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    New Art, New Woman, Old Constructs: Gmez de la Serna, Pedro Salinas, and Vanguard Fiction Author(s): Robert C. Spires Source: MLN, Vol. 115, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 2000), pp. 205-223Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3251372Accessed: 01-05-2015 17:56 UTC

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  • New Art, New Woman, Old Constructs:

    G6mez de la Serna, Pedro Salinas, and Vanguard Fiction

    Robert C. Spires

    As a manifestation of the modernist movement of the first half of the twentieth century a subcategory known as vanguard or avant-garde literature emerged in the Hispanic world and most of western Europe.' Often referred to as the "new art" when it began to assert itself in Spain and Latin America in the 1920s and into the mid-1930s, it also boasted of representing a "new woman," a claim that I propose to examine here. When some critics of the time (male of course) objected that the anti-conventional mode of this artejoven and its attempt to change the historical representation of women were expressions of deficient virility, of effeminacy (see for example Perez Firmat 37), they drew attention to a gender issue central to vanguard art. These same detractors at times went so far as to charge that the new mode was guilty of emasculating the male image.' Yet today many would answer the charge of masculine emasculation by counter-charging that the

    For representative studies of the Hispanic expression see Buckley and Crispin, Harris, Hernando, Ilie, Nagel, Perez Firmat, Pino, Soria Olmedo, Unruh, Urrutia, and Videla. For more general European surveys of the movement see Benjamin, Burger, and Poggioli.

    2The nineteenth-century realistic novel tends to stand as the benchmark of masculine narrative, against which effeminate vanguard fiction is compared. Susan Rubin Suleiman's remarks, although directed to the more contemporary works of Robbe-Grillet and Roche, also apply to Spanish vanguard works: "the realist novel was

    MLN 115 (2000): 205-223 ? 2000 by TheJohns Hopkins University Press

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  • ROBERT C. SPIRES

    vanguardists in fact were guilty of perpetuating feminine violations. By examining some representative examples from El novelista of Ram6n G6mez de la Serna and from Vispera delgozo of Pedro Salinas,3 I propose to demonstrate how these male-authored vanguard texts project fe- male representations that can be considered both seditiously threaten- ing and stereotypically comforting to a virile discursive tradition.

    Conventional gender constructs serve as the comfort zone for the male protagonists and narrators of the works to be discussed. When faced with the threat of a new and disquieting female image, they turn to historical and canonized models for reassurance. Each male character seems to find in these stable and familiar constructs the support to counteract the vicissitudes of his own existence; he apparently needs the reassurance of woman's materiality to counter- act his anxiety over his own ethereality. In addition, for each of these protagonists woman seems to represent what Peter Brooks defines as "an inextricable link between erotic desire and the desire to know" (22). Yet in the Spanish examples the search for knowledge may be labeled more accurately a quest for reassurance; the textual strategies involve either killing off the unfamiliar female or, even more signifi- cantly, relying on comparisons to familiar older models as a means to explain, and thereby negate the threat of, a new breed.

    The first work I propose to analyze, G6mez de la Sernas's El novelista, fits the conventional definition of novel in title only. It consists of a series of disconnected and often absurd vignettes of widely varying length and content, each of which features a distinct internal focalizer. These narrative fragments represent a series of novels written by Andres Castilla, who serves as both dramatized

    codified as male: unitary, phallic, teleologically moving toward a single meaning, a single story. The feminine text [the avant-garde], by contrast, was synonymous with the plural, the erotic, the experimental, the new" (40). 3 The two authors of the works I propose to analyze are prototypical examples of the Spanish avant-garde movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Ram6n G6mez de la Serna is often cited as the initial Spanish practitioner of the vanguard movement and he is one of the more unorthodox writers in Spanish literature. In an interesting essay Ignacio Soldevila-Durante discusses G6mez de la Serna's art in reference to the French school of surrealism. Pedro Salinas is known primarily as a poet, but his collection of stories, Vispera del gozo, was the first publication of the "Nova novorum" series dedicated to the "new art" sponsored by Ortega y Gasset's Revista de Occidente. Jose Ortega y Gasset was the high priest of the vanguard movement, and his journal served as the unofficial forum for examples of and ideas on the new art. Both G6mez de la Serna and Salinas were active contributors to the journal (indeed one of the stories I will examine in detail, "Aurora de verdad" by Salinas, appeared in the April 1926 issue). For more on the role of Ortega y Gasset's journal see L6pez Campillo and Soria Olmedo.

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    author and unifying thread for the disjointed collage.4 Andres in turn is subject to the narrative presentation of an analytic non-character narrator.5 Yet final textual authority resides in the posited author or the implicit creator of the strategies outlined.6 In the following analysis I propose to demonstrate how the posited author manipu- lates this contrived fictional edifice to underscore, consciously or otherwise, an equivocal attitude toward gender issues, an attitude that in effect echoes certain discursive practices of the 1920s.7

    The chapters dedicated to "Pueblo de adobes" (20-26) offer a good example of how the text creator blends gender and genre issues in El novelista. The dramatized narrator is Andr6s Castilla and the novel he is writing, the intertext, appears in italics. In short, process (the narration about Andr6s) and product (his supposed novel) are seemingly juxtaposed, although the true process, that concerning the posited author who is creating Andr6s and the non-character or anonymous narrator, remains hidden.

    A significant portion of Andr6s's "novel" involves three characters: Clemente, an orphaned bachelor, Dona Prepedigna, an aging spin- ster intent on marrying Clemente, and the young and sensuous

    4Rugg, Tasende, and Valis (1989) provide insightful analyses of the distinction between the dramatized fictional author Andres Castilla and the real author Ram6n G6mez de la Serna. Richmond also addresses this aspect and provides a useful summar) of most of the stories of the novel.

    I am trying to incorporate the terminology of the famous Brooks and Warren paradigm, "Focus of Narration" (588-94). As we know, Genette (Narrative Discourse) refined their model and labeled what they call a non-character analytic narrator as extra-heterodiagetic (see chapter 5, "Voice," 212-62). Without trying to detract from the value of Genette's contribution, I think the Brooks and Warren categories sound lessjargonistic.

    ' For convenience sake the posited author can be called G6mez de la Serna. But when I speak of Gomez de la Serna or Salinas, I will not be referring to the biographical person but to the image of the author created by his own text-hence the term posited or implied author (Bakhtin and Booth, respectively). For example, Ramon Gomez de la Serna had a friendship and love affair with Carmen de Burgos, both of which ended when he allegedly seduced her daughter (Ugarte makes passing reference to this apparent betrayal, 86). This episode in his life could be cited as evidence of his negative attitude toward women, yet to leap to that conclusion strikes me as dangerous without knowing all the details and motives involved in the alleged seduction (an impossibility of course). In fact countering the misogynist implications of that scandal are the words of praise Don Ramon directs to Carmen de Burgos in his autobiography.

    7In her book Highfill discusses the "woman question" that was a favorite theme for many of the tertulias hosted by Ortega y Gasset and frequented by G6mez de la Serna, as well as the subject of several essays appearing in Revista de Occidente during the 1920s. As Highfill documents in her chapter onJarnes, in spite of an attempt at a more liberal attitude toward women, in the final analysis the discussions and the essays published in the journal tend to reaffirm male superiority.

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    Engracia, nicknamed the Giant. Engracia is marginalized from soci- ety not only because of her size, but because of her manifest sensuality and above all because she intimidates men, indeed "tenfa una misi6n como de encanijar al mas cumplido don Juan del pueblo, estrujandole en sus garras, dandole una muerte peor que la muerte en garrote vil" (164).8 Clemente is more captivated than intimidated by this sensual outcast, and one evening pays her an amorous visit. At this point the focus switches from the product to the process: "Era el peniltimo capftulo, y en su desenlace daba a dos capitulos posibles, a cual mas violentos pero contradictorios" (165). Andres faces the choice of having Clemente kill Dona Prepedigna, or having the older woman follow Clemente to the rendezvous and murder the impetu- ous youngsters while they are making love. He opts for the latter solution, after which "respir6 el novelista liberado de una nueva novela" (165).

    This enigmatic story seems to point in opposite directions in reference to gender issues. By opting to make Doiia Prepedigna the assassin and victor, a woman earlier characterized by the very familiar discursive phrase, "la causa reptilica de todo . . ." (148), the posited author hiding behind Andres may convey the misogynist attitude that women are indeed the devil incarnate. But by shifting the focus from the narrated story to the act of narrating, and stating that Andres decided the ending, the implication changes. The idea of an inexo- rable denouement is completely negated. Dona Prepedigna is not necessarily some innate evil force, some symbol of corrupting woman- hood that implacably punishes expressions of raw passion, but a product of Andres's artistic instinct, and above all a pragmatic means for him to draw to a speedy conclusion a long project. Certainly Andres's decision suggests certain sexist attitudes, but because of the textual strategy employed those attitudes can be attributed to him

    El novelista was published originally in 1923. I am citing from the Espasa-Calpe edition, and will note the page number of quotes in parentheses. G6mez de la Serna was exceedingly prolific as a writer, and his works include autobiographies, biogra- phies, fiction, drama, essays, and poetic word plays for which he coined the term greguerias. Fidel L6pez Criado attributes 50 novels to Don Ramon, while Antonio del Rey Briones lists 74. Apparently the eclectic and nonconventional nature of G6mez de la Serna's writing, along with the clouded distinction between story and novel, explain the discrepancy. His professional writing career began in 1910 and continued up to his death in 1963. In addition to the articles by Rugg, Richmond, Tasende, and Valis already mentioned, for representative studies of G6mez de la Serna and his fiction see: Cam6n Aznar, Cardona, Gaspar G6mez de la Serna, Gonzalez-Gerth, Granjel, Lopez Criado, Nigel, Rey Briones, Serrano, Soldevila-Durante, Spires, Umbral, and Valis (1992, 1993).

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    and not to some force of nature. In fact, there is even a hint of censorship of Andres on the part of the posited author responsible for this narrative strategy. Yet if it is intended as criticism of sexist discourse it certainly has to rank as a very timid step in that direction, so timid in fact that one may be more inclined to label this as another example of female bashing rather than a plea for gender tolerance.

    Another story implying censorship of gender attitudes concerns female Siamese twins (chapters 38-39). Again there is a non-character analytic narrator who presents Andres as the fictitious author of the text, which is again set in italicized type.

    At the birth of the twins the narrator notes that for the mother, "la parecia una doble desgracia, pues no s6lo la nacia mujer en vez de var6n, sino que la mujer que la nacia estaba sometida y mediatizada por otra mujer, es decir, seria doblemente desdichada la hija ..." (224). Notwithstanding a humorous tone, there is a tragic implication to this discursive tradition of favoring male offspring. Shortly thereaf- ter the mother dies, and the father is left with the responsibility of raising "aquella hija duplicada [que] le parecia que no le podia querer" (225). After this expression of patriarchal intolerance the father is also allowed to die and an uncle assumes the responsibility of raising this "doble hija" (224).

    In spite of the repetition of the word "doble," the twins reveal two very distinct personalities; Gracia is somber and bitter while Dorotea is cheerful and optimistic. Later, when Dorotea falls in love, Gracia feels betrayed and kills herself. Since the one cannot live without the other, an operation is attempted to separate them but Gracia also dies during the surgery. After her death the separation is completed and they are buried in individual graves.

    When the focus shifts back to Andres as creator, the basic narrator states that the writer "sentia mayor pena que cuando mat6 a otros personajes" (235). The story suggests the injustice of treating women as one, of the discursive practice of allowing gender commonality to negate individual differences. In effect and notwithstanding an initially satirical tone, the characters in this example are drawn with more sympathy than those of most other tales in the collection. In addition, the posited author here more openly criticizes gender prejudices than he does in the story of Clemente, Engracia, and Dona Prepedigna. But even so the protest is likely to strike present readers as excessively muted, and in spite of Andres's remorse it is difficult to ignore that he opts for the all-too-easy solution to this conflict between generic and individual identity by again killing off the renegades.

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    By far the most intriguing and equivocal treatment of gender themes concerns a woman with a glass eye. Again the story consists of a protagonist, a non-character analytic narrator, Andres as drama- tized author, and the hidden posited author responsible for every- thing. Chapters 40, 41, and 42 of El novelista relate how the protago- nist, significantly named Corpus, meets a beautiful woman named Beatriz at a formal dinner party-the narrator later affirms the eponymic link to Dante's character, thus seemingly encasing the female character within a familiar discursive frame. Yet the illusion of familiarity disappears almost ridiculously when, while walking with the protagonist along a corridor on the way to the dining room, she responds to one of his comments by "dejandole caer el ojo derecho en una mano, gesto por el que descubri6 Corpus que aquel ojo derecho era un ojo desviado" (236-37). The protagonist immediately becomes obsessed with this unorthodox visual organ: "Durante toda la comida Corpus estuvo pendiente de aquel ojo cuya desviaci6n demostraba un antecedente negro en aquella mujer tan blanca o revelaba que era de cristal y, por lo tanto, le faltaba el ajuste estricto que tienen los ojos vivos (237). Perhaps threatened by the suggestion of the petrifying power of a Medusa gaze, this man whose very name signifies body cannot deal with a body part that abandons the body.

    The protagonist's fascination/intimidation inspired by the mobile eye may be explained, along with the enigmatic thread tied to corporeality, by considering some recent ideas concerning the phal- lus. Lacan and others insist that the phallus is a sign of discursive power and is not synonymous with the penis. Indeed any body part, female as well as male, could potentially serve as a phallic symbol (for a more recent discussion of this thesis see Butler "The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" 57-91). But when men successfully play the role of the aggressor in sexual encounters, power and penis tend to fuse. Yet as Corpus ogles Beatriz's body his comments to himself, "iCuantas veces habra desenvainado sus brazos para las grandes paradas en vez de desenvainarlos para la acci6n!" (237), reveal that he feels inhibited rather than emboldened in the presence of this very un-Dante-like woman. Obviously intimidated by Beatriz's air of independence yet intrigued by her unorthodox eye, Corpus seems to realize that her ocular organ has more power over him than his sexual organ over her.9

    9 According to L6pez Criado, "All of Ram6n's protagonists are 'half beings' who are conscious of their divided existential unity, and who are always worried about and frightened at the prospect of disappearing in a sexual embrace" (11).

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    But there is an added dimension to the eye's Medusa and phallic connotations. This is a member capable of dismembering itself, and that display of displacement seems to intensify the protagonist's apprehension. Apparently in Corpus's mind the detachable eye is menacing because, unlike the penis with the power inherent in its exclusive gender identity, this organ is disjoinable and transferable, and therefore potentially it can outmaneuver and overpower its male rival."' In effect, from his new perspective the power of the phallus- eye seems to connote the threat of castration. This sudden revelation of the vulnerability of the flesh in turn directs all his attention to what Butler might call the "matter" of the eye, to whether it is glass or flesh and to what degree its matter matters.

    When all other efforts to determine the organic composition of the visual organ fail, Corpus even considers marrying Beatriz as a means of satisfying his curiosity. That supreme sacrifice becomes unneces- sary when near the end of the narrative Beatriz inexplicably dies during an operation, and to Corpus's question if the eye was indeed glass, an attending nurse responds "Si, se escap6 a su 6rbita contraida con tal fuerza, que se rompio contra su propia imagen en el espejo del cuarto" (250). This enigmatic response points back to a process that has both redefined and reinforced the construct labeled woman.

    Initially the narrative leads to the conclusion that Beatriz is indeed a new woman, an authentic social rebel. For example, a man says that Beatriz was about to marry his cousin when in the last minute she changed her mind, thus avenging all those young women who dedicate their lives to marriage, only to find that no man wants them as a spouse. Also, rather than playing a subservient role to the numerous men who profess their love for her, Beatriz expresses pity for them because, as she makes clear, she could never bring herself to love in return the likes of any of them.

    But her primary expression of non-conformity centers on the eye that refuses to stay put, that protests at being the stationary object of Corpus's and other men's vision: "Ante las miradas tan apremiantes que Corpus la lanzaba, el ojo le hufa, se disimulaba, daba los quiebros

    "1Judith Butler seems to make a similar point when she says: "insofar as it operates at the site of anatomy, the phallus re-produces the spectre of the penis only to enact its vanishing as the very occasion of the phallus" (89). If I read her correctly here, Butler is suggesting that the combination of anatomical and gender specificity of the penis underscores its precarious role as phallus. It lacks the maneuverability to engage in a power struggle with something as free from spatial and gender restraints as a detachable eye.

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    mas rapidos a sus pesquisas. Corpus ante eso se ensanaba . ." (239)." As Corpus's fear and frustration increase over the enigma of Beatriz and her disembodied body part, there is a switch of narrative voice and the anonymous narrator announces that Andres the fictitious author is going to perform an autopsy of this "mujer desdenosa" (240). The dissection consists first of textualizing Beatriz, and then placing her wayward eye under the microscope.

    With Andres the dramatized author and Corpus the protagonist serving as dual surgical instruments, Beatriz's frigid exterior is dissected to reveal some recognizable traits: "Tenia envuelto en sigilos atroces su engano de mujer. Su seducci6n era rec6ndita y encubierta" (242). In addition to this very familiar discursive construct of the seductress lurking behind a seemingly impenetrable exterior, the mysterious visual organ serves to screen an equally common text:

    En el ojo aquel habia desde luego esa desviaci6n negra que se encuentra tanto en los ojos de mujer, como antigua propensi6n de los ojos reojadores y desconfiados de la selva primera cuyo recuerdo gravita en su pereza y en su haber pasado de inervaciones en inervaciones a traves los siglos. (244)

    The passage conjures forth the timeless norm of the defenseless female. The narrator makes clear that this woman who initially seemed so different is really just a generic reprint of a model that emerged with the beginning of human life. The discursive familiarity of the design in turn points to the logical conclusion that her disquietingly nonconforming visual organ actually is only another manifestation of the seductive essence of all women's eyes. The hermeneutic process of familiarizing through textuality the initially unfamiliar diminishes the character's enigmatic nature and leads to the supposition that "la desviaci6n, pues, de su mirar podia ser muy bien ese algo primitivo que recuerda el antecedente selvatico de la mujer vestida de lentejuelas y seda" (244). This supposedly "new" woman turns out to be nothing more than a very old construct clothed in modern garb. His control of the discourse has allowed the anonymous narrator, with Andres and Corpus serving as mediums, to classify and thereby tame Beatriz. As far as they are concerned she is

    1 Commenting on a scene from another vanguard novel, Rosa Chacel's Estaci6n. Ida y vuelta (1930), Elizabeth Scarlett says of a description of young girls running with their breasts bouncing up and down: "These disturbingly active and trapped breasts defy the usual rendering of a passive female body for the male gaze, a convention that male avant-garde writers were not concerned with subverting" (65). Apparently Scarlett had not read El novelista when she made this statement.

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    a mere iteration of the very first verbal and plastic renditions of the female gender.

    But textual deconstruction does not suffice. It becomes obvious that the narrator and his accomplices feel they cannot impose closure on Beatriz until they subject her eye to a physical postmortem. Assuming the role of Deus ex machina, the narrator exercises his poetic (and gender?) license by having her die, just as Andres deposed of Engracia (and Clemente who dared to allow himself to be attracted to this man hater) and the twins. Yet in this case the solution of one riddle creates another. First confirming that the eye was glass, the nurse then introduces the new enigma with her explanation that the organ escaped from its constraint with such force that "it shattered against its own image in the mirror" (250). This polysemic statement serves to reopen the text at the very point where it seemed to be closing. Among the options suggested, the shattered-mirror image could point to a splintering of the pictorial tradition of women viewing themselves as object.12 But the image could also signal an end to the illusion that representation faithfully reflects reality. It could also indicate an assault on the image of woman as the speculum for male identity. Or it could suggest that the construct of woman itself is an illusion destined to be shattered by the very object it supposedly reflects. Above all, this glass phallic symbol that shatters its own image may say more than the author himself intended about the matter that determines sexual roles."'

    If initially G6mez de la Serna set out to represent a "new woman," the text suggests that he found himself enslaved by the convention

    12 This tradition, often labeled Vanitas, refers to paintings of women, usually in the nude, observing themselves in a mirror (see Berger). Pointon discusses this type of pictorial representation as a discursive practice in which woman is trapped in a cycle of perpetual imitation or "re-presentation outside which she has no existence" (29). According to Pointon, the female figure staring into a mirror views the image conceived by men and imposed on women. Considered within this pictorial tradition, the shattering of the mirror in Gomez de la Serna's text can be interpreted as an expression of female liberation from the prison house of male discursive practices.

    13 At best Ram6n G6mez de la Serna was ambivalent about women and their role in society, and at times he can be accused of outright sexism. As an example of the latter, he published a book of drawings and word plays exclusively about women's breasts (Senos). On the other hand, in his essay "Lo cursi," a term that conveys very generally the idea of bourgeois materialistic bad taste, the author criticizes early twentieth- century Spanish society for, according to Valis, transforming this word into "a feminized, domestic object of desire" (1992, 388). I believe that the narrative just analyzed conveys Gomez de la Serna's vacillation between traditional male views of women and a criticism and rejection of such attitudes, the same type of vacillation expressed in the "woman question" debated in Revista de Occidente at the time.

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    called mimesis, which dictates that novelistic representations be familiar. Thus the force of discursive tradition began to undermine his attempt at artistic sedition. In the reading I am proposing, convention dictates that just as Dante in creating Beatriz could not escape from the social and fictional constructs that ancient Western civilization had created for him, neither can G6mez de la Serna transcend the limits that modern society and literary tradition have imposed on him. Don Ram6n tries to counter-challenge that impla- cable force of artistic and generic imprisonment by shattering the image in the mirror. But such a metaphoric splintering leaves behind so much residue that its connotations may have exceeded G6mez de la Serna's intentions.

    The next work I propose to discuss, Pedro Salinas's Vispera del gozo, reveals some of the same ambiguities concerning gender found in El novelista. Although Salinas avoids the narratological traps that snare G6mez de la Serna, he also ultimately becomes entangled within the subversive gender web he weaves in his fiction.14

    "Cita de los tres" offers what on the surface appears to be a switch in gender roles. The male protagonist is timid, ingenuous, and completely lacking in self-confidence until rescued by an assertive woman. The incident is inspired by a group of university friends who tell Matilde of the charms of a statue, Alfonso de Padilla, housed in the cathedral. After listening to their praise of its artistic merits Matidle, "dijo firmemente, mirando derecha a Angel: 'Manana, a las seis, ire a la catedral"' (47).15 Angel, who is also called Jorge, gets the message and arrives at the cathedral before 6:00 for this date suggested by Matilde rather than by him. As he listens to a series of church bells all announcing six o'clock but also one after the other, thereby extending the moment, he is able to tell himself that although Matilde has still not arrived she will appear at the desig- nated time. But finally the clock on the city hall, without the benefit of bells, marks 6:00 and shortly thereafter the tolling ends. Now Angel knows that Matilde has stood him up. But he then rationalizes that the date she made was not with him but with Alfonso de Padilla, whom he pictures in his mind as a real person. Finally, as the sacristan

    14 Although as noted Pedro Salinas is known primarily as a poet, he also wrote drama as well as fiction. In addition to Vispera del gozo, his other works of fiction are the collection of stories, El desnudo impecable y otras narraciones (1951), and the novel La bomba increible (1950). Salinas died in 1951.

    15 I cite from the Alianza edition and indicate the page of quotes in parentheses.

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    is closing the cathedral, Matilde appears as the pagan goddess Diana. But the reference to this classical literary model involves a contradic- tion: the speaker tames the young woman in the very act of labeling her a pagan.

    Her total domestication quickly follows: "perversa y femenina, con su poder divino, en una habil metamorfosis no ovidiana, tom6 la apariencia respetuosa y timida de una sefiorita que llega tarde a la catedral, la figura misma, los rasgos exactos de Matilde" (50). She then laments weakly that she has arrived late and unfortunately will not have time to see the statue. With Matilde at his side Angel now sets off into the sunset. Angel, apparently brimming with new self- confidence, now feels "un placer satanico y secreto" (50). Whereas one is initially inclined to think that he has been saved by this new woman, the narrator suggests that in fact he has been eternally damned. Eve rather than Diana now appears to be the model. In addition, the speaker relies on the female pejorative stereotypes "perverse and feminine" to characterize her seductive strategy. Whereas Dona Prepedigna is represented as a vengeful succubus intent on punishing expressions of carnality, Matilde is her seductive polarity. She may seem to act out of gender character when she initiates the date, but she is far too familiar to qualify as really "new." Indeed both she and Dona Prepedigna are defined by all-too-common discursive categories that attribute man's downfall to woman.

    "Volverla a ver" offers yet another example of a new woman made familiar by virtue of canonized male discourse. The first-person narrator has gone to an unnamed city to see an old flame, Miss Priscilla Beexley. As he appears at the balcony of his room the morning he is to meet with her again, he sees the letters of her name on a large billboard. The L suggests her silhouette, the X her contradictory behavior, the S her sense of humor, the B her breasts, the Y a pose she struck one day on the tennis court. But the protagonist says that "en ninguna me detenia tanto como en esa deliciosa V" (74). Of course that letter does not figure in the name Priscilla Beexley, but it is a common and demeaning means for representing female genitalia.16 As a result, the protagonist reveals himself to be a stereotypical male who relies on a ribald discursive tradition to reduce women to their sexual function. The story ends when he finally encounters Priscilla as she steps out of the elevator. Before she has an opportunity to speak he says to himself that in spite

    16 Gertz also points out this implication (97).

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    of the three years that have passed since they last saw one another, in effect time has stood still. If indeed she is totally physical matter for him, then his statement about static time may apply to the very male practice he has just demonstrated. Women in this sense are timeless because their anatomy rather than their personality defines them. Apparently Priscilla has not physically deteriorated in the three years, and since the story ends at this point there is no way of knowing if she has changed in other ways. But of course that is the point. The protagonist relies on a vulgarized geometrical figure to reduce her to a purely physical being, and never allows her to express herself beyond that material level.17

    Perhaps the most interesting treatment of gender issues occurs in "Aurora de verdad." The story concerns Jorge, who awakens at 8:30 a.m. to discover that his lover Aurora, with whom he dreamed he spent the night, is absent. He then discovers in his notebook that he had made a date with Aurora for 10:00 a.m., and thus begins what Peter Brooks seems to have in mind when he speaks of the "eroticiza- tion of time" (20). On his way to their rendezvous, Jorge semiotically constructs his lover from glimpses of shadowy forms, the flash of a parasol, the glint of the posture of young women on a streetcar, and the caress of a sea breeze, all familiar gender-specific images. In effect, Jorge begins what Peter Brooks defines as a semioticization of the body and a somatization of the story (i-27). To complete the representation all the protagonist needs is Aurora's presence to supply the gaze, smile, and voice. Yet when he arrives at the art museum where they are to meet he finds a whole collection of female models, ancient and modern, that allows him to complete the mental picture without her physical presence. When she finally comes up behind him unperceived, and he turns to face her, he finds that this Aurora in the flesh is not at all the one he expected, and "la figura inventada y esperada se venia abajo de un golpe" (69).18

    In this story no extradiegetic narrator or dramatized author intrudes with his surgical hand to perform a clarifying autopsy of the

    17 In another story from the collection, "Mundo cerrado," the male protagonist is on a train en route to visit an old girl friend, Alice Chesterfield. Yet as he remembers their moments together the protagonist's thoughts are disturbed by reference to a Lady Gurney, which turns out to be Alice's new married name. Torn by a desire to live in the past of Alice Chesterfield yet unable to erase the present reality of Lady Gurney, his dilemma is resolved when he arrives at his destination to find a letter informing him that Alice has died. The timely death of the female character as a solution to the protagonist's quandary echoes somewhat G6mez de la Serna's strategies.

    18 For other critical readings of this story see Feal, Gertz, Newman, Pino, and Spires.

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    female character. Yet this supposedly very modern ("novisima" 85) young woman who at the end of the story stands before Jorge in the museum also displays some very familiar traces from the past.

    Initially Jorge is disturbed by Aurora's ephemeral nature. Awaken- ing in anticipation of her presence, he encounters her absence. Very soon, however, he discovers that her absence allows him to create an even more desirable presence for her. Now he can supplement the oneiric and "discursiva" (84) Aurora of the night before with an invention so real that in effect it will predetermine "la otra verdadera y silenciosa que iba a encontrar muy pronto en el Museo" (62-63). Relying on discursive models that dictated his dream, what he claims to be an invention is already defined as an imitation.

    As he leaves his house, Jorge begins the task of constructing the already familiar model. Walking along the city streets toward their meeting place at the museum he begins to encounter fragments of Aurora in various scenes along the way. Yet he reconciles this disjointed process of discovery by arguing epistemologically that it is "como da el fil6sofo con la verdad" (63). According to his reasoning, the semioticization in which he is engaging is merely a preliminary step toward totalization. Indeed, Jorge decides that the key to re- ordering chaos begins with recognizing a foundation of familiar ideal forms:

    Poco a poco la figura aiin invisible y distante se formaba por la coincidencia de aquellos abigarrados elementos exteriores que la ciudad le ofrecia sueltos, incoherentes, pero que el, gracias al modelo, a la imagen ejemplar que llevaba grabada en el coraz6n, iba colocando cada uno en su sitio igual que las piezas de un puzzle. (65)

    Jorge draws on nonliterary icons as well to construct an enclosing frame for Aurora, such as a "cierta linea exquisita y dificil de una escultura de Estrasburgo" (64). His cultural memory serves as a deep structure that restores a tranquilizing order to a threatening chaos. Yet despite the "imagen ejemplar que llevaba grabada en el coraz6n," as he arrives at the museum Jorge admits that only Aurora and her simple formula for greeting him, "buenos dias," can complete his carefully constructed icon by supplying the three fundamental ingre- dients: gaze, smile, and voice.

    As he enters the museum the multiple yet essentially identical female icons on the gallery wvalls reinforce the validity of his construction, to which he now merely needs to "poner ojos, dibujar labios e infundir palabra, hacerla obra vivificada y perfecta" (66). Aurora actually

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    facilitated his imitative task by agreeing to Jorge's proposal to meet each day in a different section of the museum (today it is the Turner room), a plan that "ofrecia a Aurora un fondo cambiante y siempre bellisimo, de acentuada progresi6n hacia la luz y el color, haciendola pasar por delicadas transiciones ..." (67). Whereas the backgrounds of the paintings evolve, the narrative makes clear that the foregrounded female representations are disconcertingly iterative. In fact, in this paradise of pictorial images Aurora becomes Eve, but an Eve who, he claims, preceded rather than emerged as a product of man.

    Yet everything belies the assertion of reverse creation. Although apparently incapable of recognizing it, Jorge is indeed Aurora's creative Adam. Even the act of referring to her as Eve robs her of her own identity, which in turn merely underscores how her image is iterative, a reconstruction from previous models. But in effect Aurora's physical self had been predetermined even before Jorge embarked on his project. She is a construct constructed from previous con- structs, many of which surround Jorge in the museum. Therefore, "desdenoso de los cuadros en torno, se volvi6 hacia su imaginaci6n" (68). Because the plastic images are so engraved in his being he can easily transform Aurora's material absence into an ideal presence: "estaba ahora tan familiar, alli dentro tan parecida, hecha casi por 1e, que su aparici6n no le sorprenderia" (68). Although he claims to have created this object of desire, in fact he has not acted as creator but mimic; this portrait does not carry his own signature, but that of countless others who have collaborated over the centuries to repro- duce the verbal and visual construct called woman. Anticipating an encounter with this discursive construct, Jorge is totally unprepared to meet Aurora in the flesh.

    His fantasy world first begins to evaporate when, rather than the melodious "buenos dias" anticipated, he hears the more mundane, "Vengo un poco tarde dverdad?" (69). Then as he turns to face the person of flesh and blood, ideal-ization yields to real-ization: "La creaci6n fidelisima, de la manana y el pensamiento, la figura inventada y esperada se venia abajo de un golpe, porque Jorge la habia labrado con lo conocido, con los datos de ayer, con el pasado" (69). He is guilty of imitating discursive practices that inevitably contrive to make all women conform to familiar and ideal constructs. Yet finally he proclaims to himself that the Aurora before him, "intacta y novisima . . . era la vida de hoy, era Aurora de verdad" (69). But is she really so brand-new?

    Since the posited author of this story is never dramatized, some

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    readers will want to distinguish between Jorge as the focalizer, and the posited creator who stands apart from his creation. Jorge characterizes himself as a person unable to transcend discursive practices and therefore a slave to past constructs, while implicitly the author recog- nizes his character's limitations and utilizes the text to signal the need to accept and even encourage a play of differences. In his narrative, G6mez de la Serna seems to concede the discursive force that strives for order and familiarity and consequently he inserts an authorial voice to effect artistic conformity, even though he undermines that authority in the end. Salinas in his fiction, on the other hand, deflects the blame for imitation onto Jorge. Yet there may be something contradictory in a message of change and liberation conveyed by a style that celebrates a conventional expression of femininity. To represent Aurora's essence the text relies on gender-associated images: she is "fluida, preciosa" (64), like an "imagen en el fondo del estanque" (63), like an "ondulaci6n suave del Mediterrineo" (65), like elements "sueltos, incoherentes" (65), and like "una blusilla azul y levisima que temblaba" (65).19 One of the more concrete descriptive nouns, "el descote de Aurora" (65), tends to reduce her to her sexual identity, a status reinforced by the adjective "desaprovechada" (64). Although this vocabulary is designed to convey Jorge's focalization, there is nothing to counteract or correct his vision. For example, never is there an opportunity in Vispera del gozo to look through the woman's eyes. In short, this collection of stories, which Valis so aptly characterizes as "one of the most libidinized texts to come out of the vanguard period" (1993, 12), celebrates woman as iconic construct even as it pretends to protest against that practice.

    Vispera del gozo and El novelista continue to present women as objects of desire rather than as desiring subjects. Aurora may strike Jorge as "novisima," but Salinas does not afford her the opportunity to assert her new being.2" Her representation echoes what Peter

    1' It seems to be more than coincidental that the meetings occur in the Turner Room of the museum. Turner's paintings tend to fuse air, land, and water, just as in Jorge's mental pictures of Aurora the fusion of these basic elements blur her image to the point that it becomes insubstantial, fluid, one might argue prototypically feminine. Also, she is wearing gray, the most characteristic color of Turner's paintings. Again, this may represent more evidence thatJorge's supposed creations are really imitations of discursive models from the past. 20 Feal offers an alternative reading for the ending: "The final Aurora-woman, world-has been liberated from the self that thinks her, that turns her into an extension of his mind" (95). Again, since Jorge is the sole focalizer, it is not clear to me how she expresses her liberation from him, let alone from the posited author.

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    Brooks notes in reference to Flaubert's Emma Bovary who, he says, "has no body-of her own. Her body is the social and phantasmatic construction of the men who look at her" (95). In spite of their "new art" with its alleged rejection of nineteenth-century technologies of representation, as G6mez de la Serna and Salinas strive to transgress mimesis they continue to mimic the female constructs passed on to them through the ages. The two writers' ties to a male discursive tradition is underscored by an observation made in reference to Don Ram6n's fiction but that also applies to Don Pedro's: "the erotic theme serves as an experiential laboratory for his own doubts and hopes and where, like the hand of the alchemist, he examines the possibilities of finding mans reason for being" (L6pez Criado 7, emphasis added). Yet the textual representation of Julio's, Angel's, Corpus's and the other characters' discursive imprisonment provides readers with a possible key to their own freedom. Whereas the personages and the narrators of these stories essentially treat women as objects of erotic desire, for readers they satisfy, to one degree or another, the desire to know, and above all to know, or recognize, the incarcerating effect of treating woman as mere objects of desire.

    In spite of its label "new art," the Spanish vanguard movement perpetuated old practices at least as far as gender roles are con- cerned. Women were limited to being the object of men's gaze and quest and never allowed to be the gazing and questing subject.2 Yet I would argue that these two writers' obsession with the representation of women, as that of Jarnes and many of the other vanguardists, had an effect on subsequent literature and society.

    In a sense, the Spanish protestors of the vanguard movement of the 1920s and 1930s had motive to be concerned. The positions assumed by the agents of the "new art" helped realign the field called modernism, and with it gender constructs. As Pierre Bourdieu states it, position-taking changes the whole cultural field where it occurs because it offers new or different options for "producers and consum- ers to choose from" (30). Although the arte joven was guilty of reiterating gender constructs even as it claimed to represent a novisima woman, in fact its position-taking did change those time-

    21 Even the most prominent female vanguard writer, Rosa Chacel, creates a male protagonist and focalizer for her Estacion: Ida y vuelta (1930). In the plastic arts, Goya's Maja vestida and Maja desnuda along with Manet's later Olympia were considered revolutionary precisely because they represented female gazing subjects, a technique that implicitly transformed the posited male viewers into the object of the gazes.

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    honored constructs. Not only did it provide an opportunity for readers to read "woman" differently, but thanks to the vanguardists artists began to enjoy the freedom to opt for new methods and models of representation. In addition, those critics who decried the effeminacy of vanguardism also contributed to making it and subse- quent art more female-centered. Their protests provided a "discursive occasion" (Butler 109) for resistance and change. By calling attention to woman as a social construct, they underscored the potential for changing the very concept of woman, for what has been constructed can also be de- and reconstructed.

    Rather than failed novelistic and social projects, G6mez de la Serna's and Salinas's texts serve as testaments to the power of discourse, and to the long and painful process required to change it. However far society still may be from the goal of positioning women as well as men, blacks as well as whites, Hispanics as well as Anglos, and gays as well as straights as equal agents of discursive practices, I believe that the goal would be even more distant than it is today were it not for the position-taking of vanguard models such as El novelista and Vispera del gozo.

    The University of Kansas

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    Article Contentsp. [205]p. 206p. 207p. 208p. 209p. 210p. 211p. 212p. 213p. 214p. 215p. 216p. 217p. 218p. 219p. 220p. 221p. 222p. 223

    Issue Table of ContentsMLN, Vol. 115, No. 2, Mar., 2000Front MatterDe qu muri Quevedo? (Diario de una enfermedad mortal) [pp. 157 - 187]Carmen de Burgos and the War in Morocco [pp. 188 - 204]New Art, New Woman, Old Constructs: Gmez de la Serna, Pedro Salinas, and Vanguard Fiction [pp. 205 - 223]La astronoma de la pasin: espectadores y estrellas en "El da que muri Marilyn" de Terenci Moix [pp. 224 - 247]Somatografa Epica Colonial: Las "Elegas De Varones Ilustres De Indias" De Juan De Castellanos [pp. 248 - 267]Por qu llora Reinaldo Arenas? [pp. 268 - 298]Tres caricias: una lectura de Luce Irigaray en la narrativa de Diamela Eltit [pp. 299 - 322]Consuming Aesthetics: Seix Barral and Jos Donoso in the Field of Latin American Literary Production [pp. 323 - 339]NoteLa Encrucijada Del "Macas" De Larra, Entre Plazos Verosmiles y Tiranas Pasiones [pp. 340 - 354]

    Review ArticleGarcilaso's Poetry: Between Love Affairs and Annotations [pp. 355 - 366]

    Reviewsuntitled [pp. 367 - 370]untitled [pp. 370 - 372]untitled [pp. 372 - 374]untitled [pp. 374 - 377]

    Books Received [pp. 378 - 379]Back Matter


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