse la muerte, Una felicidad con menos pena, Después del dla de fiesta, and Lo impenetrable, respectively. 27 Cynthia Tompkins analyzes abjection in the works of Elvira Orphée and of Griselda Gambaro, specifically in Una felicidad con menos pena, in Ganarse la muerte, and in Lo impenetrable. Although she mentions the abjection oi Jonathan's corpse as it is trodden underfoot, her principal focus is the abjection of the feminine, particularly the maternal. See footnote 12, chapter four. 2' Kristeva specificall studies the following pamphlets: Mea Culpa (1936), Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937), L’ cole des cadavres (1938), and Les Beaux Drape (1941), all of which are signed with his father’s name, Louis Destouches (175). 49 the Family, the Nation, the Race, and the Body" (178). Not only is the Jew the inheriting brother, preferred over the Aryan by the Father and hence deserving of sibling jealousy (184-85), but also for all practical concerns his wife: The Jew becomes the feminine exalted to the point of mastery, the impaired master, the ambivalent, the border where exact limits between same and other, subject and object, and even beyond those, between inside and outside, and disappearing—hence an Object of fear and fascination. Abjection itself. He is abject: dirty, rotten. (185) As Kristeva sees it, anti-Semitic discourse reflects not only hatred but also a “frightened desire” for the Other, and therefore that Other must be abjected, discarded like excrement or a corpse (185). The uneasy balance of fascination and abomination in the face of racial otherness is taken up in Gambaro’s Después del dia de fiesta in the neighborhood bigot’s reactions to the immigrants from Africa and India. Not only is he intrigued by the color of a little African boy’s skin but he falls in love with N’Bom; nevertheless he refers to the Africans as a contaminant and constructs a wall so as not to see them. The ugliness of racial hatred is reflected in the repulsiveness of bloated bellies and decaying teeth; however, largely through Tristan’s sympathetic vision, the abjection these bodies inspire is deflected in the direction of an ethnic majority that simultaneously exploits and excludes them. Gambaro’s manipulation of abjection to achieve a reaction against social injustice is consistent with the ethical concerns that permeate her writings. According to Payne, those concerns are shared by Kristeva, for whom “practice necessarily encompasses the ethical” and literature destroys truths about the subject being formed in order to promote further development (204). Gambaro, 50 likewise, encourages critical consciousness by destroying the assumptions that first arise from the text; she takes abjection a step further from the initial pity and disgust inspired by the victim to its transference to the victimizer. In this she, like Kristeva, places her writing in the service of the social. Kristeva’s theory of the subject interiorizes Thomson's unresolved clash of incompatibles in an abjection that simultaneously fascinates and sickens (1 ). The uncanniness of what was once familiar but is now “radically separate, loathsome” (2) corresponds to Kayser’s notion of estrangement. Kristeva herself acknowledges her indebtedness to Bakhtin’s concept of the “basic bivalence” of speech that depicts the unthinkable, as she applies that concept to Céline’s mocking portrayals of death and destruction (138). She can be credited with providing a new perspective on the grotesque in the light of psychoanalytical theory. Conclusion Griselda Gambaro’s narrative strategies both encompass and transcend the traditional domain of the grotesque. They fulfill the fundamental requirement set forth by Thomson, based on both Bakhtin and Kayser, of a clash of incompatible elements in both the work of art and the reader's response. This clash or contradiction functions on several levels: it appears in the narrative situation, for instance in the impossible coalescence of different centuries and locations in Después del dia de fiesta, or in the man-monster hybrid in Nada que ver con otra histon'a. It is presented in social interaction when words and actions contradict one another or when reactions fail to correspond to situations. At the 51 textual level the comic treatment, callous narrative voice or official discourse stands in stark opposition to the misery to which it refers. In symbolic terms the opposition of beauty and ugliness or of everyday life and the hidden violence behind it are not resolved within the text. In the reader amusement and horror, compassion and repulsion struggle for the upper hand. The degree of abnormality or deformation that grotesqueness implies is reflected in the deformation of social structures and interaction between characters. Institutions such as the orphanage or the home, intended to protect and nurture, instead suffocate and abuse the helpless. Marriage in Ganarse la muerte becomes twisted and perverted in the intergenerational exchange of partners. In the human body abnormality is evident in deformity, mutilation, and aging. Language also undergoes a sort of deformation as it is devalued by Iiteralization or inappropriate application. Human behavior degenerates into extreme cruelty or animality, so that humanity becomes a category difficult to apply to the characters. Kayser’s stipulation of a breakdown of the categories with which the characters make sense of the world, causing estrangement in characters and reader, is fulfilled as the values system advocated by authority figures is revealed as either ignored or inapplicable, as characters lose their sense of identity, or as reality and nightmare appear to coincide. The world becomes a terrifying and alien place in which Toni opts for suicide and Tristan expects no recognition from his fellow human beings. The Kayserian perspective on the grotesco criollo as set forth by Kaiser-Lenoir accounts for the defeat of characters like Horacio, who 52 withdraws into a fetal position, into cowed obedience, and eventually into literal nonexistence. In a novel like Ganarse la muerte, the humorous or whimsical aspects of the text may combat the terror evoked by the estrangement it provokes, but they hardly subdue it, an effect congruent with Kayser’s general emphasis on fear and alienation. In order to accomplish the task of subversive discourse, which according to Bakhtin is the contradiction of official ideologies, Gambaro appropriates techniques also outlined by Bakhtin, such as the camivalesque uncrowning of authority figures like representatives of church and state by means of the fundamental figure of grotesque realism, debasement. The courtroom scene in L0 impenetrable, for example, camivalizes any illusion of order through its degeneration into an orgy, while debasing the prosecutor’s defence of homosexuality through his reference to excrement. The grotesque body, through its caricature and hybridization as well as by means of its protrusions and secretions, exposes cruelty, mocks phallocentrism, or betrays the biases suggested by abjection. In keeping with the political agenda of the grotesco criollo, Gambaro deconstructs the military dictatorship or the biases of a post-Process Argentina by exposing its perversions and contradictions. Characters in these dehumanizing settings, particular under a repressive regime, betray their disorientation, lack of power, and diminishing humanity by their linguistic and corporal clumsiness and by their growing ineffectiveness and inertia. The comic 53 tone and the inappropriate responses of the characters create an uneasy tension between identification and alienation. It is the peculiar interaction between the reader and the text as literary form, however, which presents an innovative and powerful catalyst for the development of critical thinking and social denunciation. Gambaro never provides a perspective for the reader to adopt but rather creates narrative voices or focus points such as Toni or the nameless narrator of Una felicidad con menos pena with whom the reader begins to identify, only to discover his or her lack of respect for aspects of the narrative point of view. The play with language in puns, Iiteralization, misunderstandings or other forms of humor engages the critical consciousness. The deformation of reality in most of the novels creates a deep suspicion of anything reported in the text, in precarious balance with an equally deep recognition of the truth of human suffering and grief. Gambaro's art captures the contradictions and falseness of language as coverup, insisting through her exposure of the reality it obscures that the reader, like her, assume a posture of responsibility. 54 MAN AND MONSTER IN NADA QUE VER CON OTRA HISTORIA ln Nada que ver con otra historia1 Toni, a present-day Frankenstein’s monster, frequently ponders the question of what it means to be human. His point of view as monster places him on the outskirts of society, looking in, and affords the author a means of examining human nature and behavior from a distance while calling into question the meaning of humanity in Juan Carlos Ongania’s Argentine Revolution of 1966-1970. Gambaro incorporates into the plot incidents typical of the sociopolitical turmoil of that period; she subverts official structures by camivalizing them; she creates an uncanny fusion of man and monster in both Toni and Manolo, his maker, in order to focus attention on the issue of humanity; and she allows both of them to be sucked up into a vortex of forces beyond their control which recreates the destabilization experienced by Argentines during those turbulent times. Toni is composed of diverse parts, human and otherwise, scavenged from cadavers and various inorganic materials. He lives with Manolo, a veterinary student, in an urban apartment where Manolo initially keeps him under lock and key, unexposed to human company. Eventually Toni meets Manolo’s girlfriend, Brigita Maria, and falls in love with her. His growing awareness of the world outside and increasing desire for freedom and interaction impel him to pick the lock and venture out into the city, where he meets an assortment of old men at the local plaza and strikes up a friendship with Ercilia, a handicapped widow. Some time after Toni and Brigita Maria have made love, she is killed in a street 1The novel is a narrative version of Gambaro’s play, Nada que ver, written in 1970 and first performed at the Teatro San Martin in April of 1972. 55 scuffle and Toni cares for the sorrowing Manolo as a father would. Manolo, perhaps crazy with grief, makes more than fifty calls to mothers telling them that their sons are dead, and then takes to making homemade bombs. Manolo’s false reports of death include an unwitting call to his own family, and his grandmother comes to mourn her grandson’s passing, only to find him alive and well. Toni becomes involved in a street battle after writing pacifist graffiti on city walls and is imprisoned and condemned to ten years in prison, where he contemplates hanging himself with a rope he has woven. As Sandra Messinger Cypess points out, there is a tradition of using Frankenstein’s monster to show up social injustice.“ Gambaro’s does so in the usual sense: the monster functions as an outsider who observes human beings in their social setting with a certain detachment. The distance created by his strangeness enables him to point out what in turn seems strange to him in a way credible to the reader. Toni as narrator allows the author to comment through him much more directly and at greater length than in the play, where the spectator draws his own conclusions based on what he hears and sees but is not privy to Toni’s unspoken thoughts. Gambaro takes care to remind us that it is Toni speaking, by an occasional expression of naiveté, as when Manolo kisses Brigita Maria: “saco su lengua blanquecina y le lamio los labios. aQué hacian, los chanchos?” (30), or when he wonders what it is like to be a living person: “LEra esto vivir?” (86) 2“Frankenstein's Monster in Argentina: Gambaro’s Two Versions.” Cypess mentions political rhetoric regarding the Southern Confederacy in the United States (352); feminist critics’ understanding of Shelley's text as critique of the patriarchal system (355); the presence of social 56 Andres Avellaneda reads Toni’s story as a Bildungsroman of the type that proliferated in Argentina during the late sixties, characterized by a confrontation with systematic repression which often leads to a discovery of solidarity at the political and ideological levels as the only possible solution (221 ). What gives meaning to human existence in these novels is the act of reaching beyond individuality toward community, and, in Toni’s case, his quest for understanding leads to a humanization process that reinforces reader acceptance of Toni’s insights and identification with his point of view. What situates the novel in the grotesque tradition is the unsettling lack of distinction between Manolo and Toni as man and monster; the apparent coexistence in one organism of both the organic and the mechanical; the camivalesque uncrowning of family, church, and state; and the slippery unreliability of the narration as it deforms reality in its telling. Not only are the events often a physical impossibility, but the utter chaos of the street scenes makes it almost impossible, as in a real dictatorship under censure, to discern what has really happened. Gambaro manipulates the grotesque effect achieved by the distortions within the text in order to simultaneously destabilize the reader and sensitize him or her to the strangeness of the society she portrays. A Monstrous Society The Argentine military state from 1966 to 1970 has been called “a preview of the future Military Process” (Hodges, Dirty War 39). It was the first prolonged sharing of power by the heads of the armed forces in order to manage the injustice within Shelley's work itself (358); and the Argentine military state of the early seventies as Gambaro's real monster (359). 57 military-industrial complex (39). Military leaders governed by decree, Congress was shut down, political parties were banned, civil rights were systematically violated, and trade unions were perceived as the enemy (Hodges, Argentina 1). Universities were purged of professors considered Marxist and student political activity was banned (Dirty War 40). The writ of habeas corpus was not required for arrests, and judges and lawyers who defended political prisoners had their phones tapped and were threatened, kidnapped, and occasionally assassinated (Zijlstra 1). Although torture had long been in use by the police,“ it first became prominent under Ongania (Hodges, Argentina 2). The economy was in turmoil, with massive strikes throughout the period violently suppressed by policemen using tear gas and batons, weapons also employed to subdue and arrest protesting students in 1966 (Crawley 283; Wynia 96-97). Students became increasingly radicalized (Hodges, Dirty War 40) and joined forces with workers, building barricades in the streets and burning autos and foreign businesses (Wynia 97) as well as occupying a significant portion of Cérdoba’s industrial city until dislodged by military forces during the first Cordobazo in May of 1969 (Hodges, Argentina 49). During that month there were two confirmed deaths, at least a hundred injured and hundreds of arrests (Wynia 97). As a direct result of the Cordobazo, revolutionary elements within the Peronist Youth organization created an urban guerrilla movement, the Montoneros, who abducted, tried, and executed former president Aramburu on 3 According to Marguerite Feitlowitz (A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Tenor), a number of torture devices were invented in the 1930s and the picana (electric cattle prod) came into use in 1934; Senate hearings in 1946, 1949, 1953, and 1956 attest to its prevalence well before 1966 (12). 58 the first anniversary of the Cordobazo, seized the town of La Calera, and raided banks (Hodges, Argentina 53). Donald Hodges defines the ideological underpinnings of Argentina’s military dictatorships of 1955, 1966, and 1976 as Catholic nationalism, which sought to restore the role of the Catholic church in Argentina through respect for authority, hierarchy, and discipline and to subordinate individual rights and interests to those of the state (Dirty War 157-58). The “secular trinity" espoused by Catholic nationalists consisted of authority, obedience, and sacrifice (165). Catholic priests, however, were beginning to divide on the issue of social justice with the appearance of radical clergy in the aftermath of the 1965 Second Vatican Council (Rock 215) and the eventual emergence of the Theologies of Liberation, consistent with Vatican ll's declared concern for the poor (Rooy 2-3). Life became increasingly difficult for the underprivileged. The standard of living for workers deteriorated, wages were frozen, price controls were lifted, social benefits were canceled, and the retirement age was changed from sixty to sixty-five years (Dirty War 40). The drastic devaluation in 1969 of all money and stock values deprived the elderly of two thirds of their life’s savings and significantly decreased the value of their pensions (Rooy 1-2). Avellaneda considers the coup of 1966 the decisive factor in ending the optimism of the sixties regarding culture’s power to change a nation (220). Avellaneda also characterizes Argentine novels of the late sixties as less forthcoming about sociopolitical repression than, for example, The Death of Artemio sz, and describes their criticism as considerably more indirect due to 59 fear of reprisals (221). Nevertheless, Nada que ver con otra historia manages to give a fairly comprehensive portrait of the times, from police violence to “subversive” activities and the poverty of the older generation. Toni and Manolo are beaten by the police on several occasions (9, 12, 91), and Brigita Maria is killed by a law enforcement bullet (56). The radicalization of students is suggested by Manolo’s involvement in bomb threats and in the construction of Molotov cocktails (82) as well as in the provocation of a riot through his false death reports (76), and Toni writes typical sixties graffiti (“Make love, not war”). The graffiti exemplifies the influence of foreign counterculture in the slogans, which come from a little book of poetry from another country and include lines incomprehensible to Toni, such as “Mary Poppins es drogadicta” (90). The difficult economic times are reflected in the old men in the plaza, who are cold and hungry: they avoid the marble benches and end up perching on Toni, and one of them complains of not having money for a jacket. When Toni decides to seek employment, Manolo tells him that competence is no guarantee maps “LQué sabés hacer?”, me pregunto el amo “De todo”, le dije. “No sirve.” (69) At the bank the presence of guards with machine guns suggests raids by terrorist groups, and the hand-to-mouth existence of retired citizens is implied by the guards’ question, “gDonde van? Hoy no se paga jubilacion.” Their lack of respect is evident in their insults: idiota, espastico, imbécil (34). Respect, on the other hand, is what the priest in the first scene calls for, he is sardonically labeled “posconciliar seguramente,” referring to the social consciousness promoted by Vatican II (12). The atmosphere of fear in this type of society is suggested by the guards’ insults and threats (35). Real violence is echoed in media violence such as the deadly catastrophes, murders, and rapes in the soap operas the old men watch (43). Toni as a prisoner is treated savagely: stripped, humiliated, and beaten during endless nights of interrogation which yield, eventually, a false confession to fit his captors’ expectations, after which they still insist until they are worn out, hoping to get the names of accomplices (95). The prisoners are lined up and sniffed by dogs that bite them if they lower their guard (94). Their vulnerability to rape is suggested by the attempt on Toni (93), and they are starving, as their dash to eat the greasy, rancid food Toni has discarded indicates (95). The thought of spending another ten years in prison has Toni weaving a rope with which to hang himself (94). Society has become warped to such an extent that the institutions that should protect the innocent shoot and imprison them instead. Rather than maintaining security, they inspire terror. The keepers of the peace are as monstrous as any criminal, and considerably more ubiquitous. Cypess contends accurately that “the true monster is not the physically ugly creature, but the dark forces of the Argentine military government of the 1970's” (359). Gambaro exposes this monster in Nada que ver con otra historia through various techniques: through reader experience of its strangeness through the eyes of the ostensible monster, Toni; through its dehumanizing effect on Manolo and 61 other characters in the novel; through the camivalesque uncrowning of the authority figures most respected by the regime; and through a distorted representation of reality which makes it impossible to take the narration at face value, forcing the reader to adopt a critical stance. Monster as Man According to Geoffrey Galt Harpham, the grotesque is a psychological event (xv), a sense that things that should be kept apart are fused together (11). “The quality of grotesqueness,” he asserts, “arises not so much from the specific contents of the image as from the fact that it refuses to be taken in whole because it embodies a confusion of type” (6). The grotesque is a skewing of categories (10) that simultaneously inspires attraction and repulsion (9). Given this definition, the grotesque element in Nada que ver con otra historia seems quite transparent: Toni’s body, a composite of human, animal and inanimate parts, has been stitched together by Manolo with nylon thread (9). His face is painted amateurishly in garish colors that suggest a mask (10); several characters comment that he smells strongly of paint (10, 29). Toni’s hands do not match (45); his feet come from a different body altogether (14). His hair is described as bristles (31) which prick like pins (33), and it is difficult to ascertain which human organs he possesses.“ The idea of his body as made up of assorted parts is reinforced by the image of Toni sleeping with his body spread ‘ He has intestines (63), eyes (41), a tongue (23), and salivary glands (14), his heart beats (24), and he can bleed, although the flow stops abruptly (22). Nevertheless, he cannot produce tears (13), and when his master says that a cigarette would ruin his lungs, Toni replies that he has none (17). 62 out over different levels on a table, a chair, and two fruit crates, so that he feels divided into sections (15). Toni’s hybrid nature'5 is paralleled by his humanlike yet not-quite-human behavior and speech. He moves his arms like blades (13) and sounds like squeaking machinery when he walks (27).“ He is robotlike in that his master can put him to sleep on command (14). When people see Toni, they are simultaneously fascinated and repulsed, which is the typical reaction to the grotesque as clash of incompatible elements (Thomson 27). On his first outing, an attempted visit to the zoo, he attracts a small crowd and eventually a street full of people (10-11). He is variously described by them as enormous, frightful, beastly, and made of plastic. His smile is unbearable to his master (14) and makes Brigita Maria howl in terror and run away (28). When she visits them, her behavior illustrates the reaction Toni often gets: she circles him when he has fallen, unable to leave him, but cannot bring herself to touch him (29). Gambaro treads a fine line in terms of narrative voice: although the general effect of the text is to encourage a certain critical distance, the reader is more likely to react, like Toni, with surprise and shock to the aberrations of society if there is some measure of identification with him (and therefore with his point of view). As has been widely noted,7 Toni gradually becomes more and 5 Margaret Miles designates hybridization, together with inversion and caricature, as one of the “three rhetorical and pictorial devices [that] contribute to grotesque presentation” (Adams and Yates 96). ° Wolfgang Kayser designates the fusion of the mechanical and the organic as a specifically grotesque motif (183). Cypess asserts that Toni “is no longer identified with monsterdom, for he has distanced himself from that state on the basis of his humane deeds and human emotions of love and compassion” (359). For Hortensia Morell, Toni’s humanity is defined by his love of liberty and by his respect for others (“Ganarse la muerte y la evolucidn de los personajes de Griselda Gambaro” 185). 63 more human, so that the line between man and monster is progressively more difficult to draw. Toni’s humanization is directly related to his discovery of love and compassion“ and is foreshadowed by the need he feels to meet someone (22). When Manolo introduces him to Brigita Maria, his reaction parallels that of any young man in love: he is enchanted by her (25), he imagines her charms beneath her short dress, he shivers (28), he is left breathless, his heart pounds and he trembles inside (39-41). It is specifically when the one he loves exclaims that he seems human that he is able to say, without stumbling and in a clear, melodious voice, “Lo soy” (30). The intuition as to what to do with her seems another indication of humanity. Parallel to his discovery of love is his awareness of the needs of others: as soon as he is able to let himself out of the apartment he invites the old men into it. Although his initial interest in Ercilia is because of her television set, he sees that she is alone and treats her with compassion when she tries and fails to seduce him, thus gaining a friend with whom to drink mate and tell stories (44- 47). When Manolo’s grandmother appears, devastated by the false news that Manolo is dead, Toni feeds her tea, puts her to bed, watches over her and wipes her tears (78). He is able to overlook her apparently ungrateful efforts to get rid of him, realizing that she needs a friend and so does Ercilia: “Me alegré por la Avellaneda observes that as the monster becomes a human being, the horror is transferred to what he Ieams about society (222); I hope to establish, however, that Toni never becomes completely human. Cypess suggests that Toni’s compassion is reflected in his attempts to understand why Manolo would knowingly cause suffering (358). renga. l oompan The undt his down Q'ai‘lti su la guerra human b, Wind hi Manolo h baffle, 9r Toni Und. ”allative ISiilled Vt CloSe 10 I that tend. sens’rlive renga. Necesitaba una amiga” (86). Toni has become human in his need for companionship: Mi aprendizaje de la vida me habia dado resultados mas bien precarios. Aun no le habia encontrado sentido a nada, 0 el sentido me habia sido arrebatado absurdamente, y ahora sclo me quedaba el estar juntos, el compartir con otros la pena o la alegria, como el calor de un fuego (67) The understanding of solidarity that culminates his apprenticeship is, ironically, his downfall, since he is imprisoned during a street riot immediately after writing graffiti such as: “Herrnano, no mates a tu herrnano” and “Hagamos el amor, no la guerra” (90), which indicate a more humane perspective than that of the human beings busy killing or imprisoning others. Concurrent with Toni’s burgeoning self-determination and love for those around him is his sense of poetry and his insight into the essence of humanity. Manolo has written a poor excuse for a love poem which begins “Piba de mi barrio, enhiesta y derecha,” and which he doubts that Toni will understand (18). Toni understands more than Manolo suspects, and the poetry woven into his narrative far surpasses Manolo’s cliches. When he meets Brigita Maria, his skin is filled with eyes and his blood turns to honey (25). What he sees as he lies close to her on the floor goes beyond her appearance to a glimpse of her heart, that tender and quiet place where smiles and kind words are born (41). His sensitive depiction of their first hint of love is in utter contrast with Manolo’s crudeness: “iTonil”, grito ella, como si se le rajara el alma, y escapo tan velozmente que se armo un vendaval en la pieza. 65 “iBrigita Marial”, exclamé sin moverme, aferrado a mi silla, y el nombre de ella busco al mio, en el aire agitado, y lo abrazo como a un cuerpo. “iQué tufol”, dijo el amo, cuando regreso a la tarde, sospechaba olores lamentables, y abrio de par en par la ventana. No se destaca por la percepcion. Yo todavia estaba sentado, mirando el abrazo, hasta que entro el viento por la ventana y nos Ilevo lejos. (42) Toni also has a poet’s eye for the unusual image, the ability to create beauty in unexpected places. When he sees Ercilia, the crippled widow, walk toward him, he is struck by the fluid movement of her deformed leg, curved like a swan’s neck, as well as by the freshly washed day, holding the promise of reconciliation: La viuda se acerco caminando bellamente, era un dia luminoso, la luz misma lavada después de la lluvia, y sus gestos de cisne se destacaban como un poema entre toda esa prosa de piemas derechas. (46) Similarly, Ercilia’s nearly toothless mouth becomes for Toni a warm, dark nest with two suns in it (47). The strategic advantage of Gambaro’s chosen point of view is evident in the fact that a monster may logically exercise unconventional esthetic criteria, thus not violating the premises of the narration, yet Toni's fresh perspective on beauty transforms the reader’s perception of it. Toni also understands more than one might suspect about the human need for freedom, which he in his growing humanity feels keenly.“ He loves to look at the sky and the clouds; it is his favorite thing about humanity (59). The open space suggests a lack of boundaries: ° Morell compares him to Cledy in Ganarse la muerte both feel keenly the dehumanizing nature of being enclosed (185-86). One might also observe that both characters are imprisoned by a father figure: Mr. Perigorde in Cledy’s case and Manolo in Toni’s, as well as by institutional authorities—the orphanage and the prison respectively. 66 Tonis g humanity memory' human. which M lender c and pull: (52h El realizing would n b”) is State of satesc dreame Mere,“ dreamjm Borges - arriba, no habia casas ni baldosas ni gente, sino espacio. El cielo libre y limpio. No era verdad, pero vivia mi ignorancia sin saberla, como una certidumbre. (32) Toni’s grasp of difficult abstract realities is a further indication of a degree of humanity: when he encounters death, he understands the importance of memory and even of his grief to counter its finality: La muerte estaba dentro de la pena, intacta. Seguiria siempre alli, aunque uno tratara de disimularla, ensuciarla. Ni siquiera Ia tocaria el olvido, ese modo inutil de matar a la muerte. (58) Toni’s love, compassion, and poetic insights do not make him totally human. When Ercilia tries to seduce him, she sees the big, uneven stitches with which Manolo has sewn him together at the waist and at the wrists (45). After his tender care for a devastated Manolo, his grandmother still calls him a monster and pulls off the bow with which Manolo had finished the stitches on Toni’s head (62). Even when he is in prison the dogs sniff him, puzzled (94), apparently realizing that there is something different about him. If he were totally human he would no longer be grotesque; Mikhail Bakhtin reminds us that “the grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming” (317), and Toni’s remains unstable, in a state of flux. Toni himself is keenly aware of his hybrid nature and employs a series of motifs to trace its fluctuations: the image of himself as dream and dreamer, the smell and color of paint, the wearing away of his shoes, and his references to Frankenstein’s monster. As he sleeps, forced to do so by his master, Toni senses that someone is dreaming of him, as in the tales of a blind man (14). This clear reference to Borges’ “Las ruinas circulares,” in which an old magus dreams up a son, wishing 67 for him that he be unaware of his status as simulacrum, only to discover in his final moments that he himself is being dreamed by another, appears here with an ironic twist. The “son,” Toni, is aware that another is dreaming of him (that is, that he is someone else’s creation), but as he arrives at the end of the road in his dream, he stops and the nightmare falls into the stagnant darkness while he himself is safe, although dead and unable to dream. Later, when he is about to make love to Brigita Maria, he senses that he has changed: “el suefio seria mio, desierto de pesadillas que no me pertenecian, como sofiadas por otros cuerpos, suei'Io que no iba a parecerse a la muerte” (52).'° This dream, however, is shown to be an illusion as death passes from dream to reality when Brigita Maria is killed and he and Manolo sit in the darkness, awake (57). Toni’s garishly painted face and his smell of paint mark him as other than human. His black lips terrify both Manolo and Brigita Maria, both of whom also notice his odor. Toni himself is keenly aware of his alterity and works at fading his paint with solvent. Manolo seems confused by his pallor and buys him a tonic (31), a development that feeds the confusion between Toni’s artificiality and humanity. After he has become a parent figure for Manolo, and after his epiphany regarding the need for companionship, his lips are pale, almost skin- colored (67); during his prison visit to Toni Manolo tells him that he no longer smells like paint (93), yet Toni in the last line of the novel still refers to himself as “pobre cosa” (95, emphasis mine). The decreased color and smell of paint '° Morell points out that this feeling is due to the fact that he has just put Manolo to sleep instead of being put to sleep himself, reversing the power structure set up by Borges (187). 68 indicate an increasing humanity, yet Toni seems aware that at the end they are but images, since he is still a thing. Toni’s shoes, over which he trips early in the story, fulfill a similar symbolic function. He attempts to file down their platform soles while he is still in the apartment (23, 27), but it is his forays into the life of the city, where he interacts with the old men and with Ercilia, that wear them down. He observes that as a result of these walks he can now feel the ground, cold, warmth, and rough places (51). The sensitivity of his feet symbolizes his increasing sensitivity to the human beings around him. As he grows to understand human needs, not only have his lips become paler but his shoes gape open like a toad’s mouth (67).“ Although these motifs indicate an increased sharing in human nature, it is precisely at the time that they symbolize nearly complete humanity that Toni as narrator introduces the figure of Frankenstein’s monster. He does so without mentioning his name, but it is clear to what he refers: . Lei una historia de alguien muy semejante a mi, menos favorecido fisicamente y con menos suerte, mataba inocentes que nada tenian que ver con su desdicha y terminaba saltando sobre un témpano. Existencia horrible, muerte tremenda, y ya no quise leer mas. Debia buscar un trabajo. (69) Toni, clearly disturbed by what he has read, seeks to ignore it and throws himself into a typically human activity: work. He purchases underwear and stockings in the cheap shops in Barrio Once in order to sell them. This attempt at normality, however, comes to an end as pathetic as it is ludicrous: the old men in the park ‘1 To Avellaneda, Toni's patient filing down of his shoes’ disproportionately thick soles expresses metonymically his sustained effort to reduce himself to a normal scale (222). Morell sees both Toni's scrubbing off the paint on his cheeks and his filing down his shoes as expressions of his 69 throw the panties on the ground and ruin the nylons by putting them on over their shoes (70), and when Ercilia offers to buy underwear it is far too large for her scrawny body, even when she puts on four of them at once. Then she shows that the offer was actually another pretense for seduction, to which Toni is unreceptive (71). It is at this point that Toni realizes his inability to succeed at human activities and sees himself in a position analogous to the monster's: “me vi a mi mismo como sobre un témpano en un mundo de desgracias” (72). Monstrous Doubles Bringing Borges and Shelley into the story does more than confirm Toni’s status as simulacrum of a human being or as monsten it also changes our understanding of Manolo. In “Las ruinas circulares” not only the son but also his creator have been dreamed by another; both are simulacra. Mentioning this story immediately brings to mind a parallel work by Borges, “El Golem.”12 As Cypess aptly observes, there is in Argentina a tradition of monster stories including the Golem, a manlike clay figure brought to life by a rabbi, the homunculus, a tiny humanoid that owes its life to alchemy, and Borges’ and Bioy Casares’ “La fiesta del monstruo” (351 ), which creates a literary context for Toni. The Golem inspires in Rabbi Judah, his creator, a mixture of tenderness and horror, and Borges implies at the end of the poem that the rabbi may very well inspire the same emotions in God, his creator. This equation of the monster and determination to improve on Manolo’s defective work by making himself closer to the human model (187). ‘2 In the 1969 preface to El otra, el mismo, Borges recalls that a reader pointed out—to his delight—that “The Golem” is a variation on “The Circular Ruins.” 7O his maker suggests a reading of Toni and Manolo as doubles13 which many critics have also seen in Shelley's Frankenstein and his monster." I argue here, however, that they are a particular kind of doubles: each is the reverse of the other, like a man and his mirror image. As one shows more humanity through compassion and self-determination, the other exhibits a corresponding lack of control and insensitivity or self-absorption. The equation remains in flux throughout the novel’s development, making easy generalizations nearly impossible, increasing the reader’s perplexity and uneasiness, and setting the stage for a consideration of what, indeed, does constitute humanity. If Toni were the only grotesque being in this novel, it would not be nearly as unsettling. Both Toni and Manolo are grotesque figures, both human and inhuman, fluctuating between the two extremes. Both are powerless to effectively control their circumstances and exhibit a varying degree of dehumanization and puppetlike passivity as each controls the other or is controlled by powers outside their relationship. The grotesco criollo tradition as characterized by Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir derives from the commedia dell’arte via the Italian grottesco the image of marionettes becoming men and men becoming marionettes (31). Concretely, physical control over the other and the ability to put him to sleep become an outward sign of humanization which is sometimes but not always an extemalization of less tangible evidence of humanity such as caring and providing for others at the expense of self. ‘3 According to Marilyn Kiss, the idea that Manolo and Toni are doubles is “underlined in the play in a visual, three-dimensioned way that does not have a counterpart in the narrative version” (209). She refers to Act I, Scene 3, where Brigita Maria gazes at Toni while calling him Manolo and telling Manolo that she is looking at him (Nada que ver 235). 71 Specui lack of end of t0 get l being, he lUm bleak: (‘5). r broke, SUmm The reader may have the initial impression of a clear distinction between what is human and what is not, but the portrayal of Manolo blurs that distinction almost immediately, suggesting a breakdown of categories that is pervasive by the end of the novel. Toni describes his master as unattractive in the light of day: he has a squalid body, an air of insanity (10), a filthy beard, a whitish tongue (30), and no chin (16). He tends to turn unusual colors: grass green, then yellow (12-13). He has the sweet voice and hands of a woman, which leads Toni to speculate about his masculinity: “T engo mis dudas, me las guardo” (16). This lack of definition is reinforced later when Toni calls him a malicon (28). By the end of the novel, Manolo is so repulsive that one wants to squash him underfoot to get rid of him (93)—-a reaction more appropriate to an insect than to a human being. Toni, in fact, uses animal imagery more than once to describe his actions: he turns in circles like a dog on a chain (21) and he squawks like a bird (23). If Toni is uncoordinated, Manolo is clumsy. He hits his own finger and breaks glasses when killing cockroaches (9), he falls over everything in the dark (15), he tosses a package, breaking a vase (29), and then sits on the pieces of broken glass (30), and he pours his drink all over his shirt (55). Toni summarizes: “medienamente habil para injeltar visceras o combiner brazos y piemas, pero UI'I caballo para el resto” (16). Manolo has as much trouble maintaining his presence of mind as he does controlling his body: he pays insufficient attention to the letters and words he is teaching Toni to read, so that he reads a for b and mama for papa; he is unable to keep his papers in order, mixing shopping lists with poetry and records of 1‘ Cypess mentions ChristOpher Smell, Morton Kaplan, Robert Kloss, and David Ketterer (360). 72 source bathrc asking dissue given Toni's throws diSCOL utensi (1 8-19 worlds that he Itself. unam table linge beha and . Sma: Tom alway ManOir sources for Toni’s body parts, and sometimes ripping off pages to take to the bathroom (18). Absent-minded and gullible, he allows Toni to distract him by asking him to read the bad poetry he has written in honor of Brigita Marie. He is dissuaded from opening Toni’s head with a scalpel to see which brain he has given him—since he no longer remembers and cannot find the records—by Toni’s imitation of a dog, meant to suggest that it is a dog’s brain. After Toni throws the scalpel—end the kitchen knives for good measure—out the window to discourage future exploratory surgery, Manolo tells the irate woman on whom the utensils have landed that the window is closed, as he points to the open window (18-19). After he nearly asphyxietes Toni by pressing a rag over his face, he wonders why he has turned so purple (16). When he calls home to tell his family that he is not dead, he forgets the purpose of the call and eventually the call itself, reading aloud from his animal anatomy book as the receiver dangles unattended. He sets the book on the hair of the weeping girl seated at the same table and plays absentmindedly with locks of her hair, twisting them around his finger (81 ). The reader’s image of Manolo ls further dehumanized by his inhumane behavior. He enjoys jerking Toni around with a rope as if he were a horse (10), and tries to charge people for a look at him (11). He is as pleased after smashing cockroaches with a hammer as if he had scaled Everest (9). He ties Toni up and makes him sleep for two days, and then gives him hot milk, which always burns him (17). When Toni wakes up on the floor during the night, Manolo walks on him (25), and he keeps him locked inside the apartment (22). 73 He orders Toni to his cucha as if he were a dog (25) and calls him a beast (42). More disturbing are Manolo’s more than fifty false death notices to mothers, which cause great suffering (73-79), and then his manufacture of homemade bombs (82). Although Toni attempts to reconcile his affection for Manolo with Manolo’s actions by theorizing that the phone calls are a strategy to unite the city (76), the reader is left with an impression of cruelty. As Manolo loses control, Toni gains control. His initial actions seem aimed mostly at placating his master: he licks his hands, calls him amito, and begs his pardon (14). Soon, however, he begins to take the initiative in order to improve his situation. He grabs the hammer and pounds Manolo on all five fingers as he demands a mattress; he enjoys seeing his master speechless (17). He cynically manipulates Manolo’s—and the reader's—expectations of him as a monster, first distracting Manolo with requests for poetry and then leading him to believe that he has a dog’s brain by frolicking on all fours, licking his face and barking (18). In order to get Manolo to stop tying him up at night he threatens him with a noose and intimidates him with a cavernous laugh and sepulchral howls (18). His purpose at this point seems merely self-preservation, or perhaps to get even: he thinks with pleasure of his master cutting himself on the pieces of vase he has just tossed onto the bed (29). Once Brigita Maria enters the picture, Toni’s motivations and tactics change. To improve the negative impression he has made on her, he calculatingly imitates ingratiating human behavior, lowering his eyes, pressing his lips together and breathing in, as well as peeking at her through his fingers (30). 74 lo pick ‘ himself the old I manage (45). w (55). F, the Mr Washing tries to WY'leihe the stoi Wd. 1 Manolo , MOVES ”7 ””7 With To get her close to him he slides onto the floor, pulling her down with him (41). Once it becomes clear that she is attracted to him, his increased self-confidence enables him to put his master to sleep, thus gaining the upper hand, and he rolls up a sheet to make Manolo think that his girlfriend’s arm is still around him (Manolo kisses the sheet). Toni carries Manolo into the bathroom and intuitively knows what to do with Brigita Maria (51-52). Toni’s increased control over his situation is also evident as he manages to pick the locks and escape from the apartment whenever he wants to, helping himself to Manolo’s clothes and cologne (31). He takes the initiative by inviting the old men in the park first to the bank and then to his apartment (34, 36) and manages his relationship with Ercilia by telling her that he loves her like a sister (45). When Manolo is gone for two days, Toni reprimands him: “iMuy bonitol” (55). Finally, after Brigita Maria’s death, when Manolo is overcome with grief to the point of not being able to take care of himself, Toni steps in like a parent, washing him, putting him to sleep, feeding him a cup of milk. He cooks for him, tries to entice him to eat, and even removes his glasses, deciding for him whether he should try to look at anything at that moment (57-58). At the end of the story, when Manolo visits Toni in prison, Toni lies to him as a parent or lover would, telling him he is happy and that they treat him well (93-95). The dynamics of control shift throughout the story, but largely pass from Manolo to Toni. At the beginning Manolo controls Toni the way a puppeteer moves the strings on his marionette: he can make him sleep, he literally steers him with a rope, he ties him up at night and locks him up during the day. Manolo 75 is successful in love while Toni inspires terror, Manolo goes out into society while Toni is isolated, imprisoned in the apartment. Once Toni has seen Brigita Maria, however, he realizes that there is more to life than what Manolo has determined for him, and he goes out himself. With Brigita Maria’s love comes the upper hand in the relationship: Toni is now able to pull the strings himself and put his master to sleep, and since her death immediately follows this episode we see Manolo in decline, more and more helpless as Toni decides to what he should be exposed, when and what he should eat, when he should sleep. The image of fatherhood is applied to both of them and transferred from Manolo to Toni along with responsibility for the other. Manolo is offended when Toni calls him father (13-14), but since Toni owes him his life, it is an apt designation, and Manolo himself calls Toni his son (16)."5 Once Toni has won Brigita Maria’s love, he picks Manolo up and notes that he weighs very little, naked and small as a newborn child. Manolo puts his arms around his neck and kisses him, completing the picture of a father carrying his child (52). A parallel mirror image to Manolo’s fatherhood appears when, after Brigita Maria dies, Toni carries him to bed in his arms, Manolo surrounds his neck with his little arms, weeping, and Toni comforts him and spoonfeeds him a cup of milk (58). When Toni leaves the apartment and, later, Ercilia’s house when the grandmother is present, he does so out of consideration given his new understanding of human relationships. Manolo, in contrast, is increasingly absorbed into his own nightmare world of terrorism and defeat. Just when it '5 Kiss notes the Biblical imagery in this passage: “’Oué temes, hijo mio’. Yo lo edorabe cuando empleaba ese tono. Me hubiera dejado cnlcificer” (205). 76 mak mon lheo huma Toni il feels li a rape an an‘ he Wa? On the he the Says . Manc lies (, Wgul 00m dos Ll appears that Toni has become either mostly or completely human and Manolo has largely lost his humanity, however, Manolo’s grandmother reappears, Manolo shows love for her, and Toni becomes more of an outsider; his failure to make a living for himself further alienates him and reminds him of Frankenstein’s monster. Thus when one moves in a direction, toward or away from monstrosity, the other does the opposite, the way images are reversed in a mirror. The impossibility of tracing clear and consistent distinctions between humanity and monstrosity, however, becomes apparent during Manolo’s visit to Toni in his prison cell. Toni observes that his master looks so horrible that one feels like squashing him like a bug; Manolo reacts inappropriately to Toni’s tale of a rape attempt: “iOué plato si te volvés putol”; his lack of power reminds Toni of an ant. His hair has become as Toni’s was at first, gray and hard, and the way he walks reminds Toni of how he used to trip over everything in the dark (93-95). On the other hand, Manolo brings Toni food, he is solicitous about his wellbeing, he tries to comfort him by saying that ten years will pass quickly, and when Toni says “Lo unico que me queda es su bonded,” he is most likely referring to Manolo (95). Toni no longer smells like paint, but has a sour human smell; he lies to ease Manolo’s mind, and he is planning something only a human being would do: suicide (94-95). Nevertheless, he refers to himself as a thing as he contemplates floating off on his version of Shelley's ice floe. Man as Monster The reader is kept dangling, unable to form a fixed image of either of the doubles, and this grotesque vision extends to the novel’s treatment of humanity 77 in general. The portrayal of human beings as abnormal not only corresponds to the fact that they are being described by a monster whose perspective as an outsider makes him likely to depict them as strange, but confirms visually the dehumanization that takes place in the context of a dictatorship. A Rabelaisian exaggeration of physical traits and size‘“ focuses on the human body’s propensity to deformation and decay and alienates reader sympathy, preventing identification with the characters. On Toni's failed outing to the zoo the ladies on the street are fat, and their thighs are colossal; the children, on the other hand, are like dwarves (10-12). Manolo’s grandmother is like a gnome; her steps are so short that her little bits of leg seem tied together, and she is so small that even when standing on a chair she is unable to reach Toni’s face (61 -62). Except for Brigita Maria, human beings are not attractive. Manolo’s repulsive appearance has been described above. Ercilia resembles a tangle of bones (44), but the skin on her belly is very wrinkled and loose as if she had given birth to many children (63). She has only two teeth in her cavelike mouth (44). The old men in the park, when telling the juicy parts of soap operas, stutter between their loose teeth (43). Grandma, after her plastic surgery, has an old woman’s face, but without wrinkles, like a stretched-out raisin; Toni calls her hair- raising (61). Her grief for the supposedly dead Manolo collapses her facelift and all of her wrinkles descend on her mouth (77); they are so deep that her tears pool in them (78). When she moves her head, it is as if her brakes were worn out (85). Even Brigita Maria breathes with her mouth open as if she had nose ‘° According to Bakhtin, “exaggeration, hyperbolism, excessiveness are generally considered fundamental attributes of the grotesque style” (303). 78 poly distc desc descl ieatm throug Ikedo SWV,h (10). s Manoh thnu (9)." Siiahgl genie polyps (50). Mobs are particularly dehumanized by their reduction to a few distorted features: on the zoo outing Toni relates that “la calle se lleno de ojos desorbitados, de hoyos con dentaduras” (11) and the swarm of policemen that descends on Toni after his graffiti writing becomes mere fragments of congested features (92). Physical monstrosity is underlined by the use of animal imagery throughout the text. In the opening scene, the people on the street behave more like dogs than like human beings: “Olfatearon, con las narices crecidas, ‘snif, snif', hicieron, antes de perder la compostura y ledrar todos al mismo tiempo” (10). Similarly, the mob howls, summoning everyone to come see the monster. Manolo had offered to show Toni all sorts of animals at the zoo; Toni observes wryly, “en cuanto a conocer 'toda clase de animales’ no necesité llegar tan lejos” (9).17 The dog metaphor in particular is sustained as Brigita Maria sniffs with a strange rocking motion (27) and Toni comments regarding people in general: “la gente es como los perros, si uno corre lo siguen detras, gritando” (53). Taking Grandma for a stroll reminds Toni of walking a dachshund; he is disappointed that she falls to sniff tree trunks as they go along (82). Once at Ercilia’s house, she stands with one leg in the air (85). Other animal images include the description of Manolo's mother, as impavid as a cow (63), of Brigita Maria circling Toni like a hen that cannot decide whether to peck at rotten fruit (29), and of Manolo mistaking his sleeping grandmother for a cat (79). 79 tel hu Th The visual treatment of human bodies in Nada que ver con otra historia is consistent with both the general tradition of the grotesque and with the techniques of the grotesco criollo. According to Bakhtin, “the combination of human and animal traits is one of the most ancient grotesque forms” (316).“ The image of the grotesque body is associated with social and cultural renewal (325) because it is a body that is constantly changing, reflecting the inevitable transformation of the cosmos (336). It also grows out of the Renaissance concept of the body as microcosm (thus infinitely transforrnable), in reaction to the static medieval scheme of the universe as a set of immutable hierarchies and of the body as self-contained and strictly defined (362-64).'“ Hodges identifies the two philosophers behind Argentine Catholic nationalism as Father Julio Meinville and Jordan Bruno Genta, who designate the high point of Western Christian civilization as the Middle Ages (Dirty War167). As a result, “Catholic” and “authoritarian” were “the defining features of Argentine nationalism” (165). Within Gambaro’s text, therefore, the grotesque body image functions as it did within Rabelais”: as a graphic denial of the possibility to sustain rigid categories like those set up by the defenders of the status quo. The violation of commonly 17Kiss comments, “the original purpose of going to the zoo to see ‘toda clase de animales’ (story, p. 7) takes on a charged meaning since the animals he encounters are the human ones who degrade him and cell the police” (203). ‘° An important source for grotesque images of the body, described in Rabelais and His World, was the cycle of works referred to as “Indian Wonders,” first collected by Ctesias in the fifth century before Christ and added to by Pliny, Isidore of Seville, Callisthenes, Latini, and Gauthier of Metz, among others. Eventually the legends were included in travel accounts such as Merveilles du monde and in Le Roman d'Alexandre. They contained descriptions of human beings with “a distinctive grotesque character,” characterized by animal body parts or behavior (Bakhtin 345). ° The grotesque body is not self-contained since it is penetrable from without and secretes from within. Its secretions tie the body to the rest of the cosmos rather than differentiating it from its surroundings (Bakhtin 335). In this novel blood (2), sweet (71), and tears flow copiously; the gilt in the cafe cries for several days (75) and Grandma’s tears fill a basin while she sleeps (78). 80 accepted categories opens the door—and the mind—to the questioning of other assumptions regarding humanity. The literary context that contributes to a deeper understanding of the depiction of human beings in Gambaro’s novel is without doubt the grotesco criollo. Both Toni and Manolo exemplify its grotesque protagonist, in incomplete control of his body and powerless against a debilitating sociopolitical reality. If the ability to speak is distinctively human, Toni fails to communicate at first because he is unable to control his tongue and mouth;2° and Manolo lapses into incommunication as he mourns Brigita Maria and cuts himself off from the world.” The grotesque character, as Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir points out, is doomed to failure and has lost his bearings in a demythified society (64-65). The very picture of the marionette, a mechanized being like Toni, who nevertheless does not respond as his strings are pulled, is a typical representation of man in the grotesco criollo (191). What brings an even more grotesque twist to this image is that it is shared by both puppet/monster and master, who are both unable to function viably and, in fact, become indistinguishable in their characteristics. David Vifias points out the element that unites the Argentine of the 1930’s with the Argentine Revolution: the impossibility of effective political action, that is, of the ability to take some control over one’s own future (109). The animal imagery in the novel flows from the effect that the repression has on human beings in its sway. 3° When he first awakes he can only produce a metallic grunt or an abject howl (15), followed by random syllables like “ay, ay, ju, m, cuc" (15-16). When he is nervous, he can not control his tongue and quacks like a duck (28). 81 per the pots com Bad) exalt em.- in 0H Subhuman behavior confirms the subhuman depiction of characters. The people on the street feel Toni’s legs, seeking what he naively calls another head; the fat ladies keep their hands on his crotch area until they turn red as a traffic light (10-11). The schoolboy jabs Toni with a stick (11) and the policemen beat offenders and bystanders alike; although the crowd is dispersing they use tear gas, which provokes choking and retching (12-13). The woman accidentally hit by the knives that Toni threw out the window suggests some of the excuses with which the police justify violence: “No era puta ni terrorista ni homicide en potencia” (19).” Toni’s treatment in prison and Brigita Maria’s shooting death complete the picture of a truly inhumane society. Gambaro drives home the monstrosity of Argentina in the late sixties and early seventies by making it incomprehensible to a monster. Manolo attempts to explain the dynamics of this society; Toni’s perplexed summary of his explanation emphasizes the apparent need of the authority figures to do violence in order to feel satisfied: El amo me explico Ia situacion, pero no terminé de entenderle. Era muy complicada, me sentia corto de alcances para aclarar tanta confusion, apenas si ahora tenia recuerdos del pasado y no me ayudaban nada. Habia gente de un Iado y gente de otro. También habia gente abajo, arriba, en el cielo y bajo tierra, y lo que pesqué, en resumen, era que todos se molestaban, que algunos debian desaparecer (obedecer, caller, morir), para que los otros se sintieran felices. (89) 2' Both Kaiser-Lenoir and Vlfias point to the failure to communicate, evident in the breakdown of language, as a key element of the grotesco criollo (Kaiser-Lenoir 109, 135; Viiias 99). 22 This last category reflects the lack of true interest on the part of the police to examine their motives: as criterion it is virtually useless since it is nearly impossible to deny that anyone is a potential murderer. 82 This regime, which at the end of the novel has reduced Manolo to a gray-haired insomniac with ulcers who cannot look Toni in the face when he says that he is all right and who has nightmares in which he is being chased (93-94), hardly offers an incentive to a monster to desire any part of humanity. 83 A Camivalized State Despite the tragic realities of a society grown monstrous and the dehumanization of its members, there is an ironic, even humorous tone to Toni’s narrative. Both Kaiser-Lenoir and Marilyn Kiss (231) have noted that the rupture between what is said and what is done is a specifically grotesque characteristic. Kaiser-Lenoir explains that laughter, according to Bakhtin, can serve to degrade persistent myths of society (193), to control terror (148), and to transcend the seriousness of oppressive official culture (149). Grotesque realism draws from the rich tradition of medieval folk humor surrounding Carnival festivities, which took place parallel to but separate from the official ecclesiastical or political ceremonies (Bakhtin 5). Carnival, a spectacle in which all the people participated (7), was an escape from life as usually lived, organized around laughter (8) and characterized by parody, “inside out" logic (11), and “great license and lawlessness” (71). The usual norms of etiquette and decency were suspended (10) in favor of beatings and uncrownings (219). Grotesque images, the formal expression of carnival, consecrate inventive freedom and liberate the mind from the prevailing point of view (34), so that “medieval laughter became the form of a new free and critical historical consciousness” (97). Their common principle is the degradation of the spiritual to the material level (19). In Nada que ver con otra histon'a, Gambaro exploits the subversive potential of carnival imagery as she introduces a pattern of uncrowning the icons of traditional Catholic society: family, church, and state. Grandmothers, for example, are supposed to be respected and to behave in a wise and refined 84 manner, yet Manolo’s is not only a caricature in terms of visual representation but uses crude language like pelotudo (62) and tells Toni: “Métaselo en el ...” (64).” Her lack of social graces is obvious when she tells Toni to leave the room, theorizes that he eats like a beast (63), and implies that Manolo’s veterinary studies explain Toni’s monstrous appearance (62). Both the oblique references to Toni’s sexual organ and his anus and her mention of excessive eating follow the traditional pattern of degradation as outlined by Bakhtin. By extension, the elderly in general become an occasion for humor based on the inversion of expectations: Toni becomes popular due to the candles he hands out to the old men (43), as if they were children.“ This particular inversion is repeated when a boy calls them a kindergarten class out on afield trip. The old men, like Manolo’s grandmother, do not behave with dignity and sell-control: they insult the boy with obscene language.” On the way to the apartment, young people hide their faces and cross the street to avoid them the way the older generation usually stays clear of young hoodlums (36). In the apartment, the old men all decide that they will let their hair grow (37), a radical departure from the usual attitude of the older generation during the sixties; this departure aligns them with rebels rather than with the status quo. The only reference to the Catholic Church in the novel is the brief appearance of the priest in the opening scene. Given the central role the 2’ Pelotudo refers coarsely to the testicles, and one may assume, given the masculine definite article, that Grandma’s phrase is concluded by the word culo. 2‘ It is, of course, also possible to infer that the old men are so hungry, due to the economic crisis and the devaluation of their pensions, that they crave anything sweet, an interpretation compatible with their devouring all the crackers at Toni’s and Manolo’s apartment. That situation would also be an inversion of what is normally expected, that children are typically the ones who need to be fed. 85 natzl abs: to e: SUbjl agail with ' Chur applil fingeg COpie gestu and (1 0f the r“Flori largo” 39mm lack of UP to Vic § '. nationalists hoped to restore for the Church (Hodges, Dirty War 157), its virtual absence in the text is in itself a sort of uncrowning. The priest himself, contrary to expectations, fails to even think about whether Toni has a soul. When the subject is introduced, he exclaims: “iMierdal no lo habia pensadol” (11). Apart from the coarseness of the expression, the reference to fecal matter once again introduces the lower body organs and humorously counters the deference with which his opinions are received by the fat lady. The moral authority of the Church is further mocked by the cynical phrase “posconciliar seguramente,” applied to the priest when he calls for respect, and by the way he holds his index finger erect until it goes to sleep (12). When he consciously or unconsciously copies Jesus’ gesture of gathering the children to himself,” they cover his lapel with mucus, which degrades the potential symbolism, or even sweetness, of the gesture and debunks the sentimental image of children. The goal of the Argentine Revolution was to restore authority, hierarchy, and discipline to the nation through the subordination of individual rights to those of the state (Hodges, Dirty War 157-58). In this context, Manolo’s false death reports, delivered in a dry, authoritarian voice and riddled with useless patriotic jargon such as “lsubordinacion y valorl” and “iViva la Patrial” (74-75), constitute a grotesque imitation of official discourse and behavior calculated to expose the lack of humanity of both. The violence with which the police impose order is held up to ridicule verbally when they are called the guardians of order just before ’5 “jMaleducado, bestia, la puta que te pariol”, 34. ”“He [Jesus] took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me; and whoever 86 they I heavy conde each boy 0 Mano knwes woma Canhv ahem; Chaos Street, pahde they begin to crack skulls in the opening scene, with chaos ensuing (13). Their heavyhandedness, copied by everyone, presents in the first two chapters, condensed, a sort of Punch-and-Judy dynamics of escalating violence where each character tries to outdo the last. The schoolboy sticks Toni; he whacks the boy on the head; the police beat everyone in sight with their sticks; Toni hits Manolo with a hammer; Manolo wants to use a scalpel on Toni; Toni throws the knives and scalpels out the window; they hit a woman on the sidewalk; the woman comes upstairs and throws the sharp utensils at Manolo’s face (11-19). The use of violence as a means to presenring order is not only camivalized by being taken to an extreme, but also by several scenes where attempts at the imposition of authority from above are subverted by grassroots chaos. Manolo’s death notices bring horrified, weeping women out into the street, where they discover that others have also “lost” their sons, and pandemonium ensues: Esto creaba una camaraderie instantanea. Se daba comienzo a un intercambio: se pasaban hombres, detalles lacerentes, humeaba la congoja. lmposible frenar Ias consecuencias: se abrazaban los deudos, los curiosos se amontonaban, el transito se detenia, el estadio de sitio cesaba por obra de la muchedumbre, desbordante de angustia, Ias bombas lacrimogenas no surtian efecto porque ya nadie podia llorar mas de lo que lo hacia, etc. Los muchachos aprovechaban el tumulto para escribir leyendas en la paredes, amontonarse y caminar libres por la calle, detras de las barricades que habian armado fragilmente, sentir el sonido de la propia voz, enmudecia demasiado. Yo no me arrimé a ellos. Segui mezclado con Ias mujeres, en la baraunda de esa hecatombe de dolor, estrechaba manos de gente desconocida, daba condolencias, apoyaba a los desmayados contra los arboles y aguantaba pensando solo en la alegria del dia siguiente. (76) welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’” (Mark 9:36.37) For alternate accounts see Luke 18:15-17 and Matthew 18:1,2. 87 The theh hear SUDF conu neah those suns Thes buhdh °i03h 5Quad Simila initiail; afflict bonfirl caUSel 80mm1 obliged pnsOhe1 Se Dieo The object of a state of siege is effectively reversed: people are not isolated in their homes but interacting on the streets; the individual voice is not silenced but heard; the outer evidence of a smooth and efficient society—traffic—has been suppressed; the authorities’ efforts at intimidating the crowd and controlling the commotion—tear gas—is ineffective because everyone is already weeping. The nearly festive air, in spite of the mourning, is accentuated by the comic detail of those who have fainted, propped against trees. The official pretext of protecting the populace from dangerous elements in society is undermined by the bomb scares engineered by Manolo and others. The scene is explicitly festive: firemen and policemen scurry from building to building; an occasional bomb goes off to keep them on their toes; the evacuation of offices allows employees to enjoy a cup of coffee on the sidewalk; bomb squads fume as they return emptyhanded from yet another false alarm (82). Similarly, the riot occasioned by the young boys’ celebration of Toni’s graffiti is initially festive. Toni and the boys sing, and laughing people toss papers, old annchairs, trash, and urine-soaked mattresses out their windows to feed the bonfire as they weep from the tear gas. (90-91) Even Toni’s jailers are ridiculed in spite of the acute suffering they have caused him: they tire of beating him before he supplies the names of the accomplices they want to hear, a disappointment with which they have been obliged to come to terms (95). Toni takes a perverse delight in their fear of the prisoners ruining the mattresses by urinating on them: “me hace feliz saber que se preocupen por los colchones, no pueden vivir en paz” (94). The possibility of 88 bodily humor in the i at Ton Toni ca onvhpc lampor by the irony d qUeshc of the t 30 that Thefa: Similar] momhs fo'day\ Ma’70/(3 J bodily fluids leaking uncontrollably calls into question the jailers' ability to control, humorously subverting the totality of their authority. There is also humor implicit in the image of the dogs, intended to terrify the prisoners, baffled when they sniff at Toni, which further frustrates the purpose of their owners. A reality from which Toni can escape only through suicide is nevertheless shown to be less than omnipotent through carnival humor. A Camivalized Text The restoration of values and order touted by Ongania’s regime is lampooned by the brutality of its enforcers, by the foolishness of its clergy, and by the relativity of its control over the people it seeks to subjugate. Humor and irony dethrone and degrade the authority figures of the state while calling into question the power they exert. The final uncrowning, however, is of the authority of the text, which in this narration becomes deformed, like the society it presents, so that the reader no longer can depend on it to deliver a reliable account of events, but rather is left to sort through hyperbole and impossibilities. Gambaro exaggerates physical functions and effects throughout the novel. The fat ladies’ mouths are open so wide that one can see their stomachs (12); similarly, the tear gas causes everyone to try to expel their tracheas through their mouths (13). When the women drop their groceries, a vegetable garden takes root in the street (12). Toni’s bleeding starts and stops as if it had a mind of its own (22), and Grandma cries a basin full of tears (78). The girl in the cafe weeps for days on end, but although the tears keep falling the floor remains dry (90). Manolo turns green, then yellow (12-13); his tears mix with the dirt on his face 89 andr heln babb hueb flowc wonn inlha Tonic (‘30); leggh Shook When and make a layer of mud that covers his eyes. When Toni gives him tea with gin, he burns like a log in a fireplace, smoke comes out through his hair, and he babbles incoherently (55). In his depression he takes to hiding; he fits between the bed mattress and its cover, so that Toni does not notice him and sits down (57). The exaggeration of movement is a common technique Mulch distorts the flow of the narrative and creates suspicion. Toni’s legs, tied up, squirm like worms and cry out (12); the nails Manolo is hammering into Toni’s shoes end up in Manolo’s uvula, making his voice sound strangled (17). When Manolo pulls Toni down the street to escape the riot, they fly like a jet and are unable to stop (130); similarly, Manolo passes Toni in the park like a locomotive, with smoke fogging up his glasses (65). When Ercilia is out of breath from running, her shoulders heave up and down from the base of her hair to her feet (71), and when she is angry, she gets tangled up in her legs: I dio un peso adelante y en el furor se le trabaron Ias piemas. No conseguia ponerles en orden, le buscaban la nuca 0 se le volaban para el techo. La vieja se asusto con tanto movimiento descontrolado. (85) On his second outing, after Toni naively tries to get money from the bank for the old men he has met at the park and he is threatened by the guards, the old men form a huge ball of bodies to protect him. In a cartoonlike sequence, the ball becomes more compact and speeds straight back to the park as the old men lose their false teeth, their few remaining hairs, their prosthetic legs, and their warts (35-36). 90 chaos happe whatc husha husle: aphfic Camivz not Sur 00mmi Ullders Shoo? loader eye by ‘errtav math 3 great Not only are these events often a physical impossibility, but the utter chaos of the street scenes makes it extremely difficult to tell what has really happened. Toni may subvert reader expectations as he behaves differently from what one would anticipate from a monster (Cypess 356), but the narration frustrates reader expectations as it deforms image and movement. The effect of this text is that, as it sets up a context of impossibilities and distortions, it creates a profoundly suspicious attitude in the reader, who may be amused by its carnival humor or touched by Toni’s insights and his “triste fin” (95), but who is not sure how to sort the hyperbole from the truths the text seems to communicate. Toni’s perplexity at human behavior and his struggles to understand it are mirrored by the reader’s perplexity at the text and his or her struggles to make sense of it. The tone of the narration can be shocking as well: it is difficult for the reader to identify with a narrator who jokes about Brigita Maria’s being shot in the eye by confessing that he erroneously called her “bizca” (cross-eyed) instead of “tuerte” (one-eyed, 56) or who trivializes the fear in which they all live by quipping that if Manolo’s poor girlfriend had been able to endure his poem she must have a great capacity for terror (23). In the context of imprisonment and brutal violence, Toni is able to joke that Grandma ought to be there to tell him to leave the room and to delight in the authorities’ fear of urine-soaked mattresses (94- 95). The woman out by the knives which Manolo has thrown out the window communicates her terror and rage with stilted, ridiculous language: “aPor que la habian agredido con esa intencion mortifera?” (19). As Toni throws his attackers 91 victirr quaiit freedc huma' Scene.- Conner hhonn, Toni a. Wobnc and m, and bil down on the street, knocking them out, he is reminded of children playing statue (92). In opting to portray violence through comedy, Gambaro both relativizes the effects of a violent regime and creates a distance from the narration that encourages a critical stance.“7 The deformation of the text reinforces the sense that both society and its victims have become monstrous. A search for what humanity remains turns up qualities that the narrative voice has not exaggerated or twisted: hunger for freedom, respect for others, the will to resist,” love and compassion. Toni is human in the measure of these qualities that he possesses, as is Manolo.” The scenes that subvert an authoritarian imposition of order generally include human connections: the mothers of purported victims weeping together and exchanging information not likely to be given out by official sources, the young boys carrying Toni around and singing, employees communing over coffee during the bomb scare. On the other hand, the imagery of monstrosity is generally applied when violence or complicity appear: the policemen lack human features when Toni and the bystanders are beaten (92), and Manolo’s marionette-like clumsiness and bristly gray hair recall Toni as monster in the jail scene, when the mention of 27 Her treatment of violence can also be elucidated by Eduardo Grflner's observation that the tone of culture and politics in the twentieth century is more properly parodic than tragic, or by Freud's suggestion that the origin of comedy lies in the inability to assume the tragedy of the situation Grl'iner 30-31). Toni’s manner of coping with being enclosed in Manolo’s apertrnent has been to pick the locks. In prison, however, this has proved impossible, and he acknowledges the need for the kind of Iongsuffering and resistance of will of which he does not feel capable, hence his plan to commit suicide. As he expresses it, “Me habia hecho un par de genzuas, pero no servian. Daba Ia impresion de que no servia nada, salvo el aguante, el peso del tiempo como una bola sin sentido.” (94) 2" All of the critics who mention Toni’s humanity refer to these qualities: Cypess to his love and compassion, Morell to his love of freedom and respect for others, Avellaneda to solidarity. See note 37. 92 uhes has 9' muerft lmmtf hena itself 1’ ulcers and nightmares and the hint of ill-gotten money (93) suggest that Manolo has either caved in to the pressures of society or opted for violence. Gambaro anticipates here the narrative treatment she gives Ganarse la muerte, written at the beginning of the next stage of military dictatorship, in which both the repressive nature of the state and the reader's inability to identify with the narration are intensified. In both novels, Gambaro simulates through the text itself the disorientation and alienation of the individual under dictatorship, by combining identification with a victim who is the focus of the narration (Toni and Cledy) and historically accurate events (street riots, economic hardship, the disappearance of persons) with a narrative style which clearly cannot be taken at face value. In both cases the reader has to form his or her own version of and attitude toward the text, the way the citizen in a dictatorship has to read between the lines of censored news publications. Conclusion For Wolfgang Kayser, the grotesque is a play with the absurd, “an attempt to invoke and subdue the demonic aspects of the world” (188). The key word here may well be attempt: although in Nada que vercon otra historia the demonic aspects of the Argentine dictatorship of the late sixties, herein portrayed as monstrous, are clearly invoked, they are only partially subdued. The camivalization of authority figures posits their potential overthrow, yet Toni’s story is told from a prison cell as he waits till evening to hang himself, while Brigita Maria is dead and Manolo appears a defeated figure as well. Hortensia Morell explains Toni’s suicide in terms of his loss of the hope of recovering his freedom 93 (185). of his has lo gaine: muert’ in this overcr groles This h Bakh: SIDCQ 'in the With lh aDDart Shells 3cCl’hs ' e; be: (185), and Cypess sees it as his realization that he is seen as a criminal because of his resistance to an inhumane system (359). In either case it seems that Toni has lost the will to resist or even to persevere. lnhumanity appears to have gained the upper hand against humanity, as will also be the case in Ganarse la muerte. The Bakhtinian model of analysis seems to offer a more complete picture in this case: the element of humor is too strong in this work to be completely overcome by the darkness of the political times, and the presence of the grotesque body in Gambaro’s descriptions points to eventual death and rebirth. This novel exemplifies the coexistence of seriousness and laughter of which Bakhtin asserts: True ambivalent and universal laughter does not deny seriousness but purifies and completes it. Laughter purifies from dogmatism, from the intolerant and the petrified; it liberates from fanaticism and pedantry, from fear and intimidation (122-23) Since carnival uncrownings are employed extensively here, Bakhtin’s notion that “in the world of carnival the awareness of the people’s immortality is combined with the realization that established authority and truth are relative” (256) sets apparent death and defeat within a wider context. Nada que ver con otra historia as title refers facetiously not only to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and to Borges’ “Les ruinas circulares” but also to the story of Argentina, especially since the word historia can be taken to mean either story or history.” In addition, given the apparently inappropriate narrative treatment of 3° Cypess (352), Morell (185), and Avellaneda (221) all refer to the double intertextuality of the title; both Cypess and Avellaneda also mention the expression nada que ver by itself, which Cypess explains thus: “a popular colloquial expression in the Argentine society of the early 94 the violent and tragic incidents in the novel, the expression nada que ver can be applied to a text that appears not to fit the pertinent context, a tension which is typical of the grotesque and of the grotesco criollo."1 When placing the work within the historical context with which this analysis has sought to establish its firm connection, it can be seen that the forces of repression were eventually overcome, although not until after the horrific bloodbath of the Military Process of 1 976-83. The eventual victory of the people is suggested within the novel, but the only victory at hand by its final page is a symbolic one. Although humanity seems overcome by monstrosity within the events of the plot, the reader has been led by the selective placement of grotesque imagery to identify with those elements that can be considered humane rather than inhuman. The solidarity of which Avellaneda writes and which Toni and sometimes Manolo practice is epitomized in the figure of the old man from the plaza who deliberately takes a vicious blow destined for Toni: En una de ésas, uno levanto el garrote, que me estaba destinado, y el viejo, velocisimo, metio la cabeza. Placl, sono el golpe sobre el craneo, como si lo tuviera hueco, y el viejo se desplomo con un gemido. Capoto sobre los adoquines, los brazos en una cruz despareja. (91 )3“ Seventies, as an idiom “nada que ver" is used in a context where the speaker wishes to affirm that a particular idea of object, action or situation is absolutely cut off from reality, from a given pertinent context.” ‘ Thomson invokes as case in point for the grotesque Swift’s A Modest Proposal, in which the raising of children in order to eat them is proposed in the most reasonable, scientific style (4-5). In Teoria del género chico criollo, we find regarding the grotesco criollo the following formula: “comico/texto, dramatico/contexto: grotesco” (Marco et al. 431 ). 32 A more extensive version of this quote appears in Avellaneda’s analysis (223) to confirm solidarity as the value affirmed by the resolution of this Bildungsroman. 95 va Hu tho aha the It large! round deform drama pail-m play. Poetic Toni's nuanc alliUse W3W o‘. r“Press real ph.| The unmistakable Christ figure points beyond the foolish priest to real Christian values, not those espoused by the ideologues of the Argentine Revolution. Humanity is captured here in the image of one who defends another with no thought of self-preservation and vindicated in the old man’s survival, though he is abandoned like rubbish by the authorities (92). This novel achieves affects more difficult to attain in the dramatic version: the wider range of scenes of actions allow Toni to interact with a considerably larger variety of characters, which gives him room to develop as a more well- rounded character himself.” The distortions in the narrative such as implausible deformations of people and their actions are virtually impossible to achieve in dramatic form. Toni, however, can been seen—llterally—on stage as monster or part-monster at all times and thus is never confused with a human being in the play, which removes much of the ambiguity produced by Toni’s meditations and poetic expressions, which are more prevalent in the novel. The narrative form of Toni’s story exemplifies the grotesque tradition more fully since it elicits a more nuanced and ambivalent response, which contains clashing reactions such as amusement and horror, or identification and rejection. The reader is both oriented and disoriented by Gambaro’s monsters-eye view of Argentina during the late sixties. Toni and Manolo as doubles, vacillating between two natures, embody the dehumanization experienced by victims of repression. Although that repression is subjected to carnival laughter, it inflicts real physical pain and death and appears to have gained the upper hand. The 96 un- rial rep the I351 j a uneasy blurring of humanity and monstrosity and the unreliable character of its narrative depiction leave the reader in a no-man’s-land which effectively replicates life in a dictatorship and produces the conflicting emotions typical of the grotesque. 3° Cypess also points out the fact that the larger number of contacts affords a greater opportunity to judge Toni’s behavior (356). She also holds that the play can be seen as a parody of the novel (351), a fact difficult to establish since their composition was virtually simultaneous. 97 DISTORTION AND DISTANCE IN GANARSE LA MUERTE Ganarse la muerte, written in 1976 and banned within a year, was clearly perceived from the beginning as a threat to society as conceived by the military dictatorship.1 The decree itself states that the military junta intends to enforce Christian morals, Argentine traditions, and national dignity by upholding the family unit and social order, and that it considers Gambaro’s novel immoral, unbalanced, and subversive (Castro and Jurovietzky 43). The novel is indeed subversive: instead of allowing its readers to embrace the status quo, it sets them at a critical distance from which to examine official discourse and its results in Argentine society. It estranges the reader from the text by a series of distortions: in the plot, in social institutions, and in the narrative itself. It degrades the official program by taking it to its most extreme consequences, where the grotesque body evokes both compassion and disgust. A text that refuses to acknowledge what the characters experience creates distance, which, according to Gambaro, was her intent: “esta diferencia entre lo que se dice y lo que se vive es lo que pretendi Ilevar a la novela” (43). The plot reads like a twisted fairy tale or novela rosa.2 Fifteen-year-old Cledy, as female orphan, offers a double opportunity for a happy ending: ' By April of 1977 its distribution was prohibited, all copies were confiscated, and the publisher was closed down for thirty days. (Phrases quoted here come from portions of the executive decree that were republished together with an interview with Marcela Castro and Silvia Jurovietzky in Feminaria literaria.) Recognizing the threat to herself and to her family that this represented, Gambaro left the country for three years (Betsko and Koenig 190). 2 As Carmen Martin Gaite describes it, the novela rose is a love story that encourages the image of the dependent women, seeking protection, for whom marriage is the desired happy ending. Even in the modemized versions of this century by Carmen de Icaza and Concha Linares Becerra, in spite of the adventures of the heroine, the following requirements were sure to be met: “el lector estaba tranquilo desde que abria el libro hasta que lo cerrebe, seguro de que ningun principio esencial de la femineidad iba a ser puesto en cuestién y de que el amor 98 adoption or marriage. Both prove illusory, however". a neighbor takes her to the local orphanage, where both the director and the matron sexually assault her and her innocence is “rewarded” by rape by a revolting old cleaning woman and resident prostitute. Cledy is then sold to the Perigorde family to be married to their son, Horacio. The rights to film what should have been an intimate occasion—the ceremony and the wedding night—are bought up by a local television station. After that humiliating ordeal, Cledy and Horacio enjoy a brief period of happiness in the small home her new in-laws have bought for them, and Cledy gives birth to a daughter, Alicia, and a son, named Arturo after his grandfather. Their apparent good fortune is reversed when Horacio loses his job and the young family is forced to move in with his parents. Soon a horrifying twist of the plot lands Horacio in bed with his mother and pairs Cledy off with the impotent Mr. Perigorde, who beats her and allows her no private contact with her husband. A second happy ending is forestalled when, after Horacio and Cledy finally return to their house, their little daughter is taken away as scapegoat for the showing of pornographic films at a party. Alicia is returned to them, but one day both children are found dead. Cledy’s last chance at happiness, her relationship with Horacio, evaporates when she returns from shopping to find an unfamiliar husband and children in her house. This new husband, the man with correspondido premieria al final cualquier claroscuro de la trama, haciendo desembocar la vida azarosa y presuntamente rebelde de aquellas heroines en el oasis de un hogar sin nubes.” (41- 42) Hortensia Morell comments on the ambiguity of the simultaneous comparison of Mrs. Davies with Sister Kenny and Dracula as a way of juxtaposing a tale of horror and the novela rose, the latter being particularly applicable to the dreams of young orphan girls of being rescued by a young upper-class suitor (“Ganarse la muerte y la evoluclén de los personajes de Griselda Gambaro” 189). 99 the badge who had taken Alicia, shoots Cledy to death when she burns his supper. The hope of living happily ever after has been exchanged for the unlikely event of a funeral with flowers. The Distortion of Society Like the military coups of 1955 and 1966, the Catholic nationalists who took possession of the government in 1976 aimed to restore authority, hierarchy, and discipline in their defence of Western Christian civilization (Hodges, Dirty War 157-58). They were critical of the weakening of the Catholic Church’s influence in the modern world (159), and intended to further its participation in the recuperation of values that had been eroded since the Protestant Reformation (156). The Process of National Reorganization dissolved Congress, provincial legislatures, political parties, and trade unions and replaced the members of the Supreme Court in order to “ensure the eventual restoration of democracy and the revitalization of [its] institutions."3 In his inaugural address, President Rafael Videla emphasized the importance of subordination (Feitlowitz 23) to a government that stressed its moral nature and commitment; Admiral Emilio Massera asserted that “A government is an essentially moral entity [and] must never abdicate the metaphysical principles from which the grandeur of its power derives every citizen is unique and irreplaceable before God” (24). 3 Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror 22. Feitlowitz interviewed victims of torture and kidnapping, their families, torturers, military figures, and political activists over the course of more than six years about how their experiences during the Military Process changed their lives and their language. She also studied the language of repression through the speeches and writings of government spokespersons. Feitlowitz first became familiar with the situation in Argentina through her translations of Gambaro’s plays. 100 The restoration and revitalization of social priorities and institutions was frequently described in terms of “sickness,” “treatment,” and “cure,” where subversives were “microbes” and the destroyers of those microbes were the “antibodies” (33). Health, according to Marguerite Feitlowitz in her study of the rhetoric of the Process, actually meant “’proper social adaptation,’ that is, conformity, passivity, compliance” (34). In order to further health in this sense of the word, the Ministry of Education’s recommended textbooks for the Moral and Civic Education class taught in the first three years of high school stressed the fundamental importance of the family: Mujer y hombreumatrimonio y familia: Por exigencies psicologicas y fisicas tanto del hombre como de la mujer, debe quedar el varon constituido en autoridad, asumiendo la primacia de la razon y de la direccion. A la mujer corresponden— por naturaleza—la temura y el amor. De no ser asi, la anarquia y la insatisfaccién de sus miembros es un hecho. Negar la autoridad patema es despedazar la familia. La obediencia de la mujer a la autoridad del jefe de la familia. tiene gran influencia forrnativa en los hijos porque ven que ello no es disminucion de la personalidad, sino un servicio al bien coml'ln que ese pequei'lo nucleo humano quiere alcanzar. (Duhalde 64) A breakdown of the family, the text went on to explain, would have an adverse effect on society: “la sociedad se conmueve y se resiente acarreando consecuencias que influyen en la convivencia social” (64). According to Feitlowitz, in the Argentine wOmen’s magazine Para ti the family was represented as a microcosm of the Process (39). Gambaro in Ganarse la muerte demonstrates how the family duplicates the rule of terror that controlled society in 101 general in the late seventies, and mirrors the distortion of the family with her portrayal of the orphanage and the administration of justice.“ Eduardo Crawley holds that in its struggle to regain complete control, the military leadership began to demonize the resistance and speak of “a vast subversive conspiracy which, said the military, had already taken hold of every aspect of life in Argentina ...an orchestrated campaign to destroy family and morals, to falsify history and to corrode all traditional values” (423) To combat such a conspiracy, not only armed subversives but also anyone who created the environment for subversion should be annihilated (424). To that end, civil society was to be militarized and subordinated (Duhalde 25) and a climate of terror implanted in the population to deter the free movement of guerrillas.“ The armed guard at the door of the orphanage and the desire to gain prestige by the attendance of someone in uniform at social gatherings reflect the militarization of society in the novel; Alicia’s arrest and Horacio’s subsequent fear speak for the general atmosphere of terror. By late 1975 there were already 3000 political prisoners (Crawley 419), and in the two weeks after the coup some hundred suspects were killed and thousands arrested (426). Inquiries about a disappeared person often led to the “disappearance” of the family member who asked (430). In spite of the human ‘ Morell’s thorough exploration of the novel presents Cledy as a representation of Argentina as well as of Everywoman in her multiple, conflicting roles as wife, mother, and person seeking to preserve her integrity in a repressive society. Morell also considers Cledy as orphan a representative of the children interviewed by Gambaro in Conversaciones con chicos and of the vulnerability of children in general during the Process (184). 5 According to testimony by Inspector Rodolfo Femendez, a former aide to Minister of the Interior Albano Harguindeguy, the practice instituted before the 1976 coup (but executed systematically thereafter) of illegal “diseppearances” and tortures was designed to implant terror “para evitar que la guerrilla se ‘moviera como pez en el agua'“ (Duhalde 75). 102 rights violations, however, the regime insisted on representing itself as a noble, self-sacrificing victim. According to President Videla, Without a doubt, the year ends under the sign of sacrifice. A shared, indispensable sacrifice which marks the beginning of our way to the true reuniting of Argentines; through sacrifice will we be able to face the future, ourselves, and the world, with a new identity. [Sacrifice] will permit us to assume the essential task of the great Argentine family: that of national reunification.“ It should be noted that the president here refers to the nation as a family, a metaphor which Gambaro has chosen to bring the dynamics of repression “close to home.” The self-justifying official discourse represented here becomes the narrative voice adopted in Ganarse la muerte; the ultimate consequences at the personal level—the real sacrifice—appear in Cledy’s bruised and broken body and in the death of her children. The military regime’s protestations of Christianity suggest examination of Gambaro’s selection of a woman and of children as victims in the light of Scripture. A Judeo-Christian ethics has presented from the beginning the treatment of women (specifically widows) and children as a yardstick of obedience to God. The Mosaic law in both Exodus and Deuteronomy contains specific admonitions regarding justice for them, and Isaiah announced the judgment of God on Judah for their neglect. 7 James in his New Testament epistle defines true religion as follows: “Religion that God our Father accepts as ° This was a Christmas Eve radio broadcast to the nation; qtd. in Feitlowitz, 30. 7 Exodus 22:22 exhorts, “Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan.” Isaiah clearly states that forgiveness and acceptance by God depends on how the powerless are treated: “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, Ieam to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow“ (1 :15—17). See also 103 pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (1 :27). James’s emphasis on works as evidence of faith is of particular interest in the light of Gambaro’s stated purpose to expose the discrepancy between words and deeds in Argentina’s “Western Christian” society. The institutions portrayed in the novel are in fact a distorted version of themselves, which accomplish the opposite of their ostensible purpose. An orphanage is expected to be a place of rescue and nurture for defenseless children, a place to equip them for future life. The orphanage to which Cledy is taken, however, is constantly trying to dispose of the cartloads of children that arrive nightly by dropping off the least self-sufficient—newboms, two-year-olds—as far away as possible so that they can not find their way back. Some are abandoned in alleys or on railroad tracks, and others are machine- gunned by the guard (55-56). The dining hall feeds only the matron, since the children are so lethargic that they cannot drag themselves there; one of them dies after exerting himself to pick up a piece of string, the only toy to be found in the dormitory (39-40); and the reaction of one child to the matron’s kiss indicates emotional starvation (38).“ The fate of girls, if not talented, is hinted at in the person of the old cleaning woman who services the director and assistant director and sexually assaults Cledy. Cledy is eventually sold and the profits consumed by Mr. Thompson, the director, in the company of prostitutes. A place Deuteronomy 10:18 and Psalms 68:5 and 146:9, where the Lord is described as the defender of widows and orphans. ° The stated policy of the Patronato is not to allow emotional attachment to develop: “nada de contactos de piel 0 de alma. Ahi, eI vacio absoluto” (15). 104 oimh conui Agen hecc beds dSapj mhho more some hoax hePi nudge whnr rehho “3085 toDan P9090 9 _. . Silvia VEiieqjcj the disé. #99057? 9P: h Du h" of refuge for the helpless has become instead the instrument of death and corruption.“ The treatment of the orphans recalls the fate of a generation of young Argentines: the electrically charged exit door, the disposal of undesirables under the cover of darkness, and the assistant director’s suggestion that excess bodies be disposed of in the institution’s ovens“ are reminiscent of those who disappeared during the night and were conveniently disposed of, since the authorities did not consider them worthy of rehabilitation.11 The sexual abuse and rape of Cledy reflect the usual treatment of women detained by the representatives of the official order.12 Analogies with the practices of the dictatorship are encouraged by the matron’s use of the term “proceso” to refer to the Patronato’s efforts to rid itself of unwanted children (38). The reader is thus nudged in the direction of considering the military regime’s process for dealing with the young as twisted as the orphanage’s. The tea party at the Perigordes’ house reflects the distortion of social relationships in a militarized society, where the strict sociopolitical hierarchy places the military—who should be the defenders and servants of society—at the top and the local citizens at the bottom of the structure of power. As Mr. Perigorde puts it, “no hay como ser civil para ser roiia” (107). In undemocratic ° Silvia Lorente-Murphy emphasizes that the family and the orphanage are both microscopic reflections of Argentina under the dictatorship: all characters manifest the marks of subjugation and the impossibility of self-determination (173). ‘° The government committee’s report on the Process documents the burning of the corpses of the disappeared in the ovens of the Navy School of Mechanics (Nunca Mas: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared 222). " General Cristino Nicolaides considered a subversive simply an incorrigible delinquent (Hodges, Dirty War 182). 105 fashion the veterinarian, the military men, and the lawyer are mentioned individually, and the rest dismissed as “gente inferior" (101) whose opinions are of no importance (103). The officer is given a larger cup due to his rank (102). At the second party, the Perigordes are unable to invite someone in uniform; this is apparently so important to its success that Mr. Perigorde even suggests inviting a security guard (147). The skewing of priorities extends to the administration of justice, which gives way to personal whim and arbitrary, uncontrolled violence: the man with the badge who has just masturbated during the showing of the pornographic film, in search of someone to punish, opts for little Alicia since he is not in the mood for men (1 50).13 She returns months later with circular scars all over her body, an increasingly erratic air (165) and the inability to communicate coherently either orally or on paper (174-75).“ The implicit references to torture become explicit when Cledy's new husband reflects on his day’s work's. He has invented a chair with a hole in the seat through which the victim’s sexual organ hangs. Weighted ‘2 Nunca Mas frequently lists rape among the forms of abuse and torture in the individual cases it documents; see for example pp. 4, 44, 47, and 49. ‘3 Nunca Mas documents the kidnapping of babies and children and the torture of children as young as 11 and 12 years of age (309—12). Duhalde (155) mentions circular scars from the picana (electric cattle prod); Nunca Mas lists torture with cigarettes among common practices (227, 232). A report by the Medical- Psychosocial Workshop of the Second Latin American Congress of Families of the Disappeared finds that sleeplessness, eating and Ieaming disorders, regressive or aggressive behaviors, and language disorders commonly result from severe trauma to children (205). '5 Lorente-Murphy expresses the opinion that Gambaro’s novel is more suggestive than explicit: “sin ser explicitamente acusadora, carece de inocencia, presenta los hechos como cuestiones altamente debatibles y [su] interpretacion final esta siempre fuera de los margenes del texto y a cargo del lector. En Ganarse la muerte no encontramos denuncia directa sino la presentacidn descamada de una realidad que cualquier intérprete puede calificar de cruel y arbitraria” (171). She does argue convincingly that the novel sets out persuasively the sensation of impotence and the ambiguity of the official word, as well as the image of woman as the victim par excellence, but the abundance of references to specific code words and practices as well to the key phrases of official discourse persuades me that the accusations In the novel are explicit indeed. 106 down with sandbags, the prisoner is beaten from below with twin rods as his eyeballs bulge against his blindfold and he secretes liquid feces (188-90). The use of the code word work for torture, the enclosed room with tainted air, the blindfolded eyes, and the loss of control over body functions all duplicate specific details of the torture of the disappeared in the illegal detention centers.“ Justice in the case of Cledy's murder is completely miscarried when the police decide to present as evidence of their supposed skirmish with extremists some old weapons that they have in their patrol car.17 Their lack of interest in real justice is also apparent when one of them suggests implicating the butcher since he has had the nerve to charge him for meat (192-93). The patent ridiculousness of such an idea, juxtaposed on the excuse they select, is seen as an equal distortion of a policeman’s duty. Official reports during the Military Process listed terms such as enfrentamiento, fugas, suicidio, actividad criminal, and accidentes as cause of death for a murdered detainee (Duhalde 221 ). The healing and rebuilding of society by the military dictatorship is twisted into a fragmentation of that society into individuals as everyone ignores Cledy once Alicia disappears and pretends to be sound asleep the minute the shot that kills Cledy is heard. Repeated references to fear of being noticed by the authorities emphasize that the new consciousness the regime has succeeded in 1° Feitlowitz reports the following description of the quirdfano (operating theater, meaning torture chamber): “This was a very sinister place, the walls were so covered with blood and stains that you could barely make out that it had once been painted yellow. The smell of burned flesh, blood, sweat and excrement, especially since there was no ventilation, made the air heavy, suffocating. The torturers took turns and kept a written copy of their 'work'” (Oscar Alfredo Gonzalez and Horacio Guillermo Cid de la Paz, Testimonio sabre campos secretos de detencidn en Argentina, qtd. in Feitlowitz, 58). She also reports that prisoners were generally kept blindfolded as a form of psychological torture (54, 66). 107 implanting is terror. As with the covenlp for Cledy's death, a ludicrous fear of consequences parallels another more based on experience, equating them for the reader, which causes the foolishness of the one to bleed into the other. When Cledy throws her cup of tea at the party, the guests’ reaction reflects a generalized apprehensiveness: Suerte que el militar estaba muerto, si no quién sabe lo que hubiera pasado. La ley marcial, el estado de sitio, ejecuciones en mesa, cualquier cosa. El reglamento lo preveia todo: [semejante acto de indisclplinal (110) The reference to a lack of discipline betrays an absorption of the military mentality by civilians, which is expanded in the neighbors’ attitudes after Cledy's children’s death. The common phrase during the late seventies, “Por algo hebra sido,” appears in expanded form to assign blame to the victims of repression: En el barrio la trataban con respeto compasivo, un poco distante, sin embargo, porque el motivo de la muerte de los chicos se ignoraba. Nadie queria compromisos. Y era comprensible. Sélo algunos inconscientes, por lo general muchachos, cuando moria alguien, inexplicablemente, de un sincope en la comisaria, o muchos, acribillados a balazos en una fuga, hacian manifestaciones en la calle, alborotaban hasta que les rompian los huesos. LY no era logico, en cierta tonne? Pretextos para el caos, a rio revuelto, ganancia de pescadores. Los tiempos habian cambiado. La muerte ya no otorgaba a nadie certificado de santidad. Asi que los vecinos saludaban a Cledy, pero no le daban pelota. (181) Here the sarcastic use of inexolicablemente for a death possibly caused by torture or by firing squad indicates an awareness of reality, which together with an inclination to assume guilt where punishment is given accounts for the abandonment of solidarity in favor of self-preservation. ‘7 Feitlowitz cites newspaper headlines that covered up murder by police or the military: “Shootout with 21 Subversives,” “Extremists Die in Cdrdoba,” “Five Guerrillas Fall” (24). 108 Within this suffocating social atmosphere, the family demonstrates and enforces the same authoritarian structure as society in general.“ Horacio, in his reverie about making his own way in life, associates his mother's domineering nature with the tortured and the dead (62), thus explicitly identifying the repressive family with the repressive society. Cledy, as focus of the narration, is as powerless within the family as the typical citizen is under military rule. Control is maintained by intimidation and by physical force in both institutions: Mr. Perigorde’s stick and belt buckle prevail when Cledy, faced with impostors posing as her parents, tries to obey her own sense of truth and when she tries to prevent the abduction of her daughter. The subordination of individual interests to those of the authorities in the military dictatorship here becomes the subordination of everyone’s interests to the father's. Mrs. Perigorde is described as disgustingly docile with her husband (77), and she transfers this docility to Horacio after the exchange of partners, reacting apprehensively when she spills his drink (90). Wife and children are seen as the property of the father; Mr. Perigorde introduces himself by name and the other family members solely in terms of their relationship to him: “Soy el ser'ior Perigorde. Mi seiiora. Mi hijo” (57). Horacio’s fear of his parents parallels the general loss of solidarity in society as it prevents him from defending his wife from his father’s beatings. The Christian objectives of the regime are distorted in w Gambaro’s most recent novel, El mar que nos trajo (Norma, 2001), the account of her grandfather's arrival as immigrant and his family’s subsequent hardships in Argentina, also depicts her dictatorial father and, according to Carolina Arenes, perhaps the origin of Gambaro's consistent preoccupation with authoritarianism. This possibility is alluded to by Gambaro herself: “Y si, no fue solo una inquietud teorica lo que me movie a ocuparrne tan persistentemente de esos temes. El autoritarismo fue el clima de mi infancia y de mi adolescencia. Le vida me dio 109 this instance into a disregard for Christ’s injunction: “a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Matthew 19:5, emphasis mine). A man’s dignity is to be upheld at all times: female solidarity gives way to complicity as Mrs. Perigorde encourages her husband to try again with Cledy when she realizes he has been unable to perform sexually (99). The father figure is depicted as motivated only by his appetites rather than by a pursuit of mutual good: when he touches Cledy’s breasts, his wife remembers that he decided to marry her as soon as he saw her breasts, before even looking at her face (82). Paternal authority is arbitrary and self-serving: men are not expected to work in the house; Mrs. Perigorde insists on serving Horacio; and Mr. Perigorde is more incensed by the idea that he might have to change a diaper and take care of the baby (140) than by his wife’s attempts to drag their son into the bedroom (137). Despite the high school civics textbook’s waming that to deny paternal authority is to destroy the family, what destroys this family—and shatters Cledy’s identity—is the father’s authority taken to extremes. The breakdown of the family in the grotesco criollo has been recognized as a reflection of the breakdown in society at large.“ In an ironic reversal of the official dogma that the family and specifically the father’s position of headship is the foundation of a healthy society, tiempo, por suerte, para perdonarlos. Si pude escribir este libro fue porque ye los habia comprendido” (Arenas 2). 1° David Vifias stresses the importance of the family as mirror of the loss of solidarity in society at large: “Ia disolucién de la solidaridad grupal de la fabrica so reproduce en el deterioro del grupo familiar" (131). This role of family problems as symptomatic of a larger crisis continues to be taken into account in recent criticism. The June 27, 2001 issue of La Nacidn in its review of “Los 110 the incestuous relationships and cruelty depicted here disintegrate the family as if to predict the destruction of a society that behaves in a similar manner. According to the textbook, anarchy and the insatisfaction of its members result from a lack of paternal authority; in Ganarse la muerte they result from the excessive strength of that authority. The references in the novel to Cledy’s enclosure mirror both the isolation of prisoners and the twisted rhetoric justifying repressive measures, here the concept of protection: “Poco conocia del mundo, siempre protegida entre cuatro parades” (164). Enclosure imagery permeates the work. In the orphanage, the girls’ dormitory is enigmatically referred to as “closed” (35) and exit doors have been wired with electricity. Cledy is shut in with the old kitchen maid during her first night there, with disastrous results. At night at her in-laws’ house, Cledy is either tied to Mr. Perigorde’s bed or weeping under the kitchen table, another enclosed space. When her parents are dying, she is boarded into the bedroom with them, despite the stench (161-62). Her new husband backs her into a corner when he is ready to have sex with her. The final enclosure, ironically, is the morgue where she is locked in with other corpses awaiting the availability of cemetery space, thus contradicting the chapter’s title: “Por suerte, esto se acaba” (185). Death has not delivered her from the limitations imposed by family circumstances. Albomoz" refers to this tradition: “En la decade del 30 algunos grotescos discepolianos modraban en escena la realidad de un nucleo familiar agobiado por una fuerte crisis social.” 111 Distorted Humanity The distortion of social structures results, as in Nada que ver con otra histon'a, in a distortion of humanity. The strategies of the grotesco criollo are applied here to another dehumanizing sociopolitical situation, which the text deconstructs by showing the distortion and breakdown of the individual within that context. The characters’ powerlessness within society is mirrored in their inability to communicate and in their lack of control over their own bodies. Increasingly isolated and dehumanized, the individual falls into inertia and eventually into utter defeat. Like the plight of the Italian immigrants depicted by Discépolo, Cledy’s socioeconomic situation is not viable. As a young female orphan, penniless and unskilled, she is at the mercy first of the directors and matron of the orphanage and then of the family into which she marries. Her husband’s unemployment and their subsequent move to his parents’ house puts Cledy under the control of Horacio’s domineering and lecherous father. This situation virtually duplicates the basic dynamics of a grotesco criollo play, in which the immigrant’s inability to support his family causes both his integrity as a human being and his relationships to crumble. Here Cledy’s helplessness extends to more and more aspects of her life as she feels unable to counteract Horacio’s sacrifice of her welfare and physical safety in favor of the whims of the parents on whom they depend economically. Unable to get a hearing from the neighbors when her daughter disappears, Cledy is also forbidden by the family to speak the child’s 112 name. Trapped within four walls, she is powerless to avoid her own death at the hands of a virtual stranger who claims to be her husband. Cledy is not, however, the only powerless character. According to the survivors of the Dirty War interviewed by Feitlowitz, living in that society was a form of captivity, in which power was relinquished (151). The authorities at the orphanage cannot control the enormous daily influx of children, for whom they are unable to provide. The children, starving for both food and affection, have become so weak that they can not make it across the space between beds, much less to the dining hall. The old woman who raped the defenseless Cledy is no match for Mrs. Davies, who in turn dares not cross Mr. Thompson when he is in one of his moods. Mr. Thompson feels forced to part with Cledy for what he considers to be an unfair price, presumably because he needs the money. Horacio is unable to stand up to either of his parents. No one in the neighborhood dares to associate with Cledy after her daughter disappears, and without exception they immediately turn off their lights and retire for the night when they hear the shot that kills her. The disintegration of the individual within a disenfranchising society is particularly evident in the case of Cledy and Horacio, who gradually lose the naturalness and integrity of their reactions. Cledy at the beginning of her story responds naturally and shows some initiative: she weeps at the mention of her parents (17), is disconcerted at Mr. Thompson’s insistent demands for a kiss (16) and resists his attempts to fondle and kiss her by jumping out of his way (17, 21), smiles at a shy Horacio (58) and is repulsed by his father (65,66). She clearly 113 feels she cannot oppose Horacio’s decision to move into the family home, however: “Huorfana, solo esposa y madre, ninguna otra habilidad” (86). By the time she has been assigned to Mr. Perigorde, all Cledy can do is weep copiously. When the abusive Mr. Perigorde nearly pulverizes her arm with his stick (122), she merely picks up the bone splinters and obeys his command to go to the kitchen (123). Although small evidences of some resistance to her situation surface sporadically, such as her refusal to call her son by his given name and to drink the tea at the anniversary party (104), these are the exception rather than the rule. Cledy does not assume she has the right to take her children for a walk (1 36) nor to oppose being nailed into a bedroom with her dying father. By the time her husband is supplanted by the man with the badge she no longer trusts her own misgivings (186). Cledy's spirit has gradually become cowed and she can no longer act on her own. Horacio, like Cledy, takes his cues for action from others, especially from his parents. His delusions of independent action lead him to fabricate a different version of his meeting with Cledy—that he followed her down the street and his words convinced her to go with him (70-71, 76)—-yet in reality he seems unable to take the initiative. The loss of the job which had given him some autonomy drains his self-esteem and weakens his backbone until he consents to go to bed with his mother (93); he allows her to kiss him on the mouth in front of others (137); and he is willing to get his father a thick stick to beat Cledy (115). When Cledy tries to get help from the neighbors after Alicia's arrest, Horacio is so afraid 0f reprisals that he invents a story about Alicia going away with her uncle (161). 114 gr: are ape the Opti aha lang Chan rBSpc Cleo Cleo- He allows his father to make him feel guilty for asking that Cledy no longer be chained to the bed at night (155). At the end of the narrative, Horacio seems to disappear; since his presence has never been much of a defense for Cledy, his absence seems merely the logical conclusion. According to Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, what makes the grotesco criollo grotesque is the fusion between the social mask and the individual face,20 which are opposed in increasingly unbearable tension until the very individual is broken apart (13). Cledy disappears increasingly into silence and inertia, shrinking from the suffering caused by family and society while unable to extricate herself from it; Horacio disappears into the role his parents have designed for him, no matter what the cost, until he is indistinguishable as a person. This family as microcosm of the dictatorship exemplifies its effects on the individual: the removal of options, the rule of terror, the imposition of a sort of autocensura which causes an absolute rupture between situation and behavior. Both Kaiser-Lenoir (109, 135) and David Vifias (99) find the breakdown of language characteristic of the grotesco criollo. In Ganarse la muerte, the characters contradict themselves, they misunderstand one another, and they respond inappropriately. Mr. Thompson first echoes Mrs. Davies’ sentiment that Cledy’s misfortune is indeed very great, and then asks, 'What misfortune?” (15). Cledy muses that she has chosen Horacio by “el azar o la mas absolute 20 This perspective is shared by Luis Ordaz, who explains that penetrating below the mask to the face reveals the absolute failure of the dreams and hopes that the immigrants brought with them to Ar Qontina (“Armando Discépolo 0 el ‘grotesco criollo'” 411). Juan Carlos Ghiano speaks of the WOI-Ihds hidden behind the mask and characterizes the grotesque protagonist as a commedia d9”)8rte marionette now conscious that he is a puppet whose strings are moved by other men (11 115 predestinacion” (75), which is not only self-contradictory but also untrue. Mr. Perigorde, who cries continually, hates tears (115). Horacio contradicts by his words the obvious reality in which Cledy lives: “Papa y mama son buenos. Yo soy bueno” (117). Mrs. Davies is unable to make Mr. Thompson understand her immoral intentions for Cledy (32). When Horacio is asked to speak to the TV camera on his wedding night, he has just begun to get a few words out when the reporter cuts in, “NW bienl”; the same reporter reacts with delight to Cledy's failure to respond: “(Que gente lindal” (71). When Horacio and Cledy meet under his parents' kitchen table at night, suffering causes a mutual lack of understanding (104), and Cledy cannot comprehend most of Horacio's explanations why they should be grateful and she should be patient (119). It is particularly in the area of the inappropriate response that one sees how the characters in this story are out of tune with themselves and with others. Mrs. Davies and the assistant director look on with understanding and tenderness as Mr. Thompson assaults Cledy. After giving Cledy a nosebleed and swollen lips when separating them, Mrs. Davies observes with satisfaction, “Asi esta bien,” and the assistant director invites Cledy to suck up her own blood from the handkerchief so as to return it to her body. (18) This same silent gentleman displays hatred when Cledy shows her lack of training on the violin (27)- Mr. Thompson, who has just been pursuing the young girl mercilessly, repl'oaches Mrs. Davies, “No Ia toque tanto. gPara qué?” (27). Cledy’s supposed mother shows her sexual organ to establish a family resemblance 116 (130), and when Horacio sees the circular scars on Alicia's body, he treats them with humor: “LQuo son? (A qué jugaste?” (165). The inappropriateness is intensified when it comes to the characters’ callous reactions to suffering and death. The line is crossed here between an unsettling comedy and a true lack of humanity. Clearly a strategy designed to provoke reader indignation, this type of faux pas is perceived as an error in the context of the equally mistaken reactions that surround it. As a deconstruction of social attitudes, it evokes an association with the generally anesthesized public consciousness under the military regime. James Neilson commented in the Buenos Aires Herald on July 3, 1976: In some fortunate nations the discovery of a single corpse would be enough to keep the press and police occupied for several days "Nothing of the kind happens here. Argentines have been so cauterized by violence that they will accept almost anything. (Feitlowitz 157) Thus when Alicia has been thrown into the air by a car, the couple in the vehicle are in anguish about possible dents on the vehicle; reassured, they comment “No peso nada” (144). After the children are found dead, Horacio’s first words are “oNo hay un poco de cafe?” (177). In Cledy’s dream, those who have just murdered her children and then driven rusted nails into a man’s legs laugh festively and walk off chatting pleasantly (179). The ultimate inappropriate r esponse is the shooting of Cledy over a burnt meal (190), and the “new" children’s celebration of her death is almost as shocking: “iSe murio la estl'Ipidal iSo murio la estflpidal” (191) 117 As in works like Stefano and El organito, the malfunction of social skills are reinforced by a clumsiness or lack of control over one's own body to replicate the loss of self-determination and power in society. Mr. Thompson’s fingers are clumsy though avid as he gropes at Cledy’s crotch (18); Mrs. Davies gets wound up in her skirt while dancing and sinks to the floor (25). A blow meant for Mrs. Davies misses her and hits the violin, which bounces off the floor and strikes Cledy's nose, making it bleed again (25). Cledy’s dancing is so clumsy that the onlookers shout, “iUuuuyI iEspantosol” (26), and she Is equally inept at cutting in a straight line (29). Mr. Thompson drops his glass eye, slips on it, and pulls over the table lamp, nearly electrocuting himself (48). Mrs. Perigorde spills Horacio’s drink (90), and Mr. Perigorde by virtue of his age displays a nearly complete lack of physical control. He is impotent (97), his tongue will not obey him when he tries to read aloud (115), he repeatedly misses Cledy with his stick (150), and when he tries to lean on Horacio he sticks his fingers in his son’s eyes, elbows his ribs, and injures his testicles (109).“ The narrator summarizes Cledy’s life by saying, “habia entrado con el pie izquierdo en el mundo, puede decirse” (185), and in fact her inability to cook without burning the food precipitates her death, which also results from her husband’s lack of control over his temper (190). The less control a human being can claim, the more dehumanized he or she becomes. This dehumanization is further reinforced by animal imagery, a technique, according to Viiias, which emphasizes an absence of the power and \ 21 F0? Kaiser-Lenoir, the inability to control gestures is a manifestation of the impossibility of °°horent action (135-36). Old age, in fact, implies a gradual loss of control, which Vii’Ias identifies 118 initiative that should typify humanity (109). Cledy's dead parents are described as yoked together like horses (16). Mr. Thompson squawks (29) and his puckered lips are inelegantly compared to a hen's ass.22 Mrs. Davies is depicted as a big ugly bird.“3 Cledy is cornered by her “new” husband, tense and gasping like a cat (186), and the feet of her dead body are called patas, a word normally reserved for hooves or paws (193). The association of human beings with animals, however, can also be seen as an effort on the part of the narrator to drive a wedge between characters and reader in order to prevent identification. Like the narrative tone of the novel, it parallels the dictatorship’s efforts to destroy public empathy for its victims. The reader, like the indoctrinated citizen, is to reject what the character has become: something less than a human being. This attempt to create distance, nevertheless, must be seen in the general context of the narrator's persona as representative of the discourse of authority, which falls to persuade in the presence of elements like the perversion of human relationships and the brokenness of the grotesque body as its ultimate consequences. The Grotesque Body and Distance In Ganarse la muerte the human body is subject to invasion, mutilation, and aging. Its depiction inhibits identification in various ways: the physical repulsiveness of authority figures serves to increase the horror of the victim’s abuse by them and distances the reader from them and from their actions. References to the grotesque body as a degradation of the ideal to the material \ .323 one of the ways the character in the grotesco criollo is humiliated (117). OHIO de gallina, 17. 119 uncrown authority figures by undermining the acceptance of the principles they espouse. At the same time, the reader rejects at a visceral level the sheer physicality of the victim’s suffering, so that the abjection it warrants is transferred to the cause of that suffering, in this case a repressive regime represented by the family.“ The bodies of those who seek inappropriate sexual intimacy with Cledy or Horacio provoke repulsion through association with infection, decay, and mutilation. Mr. Thompson’s empty eye socket becomes his way to attract attention, first Cledy's and then the prostitutes’: he exhibitionistically changes glass eyes and accidentally crams two at once into the socket. The eyes are only further encrusted into his skull by digging for them (72-73). Mrs. Perigorde’s powdered jowls shiver and bounce against her chest (63). The reader’s disgust with these departures from a normal, attractive body emphasizes their wrongness as sexual partners. The horror of Cledy's rape by the old woman in the orphanage is increased by the particularly unforgiving picture of old age painted by Gambaro: a bald pink head with a few long white hairs, flaccid breasts with very prominent dark nipples which reach to her belly (54). The father figure, however, is described in the greatest and most repulsive detail. He is depicted as an unnatural mixture of old and adolescent characteristics, recalling the Kerch terracottas which Bakhtin cites as an unstable 2’ pajan'aco, 25. 2‘ Cynthia Tompkins scmtinizes the abjection of the feminine in works by Gambaro and Elvira Orphoe; she states that the abjection of the mother is a direct result of the constant victimization of Cledy. That process of victimization is represented by images of physical decay, corpses and secretions. Cledy is also paradigmatic of the orphans, who become corpses or are discarded like refuse. (179-92) 120 image of reproductive force and decaying flesh.”5 The coincidence in Mr. Perigorde of decay and lust proves a particularly effective use of the grotesque body to distance the reader. His diseased gums and loss of control over his body evoke death and disease, which suggest the imminence of his demise or replacement. The full spittoon in his nightstand, his oozing pimples, and the bleeding of his gums as he crams his fingers into his mouth all the way up to his tonsils at the party recall the stereotypical female body with its uncontrollable secretions. Together with his impotence, this male-female ambivalence undermines his supposed right to absolute power by virtue of masculinity; his image as father is weakened by his irresistible attraction to Cledy's breasts, engorged with milk (82), which parallels Horacio’s union with his mother, signified by her bitten nipple (96). The child-adolescent-old man conflation associates his every impulse with inappropriateness and prompts the reader to reject his authority. Revulsion for the aging, secreting body as sexual object is associated by means of the sensation of abnormality with sexual perversion. Gambaro consistently aligns deviancy with the abuse of authority: a figure that should protect and nurture as a father or a mother preys on those who depend on him or her. The reader is alienated by a sexual deviant like Mrs. Davies, who is aroused only by young girls and constantly attempts to seduce or assault Cledy. During the wedding night the voyeuristic Mrs. Davies continually uncovers the newlyweds to see if she can discover the benefits of heterosexual passion (74). \ 25 These senile laughing hags deny in their decrepitude their pregnant bellies, which for Bakhtin 8)rrnbolize the cycle of rebirth after death that offers the opportunity for renewal (25). 121 Both Mr. Thompson and his assistant—apparently simultaneously—seek the sexual favors of the old woman who rapes Cledy, in spite of her ugly old age (41). The man with the badge who attends the Perigordes’ second party is observed with an erection after seeing the pornographic film, and he views it three or four more times while apparently masturbating until he finds relief (149). Reincamated at a later point as Cledy’s husband, he shows no interest in viewing a normal female body: “si al menos hubiera vislumbrado un triple bulto de senos, pero inI'Itil sor'iar" (187); only an abnormal body would excite him. Even the military men at the first party, in spite of his rhetoric of law and order, wears false eyelashes, which undermines the masculinity and fatherhood traditionally associated with power (114). The ultimate sexual perversion in this novel is probably the unnatural liaison between Horacio and his mother. Foreshadowed in the prologue by a reference to birth as an inverted copulation (9), it appears to be an extension of the domination hinted at when Horacio remembers his mother’s control over his attempts at contact with the opposite sex (61). Mrs. Perigorde’s urge to dominate is evident as she struggles to remove Horacio’s pajama pants due to what she considers an ill-timed timidity (131); she kisses him on the mouth and attempts to drag him into the bedroom (137); and she resents Cledy's smile as the sign of the latter's victory in the competition for Horacio’s affections (162). The double inversion signified by female power within a patriarchal paradigm and mother-son sex as an inversion of birth completes the picture of a world upside down where the unnatural governs and the natural is forbidden. 122 What reinforces the physical repulsiveness and sexual deviancy of authority figures to afford an impression of transgression and abnormality is the Bakhtinian principle of debasement. The essential principle of grotesque realism, it is a downward movement, the degradation of the spiritual from the ideal to the material bodily lower stratum: the digestive and reproductive organs and acts such as defecation and copulation (Bakhtin 19, 21). In Ganarse la muerte those figures who destroy the innocent and powerless are the ones who give the poetic or the spiritual image a crassly physical meaning. The romantic image of Cledy’s parents gazing into one another’s eyes is propelled downward to the sexual organs in the mind of the old prostitute: --Cruzaban la calla—dijo Cledy, contando la muerte de sus padres. -Se querian mucho, siempre estaban mirandose a los ojos. No veian nada, salvo esa puerta por donde cada uno puede entrar en otro. La otra conocia otra entrada distinta, pero se lo guardo. (50) Mrs. Davies, pale as an avenging angel at the newlyweds’ treatment by the cameraman, sits down to devour a plate of cookies (74), an introduction of the digestive functions into what was ostensibly moral indignation, and a reminder to the reader that her interests are hardly more pure and disinterested than theirs. When Cledy's nose bleeds, the narrator immediately transfers it downward, associating it with the loss of virginity: “la sangre corrio libre y contenta por el escote y aparecio luego por Ias piemas, como si la hubieran desvirgedo” (26). The narrator, aligned with those representatives of official order who have raped and imprisoned Cledy, here betrays the nature of his own attitude toward her. 123 The debasement of authority extends to the structures of society designed to keep unruly members in their place. The pretentiousness of the tea party, where only the professionals count as individuals, reinforcing the rigidity of social caste, is degraded by the association of the tea with urine: the lawyer, having offered to get some from the kitchen, returns almost immediately with a steaming cup, and the guests wrinkle their noses at the small; one of them calls it pee (110-13). Cledy is boarded into a bedroom with the father figure imposed on her by the Perigordes, to care for him until he dies. She is left with him until the stench becomes unbearable throughout the house (162). The odor of decaying flesh together with the death of the father is a powerful evocation of his loss of authority through replacement. Julia Kristeva associates the corpse with excrement and vice versa,” so that the authority figure becomes something to be discarded, which will eventually decompose. Urine, excrement, and corpses provoke what Kristeva calls abjection: the sickened tuming away of the human consciousness from what it considers intolerable and unthinkable (1 ). The abject draws the line beyond which a culture will not step (2); by means of loathing it marks out an identity, a territory of the acceptable (10). What relates abjection intimately to the grotesque is its simultaneous fascination and repulsion of desire (1 ), yet it clearly inhabits the sphere of the improper or the taboo (17, 93). To associate the abject with the fundamental authority and structures of a culture, then, is to deny their nature as 2‘ Excrement and its equivalents—decay, infection, disease, and corpses—stand for a danger to identity from without (Powers of Honor 71). We recall that for Kristeva the corpse is “the utmost of abjection death infecting life" (4). 124 authority and to reject them on the most intimate level. The provocation of abjection through literature is a weapon that can turn on its wielder through the fickle focus of reader sympathy and antipathy, and in Ganarse la muerte it appears to call forth an abjection of the victim, only to redirect it toward the treatment of that victim. This change of allegiance is accomplished through the reader's eventual rejection of the narrator's standpoint and his or her awareness of the intense suffering caused by the abuse of authority. Early references to Cledy’s beauty (16, 56) soon give way to evidence of neglect and abuse. Her nose looks like an overripe tomato, almost rotten, after Mr. Davies forcibly separates her from Mr. Thompson (31). Her arm, broken by Mr. Perigorde, extrudes splinters of bone (123) and is permanently crippled (174, 191). Cledy's ill-shod feet are as hard as iron and make an annoying sound when she walks (116), and her hair, though still soft, is by the end of her life matted and filthy-smelling (192). Her tears, which one would expect to call for sympathy or tenderness, are described either in negative terms, such as stagnant water (12), or exaggerated ludicrously, as when they soak the mattress, wash off the dishes, and soothe Mrs. Perigorde’s bitten nipple (95-96). Mrs. Davies obsenres with implied disgust the handkerchief she now regrets lending to Cledy for her nosebleed (13), and the assistant director spits contemptuously when he sees the blood (26). Rather than an object of compassion, she is perceived as worthy of disgust. During an interview with Marguerite Feitlowitz, Gambaro stated that for her “the responsibility of the artist or intellectual is to refuse to enter into that 125 perverse system of thought in which people become abstractions” (“Griselda Gambaro” 54). The gap between official discourse and the reader opens at the point of the battered, disfigured body of the victim, which provokes an abjection that spreads to the language that describes or avoids description of it.27 For example, the other victim of physical abuse in the novel, the tortured man, remains faceless due to his blindfold and the depiction of only three parts of his body: his eyeballs under the cloth, his private parts, and his anus secreting liquid excrement. The faces suggest the abjection of the torturar toward his victim, perhaps already a corpse to him. The torture is referred to as “trabajo Iimitado y paciente” and “trabajo infecto, de puro aburrido nomas” (189-90). Once the reader has been subjected to the horror of the concrete bodily anguish, the euphemism is no longer acceptable. Distance as Estrangement Cledy, the focal point of the narration, is defined chiefly in terms of relationships.“ This aspect of the text is important as a statement about the concept of woman in a traditional society such as the one defended by the military regime. The textbook definition of the family defines the father as authority and the mother as a model of submission; Gambaro herself 2’ Lorente-Murphy broadens the scope of the female body’s effect by assigning it two important functions: it registers the excesses of the regime as a site of multiple rapes and resists control metaphorically through its overflowing secretions (171). 2' Melissa Lockhart affirms that “Cledy is the perfect victim Cledy as ‘protagonist' exists in a vacuum“ (102). According to Lockhart, the concept of femininity is both the catalyst for violence and a cover for the barbarous actions of the two “good” woman, Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Perigorde (103). Cledy exists only as others define her, which is in terms of the masculine constructs virgin or whore (104). Gambaro, for Lockhart, shows how the qualities imposed upon women by masculine models are used to justify violence against women (105), a violence taken to such an extreme that it elicits condemnation, which explains the novel’s government ban (98). 126 emphasized the symbiotic relationship between dictatorship and obedience in a public address given in 1987: La fuerza de las dictaduras se centre, en gran parta, en la atomizacion del conjunto social, y por eso tienden a pulverizar todo encuentro colectivo que no garantice obediencia o sumision. (“Los rostros del exilio” 33) The disintegration of Cledy’s marriage when it embodies solidarity with Horacio apart from the patriarch is of great symbolic significance. If the primary bond of a citizen is to the dictator, this union will require a violation of other basic human relationships. The trauma of this dissolution has a double impact on Cledy, since she has lost her source of solidarity as a person and her identity, up to now defined as daughter, wife, and mother. Cledy's situation of powerlessness when she and Horacio are forced to live with his parents is identified through her relationships or lack of relationships: “huorfana, solo esposa y madre” (86). Cledy’s gradual loss of her sense of identity and consequent estrangement from the world around her is built on the loss of one set of relationships and the substitution of another. As the story begins, she has lost her parents to an automobile accident. Theorphanage’s custody of her results in sexual violation, estranging her from her childhood and sense of being loved and protected: “Cledy penso en su infancia, en las sabanas blancas de su came, el beso de su madre, su padre que le frotaba la neriz con un dedo y Iloro, muy sumida en su pena” (31). Cledy is delivered from the hands of Mrs. Davies and Mr. Thompson, interested only in sexual contact with her, to the Perigorde family. In her relationship with Horacio, she is a partner in conversation and affection: 127 La timidez de los primeros dias habia pasado y ahora conversaben largamente Después del amor, se sentian saciados y sin pena, y en Ias charlas y en el silencio comenzaba el mundo, se ordenaba, ahi, en la came amplia, en las cuatro parades del cuarto. Pasaron los meses y cuando el vientre de Cledy se puso tenso, el mundo terrnino de completarse. (75-76) The loss of solidarity with Horacio when he aligns himself with his father to effect Cledy’s obedience to the patriarch is the first step in her loss of bearings. It is Horacio who blocks the bedroom door with his body and points Cledy in the direction of his parents’ bedroom (92), who puts his arm around his mother‘s shoulders as they enter Horacio and Cledy’s bedroom (93), and who kisses her hands in front of Cledy and his father (155). The familiarity of routine and relationship begins to evaporate when Mr. Perigorde takes Cledy into his bedroom. The sexual role reversal signals a turn toward the nightmarish estrangement of the familiar world which Kayser considers the hallmark of the grotesque (15): Cledy’s role as wife and daughter-in-law have become juxtaposed so that she is both simultaneously. Cledy also loses her right to be a mother to her own children as the Perigordes, with Horacio’s concurrence, prohibit her from taking them out of the house even for a walk (134-35) and occupy her time with household duties. Human identity continues to disintegrate for Cledy as she is forced under threat of violence to accept as her parents a couple she does not recognize (129- 32). What directly contradicts their strangeness to her is the fact that they have her old doll, which she immediately acknowledges as hers (131). The doll, thus intrinsic to her estrangement as daughter, reappears in connection with Cledy's estrangement as mother. Cledy had never allowed Alicia to play with her doll, 128 yet the strange little girl holds it in her arms. The doll is described exactly as when Cledy’s “mother" presents it as proof: one-eyed and unclothed except for the blue-and-white checked apron (131, 182). In both instances what should be an uncontestable objective corroboration of identity directly conflicts with the certitude that is reasonable to expect from Cledy regarding a family member, thus placing both Cledy and the reader in a situation where there is no way to verify identity and relationship. The sudden death and mutilation of Cledy's children precipitates a series of events which swiftly estrange the familiar world: the children are dead (174- 75); Horacio seems insensible to Cledy's grief (177); Cledy dreams of people killing her children and cheerfully torturing a man (179); Mr. Perigorde, who hates tears, allows her to weep at his knee (180); Cledy returns from shopping and encounters a whole new family, complete with new parents-in-law (181-84). The new husband, however, is not entirely new: Cledy does not recognize him from the party as the man with the badge, although the narrator identifies him as such (181), but from her dream as the man into whose legs people were driving nails (182). To accept as husband the man who took away her daughter and returned her with physical and emotional scars represents a profound violation of Cledy’s motherhood. Furthermore, lovemaking with Horacio has never been depicted as unpleasant: Horacio is sweet and considerate (76), and Cledy responds gratefully (171). In contrast, the new husband corners a tense Cledy and fulfills his “obligations” without undressing (186). His penchant for violence is suggested when his little daughter backs away from him mistrustfully (184). 129 Although spineless, Horacio has sought to comfort Cledy, for example when he has embraced her and spoken with her under the table at night (117-19), and with his disappearance Cledy loses her last refuge to a new husband who is eventually shown to be a torturer and murderer (1 88-90).““ What is already an estranged situation is given a final twist of ambiguity with the motif of Horacio’s beard. He is starting to let it grow when he meets Cledy (60); as a new father he looks directly into his wife’s eyes and strokes his thin beard (80). When Horacio loses his means of providing for his family, he shaves off his beard but strokes his cheeks as if nostalgic for it (84). At night, when he defies his parents’ wishes to comfort Cledy under the table, a few hairs grow on his face (117), and when Horacio is employed again he grows his beard back (165). This accumulation of references to Horacio’s beard define it as a symbol of his virility and independence, sometimes lost, sometimes regained, always closely associated to him as husband and father. It is therefore chillingly disorienting when the new husband strokes an invisible beard (184). He has been clearly identified as the man with the badge who attended the party at which Horacio was also present. Horacio seems somehow by his repeated conformity to the structures of society to have disappeared into this incarnation of the repressive, torturing system. Horacio’s gesture carried out by another completes Cledy's disorientation, lost among people she does not know but condemned to live with them (183). 2’ According to Helena Aral'ljo, Cledy will accept any home, father, husband, or child imposed upon her because she has no identity of her own. Rather, she is a commodity and is defined by her passivity. For Arat'ljo, Gambaro is raising consciousness of the model of femininity that permits mistreatment of women while transferring the guilt for that mistreatment to them (22). 130 Distance and the Text This manipulation of the beard motif to create ambiguity and alienation closely ties Cledy's estrangement to the reader's. Both Cledy’s doll and the beard are used consistently as a means of identification and stabilization until late in the novel, where they operate as a destabilizing factor, pitting Cledy’s sense of rightness against the presence of the identifying object. Traditionally, at the end of a literary work loose ends are woven together; in this one they unravel, leaving the reader stranded and frustrated. Other motifs prove equally unreliable: the white nightgown Cledy wears to bed the first night at the orphanage is called virginal (44); on her wedding night Horacio brings Cledy her nightgown as she takes refuge in the bathroom from the camera crew so she can cover herself modestly (73). The sequence when Mrs. Perigorde takes over the nightgown she has bought Cledy is pivotal in destabilizing Cledy's Identity as wife, and once the role reversal has occurred Mrs. Perigorde takes to wearing a nightgown around the house all day (101), perhaps as a way of asserting her claims on Horacio. The symbolic significance of white is here undermined since Mrs. Perigorde wears a white one.30 Another motif, the gaze, is established in Cledy's account of her parents' death as a symbol of loving communication (50). Horacio looks into Cledy’s eyes after the birth of their son, “an un abrazo que los otros no veian solo ellos dos” (80). Under the table at night, the couple’s separation is underlined by physical imagery when Cledy is unable to look into her husband’s face (117). 131 Nevertheless, Horacio also looks into his father‘s eyes when they tacitly agree to threaten Cledy with the belt in order to force her to accept the strange couple as her parents (132). The new husband’s gaze at Cledy instead of spousal affection shows a lack of recognition, since he does not remember faces (182); and the motif ceases to communicate anything when the torturers smile into their victim’s face with only the slightest hint of interest or sadism (190). The treatment of motif in this novel exemplifies a rupture between form and content that extends to the use of language in general. The narrator continually misleads the reader as decoder of the text with an unkept promise of coherence until he or she feels taken advantage of. Language is stretched and twisted, used inappropriately and ignored. As social convention it becomes meaningless; as self-justification it exudes falseness. Bakhtin’s notion of subversive discourse “on the confines of languages” (473), contradicting official ideologists (474), applies here in that the reader’s confidence in the text is gradually eroded. Its incompatibilities reveal not only the breakdown of human communication and relationships within the particular sociopolitical situation but the self-serving discourse of its authority figures. From the first chapter on, conventional language including Biblical references and cliches is devalued by means of Iiteralization or inappropriate application. For example, the phrase the power and the glory, which in a common version of the Lord’s Prayer refers to the attributes of God, hare denotes the prestige the orphanage guard expects to gain from slaughtering 3° Lockhart uses the symbolism of both the nightgown and the white gown to affirm that Cledy represents the virgin, as she will later be the whore; the problem is that the symbol does not 132 women and children (11). To give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, the course of action which Jesus proposed regarding the income tax,31 in the mouth of the assistant director is applied to sucking blood in order to return it to the body from which it came (19). The use of Biblical text to cover up for murder and vampire- Iike bloodsucking creates a sensation of dissonance which resembles the disjunction between official discourse regarding the restoration of a Christian society and the actual practices of the originators of that discourse. Cliches are applied inappropriately throughout the novel, often with ironic or parodic effect. Mrs. Davies attempts to console Cledy after Mr. Thompson insults her; the trite expression “la consolo con todos los artilugios de mujer que poseia, el corazon de una mujer es un pozo de temura” actually means that the matron debs at Cledy’s neckline and tries to remove her underpants (27). In the context of the textbook attribution of “temura” to the submissive mother, its degradation here suggests the use of this formula for family harmony to further abuse and corruption. Mr. Perigorde is outraged when Horacio surreptitiously consoles Cledy at night; he grumbles that she is deceiving him with his own son and sighs, “Si nuestra case no es limpia ...” (120). The house, of course, is not clean because of his treatment of Cledy and Horacio’s incest with his mother, not because of Horacio’s sympathy for his wife. The reference to cleanliness points, once again, to the official justification of torture and death. According to Feitlowitz, “cleansing” was “a key word in the official lexicon” (154). Mr. Perigorde wishes, perhaps, to remove any residue of maintain its coherence once it is transferred to Mrs. Perigorde. 3' Luke 20:25. 133 solidarity between Horacio and Cledy or any reminder of relationships other than the current one. This attribution of virtue to the dictatorial authority figure while pointing to the opposition’s transgression of the code embodies a falseness that the reader immediately rejects. When the police arrive after Cledy's murder, they pretend to be deeply affected by the tragedy. The narrator explains melodramatically, “el trance los superaba, era como una burla del destino” (191). Their cold calculation as they plan the coverup, however, spoils the effect of their supposed grief and reveals a close parallel to President Videla’s talk of sacrifice when the real sacrifice was required of the victims of his army’s cleanup campaign. Similarly, Mr. Perigorde’s reverie—as he beats Cledy—about how punishing another hurts the self evolves into an absurd substitution of identity: Arrojo a Cledy fuera de la cama y se astiro en el hueco del colchon, exactamente en el centro, a medias consolado. Yo soy otro, penso, y alguna vez que fuera para bien. Sus huesos entorpecidos por el reumatismo, Ie agradecian la dureza del piso, y hasta ser otro tenia sus ventajas: los huesos molidos de Cledy, el brazo astillado en varies partes, le agradecian el colchon. (122) Cledy’s broken body gives the lie to this self-justifying discourse as the awareness of torture and murder did the official speeches during the Military Process. Figures of speech are rendered ludicrous when taken literally, a technique that furthers the degradation of conventional speech. When the Perigordes plan their party, they decide to go all out: “T irar la casa por la ventana, los muebles atados para que fueran devueltos” (100). Horacio, as he waits at the orphanage 134 for his parents to negotiate for his bride, reflects on a well-known phrase by Antonio Machado and by taking it literally conjures up a grotesque image: Alguien habia dicho que se hace camino el andar, y lo anonado pensar cuanto tiempo necesitarian sus pies para hacerlo en la roca, an el agua, en la arena. Haria el camino, pero se quedaria sin pies, llegaria con las rodillas, si queria ser exacto. El poeta habia hablado bellamente, pero mintiando, recortando el mundo a su propia necesidad. éQuo clasa de camino podia hacerse solo con los pies de uno? Su madre era muy prepotente. Harlan falta miles de patas para abrir un camino transitable sobre los torturados y los muertos. Se puso palido, abrazandose los muiiones. (61- 62)” The reader’s lack of confidence in the language of the novel is aggravated by the use of hyperbole. The likelihood of Mrs. Davies’ teeth leaving a mark the size of a saucer or the orphanage dormitory having 1500 beds is dubious. Descriptions push credibility to its limits, as when the front of Cledy’s father’s shirt is said to be stuck to his back, forced through crushed flesh as result of the accident, or when the orphans’ eyes are so sunken in that they adhere to the back of their necks (36). The idea of Cledy’s insubordination regarding tea drinking causing the death of the military men is equally preposterous and pokes fun at the rigidity and insistence on order of the military establishment. Given the precedent of hyperbole that has been set, the thought of 771 children left at the orphanage every night, babies and toddlers abandoned on train tracks, and children hurled over the orphanage walls, breaking their limbs, seems at first more of the same. Upon reflection, however, the eerie resemblance between these “exaggerations” and the actual treatment of children “2 Morell points out that Horacio’s application of this famous phrase betrays his own weakness: he realizes that he lacks the fortitude to resist the pressure brought to bear on him by his parents (1 89). 135 and young people during the Process” leads to the conclusion that the historical events, like the hyperbole in the novel, are unacceptable, and offers an ironic commentary on the official line that reports of the disappearances were greatly exaggerated. While truth is stranger than fiction, as the popular saying goes, here it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the difference. The point at which language itself fails to communicate is the moment of the exchange of partners. When Mr. Perigorde suggests to Cledy, “Vamos a dorrnir,” the use of first person plural could mean either him and his wife or him and Cledy, but then Mrs. Perigorde says good night without moving toward the bedroom. She echoes her husband’s suggestion: “aNos vamos a dorrnir?” but directs it to Horacio. The double reiteration of the sentence about the nightgown Horacio has bought for Cledy, now transferred to her mother-in-law along with her identity both as Cledy and as Horacio’s wife, completely fragments the previous understanding of reality: Horacio miro a la madre y dijo: «Si, Cledy. Es muy lindo el camison que te compro mama. (92) El Sr. Perigorde sujeto a Cledy por un brazo, flaco y venido a manos, pero muyfuerte aun. -Vamos, Cledy, dijo. -Estoy cansado. Muy lindo el camison que te compro mama. (93) Kayser’s stipulation that “the grotesque consists in the very contrast that ominously permits of no reconciliation” (59) is confirmed by the impossibility of verifying through language who is Cledy and who is “mama.” The very fabric of human communication starts to unravel as language—here names and 33 The abandonment of children after their parents’ abduction and the hurling of drugged prisoners out of airplanes into the see are documented in Nunca Mas, 14 and 221-23 respectively. 136 pronouns—no longer communicates effectively but rather disorients not only Cledy but also the reader. The aspect of the text that most inhibits identification, however, is its narrative tone. The use of an omniscient narrator places the narrative text in an analogous position to the discourse of authority on the national level: the narrator’s claim to reveal the motives and feelings of all the characters becomes open to suspicion as he betrays a decided affinity with the perpetrators of cruelty and a complete lack of identification with their victims.34 Intense human suffering is dismissed flippantly and even treated humorously. The description of Cledy’s parents’ death within the first few pages of the novel sets the tone: Quedaron sobre la calle, en mucho major acuerdo que cuando vivian. La mujer mostraba impudica la pollera levantada y los muslos machucados, y el padre no decia nada Confon'nes los dos, en buen acuerdo. [Lastima haber esperado tanto para ponerse de acuerdol Un acuerdo que no se mueve es siempre un poco estéril. (16) The narrator has just described them as yoked together like horses and said that the father was mouthing a vulgarity when they were struck by a car. The already obvious lack of respect for this tragedy deteriorates into a bad joke by the last line. This insensitive rhetoric continues when the administrators discuss Cledy’s plight: “No tenia donde caerse muerta. Los padres, con su brusca partida, habian sido bastante desconsiderados en este aspecto. No muere quien quiere sino quien puede.” (21) When Cledy dies the narrator notes that her posture is 3‘ Lorente Murphy sees the multiple perspective as a way of introducing the voice of the other (175); however, the perspective betrayed is considerably more understanding of victimizers than of victims. Morell explains it by using Norman Friedman’s terminology: she considers the various characters “reflectors” (his term) of the selective multiple omniscient narrator (her term). This lack 137 modest and pleasing (191),““ juxtaposes her murder with the shooting of a dog (193), and records the reaction of others as follows: Alguien se inclino y astiro Ias patas de Cledy, pegando la izquierda con la derecha. La ilustre difunta, por fin yace con las piemas juntas, penso, recordando un versito que corria por ahi. (1 93) Not only Is the pun in execrable taste,“5 but the allusion to the loose morals of Eva Peron has the effect of transferring guilt for Cledy's situation onto the victim,37 as defenseless in death as she has been in life. Cledy’s suffering in life is treated with no more respect than is her death. When Cledy, nearly unconscious with grief, discovers the bodies of her children, the narrator editorializes: Toda angustia que devora al ser que la soporta, es estoril. Si después de la muerte de sus padres, los primeros, Cledy no hubiera sido conducida al Patronato, si su belleza adolescente no le hubiera proporcionado Ias atenciones de todo el mundo, desde la Sra. Davies y el Sr. Thompson hasta su compafiera de cuarto, si on seguida, del estado nubil o casi nubil, no hubiera pasado al de recion casada feliz, y la matemidad, y etc., todas las compensaciones, la angustia no la hubiera devorado. Pero, claro, si mi tia fuera alargada, verde y con cuatro ruedas, seria un omnibus. (177) The grotesque image of a long green aunt with wheels is merely the icing on the cake in this callous monologue. To say that a mother's anguish is sterile is to ignore it. To refer to her nubile or quasi-nubile state is to trivialize the devastating experience of rape. To list Cledy's experiences as “happy of narrative unity constantly confuses the reader regarding the origin of the values expressed at the moment and requires repeated rereading of each section of the text (188). “Although for Cynthia Tompkins this description lends dignity to Cledy (182), it seems to trivialize the main point, which Is that she Is dead. a”Estirar la pata means “to kick the bucket,” that Is, to die. 138 newlywed, mother, etc.” is to dismiss her life story as not worth mentioning. The reader, who has by now acquired considerable empathy for this suffering victim, is unable to reconcile the events narrated with the narrator's attitude. Drawn in by Cledy’s piteous fate, he or she is simultaneously repelled by how it has been presented.” Although the narration includes the thoughts of most of the characters, including Cledy and Horacio, its flippant and indifferent treatment of cruelty identifies the narrator more closely with the victimizers than with the victims. The language of the former, ironically, is heavily charged with self-pity, showing them to be victims in their own eyes.“ Mr. Thompson considers himself a failure because he is denied the lord of the manor's sexual prerogative over the local maidens: “cuando entraba, todos se sacaban el sombrero, genuflexionas de aqui y de alla, pero el derecho de pemada, no, no lo habia conseguido. Las frustraciones intimas son las que duelen mas” (28). Mrs. Davies feels misunderstood regarding her treatment of the orphans (“itan inocentel”, 38) and unfairly discriminated against in the marriage market because of her sexual preferences (59). The assistant director suffers intensely in a world where unwanted children are born every day; he can only breathe freely when he hears 37 In this regard Araojo speaks of a dislocation of guilt, whereby Cledy is considered guilty of the sadistic treatment she receives. The original observation was made by Evelyn Picon Garfield, as AraIJjo acknowledges (22). 3"Lockhert calls the narrator 'yet another authoritarian voice inscribed in the power structure, justifying her victimization while detailing the torture against her and at times voicing his/her own palpable contempt and condescension towards her" (102). What Booth calls the implied author, says Lockhart, is used by Gambaro to challenge the unjust order by infuriating the reader and causing him or her to react against that order (103). 39As discussed above, this type of exchange of identity between victim and victimizer was frequently part of the self-justification strategies of the military regime. It is also present elsewhere in Gambaro’s work with a similar effect on the reader: Miguel Angel Giella has studied 139 of tons of bombs being dropped somewhere (68-69). Mr. Perigorde is shocked that Cledy would deceive him with his own son; he feels obliged to administer justice by beating her in spite of personal preference: Dios mio, penso el Sr. Perigorde, a veces era necesaria la crueldad Sentia que procedia justamente, Ia justicia no da opcion, pero como los guardianes que matan a sus prisioneros, no contento, no se podia sentir contento. Esta maldita condicion humane, penso .... (1 21 -22) The consistent pattern of self-justification and self-identification as victim culminates in the torturer who kills Cledy. Considering himself a victim of duty, he projects onto Cledy an insatiable sexual desire that he has the obligation to fulfill (186), and he justifies his torture of prisoners as the trap life has set for him through the responsibilities of wife and family (187). Having to come home to a burnt supper because Cledy Is distracted, calling for her lost children, is simply the last straw: iAh, era demasiadol, penso el marido, sintiendo que el mundo se le venia encima. Otros podian ser peores que ol, que por otra parta, siempre habia sido un pan de Dios. (190) The rhetoric of self-justification, juxtaposed with the human suffering it seeks to excuse, is not only hollow and unconvincing but infuriating. The reader rejects the discourse of authority in the light of the cruelty it perpetrates, identifying rather with the victim of that cruelty. The grotesque effect, however, already facilitated by the clash between language and reality and exacerbated by this technique in Los siamasas, where Lorenzo, the persecutor, sees himself as persecuted (“El victimalio como victims on Los sl'amasas" 77-86). 140 inconsistencies within the language itself,“0 is heightened by Cledy and Horacio’s puzzling lack of resistance to being crushed by the system. It is difficult to identify with a character who does little or nothing in self-defense. Their sporadic gestures—Horacio’s support for Cledy when she refuses to drink the tea, Cledy’s opposition to Alicia’s removal from their home and her complaint to the neighbors—are not part of a sustained pattern and do little to change the general situation.“ The authority figures’ contempt and lack of understanding eventually threatens to rub off on the reader. Gambaro herself has explained that her readers are expected to reject what they read; the real social critique occurs in the act of reading, which completes what is on the pages of the novel.“2 The text, nevertheless, seems to stand in the way of choosing sides when the mixed reaction it inspires includes a mixed reaction to the victims of social injustice. The distortions of social institutions, of human relationships, and of self- justifying discourse in the novel are mirrored in the twisted irony of self-referential elements such as titles. Traditionally a way to interpret or at least to introduce expectations, the chapter titles in this novel are offensively inappropriate. “Los nil‘ios, primero” seems at first to refer either to the literal fact that Cledy sees them first in her tour of the orphanage or to the usual practice of evacuating women and children first from a dangerous situation; however, in this novel the children are also the first to die. “Estreno,” the term used for opening night or for ‘° Lockhart points out that Mrs. Davies” and Mrs. Perigorde’s self-depictions as good woman and their horror at the words others use for prostitutes along with their own reluctance to pronounce them clash grotesquely with their barbaric actions (103). “ For Arat’ljo, Gambaro is critiquing a model of femininity centered around passivity and vulnerability. ‘2 She has told Marina Durationa, “esa moraleja debia desprenderse de le oposicion del publico: ‘ Esto no puede ser; esto que presenta esta obra no puede ser: no debe ser asi’” (409). 141 the first time a new item is worn, refers hereto Cledy's new nightgown first, but to her forced loss of virginity second."3 “LNG hay un error?” is a gargantuan understatement referring to Horacio’s and Cledy’s partner exchange with his parents. “For suerte, sin consecuencias” alludes to the lack of dents on the car that hits Alicia, not to Alicia, whose speech becomes halting and erratic after the accident. “aQuo puedo esperar?” heads the section in which Cledy is imprisoned first with a dying parent and than with a stinking corpse. She can expect to be enclosed, to be held to duties created for her by others; she can expect death. “iOuo insolitol” is an indifferent reaction to the death of the children; and “Por suerte, esto se acaba” is the final offence to the reader. It implies either that death is good fortune, presumably by way of contrast with life, or that the novel’s end is a relief. The title and prologue of the novel are hardly more helpful. “Ganarse la muerte” as title evokes expressions such as “ganarse la vida,” “ganarse el pan,” or “ganarse la loteria.” One does not usually aam or win death, as if it were a salary or a prize. The two parts of the title produce tension, as do the two exclamations in the prologue, each repeated three times: “iquo maravillal” and “My, si uno pudiera saber!” The first “iquo maravillal” follows a description of the father waiting eagerly for the new child. This allusion to the wonder of birth is followed within three lines by the second instance of this exclamation, this time referring to the fact that although both torturer and victim cry at birth, only one of them will cry out later on. The third time it appears within a sentence: “Pero ‘3 Equally offensive is the fact that Cledy is fifteen when she is introduced to sexual abuse and rape. Fifteen is traditionally the age at which a young debutante is presented to Argentina 142 nada se sabe en esa gran incognita, iquo maravillal, el misterio de la vida” (9) The great unknown is the impossibility of identifying predator and victim and consequently of preventing the tragedy.“ Thus “iquo maravillal” is an ambivalent phrase with no fixed value, although its repetition misleads the reader into thinking that it does. Similarly, “iAy, si uno pudiera saberl” is repeated only to multiply perplexity since the role each new child will play is unknowable. The three references to death and two to killing in the prologue create false expectations in the reader. Death at birth is the only innocence; the voice in the prologue foresees a lifetime of subjection leading to a docile death; the only recommendation to be gleaned is not to accept death passively (“ganarse duramente la muerte”). The references to killing, by their parallel structure, suggest that to kill the enemy is to kill patience. If, however, the author is advising the characters not to be patient, they do not follow that advice. The interaction between devices generally expected to provide meaning (chapter titles, prologue, comments by the narrator, characters with whom to identify) and the lack of coherence in the text itself, which does not fulfill the expectations created by those devices, produce a discomfort typical of the grotesque effect. Cledy’s poems prove similarly unsettling. Since all four of them appear in the last quarter of the novel, one expects them to offer a distillation of her life experiences. In the first, Cledy returns the words lent to her through the vessel society. “ Morell inadvertently points out the grotesque effect of the text as it evokes wonder and horror simultaneously through the poetic devices of parallelism and repetition. For her this section demonstrates the power of the poetic word to situate itself outside of the confusion of voices in the text (1 88). 143 of her body. While it is true that Cledy's body speaks of her suffering, her torment and death do not flow logically from her life."5 The longest poem, “Dorrnir juntos,” suggests that love can recover hope and make that hope real in life: Y por amor el que sa perdio en la pesadilla vualve a sofiar con nihos y crea la alegria Vuelve a aspirar el cuerpo ajeno para craar los suef'Ios cotidianos y despertar mas tarde y hacerlos vivir apenas modificados por los ojos abiertos. (172) The return from nightmare, however, is only very temporary since the worst nightmare is yet to come: the dreamed-of children are killed in the very next chapter, destroying the expectations created by the poem. The remaining two poems form a pair which deals with the proportion of death to life and vice versa. Cledy wants a death that fits the measure of her life: No quiero demasiada muerte ni tampoco insuficiente. La necesaria apenas para mi vida sobre la tierra. (165) The novel ends with the same poem, except that death and life have changed places. Death now sets the standard for life; it has become the measure. The title of the novel and the last phrase of the poem bracket the whole story of Cledy: a life that is surrounded by death, that becomes death. What should be ‘5 For Morell, Cledy speaks In her own voice and maintains the integrity of her personhood through her use of the poetic word. In this she resembles Toni in Nada qua var con ofia histon'a. 144 the story of a life in Argentina is really about death in Argentina. The reversal of priorities is a grotesque distortion of what ought to be, just as bodies, relationships, and the text itself have become twisted. The pattem established in the text is to treat it with extreme skepticism. The reader has been alienated from the beginning by the unreliability of the usual signposts, by the grotesque body as sign of debasement or of undeserved suffering, by the distortions of the normal, now become abnorrnel and perverse. The multiple versions of an event, expressed in words or in body language, contradict one another and create distance and disbelief. For example, the death of Cledy’s parents is told from radically diverging perspectives, one naive (50), one cynical (16). During the Process, the news appeared only in the official bulletins of the armed forces (Crawley 421 ); that is to say, history was being written by the oppressors. The public had to Ieam to read between the lines and to distance themselves from the text they were offered, reconstructing it from an ambiguous and untrustworthy message. Gambaro duplicates that process here for the education of a new generation of readers. Conclusion In Ganarse la muerte we find all three components of Kayser’s definition of the grotesque. The text includes structural and stylistic elements described by Bakhtin, by Kayser, and by Harpham, such as the debasement of authority figures and official discourse by means of the grotesque body, the estrangement of reader and characters from their surroundings by the disintegration of reality as they know it, and contradictory strategies of communication that confuse and 145 disorient the reader. The coexistent humor and horror pull simultaneously in opposite directions. A coincidence of pity for Cledy and Horacio and rejection of their passivity, even stupidity, creates a clash of emotions exacerbated by the ambiguity of the text. The prevalence of abnormality, even monstrosity, in social institutions, particularly the family, which is associated normally with protection and nurture, boobytraps the plot, drawing the unsuspecting reader into the presence of horror at the moment the character and he begin to feel secure. The violence practiced on the most helpless of victims invites an indignation which is then subverted by comedy. Like the protagonists of the grotesco criollo, Gambaro’s characters fall over their feet, trip over their tongues, and gradually relinquish their humanity. Unable to break free of their social masks even as they are destroyed by them, they invite more derision than compassion. The body in Ganarse la muerte speaks its own language in counterpoint to the word of authority that circumscribes it. As in Una felicidad con manos pane and Lo impenetrable, the grotesque body recontextualizes and redirects the written word through its brokenness and its transformations. The death and decay surrounding the father figures, the monstrosity of the abusers, and the basenass of their thoughts distance the reader from the allegiance they would normally receive. The abjection inspired by the battered, disfigured bodies of the victims in tension with the protectiveness they elicit creates a grotesque effect that destabilizes and forces a confrontation with the reality denied by the authoritative discourse of the narrator. By refusing to allow human beings to 146 become abstractions, Gambaro has refocused public attention on en Argentina that neither said what it was doing nor did what it was saying. 147 WORD AND BODY LANGUAGE IN UNA FELICIDAD CON MEMOS PENA AND LO IMPENETRABLE Julia Kristeva observes regarding Mikhail Bakhtin that he conceives of the “’literery word’ as an intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialogue among several writings.” These writings may be the words on the page, the text of the addressee or the character, or the surrounding culture ("lNord, Dialogue and Novel” 36). The Bakhtinian perspective on the grotesque teaches us nothing if not the additional presence of the grotesque body as yet another text, which radically transforms perception of the written word by recontextualizing it within cosmic flux and the renewal of culture.’ References to the grotesque body may relativize surrounding discourse by means of the artistic principle of debasement, wherein it is related to bodily functions such as excretion or childbirth, or simply by the use of the body to comically contradict what is being said. In Griselda Gambaro’s Una felicidad con manos pane and Lo impenetrable both of these techniques apply to create a multilayered text in which the written word contradicts itself and is contradicted by body language. Within these two novels, separated by sixteen years, we find themes and techniques that respectively foreshadow and echo one another and other works by Gambaro, such as the complexity and dysfunctionality of human relationships, the problematic nature of male commentary on those relationships, and the 1 Bakhtin argues that the grotesque conception of the body in its simultaneous signifying of death and birth refers to social and historic themes such as changing eras and the renewal of culture (318, 324). 148 presence of the body, especially the female body, as a graphic but mute protest to its use and misuse by men. Una fellcldad can manos pena In Una felicidad con manos pena the narrator, unemployed and virtually penniless, is invited by an apparently well-to-do gentleman variously called Eustaquio and Heriberto to move in with him. Since Eustaquio/Heriberto has established himself as a generous individual by sharing his cigarettes, the narrator agrees and moves his accumulated junk and his dog, Boby, to Eustaquio’s patio, where he constructs a shack after he realizes that his host’s generosity does not extend to the use of a bed. Eustaquio limits access to his large house to one room, which gradually fills up with other people until it becomes nearly impossible to circulate or even to breathe. The interest of Eustaquio and the narrator is soon piqued by what appears to be a large furry dog and turns out to be an overweight woman with shaggy hair named Maria Rosa, generally called the fat lady (la gorda) within the narration. Eustaquio becomes romantically interested in Maria Rosa and she in him, but his inability to give up any of his belongings including his chair—which eventually becomes inextricable from his rump—frustrates a true relationship and in the and prevents him from saving her from being crushed to death. A black woman brought in by the fat lady (ostensibly to help clean and wash dishes but probably to provide her with shelter) has with her a baby which is put out in a torrential downpour by the inhabitants of the room because it will not stop crying. Eustaquio’s sidekick Atilio, obsessed with sticking people with a sharp piece of 149 metal, eventually kills the baby. After Maria Rosa is crushed by the crowd and the others appear to have succumbed as well, the narrator sets out to find elsewhere happiness that involves less pain. This strange tale has been interpreted as a social parable in which a well- meaning bourgeois figure finds himself incapable of canying out his plan to share his wealth because he cannot bring himself to part with his belongings (see Tompkins 180). It is also a picture of stunted psychological growth where an adUlt male is shackled to his obsessions (hair fetish, violence) and apparently afraid of the reciprocity of a normal heterosexual relationship.“ In addition, Una felicidad can manos pena relativizes and renders problematic the centrality of the male word by means of its self-contradictions and through body language, particularly the language of the female body. During much of the narration, the narrator and Eustaquio seem to share an interpretation of the situation; however, their version is constantly questioned and undermined by their own words and actions as well as by the physical consequences of their attitudes, and eventually the narrator’s allegiance shifts from Eustaquio to his victims. The problematic nature of the central male authority figure and consequent questioning of that authority, as well as the depiction of suffering and lack of nurture, reappear in later works such as Nada qua var can otra historia, Ganarse la muerte, Dias no nos quiere cantantas and Daspuos del dl’a da fiesta. 2 Cynthia Tompkins, while focusing on the abjection of the maternal through the treatment of living and dead bodies and of bodily excretions such as saliva and mucus, posits the regression of Eustaquio/Heriberto as representative of the symbolic order, gradually immobilized and without signs of sexual differentiation to the point where incest (particularly given the maternal image projected by the fat women) seems a more appropriate image than does marriage (181). 150 Authority and Self-Contradiction Eustaquio/Heriberto is depicted by the nameless narrator as good, generous, and powerful, a godlike figure who inspires allegiance and respect. Kindness, according to the narrator, appears on his face like a photograph (7); in fact, his face resembles Christ’s (10). Eustaquio smiles even when life is killing him (18) and is variously described as angelic and possessing a heart of gold (19, 28). To give, says he, is his only desire (29). One look inspires the ewe usually reserved for God the Father (38). Nevertheless, Eustaquio’s benevolent words and appearance are gainsaid almost immediately by his own actions and words, thus juxtaposing contradictory texts which when read simultaneously create shock and rejection in the reader to the detriment of his acceptance by that reader as authority figure. The narrator registers both “texts” concurrently, apparently without the ability to decide between them until very late in the narrative. For instance, Eustaquio calls Atilio “hijo mic” and then hits him in the legs with a chair (24); the description of his smiling demeanor is followed by his closing the door on the narrator’s fingers and instructing him to shut up. Even the narrator’s tendency to make excuses for his host (“pero are un angel el ser‘ior Eustaquio” [18]) seems to backfire when Eustaquio fails to live up to the noble motives attributed to him. When Eustaquio explains his desire to share with his “brothers and sisters” to his new acquaintance, the fat lady, he immediately undercuts his own rhetoric by excluding the first person she sees from that privileged group: necesitaba compartir, los otros eran sus herrnanos, todos, “(,lo sable?”, pregunto y ella me tendio la mano y dijo: “Encantada.” 151 “Esta no”, aclaro el ser‘ior Eustaquio y me aparto. Calculo tan mal el envion que por poco no cai sentado en la calle. (28-29) Later, when he defends the right to a space in his house for people who will not work to support themselves, he goes on to contradict himself by failing to apply his own principles to the black woman who is mourning the loss of her baby son: Le propuse aI seiior Eustaquio clausurar Ia puerta de calla y detener la invasion, pero él era mas bueno que un santo. “Todos tienen el mismo derecho”, me dijo, bastante enojado, y yo me santi como un puerco, aunque bastante feliz de poseer mi chalet en el patio. “La negrita no trabaja”, me dijo. Y yo pensé para que queria que trabajara si la que sobraban eran brazos, pero él no habia invitado a los otros para que trabajaran. (68) The self-contradicting discourse and rupture between speech and actions in Eustaquio extemalize an inner conflict in which the nature of his motives become gradually less clear and therefore constitute a questionable foundation for his authority. For instance, as the inhabitants of Eustaquio’s room increase exponentially, his reflections are sprinkled with clashing references to them and to his conflicting feelings: Habia invitado a uno o dos, Y se habian multiplicado coma los panes, en una promiscuidad aberrante. Los habia recibido con los brazos abiertos, alma de apostol, de martir. Comia pan con salame y los miraba. Ninguno le resultaba particularrnente simpatico, salvo la gorda El resto era decepcionante. Gente maleducada .... “iQué paste de gentel”, me confio el ser'ior Eustaquio que, sin embargo, no quiso escuchar palabra de rechazarlos. (37) At times Eustaquio’s words and actions serve not so much to contradict as to render ridiculous the noble sentiment he has just expressed, as when he seals his engagement to Maria Rosa with a dirty piece of string (74) or eats bread with salami as he reflects on his apostleship or martyrdom (see above). Expressions 152 such as promiscuidad, aberranta, and pasta juxtaposed on a meditation on his altruism achieve verbally what the salami or the string do visually: they implement a drastic and sudden change of register from high to low, which constitutes a typical debasement pattern. His tender feelings for his fellow man lead comically to a reference to excrement: “... Si no tuviera semejantes, aqua seria de mi? Un mundo solo habitado par perros, por lluvia, par arboles. iCacel, qué horror”. Lo de la caca no me gusto nada, debo confesarlo, porque la frase me habia entusiasmedo y se me ocurrio que la terminaba cruelmente. Contemplo a Atilio, que bufaba y se masticaba por todos lados (23) This scene illustrates a multiple undermining of the discourse of authority: not only does Eustaquio himself descend from the sublime to the ridiculous, but the narrator makes explicit the conflict that this change in rhetoric sets off in himself as listener. The coup da grace is Atilio as exemplar of Eustaquio’s fellow man, snorting like an animal and chewing on himself. Eustaquio’s rhetoric regarding his high calling (apostleship, martyrdom) to share his worldly goods with others is also contradicted by his obsession with the accumulation of things solely for the sake of possession rather than for use: the hundreds of unopened bottles and room upon room full of furniture, including beds never slept in (11). The narrator accepts somewhat doubtfully his feeble excuse about saving those rooms for future visitors with the self-reassurance that Mr. Eustaquio is so kind that he must be right, whereupon Eustaquio spreads his short stature over two beds while everyone else sleeps on the floor (45). The narrator compares him to an ostrich, grabbing everything it sees (42). On the same page where Eustaquio moves his listeners to tears with the confession that 153 his only desire is to give, he snatches Maria Rosa’s glasses from her face (29). Eventually he turns into a caricaturesque being, unnaturally fat and sweating in the twenty shirts he bartered for with Atilio but unwilling to remove them. Immobilized by the chair which he refuses to give up, the now absolute rupture between word and deed has him shouting encouragement to Maria Rosa, whom he supposedly loves and wants to marry, as he chooses to protect his chair rather then save her life (87). At last the remaining beneficiaries of his grand but empty gesture die, deprived of food, air, and space, as Eustaquio indulges his obsession with hair by shaving off all of Baby's fur and the narrator abandons him in search of a less impossible situation. He no longer accepts the mutually exclusive felicidad and pena because he no longer accepts Eustaquio’s authority. Lack of Control and Futility The undermining of authority in this novel is achieved in the general context of the characters’, especially the authority figure’s, lack of control over his own feelings and actions as well as over his environment. Eustaquio fails to control his own words and the very mechanisms of pronouncing them (12): when he smiles his lips twitch spasmodically, revealing his false teeth (32). He shivers in his twenty T-shirts and layers of fat on a very hot day (39) and his saliva runs uncontrollably when he sees a couple clasped in intimate embrace (49). His eyes consistently fail to focus on the person at whom he is lacking (23, 33). His baser instincts constantly break loose from the moorings of his apparently virtuous intentions, as when he kicks Baby and calls him a dirty dog (11) or 154 pushes and bites the narrator (29). A hope akin to happiness lights up his face as he contemplates destroying the fat lady's glasses (30) or cutting off her hair (31). Even productive activities such as sweeping up backfire when, as Atilio digs out garbage from the cracks in the floor with a knitting needle, Eustaquio sweeps it up in a dustpan, only to throw it over his shoulder onto the floor (25). A general atmosphere of failure pervades the story as Eustaquio fails to follow his nobler inclinations or protect his fiancee, the black mother fails to protect her baby in spite of her compulsive wrapping of the child in countless layers (34), the fat lady fails to find her way to the baby in time to save him because Eustaquio has taken away her glasses (59-60), and the narrator fails to protect anyone, even his dog. The futile gesture par excellence is the narrator's attempt to get a confidential message to Eustaquio, who is oblivious to his and Maria Rosa’s mutual attraction. Since he cannot strike up a conversation without being heard or, worse, impaled by Atilio through the keyhole, he resolves to pass him a note via Baby. The note is received, but the crowd chants the “confidential” message at the top of their voices: “iEnamorada de usted y vice versal [Enamorada de usted y vice versal” (67) It is particularly intriguing that the patterns of futility and lack of reciprocity between characters and between speech and actions, intentions and results both correspond and do not correspond to the usual patterns of the grotesco criollo. The general setting in terms of social class follows closely the bourgeois/working class distinctions of the grotesco criollo, where the lower class individual, typically an Italian immigrant, is prevented from functioning as a human being 155 due to the structures and strictures of society (Kaiser-Lenoir 11). According to Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, the humor of the grotesco criollo derives from the contradictions between a higher vital impulse and the socioeconomic reality that derails its fulfillment (49). Specifically, the situation at hand was the failure of the Liberal Program, which brought in a massive wave of immigrants only to see wages fall, unemployment rise, and the tissue of society crumble under the impact of social protest and an eventual coup (51-54). Similarly, in Una felicidad can manos pena the influx of people, most of whom do not belong to the work force, far exceeds the available space and resources, so that Eustaquio’s project to offer them a space in his supposedly ample house fails miserably. What differs here is the bourgeois, supposedly authoritative and successful figure as grotesque character: Discépolo’s grotesque “heroes” were typically working class men who illustrated the bankruptcy of liberal capitalism.“ Eustaquio owns a large house and apparently can afford to eat and purchase an abundance of goods. Yet his behavior careens out of control, and word and body part ways, very much as Discépolo’s unemployed figures, unable to keep their families and their integrity together, lose their humanity as well.“ According to David Vifias, one of the trademarks of the grotesco criollo— and integral to the dehumanization of the protagonist—is the attribution of animal qualities and behavior to human beings (109). The narrator's wish to form a 3 See Vihas 136, 140-41. The immigrant, according to Vliias, has no effect on the world around him because he is unemployed and powerless, and hence becomes less than human: “El grotesco—‘animalizado’—resulta asi la tonne teatral de la soledad coma eje principal del inmigrante fracasado” (140). ‘ For example, Miguel in Discépolo’s Mateo finds himself obliged to deny his ethical values and steel in order to feed his family (Kaiser-Lenoir 69-71). 156 “family” with the fat lady and Baby is mirrored absurdly in his and Eustaquio’s repeated mistaking of her for a dog; the black woman is possessed of a dog-like faithfulness (38); a man in the house breathes like a dog (49); and Eustaquio himself smiles like a hyena (19). Atilio sleeps standing up like a horse (19), the fat lady is as blind as a mole without her glasses (59), and Eustaquio snatches up everything in his path like an ostrich (42). Even the baby has eyes like a bird’s (61). The animalization of human characters reinforces the novel’s ties with the tradition of the grotesco criollo and makes the similarities more transparent. Eustaquio can be seen as a curious inversion of the grotesco criollo protagonist: although both are caught between human face and social mask, the grotesco criollo dramatizes the tearing apart of the individual who has to give up his humanity in favor of dog-eat-dog social survival for the sake of his family. This novel, on the other hand, depicts a kindly social mask which slips to reveal a nasty sort of human being enslaved by his obsessions and his cruelty who cannot bring himself to give them up for the sake of his loved one. Thus if the grotesco criollo posits the dehumanization of the victims of liberal capitalism, Gambaro’s novel unveils the inhumanity of their victimizers. In this way Gambaro denounces social injustice in the spirit of the tradition she acknowledges as her inheritance although she approaches it from the opposite direction. Where she and Discépolo coincide is not only in their critique of economic injustices but in their depiction of the human suffering they cause, and in either case the bourgeois authority figure is thoroughly discredited. 157 Textual Authority and the Narrator The figure of the narrator, initially closely identified with Eustaquio, undergoes a gradual weaning from his admiration and devotion in favor of a more critical stance. His bodily movement into Eustaquio’s house and then back out, eventually distancing himself to the point of moving away, parallels his changing attitude. In general his reactions to Eustaquio’s stinginess and cruelty, although somewhat late in coming and hampered by his insistence on making excuses for his host, seem human enough, so that the reader is more likely to identify with him than with Eustaquio. Any narrative reliability, however, is attenuated by the narrator’s excessive adulation of Eustaquio in spite of the suffering he has caused and by his indulgence in hyperbole. The central male authority figure is thus situated at a double distance: first between character and narrator, and then between narrator and reader. There is in the text a constant pattern of undercutting the motives and rhetoric of Eustaquio in spite of the narrator’s professed devotion to him. When the former pontificates: “Estamos en el mundo por tan poco tiempo,” the latter observes, more realistically, “mi intencion no era quedarrne poco tiempo sino hasta que me echaran a patadas” (23). When Eustaquio expresses an intense desire to have children, the narrator explains that the only thing stopping him was having to share the beds with others (54). Even his compliments seem to come out left-handed, as when he refers to “ese modo suyo, tan cariiioso y decrépito” (46). This pattern dovetails with Eustaquio’s own self-contradiction and lack of 158 self-control to set up a continual flow of affirmation and denial, whether explicit or implicit. Apart from value judgments about Eustaquio’s words and actions, the actual narration is called into question by the destabilizing presence of hyperbole in the text. Particularly descriptions, but in some instances actions, are so exaggerated as to defy the reader to believe them. For example, Eustaquio’s smile goes from ear to ear and around the block, behind his neck (18); when his nostrils flare they flutter like a butterfly and create a wind that obliges the narrator to wrap up to stay warm (57). When he is about to bury the dead baby, the narrator gets a lump in his throat the size of a sailor’s knot (nudo in both instances, 62). Baby is so starved that he chews on a shoe to get some nourishment; eventually he wears his ribs on the outside of his skin (74, 91 ). Especially the descriptions of the human body surpass normal credibility: the black mother'ihas a neck the diameter of a pin (34), skeletal fingers (38), and errns more dry and bare than Baby’s bone (35). She fits through the hole in the door with room to spare (69), and the reason she does not move a muscle in her face is because she has none (70-71). The physical environment of the room takes on hyperbolic characteristics as well, shaking and swelling as it about to explode (90), and the smell in it is enough to kill germs (59). The effect of all this exaggeration is not only to create distance between reader and narration but also to focus attention on the text as text. Whereas a realist narrator seeks to become as invisible as possible so as to create the illusion of being present at the scene and seeing things as they really happened, 159 here the text makes that illusion impossible. The “invisible” narrator is actually an authoritarian narrator, uncontested by the characters or the reader. The structure and tone of this novel imply multiple textual voices—the events as presented in the story, Eustaquio’s and the narrator’s interpretations of those events, the reader’s emotional reaction to the violence and narrative tone as well as his or her assessment of how much of the narration is plausible, and anything in the reader’s experience that modifies an understanding of the text. This same opaque quality of the text encourages a closer examination of all of its aspects, including the treatment of the human body, which is one of the more obvious hyperbolic elements and the one that elicits the most emotional response. The presence of the grotesque body is essential to grotesque realism, defined by Bakhtin as a way of writing where the material bodily principle predominates as a deeply positive though naturally ambivalent element that serves to bring abstractions down to the material level (18-20). Specifically, in Una felicidad can manos pane, a “body language” is created which presents graphically the consequences of Eustaquio's authoritarian text, both mediated and contested by the narrator, and elicits the reader's text, all of which together call into question the validity of his authority. The Grotesque Body and Authority The undercutting of the discourse of authority by means of references to “lower” bodily functions such as eating (the salami) and defecation exemplifies the fundamental artistic principle of grotesque realism, debasement (Bakhtin 370). According to Bakhtin, a downward movement in imagery directs attention 160 toward the material bodily lower stratum, containing the digestive and reproductive organs, replacing the high with the low in a typical camivalesque inversion (383). The devouring, defecating, and generating aspects of the body link it to nature (425) and thus to historical renewal: “the dual body becomes a dual world, the fusion of past and future in the single act of the death of one and the birth of another” (435). What this introduction of ambivalence and degradation accomplishes is a destruction of the official picture of events (439), hence its relevance to the questioning of authority here and elsewhere. Margaret Miles points out that the sheer penetrability of the grotesque body (Bakhtin 339) makes it more appropriately female (Adams and Yates 88). The three rhetorical and pictorial devices commonly associated with the grotesque, caricature, inversion, and hybridization, imply that compared to the “normal” male body, the female body is a deformation (thus grotesque) and unstable, threatening (96), hence Bakhtin’s frequent achievement of degradation through a male-female conversion. The “simultaneously fascinating and terrifying” nature of the female body (103) leads to the public representation of women in such a way as to ensure their control (112). What is ironic about this attempt to control, of course, is that the grotesque body in Bakhtin stands for the inevitable triumph of progress and is therefore uncontrollable. Although ultimately not to be controlled, the grotesque body is nevertheless deeply ambivalent (Bakhtin 304), which accounts for Julia Kristeva’s reference to this dynamic of identification and alterity as “a vortex of summons and repulsion” (Powers of Horror 1 ). According to Kristeva, abjection 161 is closely associated with the fear of the archaic mother and her power to procreate (77). Fear of the female is in some ways a fear of life itself, and in Una felicidad can manos pena the abjection of the feminine reflects the male authority figure’s fear of human relationships and the choices they imply. The representation of female and infant figures as grotesque in the narrative mirror attitudes both evinced by Eustaquio and attributed to him by the narrator. When Eustaquio’s lofty pronouncements are brought down to their bodily implications for his victims, however, not only is he literally paralyzed by his conflictive reactions to the human body, but the reader—and eventually the narrator—is horrified by the suffering and ugliness that inevitably ensue. Abjection is then transferred to Eustaquio himself as a reflection of the narrator’s increasing distance from the character with whom he most identified initially. According to Kristeva, abjection is a way of living the grotesque from the inside (93). What leaks out of the male or female body—any secretion—is abject (102) because it constitutes a breach of boundaries (103), even though it originates within the intimacy of the body itself. Paradoxically, the transformation of the self in its bodily form is a source of horror when it becomes a corpse, at which point it is seen as an equivalent of excrement and a representation of danger from without (71). The establishment of selfhood through abjection would thus seem to be at the same time an estrangement from the self at its most intimate. According to Elizabeth Grosz, abjection’s ties with death, the animal, and the material all point to simultaneous acceptance and rejection of our bodily nature (Tompkins 185). 162 The highly unstable and malleable quality of the body in Una felicidad can manos pena sets the scene for the clash of emotions it elicits. According to Bakhtin, the grotesque body is not “a closed, completed unit: it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits” (26). Similarly, the body in this novel shrinks and expands, is penetrated and secretes. Its hyperbolic representation further contributes to its perception as grotesque and to the abjection it inspires. The fat lady's body is squeezed and flattened (“hasta Ias tetas,” 74) to pass through a crack in the door; Eustaquio’s swells into a ball of fat (39) as he refuses to leave his chair. Atilio pierces bodies with his piece of metal, drawing blood; sweat, mucus, tears, and saliva flow freely. Eventually all bodies except the narrator’s become corpses, their decomposition suggested by the fingernail falling off the hand that sticks out through the door (91). Eustaquio’s professed desire to share what he has with the less fortunate is not only contradicted by his hoarding of food at the expense of his guests, who go hungry, and his denial of space, so that they eventually suffocate, but also by concrete images of the body as abject. His unwillingness to share anything other than hard, stale bread with the others leads to an attempt to make it palatable by moistening it, not with milk, which he explains, is not digestible with flour products, but with water. This revolting porridge makes the narrator want to vomit (21). Furthermore, Eustaquio himself is depicted repulsively as a copiously sweating ball of lard; his obsession with ownership prevents him from shedding even one shirt so that sweet pours down his face until he can not open his mouth (42). His compulsive attachment to his chair, which he justifies in terms of 163 maintaining order, leaves his rump covered with sores (79). His unwillingness to turn anyone away even after the narrator suggests it as a practical solution (37, 68) creates at first a body odor so ovenivhelming as to kill germs (59) and eventually the indelible image of Maria Rosa’s sweet head, crushed and purplish (88). A close reading of the novel reveals at least as much abjection related to male figures as to females. Although Cynthia Tompkins in her groundbreaking study of abjection in Gambaro and Orphoe considers its force to be primarily directed towards the feminine, specifically the maternal (180-81), the grotesque imagery and the revulsion it elicits are ultimately concentrated in the male characters and the suffering and death they cause.“ The narrator's gradual acceptance of, even identification with, female and infant bodies at the expense of his connection with Eustaquio, whose unkind words and cruel actions trigger this change in attitude, reinforces the reader's horror at the situation that Eustaquio has created. The two female figures in the text are complementary: the black woman is a mother, albeit an inefficient one; the fat lady gives abundant evidence of her maternal instinct but has no children. The black mother is depicted as completely unattractive: “la negrita era flaca y oscura, sin colmillos, una tabla. éQuién habia sido el suicide que la habia usufructuado?” (47). The repulsion the 5 Tompkins’ emphasis on the abjection of the maternal is most likely due to its correlation to Eustaquio’s regression. Gradually immobilized by his chair, the twenty T-shirts, his fat and sores, and the huge pyjamas, unable to consummate the desired marriage, he seems more like an infant son than like a husband. (181) While this emphasis rightly illuminates what becomes of the representative of the symbolic order, the reader, and ultimately the narrator, cease to share Eustaquio’s abjection of the feminine and shift their revulsion to what he is, says, and does. 164 narrator expresses toward her contrasts with the stirrings of sexual interest awakened by Maria Rosa’s mouth, ears (27) and breasts (36). Both of them elicit conflicting reactions in both Eustaquio and the narrator, although for somewhat different reasons. The black woman’s chief attraction to the former, once he gets over his initial irritation, is her potential usefulness as a servant. Instructed to wash the dishes, she breaks them because she will not relinquish her child (36). He has no patience with her once she fails to fulfill his expectations, and he complains inconsistently that she does not work, even though the narrator points out that neither does anyone else. Her lack of feminine roundness elicits the exaggerated description of her bony arms and absence of facial muscles cited above. Her protective wrapping of her baby inspires more vexation than admiration, since it keeps everyone from seeing the child (34-35). The narrator’s main displeasure with her, other than her ugliness, is due to her failure to protect her baby from Atilio’s puncturing iron when she lays the child on the floor. The black woman is chiefly defined by lack; Maria Rosa exudes abundance. Her hair is described as a huge thatch that shades her from the sun and swallows up the narrator's glove. Her body is immense (26-27). The baby disappears between her breasts (44), and she is so huge that Atilio does not need to move to reach her, so that her skin, soon covered with puncture wounds, resembles a strainer (43). Eustaquio’s reaction to her is, once again, inappropriate: he is fascinated by her hair, which he calls delicious as he rummages in the drawer for scissors (31). He eventually professes to be in love 165 with her, after the narrator points out his growing attraction in the “confidential” note, and offers marriage, his chair and a kiss. Nevertheless, he pulls the chair out from under her, slaps her hand, and succumbs to his obsession, shaving off all of her hair (77-78). The multiple invasions of her body by Atilio’s pointed instrument and Eustaquio’s scissors are balanced by her copious secretions of tears and mucus as she weeps over the dead baby and her rejection by Eustaquio. She thus embodies the grotesque characteristics of overflowing abundance and permeability, while her secretions and blood blur the boundaries between her body and her surroundings. The narrator, when confronted with grotesque female and infant bodies, reacts initially with revulsion as does Eustaquio, but as these bodies display the consequences of Eustaquio’s arbitrary authoritarianism and contradict his discourse, the narrator gradually places himself at a critical distance and transfers his abjection to the figure that he initially admired. His disgust with the black woman turns into pity; not only does he defend her to Eustaquio but he offers her a place in his shack outside. He identifies with her feelings instead of focusing on her repulsiveness: Ella no se lo merecia. Primero la habian compadecido y apantallado, y ahora la acusaban de sucia, matricida y otras lindezas, amenazandola, incluso, con entregarla a la policia. (70) Although the narrator alternates between his attraction to Maria Rosa and his focus on her inordinate hugeness and less pleasant secretions, Eustaquio’s mistreatment of her coupled with her kindness triggers a transfer of identification from Eustaquio to her as well as a sudden transformation of his perceptions of 166 her from grotesque to beautiful. Immediately after he excuses Eustaquio’s inability to relinquish the chair as a way of keeping order in the house, when Maria Rosa explains that she hopes to wean him from his compulsive possessiveness so that others may also sit down, Eustaquio screams at her and the narrator suddenly sees her in a new light: “lLa boca se te haga a un lado, necial”, grito, y en ese momenta, juro que me costo disculparlo, por el insulto y el tuteo, y la gorda, con la cabeza monda, dejo de recordarrne una naranja can care y me parecio de una hemlosura extraterrena. (79) At the conclusion of this scene the mob inside the house crushes the fat lady to death, and the narrator is left with the simultaneously sweet and horrifying image of her head, crushed and bruised—the ultimate grotesque. The progression of imagery related to abjection from the female to the male completes the narrator’s transfer of identification, always problematic and conflictive, away from the male authority figure and toward the helpless and mistreated. Along with his changing attitude toward Maria Rosa and the black mother, he comes to see the baby in a different way as a result of the indifference and cruelty with which it is treated. Initially the baby serves to contradict Eustaquio’s professed fatherly instincts. Eustaquio claims to adore children (34), but when the baby cries he has him put out in the pouring rain, and when Maria Rosa unwraps him afterward Eustaquio is repelled by the physical reality of a sick baby: cuando par fin asomaron los brazos y las piemas lanzo una exclamacion de alegria que, en seguida, se troco en espanto. [Que desilusionl El chico era francamente asqueroso y antes de que la gorda acabara de desnudarlo, aparto la vista. La came oscura se apretaba contra los huesitos, un monton de pelo negro, 167 aplastado y chorreante, la boca abierta, sin dientes, el sexo blanco. Pero la gorda procedia coma si hubiera dascubierto un tesoro (51 -52) The narrator appears to share Eustaquio’s revulsion, since it is he who describes the child and calls him disgusting; nevertheless, after the child’s death he feels sorrow, sees him as worthy of compassion, and attempts to imagine the coffin as if he were the child inside it, so that he now identifies with the victim: Tristemente, me encarguo da la ceremonia. Antes, la descubri la care para que mirara un poco hacia arriba. (Para que iba a mirar, el pobrecito, sino la aleta de la madera? Estuve mirandolo un rato yo tambien, para que no se fuera asi, sin nadie, aparte de la negrita, que recordara su cara. Los ojos eran duros, impavidos, coma ojos de pajarito. Los miraba con compasion, pero casi tranquilamente, cuando de pronto se me vino el alma a los pies y les puse la mano encima. A los ojos, si, e asas bolitas de vidrio puestas en esa care miserable de babe raquitico. [Ouo destinol, me dije, con un nudo en la garganta grande coma nudo marinara. (61 -62) Not only is the narrator's vision of the women and the child transformed, but his realignment with the victims is complemented by his abjection of the victimizer. The grotesque vision of humanity is maintained throughout the narrative since no depiction is devoid of some degree of repulsiveness, but the balance gradually shifts away from those Eustaquio mistreats and toward Eustaquio himself. The abundant references to his increasing repulsiveness as he is immobilized by his fat, his sores, and his chair, together with his bodily secretions such as his sweat, are reinforced by his physiological reaction to the couple embracing as if they were alone: “jadeaba con la boca abierta y no podia hablar, la saliva le caia como un rio blanco. espeso” (49). The narrator’s expectation that Eustaquio would soften his reproach with a kindly word is 168 contradicted by the latter’s attitude. The description of the saliva bears a much closer resemblance to semen, which indicates at the very least a suspicion of base motives in a figure which the narrator professes to admire. The progression of the Dracula motif within the plot reflects the narrator’s changing perceptions. Early on, the narrator’s dog, Baby, climbs onto a chair at Eustaquio’s house and begins to lick a wound on his paw. The narrator justifies Eustaquio kicking Baby off the chair because Baby’s behavior is repulsive: “no era para manos, Iamerse la sangre es una cosa repugnante, de vampiros” (12). Later, Atilio is described as having a face like Dracula’s (22); the narrator clearly has no desire to identify himself with this poor excuse for a human being: “deseé tener Ias patas de Baby para pertenecer a otro genera” (40). Eventually Eustaquio’s mistreatment of Maria Rosa prompts the narrator’s observation: “para mi, él la chupaba la sangre” (69). At this point the repugnant behavior initially restricted to the dog has been extended to a figure which is supposed to command respect. By now the baby is dead and the narrator has seen enough that, although he continues to make excuses for Eustaquio from time to time, he also finds him at least as disgusting as anyone else. The narrator’s relationship with Eustaquio has become deeply problematic; his relationship with the reader turns progressively problematic as wall. The narrator doubles Eustaquio’s behavior in many ways, by not acting upon the noble sentiments he expresses and by his judgment of Eustaquio’s actions or inaction while doing nothing himself to remedy the situation. As Ruth Budd has pointed out, he insists initially that Baby is like a brother to him, yet ha 169 apparently breaks the dog’s legs, tries to sell him together with his junk, and also expresses a desire to substitute a pedigreed dog for him in an effort to increase his social status (75). When the crowding becomes intense, the narrator suggests to Eustaquio that he close the door to prevent more from coming In (68), instead of recommending that he allow them access to more rooms of the house. He does not offer his “chalet” in the patio to any of them, although eventually he does invite the black mother in. Prudishly fastidious, he announces, “lo de la caca no me gusto,” but he does nothing to counteract the degradation of the phrase that sparks his enthusiasm, “si no tuviera semejantes, aquo seria de mi?” (23). His concern for his fellow man takes a back seat for his concern for his own hide: he sends Baby in with a message where he himself dares not enter, and remains outside the door, a witness to the death of the baby and Maria Rosa, unwilling to risk his own safety in their defence. Budd suggests that Eustaquio may be interpreted as a dictator“ with enough charisma to attract followers, and his house as Argentina (81). The house “belies its initial impression of luxury and wealth” (82) and becomes seriously overcrowded. One might then see Eustaquio’s inertia in the face of Maria Rosa’s endangerment as not only materialistic but also ideological. If the narrator represents the mainstream population of Argentina, he anticipates the Whiner in Daspuos del dia da fiesta, who as established immigrant resents the newer arrivals. Taken in by Eustaquio’s empty rhetoric, his early illusions ° Consistent with this intepretation, Budd also posits the chair as a visualization of “his obsessive desire to retain his seat of power" and his methods to include violence (81); Atilio is a torturer under the power of the dictator (thus a victim) and at the same time a victimizer of the inhabitants (82). 170 become disillusionment as he “remains on the fringes of the domestic space” and “maintains enough reasoning ability to realize eventually that he will not have a better future as long as he remains in this house” (Budd 82). If the narrator does represent mainstream Argentines, he also stands for the many Argentines who witnessed repression but did nothing to stop it and who preferred to justify the dictator rather than endanger their own lives in an effort to stop the suffering he allowed. He may furthermore be seen as the writer who, either from exile or from a position of self-serving inertia, prefers not to rock the boat. Until the last, he prefers to think that the victims’ death rattle is snoring (91). The narrator’s inaction and hypocrisy are also condemned by the grotesque bodies of the victims, including Baby's sham body, reminiscent of a slug’s, so starved that his ribs are on the outside of his skin. The reader rejects not only Eustaquio’s hoarding of goods and his meanness but the narrator's complicity and cowardliness. As the narrator takes his leave of Eustaquio’s house, what was to be a home for the needy has instead become their tomb. The early indications of the denouement—the fermenting bodies and than Maria Rosa’s death—ere borne out by the collective death rattle and ensuing deathly silence in the house (91- 92). The ultimate abjection is reserved for corpses, an abjection associated with Eustaquio early on through the narrator's reference to his corpselike pallor due to his collection of T-shirts and the lack of fresh air (41). Eustaquio’s discourse of authority has been contradicted from the beginning by his own self- 171 contradictions, by his problematic relationship with the narrator, and by the counterdiscourse of the body. Lo impenetrable The parody of the erotic novel that Gambaro achieves in La impenetrable was admittedly a new venture for her, which nevertheless, as she explains on the back cover of the 1984 edition, returns in a humorous vein to themes which she had previously treated seriously. Such themes include the female body as it graphically shows up male domination and abuse, as in Una felicidad can manos pena, Ganarse la muerte, Dias no nos quiere contentos, and Daspuos del dla da fiesta; and the juxtaposition of the male authoritative word and its contradiction by physical reality and reader sympathies, as in especially Una felicidad can manos pane and Ganarse la muerte. The use of a parodic text—or burlesque, as David Foster prefers to call it 7—is particularly conducive to multiple readings: first of all of the narrative at face value and then of the text as it relates to prior texts; and once the reader’s attitude toward the novel’s language has been oriented by its parodic nature toward more than one reading, he or she is likely to perceive it also as a phallocentric pursuit narrative undercut at every turn by the body itself as text. The plot of La impenetrable traces the frustrated search of a pair of would- be lovers for physical fulfillment of their mutual attraction. An English gentleman, referred to as al caballara perhaps to highlight his generic status as the pursuing and somewhat idealized male, becomes obsessed by his desire for sexual 7 Foster 288. He develops particularly the inversion of the typical male-pursuing-female pattern as well as the comic recasting of the topoi of quest literature. 172 possession of Madame X, an aristocratic lady slightly past her prime but unequivocally receptive to his advances. Their initial contact is—appropriately— clouded by a confusion of identity: Madame X is sure that the gentleman pacing the sidewalk opposite her window did not dance with her the night before, despite his ardent claims to having fallen for her under those circumstances. The gentleman pursues Madame X through a series of impassioned missives in which he assures her in no uncertain terms of his desire to penetrate her; his ardor, however, is constantly thwarted by his uncontrollable male organ, which is aroused to erections and premature ejaculations of enormous proportions by such innocuous items as her handkerchief, her maid, Marie, or her voice pronouncing his name, Jonathan. His Gargantuan member lands him in the hospital twice and in prison once, exhausts him physically and emotionally to the point of fleeing his beloved until the very end of the novel, and eventually does him in. Madame X, ironically, is penetrated by nearly everyone except by Jonathan, who dies claiming that it is only the unknown (the la impenetrable of the title) that gives true pleasure (148). The Male Grotesque The most obvious aspect of Gambaro’s burlesque of pomography—which Foster characterizes as male-authored, male-centered, and male-addressed (284, 287)—is the constant relinquishment of control by the very figure who is normally in complete control of the situation—the male pursuer. Jonathan appears to direct the relationship by means of his notes to Madame X, setting up multiple rendezvous, exciting her appetite, and answering her every question 173 almost before she has formulated it. Nevertheless, none of these encounters take place as planned, the denouemant anticipated in the notes never comes to pass, and even his vigils outside her window and in disaster. Meanwhile, even as others achieve what he is unable to attain, his sexual organ controls him like a helpless puppet, to the point of usurping his self-datannination and becoming a character in itself. At the same time, that very organ is described in such impossibly hyperbolic terms and personified to such an extreme degree that by virtue of its excess it renders the centrality of the phallus as an entity demanding satisfaction completely ridiculous, an effect that calls into question the underlying premise of pornography as phallocentric discourse. Furthermore, as Foster is quick to point out, the traditional pattern in the erotic novel—male initiative—is inverted when Madame X takes over the pursuit once Jonathan abdicates his traditional role (289). In addition, the presence of the female body, or even the prospect of an actual encounter with it, paralyzes Jonathan’s ability to act and renders him almost totally passive, thus completing the role reversal. Jonathan’s abdication of power is hinted at on the very first page of the narrative when the missive to Madame X with which he initiates their relationship is found to be written in a shaky script that transgresses its normal place on the page; the spasmodic blotches of ink prefigure another liquid, later to be spilled spasmodically as well (9). He explains in the note that his hand has become stuck in the cupped position it adopted as he thought of her breast, and that his heart shudders violently (10). His inability to control his sexual functions is anticipated by his description of himself as a sail swelled by the wind and then 174 flaccid and damp above a slippery deck (10-11). The aptness of that metaphor is immediately made evident by his body language upon receipt of the handkerchief she tosses down to him as he waits under her window for a reply to his letter: “Lo beso repetidas veces mientres su cuerpo se movie freneticamente, de atras hacia adelante, perforando el aire” (17). The violence of his reaction eventually provokes orgasm an massa in the circle of bystanders on the sidewalk (29), a generalization of sexual helplessness that becomes a motif throughout the novel. After smelling (not even touching) a lock of Madame’s hair, the gentleman goes into an incontrollable series of ninety-nine orgasms which send him to the hospital, dangerously weakened. Here his penis begins to acquire a life of its own,“ as well as a personality: it thinks on its own and acts accordingly (43), remaining erect while he lies prostrate, strong enough to raise the rest of the body: El caballara se ponia boca abajo, para el mastil lo levantaba, y tratar de sujetarlo con las manos era pear, se encabritaba mas, pegaba dentelladas. Se retorcia como una culebra entre los dedos del caballara y, en plan de comparacion animal, escupia como un sapo y terminaba por escapar, dejandole los dedos ht’lmedos y olorosamente pringosos. (44) During Jonathan’s second hospital stay, he himself is comatose but his organ remains vigilant: “Antes de salir de coma, su pilote levanto Ias sabanas para mirar a su alrededor. No observo nada de interes y se bajo de nuevo” (75). From this point on the phrasing in Jonathan’s letters delegates all decisions to his ° The self-determination and unfortunate meddlesome nature of Jonathan’s penis recall Monique Wittig’s satiric creations, the glenuri, leashed animals with long bodies and a head “filled by a soft extensile membrane that can become taut or relaxed” and ending in an enormous orifice. The glenuri are constantly attempting to run off and “systematically insinuate themselves into any interstice that affords their bodies,” only to become trapped when their heads expand (22). 175 “mast,” which will now operate with precaution (78) and may, if he is fortunate, grant him a reprieve (114). He avoids contact with Madame X so as not to provoke his organ, and solicits her cooperation. The pursuer has become a victim of his own body and has consequently relinquished control over what will ensue until the very and the narrative, when his final attempt at an encounter with Madame X is frustrated by that body's inability to survive the prospect of actual physical contact. If, as Margaret Miles claims, the grotesque body is more likely to be female because the male body is considered the normative one (96), a male body becomes grotesque as it approximates female characteristics. As Eustaquio in Una felicidad can manos pena acquires an abundance of fleshy parts and begins to possess a body that leaks and secretes uncontrollably, he becomes more “female” and hence more grotesque. Similarly, when Jonathan’s body completely eludes his control, secreting semen in monstrous amounts, he begins to resemble the stereotypical woman, controlled by hormones and bodily secretions. Wa-Ki Fraser de Zambrano concludes that this excessiveness turns virility into emasculation.“ At the very least there is here the blurring of boundaries between the normal and the abnormal which virtually every theorist of the grotesque considers essential to it. In the Bakhtinian concept of the grotesque as summarized by Miles, the three typical devices are inversion, caricature, and hybridization (96). In La 9 “La visibilidad de tanta virilidad exagerada tiene una consecuencia subversive: efectt'Ia su emasculacion o femenizacion. La representacion grafica de los fluidos seminales demuestran una corporealidad incontrolable, excesiva, expansive, disnlptiva e irracional que siempre ha sido 176 impenetrable we find all three. For example, Madame X’s taking the lead parallels her mustache (137) and big feet (25, 140) in attributing to her what are conventionally male characteristics, while Jonathan languishes under the spell of his emotions and becomes increasingly passive, like the traditional female. This confusion of categories disorients the reader and elicits conflicting reactions. There is a suggested hybridization when a wandering hunter encounters a tree with two trunks, one of which turns out to be the monstrous penis (92); the fusion of the human and the vegetable is made explicit when Madame X’s coachman identifies the tree es “un pino. Pinus Sylvestris La madara sirve para mastiles” (90). Since Jonathan has consistently been referring to his organ as a mast, we now have the image of the penis, which has further been described as smooth and rounded at the end and dripping tears of dew (92), growing out of a tree. In addition, the treatment of Jonathan’s sexual organ is a classic case of caricature. Bakhtin specifically identifies the giant phallus, together with the fat belly and the gaping mouth, as associated with the banquet imagery of abundance that ambiguously provided merriment while unsettling the status quo (Bakhtin 292). The grotesque body, never isolated from the world and from other bodies as was the Renaissance concept of the body (29) but rather constantly transgressing its own limits (26), always functions against the established hierarchy and its attempts to control. To have the male body behave in this way within a genre traditionally a static confirmation of male ownership of the female atribuida e la mujer. Por lo tanto, Ias particularidades de esta falizacion desmoronan la solidez que el pane siempre ha representado.” (403) 177 body is a contradiction in terms that destabilizes the very foundations of the erotic novel. The disproportionate dimensions of Jonathan’s organ are emphasized by his own analogy of the mast of the Santa Maria attached to a canoe (76) and acknowledged by Madame X’s assertion that it would not fit inside the room (82). Its ejaculations are compared by the witness at Jonathan’s trial to the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls, the Amazon, and Iguazo Falls combined (103). Its strength is sufficient to break a hospital window (77), and the stream of semen launches a large boulder into the air and unleashes a lightning bolt, a forest fire, a-flood, and gale-force winds (92-93). No longer the highly desirable commodity of male fantasy, Jonathan’s excessive virility causes both natural and personal disasters, completely undermining any semblance of male control. In the courtroom scene, male sexuality as instrument of social dominance is further subverted with the thrust of the scribe’s organ overturning his writing table and the prosecuting attomay biting the defendant on the lips and beginning to undress (109). This degeneration of an institutional process intended to contain the chaos caused by unbridled erotic forces into an orgy, in which the male authority figures either participate actively or are powerless to take control, is a manifestation of camivalesque impropriety and uncrowning1o in which even the 1° Bakhtin cites Goethe’s description of the Roman carnival as capturing the essence of that popular feast. He specifically mentions the disappearance of differences between superiors and inferiors (246), improprieties such as indecent gestures, and the theme of historic uncrowning (247). In his interpretation of Goethe’s depiction, Bakhtin ties the festival explicitly to the overturning and renewing of social structures: "The heart of the matter is not in the subjective awareness but in the collective consciousness of their eternity, of their earthly, historic immortality as a maple, and of their continual renewal and growth” (250). 178 supreme authority of the courtroom—the judge—is penetrated by the mob, and the gavel which symbolizes his power is broken (110). The grotesque image of Jonathan as helpless appendage to his giant phallus emphasizes the failure of the male figure in his quest for sexual satisfaction, set within the general failure of male figures to exert control. Foster’s observation that Gambaro’s novel takes to a ridiculous extreme the pornographic novel’s need to postpone sexual union in order to burlesque it (293) is one way of glossing the failed quest pattern; one might also envision it as a replication of the grotesque protagonist in grotesco cn'alla drama, where the central theme and pattern is failure, and the character ends up with the opposite of what he set out to achieve.” Another approach to the depiction of the male figure within the novel is by means of the abjection of the male body. While the initial idealization of male eroticism gradually yields to the ridiculous, the introduction into the narrative of numerous uncontrollable secretions and references to excrement and death move the reader away from the male body as desired object in the direction of the female. The many depictions of semen as unintentional and even undesirable byproduct of male sexuality embody the grotesque effect of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. It is variously described as white blood (32), as an enormous puddle of clear honey (50), as a gelatinous white rain (70), as tears of dew (92), and as spouting liquid (92). Honey constitutes a positive association, blood less so; nevertheless the very excess of the imagery tends toward 179 repulsiveness. For Bakhtin, bodily secretions of any kind connect the body to the surrounding cosmos (317), evoking the grotesque body’s constant state of becoming and the attendant cycle of death and rebirth. For Kristeva “any secretion or discharge, anything that leaks out of the feminine or masculine body defiles” (102). Abjection lives the grotesque from the inside (165), where “desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects” (1 ). Within Gambaro’s narrative the act of ejaculation literally causes illness in both Jonathan, who lies in a coma for six months, and Madame X, who is chilled to the bone and nearly contracts pneumonia. When the prosecuting attomay praises the male body as erotic object rather than the female, he only succeeds in provoking abjection because of his reference to excrement in connection with anal penetration: Esta caballara inocente se habia habituado a aberturas demasiada amplias y sosas, ignore que los que pertenecen a su sexo poseen Ias aberturas ideales para su apéndice viril, mas firrnes, sefioras y seiiores, mas apretadas, y que después de un placer indecible, no lo dejaran salir desnudo y exprimido sino coronado regiamente con un resto dorado. (108) His subsequent degradation of female genitalia as “una fosa maloliente” is both anticlimactic and discredited a priori—a repetition of the pattern of male failure, this time abjection that backfires.12 Although Jonathan himself has referred to sexual union with Madame X as an execution, the final scene has him literally dying at the prospect of actual " See Viiias on the difference between the preceding sainete and the grotesco criollo. Where the farmer's pattern can be characterized as situation-complication-denouement, the latter’s consists of aspiration-plan-failure (102). 180 penetration. The pursuing male has his quest crowned not by victory but by death; the Gargantuan phallus is finally flaccid; the mast sinks the ship (146-48). No longer does his body elicit ardent desire in the female protagonist; instead it becomes abject in its new status as corpse. As Tompkins points out, the dead body becomes paradigmatic of contaminating body waste according to Kristeva’s categories and is trod underfoot by Madame X as demonstrated by the crunch of a kneecap."" The first glimpse of Jonathan provokes her passion; the last elicits her contempt, as she calls him a fool and turns away toward a more appetizing body. The Impenetrable Word The word as means of miscommunication and misinterpretation furthers the rejection of what is traditionally a male-centered text in favor of a more open set of meanings and connotations including the privileging of female sexuality and the questioning of male authority. Since the relationship between Madame X and Jonathan depends on the notes he sends her, it is the male word that both interprets and directs their interaction. This male word is problematic not only in that it hardly seems intended to be taken as truthful, since Jonathan avoids places towards which he directs his beloved in his written messages, but also in its self-contradictions and in its subversion by bodies, both male and female, within the larger text of the novel. ’2 Tompkins’ interest in the abjection of the feminine, especially of the metemal, is evident here in her lack of interest in the mention of excrement connected with homosexual penetration. She chooses rather to focus on the negative depiction of female sexual organs (184). ‘3 See Tompkins 179 and 183. The Kristeva reference is to pages 3 and 4 of Powers of Horror. 181 As Marianella Collette points out, the most explicitly interpretive parts of the text—the epigraphs on the erotic novel—contradict one another. The epigraph to the first chapter sets forth the principle that within the erotic novel a priori assertions are inadmissible. This dismissal of “rules” for erotica is consistently undermined by the generalizations contained in all the remaining epigraphs (117- 18). In turn, these pronouncements are transgressed within the chapter itself by actions and by the body itself (Collette 120). While eroticism itself functions as an anarchic element in any text, the discrepancy between epigraph and epigraph and between epigraph and actuality creates confusion in the reader and contributes to the subversion of the role society attributes to women (122). The confusion to which Collette refers can be extended to the actual content of Jonathan’s love notes. The stereotypical authority of the male word is burlesqued in the sequence where Madame X’s every question is answered, as soon as she asks it, within his note: -Dile al caballara que pase a buscarrne esta tarde a Ias cinco. Mientras Marie corria escaleras abajo, maldiciendo an voz alta, Madame X, por simple curiosidad, abrio nuevamente la carta, cuya lecture habia concluido un momenta antes. “Gracias”, leyo, “la esperaré”. "5A que hora?—murmuro tiemamente, con los ojos perdidos en una vaga ensol'iacion. Oyo el resoplar agitado de Marie subiendo Ias escaleras. Antes de que entrara en el cuarto con su presencia enervante, Madame X bajo los ojos y la mano invisible del caballara escribia con letra temblorosa, pero con la certidumbre de la pasion correspondida: “a las cinco”. (56-57) The ability of the male word to speak authoritatively is further undermined by its own baroque excess as it degenerates into a nearly impossible string of mixed metaphors, taken from the nautical world and the penal code (78-79). 182 Among other contradictory nations, the mast is depicted charging like a cannibal (78). The notes present images entirely devoid of plausibility, such as the following: “iOh, huracan, torrnenta, rayos y pararrayos sobre la fragilidad de mi barcol” (63). Madame X’s tendency to take such language literally creates a pattern of contradiction within the narrative, since the imagery, which is already internally inconsistent, does not hold up under scrutiny. For instance, her vivid imagination debases the suggestiveness of Jonathan’s desire to have his nose where it can always small the intimate perfume of her body, turning it into a grotesque depiction of body parts in incongruous juxtaposition: “Madame X se impaciento un poco aqua haria ella con las narices del caballara en su sexo? Le estorbarian para recibir visitas, estarian siempre oliendo” (77). The polysemic and therefore potentially incommunicative nature of language, especially regarding sexual matters, is demonstrated with slapstick humor in the carriage sequence where Madame X instructs her coachman to look and see whether Jonathan is coming. The exchanges are all loaded with double antendres: no ta damaras; haga la que puedo, a viene?; 1 ya vianal, na seas tarpa, no viana; ya vino (86-87). Double meanings are a pattern in the novel, as when Madame X instructs the passerby who has entered her house to leave (salga) and he interprets it as an invitation to let out his penis (ya sale, 26), when Madame muses that she allows the servants to take advantage of her (33), or when Marie comments impishly that she likes holes (35). In all of these cases words lose their innocence to become debased by association with the 183 reproductive functions of the body and create thereby a pattern of questioning of the word. When obvious, normative meanings are systematically questioned, a space is opened for alternate possibilities. While the anticipated satisfaction to be had with the mysterious gentlemen never materializes, done in by his ineffectual words and inability to act, another option has been opening to Madame in her relationship with a woman—Marie, the maid, who is able to elicit pleasure never experienced with the male protagonist. At the close of the narrative, Madame sands Marie out to receive yet another letter from a new gentleman caller, who may initiate another cycle of misunderstanding and frustration, yet the possibility of an alternate ending to the story is hinted at in the last sentence of the novel: Marie se calzo la cofia, torcida para mas agravio, y maldiciendo vivamente, sin intuir que an al futura padrla sar prataganista, fue a recoger la carta cuyo texto empezaria otra novela. (151, emphasis mine) Although Foster takes this ending to dismiss lesbian love as a real option, the use of the conditional form in fact opens up its potential." It is only with Marie that Madame has enjoyed genuine affection simultaneously with sexual pleasure. Jonathan’s supposedly authoritative word at the novel’s end, his wisdom ostensibly gleaned from his quest—only the unknown is capable of affording pleasure—has already been exposed as a lie by the language of the female body. “ Foster interprets the italicized words above as a “radical repudiation” of such a choice (296), yet the alternate name of the conditional in Spanish, modo patencial, reflects its ability to reflect real possibilities. The constant presence of double meanings within the text allows another interpretation: that, although Marie does not suspect it, she may very well be a protagonist in the future. 184 The Body as Text The stock phrases and images of erotic literature—the idealized female body, the amazing feats of male prowess—are ridiculed extensively in this novel. The phallus as center of attention has been shown above to be a grotesque aberration more likely to cause laughter and disgust than admiration. Male domination of the female is likewise debased and made a laughingstock through an exhaustive depiction of male loss of control. Female bodily idealization is also debunked, supplanted by a celebration of real pleasure based an intimacy and acceptance. Marie’s saucy phrase, “obras son amores,” summarizes Gambaro’s strategy for subverting the rhetoric of male pursuit and conquest of the unknown by counterbalancing it with female enjoyment of the known. When Fraser de Zambrano demonstrates the deconstruction of traditional feminine and masculine ideals through the symbolic pair Columbus-America as stand-ins for Jonathan and Madame X, she shows his discourse up as that of a colonizer hoping to take possession of a waiting New World (394). The references in Columbus’ writings to the same body parts that Jonathan notices in his beloved, together with the nautical vocabulary and his failure to attain safe harbor, complement allusions to Madame’s body as the unknown see where the world both ends and begins and to her breast as sign of the Earthly Paradise as described by Columbus. Curiously, Fraser de Zambrano fails to mention other references to exploration and conquest in the text, which further ridicule male conquest of women even as they show the mysteries and joys of the female body. 185 The imagery of male conquest, although obliquely introduced in Jonathan’s first letter by his reference to her body as a continent whose content is yet unknown and to himself as a ship (10-11), is immediately and more explicitly reinforced by Madame’s attempts to recollect meeting Jonathan. She discards Count D’Hubert as a possibility since he has already taken possession and been evicted. Gambaro’s discourse here lampoons male conquest as completely unsatisfactory to the female: al conde no se aplicaba esa de contenido y continente, habia dascubierto el contenido del continente, clavado su pica de conquistador, explorado hasta la fatiga. Y asi coma America se habia cansado de sus conquistadores antes que ellos se cansaran de ella, Madame X busco una rapida solucion para sacarse al conquistador de encima. Esto debe entenderse al pie de la letra y no lejos. el conquistador encima de ella, pero descabalgado después de usufructuar a America X sin dar ninguna recompense a cambio. (13) This imagery is expanded with Madame X sending the conquistador off in his brig to a small island, Paradise to him by virtue of its unexplored condition, from where he has been conducting forays in search of tempting fruit on other islands, to ridiculous effect. Female appropriation of language initially employed by a male figure, with its attendant shift in meaning, as witnessed above, also occurs relative to Jonathan’s image of Madame as the unknown sea (43-44); after her dream of Marie while waiting in the carriage for Jonathan, her repressed desires are pictured as a bottled-up ocean, boiling in the depths of timid perversion (88-89). In her drowsy and uninhibited state, she reflects that perhaps what is perverted is possessivenass in love or its strict limitation to heterosexuality (89); she would, 186 the narrator explains, have said, had she been an educated women, “El que desea y no obra, engendra paste” (88). This foreshadowing of the outcome of the novel also echoes Marie’s reference to abras and, like it, constitutes a condemnation of Jonathan’s eternal postponement of encounter with a real body, as conqueror who never conquers. Jonathan’s twin obsessions with pursuing the object of desire and maintaining a safe distance reflect, as Collette astutely surrnises, the possibility of the death of desire, which would endanger his position of power (133). Ridiculing through parody the values and norms of culture (male desire dictates female behavior) neutralizes their power by destroying their invisibility (154). The self-inflicted physical harm that comes from her corset and the impossibly tiny shoes crammed onto her big feet reflects the traditional female position as object of the gaze of the Other (129). Collette quotes Victoria Ocampo’s observation that incarnation is indispensable to a change in social attitudes (16); that incarnation is here the fragmentation of the female body into throbbing parts: the feet, the rib cage, the ankle twisted or the tooth lost due to a distracted fixation on the long-awaited male. The centrality of male desire as determining factor in a sexual relationship becomes ludicrously evident in the content of Jonathan's notes, where the references to Madame X’s body gradually disappear to be supplanted by the everpresent penis. The mastil is the only body part mentioned in the last notes, while Madame’s body is alluded to only insofar as it affects his: No tema, adorada. El mastil es comun, se excite cuando debe, y no padece el prodigioso desenfreno de otras opocas. Ha estado 187 tanto tiempo en la celda de los condenados que ya aspera la guillotine sin temor. (142) While designating her as his guillotine reflects his fear of a direct encounter, it is offensive to his would-be partner". Madame rejects the role he assigns her (“no queria ser guillotine de nadie”). The self-centered and self- gratifying nature of his desire, entirely independent of an actual physical encounter, is made explicit in their last dialogue, where he exclaims: “icomo he gozado!” (147). This assertion is incomprehensible to his beloved, who reminds him that he has never penetrated her, to which he responds that the impenetrable is the only thing that affords true pleasure. This explanation has been discredited in advance by her perspective: Al escuchar esta, Madame X, que no habia gozado nada, a por lo manos no lo que se habia prometido, retrocedio, un si as no resentida. Toda la existencia del caballara habia sido una sucesion de naufragios, adonde habia estado el goce? (147) The mention of shipwrecks counters the central metaphor of Jonathan’s discourse—the idea that his penis-mast would eventually bring him into the fragrant bay of her body (78). Instead, its final shipwreck Is on the floor of her boudoir, where it expires with him. The female body’s behavior within the text of the novel is itself a text that counters the pretentiousness of the male quest of the impossible (and satisfaction deferred or self-conferred) with its own evidence of quiet satisfaction in the possible. Madame X and Marie appropriate the privileges that Jonathan has granted himself: the penetration of the dark and damp caverns of the female body and the intense enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Madame’s hand visits the 188 hills and ravines of Marie’s body (32), and Maria’s tongue extends into her mistress’ damp cavities (31). This female exploration of the female body is capable of causing pleasure: “provocaba en Madame X la humedad prevista y la sensacion de una dulce picadura” (119). Although Madame states correctly that she has not experienced pleasure with Jonathan (gozado), the same cannot be said regarding Marie: Madame X domino un estremecimiento de gaza que le parecia impropio -Marie—dijo calidamente, entregandose a la simplicidad que le proponia. (62, emphasis mine) Columbus and America are both female in this recasting of sexual conquest; conquest as metaphor has given way to mutual exploration and discovery. A verbal confirmation of this role shift can be found in something as simple as the use of the same term of endearment—criatura—by both Jonathan (for Madame) and Madame (for Marie). Madame X’s dreams are an additional key to her desire for more than the socially acceptable sexual exchange; she dreams of taking both the female and the male part: “Lamento que su cuerpo no se desdoblara en mujer-hombre, mujer-mujer, le hubiera gustado sentir su propia peso y no otra, penatrar y sentirse penatrada, ser el yin y el yang (20).” She also wishes for more options regarding type of sexual partner than society recognizes when she dreams of Marie as women, as man, and as androgyne (88). Although she is helpless to explain why Marie moves her the way she does (35), she looks to her for reassurance and comfort, and she is not disappointed. Madame X calls Jonathan a fool because he has twisted desire into something that can never be satisfied, because it is in effect a desire for 189 something that does not exist: “lLa incognita que no se devela as pure nadal” (149). She treads upon his body as physical confirmation of her utter abjection. Instead, she leans on Marie, smalls her, and concludes that here is pleasure to be smelt, tasted, seen, and felt. She opts for an encounter with the here and now, with a someone (alguien) rather than with a something (alga), with a real person, imperfect though she may be, rather than with an abstraction or an isolated body part as in Jonathan’s letters. The impossible being unlikely to afford pleasure, she and Marie decide to enjoy the possible: “decidieron, graciosas y desenvualtas, adentrarse, gozar de lo posible. Penetrarlo” (150).'“ Her interest at the very and of the novel in the new gentleman therefore strikes both the reader and Marie as utterly misplaced, and is qualified by the allusion to Marie’s future role as protagonist (151). In the last chapter of the novel, there are several descriptions of the female body. The first assesses Madame X’s appearance in the light of the standards of her time for a desirable woman: silky, unwrinkled, hairless skin, pale with rosy cheeks, a slender figure, and tiny feet. In contrast, Madame’s skin is dark where it should be pale and red as a drunkard’s where it should be pink, and the time spent waiting for Jonathan has taken its toll on her posture and figure (137). She asks Marie how she looks, consumed by insecurity. Marie sees her as she is, '5 Collette’s otherwise brilliant exposition of the deconstruction of the traditional images of sexuality and the female body in this work—and the reconfiguration of that body to create new paradigms which recognize the power of the female Eros—hits a snag when she glosses the la of panatrarla as a reference to Jonathan (148). The immediate antecedent is properly la posibla: Madame and Marie will enjoy and penetrate that which is possible rather than an impossible abstraction. 190 yet in the light of the love she feels for her. The second description reflects Marie’s acceptance of the loved one despite the imperfections of skin and figure: Una sefiora ordinaria, veia Marie indefensa, entrada en carnes. Para con fascinantes ojos, delatores de lo que Madame X sentia, y toda ella docil para el placer y generosa también para concederlo Y bastaba que Marie mirara a Madame X can atencion para que recuperara, coma quian lee un palimpsesto, bajo la superficie presenta la otra escritura, avanzaba sobre la visible camalidad la otra invisible, recuperaba a aquella criatura—burra y ordinaria desde siempre, pero fresca y graciosa—que la habia enamorado. (139) A parallel passage—the third description—has Madame X recognizing that although Maria has gained weight, she is still very desirable: “mejillas tersas y sonrosadas, senos y caderas finnes” (148). It is as she reflects on Marie’s availability and concrete sensual appeal that she calls her a someone. Maria has, in fact, literally stood by her through thick and thin; it is in contact with her body that Madame has experienced pleasure. The two women’s bodies described in these pages, unlike the male body, are both real and desirable, and their bodies, unlike his, experience real joy in an actual encounter with a very real other. The quest of the male body to penetrate and control the female body in La impenetrable is defeated and turned aside by its own lack of control. The male word’s attempt to seduce through abstractions is thwarted by its own self- contradictions and by the language of both male and female bodies. The female body has the final word as she alone experiences and affords a pleasure rooted in the possible. 191 Conclusion Both Una felicidad can manos pane and La impenetrable embody—in the literal sense of the word—a dialogue in which the male word is juxtaposed on the body, both male and female, as well as on the words of others, and subverted by body language. In the former, the problem of male authority is highlighted by the ambiguous relationship between the male protagonist and the male narrator, who approaches and than distances himself from Eustaquio both physically and verbally; by the abjection and than acceptance of female bodies concurrently with the gradual abjection of the male; and by the protagonist’s own self- contradictions. The suffering and death graphically incarnate in female and infant bodies are ultimately what move the narrator to align himself with them in opposition to the male authoritative word. In the latter, the vision of both male and female bodies moves from abstract and idealized within male discourse (Jonathan’s letters) to concrete and flawed within the narrative text (not coincidentally female). The male body is subjected to increasing abjection, culminating in its death and trampling underfoot like excrement, a parallel foreshadowed by the prosecuting attomey’s reference to the resto dorado. The female body, on the other hand, is celebrated with all of its flaws as worthy of desire and as source of pleasure. The male (con)quest fails and is supplanted by female mutual exploration and discovery. Parallel themes and techniques in both works reinforce a dynamics present elsewhere in Gambaro’s works and dealt with here in the form of parable and parody. Maria Rosa’s sweet, purplish crushed head foreshadows Cledy’s 192 splintered arm; the death that comes to both of them is not idealized but instead presented in all of its stark horror by means of their brutalized bodies. Death in all of Gambaro’s works grows seamlessly and inevitably out of the grotesque deformation of human relationships, but never appears to the reader as natural and just. The shift of the narrator’s identification in Una felicidad can manos pena, like the narrative undermining of Jonathan’s missives and intent in La impenetrable, differs from the focus in later works, but the narration always draws reader sympathy toward the victims of repression and away from the male authoritative word. Gambaro explores in all of her works the best way to bear witness to the suffering of the oppressed and the excesses of the powerful. 193 . . ART AND SUFFERING IN DIOS NO NOS QUIERE CONTENTOS AND DESPUES DEL DIA DE FIESTA Dias no nos quiere cantantas and Daspués del dia de fiesta are, according to the editor of the latter, intended to be the first two books of a trilogy. It seems at first difficult to understand how the second is a sequel to the first: although they are both set in Buenos Aires, each has a completely different cast of characters; they share only the protagonist, Tristan, and he changes in significant ways from one to the other. The events of the first book are never so much as referred to in the second, except for brief references to a former love of Tristan’s, but she is called Maruja rather than Maria in Daspuas del dia de fiesta. Furthermore, the motif woven into the very fabric of Dias no nos quiere contentos, Tristan’s desire to Ieam to sing, disappears completely from the sequel; he is instead obsessed by a line of poetry which flashes into his mind as the second work begins. Closer scrutiny, however, yields a common thread: the significance of art for the main characters of both novels as well as for thematic development. The Bareback Rider's acrobatic art on the trapeze, and song—both hers and Tristan’s—flow out of and constitute a response to human suffering. Poetry, which Tristan expects to transform the world around him, coexists instead with prejudice and pain. The almost unbearable tension between beauty and ugliness—art and suffering—is largely responsible for the grotesque nature of both works, along with and reinforced by more easily recognized grotesque images and effects. Dias no nos quiere contantas and Despuos del dia da fiesta 194 are perhaps Griselda Gambaro’s most self-conscious narratives because of their unflinching examination of an artist’s relationship with society. Dias no nos quiere cantentas In the first book of the trilogy, Tristan is bereft of his adoptive family when their house falls in on them as they eat dinner. Reluctantly taken in by the neighbors, he is befriended by their daughter Maria and eventually falls in love with her. When Maria’s aunt, the Bareback Rider, visits the family, she invites them to the circus, where Tristan is spellbound by her acrobatic act. He goes to live with her and the baby they inherit when the child is separated from his mother on a crowded bus; Maria does not go with them. The Bareback Rider goes from one run-down circus to another, eventually becoming a trapeze artist. She falls in love with a destitute man who has stolen most of her belongings; he does not return her love and the Baby and Tristan attempt to support themselves and her by selling pictures of saints and by doing odd jobs. Tristan’s attempts to look up Maria finally result in finding her at the house of prostitution, where the customers force Tristan to perform sexually with Maria. The years go by, the Baby gets married, has a child and dies, and Maria ends up running a small grocery store where Tristan visits her but seems to go unrecognized. Years later, Tristan is reunited with the Bareback Rider at the deserted house of prostitution, where she acknowledges that he has finally learned to sing. Grotesque Characters: A Portrait of the Artists Tristan’s unwillingness to believe the Bareback Rider when she tells him that he has learned to sing is not surprising given his track record. He is in many 195 ways a classic grotesco criollo character, out of tune with himself and the world, both laughable and pathetic,’ doomed to fail at anything he undertakes. The reader scarcely knows what to make of him, moved altamately to pity by the treatment he receives and to disgust by his stupidity, clumsiness, and inadaptation. Tristan’s emerging sensitivity and understanding of others seem completely at odds with the rest of his characterization, so that he becomes a tangle of traits grotesquely at war with one another. Like Cledy in Ganarse la muerte, Tristan is not only abused but unable to assert himself. His adoptive family call him an animal and relegate him at meal time to the back yard or the neighbors’ back lot with the other garbage (9). After the house caves in, the neighbors prefer to ignore the possibility of survivors, rather than take on the responsibility of looking after him. Maria’s father finally brings him in and gives him a mattress on Maria’s bedroom floor, but upon awaking the next day Tristan hears the family call him names like retard and imbecile (12). It is the general consensus that it is a shame that he has survived (14). On the way to the funeral, no one thinks of Tristan until the last minute, when they stuff him into the hearse with the coffins (16). When Tristan tries to sing, they hit him discreetly, but hard (18). Later, Maria’s father makes it a practice to take him out to the street at night to see if someone will come and take him, like Roberto Cossa’s nona,“ off their hands (22). ‘ Kaiser-Lenoir shows how Discépolo's character Miguel in Mateo is “patotico y risible a la vez" in that he is forced to deny the morals he holds so deer in order to support his family, but comically holds himself to similar moral standards in crime as in honest living (70). 2 Various family members attempt to kill off or rid themselves of that epitome of venerable womanhood, the grandmother, who in Cossa’s La nona literally eats them out of house and home; one of the sons leaves her on the street in a distant neighborhood, but she makes her way home again and at the end of the play is the only surviving family member. 196 The larger world brings him no better treatment. A pedophile tries to assault him (30-31). At the circus the clown sweeps garbage over his feet and whacks him on the shins with his broomstick when he does not move (48). The Bareback Rider pursues him relentlessly, offended by a gesture (50-52). The Baby rejects him temporarily in favor of Maria (77). The circus boss hires Tristan to provide sung accompaniment to the Bareback Rider's routine because his song is laughable (188), although the boss himself finds him repugnant (204). At the house of prostitution, Tristan is stripped of his clothes and his dignity, his affection for Maria debased by the customers’ voyeurism and ridicule, what should be intimate and tender made into a spectacle (169-70). Afterwards, the big man who has orchestrated the humiliating scene beats Tristan and terrorizes him by pointing his revolver at Tristan’s head as if ready to kill him, shooting past his ear at the last minute (174). After this ordeal Tristan is haunted by dreams of violence and sexual humiliation. Maria, who does run after him to express her concern, in time fails to recognize him when he visits her store (224-25). By the end of the novel Tristan is an isolated figure that the Bareback Rider encounters by chance, after years have gone by, whose loneliness can be read in his eyes (251 ). Reader sympathy for Tristan, based on his shabby and sometimes despicable treatment by others, is increased by his humble acceptance of his lot: he feels like a thief when Maria asks him whether he has slept well; he has Ieamed to expect that words are not for him (13). When she asks him if he is an idiot, he feels grateful that at last a word is for him, not an undeserved gift (36), 197 and his unexpressed devotion is truly touching: “movio freneticamente la cabeza, incapaz de decirle: no me indiques que te siga porque te siga, como un rio a su cauce, no me des palabras que no son para mi” (37). Tristan muses that nothing is as vulnerable as hope (24); all he hopes for is to be taken into account (77). Endearing as these thoughts may be, any initial inclination toward identification with this maladjusted and suffering character is stymied by Tristan’s own inability to function as a normal human being. Clumsy and obtuse, he has no table manners, and his attempts to handle a knife at dinner launch scraps of food into people’s eyes, which earns him the epithet of “animal” (8-9). The slapstick effect of this scene is reinforced by others, such as Tristan, incapable of judging distances, leaping into the wall (157), failing to dodge the clown with the broom, or being chased by the Bareback Rider. His inability to touch his pinkie to his index finger (47) or to tie his shoes (11) are somewhat less amusing, as is his lack of familiarity with such rudimentary artifacts as a mirror or a faucet (13-14). Tristan is clearly a social misfit, unable to respond appropriately when spoken to (12) and uninitiated in the art of conversation (20). He seems incapable of following social cues: he has no idea of what to pack in the Bareback Rider’s suitcase (159), and when she is robbed, Tristan does not understand that the intruders are not new coworkers of hers (84); the robbers do not bother to tie Tristan’s hands, yet he fails to take advantage of this fact by untying her, instead speaking to Maria as if she were present (85). His clumsy attempts to untie the Bareback Rider, once he hears her pleas for help, are so 198 fruitless that the bearded robber takes pity and partially loosens the knot for him (86). Tristan does not know how to console the Bareback Rider as others do (151,154), and when he visits Maria at her store he cannot bring himself to tell her who he is (225). The ultimate instance of inappropriateness is when, after the house collapses, Tristan does not go to help the family because he is afraid of being perceived as rude or embarrassing (9). His social ineffectiveness extends to his smile, which, instead of attracting customers to buy his religious pictures, is so repugnant that it drives them away (151). This incongruous puppet, tangled up in his own strings, simultaneously attracts and repels the reader. The complete rupture between his wistful, often poetic thoughts and his sensitive heart on the one hand, and his utter inadaptation and social and economic failure on the other, are surely what Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir has in mind when she speaks of an inner tearing apart of the individual in the grotesco criollo (87). In many ways the polar opposite of Tristan,“ the Bareback Rider is nevertheless a grotesque character as well, although for somewhat different reasons. Like Bakhtin’s grotesque body, hers is constantly changing, creating a simultaneous impression of instability and of mastery.“ Able to contort her body since childhood (21), she can stretch her arm back to go around Tristan’s shoulder when he walks two paces behind her (62) or make herself into a human knot attached to the ceiling of a bus (66). She can roll down the street like a ball 3 Malena Lasala makes the point that although apparently Tristén and the Bareback Rider are opposites, they are equally inable to elicit the desired response from others (15). ‘ According to Bakhtin, the grotesque body is characterized by “exaggeration, hyperbolism, [and] excessiveness” (303); it is “a body in the act of becoming“ (317). 199 (97) or rest her head on her own back (158). On the trapeze she allows her neck to become very thin, threading it between her toes, her head dropping far down on its thin stalk, until she takes it up again and her neck recovers its normal dimensions (128). When the wind picks up the circus tent, she takes flight, finally landing on the roof of a house (177).“ The impossible things she does with her body violate one’s sense of appropriateness, eliciting ambivalent emotions of fascination and rejection. Mary Russo reminds us that the grotesque emerged “only in relationship to the norms which it exceeded” (3). Accordingly, she quotes Jean Starobinski on the female figure parfon'ning in the air: the powerful ambivalence in the male viewing of these female loans is associated with the scandal of the female body exposed and provocative, offering itself as simultaneously accessible and unattainable within the performance because of the very intensity of light and spaciousnass, which provides a separation and a distance between flier and watcher. (43) Starobinski also asserts that the female acrobat’s mobility is associated with “an aggressive and dangerous virility" (Russo 44). She would thus represent a double violation of what is considered normal and acceptable for women. The Bareback Rider's femininity is hardly disputable on the one hand, since men are always falling in love with her (93). Her bodily contortions, on the other, push the limits of what is commonly considered feminine, attractive, and safe, and for that 5 Ironically, the only thing she cannot do is ride bareback: she nearly falls off the horse and grabs its mane, which turns out to be painted straw and comes off in her hands (47). The utter ridiculousness of her nickname is mirrored in other equally inapprOpriate names: Maria, who is anything but virginal by the last part of the novel; Tristan, whose song is not like the legendary musician’s (see Hortensia Morell’s footnote on the name Tristan in “La narrativa de Griselda Gambaro: Dias no nos quiere contentos,” 483-84); and the Baby, who is more mature than any other character even as a child. This practice of misnaming toys with the reader’s expectations of a character which arise from his or her name. 200 matter exceed what is humanly possible. When she flies higher and higher on the trapeze the night of the Baby's death, she takes her spectators with her to a region beyond life and death, and they are not sure whether they want to be there (219), experiencing both joy and suffering (220). The Bareback Rider’s body and art—her body as art—elicit a reaction typical of the grotesque: fascination and rejection, exultation and pain. As a person, like Tristan, she inspires a mixed reaction at best. Her character, certainly less than commendable, is at worst egocentric, insensitive, and arrogant. The merits of others destroy her peace of mind (7). The only thing capable of sidetracking her is flattery (44); what inspires tenderness in her is Tristen’s admiration: Se prodigaba sin cansancio para él, porque Tristan cumplia su ideal de que alguien la mirara incansable, suspendiera su propia vida para vivir otra que nacia de su arte. (45-46) Dazzled by her own haughtiness, she asks coquettishly if he has brought her the flower she herself has just rescued from the trash (49). She takes a crowded bus only because an old man on it seems to acknowledge her fame (65), and there is apparently no limit to her arrogance: “Despilfarraba una actitud de princesa para una estupidez, pero tenia tales reserves que no experimentaba temor alguna de agotamiento” (74). As persons and in their actions, than, both Tristan and the Bareback Rider evoke conflicting responses in the reader. A cast of secondary characters, especially in the circus, reinforces the grotesque effect. The ubiquitous clown is 201 so scrawny and inept that he reminds everyone of decay and death (48).“ He provides comic relief after the meek woman’s fatal fall from the trapeze, his pratfalls grotesquely juxtaposed with the horror of the crowd as the body is removed (196). Clowns are expected to be funny; this one, however, seems even funnier to the boss because of his fingerless stump of a hand, on which he has painted a naked woman. The woman seems to come alive when he moves the stump; bowlegged, hunchbacked, with breasts down to her knees, her monstrous distortion superimposed on his disfigurement hardly fits the usual definition of comedy (122). Jose and Pope, the decrepit trapeze artists, bear an uncanny resemblance to twins in their nearly identical names and their mirrored gestures.’ Twins, as Russo observes, are already a sort of abnormality;“ moreover this turns out to be a homosexual couple, which for conservative, Catholic Argentina is another perversion. Their histrionic, sometimes staged lovars’ spats (240) are ridiculous in the light of their bony old bodies on which their ancient leotards hang all too loosely (242). Caricatures of their former selves, hardly able to perform the most basic routines, they simultaneously inspire pity and disgust, and yet 5 In the Bakhtinian scheme of things, death as the “other side of birth" (407) is not only necessary but reminiscent of the possibility of change and renewal and hence a deeply ambivalent image 409). Hortensia Morell cites their names as one example of the possible reference to the world of Argentine circus performance. They resemble the names of Jose Podesta and his clown Pepino. Furthermore, the Bareback Rider shares a name with Rosita da la Plata, the most famous equestrienne in the world in her time, and the Serrasani Circus did indeed visit Buenos Aires, beginning in 1924. Morell suggests the possibility that these references are placed in the work to present in contrast to the despotic control of the Boss a time when circus performers (and other artists) could work freely without fear of censure (490). What also comes to mind is that the performers here are a lesser version of those famous artists: Jose and Pepe are too decrepit to hang on, and the Bareback Rider perlorrns in other events, but not on horseback. ° Russo suggests that twins are “arguably abnormal as multiple births” (110). 202 their tender affection for one another nearly cancels out the negative reaction, keeping in tension the wrinkled, scaly hand and its gesture of love: la Ecuyere aparto la vista cuando vio la mano de Pepe, arrugada y escamosa, buscando la mano da Jose bajo Ia mesa. Jose la estrecho tiemamente y descanso su mejilla en ella, en una posesion quieta y antigua. (244) The clash of emotions evoked by the characters serves to create a perception of incongruity which prepares the reader for the emergence of the central theme: art’s surprising birth out of human suffering and inadequacy and its precarious coexistence with cruelty and pain. Grotesque Lives: Creating Expectations The grotesque character, according to Kaiser-Lenoir, lives a pattem of defeat (63). The key to this defeat is the loss of reciprocity.“ In Dias no nos quiere cantantas the characters lose two types of reciprocity: the ability to communicate and the ability to act effectively upon their surrounding reality. Inasmuch as these abilities parallel an artist’s communication with others and art’s effect on society, the characters’ failures create the expectation of more failure, making the stubborn persistence of art the more shocking. Particularly in the early sections of the novel, people frequently talk pastor misunderstand each other or are unable to express their feelings. The Bareback Rider repeatedly mistakes people’s gestures for appreciation or emotion caused by her presence (49, 61); the bearded robber thinks she is pursuing him out of anger, not out of love (96), and she thinks that Jose and Pepe want her autograph, while they think she wants theirs (123-24). On the bus, the Bareback 203 Rider’s “Para a mi, (me via?” passes the old man’s “Circos eran los de antes El Serrasani ...” without so much as making contact (68). Tristan has no words to explain to Maria why he will follow the Bareback Rider rather than stay with her, so he kisses her, smiles, and leaves without speaking (63-64). Tristan’s experiences of his inability to communicate are likely the reason that he cannot believe that he has actually Ieamed to sing in the and, nor that the Bareback Rider hears his song. Her total disregard for others, observed early on and reaffirmed on the opening page of the novel, which takes place chronologically at the very end of the plot, make it a shock that such a self-absorbed person can drew her audience with her into a sublime experience through her art. David Vii'Ias observes that in the grotesco criollo the breakdown of societal units, such as a character's professional life, carries over into the breakdown of the family unit.’° Such a breakdown, relevant than in the context of the dehumanization of the grotesque protagonist who loses touch with himself and his loved ones, is even more relevant in the setting of the Military Process of the late seventies. The stated purpose of the military dictatorship was to restore the values and structures of Western Christian culture, of which the family was the basic unit.” Evidence that the family was breaking apart is also evidence that the restoration of society that the regime claimed to be accomplishing was unsuccessful after three years of dictatorship. In Dias no nos quiere contentos, ° The grotesque protagonist lives a constant clash between his or her internal reality and the social reality outside of the individual consciousness (Kaiser-Lenoir 64). ’° “La disolucion de la solidaridad grupal de la fabrica se reproduce en el deterioro del gmpo familiar" (131). 1’ See page 101 of this study, which quotes a high school textbook’s affirmation that a breakdown of the family would have a negative effect on the rest of societal coexistence. 204 the family units portrayed are generally dysfunctional to some degree. Maria’s family’s resentment, antipathy and competition are seething beneath the surface and erupt when a letter comes from the Bareback Rider, Maria’s aunt (20). The failure to understand a message written in clear handwriting (21) points to more than poor reading skills. Beyond any family affection or loyalty, what motivates Maria’s mother to receive her sister-in-law and spouse is their apparent wealth; once it becomes evident that there is no money, Maria hates her fat uncle, his own wife despises him, and Maria’s mother regrets having spent money and effort on wine and ravioli (33). Maria, when told to wash the dishes, breaks them on purpose and is slapped soundly (74). The adaptive family does not fare better than the biological family: Tristan’s adoptive parents call him an animal and send him outside to eat amid garbage like him (9); he does not dare investigate the ruins of their house last he be castigated. None of the neighbors are willing to exercise the Christian value of hospitality when he is orphaned for the second time; instead, they have all mysteriously disappeared into their houses to wash their hands (11) like Pilate, that Biblical avoider of responsibility extraordinaire.“ The ones who do take him in first try to avoid doing their duty and then insult him. Ironically, the only family units that seem viable are the marginal ones, likely to be considered contemptible by bourgeois Catholics: the Baby's family, living in extreme poverty, Jose and Pepe, the homosexual couple, and the odd threesome of an ’2 When the Jews demanded to have Christ cnlcified, Pilate objected that he was innocent. “But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify himl’ When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said. 'It is your responsibility!” (Matthew 27:23b,24) 205 itinerant circus performer (the Bareback Rider), a nobody (T ristan), and a foundling (the Baby). To summarize the failure of the military regime to restore the health of society, Tristan’s vision of his madre patria is that of a mother committing the unspeakable act of decapitating her children (59). In addition to the inability to communicate and coexist, the characters generally fail to take charge of their situation. Tristan’s adoptive family builds their house on an inadequate foundation, which leads to their untimely demise; they adopt Tristan because they have failed to do something about their infertility (9). Maria’s father is unable to decipher his sister's letter after two hours of reading (21); he feels trapped by his own kindness in taking Tristan in (22) but is unsuccessful at getting rid of him. He dreams of leaving his job but knows that there are thousands eager to replace him. His wife buys wine for their expected guests but the family drinks it up rather than delay gratification (23). The Bareback Rider, generally in excellent control of her body, has no such control over her emotions: she falls helplessly in love with the bearded robber in spite of her devotion to the circus and his miserable circumstances. Many episodes contain multiple failures: Maria and Tristan can not fend off the advances of the pedophile, while he is apparently unable both to control his own impulses and to defend himself from his wife’s blows (28-31). On the bus no one seems able to avoid banging the baby’s head, the mother can not keep track of her child,’3 and the Bareback Rider inadvertently takes him off the bus with her, asleep inside the knot of her body (66-71). The ill-fated meek woman, rejected by her former lover 206 the circus boss, the father of her children, epitomizes both types of failure simultaneously: La mujer tenia la misma mirada, esa mirada indefensa de los seres que no pueden articular sus experiencias y solo disponen de la estupida capacidad de sufrirlas. (193)“ The callousness of this description bespeaks yet another failure: the failure to secure the pity of others. And it is pity, precisely, which will prove to be the catalyst for the Bareback Rider's art, a pity which will flower unexpectedly in the wake of death and defeat. Argentina as Grotesque Circus In Tristan’s dream of the hotel, he forgets momentarily where he comes from, and then it comes back to him: “Habia recordado de que lugar venian, y no sabia si alegrarse. La memoria le traia un pals aspero y duro. La madre que decapitaba a sus hijos” (59). The unnaturalness of this image is emblematic of the warped sociopolitical reality reflected in the novel, a reality where the powerful maim and kill instead of protecting and nurturing. In a similar way to the function of the family in Ganarse la muerte, within this narrative the circus becomes a microcosmic representation of the dynamics of power, the suppression of memory, and the deceitful public face of a repressive regime. The circus act as spectacle is the intersection of art and society: the artist, forced to operate within the existing power structures, acts upon them through ‘3 The image of the lost child recalls the thousands of lost children, either children of detainees or the disappeared themselves. The mother‘s unsuccessful search at the police station (72) resembles a similar lack of success for the mothers of the illegally detained. “ This battered women is reminiscent of Cledy in Ganarse la muerte, who suffers in silence, picking up the splinters of her shattered arm and obediently going into the kitchen. The reader is equally baffled by her lack of rebellion. 207 the artistic production. The spectators, simultaneously shaped by both art and society, are drawn in two directions at once, the way the reader of this text experiences clashing emotions, which constitute the grotesque effect. In her thoughtful book on Dias no nos quiere contentos, Malena Lasala centers her reflections around the concepts of helplessness (dasampara) and bereavement (despaja) as signs of the marginalization of the characters (14). Bereft of material possessions, of the capability of effective communication and of the essential human attribute of acting upon their environment (15), they have no one to defend them or to raise them up. Even the poorest of the poor fears being relieved of his miserable possessions (Gambaro 85), and the powerful are too busy spying on the powerless to concern themselves with their protection. When Tristan is told to take the lost baby to police headquarters, he is paralyzed by images of horror (72-73). His instinctive terror is plausible in the light of the many police stations that became illicit prison camps and torture centers during the military regime concurrent to the writing of this novel.15 A society where protectors have become persecutors leaves one with nowhere to turn. The deformation of societal structures is forcefully depicted by the Baby’s warnings to Tristan. Rather than the criminals one would expect to fear, the true danger lies in the ubiquitous representatives of law and order, whom one should avoid without seeming to do so: --Hay que rajar -le dijo—volverse idiota, genuflexo, simpatico. ...hay que rajar sin raje. ...debio aleccionar a Tristan sobre los otros peligros de la calle, no los intrascendentes que podian partir de asaltantes, pederastas y drogadictos, sino el peligro de los otros '5 CONADEP’s document on the Dirty War disappearances, Nunca Mas, states that the single most common structure used as a detention center was the police station (55). 208 uniforrnados, los que se mimetizaban de hippies o sediciosos, con barbas propias o postizas, cabelleras de Cristo en el huerto de los olivos, turistas ingleses o brasiler‘ios que balbuceaban una jerga incomprensible mientres tendian Ias orejas que aleteaban como radares para sorprender conversaciones, confianza, confesiones de amor a de odio. Ya no parseguian planes revolucionarios sino exceso de sentimientos, sombras de inteligencia. (138) Those who should be defending individual rights are instead infiltrating civilian ranks to root out expressions of individuality. The fundamental wrongness of this situation Is underlined symbolically in the text when Tristan Ieams to detect danger because it smells like the rotting garbage in a nearby vacant lot (138-39). In a repressive society, neither conformity to the system nor individual initiative is a guarantee of safety or success.16 All the Baby has to show for years of work is the meager furniture in the poor little house he shares with his wife and son (209). The bearded robber is rewarded for leaving his life of petty crime and seeking self-improvement by being removed without a trace: El rotoso habia abandonado los pequei'Ios hurtos sin provecho y preferido la honradez del trabaja. Para que habia hecho en el trabaja, protester o dar Ia care, para que sus margenes de felicidad, ya tan estrechos, disminuyeran a la nada. (146) Jose and Papa’s decades of service to the circus earn them enclosure in the nursing home and death, respectively, once the Boss no longer considers them useful (247). The meek woman, once a source of pleasure and now an irritating presence to him, is “persuaded” to undertake a tightrope act without a net and falls to her death (195-96). 1" Although, as Duhalde reports, the goal of the military repression was to create in its citizens the following virtues: “aplicacion, discipline, docilidad, obediencia” (65), in fact these virtues were not rewarded in the prison camps (Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Tamar 76). Neither are they rewarded in this text. 209 Although the Bareback Rider performs in many circuses throughout the novel, the same characters reappear in each: the Boss and the strong man, the clown, Jose and Pepe. The Boss is not always clearly the same person, but his behavior remains consistent with former incarnations, much as the behavior of one dictator resembles that of another. Repeated characters and actions underline the paradigmatic nature of the circus, explicitly recognized by the Bareback Rider—“Bien sable que el circa, desdoblado en muchos, era uno solo” (252)—and confirmed by Gambaro herself as identifiable with her homeland (Morell 489). In it the powerful are right by virtue of their power and the week are wrong because of their weakness (111). Everyone, including the spectators, is afraid of the Boss (191), who controls the fate of his workers shadowed by a goon who spreads terror in his wake (192-93). According to an aide of one of the generals involved in the military regime of the late 1970’s, the strategy of repression was to implant general terror in the population, and the struggle was considered to transcend questions of morality (Duhalde 78-79). Not only morality, but also rationality seems to have been discarded in this circus, where not only does the Boss literally get away with murder but he holds others responsible for the absence of spectators while taking all the credit—and the profits—when they do show up (237). The dynamics of power in the circus closely mirror the structure of Argentina’s military dictatorship, reflected in the novel’s general atmosphere of fear and hopelessness. Furthermore, the tactics pursued by the Boss reflect key elements of the military regime’s attempts to manipulate public opinion. The 210 authorities hired a public relations firm to present a seductive image of Argentina to the world (Feitlowitz 159) while torturing and killing thousands of suspected subversives; the circus boss pretends to weep at Pepo’s death (247) and insists that his former lover died the way she wanted to (197).17 The fact is that he has engineered Pepo’s demise by designing a stunt impossible for the two week old men to accomplish, and the woman’s “willingness” to risk her life is apparently the result of two black eyes among other persuasive techniques (195). His repeated assertions that nothing has happened recall the news blackout imposed by censure in the 70’s. The somewhat contradictory statement, “Ace no peso nada y a quien no le gusta, se va” (200) is reminiscent of the exodus of many Argentines, including Gambaro herself, who went to live overseas during this period, as wall as of those who would have liked to leave but could not. The Boss’s concern for a good public image, like the military regime’s, is apparently rewarded with success. Every show is packed with people thanks to incessant publicity, which turns everything into magic (191). Beyond the false front, however, the more serious concern is not only his manipulation of the truth but his suppression of memory. The spectators, unwilling to accept the horrible death which they have just witnessed, are relieved and easily distracted by the clown’s comic clumsiness while the body is removed (196-97). Even the Bareback Rider, misled by the absence of a body, begins to question the reality of the woman and of her fall from the tightrope (198). The elimination of physical evidence in this case parallels the Argentine authorities’ concealment of tortured '7 The deviousness of the Boss’s coverups and concern for appearances is alluded to in the text: “esa boca mentia siempre aunque dijera la verdad” (249). 211 bodies by digging unmarked mass graves or by throwing them from airplanes.18 This attempt to induce forgetfulness and impose an official version of recent events is repudiated in the novel by the Bareback Rider, conscious that memory is what constitutes personhood (198). The artist bears witness to the presence of pain and to the memory of the fallen. The Deformation of Reality The deformation of societal structures, replicated in the circus by the Boss’s reign of terror, crimes, and coverups, is underlined by the novel’s deformation of reality. The reader can never quite rely on the apparent realism of the narrative, shot through as it is with dream sequences, hyperbole, physical impossibilities, and irony. These devices, however, supplement the more traditionally reliable portions of the text to offer a more complete picture of the painful experience of living in a society where the individual has lost his bearings and has nowhere to turn for protection. One of the greatest challenges to the reader of this text is to distinguish between dreams and waking experiences. Each mirrors and enriches the other, forming a complex mesh of impressions. Tristan, nearly voiceless throughout the novel, expresses his feelings, fears, and frustrations through his dreams, and his experiences are often foreshadowed in the dream sequences. As the narrator puts it, “la realidad jamas desmiente los suei‘ios bien aferrados, no se atreve porque esta hecha de una materia pusilanime” (26). Several of Tristan’s dreams 1“ Feitlowitz details testimony by Adolfo Scilingo regarding death flights where drugged prisoners were dropped from airplanes into the sea (195-97). Hundreds of corpses, often mutilated, were buried in graves labeled “NN” (nan naminatus, p. 49). In the novel this possibility is suggested by 212 are set in the house of prostitution, a locus of pleasure full of mysterious attraction for him and Maria, where happiness is somehow associated with sin: “la felicidad es siempre pecaminosa en este mundo” (35). Before entering the house either in dreams or in actuality, Tristan and Maria encounter the pedophile on the bus, who lures them to his house with the promise of a map to the airport. His advances, incomprehensible and unwanted, together with Maria’s tears, strengthen Tristan’s half-formed association of physical pleasure with guilt. The profound impression of this episode on Tristan’s psyche is reflected in the repetition of specific details from it in his dreams, such as the canary, the candles, and the fortyish woman slapping the would-be seducer of children. In Tristan’s last dream he means to reconnect with Maria, but instead finds himself behaving like the pedophile, luring her to his room with the promise of something there she will like. His attempt at establishing a normal relationship fails as his two traumatic experiences related to sexuality—the incomplete seduction by the pedophile and the forced sex with Maria in the house of prostitution—conflate and the dream version of Maria alternates between the frightened girl of the first episode and the woman old beyond her years of the second. The woman asking who will pay for what is happening specifically ties the dream to the brothel incident as well. The degradation he has felt during the encounter with the man on the bus has been intensified by his experience in the house of prostitution and is now reflected in the dream image of the man mechanically yet eagerly pawing Maria’s private parts with his sharp, filthy nails. TIistan’s imagined need for the fact that the truck with the meek woman’s body takes a dirt road, the way truckloads of bodies were taken into the country to be buried (198). 213 punishment, typical of abuse victims, finds expression in the beating he receives from the woman and in the big man advancing on him at the and of the dream (235). The search for Maria which begins the dream is most likely an attempt to counter her lack of recognition of him when he visits her at the grocery store (222-25). Tristan’s first dream of the house (39-43) is situated after the incident with the pedophile but well before he actually enters the building. It both reflects the danger and discomfort he associates with sexuality and foreshadows the confirmation of his fears in the forced copulation later on. The sleepers inside the house turn out to be giants, wrapped up like mummies in horror movies, but frighteningly real. Their protests seem to rebuke Tristan for his intrusion into a forbidden realm, and the man’s black vomit appears to be linked either with this intrusion or with camel knowledge. The specific link to the sexual is underscored by the woman’s masturbation after Tristan brings a rag, used to stench the man’s abdominal bleeding, a physical symptom which reinforces the unsettling sensation that there is something wrong. Tristan feels the need to protect Maria in this setting: “Yo sero sombre, fidelidad y amparo” (40). She is both present, as a younger, more vulnerable version of herself whom he leads by the hand, and absent, since he finds her, now once again adolescent, outside the door—a foreshadowing of her physical presence and emotional absence during their later physical encounter under duress. Tristan’s fear of being unable to protect her is subtly justified by the complex symbolism clustered around the eating of the pomegranate: in Greek mythology Proserpine’s eating of pomegranate seeds 214 condemned her to periodic permanence in the underworld; similarly, Maria will become consigned to the house of prostitution and permanently altered by it. When Tristan finds Maria outside the door, her teeth have become blackened by the juices of the pomegranate, recalling the black vomit and suggesting some kind of contamination or consubstantiality. In the “real” part of the narrative, Tristan is also eventually unable to save Maria and loses her to the underworld of the brothel. The interweaving of dream and reality within the text render Tristan’s lostness and suffering more vivid to the reader; nevertheless, the “typical” dynamics of dreams, such as the way the bed shrinks, the liquid changes color, and Maria’s age fluctuates, are not restricted to the dream sequences but mirror narrative technique elsewhere. Since Gambaro’s storytelling is apparently grounded in the real, it proves disorienting when Maria’s mother’s irritation with her sister-in-law’s imminent visit is so intense that the letter becomes wrinkled and worn within its envelope before anyone touches it (20), and when the Baby blows hard enough to bend trees and freeze Tristan’s eyelids open (73). Similarly, the idea of the Baby crying for three days while people try to trace the “sirens” and soldiers surround the square (139) or the Bareback Rider soaring beyond the circus tent during her performance (220) stretch the reader's credibility to the breaking point. One finds it difficult to imagine a real circus executive biting off the clown’s fingers (119) or prodding the lion to attack the Bareback Rider (117). The scenes where the Boss does away with the meek woman and with Pepe, on the other hand, do not contain unrealistic elements per 215 sa, but they convey a feeling of irreality. One reads them like the nightmares in the novel because reality has become a nightmare. As in Vischar’s description of the grotesque affect, one is caught up in a whirlpool of absurdity where a whole segment of reality disintegrates (Kayser 113) and where dreaming and waking are equally frightening and painful. Art and Suffering Surrounded by terror and suffering, the artist can speak through his art only when he opens his heart to them. Paradoxically, Maria’s strength and precocious knowledge do not help her survive because she has resolved to ignore her feelings: “se concedia Ias lagrimas como una debilidad y aun el peso de su corazon are un deposito transitorio. Tania que pensar, y éste era su camino” (75). She acknowledges that although she tried to mother her own body, she as a person has died; she admits that she could only find thoughts about herself when she looked at Tristan (176). This confession is soon echoed by the Bareback Rider in one of her unuttered talks: “mis gestos solo adquieren peso y sentido cuando pueden completarse en las palabras y los gestos de los otros” (179). As she Ieams to look at others and really see them, her art acquires maturity and transcendence, and she is only able to teach Tristan that he can sing when this art also becomes compassionate. The Bareback Rider undergoes a process of maturation from the self- absorbed, haughty person who is only interested in others if they admire and flatter her to someone who weeps at the sadness in the world because she loves human beings (149). It is after she has fallen hopelessly in love with the poor 216 man and spent many days standing across from his hut gazing at the door, after she has given away all her belongings and received no indication of love in return, that she is able to make the spectators feel that they are with her leaping fearlessly in the air with an almost unbearable perfection (129-30). Early on, the Bareback Rider expects all gazes to be fixed on her; by the time the Baby, now grown and a husband and father, lies dying in his hut, her gaze is focused on him. She can now see beyond his miserable circumstances to the value of the gift of himself: “LQuo hiciste, babe, en este tiempo? Tan poco, decia la mano del babe, indiferente, tanto, decian los ojos de la Ecuyere, mirando” (209). The pain of love and death translates into her most superb performances: as she carries her audience with her in spite of their trepidation to unknown regions beyond life and death, she repeats to herself: “Bebe, a tiempo te moriste,” and it is now her pain rather than the sense or nonsense of life that sustains her (220). Although the Bareback Rider’s art soars unexpectedly from amid the sordid machinations of the circus, she continues to feel oppressed and conditioned by it. She resists the tendency to follow its tinny music (238) instead of her own, which arises from her compassion (191), and she recognizes that there is no escaping a world that is always exchanging lies for the mm (250). In the circus as mirror of society, the Boss insists after both deaths that nothing has happened, yet the ideas of pain as preserver of memory and of the persistent presence of the dead have already been introduced within the text, which puts his deceitful claims in their proper context. As the Bareback Rider walks toward the circus, she focuses on the horizon, below which the dead continue to move: 217 “tenaces y sin querer el olvido, los muertos van y vienen, coma grandes paces en el mar. Proximos y secretos, coma para que una palabra los aleje” (178). It hardly seems a coincidence that when referring to guerrillas during the military repression, the specific wording of official policy was to prevent their free circulation “like fish in water.”"’ This oblique reference to the presence of the fallen in the mind of the artist reinforces the value of art as testimony.2° Beyond any conscious memory, pain keeps its essence alive: “Bajo el llanto resecado, conservaria la memoria. Y aun si perdiera la memoria, sabia que el dolor tiene su propia memoria insobomable” (148). The Bareback Rider is determined to counter the denial of the meek woman’s life and death, knowing that, although remembering is painful, she and her art are worthless if she forgets:21 No perderé la memoria. Viviro en su esclavitud que me quitara la alegria, pero no querré salir porque no hay paraiso posible. es decir, inocente, fuera de la memoria, y yo no sero nada si la pierdo. (1 98) The Bareback Rider embodies—literally—the transformation of the ugliness of pain into a testimony of the human heart’s stubborn refusal to forget. Tristan, however, has had from the beginning a more intuitive grasp of the counterbalance of suffering and sweetness, of the way art speaks to misery even as it cannot take it away. His repeated failures vividly portray the artist’s ’9 Duhalde (75) and Feitlowitz (23) both record this phrase, originally coined by Chairman Mao. 2° The testimony of art is even capable of eliciting remorse: as he sees the Bareback Rider’s act, the clown remembers his guilt in suggesting that the meek woman could perform without a net 220). $1 Even before she has consciously arrived at this point, the circus boss perceives her as a threat and tries to do away with her by forcing her to clean the lion's cage. The resonance of this decision is remarkable: not only does it recall Daniel, condemned to die in the lion’s den by Darius the Made for his refusal to compromise his faith by praying to the king, and saved by an angel of the Lord (Daniel 6), but the infamous leanara of the detention centers, where recent 218 inadequacy in the face of horror; his dogged persistence is evidence of a consuming need to communicate; his final success at the place of his deepest humiliation is emblematic of the miraculous appearance of art where it seems most unlikely. Tristan is initially too wounded to reach out even to himself, much less to others, as Maria discems when they are both barely beyond childhood: “éQuién Ia ayudaria...? No Tristan, mas perdido que ella, poseedor de su silencio y de ningl'ln otra bien o sabidurie poseedor de la nada” (37). He senses his own utter desolation: his adoptive family is dead; he is ashamed that he has survived (14); he feels unworthy of being spoken to and completely alienated from even his own mirror image (13). All he can hope for is to be taken into account (77). Hopelessly inept, his attempts at singing are perceived as braying or choking noises, comic and desperate gargles which at best earn him a tentative smile from the Baby’s little boy (207) and at worst blows from the mourners at the funeral (18). Even as an adult he is rendered silent by Maria’s large belly and changed aspect (223), and in the final scene he is unable to hear himself sing and to believe himself capable of making music (7-8). It would be difficult to find a less likely figure of the artist than this virtual social outcast who hardly speaks a ward during the entire story. To choose such a broken victim of contempt and abuse, however, becomes strikingly appropriate given the setting in which the novel was written. Artists and journalists were among the most frequent victims of imprisonment, detainees were severely beaten and tortured with the electric prod to “soften them up” (Gonzalez and Cid de la Paz, qtd. in Feitlowitz, 56). 219 exile, and torture in the Argentine of the late 1970’s.22 Beatings and sexual humiliation were the Me in the illegal detention centers, and one of the most forbidding challenges presented to the detainees was to remain conscious of their own humanity and the humanity of those around them.” Tristan has been deeply marked by his experiences, as is evident in his tortured dreams; nevertheless, he gradually Ieams to observe signs of suffering in others, such as the new lines in the Bareback Rider's face and the way the Baby keeps repositioning his head on his neck (208). Before he dies, the Baby gives Tristan his way of looking at others (211). The Baby has the gift of the necessary word or gesture; he is the only one to call the Bareback Rider by her name—Rosa— and the first to understand that she is in love. He instinctively senses where the true danger lies on the streets, and he knows how people eventually emerge from the depths of misery (152). Armed with the Baby's gaze, Tristan can look at what Maria has become without falling apart: “el dolor nos arrna major que la felicidad, y con esa mirada podia contemplar a esa mujer que tenia enfrente sin )3" Tristan has Ieamed that pain can be good deshacerse en el horror” (224 company (182) and he has also Ieamed to set aside his heart’s desires in favor of the needs of others (179). His intimate acquaintance with suffering is what gives him a heightened awareness of its reality. It impels him simultaneously in two directions: he experiences a powerful urge to sing as a response to the pain “2 See Nunca Mas, 362 IL, on the disappearances of journalists and other writers. “3 Marguerite Feitlowitz in A Lexicon of Terror remarks that the victim’s horror at and alienation from their own tortured body worked toward preventing consciousness of his or her own humanity as well as of that of the torturers (66). 2‘ Morell contends that the words of “Esta noche me emborracho,” an Enrique Discépolo tango, the first line of which is quoted in reference to the Bareback Rider (“Vieja, fané, descangayada"), 220 and failure of others, and at the same time is keenly aware of his inability to produce an appropriate and effective response. Gambaro has told Sharon Magnarelli that Dias no nos quiere cantantas is her answer to what was happening in Argentina at the time it was written, as well as to her own situation (128), living in exile because of the banning of her 1976 novel, Ganarse la muerte. That novel makes abundantly clear that she understood the suffering and brokenness caused by the regime as well as the powerlessness of its victims to resist. Her choice of Tristan, a penniless outcast literally without a voice for virtually the entire novel, reflects the impotence she may have felt as an artist banned from speaking out in her own country.25 Tristan understands intuitively that pain calls for the type of response that art can provide. His own pitiful appearance in the mirror the day after his family is buried alive elicits an unsuccessful attempt at song (13), but the vast majority of his attempts are inspired by the suffering of others. At the cemetery, when the bereaved mother cries out that the unearthed bones are her little boy and seems to feel her son’s skull through another child’s hair (18); when the Bareback Rider fails miserably at bareback riding (48); when she nearly loses her will to live after the disappearance of the man she loves (149-57); when the Baby is dying, actually apply to Maria (489). The tango details in comically grotesque language the physical ruin of the beautiful girl, now aged and ugly, who was the perdition of the man singing the words. 2“ Enrique Giordano sees the space inhabited by the characters in this novel as the space of total exile, due partially to the destabilization of identity. Giordano’s study concentrates on Gambaro’s transgression of the preestablished codes of conduct for male and female characters (31) and the rupture of human identity in the novel based on the absence or inappropriateness of names and on the absence of feminine mystique, of maternity, and of the traditional male hero. Masculine and feminine subjects do not exist as absolute categories, since the feminine functions as whatever is marginal to the masculine. This leaves the door open to a new way of being, for which he has not yet settled on a term, provisionally accepting androgynyas the closest equivalent. (“La treyectoria de los sujetos en Dias no nos quiere cantentas” 31 -41) 221 leaving behind a fatherless can (207); and when Maria has become a distortion of her former self (223), Tristan tells himself, “Tengo que aprender a center.” He senses that art can somehow be of help, perhaps because it brings a new element to the situation (149), because it makes the human story more compassionate and clear (116), or because it is greater than the sum of its parts. Art can elevate the humble elements of which it is composed: “desprender Ias palabras de su sujecion de pequefiez y de tierra” (63); this image of liberation metonymically expresses the way art can draw the human soul beyond its own earth-bound experience, as in the Bareback Rider's best performances. The grotesqueness of Tristan’s art arises not so much from its inadequacy or its ugliness as from the juxtaposition of that ugliness with what he somehow knows art ought to be. He is torn between what he feels compelled to do—his calling—end its utter failure throughout most of the novel. Much like Discépolo’s Stefano, who dies an individual and social failure, incapable of coherent communication, his life’s work never carried out (Kaiser-Lenoir 73, 76), Tristan remains a solitary and alienated figure unsuccessful in that which he feels defines him as a person. The inner brokenness of the grotesque protagonist captures the brokenness of a society where true communication and solidarity are the exception rather than the rule and where nothing is as it ought to be. The artist in such a society has a choice to make: either succumb to defeat or keep trying, however grotesquely. The Bareback Rider in her meditations sees that choice and opts, as Tristan ultimately does, for continued struggle. Although she feels that God does not want human beings to be happy 222 and that they destroy their own existence, that the meaning of life is inscrutable (250), she chooses her own answer—that all is well: y asi coma aferrandome al trapacio me desplazo en el aire y del ceos del movimiento escojo los que puedo ordenar, con esa respuesta que no es respuesta me transforrno y la elijo como cierta, mas cierta y mia que aquella otra oculta por una sabidurie indiferente Llora, Tristan. Todo esta bien. (221)26 That contradictory affirmation—weep; all is well—summarizes the irreconcilable tension that characterizes not only the presence of art with its healing potential in a world in ruins but also the brokenness and hunger for coherence common to all of humanity. The Bareback Rider consciously decides to construct meaning out of chaos, and to choose an answer that is not an answer and to confer certainty upon it. All is well, she decides, when we weep together; all is well when our song, like hers, is compassionate in the face of our ignorance, as Tristan understands when he finally begins to sing (253). Enrique Giordano calls the illuminated pleasure house a place of dreams, and then goes on to show how these dreams are broken.“7 So attractive to young Tristan and Maria, it is the scene of their deepest degradation, and ends emptied of all life, dirty, with crumbling plaster (7, 252). The tearing of the fabric of society, evident in the ruptures within families and other human relationships, is mirrored in the crumbling stnlctures that house them. Tristan’s adoptive family’s house, built on an unstable foundation, collapses and kills them (8). The 2" Morell develops a series of parallels between this novel and Voltaire’s Candide, with which it shares the theme that all is well (in spite of the sufferings of the protagonist), the use of humor, and many details of the plot such as the sexual corruption of the loved one, the earthquake, the correlation to historical events, Biblical parody, and the redeeming value of work (490-92). “7 Giordano also points out the dream of both the Bareback Rider and Maria to fly, in Maria’s case not achieved (36). It is particularly striking that the Bareback Rider does fly in the final pages of the novel, precisely in that place of broken dreams. 223 Baby's house is in obvious decay as he lies dying (207). Other structures, such as the hotel room in Tristan’s dream and the destitute man’s house, are vacated forcibly, affording no protection to their occupants (55, 144). Even the circus tent is carried away in a wind storm (177). The only two places where the Bareback Rider perfects her art are the circus tent and the house of prostitution, which could both be considered emblematic of Argentina under dictatorship. Marital bonds are broken, innocence is lost, and the powerless are abused in the brothel, where cynicism and numbness prevail (106-08). Despotic power murders without accountability and memory is suppressed in the circus. Among the crumbling plaster, in the space where Tristan’s innocent dreams were shattered, he remembers his humiliation without pain or perplexity and still allows the Bareback Rider to lift him into the air with her. They reclaim a soiled and crumbling space with their art and redeem a compromised word, center, from its weight of complicity.28 Gambaro opens a window of hope for the future of art, practised by broken artists in a space shattered by repression. Daspués del dia de fiesta The jacket of Daspués del dia da fiesta promises an allegory of our times. That it is, although not only in the sense of social prejudice and failure; it is also 2“ Feitlowitz has compiled a list of words whose meaning became compromised through their association with repression, torture, and death, such as desaparecer, trasladar, paquete, laanara, capucha, submarina, and chupar (51-60). She observes, “As the wise novelist Julio Cortazar said, 'Under authoritarian regimes language is the first system that suffers, that gets degraded.’ l have come to believe that, even after the regime has ended, language may be the last system to recover" (61). Although the sinister meaning of “to sing” is not restricted to Argentina, the relevance of the redemption of compromised words in a novel set in the Argentine of the Military Process is particularly apt. In this regard, Salil Sosnowski considers semantic restoration a way 224 an exploration of what art can and can not do in society. The figure of the great Italian Romantic Giacomo Leopardi, suddenly and anachronistically present in contemporary Buenos Aires, inspires in Tristan, his host, tenderness, admiration, and eventually indignation. The self-absorbed and ineffectual though charming Giacomino, as he is affectionately called, stands in stark contrast to the black Africans and the Indians who arrive suddenly and inexplicably and suffer hunger, cold, and, predictably, discrimination at the hands of the partar‘ias. A lovely young African women, N’Bom, loved despite her black skin by the neighborhood bigot and rabble-rouser, the Whiner (aI Ouajosa), and befriended by Tristan, prostitutes herself to earn food and clothing; abused by her clients and increasingly isolated, she ends up dead in her bathtub. Meanwhile, the Whiner organizes the building of a well within the shantytown in which he and Tristan live to separate the Africans from the Argentines. Giacomino, who has been corresponding with his sister Paolina and writing poems at night in spite of his deteriorating health, is visited on his deathbed by his best friend, Antonio Ranieri, and Ranieri’s sister. After Giacomino’s death, Tristan discovers that the words which have haunted him during the last few years are actually the first line of a poem by Leopardi. As he reads the rest of the poem, he reflects on what he expects from poetry, and the concluding scene of the novel is his vision of his world in the light of Giacomino’s art. The wall in Tristan’s neighborhood is emblematic of the divisions within this text, where Gambaro makes use of sharp contrasts to polarize the in which the artist assumes leadership in the reclaiming of values subverted by institutional terrorism (Bergero and Reati 49). 225 discussion of art and society and to symbolize the tensions within individuals and groups. Clear divergences develop between Tristan and Giacomino regarding what constitutes real suffering and between Tristan and the Whiner about coexistence with others. There are also definite ruptures in time and space, such as the characters Giacomo Leopardi and Antonio and Paolina Ranieri from the eighteenth century, present in the twentieth, and the arrival of Africans and Indians in Buenos Aires as well as the apparent transformation of the River Plate into the Ganges, complete with sacred cows and funeral pyres.29 At the same time, parallels in social situations across time and space and a circularity of structure in the novel blur the distinctions while highlighting class differences and injustice in all of them. The presence of incompatible elements throughout the novel reinforces the paradox that is art, a paradox most clearly developed in the last scene where human misery and beauty seem unable to coexist, yet they do. Tristan and Giacomino Giacomo Leopardi appears in Tristan’s room the day after the Africans arrive. The night before, Tristan has stepped outside in search of cooler air, and suddenly has found himself repeating a line of poetry. As he reflects on its meaning, he stumbles upon a small black boy with an enormous belly. The virtual simultaneity of the two arrivals foreshadows the development throughout the text of a tension between poetic beauty and social ugliness. The two characters, Tristan and Giacomino, manifest in their relationship an attraction and rejection that mirrors the tension between their visions of art and society. 2’ This violation of credibility is related to the fear of a loss of identity expressed by the Whiner in the face of an “invasion” of a European community by other ethnic groups. 226 Tristan feels an immediate bond with Giacomino, whom he identifies as a kindred spirit. He feels drawn to the poet’s apparent sadness (19) and willingly takes care of him. Giacomo seems to hold for Tristan a mysterious promise, which is confirmed when the line of poetry that haunts Tristan proves to be his. The narrator’s ironic comments, however, underline the differences between them: Tristan se habia encadenado a ol como a su alma gemela, un alma imposible que jamas podria tener Un alma gemela es aquella que nos encadena por lo que no somos. (36) Tristan and Giacomino do in fact complement one another: the former works to provide for both of them and realizes their budgetary limitations, while the latter never concerns himself with practical matters. When Giacomino treats the prostitute to a meal and breaks the cup and saucer, Tristan pays for everything and gently explains to his guest about eating at home (42-43). Tristan knows everyone in the neighborhood; Giacomino is an isolated figure who scarcely interacts with others, yet he provides company for Tristan and his stories take Tristan beyond the small world he inhabits. Giacomo’s role within the story, like the Whiner’s, is to help define Tristan’s vision. The true tension in the novel is between two apparently incompatible realities, that of the beauty of art and that of the ugliness of human prejudice and suffering. As Hortensia Morell points out, the suffering in Giacomo’s art comes from his concept of naia, which is not founded on any concrete cause but rather is a definition of life as pain. The inability to find satisfaction in any earthly thing is for him a proof of greatness in a human 227 being.“o As Tristan observes and interacts with Giacomino’s romantic alienation and his apparent indifference toward the suffering of others, he becomes increasingly indignant. When Giacomino professes to envy the poor for what he considers to be their resignation and lack of awareness, Tristan loses his patience and drags him along to the wake of a child killed in a fire so that he can witness the pain of the bereaved father, who feels responsible for his child’s death. This man, abandoned by his wife, is forced by crushing need to leave his five children while he works to support them, and the flimsy shack in which they live has caught fire while the baby slept. While Giacomino’s pain begins and ends inside his own soul, Tristan’s is fed by and focused toward that of others. The emotional and thematic climax of the novel is centered around this episode, where Tristan forces his guest to see that his suffering is a choice, the way vacation is only a choice for the financially secure, whereas others choose neither their work nor their pain: El hombre, vaya a saberse de donde habia salido, ignoraba que ninglin mal del corazon puede compararse al hambre, ningun desfallecimiento en la pasion puede compararse a la intemperie. LLos creia inalterablemente felices? Cuando terrninaban de gritar en la cancha, belicosos, exultantes o frustrados, se sentian vacios y no se daban cuenta del vacio. No darse cuenta, Giacomino, es lo pear. Y al dia siguiente. vuelven a levantarse en la madmgada soportando el frio y el maltrato, viajan ocupando los asientos duros del omnibus a pear, sin conseguir asiento alguno, y regresan a un trabaja que no amen. Vos debés amar el tuyo. Agradecé a Dios. (171) Giacomino loses his will to live together with his pride once he has been confronted with the agony of the bereaved father, although he stubbomly insists 3° This explanation appears in quotes from Leopardi’s Zbaldana and Pansieri, found in Octavio Casale’s A Leopardi Reader. Morell interprets this suffering correctly as intellectual, and for 228 that he, too, suffers (173). What he has considered the uniqueness of his suffering somehow defines him; he is lost without it. Gambaro has built her portrayal of Giacomino around the concept of the Romantic poet who focuses on both human suffering and the presence of beauty—hence the moonlight shining on the poet’s sorrow and solitude in the poem—without the possibility of that beauty transforming the reality that causes the suffering.31 Giacomino’s poetry as “pure art” reflecting universals is in direct opposition to Tristan’s expectation that art should be engaged with the here and now and be an instrument of social change. The latter is thus deeply disillusioned when he reads the remaining lines of the poem after the promise of the first one: después de esa primera frase el resto solo podia prometer venture. En cambio, Giacomino no hablaba de los tugurios que cambiarian en cases habitables, no hablaba de un mundo arrnonioso, fuera de la intemperie y el desamparo. Hablaba de la luna, icon esta perdia tiempo Giacomino! (194) Giacomino’s art neither expresses the intense suffering of the hopeless nor rectifies skewed social priorities; it neither heals nor restores; it does not even evoke N’Bom as she was before she lost her identity as a beautiful black women (193); and therefore in Tristan’s eyes it is hypocrisy (195). That this impasse comes to a head in the closing scene of the novel emphasizes the inevitably two- faced nature of art, represented both explicitly and implicitly in the many contradictions within this novel. Giacomo something the masses are incapable of feeling (670). 3’ According to John Heath-Stubbs, “the characteristic setting of Leopardi’s poetry is landscape transformed by moonlight The moon, throughout Leopardi's poetry, is a recurrent symbol for that beauty which so poignantly touches the darkness of human existence.”(Origo and Heath- Stubbs xi). Gambaro also explicitly associates the mountains with beauty (196). Tristan's perception is that this beauty does not really touch human life if it does not affect the cause of human suffering. 229 Trlstan and the Whiner Duality as motif and technique is seen in the presence of two complementary pairs of characters: Tristan and the Whiner as kindred spirits are a sort of funhouse-mirror reflection of the relationship between Tristan and Giacomino. The Whiner sees Tristan es “una persona afin, su alma gemela en suma” (38). The placement of this thought is strategically—and ironically—a mere two pages after Tristan’s musings about his kinship with Giacomino, which causes the reader to recall that a kindred spirit chains us to that which we are not (36). Tristan is in tension with both alter egos over significant issues. Whereas Giacomino both symbolizes and expresses the idea of art as beauty manifested in the face of, but not directly interacting with, the ugliness of human problems, the Whiner is the incarnation, so to speak, of those very problems. For the Whiner, what unites him with Tristan is their common identity as Argentines; he communes with Tristan over mate and resents the fact that the Africans presume to drink their national beverage (32-33). The irony of his own identity as immigrant is completely lost on him.” He shouts at them to go back to where they came from (34), kicks the little black boy off Tristen’s lap (37), and admonishes Tristan not to trust them, whereupon the narrator explicitly establishes a contrast between the trensforrnative potential of Giecomino’s poetry in the night and the Whiner‘s bigotry as destructive of that potential: Fratemalmente, la apoyo su mano sobre el hombro, y ante el color opaco de la luz, Tristan supo, quizas por la carga de esa mano que pesaba como la estupidez del mundo, que la noche vendria para que ol no podria recorder Ia frase que la transfiguraba. (38) “2 This irony is not lost on the reader, as is probably Gambaro’s intent, nor on Morell (666). 230 The symbolic value of the wall, the Whiner’s brainchild, to keep him and his in and the blacks out, so that he does not so much as have to look at them, confirms his role as a foil for Tristan’s empathy and communal instinct. Tristan defines his social priorities as over against the Whiner in a parallel way to the definition of his vision of art in contrast to Giacomino’s poetry. The Whiner’s concept of other races as contaminants is contained in the analogy he uses to justify the wall to Tristan: “No debe mezclarse el agua y el aceite, la mugre con la limpio.” (125) The compartmentalization of society with its consequent injustices is for him inherent in civilization; regarding the wall, his defiant attitude is: “aQuerian civilizacion? Pues la tendrian” (133). The Whiner’s resentment of the intruders mirrors the subtle racism in Argentina society against immigrants, not from Africa and India, but from Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay (“Derechos humanos” 1). President Salil Menem’s neoliberal economic policy allowing virtually unrestricted competition for employment and the availability of first-world goods, whether or not the middle classes could afford them (Bergero and Reati 79, 84), attracted immigrants from neighboring countries. The difficulties these newcomers experience when seeking documentation, employment, education, and health care (“Contra el racismo” 1) are reflected in the novel in the wall, in the rejection of Tristan’s suggestion that a clinic replace it, and in the policemen and the doctor’s hesitation to venture into areas occupied by other nationalities. These inequities as well as the Executive Branch’s legal right to incarcerate immigrants without judiciary authorization, and the existence of broadcast and printed racist 231 propaganda, have given rise to a United Nations formal complaint against Argentina (“Derachos humanos” 1) and a book-length study on racism and xenophobia (Margulis and Urrestl, La sagragacion nagada, 1999). The social reality for which the Whiner stands is larger than his own prejudice, and even as Tristan is both attracted to and repelled by Giacomino’s attitude, the Whiner is more than one-dimensional. In the light of his stated association of ethnic minorities with dirt and contamination, the narrator’s description of the Whiner’s eyes when he falls in love—inexplicably—with N’Bom is most ironic: “Los ojos del Ouejoso, generalmente turbios a fuerza de resentimiento y de vino berato, se hicieron claros y transparentes. El mismo parecio herrnoso” (49). What clarifies and cleanses the muddiness of his vision is his instinctive attraction for a woman who happens to be African; unfortunately, his love for her does not transform his view of her compatriots. He is also only in love with her as long as it entails no responsibility: he remains In hiding until the baby is born and turns out to be African. This emotional inconsistency also . parallels Giacomino’s contradictory nature, in which his beauty-loving and creative soul stand in opposition to his ugly hunchback and his lack of control over his own limbs, as well as to his self-centeredness. Tristan’s position as central figure caught between two opposing characters parallels his situation in Dias no nos quiere contentos, where Maria opts for self-preservation, closing herself off from others while the Bareback Rider, originally less accessible to Tristan than Maria, gradually opens up to others and their suffering, and Tristan floats between them, reaching out but not 232 always connecting as he grows as a person through his contacts with both. In Daspués dal dl’a da fiesta, neither alter ego, although the polar opposite of the other, lacks complexity, which allows Tristan to both identify with them and react against them. The inner contradictions of the characters mirror the larger paradox of art’s self-contradictory place in a society rife with ugliness and disharmony. Style and Structure The text of the novel both coheres and pulls apart the way art is both capable and incapable of creating harmony. The constant shifts between the mutually contradictive circularity and rupture, alternately foregrounded but simultaneously present in the narrative, reinforce on the structural level Tristan’s alternating perceptions, passed on to the reader, of beauty as both hauntingly desirable and monstrously inappropriate. The clash of incompatibles to which Philip Thomson alludes in his essay on the grotesque (20, 27) exists in this novel both on the level of ideas and principles and within its style and structure. In stylistic terms, the use of irony, the coexistence of the poetic and the vulgar, of the beautiful and the grotesquely ugly, and the abundance of anachronisms create a tension that is deepened by the diverging patterns of the narrative. The novel’s opening line, also the first line of Leopardi’s poem, is: “Dulce y clara es la noche, y sin viento” (7). The sweetness and clarity of the night coexist ironically with the shouts of drunks and the sounds of people beating their children the way they beat their dogs. So much for sweetness. Irony, both verbal and situational, serves to highlight the contradictions within people and 233 society and create a setting for other types of contradictions. The Whiner, for instance, loves N’Bom and hates blacks; he feels less spiritually alone when he has just crushed a fellow human being (15). To build on the irony of that situation, when the neighbors complain about the Africans to the police, the latter do not understand why they wish to be seen as different from the blacks when they are identical to them. Any naive African who might think, however, that he belongs to the same species as his Argentine neighbors is soon cured of his error by a swift blow to the head (53). Much of the irony arises from a character’s ignorance of harsh social realities. Immediately after N’Bom tells Tristan that she is pregnant, Paolina writes to her brother that she imagines the women where he is to be free (122); her idealized vision of America (Morell 668) highlights the degradation and subjugation in which most of the novel’s women exist. Tristan, before he realizes that the signatures the Whiner is collecting are for the erection of a wall, congratulates himself that the neighborhood has finally awakened from its individualistic inertia (124). Giacomino flatters himself that both the prostitute in the café and N’Bom are actually interested in him as a person. Ironic remarks about poverty can be gently and unconsciously humorous, as when Tristan tells his guest that they have all kinds of things—bread, noodles, sugar, and yarba mate (42). They can also be bitingly cynical, as when he calls the stagnant pond a Paradise and reacts to the Africans’ pathetic shacks and unidentifiable food: “Tienen casa y comida, penso Tristan en veta cinica, la vida Ias sonrie” (12). The gap between words and reality or expectations and situations mirrors the rift 234 between Giacomino’s poem (and what Tristan thinks are its magical powers) and the world he expects it to address. An additional source of tension in the novel exists betweeen physical beauty and grotesque ugliness. Gambaro’s strategy aligns reader sympathy with Tristen’s indignation by exposing the mechanism of abjection present in racism. As Kristeva explains it, the Other simultaneously elicits hatred and a frightened desire; in racism hatred wins out and the Other is discarded like excrement or a corpse (Powers of Harrar185). The Whiner’s fascination with the little black boy’s pink palm (17) and his love for N’Bom are defeated, ultimately, by his abjection, made evident in his references to filth and disease (125) and his oblique allusion to the rampant sexuality most likely to explain the Africans’ proliferation (1 26). The depictions in the text of the foreigners’ physical repulsiveness seem at first to confirm this abjection. Rotting teeth and bloody gums, scaly skin, sagging breasts, and bulging stomachs suggest disease, infection, and decay. Most of the ugliness and deformation, however, proves to be attributable to their exploitation and exclusion by the ethnic majority. While the older African women’s pendulous breasts are likely unavoidable given their preference for leaving them uncovered, their ruined teeth set in bloody gums are the result of malnutrition and lack of proper care and could have been prevented (48-49). The unsanitary conditions and lack of purified water are the most logical explanation for the presence of scaly patches on their elegant bodies and the loss of their once beautiful teeth (13). The African child in the first scene has a 235 huge belly, probably the result of parasites and lack of proper food (8). The beautiful N’Bom, unable to buy clothing or make a future for herself, feels obligated to prostitute herself in return for trifles, and finally ends up as a stinking corpse, floating naked in the bathtub, staring grotesquely with eyes the size of basins (177). Even Giacomino’s twitchy lack of physical control could plausibly be accounted for as a set of nervous tics due to his cruelly repressive upbringing. The general pattern of movement from beauty and wholeness to ugliness, sickness and loss reflects on a stylistic level the ideological tension between diverging visions of society as it confirms Tristan’s point of view and discredits the Whiner’s. An additional disruptive factor is the proliferation of anachronisms, which stretch the narrative’s credibility and clash with its grounding in sociopolitical reality.33 The anachronisms are merely the most obvious facet of a tearing away at the fabric of verisimilitude, also eroded by transgressions of place and by hyperbole, such as the grotesque physical descriptions. That the African child has a huge belly is perceived by the reader as entirely plausible; that he rolls away on it at lightning speed, rather like a ball, is less so (8). The transformation of the River Plate into the Ganges is virtually unimaginable and nearly manages to derail the scathing denouncement of the racist and classist world of the 1990’s (77-78). A large crow-like bird that follows Giacomino around in Gordoba listening to his poetry (107-111), a tribute perhaps to Poe’s raven, eventually 3" On the level of style and structure, the anachronisms create a dissonance that duplicates the lack of consensus in society itself. As Morell observes based on her reading of Nicolas Shumway (The Invention of Argentina), nineteenth-century intellectuals managed to create en Argentina 236 finds him in the outskirts of Buenos Aires (129), and leaves Tristan a note when he leaves (191) seems not only an impossibility but unnecessary to the plot. Even before the disturbances of chronology and the insertion of actual documents (letters and other writings by Leopardi, his friend, and his sister) into the text of the novel, we have a hybrid work of uneven credibility. The anachronisms, however, push the dynamics of disruption nearly to the point of no return. For a man in Buenos Aires to hear in 1994 the words of a nineteenth-century Italian poet; for that poet to show up, frock coat and all, at his house; for letters to arrive in twentieth-century Argentina from that poet’s sister in the previous century; and for the poet’s best friend and the friend’s sister to come to his deathbed, also from the previous century, polarizes the narrative into what is “real” and what is “made up,” what is “true” and what is “fiction”—except for the fact that the poet and his best friend really existed; that the letters are, verbatim, actual letters from his very real sister Paolina; and that Tristan, the Whiner, and the Africans are the fictional characters. The incorporation of numerous biographical details and personality traits—all documented as true of Leopardi— along with the historical documents corroborate the factuality of elements that seem more fictional than the fiction created by Gambaro. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile the rapidly diverging components of the text and reconstruct them into some kind of coherence. The fragmentation of the plot is counterbalanced, nevertheless, by a certain circularity arising from the recurrence of social injustice across time and that is simultaneously developed and underdeveloped, which led to a society where consensus is nearly impossible (666). 237 space. The twentieth-century society depicted here has retained the rigidity of nineteenth-century Italy, where family and servants alike live in fear of Giacomino’s father (26) and Giacomino himself is not allowed to step outside alone until he is twenty (25). The persistence across the centuries of violence and oppression makes his discussion with Tristan equally relevant to his century and to Tristan’s: “El no podia vivir con la violencia, y Tristan lo miro con interos. acomo hacia? Si uno no puede vivir con la violencia esta sonado” (27). Within the general tradition of social injustice, it is particularly the treatment of women that lends thematic unity to the novel. The extensive selections from Paolina’s letters establish a pattern which reappears in Tristan’s twentieth-century world: the impossibility that women dream their own dreams or decide their own destiny. A woman’s place, one gathers from every woman depicted in this novel, is firmly under the thumb of either a man or the social institutions which restrict her choices. A patriarchal and racist society conspires to allow neither Paolina, nor N’Bom, nor the Indian woman on the train any real control. The conclusion of the novel resembles the closing of a circle: it opens and closes at night in the villa miseria, with the same line of poetry. At the beginning and at the and, Tristan attributes to the poem an incantatory power, the ability to restore, somehow, a world in which pain and suffering are recognized and remedied, in which health is preserved and the poor live in decent housing, in which women can be themselves and decide their own fate. The expectation that the night will be transfigured is born in the opening scene (8), referred to 238 throughout the narration, and considered at length once he sees the words that actually follow the tantalizing first line. What holds the story together is human suffering across time and place and Tristan’s expectation that art can somehow transform and heal it; although narrative continuity is in constant opposition to the divergent timelines and intermittent implausibility. This structural tension— circularity against divergence—echoes the esthetic and ideological clashes within the work. Art and Society The feast day of the novel’s title may refer to Giacomino’s poetry reading in Oordoba, as Morell suggests (668). It also can be seen as the great celebration at the fall of the military dictatorship in 1983. Some ten years later Tristan inhabits a Buenos Aires not so different from the city of his childhood. He continues to live in poverty and solitude, only sporadically employed and provided with only the bare essentials for survival: coffee, pasta, bread, yarba mate, and sugar. The modesty of his shack in the villa misaria is reminiscent of the meager fumishings and provisions of the casilla in Dias no nos quiere cantantos; as an adult he possesses so little that thieves never bother to come through the unlocked door (Daspués del dl’a da fiesta 18). Like Maria’s father, who contemplated leaving his job but was aware that there were thousands anxious to replace him (Dias 23), Tristan stands in a huge line of applicants for two spots unloading merchandise (Daspuas 92). Maria’s father's dislike for the job he cannot afford to lose is reflected fifteen years later in Tristan’s depiction to 239 Giacomino of the poor, waking before dawn in the cold to ride hard bus seats to a job they do not love (171). Class consciousness has not been renegotiated since the return of democracy: the contempt felt by Maria and her mother for the Bareback Rider and her husband, arriving by train with suitcases tied with string, has become the dismissal of the Africans by stereotype: “solo la negrada tiene hijos a montones” (Daspuas 126). If the various segments of society—the shantytown inhabitants, the waiter in the cafe, the doctor—are united in their rejection of the Africans, each class in turn lumps together the classes below it. The policemen at the local station understand neither the blacks nor the Whiner and his neighborhood contingent: “aY par qué querian diferenciarse de los negros, si eran iguales?” (53). They relieve Tristan of his watch and money (175) with the same indifference that makes them arrive late at the burning shack of the native family: “No habia sido una bomba, solo indiferencia, de los que tenian todo hacia los que no poseian nada” (163). They wash their hands of their responsibility to the poor and helpless the way the neighbors washed their hands of Tristan as an orphaned child. Similarly, the inhabitants of the barrio under the director of the Whiner wall themselves off from the misery of the Africans, mounting sharp shards of glass on top to discourage intruders (136). They are as hypocritically concerned about the appearance of the wall, debating the esthetic values of barbed wire versus glass (127), as the abusive circus boss about his publicity campaign. The Indians in line with Tristan for a job at the supermarket unloading trucks seam conscious of a terrible violation when they touch the person in front of them (93); Tristan, not rejected at first sight like the natives, loses his position after a month due supposedly to incompetence but possibly to the visibility of the dark roots of his hair, dyad blond to enhance his chances of getting hired (93, 95). The management’s apparent preference for northern Europeans is mirrored in a different setting by caste hatred among the immigrants from India: entre ellos habia unos de turbante enrollado que odiaban a quienes no lo usaban, y dos por tres se arrnaban broncas que terrninaban an cases arrasadas, cuchilladas y muerte (135). Argentina’s society has castes of its own. Tristan, as N’Bom recognizes, is “un pobre que nunca seldria de pobre” (121). The poor have few choices; poor women have fewer still, a fact that has not changed since the seventies. Maria’s choices in Dias no nos quiere aontantas are limited: escape from her family results in prostitution and degradation. Even after her days at the house of prostitution, she is under the thumb of a brutish man whom she hurries to placate so that he will not attack Tristan (Dias 224). A pattern of submission to abusive men extends from Cledy in Ganarse la muerte through Maria and the meek woman in Dias no nos quiere cantantos to N’Bom and the Indian woman in Daspués dal die da fiesta. The mentality that justified the subjugation of women in the official discourse mouthed by the narrator of Ganarse la muerte, the uncensored contempt that allows both Cledy and N’Bom to be called whores, is a constant in patriarchal society. The lot of women, Gambaro suggests, has not improved substantially since the great “feast day" of democracy restored either. 241 Paolina Leopardi, in addition to providing naive, hence ironic, commentary about how women in America must surely be free, serves to illustrate the long tradition of their subservience. Paolina sees clearly that she will not be allowed to choose her own friends (146), even as she may not choose how to occupy her time. Her mother points her to the embroidery hoop with the admonition that God punishes the lazy (31). When she works with her father on his publications she begins to absorb his paternalistic attitude toward the country people around them and realizes that she may never know what it is to think for herself: “LQué mujeres lo sabran alguna vez?” (152). Trapped as she is within the castle walls, she feels equally trapped in terms of her decision whether to marry: substituting one type of prison—a mother who controls her every movement—for another—e husband’s authority—hardly seems a real choice (87, 123). She wonders whether she is an exemplary daughter or merely a foolish woman to remain in the place which has been ordained for her (153). The mother that decapitates her children (Argentina for Tristan in the seventies) is anticipated in Paolina’s and Giacomo’s mother, who rejoices in children’s death and suffering (150). N’Bom, like Paolina, has no real choices. She can clean houses like her white counterparts, who will resent the competition from one they consider below them (72-73), she can remain in poverty in the black settlement, or she can offer her only real asset, her beautiful body, in exchange for goods and money. To her it is a new form of barter for merchandise (73); she does not realize at first that it will cost her her identity and eventually her life. N’Bom gradually exchanges her naked breasts for a dress, her curls for chemically straightened 242 hair, her own small for cheap perfume, and her African name for “Vanessa.” When Tristan visits her in her apartment he sees scars, bruises, and pinch marks, also part of the exchange. Like Maria in Dias no nos quiere contentos, she has adapted to prostitution, becoming a stranger in the process. N’Bom’s freedom, like Paolina’s, is an illusion, which makes the latter’s idea of the women where Giacomino is being free doubly ironic. When Tristan reports on his visit to N’Bom, Giacomino wants to be reassured that she is indeed free to make her own decisions: Ella puede hacer lo que quiere, gverdad? pregunto Giacomino, casi afirrnando. Tristan no lo sabia, (3a qué llamamos libertad? N’Bom era solo una hojita arrastrada por el torrente (155) The image of the young woman floating on a raging stream foreshadows her death, floating in the bathtub, equally trapped in death as she was in life (177). The third woman in Después del dia da fiesta is the Indian wife on the train to Oordoba. She eats only the crumbs of the abundant lunch ingested by her husband; when Tristan offers first her and than her little girl his apple, once the child has rejected it the husband devours it in two bites. Upon arriving at the station, he leaves the train without so much as looking back at his wife, who attempts unsuccessfully to maneuver the child, a suitcase, a rolled-up mattress and some pots and pans. That her situation is of more than passing interest is reflected in the phrasing of the narration: “el tren comenzo a moverse, y a ella y a su destino se los trago rapidamente la noche” (105, emphasis mine). When Tristan has found Giacomino’s poems, he longs for them to put things in their 243 proper place, and with the righting of other wrongs he expresses the following wish: la mujer del tren, de mirar sumiso, con su nenita sobre la falda, seria una diosa con miles de brazos y manos para sostener firrnemente sus propias deseos; ya no la descuidaria el hombre con los faldones de la camisa afuera; capaz de moverse, arrojaria sus suehos de una mano a otra, de sus miles de manos a sus miles de manos, para que fracasaran algunos, cuajaran en una realidad manos ensombrecida los restantes. (193) Instead of carrying packages for her husband, in Tristan’s vision she bears her own destiny, the way N’Bom recovers her pride and her identity in his dream of a better world. Tristan's wish for the woman from India resembles his nostalgic vision of N’Bom dancing in the firelight, which he believes the magic of poetry can restore: si lograba complatar lo que seguia a esa frase perfecta ella danzaria desnuda a la luz de una hoguera. Recuperaria el cuerpo, la piel oscura, Ias motes densas, Ia tiema e inocente voluptuosided. Se moveria al compas de un tum-tum de tambores cerca del fuego, cerca del cielo estrellado y la lune, mas belle y libre de lo que nunca habia sido. (145) Tristan has, in some ways, not changed much either since the days of Dias no nos quiere cantantas. As the Bareback Rider pauses inside the lion’s cage, he tries to sing, “porque ante el sonido de su voz todo se inmovilizaria par un momenta y naceria de otra manera, mas piadosa y comprensible” (116), but the lion’s roar discourages him. He expects art to transform reality for the better or, less possibly, to undo history. Neither the Indian woman nor N’Bom can return to what they were before their encounter with Argentine society. Tristan, however, continues to see them the way he did at the beginning of the novel, as the Other: he comments the morning after he first hears poetry that the Africans seem from 244 another planet (axtraterrastras, 9). When Tristan shows one of them a faucet, he seems to Tristan to drink like a beast (11). In this he is scarcely less stereotypical in his thinking than the Whiner, who assumes that the Africans are dirty and will cause epidemics (125). Tristan and Giacomino embody opposite expectations of art in society. Tristan expects a miraculous restoration of wholeness and purity, a return to origins. Giacomino, on the other hand, has no vision of art’s place in society; for him it serves to express his suffering and, perhaps, to convince others that life is pain.“ Solidarity, for Leopardi, is merely the consciousness of shared suffering.35 His response to the anguish of the dead baby's father, therefore, is simply to insist that he, too, suffers. His concept of art is less problematic for him than Tristan’s is for Tristan, because he expects less of it, only that it express what he feels. For Tristan, however, Giacomino is “fastidiosamente autorreferancial” (166). His frock coat seems a visual confirmation of his complete alienation from contemporary society. What creates tension for the reader is that one identifies with Tristan’s outrage at Giacomino’s Romantic alienation, yet one sees the lack of feasibility of Tristan’s expectations. Morell sees the tensions in the novel as partially explainable by means of allegory: although she does not use that word, she employs Nicolas Shumway's term “the invention of Argentina” to show how the various characters stand for the conflicting forces that prevent consensus in a society simultaneously 3‘ As Morell explains, quoting Casale, the poet through his intellect becomes aware of the abysmal emptiness of the universe, called nulla. This suffering because of the impossibility of finding joy in the world is called naia. (670) 245 developed and underdeveloped, European, and native American, where one group of immigrants rejects the more recent arrivals. For Morell, the juxtaposition of historical periods reflects the coexistence of different historical stages, cultures, and economic orders within greater Buenos Aires. (666) The novel is postmodern, she claims, in that it both questions and skeptically supports the idea that European reason and progress are present in late twentieth-century Buenos Aires, and in its recycling of the writings of the Leopardis, Giacomo and Paolina (665). The choice of Giacomo Leopardi to represent nineteenth-century European culture is most appropriate. According to Heath-Stubbs, “La sera del di di festa” belongs to a group of three or four poems which “if he had written nothing else, would assure his place among the greatest Italian poets” (70). Leopardi has been read in Italian and in translation by many Italian immigrants in Spanish America as well by writers from Rodo to Stomi.36 In that regard he may be considered to embody a current of European culture awarded high prestige in Argentina. As a Romantic in the broader sense of a Classicist (Origo and Heath- Stubbs vii) who has adopted a stance of Romantic alienation in the face of the lack of progress in civilization (xiii), his selection symbolically confirms that, in fact, little progress has been made from the Argentine of Dias no nos quiere cantantas to that of Daspués dal dla de fiesta. 3“ Origo and Heath-Stubbs xii. For Heath-Stubbs, Leopardi is perhaps the most conscious of his own alienation of all the Romantic poets (viii). 3" According to Arnold Armand Del Greco, Leopardi was hlvidely referred to” by Spanish critics including Unamuno, Valera, and Menéndez y Pelayo (63). He was celebrated by several Argentine critics (104), and in 1937 an avant-garde writer, Pedro Juan Vignale, published a book of translations of his poems (173). His influence on Spanish American literature (214) included Alfonsina Stomi (223). 246 Tristan, as stated earlier, expects a great deal from art. The driving force of the second novel is the same as that of the first: Tristan seeks the transforming power of beauty as expressed through art in the midst of grinding poverty, violence, hatred, and degradation. His constant response to misery in the first is that he must Ieam to sing. In the second, if he could but Ieam the rest of the poem, he believes wholeness would be restored. He resents the banality of the poem, which muses on the return to routine after the feast day, on unrequited love, with the self-centeredness that emphasis implies, and on the poet’s awareness of the passing of time. The poem itself is seen in this context as an ironic commentary on Argentina after 1983: after the big party, business as usual. An enigmatic figure who, while agonizing over the pain in the world, stoically bears his own share of that pain, who moums the passing of N’Bom’s authentic beauty, who shares his meager living with Giacomino, and who gladly gives the sweater off his back to a shivering little black boy (17), Tristan recognizes with shame that although he intends to carry Giacomino’s burdens, he would never be willing to assume his physical ailments (167). In this he unwittingly betrays his similarity with Giacomo’s father, whose mentality Paolina realizes with horror she is beginning to adopt: “pienso como él, mi piedad por los desventurados recorre el camino de la limosna que no compromete” (152). Tristan is less than pure in that regard; although the reader identifies with him because he feels deep compassion and indignation when faced with injustice, yet, like many socially conscious citizens, he draws back when it comes to a 247 radical commitment like allowing himself to love N’Bom, who understands perfectly that his half-hearted proposal of marriage is motivated mostly by pity (120). Tristan is less the artist than the reader in this novel; he looks to Giacomino’s art to remedy the helplessness of the powerless and sees with horror its apparent failure. Because Gambaro leads the reader toward a fuller identification with Tristan and his compassion than with Giacomino and his self-absorption, it is easy to miss the point that neither of them represents a balanced picture of the artist in society, but that the two of them together symbolize the unresolved tension between esthetics and social responsibility. The juxtaposition of the villa misaria with its trash and its dividing wall in the foreground and the mountains (which do not existon the plains of Buenos Aires) on the horizon symbolizes that tension. Geoffrey Gait Harpham offers the following reflection on the grotesque as it relates to art: I argue that the grotesque appears to us to occupy a margin between “art" and something “outside of" or “beyond” art. In other words, it serves as a limit to the field of art and can be seen as a figure for a total art that recognizes its own incongruities and paradoxes. (xxii) For Gambaro, art in twentieth-century Argentina with its repression, prejudice, and violence, stands within a long tradition of art arising from the world and yet not entirely of one piece with it. The artist is a marginal figure in the true sense of the word: suffering with others and responding to that suffering, he or she can neither eliminate it nor ignore it, but rather is compelled to testify to it in spite of the apparent fruitlessness of that endeavor. 248 Conclusion When Tristan reads Giacomo Leopardi’s poem, he fully expects art to have a real effect on pain and brokenness. That he immediately links what seem to him magical words to the world around him shows that art is a response to life and must address it. What infuriates Tristan is the poem’s failure to focus on real life. He calls it hypocritical: for him, art is only pretending to be art if it does not speak to us where we live and suffer. The shantytown, contrary to his expectations, has not become a pleasant landscape (14); in the last scene, papers and plastic bags, shacks and walls are still what he sees out the window (1 96-97). Art’s apparent inability to change what matters most, juxtaposed on its undeniable beauty which somehow trensfonns our vision, is at the heart of both Dias no nos quiere cantantas and Daspués del dla da fiesta. When the Bareback Rider can tell Tristan to weep, for all is well, out of a heart that has suffered and observed the suffering of others, bearing in mind that art is itself a memorial to suffering that would otherwise be forgotten, she is expressing the same paradox seen in the final scene of the second novel, where Tristan looks beyond his squalid surroundings and sees, impossibly, the mountains. It is Tristan, not his world, who undergoes a fundamental transformation in this last scene. From his rage against Giacomino for focusing on the mountains, he moves to a longing for the beauty and stability that they embody: Montaiias, dijo Tristan, y el acento de escamio se la transformo an ahoranza. Olio la tierra an al aire, trago con gusto a tierra mientres sentia que el nudo de su furia se desataba, pero no para traerla rencores, un odio cansino o desaparecer en la resignacion. As/ 249 as, murmuro Tristan, coma si hubiera llagado a una conclusion inevitable, Ia da la belleza qua debia acaptar contra su valuntad. (196, emphasis mine) The mountains having thus been established as the symbol for beauty, their moonlit presence beyond the shantytown is an affirmation of the irreconcilable coexistence of art and pain. Tristan is not reconciled to this clash of realities (196), yet he recognizes it as inevitable. There is no apparent resolution in either novel, merely the acknowledgment that injustice and suffering both inform and contradict the artist who is both privileged and condemned to respond to them. Where art and pain often intersect, however, is at the point of memory. Eduardo Gn’Jner suggests that art is what builds the memory of humankind, and where art chooses to direct its gaze fixes the priorities of a culture (17-18). Since political power has depended on art to select the collective memories most convenient to it through its choice of images (19), it follows that the artist may opt to display an image at crosspurposes to that power. Indeed, Griiner posits that art has often depicted the material body to combat its disappearance into fetishized abstraction, so essential to the survival of ideologies (18). Here he is at one with Gambaro, who has expressed her determination to prevent the conversion of human beings into abstractions. Saul Sosnowski observes that the recovery of memory has, with few exceptions, failed to become a recurrent motive in the arts after the dictatorship (Bergero and Reati 45); it has taken a back seat to an emphasis on political freedom in the eighties and on the economy in the nineties (48). When memory recedes into unconsciousness, it threatens to reappear in the form of the 250 repetition of actions from the past, a memory that according to Freud takes the form of forgetting (Grl'iner 51). The replay of classism and indifference, of oppression and violence in Daspuas del dia de fiesta suggests the continuing urgency of memory in art; the fixation of images such as the meek woman’s two black eyes, N’Bom’s bruises, and the sobbing father’s watch over his dead baby by their sheer physicality resist fading into oblivion. Likewise, the disappearance of physical evidence, such as the meek woman’s body, encourages forgetfulness. Adriana Bergero fears that in Argentina forgetfulness has often consisted of the historic denial of the voice of the other. She takes as paradigmatic Borges’ story “La intrusa,” where the Nilsen brothers eliminate Luciana in order to preserve the homogeneity of their lives: Ambos partiran a un territorio monoglosico de lo mismo, guamecido de atradad y la otra coma figure de la interlocucion. El ggrner paso hacia ese sitio consiste en olvidar (Bergero and Reati She quotes Gn’iner’s description of Argentina today as socially fragmented by unemployment and a body of law sure to trensfonn the labor market into a lawless jungle (84), a characterization that could easily apply to Tristan’s world in Daspuos del dI’a da fiesta. Bergero would not quarrel with Tristan’s utopic vision; she argues for a resensitivization of society to painful memories and to utopic dreams so as to restore a sense of the social (85) in the face of Baudrillard’s notion of a posthistorical age: En el caso concreto de la Argentina, seria fundamental y saludable la irrupcion de los testimonios y la documentacion sobre la represion, volver a hacer circular la imaginacion utopice para 251 contrarrestar Ia anestesia del baudrillardiano delusional standpoint towards the world. Abrir el codigo hacia la heteroglossia (86). The historical tendency of Argentines to view their identity as homogeneous, evident in the Whiner’s assumption that anyone different is not one of “us,” and broadly hinted at in the Baby’s description of undercover agents with ears fluttering like radars to detect any signs of sentiment or intelligence (Dias 138), predisposes them toward repeated repression of difference. The memory of concrete bodily suffering in art, exemplified by Gambaro throughout her body of work and also in these two novels, may well constitute what Tristan has in mind. What Tristan has in mind and what he sees, however, are not entirely the same thing. The mountains defy his wish to make them disappear, parallel to the Bareback Rider's inability to escape the circus’ tinny music and a world in which lies are exchanged for the truth. The artist can ignore neither the memory of the dead in a world that would rather forget them, nor the presence of beauty in spite of his sense that it changes nothing. An attempt to reclaim soiled and compromised spaces begins in the shadow of the mountains. 252 AFTERWORD Griselda Gambaro explores in her novels the dimensions and margins of humanity. As woman, as writer, and as member of society, she writes from a marginal position and redefines marginality for the rest of us. As woman, who has traditionally been defined in terms of her body, seen as a deformation of the normative male, she portrays the grotesque body as both male and female. Both male and female bodies are broken and distorted, secrete uncontrollably, and fail to respond to intentions. What distinguishes them, rather than their gender, is how they relate to other bodies. When Madame X and Marie literally stand by one another, when they engage in mutual exploration, delight, and comfort, their bodies are flawed but not abjected, whereas Jonathan’s monstrous organ moves from centrality to marginality, as his body is eventually trodden underfoot like excrement, through its usurpation of the attention that properly belongs to human solidarity and reciprocity. In Ganarse la muerte, the bodies of those who seek to abuse and corrupt provoke repulsion through association with infection, decay, mutilation, and perversion. The reader's abjection of secretions such as urine, sweat, and excrement with its parallel, the corpse, when evoked by the broken body of the victim, redirects itself toward the cause of the brokenness, that is, the victimizer. Thus Maria Rosa’s crushed, purplish head directs the narrator’s loathing toward Eustaquio instead, and N’Bom’s enormous, staring eyes provoke revulsion toward the nameless client who drowned her. This is not to say that there is no perceived difference between the male and the female body, but rather that in the authoritarian, patriarchal society in 253 which and of which Gambaro writes, to be female is to be doubly vulnerable. A pattern of death, whether physical or moral and emotional, runs through virtually every work analyzed here. Maria Rosa, Brigita Maria, Cledy, the meek woman at the circus, and N’Bom die as a direct consequence of the distorted society in which they live, and their disfigured bodies bear witness to that distortion. The death of Maria’s integrity and spirit are exteriorized in her staring, emotionless eyes and her protruding belly. The Bareback Rider is grotesque, on the other hand, in her transgression of the accepted female space, and in this her contorted, elastic body may well be emblematic of the single female artist’s life on the margins of society. As writer, Gambaro examines the relationship of art with a world of suffering in which ugliness and deceit threaten to overcome beauty and truth. The apparent inability of art to make a significant difference in a Buenos Aires as full of class hatred and dehumanization as it was before the return of democracy infuriates Tristan to the point of wishing it absent. There should be no mountains, he decides, if they cannot help the helpless (cambiar al dasampara). Malena Lasala considers this point regarding Dias no nos quiere contentos, in which the deaths of Pepe and the meek woman and the devastation of Maria’s personhood would seem to signify the triumph of pain and death. Although to be human is to be fragile and helpless, she argues, there is another suffering that violence and evil inflict on human relationships, and it is to that kind of pain that the human will should be directed (7-8). The human word can provide the first help to the helpless (ampere) as it takes another human being into account 254 t. (Lasala 45, Dias 77). The metaphysics of dasamparo and of the word are at the margins of being, and it is there that two human beings can establish an encounter (Lasala 47). Pain can be reconfigured into com-passion, the act of suffering with another, of participating in the pain of another (54). This is the type of ampere that the Baby provides for the Bareback Rider as he unobtrusively includes her in their communal life, to coax her away from her sorrow (Lasala 55). The Bareback Rider can then scar on the wings of her pain to create her aerial art as testimony to his life, and when Tristan finally joins her in singing it is after he understands that the song has to do with compassion (63). Lasala has grasped an essential element in Gambaro’s writings: the presence of compassion toward characters who on the surface are ugly and twisted, by virtue of their status as victims, and the transference of loathing to the cause of their suffering. Gambaro’s novels also create a reader on the margins of the text: she creates an opaque text that calls attention to itself by the alternate voices in it or by its grotesqueness as authoritarian discourse. The reader is alienated by the inner contradictions of the text, as in Una felicidad can manos pena, or horrified by its callousness and hatred, as in Ganarse la muerte. In the latter, the structural and interpretive devices that normally create coherence (chapter titles, explanations) point away from their apparent meaning, so that the reader moves to a critical distance from which to evaluate what is said. The demons that Kayser sees invading and disintegrating reality in the grotesque have here invaded the text, provoking terror at the disappearance of protection for the 255 helpless and abhorrence of what official discourse has become. Gambaro also creates distance between the reader and authority figures through the carnival humor of debasement or the depiction of their lack of humanity and actual control. The reader’s awareness of their abnormality restores a perspective of priorities built on compassion. The question of what it means to be human in an inhumane society is what blurs the line between Toni, the monster, and Manolo as human being. Where solidarity and love are present, there is humanity, which is why Eustaquio, and to some extent the narrator who does not bother to defend Eustaquio’s victims, as well as the circus boss and N’Bom’s exploiter and murderer, are more monstrous than human. Gambaro is exercising her own humanity as she prods us into rediscovering ours; the reader sees the grotesque deformations of human relationships on the path toward death in the brutality of those who beat Toni and the old man in the street, in Mr. Perigorde crushing Cledy’s arm with his stick, and in the torturer dreaming of oxen in the country as he rhythmically beats his victim’s sexual organ. The traumatized bodies of the helpless are another text, crying for justice like Abel’s blood from the ground (Genesis 4:10). The relevance of art in society lies in fixing the reader’s attention on that blood, on those bodies. Referring to Scripture is appropriate here in that it is another pattern that Gambaro follows, a strategy that not only reflects her formation as an author in a Catholic society but also her commitment to ethics. Miguel Angel Giella agrees with Lilian Tschudi that Gambaro writes moral works (83); Gambaro herself 256 coincides with that assessment of her writing. She has told Marguerite Feitlowitz that she has what she would call social and ethical commitments. For her, those priorities are evident in her commitment to her own country, its land and its people, for better or for worse. (“Griselda Gambaro” 54) Gambaro’s use of Scriptural references is her way of holding society up to the mirror of its professed creed, aware that it will be found lacking. Her subtle association of victims with Bible figures of courage and integrity (Tristan with Noah, the Bareback Rider with Daniel in the lion’s den, and the old man who takes the blow for Toni with Christ) and the emptiness of a repressor's references to Scripture and moral codes are another evidence of the astuteness of her strategies as well as of her sensitivity to ethical considerations. That sensitivity is what has led her to adopt the patterns and techniques of the grotesco criollo. She perceptively notes the patterns of social history, “the constants,” as Diana Taylor puts it, “associated with sociopolitical and personal collapse” (97). The crisis of the economy in the teens and twenties, together with brutal government repression and classist discrimination, dehumanized the immigrants depicted as Discépolo’s grotesque protagonist, the same way the Argentine Revolution, the Military Process, and the grinding deprivation of the eighties and nineties have dehumanized Argentines since. The breakdown of reciprocity in society, in the family unit, and in language itself as means of relationship, the loss of self-determination and security, the eventual inertia and failure make this revival of the grotesco criollo not only an apt means of 257 representation of the social dynamics involved but a powerful political statement about the lack of social progress in the past eighty years. Griselda Gambaro claims to have found her voice as she wrote Una felicidad can manos pena. Given the multiple levels at which the grotesque functions in that work to display grotesque female and infant bodies contradicting the male authoritative voice and condemning selfishness, cruelty, and inertia, while evoking a nightmarish setting in which social controls have collapsed, it seems evident that her voice is intimately bound up with the grotesque. 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, James Luther and Wilson Yates. The Grotesque in Art and Literature: Theological Reflections. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Araujo, Helena. “El tema de la violacion en Arrnonia Somers y Griselda Gambaro.“ Plural: Ravista Cultural da Excelsiar15.11(1986):21-23. Arenes, Carolina. “Entravista con Griselda Gambaro: Con la voz y el pudor de los origenes.” La Nacion 28 March 2001. Avellaneda, Andros. “Construyendo el monstruo: Modelos y subversiones en dos relatos (feministas) de aprendizaje.” Inti40-41(1994-95):219-31. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984. Balderston, Daniel, David William Foster, Tulio Halperin-Donghi, Francine Masiello, Marta Morello-Frosch, and Beatriz Sarlo. Ficcion y politica: La narrativa argentina durante aI procaso militar. Buenos Aires: Alianza Editorial, 1 987. Barasch, Frances K. The Grotesque: A Study in Meanings. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Bergero, Adriana J. and Fernando Reati, eds. Mamaria calactiva y politicas da alvida Argentina y Uruguay, 1970-1990. Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1997. Betsko, Kathleen and Rachel Koenig. lntanriaws with Contemporary Woman Playwrights. New York: Morrow, 1987. Borges, Jorge Luis. “El Golem.” El otra, aI mismo. Obras completes. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974. ---. “Las ruinas circulares. Ficcianas. Obras completes. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1974. Budd, Ruth. “A House Is Not a Home: Domestic Violence in Selected Works by Carmen Naranjo and Griselda Gambaro.” Diss. U North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1995. Bulman, Gail. “Extra-Textual, lntra-Textual, and Neo-Baroque Constructions of Violent Space in Three Women Writers from the Southern Cone.” Diss. Syracuse U, 1996. 259 Carballido, Emilio. “Griselda Gambaro o modos de hacemos pensar en la manzana.” Revista lbaraamaricana 36.73(1970):629-34. Castillo, Debra. Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992. Castro, Marcela and Silvia Jurovietzky. “Decir no: Entrevista a Griselda Gambaro.” Feminaria Litararla 6.11(1996):41-45. Collette, Marianella. “La refiguracion metaforica del cuerpo de la mujer an cuatro novelas Iatinoamericanas.” Diss. U Toronto, 1988. CONADEP. Nunca Mas The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986. “Contra el racismo y la discriminacion.” Editorial. Clarin 29 Mar. 2001. Crawley, Eduardo. A House Divided: Argentina 1880-1980. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. Cypess, Sandra Messinger. “Frankenstein’s Monster in Argentina: Gambaro's Two Versions.“ Ravista Canadiansa da Estudias Hispanicas 14.2(1990):349-61. ---. “Physical Imagery in the Works of Griselda Gambaro.“ Modem Drama 1 7(1 975):357-64. Duhalde, Eduardo Luis. El estado terrorista argentina. Buenos Aires: El Caballito, 1 983. Duraf'Iona, Marina. “Entrevista con Griselda Gambaro.“ Alba da America: Ravista Litararia 10.1 8-1 9(1 992):407-1 8. Feitlowitz, Marguerite. “Griselda Gambaro.” Bomb 32(1990):53-56. ---. A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Foster, David W. “Pornography and the Feminine Erotic: Griselda Gambaro's La impenetrable.“ Monagraphic Ra view / Ravista Monagrafica 7(1991):284-96. Franco, Jean. Plotting Woman: Gender and Representation in Mexico. New York: Columbia UP, 1989. 260 Gambaro, Griselda. “Algunas consideraciones sobre la crisis de la dramaturgia.” In Taylor, Diana. Paradigmas de crisis. ---.“Algunas consideraciones sobre la mujer y la literature.” Ravista lbaraamaricana 132-3(1 985):471-73. . La cola magica. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1975. . El desatino. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1965. . Daspués del dla da fiesta. Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe Argentina / Seix Barrel, 1994. . Dias no nos quiere cantantos. Barcelona: Lumen, 1979. . “Discépolo: nuestra dramaturgo necesaria”. Teatro 2.3 (1981): 42-45. . “(gEs posible y deseable una dramaturgia aspecificamente femenina?” Latin American Theatre Review 13.2(1980):16-21. . Escritas inocentes. Buenos Aires: Norma, 1999. . Una felicidad can manos pena. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1968. . “Feminism or Femininity?” Americas 30.1 (1978):18-19. . Ganarse la muerte. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1976. . “Un genera que aun espera.” La telanavala: Parsonajes, anécdatas, relatos y apinianas, ed. Jose Luis Boquete. Buenos Aires: Dasde la Gente, 1 996. . La impenetrable. Buenos Aires: Torres Agt’iero, 1984. . La major que se tiene. Buenos Aires: Norma, 1998. . Madrigal an ciudad. Buenos Aires: Goyanarte, 1963. . Nada qua var can otra historia. Buenos Aires: Torres Agiiero, 1987. . “Los rostros del exilio.” Alba da America 12-13(1989):31-35. . “The Talks That Never Took Place.“ In Alicia Partnoy, ad, You Can't Drawn the Fire. Pittsburgh: Cleis,1988. . Teatro 4. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1990. 261 ---. “Voracidad o canibalismo amoroso.“ Ouimara 24(1982):50-51. Garcia Pinto, Magdalena. Women Writers of Latin America: Intimate Histories. Trans. Trudy Balch and Magdalena Garcia Pinto. Austin: U of Texas P, 1 991 . Garfield, Evelyn Picon. Women's Voices from Latin America: Interviews with Six Contemporary Authors. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1985. Gasparini, Juan. “Derechos humanos: Reclamo de la ONU a la Argentina por el racismo.” Clarin 21 Mar. 2001. Ghiano, Juan Carlos. “Los grotescos de Armando Discépolo.” Armando Discépolo: Mateo, Stefano, Relojero. Buenos Aires: Losange, 1958. Giella, Miguel Angel. “Entrevista: Griselda Gambaro.“ Hispamérica 14.40(1985):35-42. ---. “El victimario coma victima en Las siamasas de Griselda Gambaro. Notes para el analisis.“ Gastos. Taan’a y practice del teatro hispanico 2.3(1987):77-86. Giella, Miguel Angel, Peter Roster and Leandra Urbina, eds. Nada qua var: Sucada la que pasa. Ottawa, 1983. Giordano, Enrique A. 'Ambigfiedad y alteridad del sujeto dramatico en El campa de Griselda Gambaro.“ Alba de América 7.12-13(1989):47-59. ---. “La treyectoria de los sujetos en Dias no nos quiere cantentas de Griselda Gambaro.” Alba da America 1991: 31 -40. Gonzalez, Patricia Elena and Eliana Ortega, eds. La sartén par al mango: Encuentra da escritaras Iatinoamericanas. Rio Pied res, PR: Huracan, 1 984. Griina r, Eduardo. El sitio do la mirada: Secretas de la imagen y silancias del arte. Buenos Aires: Norma, 2001. Guerra Cunningham, Lucia. “Algunas reflexiones teoricas sobre la novela femenina.“ Hispamarica 10(1981):29-39. ---, ed. and intro. Splintaring Darkness: Latin American Women Writers in Search of Themselves. Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review, 1 990. 262 Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982. Hodges, Donald C. Argentina 1943-1976: The National Revolution and Resistance. Albuquerque: U New Mexico P, 1976. ---. Argentina ’5 “Dirty War": An Intellectual Biography. Austin: U Texas P, 1 991 . Holy Bible. New lntemational Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978. lbarlucia, Ricardo. “El hada de las migajas.” Tras Puntos1.44(1998):46. Jehenson, Myriam Yvonne. “Staging Cultural Violence: Griselda Gambaro and Argentina’s 'Dirty War’.” Mosaic 32.1 (1999):85-104. Kaiser-Lenoir, Claudia. El grotesco criollo: Estilo teatral da una apoca. Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1977. Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque in Art and Literature. Trans. Ulrich Weisstein. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1963. Kiss, Marilyn. “The Labyrinth of Cruelty: A Study of Selected Works of Griselda Gambaro.” Diss U Michigan, 1982. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. ---. “Word, Dialogue and Novel.” The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. Lasala, Malena. Entre al dasamparo y la asparanza: Una traduccion filosofica da la astética da Griselda Gambaro. Buenos Aires, Biblos, 1992. Laughlin, Karen. “The Language of Cruelty: Dialogue Strategies and the Spectator in Gambaro’s El desatino and Pinter’s The Birthday Party.” Latin American Theatre Review 20.1 (1986):1 1-20. Lockert, Lucia. “Aggression and Submission in Griselda Gambaro's The Walls.“ Michigan Academician 19.1 (1987):37-42. Lockhart, Melissa. “The Censored Argentine Text: Griselda Gambaro’s Ganarse la muerte and Reina Raffo’s Monte da Venus.” In Ghosh, Bishnupraya, ed., Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Woman’s Literature and Film. New York: Garland, 1997. 263 Lopez Martinez, Adelaide. Discursa famenina actual. San Juan: U Puerto Rico, 1995. Lorente-Murphy, Silvia. “La dictadura y la mujer: Opresion y deshumanizacion en Ganarse la muerte de Griselda Gambaro.“ In Arancibia, Juana A. at al, eds., La nueva mujer en la ascritura da autaras hispanicas: Ensayas criticas. Montevideo: lnstituto Literario y Cultural Hispanico, 1995. Macon, Cecilia. “Griselda Gambaro: La major que tenemos.” Tras Puntos 1 .44(1998):44-47. Mafud, Julio. Sacialagia da la clasa media argentina. Buenos Aires: Distal, 1 985. Magnarelli, Sharon. “Griselda Gambaro habla de su obra mas reciente y la critica." Ravista da Estudias Hispanicas 20.1(1986):123-33. Marco, Susana, Abel Pasadas, Marta Speroni and Griselda Vignolo. Tearia del genera chico criollo. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1974. Masiello, Francine. “Between Civilization and Barbarism: Women, Family, and Literary Culture in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Argentina.“ In Vidal: 517-66. ---. 'Discurso de mujeres, lenguaje de poder: Reflexiones sobre la critica feminista a mediados de la docada del 80.“ Hispamérica 15.45(1986):53- 60. Mc Elroy, Bernard. Fiction of the Modem Grotesque. New York: St. Martin's, 1 989. Mercader, Martha. “El dificil matrimonio da la literature y la politica.“ Cuadamas Amaricanas 2.4(1 988):1 69-79. Martinez de Olcoz, Nieves. “Cuerpo y resistencia en el reciente teatro de Griselda Gambaro.“ Latin American Theatre Review 28.2(1995):7-18. Mendez-Faith, Teresa. “Sobre el uso y abuso del poder en la produccion dramatica de Griselda Gambaro.“ Ravista lbaraamaricana 132- 3(1985):831-41o. Meyer, Doris and Margarita Fernandez Olmos, eds. Contemporary Woman Authors of Latin America. Vol. 1, Introductory Essays. New York: Brooklyn College P, 1983. 264 Miller, Yvette E. and Charles M. Tatum, eds. Latin American Women Writers: Yesterday and Today. Pittsburgh: Latin American Literary Review, 1977. Morell, Hortensia R. “Daspuas del die da fiesta: Reescritura y posmodemidad en Griselda Gambaro.” Ravista lbaraamaricana 63.181 (1997):665-74. ---. “Ganarse la muerte y la evolucion de los personajes de Griselda Gambaro.” Monagraphic Review / Ravista Monagrafica 8(1992):183-96. ---. “La narrativa de Griselda Gambaro: Dias no nos quiere contentos.” Ravista lbaraamaricana 57.1 55-56 (1991 ): 481 -94. Nuetzel, Eric J. “Of Melons, Heads, and Blood: Psychosexual Fascism in Griselda Gambaro’s Bad Blood.” Modern Drama 39(1996):457-64. O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners. Ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1969. Ordaz, Luis. “Autores del ‘nuevo realismo’ de los a‘r'Ios ’60 a lo largo de las tres ultimas decades.” Latin American Theatre Review Spring 1991 :41 -48. ---. “Armando Discépolo a el 'grotesco criollo’.” El teatro argentina. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1971. Origo, Iris. Leopardi: A Study in Solitude. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953. Origo, Iris and John Heath-Stubbs. Giacomo Leopardi: Selected Prose and Poetry. London: Oxford UP, 1966. “El otro coma enemigo.” Rev. of La sagragacion nagada, by Mario Margulis and Marcelo Urresti. Clarin 12 Sept. 1999 Payne, Michael. Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Pellettieri, Osvaldo. “Armando Discépolo: Entre el grotesco italiano y el grotesco criollo.” Latin American Theatre Review 22.1 (1988):55-71. Reineke, Martha J. “Kristeva in Context.” Sacrificad Lives: Kristeva on Women and Violence. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997. Rock, David. Authoritarian Argentina: The Nationalist Movement, lts History and Its Impact. Berkeley: U California P, 1993. Romano, Eduardo. “Grotesco y clases medias en la ascena argentina.” Hispamérica 44(1986):29-37. 265 Rooy, Sidney H. Letter, 23 March 2001. Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Madamity. New York: Routledge, 1994. Schnaith, Nelly. "lmaginar: Juego o compromiso?: Conversacion con Griselda Gambaro.” Ouimara 24(1982):47-50. Skrade, Carl. God and the Grotesque. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974. Steig, Michael. “Defining the Grotesque: An Attempt at Synthesis.“ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Summer 1970. Taylor, Diana, ed. En busca da una imagen: Ensayas criticas sabre Griselda Gambaro y_José Triana. Ottawa: Girol, 1989. Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin America. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1991. “Tamar por desbordas de violencia.” La Nacion 13 July 2001. Thomson, Philip. The Grotesque. The Critical Idiom, ed. John D. Jump. London: Methuen, 1972. Tompkins, Cynthia. “El poder del horror: Abyeccion en la narrativa de Griselda Gambaro y de Elvira Orphoe.“ Ravista Hispanica Madame 46.1 (1993):179-92. Traba, Marta. “Hipotesis sobre una escritura diferente.“ In Gonzalez and Ortega, 21 -26. Valenzuela, Luisa. “La male palabra.“ Ravista lbaraamaricana 51 (1985):489-91 ---. “Pequei'io manifiesto.“ Hispamérica 15(1986):81-85. ---. “The Word, That Milk Cow.“ In Meyer and Fernandez Olmos, 96-97. Valis, Noel and Carol Meier, eds. In the Feminine Made: Essays on Hispanic Women Writers. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London and Toronto: Associated UP, 1990. Vidal, Heman, ed. Cultural and Historical Graundings for Hispanic and Lusa- Brazilian Feminist Literary Criticism. Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1989. 266 Vii'Ias, David. “Armando Discépolo: Grotesco, inmigracion yfracaso.” Literature argentina y palr’tica II: Da Luganas a Welsh. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1996. Wittig, Monique. Las guérillaras. Boston: Beacon, 1985. Wynia, Gary W. Argentina: Illusions and Realities. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1 986. Zambrano, Wa-Ki Fraser de. “La impenetrable: La ruta al paraiso terrenal. Monagraphic Raviaw/ Ravista Monagrafica 12(1996):393-405. Zijlstra, German. Letter, 26 March 2001. 267 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII Iiiljl‘illjilljlilljlj‘illliilijljljjlilil ll 0