231
Cf. Ortega y Gasset, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
232
For other examples see La ciudad junto al río inmóvil («Sumersión», «Solves», «La angustia», «Conversación»); «Los Rembrandts»; La bahía de silencio (Ferrier and other European characters in the second book, «Las islas», and Tregua, who supposedly writes the entire novel as an effort to communicate with the Señora de Cárdenas); Nocturno europeo; Fiesta en noviembre; La sala de espera (Isolina Navarro, Violeta Méndez).
233
One of the stories in La ciudad junto al río inmóvil.
234
This is the explanation that Tregua gives. La bahía de silencio, p. 214.
235
La torre, p. 58.
236
See the final pages ofLa bahía de silencio.
237
Authenticity is a prerequisite for communication, as well as a cause of the desire to communicate. Cf. Karl Jaspers in Blackham, op. cit., pp. 56-58.
238
La torre, p. 347.
239
The similarity between El retorno and Whitman's «Song of Myself» is pointed out by Fernando Alegría, Walt Whitman en Hispanoamérica (Mexico: Studium, 1954), p. 133. The insistence on an empathic relationship to others is found also in Mallea's La sala de espera (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1953), p. 153: «Permanecía largas horas deshaciendo mi ser en otros seres, tan pronto era un rey como un celoso loco, tan pronto era un bárbaro coraje como el vector de los más crueles miedos. Pero yo era esos otros, no era el yo solo, el yo menor, el triste...» Cf. Papini, Un uomo finito, pp. 75-79. Papini, however, rather than projecting himself into others, projects them into himself: «La mente degli altri esiste soltanto coma ipotesi della mente mia». The effect of El retorno is that of a multiplicity of realities with an underlying unity, and the same technique is used in Fiesta en noviembre to connect the sufferings of the nameless poet and the events in Buenos Aires.
240
Nocturno europeo, pp. 83-86. Tregua has a similar experience of disillusionment with physical love. La bahía de silencio, pp. 28, 160.