Visor de obras.

Although Mallea's thought is at times vague and his fiction unconvincing, the reader is not always immediately aware of this. Mallea's literary style, with its wealth of imagery and passionate rhythms, tends to conceal the gaps in the ideological and fictional structures. No study of this novelist can be complete without an analysis of his style; for, contemptuous as he may be of «literature», Mallea is fully aware of the resources it puts at his disposal for the implementation of his message.

Mallea's vocabulary reflects his aversion to the «typically» Argentine and his receptiveness to foreign influences, especially the literary influences. Argentinisms are consequently rare in his prose; when they do appear, they are almost invariably relegated to isolated utterances of rural characters. In his reluctance to mimic the speech of the people, Mallea deprives most of his rural or plebeian characters of direct speech; and this procedure allows him to speak for them, using his own cultured vocabulary. Gallicisms and Anglicisms («hall», «grillroom», «sportivo») are limited in Mallea's language; they are almost always used consciously and for a specific purpose³⁵⁹.

More evident than direct borrowings from foreign languages are words and expressions which appear to be of literary inspiration, Argentine or foreign. Thus when Mallea says of Lugones, «Mantuvo su canto alto. Y él mismo se desterró así, dramáticamente, en ese vuelo de ave solitaria», we are reminded of the opening lines of Martín Fierro:

When Mallea speaks of «una teoría de hombres» and then applies the same procedure to «una alegría de gorriones» and «una locura de insectos», he may be drawing on Darío:

Reminiscent of Quevedo are a doctor «tartamudo de pies» (in Quevedo, a doctor's mule, «tartamuda de paso») and a sea captain «con aquella voz lenta y débil que cojeaba» (in Quevedo, an «hablador» «tartamudo y... zancajoso de pronunciación»)³⁶². Chaves «multiplicaba su sinrazón en busca de razones», remembering Don Quixote, no doubt («La razón de la sinrazón que a mi razón se hace, de tal manera mi razón enflaquece, que con razón me quejo de la vuestra fermosura»)³⁶³. An echo of Mallea's favorite among Pascal's Pensées («Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie») is heard as the author contemplates his city at night and exclaims: «Isla de pie, vivo, rodeado de la noche, aquel enorme espacio me estremecía»³⁶⁴. Mallea's frequent use of the adjective «imperturbable» is traceable to his predilection for Whitman, whom he quotes on several occasions. The insistence on the etymological meanings of words («conmover; es decir, mover conmigo» -«animar, que exactamente quiera decir infundir el alma»³⁶⁵) is typical of Unamuno. The Bible also, particularly in its prophetic passages, influences Mallea -less in specific vocabulary than in the tone of some of his statements³⁶⁶. And when Mallea says, «El reloj de la Torre de los Ingleses dio las doce. (Qué lejos estaba el mundo y qué pronto pasaba el tiempo)», he may well have in mind Andrew Marvell's «Had we but World enough, and Time»³⁶⁷.

Occasionally Mallea's style leaves little doubt that he is thoroughly familiar with the classics of the baroque period. Thus dawn is «el alba de la noche», water is the well-known «cristal», and the breakers on the shore are -in a hendecasyllable worthy of Góngora- «los rápidos carneros de la espuma»³⁶⁸. Nor are the concepts and contrapuntal style of the following description alien to the Soledades: «No era isla, sin embargo, sino las cautas viviendas de los pobladores del balneario, paréntesis abierto al océano en la costa sur entre estancias y médanos salvajes, viviendas alegres rodeadas de hierba verde y construidas de rientes maderas verdiblancas»³⁶⁹. The phonetic and semantic plays on words of Gracián also appear in Mallea. Mario Guillén is one of those who «de la especie sólo tienen lo especioso»³⁷⁰. And, addressing his brother, Mallea writes: «Te será necesario apretar los dientes y repetirte: Felices los que en el andar de la vida no han hallado para sí honores, sino honor; pasiones, sino pasión; altiveces, sino altivez; distinciones, sino distinción; conocimientos, sino conocimiento»³⁷¹.

The influence of Quevedo is most marked in Mallea's descriptive passages, especially those dealing with minor characters with whom the author does not particularly sympathize. Mallea prefers to caricature them. In negative and grotesquely contrasting details, he creates a character physically, but destroys him morally: «Tenía unas manos de dedos arqueados y cetrinos acabados en unas uñas roídas. Por sobre las solapas del traje descolorido, poníale la suciedad en el cuello de una camisa espesas franjas parduscas. Nos asombró, pues, cuando dijo: "Yo quiero una copa de champagne. La tomo siempre después de las comidas..."»³⁷² This type of description might be considered as the triumph of detail, which, though charged with a negative emotional significance, is transcribed with deliberate realism. Usually, however, Mallea's descriptions are anything but photographic; his realization of the difference between art and reality causes him to effect a baroque transposition of the concrete into abstract terms and the abstract into vivid personification³⁷³.

Thus Mallea transforms a given scene into a geometric space. A concrete field becomes an area enclosed within the limits of a peon's gallop; an empty room is presented through the reflections of sectors of space in two mirrors; and a standing woman is framed by the rectangle of a door³⁷⁴. The scene of an accident is pictured by a rotating wheel and a corpse lying equidistant between two parallel fences³⁷⁵. The complete reduction of a locale to its geometric components is accomplished in descriptions like the following: «La cervecería era muy curiosa. Vale la pena describirla. El salón era un gran rectángulo compuesto de dos planos; el plano de arriba tomaba una cuarta parte del salón y estaba limitado por una larga balaustrada cuyo extremo abierto era la escalera que lo comunicaba con la planta baja»³⁷⁶. Here there is a conscious effort to transpose realities. The same effect can be found in Rodeada está de sueño (p. 17), where Mallea first describes his room in terms of the sentiments it arouses, and in the next sentence gives the geographic and geometric location of its furniture. Contrast is established in descriptions of this type by the opposition of light and dark areas, as in the paintings of Mondrian³⁷⁷. The reason for this procedure of in creasing abstraction must be sought in the fact that some scenes are for Mallea probably not worth describing -at least not in the usual sense, though he does add a physical inventory to his geometric dissection of the beer hall. The photographic image of such locales adds nothing to the reader's knowledge or pleasure, or to the narrative aspect of the novel. Mallea uses it only as raw material and makes it decorative by reducing it to the balances and contrasts of its parts. In the description of the wake for Cande's child in La torre (p. 106), abstraction serves as a form of understatement, harmonizing in tone with the virile dignity of the bereaved father.

When Mallea is dealing with abstract concepts or with objects to which he wishes to give greater vitality, he resorts to personification, and in his works we note a gradual progression in the means used to effect this personification. Beginning with similes, Mallea turns to more and more elliptic metaphors, resting first on the apposition of a noun, then on the use of an adjective, and, finally and most characteristically, on the personification of the object by means of a verb. In Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada (p.127), he speaks of tragedy hanging from the roof like an immense cobweb. Metaphors, however, are more pleasing to Mallea than similes, and thus we find the «bitter bird of sickness» and the «butterflies of desire»³⁷⁸. Ana Borel is able to see «los rojos desposorios del alba»³⁷⁹. This type of metaphor, employing nouns, is made more vivid by the elimination of connecting prepositions and its reinforcement by appropriate verbs and adverbs: «La noche húmeda, vieja borracha, entraba de nuevo pesadamente en el cielo...»³⁸⁰ Occasionally the original concept is replaced by its metaphoric equivalent: «de ella [Gloria Bambil] nada le importaba, más que su vuelo suelto de ave en irreducible destierro»³⁸¹. This procedure is particularly noticeable in Mallea's treatment of his ideology, for which he has developed autonomous metaphors.

Mallea uses adjectives to personify negative abstractions, intensifying otherwise colorless expressions. In Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada (pp. 73, 81), a window is «muda de luz» and a stage is also «mudo, virgen de una compañía de artistas que estaba siempre por llegar». The hands and eyes of a character can be full of emptiness³⁸². In Las Águilas (p. 266), adjectives are used to give form to the abstract and to personify the inanimate: «A pesar de la oscuridad se veía al fondo la casa, llena definitivamente de ausencia, solitaria y erguida en su pétreo llanto». Nouns and verbs can serve to break the limits of the abstract; and thus articles of furniture «rompían la queja del vacío» and time floats in a waiting room³⁸³.

Verbs are Mallea's favorite means of establishing a vivid and highly elliptic metaphor. When applied to concrete objects, they personify them and make them more active participants in the narration. Thus, in La torre (p. 101), flashes of lightning are «pieces of day», but in Los enemigos del alma (p. 198), a flash of lightning «invents the day». Mallea prefers this second and more vivid method in descriptions of nature, to which in this way he gives a poetic quality. Instead of announcing that it is night, he says: «Velaba la noche metida en su propio embozo marino, ancho de millones de leguas...»³⁸⁴ Dawn comes to look at the exhaustion of Adrián, the moon blesses a solitary elm, a hill humbles itself, and twilight passes its hand over the grass³⁸⁵. «Un arroyuelo bordeado de álamos se atardecía, sollozante de ranas...»³⁸⁶ which is far more poetic than a simple statement that as it was getting dark, the frogs began to croak in the brook bordered by poplars. And instead of saying that the moon was setting over the river, which might be too hackneyed a bit of romanticism, Mallea writes: «El agua oscura iba en busca de la luna descendiente»³⁸⁷. In La bahía de silencio (p. 472), Tregua declares: «Yo pienso mi tierra en términos de creación», emphasizing the active and creative aspect of thought as well as the personal existence of the object («tierra») by suppressing the preposition «en».

Mallea's characters are habitual walkers; and the streets along which they wander come to be personified through the use of verbs. One street is attacked by another, the soul of deserted streets pursues the late passers-by, and «la calle nocturna recibía herida aquellas risas, aquellas carcajadas»³⁸⁸. Buildings, too, take on life, sometimes in very definite forms. The walls of the cathedral of Paris «echaban adelante las gárgolas», and the dining room of Villa Rita swallows the Guilléns³⁸⁹. But personification is carried to the extreme in regard to Las Águilas, the house of the Ricartes:

The method of personification through the use of verbs and nouns is applied also to mental or emotional states. When Avesquín runs in anguish, only his paleness illuminates the night; and Girossi's wife «fijó por un segundo en lo que él [Chaves] le mostraba el extravío de sus grandes ojos»³⁹¹. Thus Mallea intensifies the concept conveyed by an adjective by turning it into a noun, which is then made capable of independent action. The additional forcefulness of this procedure is especially notable once the reader has become accustomed to the adjectives which Mallea commonly applies to his personages: «huraño», «inquieto», «refinado». In extreme cases, personification allows Mallea to express succinctly and in one sentence three or four different facts, as when one of his characters states, in La sala de espera (p. 43), «Cuando me casé en Tres Arroyos, mis veinte años no eran los treinta y tres que son ahora». It can, however -though rarely- lead to expressions of questionable taste: «¡Qué ordeñar sin compasión las ubres de la vida!³⁹²»

Mallea's most characteristic and consistent metaphors directly serve the expression of his ideology³⁹³. The isolated individual is an island, an «isla humana». This basic metaphor of Mallea's ideological imagery is, however, capable of further elaboration. Like some of Góngora's metaphors, such as «cristal», it ceases to stand for the isolated individual and instead is the isolated individual; consequently there are arid islands, but also bitter islands, and even walking islands and standing islands and drifting islands³⁹⁴. The last-named develop into drifting glaciers³⁹⁵. Around the island is the sea or ocean, which represents the everyday life and activity from which the «human island» is separated³⁹⁶. There are bays and gulfs which often separate individuals or from which the individual must escape in order to join the sea³⁹⁷.

The geographic opposite of the island is the lake, which is also employed to signify isolation. It further represents the «waters of the spirit», indicating interior reservoirs of passion as yet unreleased³⁹⁸. The aim of Mallea's characters is to find a purpose in life, that the waters of their separate existence may flow into rivers, in a definite direction, and eventually be absorbed in the ocean of life³⁹⁹. Those who have not yet found this direction are ships in search of a port; if they fail, they are «la tripulación del fracaso»⁴⁰⁰.

Other geographic metaphors abound. Of Serena Barcos, Mallea writes: «Su alma: ¡qué raro desierto enamorado!⁴⁰¹» Nicanor Cruz lives in an abyss; Chaves inhabits a plain of silence; and Tregua's life is buffeted by the winds of desires⁴⁰². On a higher level of abstraction, we find «human territories», «human climates», and «moral countries». César Acevedo, for example, «parecía el representante en esta parte del mundo de un extraño país moral»⁴⁰³. Related to these concepts is Mallea's vision of withdrawal and silence as a «destierro creador»⁴⁰⁴. Since each metaphor acquires an autonomous existence in Mallea's writing, it can be combined with others indefinitely; and Mallea is able to write a whole paragraph which is exclusively metaphoric, without ever defining his terms:

The concepts of isolation and communication can be expressed also in architectural terms: life is a room, words are a bridge, silence is a house, and solitude is a corridor⁴⁰⁶. Hunger and thirst are favorite substitutes for desire, whether spiritual or otherwise⁴⁰⁷.

These metaphors are not used exclusively to express Mallea's ideological apparatus⁴⁰⁸; but this is their primary purpose, and they pervade all of Mallea's work. «Las islas» is the title of the division of La bahía de silencio that deals with the aimlessness of Tregua's European friends. The «bay» itself is a geographic image. This imagery permits Mallea to intensify his concepts graphically, while at the same time avoiding excessive use of abstract adjectives. To some extent, however, the procedure is self-defeating, since the repetition of the images becomes monotonous. By erecting his metaphors into independent entities capable of further development, Mallea makes his expression more succinct, but this deprives his images of their literal meaning; «island», for example, finally becomes just as abstract a term as «human being». The images thus lose their «shock» value and are reduced to the level of technical terminology.

Nor does the use of imagery really curb Mallea's predilection for the adjective. In fact, as his metaphors become independent abstractions, he finds it desirable to qualify them, such as «isla viva» and «laguna funesta»⁴⁰⁹. In an effort to avoid this, he makes his adjectives into nouns, so that a character becomes a «gran huraña» or a «resentido»⁴¹⁰. These adjectives, whether or not they are turned into nouns, remain vague, abstract; and even when they refer to the concrete physical appearance of a person or thing, they are given spiritual or moral overtones.

Mallea's language, full of abstraction and imagery, is therefore a purely literary one. Its usefulness in dialogue is limited to the «talking characters» who reflect their creator's personality. Martín Tregua and Roberto Ricarte can use it; Ágata Cruz cannot. Since Mallea is unwilling to abandon his own language or the nature of his characters, he is often forced to limit the self-expression of his personages to occasional exclamations. Descriptions by the author, indirect discourse, and interior monologue in the third person take the place of speech for the characters who could not be expected to express themselves like a Tregua -and sometimes for those who could⁴¹¹. This does not, however, mean that Mallea is incapable of using the speech of his characters for his own purposes; in La torre (p. 418), three minor characters produce a chorus-like effect by commenting on the protagonist.

Literary style thus becomes a tool which serves Mallea's ideology, at times heightening its effect or adding aesthetic qualities, but also liable to be strained through repetition or overemphasis. Yet his first published writings, Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada, show that, with him, style preceded didactic purpose. These stories frequently deal with foreign subjects, as well as with the embarrassment or frustration of the individual; but Mallea does not as yet seek any profound significance in his subjects: the foreign element is a sign of cosmopolitanism; the individual experiences are anecdotes rather than parables. Throughout, the tone remains semiserious; and the subject matter is a basis for stylistic virtuosity⁴¹².

Preciosity is evident in expressions like «cabe el hogar» (p. 33) and in the large number of sentences beginning with «Y». In this and in the slightly self-belittling attitude of the writer we suspect the influence of Azorín, the «pequeño filósofo»; yet a good many of the characteristics of Mallea's style are already apparent in a passage such as this (p. 70): «El verano quemaba sus días demasiado lentamente, y los atardeceres se prolongaban con una indolencia cortesana. La carretera... iba finalmente a entregar su cansancio a la playa...» Here we find the use of the abstract adjective and the personification of both the abstract and the concrete. The influence of Azorín appears again in two of Mallea's later works, El retorno and Rodeada está de sueño, especially in the attention paid to small details and the half-serious affectation of style: «De tanto andar, uno se cansa. Entonces entra en algún hospedaje, abre las ventanas, huele el olor a alhucema de las sábanas frescas, se recuesta, mientras progresa afuera el caer de la tarde. Uno ha andado mucho, y siente el placer solitario y un poco triste de este descanso»⁴¹³. The repetition of details of description and added elements, such as the barking of dogs in the middle of the night⁴¹⁴, intensify the resemblance to such of Azorín's writings as «La novia de Cervantes». Occasionally the description loses grammatical structure -«El ruido del viento en los eucaliptos y casuarinas. El canto del benteveo, que arranca y calla de golpe»⁴¹⁵- and is then reminiscent of Güiraldes, particularly of his Xaimaca. And the tone of these volumes, gently rambling and obliquely approaching a subject, is not unlike that of Proust.

These, however, are almost pure stylistic exercises; and for Mallea style is a means to an end. And this end is often served by emphasis and rhythm. The position of a word in relation to others can give it relief, as in «la argentina gente»⁴¹⁶; and the same transposition can also give rhythm to a sentence: «Yo, ensimismado, no veía más que la tierra desnuda, la tierra nuestra, la inmensa vastedad limpia y austera, la argentina llanura»⁴¹⁷. The repetition of words, or of similar words, can reduce a scene to its simplest terms, as, in La torre (pp. 105 ff.), the wake for Cande's child. Or it can indicate what is to come; Mallea's description of Débora Guillén returning to her house foreshadows her burning of it:

But the most important use of repetition for Mallea is to emphasize the idea he is trying to express. There are paragraphs in which the opening sentence is repeated at the end; there are others in which the basic image is developed through repetition until it acquires vital force⁴¹⁹. Or repetition can, while stressing a concept, give it the quality of thought in process: «Entonces fue cuando cambió, el recién llegado, y se hizo más parecido al hombre que era ahora. Cuando se hizo -casi- el hombre que era ahora. Cuando el recién llegado se hizo llegado. Bien llegado. Bien, bien llegado»⁴²⁰.

Rhythm is another characteristic of Mallea's style. At times it can be a purely intellectual rhythm, resulting from the opposition of concepts⁴²¹; but more often it is the result of a lyric passion and is achieved through repetition, aided by the natural stress of the words. In passages such as these from La bahía de silencio (pp. 205, 549), Mallea's prose turns into poetry, lacking only its purely typographical characteristics:

Mallea's most lyrical passages are reserved for Buenos Aires, «ese populoso desierto, esa franja de tierra miserable, isla negra surcada de estrellas»⁴²².

In Las Águilas (p. 258) there is a passage of equal poetic quality which, for the sake of illustration, I shall divide into lines:

In a sense, imagery and rhythm are the imposition of order on language; but, though Mallea's writing is rich in both of these elements, it is not always ordered. Agglutination is often the answer to Mallea's problem of expression. At times, as in the chapter of La bahía de silencio entitled «Llanto por la que desapareció», agglutination serves the purpose of showing the grief or other strong emotion of a character. Elsewhere, Mallea uses it to depict in one very long sentence the round of mundane activities through which a character passes⁴²⁵. Agglutination is also, however, a substitute for the mot juste; and often Mallea is «striving to capture a whole atmosphere of consciousness in a single word, not entirely succeeding, then trying again and again. Such repetitiousness involves Mallea's worst stylistic fault: diffuse abstractiveness»⁴²⁶. And perhaps the worst instances of this «diffuse abstractiveness» are Mallea's attempts to describe the «invisible Argentine», that elusive object of his search, who is

This estilo amontonado, obviously trying to approach more precise definition, seems to rest on the fallacious assumption that numerous adjectives are more effective than one. Actually, it demonstrates only that Mallea's concept of authenticity is vague or at least inexpressible. This style can become so intricate, so full of vague or abstract approximations, that only from acquaintance with the patterns of Mallea's thought can we understand the meaning of passages like this:

Humor is almost totally absent from Mallea's works; but his attacks on the «visible Argentina» often take the form of sarcasm, as in this description of a club in the provinces:

Or he will speak of the bourgeoisie, which in America considers itself to be aristocracy, noses in the air⁴³⁰:

Mallea is a writer of unquestionable artistic talent who has placed this talent at the service of his ideological message. When he is writing in a purely subjective vein, he can become lyrical; when he applies the same techniques to exposition, he becomes diffuse. He often develops brilliant images, but the ideological content of his fiction is expressed through metaphors which become dulled by repetition. Mallea's style is uneven; it is not careless, but it is not his main care. Though Mallea has amply demonstrated his abilities as a stylist, he is not primarily interested in being a stylist; and aesthetics, in this matter as in others, is subordinated to ethics. Mallea's greatest stylistic achievements are to be found in passages where ideological considerations are absent, or where emotion rather than thought is paramount.

The preceding chapters, examining Mallea's thought and its literary expression, enable us to evaluate his writings; for, by choosing fiction as a vehicle for his exposition, Mallea subjects himself to literary criteria, no matter how much he may despise them⁴³².

Mallea makes a continual effort to express ideas which, lying outside the realm of rational exposition, become objects of intuitive cognition. We cannot therefore be surprised to find him striving to translate these ideas into parable and myth. In style, structure, and characterization, he moves away from the objective world into a subjective, «unreal» world of myths and images. As he struggles to express the inexpressible with every resource at his command, he creates a tension which makes poetry of much of his prose. Since this tension, however, is by definition incapable of resolution, it has some undesirable effects. Mallea can never capture completely what he wishes to say; yet he returns to the charge, repeating himself not only word for word, but also idea for idea and novel for novel. The reader is always conscious of the author's unremitting search; and, to paraphrase Mallea, «de tanto buscar, uno se cansa». The rational mind eventually demands a solution, a crystallization of the vague entities which are forever floating just out of reach. Perhaps we have no right to demand that Mallea find a solution, but we grow tired of being told that it is not yet found. We also tire of repetition from the aesthetic point of view, since eventually we know what to expect when we begin a new book by Mallea. We recognize familiar figures under different names, and know beforehand that they will advance but little over their predecessors. This is one of the surest ways to kill that curiosity on the reader's part which is necessary for viable fiction.

From the critical standpoint, this amounts to a lack of progression in Mallea's writing. The synchronous treatment of his works in this study shows the change that takes place between Cuentos para una inglesa desesperada and the more mature productions; but it places all the latter on roughly the same ideological and aesthetic plane, on which qualitative differences do not noticeably correspond to chronological differences. This approach is dictated by the difficulty of dating Mallea's writings (see chap. v, note 4), and we suspect that Mallea may foster such confusion to enhance the timeless, mythical nature of his works. Since the chronology of composition (a process easily extending over years, given Mallea's methods of work as he describes them) may well be quite different from the chronology of publication, it would be interesting to establish the correct sequence, which, while not destroying the fundamental interrelation of Mallea's writings, could lead to a revaluation of his creativity.

Mallea has demonstrated his creativity in some of his novels. His ideas acquire form when confined to expression through the life of a character, as in Todo verdor perecerá, an impressive parable and a novel comparable to any. He has shown, in Fiesta en noviembre, his ability to exploit the possibilities of the genre so as to produce new and meaningful effects. But he has not been content with this. He has not only repeated his themes but has also insisted on presenting in many of his novels (notably La bahía de silencio) ideological questions unrelated to the lives of his spokesmen. These questions are important to the author and to the reader, but they matter to Mallea's characters only because they matter to Mallea himself. While his willingness to express himself in his novels is almost unlimited, his capacity for empathy, for inventing a character who is not himself and projecting himself into that character, is modest, in spite of fragmentary successes in Rodeada está de sueño and El retorno.

This all-absorbing subjectivity is the greatest danger to the author's fiction; for, although the novel is a flexible genre, it is fiction, not essay or autobiography. Mallea's novels tend to cross this boundary; but if they are meant to be nonfiction, there is no logical or aesthetic justification for their fictional elements; and if they are meant to be fiction, their reliance on extrafictional considerations to arouse the reader's interest is illegitimate. The reader has a right either to a clear exposition of the author's thought or to a fiction capable of existing independently inside the microcosm of the novel. Mallea's frequent refusal to choose either course compromises his standing both as an artist and as a thinker.

Mallea will continue to attract enthusiastic readers by the universal appeal of his ideology. Some will maintain their enthusiasm as they are drawn into his own intellectual world, where literary forms become insignificant beside transcendental problems of human existence. Others, however, will tire of tracing an inconclusive philosophy in vague and repetitious semifiction. They will demand a sharp division into categories, seeking lucidity in thought and viability in fiction. Mallea's best chance of meeting these demands lies in limitation, in self-discipline. He must invent autonomous characters, abandoning the effort for complete self-expression and realizing that an expression which fills the limits set for it is more effective than boundlessness, which tends to become formlessness. In short, Mallea must seek to master the form of the novel. In view of his past performance, his willing ness and ability to make this change are open to question.