Visor de obras.

Mallea's approach to literature is basically didactic rather than aesthetic; he believes that great literature must take cognizance of the fact that «the time is out of joint» and must attempt to remedy this situation³¹⁸. While rejecting the self-limitation implicit in an a priori adherence to any political dogma³¹⁹, he demands that the writer participate fully in the drama of his time. In a significant formulation of his concept of literary mission, he writes:

Given this outlook on literature, Mallea is bound to reject a rigidly formulated art which derives its beauty from a perfectly structured abstraction from life, and to demand in its stead a literature which, in its imperfection, is alive and participates with vitality in the universal drama. «Hoy el arte es militación o nada»³²¹. Mallea has chosen art as his form of expression precisely because it, more than philosophy, permits the sort of participation he demands; art is more divorced from reason and the rational intelligence, which must be surpassed in order to arrive at the solution of today's problems³²². But if art is to fulfill its mission, aesthetics must be subordinated to ethics and must draw its nourishment and substance from ethics, from an «ética creadora»³²³. The new literature must reflect the solidity of the new ethics and must be stripped of all rhetoric, of the spectacular and the comic³²⁴.

Mallea believes that the literature of America is essentially prophetic; as all America is for him a creative process, so he conceives of its literature as the articulation of that process, the vitalization of the past and its projection into the future. Argentine literature has not fulfilled this mission; it consists only of

Mallea's writings are an attempt to solve this dual problem of «conocimiento y expresión».

The writer who is to produce the type of literature demanded by Mallea cannot devote himself to the creation of impersonal objects of beauty. If he is to express a profound ethical truth, he must hold to this truth with his whole being; he must be a «committed writer», able to say with Kierkegaard that his thought is a passion³²⁶. The development of such thought in Mallea is seen in his intellectual autobiography, significantly entitled Historia de una pasión argentina. And throughout his works there recur traces of his predilection for authors who wrote with passion, impelled by an inner agony -Kierkegaard, Pascal, Unamuno. «Todo gran creador es un agonista desgarrado»³²⁷.

This, then, is a dynamic concept of the writer's role in society. No longer can he be an impassive observer, taking notes and then transcribing his observations on the foibles and follies of mortals. On the contrary, he too is a participant in the human struggle, he too must seek to integrate himself in a superior order. In fact, his mission is greater than that of most: he must not only find himself, but he must call others to an authentic way of life and help to restore in them the basic human values. This he can never hope to do without committing himself in the secular struggle between the authentic and the unauthentic, the human and the denial thereof. Aesthetic considerations are still valid, but they are subordinate. If truth should conflict with beauty, beauty must be the loser.

In his work, then, the writer formulates his inner experience of participation and agony. Yet this is not mere «self-expression». If the author is to fulfill his mission, he cannot be content with a self-expression that is understandable only to himself and a few initiates. He must reveal himself in such a way that others will comprehend his message³²⁸. His grito (one of Mallea's recurrent terms for his message, indicative of its inner compulsion) must be given form to make it intelligible. This aspect of creation, the process of writing, Mallea compares to the wrestling of Jacob with the angel³²⁹; it is one of continual struggle and doubt, of creation and destruction. In fact, he appears to become impatient with this concession to the niceties of literature at a time of crisis³³⁰.

The problems which concern Mallea are so closely interrelated that it is difficult to deal with them one at a time, and their novelistic expression is characterized by richness and intermingling of thematic materials. Of Mallea's more extensive works of fiction, only Todo verdor perecerá and Chaves are devoted to one theme, that of individual isolation. In Los enemigos del alma the theme of isolation is expanded and made more complex by the introduction of different motivations and various degrees and levels of isolation among the characters (the isolation of Consuelo is not the same as that of Débora, for instance). In order to find a unity comparable to that of Todo verdor perecerá, we must return to «La causa de Jacobo Uber, perdida», in which the development is more limited.

In all the other major works of Mallea, a multiplicity or at least a duality of themes, or sets of problems, is encountered. La bahía de silencio, the major fictional exposition of the content of Historia de una pasión argentina, describes, as a continuous undercurrent to the search for national authenticity, the protagonist's problem of personal authenticity. Similarly, in Las Águilas, the attack on the «visible Argentina» accompanies the story of Román and the struggle of Roberto to strengthen his personality with regard to the society represented by his parents. The same situation prevails in La torre; and Roberto's retreat into the country has the dual purpose of discovering himself and discovering his nation. Fiesta en noviembre deals likewise with a sector of the «visible Argentina», but also with the personal problems of Lintas and Marta Rague; and, as in La bahía de silencio, questions of more universal import are introduced. In Nocturno europeo the national element is somewhat subdued; general problems come into sharper focus and are treated in conjunction with the personal agony of Adrián. And in the majority of the stories that comprise La ciudad junto al río inmóvil (e. g., «Solves», «La angustia», «Sumersión») the search for the genuine country or the attack on the superficial one is combined with a statement of the personal isolation of the characters.

This multiplicity of thematic material affects the structure of Mallea's novels. Most of his short stories concentrate on a specific situation and the different aspects and ramifications of that situation. When this technique is applied to a longer novel, however, a noticeably disjunctive quality is often produced. La torre is devoted to a static cerebral situation. The same is true of La bahía de silencio, in which the autobiographic form and a fictional time span of about twelve years create, temporarily, an illusion of continuity. Upon closer examination, however, the continuity appears purely chronological; Tregua's existence in it is separate from his ideological course.

The reason must be that a conventional plot is ill suited to ideological discussion. Mallea has fictionally represented one particular problem in Todo verdor perecerá, but in this work he succeeds by limiting the verbal exploration of his theme and by constructing a plot on the basis of the problem. By «plot» I do not necessarily mean a series of external happenings or a complicated intrigue. A line of movement of the characters³³¹, whether external or internal, must connect episodes to make one grow out of the other. The plot of Ágata Cruz's life is not de pendent on changes of scenery or locale, or even on the introduction of new characters, but on the increasing anguish of Ágata's solitude, which culminates in despair. The other, more fortuitous elements of her story are related to this main theme. Each element is reduced to its essentials, and is organically bound to Ágata's development, which is viewed through Ágata's eyes; Mallea thus conveys the growing sense of doom which overtakes his character. Her speech is held to a dramatic minimum; her reactions are presented directly to the reader, subject to the author's interpretation, since Ágata in her simplicity is not always aware of the implications of her life. This economy of means and the perfect integration of the external and internal aspects of Ágata's story account, in large measure, for the power and aesthetic simplicity of Todo verdor perecerá.

Similarly, the construction of La bahía de silencio depends on the nature of the questions raised. One character, Tregua, is the chief representative of the author's point of view. Unfortunately, this spokesman tells his own story, and the effectiveness of his verbal protestations of passion is therefore limited. He speaks of his problems; he does not, like Ágata, live them. In the course of Tregua's biography (or autobiography), he is constantly supplied with interlocutors to whom he can expound his ideology; and, conveniently, he is furnished with a lady to whom he can speak (or write) even when no one else is at hand. These elements, however, serve not the development of the character but his expression. Given the nature of Tregua's thought, it is difficult to see how any incident or situation in his life could expound it better than do his words. Yet Mallea needs Tregua to utter these words; and he gives such details of Tregua's superficial reality as a description of his dressing gown and the exact route of his walks (pp. 127-128, 238) in the attempt to establish him (somewhat shakily, perhaps) as a character with an existence of his own. Without this, La bahía de silencio would be an essay³³².

In La torre, Mallea again explores the themes of nationality and individuality by means of fictional characters. This work is as inconclusive as La bahía de silencio. Roberto Ricarte has progressed a little beyond the waiting stage of Martín Tregua, and is on the threshold of something vague and imprecisely defined. Yet the total impression derived from the later novel differs markedly from the confusion of La bahía de silencio. La torre is richer stylistically and more abundant in descriptive elements; but the number of characters is greatly reduced, and there is no bewildering variety of locales, as in the earlier novel. Instead, the dominant rural environment is skillfully described in sensory and intellectual terms; it has a powerful reality which often overshadows that of the protagonist³³³. Roberto is more objectively real to the reader than is Tregua, because, although the novel is written from his point of view, he does not himself narrate it. Mallea is able to show us Roberto's thought in its natural development; he can follow his character, creating the time and suspense which Tregua's retrospective story lacks. Roberto's life, however, is an imperfect expression of his thought. La torre is superior to La bahía de silencio in its integration of ideology and fiction, not because of Roberto but because of the forcefulness of other elements in the novel, and because of the author's relatively strict adherence to a purpose.

Like Tregua and Roberto Ricarte, Adrián exists primarily as a spokesman for the author and therefore becomes more important than any specific situation which could arise in his life. His presence, supplying a consistent point of view, maintains intellectual unity, even if his fictional life is unconvincing. Situations and incidents serve only to document this fictional existence, permitting the character to carry out his mission.

In Las Águilas and Los enemigos del alma, the problem of blending fiction and ideology takes on a somewhat different aspect. Neither work is dominated by a quest; Las Águilas is rather a study of one aspect of the «visible Argentina» in the person of Román Ricarte. As in Todo verdor perecerá, Mallea's approach in this novel is not dialectic but descriptive. Since the intent is to show the process by which Román Ricarte reaches his position in life³³⁴, the integration of idea and plot is simple. Román's development is much more easily related to his biography than is the spiritual search of a Martín Tregua. Mallea is better able to portray the spiritually passive than the spiritually active character; it is easier for him to create a motivating environment and heredity for Román than a motivated act for Tregua. Thus in Las Águilas there is far greater novelistic unity than in La bahía de silencio.

The same unity is found in Los enemigos del alma, although here attention is focused on a situation rather than on a particular character and his problems. Mallea himself has written that he wanted this novel to be a separate world, closed in itself, an architecture based entirely on the equilibrium of its parts³³⁵. It was to reflect «una tempestad maligna, un círculo de orgullosos, un golfo de espíritus suspendidos sin progresión, la aridez de los que se manejan sin alma»³³⁶. The theme of spiritual isolation and sterility (in several forms) is developed not through a biographic plot, as in the novels discussed above, but through the interaction of several characters embodying different points of view. These characters are placed in a delicate balance centered on Consuelo, the only «authentic» personage, with Ortigosa and Sara Gradi on one side and Mario and Cora on the other. Débora, who lacks vital relations with anyone, nevertheless depends on the preservation of this balance; when there is a danger of its tipping in favor of her brother and sister, she precipitates the catastrophe which disperses its constituent elements and destroys her. The irony of this solution lies in the ground lessness of Débora's fears.

No one character in Los enemigos del alma bears Mallea's message; it is expressed by the relations among them. Thus the situation which constitutes the origin of the ideological element of the novel is also the necessary basis for its plot, and the fiction of the novel is linked by necessity to the thematic development. Accordingly, also, the point of view shifts from one character to another and to the author, allowing the reader to see the situation and its development at a distance and in all their complexity.

Analysis of the other novels and stories of Mallea's major productive period (thus excepting only Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada) reveals in each the elements of fiction and ideology, their integration depending primarily on the suitability of Mallea's theme to fictional treatment. If a conflict arises between fiction and ideology (or, as Mallea expresses it, between aesthetics and ethics), it is resolved a priori in favor of the latter because of Mallea's convictions regarding the role of the writer. Such conflict is at a minimum in the exploration of a particular human situation. But Mallea is concerned not only with what appears, with what is, but also, and often principally, with the quest for authentic being. This search, conducted on a plane which is remote from the normal development of life in time, he finds difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with the demands of narration. Mallea's determination to express it in the novel is indeed a triumph of «ethics» over «aesthetics». La bahía de silencio consequently lacks the impact of either the powerful narration of Todo verdor perecerá or the impassioned exposition of Historia de una pasión argentina.

The introduction of ideology not only affects Mallea's plots but also determines the settings, which are modern, if we except some of the Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada. The degree of emphasis on the contemporary depends on the subject matter of each novel. The setting of Todo verdor perecerá is contemporary, yet not strikingly so, and results from choice rather than necessity. The literary theme of human isolation does not demand any particular locale. Other problems of individual existence and of national existence are, in a sense, equally timeless; yet Mallea senses them most acutely in their present crisis, and in La bahía de silencio and Nocturno europeo there are frequent references to recent events. Mallea's characters roam through Argentina and most of western Europe, especially the large cities -Buenos Aires, of course, and Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Florence. They also reach the southern ports of Buenos Aires Province, «the country» (presumably not too far from Buenos Aires), Switzerland, and the Italian Alps. They do not, however, visit either Spain (except for the Ricartes en route to Paris) or any American country other than their own.

The wanderings of Mallea's characters are not purely fortuitous. They correspond, on the one hand, to Mallea's own travels and background, and on the other hand, to the exigencies of his theses. A close parallel exists between La bahía de silencio and Historia de una pasión argentina; in both, a period of youthful preoccupation is followed by a sojourn in Europe, from which the protagonist returns with increased fervor to Buenos Aires. Nocturno europeo is, in a sense, an excerpt from this same story, and expansion of one aspect thereof; in «Los Rembrandts» the same vision of the Netherlands is given as in all the other works in which Europe appears. The area of Bahía Blanca, familiar to Mallea from childhood, is the scene of Todo verdor perecerá and Los enemigos del alma. Mallea has visited all the places in which his novels are set. Although foreign locales are frequent, they could be termed exotic only in Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada, which cannot be classed with the productions of the author's literary maturity.

Each setting plays an essential part in Mallea's treatment of the problem of our time. In the country, he can best study the situation of the individual, as in Todo verdor perecerá, and of man face to face with the soil, as in La torre. Buenos Aires is the scene for his attack on the «visible Argentina» and for the effort to break through its surface and reach an interior authenticity. And in Europe the protagonists discover the full extent of the chaos of our time and Argentina's possible contribution toward the construction of a new order. The author's thought has been conditioned by his personal experience, and this is particularly true of his interpretation of the role of Europe.

The use of time and space is particularly interesting in Fiesta en noviembre, where biographic narration is reduced to a minimum and the thematic material is developed not through the exploration of one situation but through the juxtaposition of three. The novel alternates between the fiesta at the Ragues' (the «visible Argentina») and the discussion of the artist Lintas with Marta Rague (the «invisible Argentina»), and, in addition, there are interpolated fragments describing the murder of a poet in a foreign country³³⁷. This event is echoed in Lintas' account of the assassination of a bookseller; the falseness of the scene at the Ragues' is emphasized by the synchronous suffering of their daughter Brenda. As she lies in anguish following an abortion, her father exclaims to a friend, «Mire usted, es tan fácil como dar a luz» (p. 88). Mallea shifts his focus among these scenes, which are separated in space but not in time. In this way, the search for authenticity which preoccupies Lintas and Marta is contrasted with the superficiality of the party and the sinister events abroad. These events are vital to the novel as a whole, since they provide the background of terror and evil against which Lintas and Marta move. Although they are unaware of the event which is occurring many miles away, it is nevertheless important to them. As Mallea points out more specifically in other works, such as El retorno and Rodeada está de sueño, no man can be indifferent or alien to the fate of any other man. The fate that befalls the poet in Fiesta en noviembre is the result of the perversion of values, the falsification, and the affronts to human dignity which Lintas and Marta are trying to combat. Its significance, ominous for them and for their country, heightens the urgency of their attempts to discover and develop authentic bases for individual and national existence³³⁸.

The same thought which underlies Fiesta en noviembre, that, willingly or not, we are all «members one of another»³³⁹, is further developed in Rodeada está de sueño and El retorno. In these two volumes the author describes his voluntary retreats from the distraction of superficial life. In the solitude of the country, his powers of perception and empathy are heightened, and he draws on this creative isolation for increased communion with his fellow men. He is able to feel more deeply his relationship with his brother Germán and, further, to project himself into the experiences of a variety of characters. The episodes are informally arranged, and we are continually brought back to the personal reality of the writer by apparently trivial references to the minutiae of his life. This repetition³⁴⁰ creates the illusion of instantaneity, placing all the self-projections of the author within one point of time. The episodes do not form a continuous story, but derive their unity from their common relation to the person of the author.

A similar juxtaposition of vital experiences is found in La sala de espera, in which seven characters mentally review their lives while waiting for a train. These lives are no longer united by the empathic projection of a personally present author, but they have come to rest in the same point in space. Interpolated descriptive passages return the reader to the reality of the waiting room, contrasting the slow passage of chronological time with the remembered time of the characters³⁴¹. This physical contiguity of personages in search of fulfillment but unaware of each other emphasizes the essential unity of their destinies; beyond the individual episodes, it conveys Mallea's message of human solidarity.

Elimination of differences in time or space, besides permitting contrast between separate situations or giving them ideological unity, allows Mallea to intensify the presentation of his characters and ideas. For example, he employs the «flashback» -a technique familiar to every movie-goer- to unite past and present. This allows him to present his protagonists already engaged in a situation, the development of which is shown in retrospect rather than in chronological narration. Thus in «Los jóvenes hombres muertos» (La ciudad junto al río inmóvil) we witness the growth of the protagonist's uneasiness in a flashback episode inserted in the scene of his waiting for friends in a bar. The same technique is used in «Solves», «La angustia», «Sumersión», and «La causa de Jacobo Uber, perdida». In the first part of Todo verdor perecerá, it serves to show Ágata already trapped in her isolation and loneliness. The origin of this situation becomes clear through the reminiscences of the heroine during one of her silent meals with Nicanor. There are occasional returns to the present time as the character chews his food, speaks to a bartender, or performs some other apparently trivial act which stresses his presence and the reminiscent nature of what has preceded³⁴².

In Las Águilas and Chaves, which also utilize the flashback, most of the significant developments have occurred at a time previous to that of the narration. The protagonist's situation is not carried forward to a conclusion, like that of Ágata Cruz or Jacobo Uber; it is already definitive, and the emphasis is on its origins and growth. Here the use of the flashback allows Mallea to state at the outset the problem with which he is dealing, as embodied in Chaves or in Román Ricarte. The retrospective episodes show the development of the problem; the episodes of the present show its implications for the future. The various aspects of the problem can be viewed simultaneously. Mallea thus avoids writing the «history» of his character, but presents him as a person in whom past, present, and future are vitally, not merely chronologically, related.

A more conventional method of interrupting the continuity of narration, but one equally useful for the presentation of ideology, is the insertion of independent subplots in the novel. Mallea uses this procedure in La bahía de silencio, with its episodes from Tregua's «Las cuarenta noches de Juan Argentino». While the method and timing of their introduction are not always felicitous, the interpolations illustrate concepts which it would be difficult to include in the narrative of Tregua's everyday activities. The story of a man's lonely vigil by the sickbed of his wife is a far more powerful exposition of «la exaltación severa de la vida» than could be found in the life of Tregua himself, and the appearance in Tregua's novel of the «unauthentic» Dr. Languirós avoids the introduction of additional characters in the already crowded narrative³⁴³.

Mallea's use of motifs and symbols reinforces the unity of his novels on a more technical plane. In «Los Rembrandts», for example, the narrator continually punctuates the story of his relations with Mona Vardiner with references to paintings which he intends to see but never does. His inertia brings frustration, and this frustration reflects and enhances the futility of the effort to communicate with Mona³⁴⁴. A symbolic motif is found also in La bahía de silencio (pp. 44-45): the bells of a colonial church, heard during a conversation among Tregua, Anselmi, Jiménez, and Acevedo, are probably the symbolic voice of the «authentic Argentina». And the appearances of the Señora de Cárdenas, herself a symbol of national authenticity, are a unifying motif in Tregua's life and thought. Descriptively, the wind unites the elements of Mallea's physical presentation of the South³⁴⁵.

At times these motifs exert an active force in the narration, as in «La rosa de Cernobbio». Here the inner life of a lonely girl has as its counterpoint the story of a fabulous flower with which she comes to feel a mysterious connection. At first only echoes of this motif emerge through mentions of the rose by Berta's father; but gradually it takes possession of the girl's thought. Unnaturally fresh after its voyage from Italy, this fleur du mal seems to have a malignant beauty, and eventually triumphs over Berta, crushing her when it reaches its full development³⁴⁶.

Houses, in Mallea's novels, are not only elements of physical unity but also active and often hostile forces. The country house Las Águilas is the focal point in the lives of three generations of Ricartes, but in its pretentiousness and its lack of unity with the soil it acquires a personality of its own. For Román, it resembles his wife; for León, who built it, it had become an enemy no longer subject to his control: «Él y la casa comenzaron a odiarse»³⁴⁷, There is something baleful about Villa Rita, the house of the Guilléns, which was also the result of wealth and sterility of soul. In it the sisters and Mario are trapped. «Villa Rita era el torcedor»³⁴⁸. It is hated by its three prisoners and in turn hates them:

Mallea often uses architectural terms for comparison or description. Metaphorically, he speaks of spiritual architecture and national architecture³⁵⁰. The actual physical architecture of a city expresses spiritual qualities and essences for him³⁵¹; and, especially in Europe, it evokes the past. Thus Mallea's characters reveal their consciousness of the cultural tradition of Europe through their appreciation of its architecture. In Brussels, Tregua speaks of «aquellos edificios con olor a años y vidas desaparecidas y podridas»; and in Amsterdam another character cannot help thinking of Spinoza, that «aquí, frente a la sinagoga portuguesa sus enemigos le dieron en vago una puñalada»³⁵². In Nocturno europeo (p. 17), the Place de la Concorde symbolizes the cultural harmony of the European, particularly the French, spirit; in La bahía de silencio (p. 281), the cities of Flanders express the desolation of man and the «medieval pavor perpetuo al infierno». The physical aspect of Buenos Aires acquires a symbolic meaning for Mallea, representing the formless and fortuitous pretentiousness of the «visible Argentina».

Mallea's symbolism is apparent likewise in the names of his characters and the titles of the novels themselves. The importance of names is explicit in La bahía de silencio (pp. 196, 276). Tregua explains Jazmín Guerrero's hunger for power as stemming in part from the grotesque contrast of his name. Tregua's own name is probably symbolic of his intermediate state between preoccupation and action, and of the withdrawal he chooses at the end of the novel. He points out to his friend Ferrier that Tregua means trêve (truce, respite). The hard hearted Ágata (mineral) Cruz (cross) suffers from her isolated condition. The family name Ricarte probably has equal significance, as well as the given names León (conqueror?) and Román (dreamer?). Román's wife is Emilia Islas, isolated in her ambition. Isolina Navarro is likewise isolated, and symbolic meanings attach to the names of many other characters³⁵³.

The characters also form links between different novels, sometimes appearing in the background of works in which they are not major participants. Ágata Cruz is seen fleetingly in Los enemigos del alma³⁵⁴, and the «temeroso rumano» who is a client of Roberto Ricarte's³⁵⁵ may well be the Ira Boreseu of La bahía de silencio.

The titles of the novels, even when not taken, like Todo verdor perecerá, from an appropriate quotation, represent elements of the ideological message. The Bay of Silence is the situation of the authentic individual awaiting the moment of full expression³⁵⁶; La torre is at once a symbol of vanity (Las Águilas) and a graphic representation of an other, more spiritual, form of construction which is sought by Roberto³⁵⁷.

Mallea employs symbols, leitmotivs, and apparently unrelated episodes to elaborate the structure of his novels and enhance their expressiveness. These tools are not necessarily connected in a tangible way with the fictional situation, but are significant as expressions of Mallea's thought; only when they are so interpreted do they acquire an aesthetic validity as well. The same is true of variations in plot structure and of spatial and temporal relationships.

Although Mallea has succeeded in imposing a formal order on some of his works, he has done so only when the presentation of his message required this structure; and he has not sacrificed ideological and thematic complexity to the classical ideal of simplicity. Thus the construction of his novels depends on the thought which is Mallea's passion, in accordance with his belief that the value of a book depends not on its perfection but on its effects³⁵⁸.