Science, Literature, and Film in the Hispanic World

Science, Literature, and Film in the Hispanic World

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Science, Literature, and Film in the Hispanic World Edited by

Jerry Hoeg and Kevin S. Larsen

SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND FILM IN THE HISPANIC WORLD

© Jerry Hoeg and Kevin S. Larsen, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN–13: 978–1–4039–7438–9 ISBN–10: 1–4039–7438–1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Content s

Contributors

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Introduction

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1 An Introduction to Sciencepoetry: A New Beginning Rafael Catala

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2 Three Theories, Three Writers, One Idea: Science and the Nation in the Brazilian Literature of Joaquim de Souzândrade, Euclides da Cunha, and Augusto dos Anjos Eva Paulino Bueno 3 The Aura of Science in Fantastic Tales by Leopoldo Lugones, Macedonio Fernández, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Jorge Luis Borges María Cristina Boiero de De Angelo 4

Jorge Luis Borges and Early Quantum Labyrinths Floyd Merrell

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5 Carlos Fuentes’s Evolution Toward Ecological Awareness in His Essays and Narratives Alicia Rivero

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Life Signs: Ricardo Piglia’s Cyborgs J. Andrew Brown

7 On Science and Mexican Nationalism: The Politics of Identity in Jorge Volpi’s In Search of Klingsor Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste 8 Disease as a Dis/Organizing Principle in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Benito Pérez Galdós, Leopoldo Alas, and Emilia Pardo Bazán Anne W. Gilfoil

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CONTENTS

Ido del Sagrario’s Alimentary Madness Kevin S. Larsen 10 Pío Baroja’s Parascientific Epistemology Beatriz Rivera-Barnes 11 “Aquel Madrid”: Science, Literature, and Art in the Edad de Plata Cecelia Cavanaugh SSJ 12 Representations of Humans and Technology: The Construction of Identity in Miguel Bardem, Pedro Almodóvar, and Alejandro Amenábar Juan Carlos Martin

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Index

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C on t r i b u t or s

María Cristina de Boiero de De Angelo, Master in Applied Ethics, associate professor in American Literature, and founding member of the Center for a Culture of Peace at the Universidad Nacional de Rio Cuarto, Argentina. Her field of research is the relationship between literature, ethics, and science. She has coedited several books and her articles have appeared in numerous books and journals. J. Andrew Brown, Ph.D. University of Virginia, is assistant professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Test Tube Envy: Science and Power in Argentine Narrative (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005) as well as various articles on science, technology, and posthuman identity in Latin American literature. Eva Paulino Bueno, Ph. D. the University of Pittsburgh, teaches at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to numerous essays and articles, she has published books on Brazilian naturalist fiction (Resisting Boundaries, New York: Garland, 1995), Brazilian cinema (O artista do povo, Maringa, Paraná: EDUEM, 1999), Latin American popular culture (Imagination Beyond Nation, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), fatherhood in international literature (Naming the Father, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 2000), and on teaching English in Japan (I Wouldn’t Want Anybody to Know, Yokyo: JPGS Press, 2003). Her latest projects include the Encyclopedia of Latin American Women Writers, and a volume on Brazilian women poets of the twentieth century. Rafael Catala, Ph.D. New York University, is a poet, writer and internationally renowned lecturer. He has published five books of poetry and four books of essays. He lectures regularly in many countries, including Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Argentina. He is president and cofounder of the Ometeca Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to the study of the relations between the sciences and the humanities.

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Cecelia J. Cavanaugh SSJ is associate professor of Spanish and Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA. She is the author of Lorca’s Drawings and Poems: Forming the Eye of the Reader (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1996) and is completing a book-length study of the influence of science and scientists in the work and thought of Federico García Lorca. In addition to Lorca studies, her research areas include interdisciplinary considerations of literature and art and literature and science. Anne W. Gilfoil, Ph.D. Tulane University, is associate professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. She has published numerous articles on Spanish literature in journals such as Anales Galdosianos, Confluencia, Ojácano, and Letras Penínsulares. Jerry Hoeg, Ph.D. Arizona State University, is professor of Spanish at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Science, Technology, and Latin American Narrative in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Lehigh, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2000) and numerous articles on the relations between the sciences and the humanities, and he is also the editor of the journal Ometeca. Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste, Ph.D. Stony Brook University, is associate professor of Spanish at Georgia State University. He specializes in Latin American cultural studies. His publications include Narrativas de representación urbana (New York: Lang, 1998) and Rockin’ Las Americas (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), as well as chapters in numerous scholarly books and journals. His current research involves comics and national identity, and violence and culture in his native Colombia. Kevin S. Larsen, Ph.D. Harvard University, is currently professor of Spanish and adjunct professor of religious studies at the University of Wyoming. He has written three books (including one on science and literature in Gabriel Miró and one on Galdós) and some seventy articles published in journals and Festschriften around the world. In another lifetime he hopes to become a vertebrate paleontologist and name carnosaurs after himself! Juan Carlos Martin, a native of the Canary Islands, is at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published articles on the relationship between science, literature, and film and is currently working on realistic discourse in contemporary Spanish narrative. Floyd Merrell, Ph.D. University of New Mexico, is professor of Spanish at Purdue University and a former president of the American

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Semiotic Society. He has published over 160 articles and some 27 books, most recently The Mexicans: A Sense of Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003), Sensing Corporeally:Toward a Posthuman Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), Complementing Latin American Borders (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004), and Capoeira and Candomblé: Conformity and Resistance through Afro-Brazilian Experience (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2005). Beatriz Rivera-Barnes, M.A. and D.E.A. the University of Paris IVSorbonne, Ph.D. City University of New York, is an assistant professor at Penn State University. Her publications include numerous poems and essays, a book of short stories, and three novels. Alicia Rivero, Ph.D. Brown University, is an associate professor of Spanish American and Comparative Literatures at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Autor/lector: Huidobro, Borges, Fuentes y Sarduy (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991) and the editor of Between the Self and the Void: Essays in Honor of Severo Sarduy (Boulder, CO: Society of Spanish and Spanish American Studies, 1998) and of a special issue of La Torre: Revista de la Universidad de Puerto Rico (1998) on literature and science in the Hispanic world. Her other publications include articles on the works of such Spanish American and European authors as Borges, Sarduy, Fuentes, Huidobro, Arreola, Castellanos, Campos, Elizondo, Futoransky, Mallarmé, and Gómez de la Serna. She is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Nature in Contemporary Latin(a) American Literature: Ecology, Gender, and Race.

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Introd uction

On the one hand, it seems almost commonplace to observe that science and scientists populate the pages of the books we read and the screens of the films we see: Drs. Frankenstein and Strangelove are familiar to us all. On the other, it is also commonplace, known by everyone, that the humanities and the sciences are “two disparate cultures,” oil and water, for they are always and forever separate and irreconcilable. Additionally, as regards the Hispanic world, the “two cultures” approach is bolstered by the false but widespread perception that this very same Hispanic world is lacking in, if not totally bereft of, one of these two cultures, namely science. In this book, the various authors seek to remedy both of these misconceptions. Indeed, the essays that follow demonstrate the extreme interconnectedness of the sciences and the humanities in the Iberian and Ibero-American world. They show how, in both Latin America— including Brazil—and Spain, the two cultures have always been and continue to be in constant interaction and dialogue. These relations of mutual communication and feedback have together forged Hispanic societies and cultures through time and across continents. The relations between the sciences and the humanities form an important element of the past, present, and future of the Hispanic world. To ignore these relations is to miss a crucial component of Hispanic civilization and culture. In the first essay, “Introduction to Sciencepoetry,” the poet, essayist, and cultural theoretician Rafael Catalá argues for “an integrated vision of reality” that utilizes knowledge derived from both the sciences and the humanities to forge an holistic understanding of our world. Speaking on the need for such knowledge in our present age of global warming and genetically altered food and people, he quotes the Cuban José Martí, who wrote both poetry and essays on physics: “It is criminal to separate the education one receives in an age from the age itself.” Marti’s admonition is as valuable today as it was a hundred years ago, because our studies today often involve precisely the kind of divided and divisive education Martí and Catalá find so perilous.

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Martí wrote at the turn of the nineteenth century, and Catalá first penned his essay in 1986 (all other essays in this volume are new). Since the mid-1980s, with Catalá’s pioneering work, not to mention the founding of organizations that include the Society for Literature and Science and Ometeca, first the journal and then the Institute and the international congresses, there has been a general surge in awareness of the necessity to reconcile various fields of knowledge in order to make informed decisions regarding technological and political policies that now have near-instantaneous global impact. In her essay, Eva Bueno demonstrates the role scientific theories of their day played in the works of three canonical figures of Brazilian literature. She goes on to show how their literary production served, in turn, to produce the images associated with Brazilian nationhood. The implications of the connection for the present and future are clear. In turn, María Cristina Boiero de De Angelo discusses this same fusion of scientific and literary discourse in Argentine literature of the early twentieth century. She shows that without the influence of the scientific theories of the day, both Argentine literature and Argentina itself would today have far different shapes. For his own part, Floyd Merrell takes a specific case of this general trend in his essay on Jorge Luis Borges. He makes clear the profound influence quantum theory had on the literary production of Argentina’s most revered author, and in turn on Argentine society and culture. In her piece on Carlos Fuentes and ecological awareness, Alicia Rivero elucidates a far-reaching trend in Hispanic letters, one that seeks to serve as a counterbalance to scientific and technological excesses, especially in terms of environmental protection. This trend toward cautionary notes regarding science and scientists is continued by J. Andrew Brown, as he analyzes the Argentine author Ricardo Piglia’s literary take on science and technology in works dealing with the potentially darker side of technoscience: the conversion of humans into posthuman cyborgs. The next chapter deals with recent developments in the age-old relation between science and literature in Latin America. In his piece on the new literary movement in Mexico called the crack, and more particularly on Jorge Volpi’s In Search of Klingsor, Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste examines a new way of defining Mexican identity in a new global world: through the screen of international science. L’Hoeste shows how a Mexican novel with no explicit Mexican component uses the discourse of global science to define Mexican identity. This definition comes about because, borrowing an idea from twentieth-century

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physics, “the exact location of Mexican identity cannot be explored or determined through direct observation or contact, given that such a relation between observer and observed will invariably affect the nature of its observation.” Next, Anne Gilfoil opens a series of essays on Spain with a discussion on the interplay between medicine, society, and reform in nineteenth-century Spain. She shows how “the marriage of science and urban renewal subjected the city to the clinical gaze,” and how major literary figures of the day depicted the new relations between medical science and society. Kevin S. Larsen takes one of Benito Pérez Galdos’s ubiquitous characters, José Ido del Sagrario, as a case study of the way medicine and doctors were portrayed in Spanish literature at the turn of the nineteenth century, and to demonstrate the profound influence that medical sciences had on Spanish literature and society. An actual physician who wrote fiction at the turn of the nineteenth century was Pío Baroja: Beatriz Rivera-Barnes analyzes the manner in which he incorporated the sciences, particularly medicine and biology, into his novels and the worldview that informed his writing. RiveraBarnes, following Jean Piaget, describes this epistemology as one that is parascientific and “whose point of departure is indeed the sciences, but whose ultimate aim is to establish an understanding of a different order.” Cecelia Cavanaugh follows this same thread, that of the interplay of science, literature, and art, into the early twentieth century in Spain. She discusses the mutual influences felt amongst the principal thinkers of the day, from such leading literary lights as Azorín and Federico García Lorca to narrator/scientists such as the Nobel Prize winning histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Juan Martin rounds out our collection with an essay on the role science and technology have played in the construction of identity in Spanish narratives, especially in film. Through an analysis of films by Pedro Almodóvar, Miguel Bardem, Alejandro Amenábar, and others, he illuminates the processes by means of which Spanish culture and society come to form, to internalize if you will, images and opinions of the latest technoscientific advances. Lastly, let us note that this volume is not intended to be an exhaustive or otherwise comprehensive review of the relations between science and literature in the Hispanic world. Such a goal is far beyond the reach of any single tome, at least one of an introductory bent, as is ours. This volume simply offers an opening commentary, geared less toward pontification and more toward dialogue, in what we hope,

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reasonably one would think, is a new, viable, and useful field: the discussion of the mutual relations between science and literature in our lives. Society has sown the seeds of both science and literature and, for better or worse, reaps what it has sown. We hope a dialogue on these issues will serve to give us some measure of control over the outcomes, or at least serve to ameliorate some of the less pleasant surprises.

CHAP TER

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An Introduction to Sciencepoetry: A New Beginning Rafael Catala

It is criminal to separate the education one receives in an age, from the age itself. José Martí La América, November 1883, New York

Sciencepoetry is an integrated vision of reality in which the sciences, together with the humanities, take active part in the poetic task. Poetic practice needs a vision and a series of principles to operate as servomechanisms to spark into action the system that is the poem. In literature a theoretical model cannot, nor does it need to, be verified as in the sciences. The literary verification of a paradigm consists of its capacity to activate a series of mechanisms that articulate the present and future literary visions that are unfolding within the humanistic and social context, since literature as well as the sciences and the other humanities are subsystems of the sociocultural system. A theoretical paradigm comes forth as an unconscious element searching for articulation. A series of poems is written, and little by little, when we study them in retrospect, we discern the different elements of the infrastructure upon which the building is constructed. A paradigm is therefore the product of a praxis upon which one reflects. Spontaneity is not synonymous with irresponsibility, but an avenue of expression that requires discipline and persistence for its expression. Theory does not exclude poetic creation, or vice versa. Both are complementary elements necessary to perceive the world. One of these elements may function at the unconscious level, which does not make

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its materiality any less real. In 1883 José Martí criticized the literature of his time as ineffective, because it was not an expression of its time (508). Sciencepoetry is a poetic practice that upon examination reveals its foundations: a synthesis of two supposedly antagonistic systems: the humanities and the sciences, theory and creation, reason and life—as Unamuno would say. These systems are the expressions of knowledge, and as such cannot exist as mutually exclusive. How is it possible that two products of a sociocultural system, whose very objective is to acquire the knowledge of this system, can be perceived as antinomical entities? This seeming paradox, bothersome to me even as a child, began to take form through the years; but, what gave rise to this strabismus? Apart from the need to explore and develop new areas that were arising in Philosophy from centuries past, the educational system—at the formal and popular level—exerts a schismatic function separating the sciences from the humanities. The child is taught, unintentionally perhaps, to love one and fear the other. Thus, the bases are created for disastrous miscommunication between humanists and scientists. One suspects the other, and each is unaware of the achievements of his or her intellectual counterpart. The irony is that the humanists find themselves surrounded by the practical and theoretical results of the scientific principles with which they are unfamiliar, from the digital clock to laser surgery. They make use of them but are ignorant of the principles that make possible these achievements. “In scientific times [we must have] scientific universities. For what is it to see something and not know what it is?” (508) says Martí. Scientists often trouble themselves little with ethical concerns, thus dedicating themselves to biological warfare, or ecological disaster, and ignoring their responsibility to the environment. In this way they unconsciously destroy the ecosystem in which they live and which gives them life. In the 1930s the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset saw this problem. He wrote that “the man who does not possess the concept of physics (not the science of physics proper, but the vital idea of the world that it has created), and the concept afforded by history and by biology, and the scheme of speculative philosophy, is not an educated man”(41). If one does not have a clear vision of both the humanities and the scientific disciplines “it is extremely unlikely that such a man will be, in the fullest sense, a good doctor, a good judge or a good technical expert” (41). Much before Ortega, in 1883 José Martí insisted on the importance of technical and scientific teaching along with humanistic teaching: And the reform is not complete simply by adding isolated science courses in literary universities but in creating scientific universities,

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without tearing down the literary; in bringing love to the useful and abomination of the useless to the schools of letters; in teaching all aspects of human thought—rather than just one—in each problem; in bringing scientific rigor, artistic solemnity, and architectural majesty and precision to Literature. Only such letters may be worthy of such men! The literature of our time is ineffective, because it is not the expression of our time . . . New blood must be brought to Literature. (508)

Martí went further in another article written around that same time. In “Scientific Education,” he speaks of the importance of technical and scientific teaching in elementary schools (503–504). Throughout all of Martí’s work we find a systemic harmonizing of the humanities with the sciences, and vice versa, as operative bases in his intellectual praxis. “The sun is no more necessary than basic scientific teaching” (qtd. in Sanchez Roca 93). Martí’s theoretical practice points toward the synthesis of both systems. This practice forms the foundation for sciencepoetry, given that it was Martí who guided me when I began to postulate the problems that gave rise to the creation of this poetic genre. We find ourselves at a time when scientific achievements are at their apogee. The contribution of the sciences to all aspects of culture is immense. Modern physics, for example, has revolutionized the way in which we perceive reality. Matter and energy are not different entities: matter is energy. Material reality does not exist, notes Pagels, “except the transformation and organization of field quanta—that is all there is” (269). The concepts of time, space, chance, and the like, are changing at great speed. An important element in the integral vision of sciencepoetry is the overlapping of elements common to both systems, such as symmetry and the concepts of purpose and aesthetic finality. Another element is systemic isomorphism. For example, the Spanish language consists of twenty-eight letters plus punctuation marks. The letters can be ordered to form words and sentences. A letter by itself has no character or meaning until it is grouped with other letters or is by itself occupying a place between words—as in the single-letter word “y” in Spanish, which means “and.” The same occurs with the fundamental particles: quarks, leptons, and gluons. These are the letters of the alphabet of nature. With this small alphabet “words,” the atoms, are created. These “words,” within their “grammatical” laws, form sentences, the molecules, that in turn form books and libraries made from “molecular sentences.” Our bodies are books in that library catalogued by the organization of molecules. The

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universe as a body of literature is more than a metaphor, since both are systems of information (Pagels 287–88). Entropy is another isomorphic element that speaks to the order and disorder of information within a system, be it literary or physical. One the one hand, physics has arrived at a point in its evolution in which it is beginning to overlap with other systems such as mysticism. Fritjof Capra and Michael Talbot have studied some aspects of this evolution. On the other hand, physics has turned to literature to find ways to name and describe its discoveries. The “quark” was taken from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark.” The sciences and the humanities, we have said, can be seen as subsystems of the sociocultural system. They are integrated elements of the fragile and handsome ecosystem called Earth. Through the sciences we discover the physical laws that govern the ecosystem. Through the humanities we discover the ethical responsibility of protecting it, and we discover laws as well. Both fields of knowledge discover the beauty of the system that it studies, that it admires, and of which both form a part. Through the sciences and the humanities, we become aware that we are one with the ecosystem that we observe. This process of “becoming aware” is the means by which the end is reached, the discovery of the different facets of the ecosystem. The processes just outlined are equifinal. The outcome is the discovery of the different facets of the system, albeit they are seen from different angles. Little by little, we discover the interdisciplinary nature of our consciousness. Sciencepoetry brings this to our awareness and into expression. Yet it does not remain unmindful of its ethical or political responsibility. Sciencepoetry cannot be separated artificially from the systemic components of its material and intellectual environment. When science has done this, the results have been disastrous. Acid rain, which is destroying forests and lakes, is a result of this artificial separation: a better sense of ethics, along with the praxis of a homeostatic vision of ecology, would have helped to avoid the disasters that we witness today. “It is not the change of ideas that matters, but the evolution of human thinking,” notes Nalimov (123): this implies a transformation of our vision and of our perception of ourselves. The elements for this transformation have now been laid out. Sciencepoetry is a catalytic means to this process. The sciences and the humanities are the heuristic devices that society uses to think. The perception of the world as a systemic whole is fundamental. Indeed, this paradigm has changed the perception of the universe. We have passed from the vision of the universe as a great machine to the

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vision of it as a totality of complex relations, as a living entity, of which we are part (Bertalanffy 167). These relations include ethical values and aesthetic values, to name only a few. Martí stated it clearly in 1875 when he observed that everything was “analogous on the Earth, and each order exists in relation to other orders. Harmony was the law of birth and will be perpetually the beautiful and logical law of relation” (qtd. in Sánchez Roca 111). The work of Martí has been a strong motivating element in this intellectual and vital preoccupation. Martí brings together both worlds and serves as catalyst in this chemistry of consciousness: “Science and liberty are the master keys that have opened the doors through which men enter in a burst, enamored of the world to come” (113). In Martí there is faith in the destiny of human beings, inviting us to explore the synthesis that unites apparently dissimilar elements. In the first part of this introduction, we dedicated a few brief words to the poetic practice of sciencepoetry. Now we shall discuss briefly the intellectual context in which this practice has its being. Sciencepoetry is a part of the ecological and sociocultural system. It is an interdependent part of the homeostatic equilibrium of humanity. From here we can become aware of our unity with all that is. The optical illusion of separation exists only in our imagination. When we look at the trees in the countryside, we point to them and say “nature.” Upon reflecting on what we have done, we realize that we too are “nature,” that we are one with nature. At night, we look at the starry sky, and pointing upward we say “the universe.” Again, upon reflecting, we realize that the Earth is in the universe, and we are of the Earth. We become aware that the Earth and we are one, and that the Earth is one with the universe. Once we have become aware of this relation we can never again point to the trees or to the stars without pointing at the same time to ourselves. When we do this what we are doing is affirming a preexisting relationship of which we have become aware. In the field of religion we find similar expression. In the Acts of the Apostles, speaking of God, it is written that “in Him we live and move and have our being,” while in Luke 17: 21 Jesus says that the Kingdom of God “is within you.” If to this we add the religious teaching that God is omnipresent, we can reason that for God to be omnipresent, he must be present in each cell of my organism—and yours—and in each vibration of my voice—and yours—and in each one of my brainwaves—and yours. Seen in any other way, God is not omnipresent. Thus we may conclude that if what religion says is true, that God is omnipresent, then the life that we express is the life of God, and the quotes from the Acts and the gospel of Luke come

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together in our vision of reality: there is no dichotómy between spirit and mattér. One is a unique way of expressing the other, and vice versa—such as energy and matter. Thus we move on in the realization that divinity already exists within us. All we have to do is become aware of it. Martí seems to express this when he wrote these lines in 1875: “There is but one God: man—there is but one divine force: allness. Man is a piece of the infinite body, that creation has sent to Earth bound and tied in search of his father, his own bodily self” (716). Whether one is religious or not, upon reflecting on these matters, one begins to realize that a more exact reality is dawning upon us. It is not the reality that we know from classical physics, nor that which we learned in elementary school or in the church. These sources were part of the formative process, but a more complete and integrated vision of reality must come forth. Classical physics as well as traditional theology play an important historical role in our scientific and poetic unfolding, but the new vision to which they have given birth now occupies a central place in our intellectual and existential becoming. The genesis of realization and the subsequent coming to awareness is an irreversible process. It is possible to attempt to silence Galileo or Gustavo Gutiérrez, but the Earth continues to rotate and the peoples of the Third World incarnate the new man and new woman that Liberation Theology announces. Cartography seems to reflect this inherent striving toward a more balanced view of the world. When a new vision of the world begins to take hold, old tools are corrected and calibrated to reflect the new vision. Thus from a flattened Earth we passed to a round one in the maps of the Renaissance. Now with Arno Peter’s map of the world, the distortions of Mercator’s map are corrected, thus reflecting a more balanced and interdependent world. Peter’s map shows the continents in a new way, not in the way we are accustomed to see them on the traditional Mercator map and its successors that are Eurocentric, but free from colonial ideologies. Mercator sacrificed in his map fidelity of area (Peters, The New 63–64), producing a map that was unrealistic with respect to the relationship of landmasses, or countries, of the world. Northern areas are shown as relatively larger than southern: for example, Scandinavia, which is 1.1 million square kilometers in area, appears on a Mercator map as equal in size to the Arabian Peninsula, which is 3.1 million square kilometers, as well as to India, which has 3.2 million square kilometers. Europe, which encompasses 9.7 million square kilometers, is shown as much larger than South America, which covers 17.8 million square kilometers. Greenland’s 2.1 million square kilometers is seen as much larger than

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China’s 9.5 million square kilometers (Peters Europe-centered 4). The distortions are immense, and to our eyes, indoctrinated as they are since childhood with maps in the Mercator tradition, the discovery of the Peters map is startling and revealing. Liberation Theology, whose primary exponent is theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, is another great contribution to world culture, as great as quantum physics and the theory of relativity. Liberation Theology breaks with the dichotomies of the past. The contribution of Gutiérrez is to the twentieth century what the contributions of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas were to the Middle Ages, who synthesized the “pagan” thought of Plato and Aristotle with Christianity. Liberation Theology has made possible the union of many aspects of Marxist philosophy with Christianity. This new theology, with respect to traditional theology, offers us a conception of reality comparable to that which occurred in the transition from classical physics to quantum physics and the theory of relativity. Reality is seen more clearly, more coherently, and more deeply. We pass from the conception of the Earth as flat to see it as gloriously spherical. Liberation Theology is sometimes classified as Marxist. This categorization seems too limiting. What is happening, as I see it, is something similar to a chemical catalyst. A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing a permanent chemical change. With a panoramic view of the unifying processes that are taking place in different fields, such as the Peter’s map (offering a unified conceptual vision of the planet in line with the advances in communication and a decolonized vision of the world), the linguistic theory of Chomsky (offering an underlying unifying structure of language), the universal unity of the genetic code, RNA and DNA, the apparent structural isomorphism of modern physics and Zen Buddhism, and the like, we begin to realize that the catalyst common to all is a process of dynamic reasoning that serves as a unifying element. Other examples are the principle of “complementarity” and the Everett-Wheeler interpretation of quantum mechanics. In Liberation Theology the catalytic elements that function in the depth structure of this system are, as I see it, the philosophy of Spinoza, quantum physics, and the socialistic structure of the Inca Empire that is part of present-day Peruvian and Hispano-American consciousness, among others. Of course, even more central than these sources is a deep interpretation of the Biblical texts. In short, this great contribution to universal culture cannot be catalogued simplistically. Poetry and the sciences are approaching the same point from different directions. I have named this process inverse equifinality. They are

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similar processes moving toward the same goal, but from opposite directions with a certain structural isomorphism that unites them in aesthetics. The Mexican scientist Arturo Rosenblueth corroborates this idea in his article “The Aesthetics of Science” when he states that the artist uses the concrete to suggest or evoke the general and abstract, the scientist proceeds in reverse, explaining the concrete parting from the general. There are many ways to contemplate the universe, and two among them are singularly elevated and satisfactory, the artistic and the scientific. The road that these observers are traversing (artist and scientist) is the same, but they travel it in opposite directions. (24)

The work of Rosenblueth is a demonstration of interdisciplinary studies: Physiology, physics, philosophy, and aesthetics meet, communicate, and find expression in his scientific praxis. In his book Mind and Brain: A Philosophy of Science, he takes on another paradigmatic problem of our time, that of mind-brain dualism. It seems that all of the vectors of our century point to an underlying unity. Niels Bohr, for example, tells us that the artist as well as the scientist depend on inspiration and improvisation. When they are in the heat of their creative work, the factor common to both is inspiration. When they are in front of a written work in which they are considering and reconsidering each word, the final decision of this process corresponds to improvisation (79). It seems that there is presently occurring a universal transformation of consciousness, as if the human race were one body, or a system undergoing an evolutionary mutation in human consciousness. “Modern physics is part of a general historical process that tends toward a unification and a widening of our present world” (Heisenberg 205). The linguist Potebnya stated that language was not merely to express an idea that is already created, but to create a new one. He also stated that language was not a reflection of the perspective already formed, but rather it was the formative activity itself (qtd. in Namilov 16). The polymorphism of natural language lends itself to this process that expresses the evolutionary transformation of our consciousness. Sciencepoetry is part of the formative activity of this age of synthesis. We have already stated that the humanities and the sciences are the heuristic devices that society uses to think. We can now see the resolving of the apparent duality of the observer and the observed, passive-active, object-subject, mind-brain, and other similar apparent dualities. One begins to realize that the concept of “complementarity,” introduced

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by Bhor, where apparently incompatible aspects of a description of a phenomenon are resolved, transcends quantum mechanics and aids in the conceptualization of many humanistic aspects. I limit myself to suggesting the exploration of the existing dynamics in the new conceptualization of “energy” and “mass.” When we observe the mechanism of this reasoning process, we enter into the exploration of concepts such as “spirit’’ and “matter” in light of what we discussed previously as “omnipresence,” the dualisms disappear. The same occurs when we study “chance” in modern physics and we begin to observe it in other aspects of knowledge. We do not want to suggest a blind generalization of these concepts, but we do want to point out the need to explore the achievements of the scientific disciplines in the humanistic task. These explorations can produce an entire catalog of overlapping areas and isomorphisms. This also is sciencepoetry. Once the dualisms begin to disappear, after having comprehended them, they reappear. They seem to be a necessity of the human psyche and an essential part of communication itself. They are, if you wish, a necessary tool of human interaction—within oneself and with others. Now, once we become aware of the process, it is impossible to return to the ignorance of negating it. Sciencepoetry is part of this heuristic process of language and culture.

Works Cited Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. Perspective on General System Theory, ed. E. Taschdjian. New York: George Braziller, 1975. Bohr, Niels. Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958. Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics. New York: Bantham Books, 1977. ——. The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture. New York: Bantham Books, 1981. Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 1958. Martí, José. Obras Completas, ed. J. Quintana. Vol. III. Caracas: Quintana, 1964. Nalimov. V. V. Faces of Science, ed. R. Colodny. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information, 1981. Ortega y Gasset, José. Mission of the University. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1944. Pagels, Heinz. The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Peters, Arno. The Europe-Centred Character of Our Geographical View of the World and Its Correction. Munich-Sollni: Universum Verlag, 1979. ——. The New Cartography. New York: Friendship Press, 1983.

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Rosenblueth, Arturo. “La estetica de la ciencia.” Memoria de El Colegio Nacional 3 (1958): 15–24. ——. Mind and Brain: A Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970. Sánchez Roca, Mariano. Espíritu de Martí. La Habana: Editorial Lex, 1959. Talbot, Michael. Mysticism and the New Physics. New York: Bantham Books, 1981.

CHAP TER

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Three Theories, Three Writers, One Idea: Science and the Nation in the Brazilian Literature of Joaquim de Souzândrade, Euclides da Cunha, and Augusto dos Anjos Eva Paulino Bueno

The presence of scientific language in Brazilian literature is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, in the first written descriptions of the reality of the country, by the scribes who came with the first navigators, two elements stand out: the attempt to be “scientific” and the attempt to be “poetic.”1 From those first attempts, many others followed. In “Modernismo e modernidade na arte política” [Modernism and Modernity in Politial Art], Gilberto Freyre reviews the early chronology and names Martins Júnior, a member of the late Nineteenth century “German School of Recife,” as the “founding father” of scientific poetry in Brazil, and he calls it “modernismo do mais louco” [the maddest kind of modernism].2 It is not coincidental that Martins Júnior, one of the members of the “German School,” is credited with a type of poetry associated with science. The “German School,” founded by Tobias Barreto in Recife in 1868, was part of a widespread literary and philosophical movement in Brazil during the latter part of the reign of the first Brazilian emperor, Dom Pedro II. Indeed, the fact that scientific thought found its first followers not in the capital of the empire, but rather in the provinces, illustrates the fact that the existence of the

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Brazilian monarchy and its most shameful mark—black slavery—were at odds with the scientific and philosophical thought of the times. The literary critic Silvio Romero wrote that the new school “has not only a scientific spirit, but a spirit of struggle and of conquest” (qtd. in Sodré, O naturalismo no Brasil, 165).3 Tobias Barreto, the head of the school, named it “German School” after the European origin of its intellectual approach. However, not all philosophical thought coming from Europe and taking root among Brazilian intellectuals came from Germany. In fact, among all these philosophical movements in Brazil, Comtean Positivism stands as the most enduring and the most influential. Indeed, as Luiz Costa Lima writes, Comtean positivism had been only one of several currents that had swept the country during “the great liberal conquest of our century”. . . . Despite the small number of their adherents, evolutionist currents played a decisive role not only in the character of intellectuality at the end of the nineteen century and beginning of the twentieth, but also in the very fall of the monarchy. (Control of the Imaginary 156–57)

In other words, the pervasive presence of positivistic thought among Brazilian intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century, at a crucial moment in the formation of the republic, ended up influencing more than just academic discussions. Positivism influenced the very core of the new Brazilian republic, landing itself in the flag of the new country with the words “Order and Progress.” As the new Republic took its first steps and faced its real and imaginary foes, the presence of positivist intellectuals was extremely important. One of the most important nonfictional books written at this formative period, Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões [The Backlands] bears every mark of the positivistic thought, and in the moments when the prose of the book reaches out and becomes poetry, it cannot help but be a type of scientific poetry. Indeed, Euclides da Cunha, born in Rio de Janeiro, locates himself philosophically within the mainstream of the Comtean doctrine. Such was not the case of the two other writers we shall consider here, Joaquim de Souzândrade and Augusto dos Anjos. Sousândrade was born in the northern state of Maranhão, and Augusto dos Anjos was born in the state Paraíba. The first was educated widely, in Brazil and in Europe, whereas the latter studied Law in Recife, participated in the intellectual life of the city, and later moved to the state of São Paulo to find work. Each one, in his own way, took the ideas

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contained in the prevailing positivistic and scientific thought of the day and applied it to his poetry. Of course, it must be understood that what these Brazilian writers did was to “translate” the European thought into the Brazilian medium. In other words, the theories—scientific, philosophical, and aesthetic—that reached Brazil were modified upon arrival by the very different circumstances of the New World. As Roberto Schwarz, in his well-known essay “As idéias fora do lugar” [Misplaced Ideas], argues, Throughout its social reproduction, Brazil tirelessly instates and reinstates European ideas, always in an inappropriate manner. It is in this capacity that they will be matter and problem for literature. The writer might now know this—he does not even need to—to use them. But [the writer] only reaches a profound resonance . . . if he feels, registers and unfolds— or avoids—the off-centeredness and the dissonance in them. (24)

Indeed, in the cases of the three authors treated here it can be shown that, for each one, the specific European model of thought on which they constructed their philosophical beliefs was accepted as an edited version of the European original. It is not the objective of this chapter to discuss whether the adoption of these beliefs, or the authors’ allegiance to them, was inappropriate. As men born and raised in a South American country where slavery still existed, where an emperor still governed, and where the provinces rarely saw any of the benefits given to the capital of the empire, what Schwarz calls “inappropriate” can also be seen as “inevitable.” A Brazilian can only read the science, philosophy, and art of Europe as a Brazilian. And such was the case with da Cunha, Sousândrade, and dos Anjos, each as much the product of his country and his region as the product of his allegiance to Comte, Humboldt, and Haeckel. It is, however, this chapter’s endeavor to investigate the extent to which the life and philosophical education of these three writers can explain the presence of the scientific and philosophical thought found throughout their work. Because they are writers, and not scientists, or even philosophers, it is inevitable that the presence of the theories of Comte, Humboldt, and Haeckel passes through the filter of literature. Each man, in his peculiar way, nevertheless used literature as a way to disseminate ideas that they believed were important for Brazil at a time when the country was going through immense changes and searching for new ideas. At a time when philosophical fashion was intent on the dissemination of the ideas of the primacy of reason and of scientific thought, the three pillars—philosophy, science and

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literature—became intermingled. The result, for the literature of Brazil, was the appearance of three superb writers, who produced extremely different kinds of work: a prose narrative of a war campaign in one case, a single book of ruminative poems called I [Eu] in another, and a long epic poem composed of more than 2,000 verses in yet another. Each of these writers, Euclides da Cunha, Augusto dos Anjos, and Sousândrade, contributed not just to the enrichment of Brazilian literature, but also to the history of how and when scientific thought reached and was read in Brazil. In 2002, Brazil celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Os Sertões [The Backlands], Euclides da Cunha’s masterpiece. Da Cunha (1866–1907) was a military man with training in engineering, and he was assigned to accompany the troops to that region of Bahia known as Canudos, where a group that the central, republican government characterized as loyal to the deposed emperor had sought refuge. Canudos was a small town under the religious and political leadership of a messianic figure called Antonio Conselheiro. This town eventually attracted about 20,000 people from nearby districts and provinces. After three unsuccessful attempts to destroy the town in 1896 and 1897, the federal government sent 5,000 soldiers in July 1897. The town endured a three-month-long siege and bombardment before it fell to the republican army, by which time just about everyone, except four people, were dead. The text of Os sertões chronicles the trip through the Brazilian backlands, and the encounter of the soldiers—as well as Euclides da Cunha—with a Brazil they barely knew existed. In the process Da Cunha introduces the man of the backlands—“um forte” [a strong man]—and also describes the land in all its details. What makes Os sertões a particularly pertinent book to the study of the influence of science on this period of Brazilian thought is not just the fact that Euclides da Cunha was an engineer, but also the fact that he drew extensively from the geological knowledge available at the time and incorporated new geographical knowledge into the book. Already in a book published in 1906–1907 in Lisbon, Bibliografia Mineral e Geológica do Brasil, 1903–1906, Os sertões is referred to as a book that gives “. . . uma descrição física dos sertões da Bahia com referências à Geologia do Estado” (José Carlos Barreto de Santana 185) [a physical description of the backlands of Bahia with reference to the geology of the state]. The fact that so shortly after the publication of Os sertões its contributions to Geology were appreciated in a specialized book shows that, indeed, da Cunha’s observations were more than mere impressionistic recollections or a travel memoir.

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The first part of Os sertões, named “A Terra” [The Land], starts with a detailed description of Brazil’s central highlands. Initially, this description is typical of what one would expect to find in a novel. However, in the third paragraph, da Cunha writes, “Este facies geográfico resume a morfogenia do grande maciço continental” [This geographic facies summarizes the morphogeny of the great continental land mass]. Not many readers will easily know what facies means, but da Cunha does not relent: he makes references to previous Brazilian writers (including the sixteenth-century poet Rocha Pita), as well as to late nineteenth-century geologists such as Fred Hartt, to other European researchers such as Von Humboldt, Von Martius, F. Mornay, and Wollaston, as well as to the very important Brazilian geologist Theodoro Sampaio, whose name is mentioned three times in Os sertões.4 It is quite important to point out that, even in the part of the book when the subject is the battle itself, da Cunha stops the narrative to give the reader one more lesson on the geology of the region: De fato, a vila . . . contrasta, insulada, com a esterilidade ambiente. Decorre is to de sua situação topográfica. A sublevação de rochas primitivas que se alteiam aos lados, para o norte e para leste, levanta-se como anteparo aos ventos regulares, que até lá progridem, e torna-se condensador admirável dos escassos vapors que ainda os impregnam (. . .) Depõem-se, então, aqueles, em chuvas quase regulares, originando regímen climatológico mais suportável, a dous passos dos sertões estéreis para onde rolam. . . . (Os sertões, 173) [Indeed, the village . . . contrasts, isolated, with the general sterility. This happens as a result of its topographic situation. The elevation of primitive rocks that lift themselves on the sides, to the north and to the east, appear as an obstacle to the regular winds, which go until there, and it becomes an admirable condenser of the thin vapors that still impregnate them (. . .) They fall, then, in almost regular rains, which give origin to a more bearable climatic regimen, two feet from the sterile backlands where they roll to . . . .]

The story of Canudos, for da Cunha, as the book shows, is more than just the story of how an army of 5,000 well-trained soldiers attacked and destroyed a town inhabited mostly by illiterate people whose main interest was to be closer to their religious leader, Antonio Conselheiro, and to follow his strict understanding of the Christian religion. The theme of the book, the story of the war on Canudos, is a way for da Cunha to make popular, or at least to translate in readable ways—at least as far as he knew how to—his geological and scientific

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knowledge among the public who read the book. How can we understand this almost pedagogical zeal? First, we have to understand it as part of da Cunha’s own professional stance. He was a member of three scientific institutions of his time, The Historic and Geographic Institute of São Paulo; the Center of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Campinas, and the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute. It is not coincidental that Orville Derby and Teodoro Sampaio, both geologists quoted in Os sertões, were also members of the same institutions. As de Santana argues, considerando-se a época estudada, podemos afirmar que a circulação, nesses institutos, possibilitava o contato com uma parcela significativa da produção científica então desenvolvida no país, e mesmo a atualização com o que se passava no mundo. (190) [considering the period under study, we can say that the circulation in these institutes made possible the contact I had with a meaningful part of the scientific production developed in the country, and it even gave an update on what was going on in the world.]

In other words, the participation in Institutes dedicated to geography, history, arts and letters put da Cunha in touch with all that was being discussed in the bosom of the highest Brazilian intelligentsia at the time. It is no wonder that his masterpiece contains not just what he witnessed in the field during the campaign of Canudos, but also a distillation of all he had learned in his contacts with the learned men (they were all men) of his time. As José de Santana puts it, O estudo da Geologia em Os sertões feito a partir de uma perspective histórica, contextualizada no tempo e no espaço, pode ajudar no entendimento de como o conhecimento geológico, produzido no final do séc. XIX, tornava-se acessível a setores mais amplos da população. . . . (190) [The study of geology in Os sertões, done from a historical perspective, contextualized in time and in space, can help in the understanding of how the geologic knowledge, produced at the end of the nineteenth century, became accessible to wider sectors of the population. . . .]

At this point, it is important to inquire why Euclides da Cunha would have such an interest. He could, after all, have written a less technical book for popular consumption, detailing the campaign for the delight of the residents of the capital city. Or he could have simply produced a completely technical book, a geological report, on the military campaign he accompanied. The fact that Os sertões constitutes

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a “mixed” book, in which da Cunha took every opportunity to express his scientific observations, makes the book a part of a project to bring the Brazilians to a better understanding of their—nascent— nation, and to popularize the scientific discoveries of the time. Os sertões can also be a part of a more comprehensive philosophical project that constituted the backbone of the Brazilian intellectuals’ credo: Positivist thought. As mentioned above, Luiz Costa Lima, writing about Euclides da Cunha, says that “Comtean positivism had been only one of several currents that had swept the country” and that “evolutionist currents played a decisive role . . . in the character of intellectuality at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth [and] also in the very fall of the monarchy” (Control 156–57). For da Cunha, the fact that he was an eyewitness to the war in Canudos, and the fact that he was also an engineer and scientist, gave him an extraordinary forum from which to speak. Os sertões is, then, a book that has three major functions: to tell the history of the conflict, to teach about the geology of the country, and to impart to the reading public some of the basic tenets of positivism, especially the illustration of the three stages. For Comte, we recall, the theological stage is the lowest level of knowledge, and after this stage comes the metaphysical, and only later, in a higher level of advancement, the positive, in which the “real sciences” flourish. In other words, even as da Cunha describes with sympathy the plight of the people of Canudos and cannot help admiring the courage of the crowd of famished, illiterate peasants who resisted such a long siege (see especially pages 402–03 of Os sertões), he closed the book by describing the decapitation of the cadaver of the leader Antonio Conselheiro and ends with another hint to other “scientific” theories of the time, according to which the form of the skull determined propensity for crime: Trouxeram depois para o litoral, onde deliravam multidões em festa, aquele crânio. Que a ciência dissesse a última palavra. Ali estavam, no relevo de circunvoluções expressivas, as linhas essenciais do crime e da loucura. (Os sertões 408) [Afterward they brought that skull to the costal region, where delirious crowds celebrated. Let science have the last word. There they were, in the relief of expressive circumvolutions, the essential lines of crime and madness.] (My italics)

Once again, the fact that da Cunha lets “science” have the last word indicates that, indeed, his project was at once to describe a historical fact

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and to teach the readers about his beliefs, so that, this way, the positivist stage could be more easily reached in the new, republican nation.

Haeckel Passing through Paraíba by the Hand of Augusto dos Anjos Augusto dos Anjos was born on April 20, 1884, in a plantation in the Northeastern state of Paraíba, and died in the state of São Paulo in 1914. The place and time of his birth is of extreme importance both to the general inclination of his poetry and to the philosophical tendencies expressed in them. After a childhood spent on the failing family plantation, Augusto dos Anjos went to the state capital to study in the Liceu (equivalent to high school) in 1900. From there, he went to Law School in Recife. At this time, even though a luminary of the stature of Tobias Barreto had ceased to exert direct influence, yet, the tendency to read philosophers inclined to the advancement of science remained. According to his friend Santos Neto, Foi no contato com o ambiente acadêmico que o poeta familiarizou-se com a ciência em voga, especialmente as doutrinas de Ernst Haeckel, muito lido na época. Absorve de tal modo aqueles termos que passa a usá-los mesmo nas conversas íntimas, com amigos, sem perceber. Não é de admirar que sua poesia também esteja coalhada dessas palavras . . . [It was in the contact with the academic atmosphere that the poet became familiarized with the science in fashion, especially with the doctrines of Ernst Haeckel, who was much read at the time. Augusto absorbs this vocabulary to the extent that he begins to use it even in the private conversations, with his friends, without noticing. It is not surprising that his poetry is so full of these words . . .]5

It is important, at this juncture, to point out that Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), the German evolutionist, morphologist, and developmental biologist, was interested in proving how the environment acted directly on organisms, producing new races.6 Augusto dos Anjos, a white man poised at a moment when his world—the large plantation of the Northeast of Brazil at the turn of the century— and lifestyle were at an end, clearly appropriates Haeckel’s theories perhaps both as a way to understand the evolution (or involution) of his world, and to seek some sort of consolation in its possible continuation in other forms. The poem “Psicologia de um vencido” [Psychology of a Defeated Man] makes these different points: Eu, filho do carbono e do amoníaco, / . . . / Sofro, desde a epigênesis da infância, / . . . / Já o verme—este operário das ruínas— / . . . / E há-de

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deixar-me apenas os cabelos, / . . . / Na frialdade inorgânica da terra! (Eu online) [I, the son of carbon and ammonia, / . . . / Suffer, since the epigenesis of childhood, / . . . / But the worm—this worker of decay— / . . . / And will only leave me my hair, / . . . / In the inorganic coldness of the earth!]. In this poem, one of the best known by dos Anjos, one sees that there are two important elements. One of them functions on the level of language, in the choice of words that are not of common usage and are considered “scientific.” Terms such as “ammonia,” “epigenesist,” and “inorganic,” for instance, are words of low-frequency usage both then and now.7 In other words, they denote the cultural background of the poet, a man of letters in a country and at a time of mostly illiterate people. Given the fact that the first language of the country is Portuguese, and the fact that the poet lived during the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, the use of Latinate words denotes elevated social class. Their usage reflects a deliberate predilection for erudite terms whose meanings certainly escape most of the readers. The fact that they denote the general sense of decay and decadence, and their insistence on the presence of the worm as the agent of change, hints at the scientific model proposed by the biologist Haeckel, who argued that atoms of carbon, “in its complex albuminoid compounds are the sole and the mechanical cause of the specific phenomena of movement which distinguish organic from inorganic substance” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). At a time when most poets were still working with the remnants of Romantic and Symbolist lyricism, the poetry of dos Anjos, with its insistence on scientific language, and the relentless presentation of decay and death, was not easily palatable. In another poem, “Monólogo de uma sombra” [A Shadow’s Monologue], it is possible to see dos Anjos’s almost didacticist detailing of Haeckel’s theory presented in his Natural History of Creation [Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte]. In this book, Haeckel stressed the “ ‘fundamental biogenetic law’ that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that the individual organism in its development is to a great extent an epitome of the form-modifications undergone by the successive ancestors of the species in the course of their historic evolution” (Encyclopeaedia Britannica). The first stanza of the poem (Eu online), written when the poet was just seventeen, says, Sou uma Sombra! Venho de outras eras, Do cosmopolitismo das moneras . . . Pólipo de recônditas reentrâncias, Larva de caos telúrico, procedo

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Da escuridão do cósmico segredo, Da substância de todas as substâncias! [I am a Shadow! I come from other eras From the cosmopolitism of the monera8 Polyp of hidden abysses Larva of telluric chaos, I originate From the darkness of the cosmic secret, From the substance of all substances!]

Here we see that, in fact, Augusto dos Anjos not only read Haeckel’s books, but he also studied their content, at least to the point of absorbing the superficial theory contained in them. From the “monera” of the first stanza, the “shadow” moves through different levels of matter and arrives at a point where it can feel “a solidariedade subjectiva de todas as espécies sofredoras” [the subjective solidarity of all suffering species]. Through the 31 stanzas and 186 verses of this poem, Augusto dos Anjos traces the circular, inexorable destiny of all living things, and, even though, at a certain point, the shadow says, “E eu sinto a dor de todas essas vidas / Em minha vida anônima de larva!” [I feel the pain of all these lives / in my anonymous life as a larva!], the last stanza is unforgiving: E o turbilhão de tais fonemas acres Trovejando grandíloquos massacres, Há de ferir-me as auditivas portas, Até que minha efêmera cabeça Reverta à quietação da treva espessa E à palidez das fotosferas mortas! [And the tumult of such sour phonemes Thundering grandiloquent massacres Will hurt the door to my hearing, Until my ephemerous head Reverts back to the quiet of the thick darkness And the pallid hue of the dead photospheres!]

In another poem, not content with merely using the theory, dos Anjos goes to the source of his inspiration. This sonnet, written later, expresses an attempt to synthesize several philosophical currents in which dos Anjos must have become interested throughout the years. It also expresses his desire to combine a more philosophical approach to life, and his ultimate failure. It is named, appropriately, “A agonia de um filósofo” [A Philosopher’s Agony]: Consulto o Phtah-Hotep. Leio o obsoleto Rig-Veda / . . . / Desde a alma de Haeckel à alma

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cenobial!. . . / E em tudo, igual a Goethe, reconheço / O império da substância universal! [I consult the Phtah-Hotep. I read the obsolete Rig-Veda / . . . / From Haeckel’s soul to the cenobium’s soul! . . . / And in all, just like Goethe, I recognize / The empire of the universal substance!]. Each of these poems represents a number of others, all very similar, in Augusto dos Anjos’s only book ever published, Eu (1912). Some critics, particularly Horacio de Almeida, have interpreted many of these poems as expressions of dos Anjos’s first love for a peasant woman, as well as his struggle with his father, who opposed the romance. Since dos Anjos never wrote his autobiography we cannot know for sure, but certainly clearly expressed in his work is his dedication to the cause of science as a way to explain everything in life, including what he witnessed on his family plantation. The destruction of his way of life, the inescapable end of all that he and his family owned, seems to have been the engine behind his attempts to explain, justify, and even console. In a universe that is always changing, always moving—according to Haeckel’s theory—the destiny of one individual, or one family, certainly could not stop the wheels of evolution.

Joaquim de Sousândrade, and “O Guesa,” the First Poem of the Americas When the German scientist Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt left the port of La Coruña, Spain, on June 5, 1798, en route to America for a five-year-long expedition, he could not know that his travel, research, and findings would give origin to the first pan-American poem by a South American poet. Indeed, few people today are aware of this, even though some recent studies have begun to shed light on the relationship between Humboldt, this fundamental poem, its authors, and other developments in Latin American and Brazilian literature. The author, the Brazilian Joaquim de Sousa Andrade (who later changed the spelling of his name to “Sousandrade” so that it would have the same number of letters as the name of his favorite poet, Shakespeare), read Humboldt’s Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent and used his observations of archaeological ruins to explain the Muíscas’s astronomy as a basis for his monumental poem, O Guesa Errante, on which he worked for some 30 years. It was published in fragments on different occasions, and finally in two final versions, one in New York and another in London. Once, somebody told Sousândrade that his poem would be read only 50 years

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after his death: “Ouvi dizer já por duas vezes que ‘o Guesa Errante sera lido cinqüenta anos depois’; entristeci—decepção de quem escreve cinqüenta anos antes” [I heard twice that the “Wandering Guesa will be read fifty years later”; I got sad—it is the disappointment of someone who writes fifty years early] (qtd. in Campos 25). Sousândrade (here we use the orthography adopted later in his life) was born in the state of Maranhão, in the North of Brazil, in 1832, very near the city of São Luís, then considered “The Athens” of Brazil. Like Augusto dos Anjos, Sousândrade also presided over the demise of the family fortune, a demise that was accomplished by either a dishonest tutor, false friends, or even Sousândrade himself, who sold off his slaves in order to take a trip to Europe, where, presumably, he studied engineering and Greek at the Sorbonne.9 After his studies and several trips in Europe, Souzândrade returned to Brazil, where, according to Luiza Lobo, “Provavelmente entre 1860 e 1864 [ele] se casou com D. Mariana de Almeida e Silva. Na verdade, o casamento se dava com uma senhora de mais idade, viúva e analfabeta, num momento em que Sousândrade já vivia sem dinheiro” (Épica e modernidade 32) [Probably between 1860 and 1864 [he] married D. Mariana de Almeida e Silva. Actually, it was a marriage to an older woman, who was an illiterate widow, at a time when Sousândrade had no money]. In 1864 his daughter Maria Bárbara was born, and in 1871 he left for New York with her, where she later studied at the Sacré-Coeur High School in Manhattanville. During his years in New York, Sousândrade composed or rewrote the cantos of O Guesa, wrote articles and reviews for the newspaper O Novo Mundo, and became acquainted with the work of several poets and thinkers from the United States (especially Whitman and Emerson) and from other American countries, especially José Martí (Épica e modernidade, 31–35). After 14 years in New York, Sousândrade returned to Brazil by boat, passing through other Latin American countries. In Brazil, he was there to witness the liberation of the slaves in 1888, and the proclamation of the republic in 1889. After the liberation of the slaves, Sousândrade gave his lands to his ex-slaves, a fact that caused his wife and daughters (one of them an illegitimate child) to block his access to any more money, and eventually they left São Luís for good. Sousândrade, in the meantime, continued participating in intellectual groups, and teaching private lessons until his death.10 O Guesa, a poem that does not fit comfortably into any category within the history of Brazilian poetry, can be said to be the work of Sousândrade’s entire life. It was not, however, his only book. Harpas selvagens [Wild Harps], published in 1857, when Sousândrade was

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only 21 years old, is the first of a series of books that he published with his own money. In 1874 he published Obras poéticas in New York, a work in two volumes, the second of which he called Guesa errante. Divided in cantos, O Guesa contains 13,000 verses in the romanticsymbolic style, as well as two passages in limerick in the cantos II and X (Lobo 47). O Guesa is the story of a pilgrimage through the Americas. The basis of the story comes from Humboldt’s writings about the Muíscas, a people who lived in Colombia. During his trip to the Americas, the Prussian scientist researched the area where there were ruins of pillars and reached the conclusion that they were remnants of an agricultural calendar developed by the Muíscas. According to what Humboldt writes in his Voyage and Vues des cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique, among the Muíscas the religious tradition prescribed that a boy child be taken from his parents and educated by all the priests, or xeques.11 When he reached the age of 15, after having traveled the extension of the nation and learned everything the priests could teach him, he was taken to a central place, where he was sacrificed, his heart offered to the gods, and therefore another boy child is taken from his parents on the same day, to continue the cycle. Sousândrade transcribes an excerpt of this narrative in the epigraph of the Canto XII, and names Humboldt again in Canto II, Canto X, and in Canto XII, in which he compares Humboldt to the snows of the Andes: . . . Céus! Os Andes qual nossa alma celeste, Mais caia o sol, mais erguem-se e resplendecem! Solitaria é a gloria em fronte adusta, Cãs d’Humboldt é bela e luz etérea . . . [. . . heavens! The Andes, such as our celestial soul, The more the sun sets, the more they rise up and shine! Glory is solitary in august fronts, Humboldt’s white hair is a beautiful, ethereal light (. . .)] (Qtd. in Campos 542, my translation)

What Sousândrade did with his readings from Humboldt was to take this piece of anthropological knowledge, and then rework it in poetic terms into a monumental reflection on the history of the conquest, the submission of the original people of the Americas, their plight, their ongoing journeys in which they witness the different aspects of the continent, all with the inevitable pains (thus one of the parts of the text is called “Inferno” and located in Wall Street) and sporadic moments of joy such a saga entails.

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The text that became O Guesa had several lives throughout Sousândrade’s own life, and several partial publications until its definitive publication in New York in 1884. As mentioned earlier, this version consists of 13,000 verses, mostly in romantic and symbolic form, except for two passages in tragicomic limerick, inserted in the Cantos II and X. Luiza Lobo points out that, even after the New York edition, there were changes to the text: the 1,854 stanzas in the New York edition were expanded to 3,280 stanzas in the London edition (Épica e modernidade 43, 47). What all these changes, additions, and deletions mean is that O Guesa is what can be called an “organic poem” because it grew and took on characteristics derived from the poet’s life in the Americas. As Haroldo de Campos writes in “A peregrinação transamericana do Guesa de Sousândrade,” O tema sousandradino, porém, não se limita à civilização e ao culto muísca. Nosso poeta imbrica o motivo do Guesa num plano mais geral, que abarca elementos colhidos na crônica da conquista e declínio do Império Inca do Peru. (546) [Sousândrade’s theme, however, does not limit itself to the Muísca civilization and cults. Our poet imbricates the Guesa in a more general plan that comprehends elements from the chronicle of the conquest and decline of the Inca Empire of Peru.]

In addition, O guesa reflects also the influence of poets he got to know during his travels, as well as during his life in New York, especially Walt Whitman and José Martí. In her chapter “Rumo ao modernismo: a musa Americana,” Luiza Lobo argues that, in spite of the fact that Whitman is not directly mentioned in O Guesa, Sousândrade must have read Leaves of Grass, since the book was in its fifth edition from 1870 to 1871, when Sousândrade arrived in New York. Indeed, Lobo shows that it is quite possible that the list of authors Whitman mentions in Leaves of grass, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Plato, was also the same that Sousândrade read. Later, in the London edition of O Guesa, Sousândrade adds the names of Longfellow and Emerson, but, as Lobo says, “must have refrained from adding Whitman’s name to his poem because he was shocked with his use of free, prosaic, discursive verse” (157).12 O Guesa is, for several reasons, an important poem in the history of Latin American and Brazilian literature. As already discussed, scientific travel literature, especially Humboldt’s discovery of the archaeological ruins of the Muísca civilization and his narrative of the myth of the guesa, served as the impetus for Sousândrade’s work. He continued

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working on this poem for many years, and it ended up taking on the form and content of his own pilgrimage through the Americas. Inevitably, O Guesa became a poem of the Americas, something that Whitman, José Martí in the nineteenth century, and Neruda in the twentieth, endeavored to accomplish in their own poetry. Leaves of Grass, as well as Martí’s poems and writings, and Neruda’s Canto General, all share their author’s desire to represent the whole continent in all its complexities, beauties, difficulties and glories. It is important, in the case of O Guesa, that Sousândrade was able to take a leaf from the page of science, and make it grow into a book of literature. The same can also be said about the other two writers discussed in this chapter, Euclides da Cunha and Augusto dos Anjos, each of whom, in his own way, by drawing from different scientists’ work, contributed to enrich Brazilian literature and to make the scientific findings of their day accessible to the reading public.

Notes 1. The letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha to the king of Portugal attempts to give a detailed, “scientific” description of the lands found in what would later be the territory of Brazil. For on the full text of the letter and its poetic and “scientific” propositions, see Sousa, Bernardo Vasconcelos e. “A Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha: Testemunho vivo do encontro de culturas.” 2. Text of a lecture given by Gilberto Freyre in São Paulo, on June 22, 1946. The full text can be found in the Biblioteca Virtual de Gilberto Freyre. 3. For a more detailed discussion of Tobias Barreto’s work and influence, as well as for the reach of the German School, see Bueno, Resisting Boundaries, especially pages 17–25. 4. José Carlos Barreto de Santana writes that Teodoro Sampaio and Euclides da Cunha were good friends, and quotes from Sampaio’s speech delivered after da Cunha’s death. In this speech, Sampaio says that he gave da Cunha notes he had taken during his trip to the region of Bahia in 1878. See de Santana 188. 5. See Santos Neto for more on this period of the life of Augusto dos Anjos, especially in relation to this intellectual formation. 6. As many have pointed out, Haeckel’s theories were later appropriated by the Nazis to explain their program. One of the most famous of Haeckel’s formulations, “politics is applied biology,” was widely used in Nazi propaganda. 7. “Amoníaco,” “epigênesis,” “inorgânica,” are more difficult to pronounce in Portuguese, because they have the accent on the third syllable. Usually, the less well-educated speaker drops one syllable and

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

makes the word easier to pronounce. However, for this poem, such transformation would destroy the syllabic system; in other words, the mere reading of the poem would “force” the reader to take on a “more educated” level of pronunciation, thus achieving one of the pedagogical goals of the poem. “Monera” is, according to the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, “Haeckel’s name given to a group of Protozoa composed of organisms of the simplest kind” (1835). It is quite likely that Augusto dos Anjos who, after all, had a humanistic, not a scientific training, had to study the meaning of such words in order to use them in his poetry. The fact that “monera” is given as Haeckel’s word, leaves no doubt that Augusto dos Anjos clearly espoused Haeckel’s theory, perhaps not knowing what they really implied in political terms. Luiza Lobo, Épica e Modernidade, 29. Lobo also mentions, in a footnote about this fact, that Augusto and Haroldo de Campos did not find any register of Sousândrade in the Sorbonne, where “a fire destroyed the archives of the period of 1850” (36). Luiza Lobo writes that, at the end of his life, “the poet was remembered as an old man always walking wrapped in a scarf, while street kids threw stones at him,” and that he literally sold the stones from his family home to buy food (36). Odile Cisneros delivered a paper on the subject in 2004 in the Humboldt Bicentennial: An Interdisciplinary Conference called “Alexander von Humboldt: From the Americas to the Cosmos,” which celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt’s epochal journey of exploration of South America, Cuba and Mexico and his visit to the United States. Cisneros’s essay, Sousândrade’s trans-American Guesa errante: A nineteenth-century Brazilian reading of Humboldt’s Voyage and Vues des cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique provides a very careful reading of Humboldt’s book and its mapping on to Sousândrade’s O Guesa. The book by the Campos brothers, Augusto and Haroldo, also offers insightful comments on the presence of Humboldt in O Guesa. See Lobo’s thorough discussion of the presence of Whitman’s style in Sousândrade’s O Guesa, especially in the Canto X. Épica e modernidade, 157–61.

Works Cited Bueno, Eva Paulino. Resisting Boundaries: The Subject of Naturalism in Brazil. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995. Campos, Augusto and Haroldo de. Re-Visão de Sousândrade. 3rd edition. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 2002. Cisneros, Odile. “Sousândrade’s Trans-American Guesa Errante: A l9th-Century Brazilian Reading of Humboldt’s Voyage and Vues des Cordillères et monu-

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ments des peuples indigenes de l’Amérique.” 2004 Humboldt Bicentennial: An Interdisciplinary Conference. Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Da Cunha, Euclides. Os sertões; campanha de Canudos. 33rd edition. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1987. De Almeda, Horacio. As razões da Angustia de Augusto dos Anjos. Río de Janeiro: Gráfica Ouvidor, 1962. Dos Anjos, Augusto. Augusto dos Anjos—Obra Completa. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1996. ——. Eu. Available online at ww.feranet21.com.br/livros/resumos_ordem/ eu.htm “Ernst Haeckel.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition. 1910–1911. Freyre, Gilberto. Modernidade e modernismo na arte política. São Paulo, June 22, 1946. Biblioteca Virtual Gilberto Freyre, read on January 23, 2005: http: //www.fgf.org.br/bvgf/portugues/obra/opusculos/ modernidade.htm Lima, Luiz Costa. O controle do imaginário. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1984. Also as Control of the Imaginary. Trans. Ronald W. Souza. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988. Lobo, Luiza. Épica e modernidade em Sousândrade. São Paulo: EDUSP, 1986. Santanna, José Carlos Barreto de. “A geologia na literatura brasileira: um exemplo em Os sertões.” Sitientibus 14 (1996): 181–96. Santos Neto. Perfis do Norte. Qtd in Zenir Campos Reis. “Augusto dos Anjos. Um ‘professor de provícia’ nos salões da ‘belle opoque’ carioca.” In http: //orbita.starmedia.com/asfloresdomal/augusto.htm. October 31, 2004. Schwarz, Roberto. “As idéias fora do lugar.” In Ao vencedor as batatas; forma literária e processo social nos inícios do romance brasileiro. São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1977. 13–28. Sodré, Nelson Werneck. O naturalismo no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Edição Civilização Brasileira, 1965. Sousa, Bernardo Vasconcelos e. “A Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha: Testemunho vivo do encontro de culturas.” In A Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha . . ., ed. Luís Donisete Benzi Grupioni. São Paulo: Xerox do Brasil—Dórea Books and Art, 2000. 87–89.

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CHAP TER

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The Aura of Science in Fantastic Tales by Leopoldo Lugones, Macedonio Fernández, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Jorge Luis Borges María Cristina Boiero de De Angelo

According to some critics, there is no such thing as science fiction in Argentina. Remarkably though, literary figures such as Leopoldo Lugones, Macedonio Fernández, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Santiago Dabove, among others, have tried their pens at fantastic stories that offer variant models for science fiction. In their utopias or dystopias, science intermingles with literary imagination and superb prose to shed light on the multiple facets of the human condition. Comments on and reviews of their best-known and most anthologised stories more often than not address the presence of the unknowable and the inexplicable rather than the inspiration of scientific knowledge as a way to understand how things work in the world. Jorge Luis Borges figures as an exception to the above statement, because much has been written on the influence of science on his work. The same could be said of some of Julio Cortázar’s short stories and Bioy Casares’s La Invención de Morel [Morel’s Invention], long considered a masterpiece of Argentine science fiction. I will therefore restrict the present study to those less-explored features of what are nonetheless representative pieces of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, without enquiring into the differences between science fiction and fantastic literature, since the subtle line dividing both concepts is still a matter of controversy among critics. Probably, the term “fantastic”

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best captures the essence of the genre in Latin American, and particularly, Argentine literature—a mixture of myths, superstitions, and dreams with some measure of scientific or pseudoscientific knowledge. While in England and the United States, science-fiction focuses on the reality of tomorrow shaped by innovations in science and technology, Argentine fantastic literature reflects the same “cultural undervaluation of science and technology” (Arocena 174) that characterizes Latin American societies, despite the economic and industrial growth that the advent of the twentieth century promised. A brief account of the state of affairs in Argentina after the wars of independence and the establishment of the state will provide a convenient starting point for a discussion on the influence of scientific ideas and technologies upon the national literature: The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a process of internal pacification and reorganization in Argentina, a process that transformed not only the geopolitical territory but also the cultural atmosphere. In literature, romantic liberalism gave way to new ideas of positivism, reinforcing the faith in science and progress based on a belief in the evolution of the species. The vast territory wrested from the indigenous population underwent lasting modifications with the advent of the railway that, along with fencing and other lesser technologies, helped subject the wilderness to man’s will. The period also gave rise to a group of young intellectuals and politicians keen to propel Argentina into the international economy and culture. The country was definitely in the process of entering the era of universal scientific movement, as seen in such concrete actions as the founding of national museums and academies. In the 1880s the Museum of Natural History in Buenos Aires, the Academy of Sciences in Córdoba, and the Scientific Society and the Geographic Institute, all gave scientific activity its place of privilege. The presence of foreign scientists such as Burmeister, Berg, Gould, Weyenbergh, Doering, Scalabrini, Calandrelli, and Larsen, among others, fostered the interest in scientific research enthusiastically pursued by Argentine scholars. Carlos and Florentino Ameghino, Lista, Eduardo L. Holmberg, Zeballos, Moreno, Lafone, Quevedo, Ambrosetti, and Adan Quiroga pioneered the study of the anthropological and natural sciences in the southernmost cone of the Americas. The influence of European and North American positivistic trends was certainly felt by the Argentine intellectuals of the 1880s; Darwin, Spencer, and Comte were read and made to conform to the local political, social, and economic realities— bewildering as this still was in several respects. The prevailing optimism was supported by the view of the country as a young, rich, and

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democratic nation whose capital city boasted of being the most European of Latin American cities, even if in open contrast with the backwardness of the provinces. In the literary field, though many writers yielded to the appeal of material and technical progress, they also could not help feeling the complexities of the still unresolved conflicts between civilization and barbarism, tradition and innovation, nature and culture: conflicts that became a distinctive feature of Argentine history. It is perhaps former president and well-known educator Domingo F. Sarmiento (1811–1888) who in his Facundo best expressed in words the schism between the new winds of progress that he saw in Europe and the United States and the still deep-rootedness he found among the wild, illiterate gauchos. Under the influence of the ideas he gathered in his wide reading and his many voyages, he propounded and developed his liberal ideas in Argiropolis (1850), a political utopia describing a blissful Argentina where the idea of progress would be linked to the push of science and technology. Likewise, the literary historian Ricardo Rojas devotes a chapter of his comprehensive Historia de la Literatura Argentina (1960) to the new scientific ideas that permeated the cultural fabric of the new nation and changed forever the colonial theocratic culture. Rojas, however, does not inquire into the influence of those new ideas on the works of the most prominent writers of the epoch. He deals rather with reviews, biographies, and the production of scientific papers by Francisco Muñiz, Florentino Ameghino, and Francisco P. Moreno, among the founders of Argentine science. It is in this atmosphere of synchronic changes in politics, science, education, and the arts that the literary group known as the “Generation of the 80s” becomes the inspiration for the new South American intellectual. An outstanding example is Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg (1852–1937), who was a physician and one of the major Argentine naturalists. His main interests were the natural sciences, particularly entomology and botany, and he was a passionate advocate of Darwin’s ideas, though consciously bearing in mind their limitations. While in his early twenties Holmberg published his first novel, Dos partidos en lucha: fantasía científica (1875) [Two Struggling Parties. A Scientific Fantasy], which is both a parody and a fervent defence of Darwinism. His contribution to the founding of the Argentine Academy of Science and Literature epitomizes his concern with bridging the gap between the two fields of human creativity. This constituted an idea on which Holmberg expands in a posthumously published novel, Olimpio Pitango de Monalia (1994), in which he emphasizes the importance of storytelling to foster imagination

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because “sin ella no podrían los matemáticos que son, entre los intelectuales, los que más habitan el mundo del ideal, desenvolverse en la evolución de sus problemas, ni tampoco los químicos, ni los físicos, ni los naturalistas de vuelo” (181) [Without imagination, mathematicians, who are the readiest among intellectuals to inhabit the world of ideas, would not be able to follow the circumventions of their problems. Neither would the chemists, the physicists, the naturalists]. (All translations from the Spanish originals are mine). Though Holmberg uses certain sci-fi commonplaces in his works, such as trips to Mars, Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac. Fantasía espiritista (1875) [Mr. Nic-Nac’s Marvellous Voyage. A Spiritist Fantasy], he does not invent spaceships; instead, he resorts to a contrivance that seems to obsess most Argentine writers, spiritual transmigration, that is, the passing of the soul into a new body or a new form of being. Indeed, phrenology, spiritism, psychopathology, and psychiatry were the major concerns of intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century. Additionally, the theme of the automaton, an ancient and almost universal obsession of science fiction writers, is also tackled by Holmberg in Horacio Kalibang o Los autómatas (1879) [Horatio Kalibang or The Automatons]. Hallucinations and dreamlike situations caused by smoking an opium pipe are described in minute detail in La pipa de Hoffman (1876) [Hoffman’s Pipe]—the title is an obvious allusion to the well-known writer who exerted a powerful influence on Holmberg’s style. The most remarkable thing, however, is that the effects of drugs in the story are similar to those caused by D-lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD, a still-unknown drug that was discovered only in 1943, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann (the coincidence in the last names is worth noting), following his chemical research on ergot alkaloids. Ergot is a fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that grows parasitically on rye and, to a lesser extent, on other species of grain and on wild grasses; it had been previously recognized in various pharmacopoeias during the first half of the nineteenth century. Speculations about Holmberg’s anticipatory powers aside, we may safely assume that his medical experience combined with his knowledge of medicinal plants triggered the idea of a drug whose psychic effects would surpass those of other known substances. But Holmberg’s predictions were not restricted to the field of medicine; by 1884, when he wrote “Filigranas de cera” [Wax Watermarks], the phonograph was just a seven-year-old invention that reproduced sounds recorded as notches on a plate of aluminium paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder. In this story, Holmberg tinkers

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with the possibility of replaying sounds stored in the earwax or cerumen, anticipating in a way the paste discs used in the first gramophones. Like his contemporary Sarmiento, Holmberg describes a utopian society in Olimpio Pitango de Monalia, probably written in 1913. Humor, delicate irony, and the amazing erudition displayed by the author are the outstanding characteristics of this novel, which is set in an imaginary island state off the Argentine mainland. Monalia is an earthly paradise not only on account of its climate and landscape, but also because its inhabitants enjoy freedom and the most perfect form of democracy. This small state, however, is subject to the innovative ideas of a scholarly writer, the quixotic Olimpio Pitango, who claims that his country should imitate the political organization of the most civilized nations in the world, among which he includes Argentina. A sort of upside-down world, Holmberg’s Monalia serves as a foil not only for Argentina, but also for most other South American countries after their independence from Spain. In her extensive introduction to Olimpio, Gioconda Marún remarks on Holmberg’s “inusual polimorfismo . . ., que conjuga el hombre de ciencia con el hombre de letras” (7) [unusual polymorphism observed in the coexistence of the man of science and the man of letters]. She also points out that Holmberg did much to spread Darwin’s ideas in Argentina, though the British scientist was already familiar to Sarmiento, another fervent defender of evolutionism, who met Darwin on the occasion of the Beagle expedition to Chile and Argentina (12). The most relevant section of Marún’s introduction for our purposes, however, is her research on Holmberg’s contribution to the understanding of the relationship between science and literature seen in his lectures and articles, and made manifest in Olimpio Pitango de Monalia, where he voices his ideas about evolution. Marún observes that A sus conocimientos de las ciencias naturales corresponde la lista de geólogos y botánicos (158–159); la mención del Cardo de Castilla (138)—especie descubierta en la Argentina por Holmberg—la nómina de las aves insectívoras que son exterminadas por los cazadores (155); la descripción geográfica de la isla de Monalia—constitución geológica, hidrografía, clima, flora, fauna—con su correspondiente mapa físico (75–76). (42–43) [The list of geologists and botanists, the reference to the Castilian thistle—a species discovered by Holmberg in Argentina—the list of insectivore birds exterminated by hunters; the geographic description of Monalia island—its geology, hydrography, climate, flora, and fauna— accompanied by a physical map, are all credited to his knowledge of natural sciences.]

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Holmberg’s theoretical knowledge and his field studies on Argentine flora and fauna provide the basis for an authentic lesson on ecology, a branch of science that had not yet been defined as a science. Further references should be added to the editor’s comments, such as Holmberg’s allusion to the findings of the French surgeon and anthropologist Paul Broca regarding the evolution of human brain (135), arguments based on Champollion’s and Leverrier’s deductive reasoning, and on Archimedes’s famous maxim “dadme un punto de apoyo . . . .” (142). Despite some minor stylistic flaws, Eduardo L. Holmberg deserves his privileged standing as the epitome of the scholar who weaves his scientific knowledge into his literary production to become the acknowledged father of Argentine science fiction.1 The worldwide optimism that characterized the birth of the twentieth century, based on visions of unending progress due to the technological wonders that would make human life ever more wonderful, disappeared as the world was plunged into World War I, a war in which technology played such a deadly role. Argentina, though untouched by the war, could not escape the reality of being an agrarian, peripheral country where science, technology, and innovations were concentrated only in a few metropolitan areas. Though not a fantastic story, Benito Lynch’s El Inglés de los Güesos (1924) [The Englishman with the Bones] is worth mentioning in this context for it exemplifies the social asymmetries fostered by the increasing economic relevance of knowledge in open contrast with the functional illiteracy of the gauchos. Inspired by his first-hand experience in the Argentine countryside and by his reading of Darwin’s “Naturalist’s Voyage Around the World,” Lynch reverses the romantic view of open plains by describing the new landscape, peopled by men and women who toil hopelessly for their daily living within a social and economic structure that is mercilessly imposed upon them. The novelist’s main character, the paleontologist Mr. James, is the embodiment of the materialistic and utilitarian philosophies that came to prevail upon Argentina, as it did all across the West, along with scientific advances and philosophic evolutionism. Even the experimental method of the natural sciences is applied in Lynch’s novel when he describes the facts and accepts his circumstances at face value. Life is viewed as a literal struggle for survival where the fittest would ironically sacrifice true feelings on behalf of progress. Not all writers shared this concern for the marginality of the rural areas, of course. The modernist Leopoldo Lugones (1878–1938), one of the most celebrated Argentine poets and writers, was an enthusiastic voice of the national spirit, impassioned by the celebration of

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the Centennial of Independence. Notwithstanding the importance of this facet of his career, it is not the purpose of this chapter to discuss Lugones’s literary erudition in the service of official discourse as found in his political prose and poetry, but rather to focus on his fantastic tales in which theosophical theories and occult sciences go side by side with physics and mathematics. He had a high regard for Holmberg and wrote an enthusiastic review of one of his works; however, far from sharing the optimism of Holmberg’s generation, Lugones was torn by the contradictions arising at the turn of the century. In 1921, his interest in science led him to write one of the first essays in the world about Einstein’s theories (Gandolfo 19).2 In turn, in the stories collected in Las fuerzas extrañas (1906) [The Strange Forces], Lugones addresses the problem of the scientist’s moral responsibility when crossing the borderline between the human and the divine. The author’s concentration on a particular theory that he wants to demonstrate, rather than on narrative technique, results in an abundance of pseudoscientific explanations that in some cases actually adumbrated or even predicted theories confirmed only many years later. His “Viola acherontia,” a story about a gardener who tampers with flowers, intending to instill killing power into them, seems to have been written in anticipation of genetic engineering, since by that time, the fundamentals of genetics discovered by Gregor Mendel would have undoubtedly been familiar to Lugones. Darwin’s theory compelled men to readjust their views by posing a less comforting perspective on man’s status in the universe. Though enthusiastically received by its champions, including Holmberg, the doctrine of evolution was rejected by many minds that were more orthodox. Even today, it is “such a dangerously wonderful and farreaching view of life that some people find it unacceptable . . . As applied to our own species, Homo sapiens, it can seem more threatening still” (Quammen 6). No wonder, then, that the mix of horror, rejection, and fascination evoked by Darwin’s account of the origin of man was to become the subject matter of Lugones’s fantastic fiction. In “Un fenómeno inexplicable” (1906) [An Inexplicable Phenomenon], the shadow of the ape as man’s ancestor is the source of a supernatural experience. First-person narration and a realistic frame provided by topographic references add verisimilitude to an otherwise uncanny adventure: “Viajaba por la región agrícola que se dividen las provincias de Córdoba y de Santa Fe, provisto de las recomendaciones indispensables para escapar a las horribles posadas de aquellas colonias en formación . . .” (Lugones CD-ROM) [I was traveling

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along the agricultural region of Cordoba and Santa Fe, bearing in mind the recommendations to avoid the ugly lodgings of those incipient colonies . . . .]. The protagonist’s meeting with an Englishman provides the opportunity for discussing the latest findings in homeopathy and for expressing an unbounded passion for science: “¡Es tan hermosa la ciencia, la ciencia libre, sin capilla y sin academia!” (CD-ROM) [Science is so beautiful; free science, with neither church nor academy!]. The story that the narrator’s host recounts, however, deviates from true science and reflects Lugones’s own fascination with oriental practices such as the conscious separation of the self, that is, the soul, from the body. The rational explanation is given by the foreigner who had the chance to learn the yogis’ art while serving as a lieutenant during the British occupation of India. The experiment turns out to be successful, though the resulting shadow, far from being a duplicate of the Englishman, bears the shape of an ape: “El desprendimiento se produjo con la facilidad acostumbrada. Cuando recobré la conciencia, ante mí, en un rincón del aposento, había una forma. Y esa forma era un mono, un horrible animal que me miraba fijamente.” (CD-ROM) [Mankind had perished. So had all life, vegetable and animal. The rest of it, soil, stones, water, metals, salt, air, were like a futile dream, because everything had worn out, and the excessive crushings and levelings had turned the Universe into cosmic dust]. In an attempt to demonstrate the irrationality of what he thinks to be his host’s hallucinations, the narrator resorts to a practical test: he will pencil in the projection of the man’s profile on the wall. The eerie atmosphere is made all the more hair-raising when the outline reveals the depressed forehead, broad nose, and massive jaws of an apelike figure. The authority of Lugones in literature is explicitly signaled by his contemporary the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga (1878–1937)3 whose literary production also evinces his admiration for Edgar Allan Poe. For example, the view of the killer ape popularized by Poe’s “The Murders of the Rue Morgue” is somewhat assuaged in Quiroga’s “El mono ahorcado” (1907) [The Hanged Ape], and “El mono que asesinó” (1909) [The Murderous Ape] where the beasts are portrayed as victims of human attempts to distort the natural course of Creation. Moreover, the perception imposed by science, of human nature stripped of all sacred or spiritual qualities, is the theme of “El hombre artificial” (1909) [The Artificial Man], where an insane scientist, Donissoff, crosses into God’s domain by creating a man in much the same way as the eponymous Frankenstein did in Mary Shelley’s famous novel.

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The findings of giant fossils in the Argentine pampas and in Patagonia fueled the imagination of the new century. Accordingly, Quiroga creates his own “lost world” in 1920, as Arthur Conan Doyle did in 1912, only that while the setting of “El salvaje” [The Savage] is the very real Argentine Mesopotamia between the Paraná and the Uruguay rivers, Doyle’s setting is the Brazilian Amazonia. The region that Quiroga knew so well, a region that he immortalized in his stories, provides the Jurassic milieu where an implausible encounter of a meteorologist with a living dinosaur occurs. Quiroga also modeled some bizarre experiments on certain images of science that were popular in the early twentieth century. For instance, he constructed some stories around the human quest for immortality, a recurrent theme in literature, and one which was solved by science in its most practical aspects. The possibility of preserving images forever became a reality in 1835, when the English scientist William Fox Talbot developed the photographic process, the basic design of which is in use even today. In 1879, William Crookes applied voltage to a crystal tube causing it to light up. The beam of electrons, or “cathode ray” as Crookes called it, was used in 1897, by Ferdinand Braun to generate images, thus setting the stage for the modern electronic television, which has more than surpassed earlier invention based on rotating discs and electric impulses. In Quiroga’s “El Vampiro” [The Vampire], published in the collection of short stories Más Allá (1935) [The World Beyond], the narrator is a scientist whose comments on the parallelism between certain auditory waves and the visual emanations produced by the so-called N1 rays attract the attention of the enigmatic “don Guillén de Orzúa y Rosales” (21), a rich man who owns a well-equipped laboratory. Both characters speculate upon the possibility of “creating” an image in a visual and tangible circuit via the power of the soul’s emotional emissions. Rosales claims that it is possible to imprint the features of a beloved person—whose image has previously been impressed on the retina—by locking oneself in a dark room with a photographic film in front of one’s eyes. At first, the scientist dismisses such ideas as nonsensical. A chance encounter of the two protagonists at the cinema, however, shows that Rosales’s obsession with the idea of giving “life” to an image has moved beyond the limits of imagination, for he is intently looking at the light beam from the projector. On one of the visits the scientist pays Rosales, he realizes that his worst fears have come true, for the third guest at the table is the specter of a well-known Hollywood actress. Quiroga acknowledged his fascination with the novelty of motion pictures, but he seems to move a step

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further in this tale because the three-dimensional female image is closer to a holograph than to a celluloid impression. His death in 1937 precludes any possibility of his being acquainted with the holograph, which was not invented until 1947, thus rebutting also some critics’ claims of Bioy Casares’s having anticipated holography in La Invención de Morel (1953) [Morel’s Invention], though—in their defense—it must be said that modern laser holography was not developed till 1961. The integration of the new century’s discoveries into Quiroga’s writing certainly infuses his stories with the “illusion” of a scientific methodology; this aura did nothing, however, to strip from them the ghostly, bleak, and Poe-like mood that effectively permeates his whole literary corpus. In stark contrast to the gloomy atmosphere set by Lugones and Quiroga, “El Zapallo que se hizo Cosmos” [The Gourd that Became Cosmos] is an absurd and humorous story written by Macedonio Fernández, a well-known ironist and close friend and mentor of Jorge Luis Borges. The sardonic, if not outright sarcastic, intentions of the author are manifest in his choice of a gourd as the main player in his story, given the negative connotation in Argentine culture of the epithet “gourd,” implying a dull-witted person. The regional setting invokes additional irony, due to the fact that Argentines, who so frequently boast of their intelligence, are literally “swallowed” by a giant pumpkin. The image of the pumpkin growing “in a Darwinian way” at the expense of the weaker plants around it is used to voice Fernández’ distaste for social Darwinism: “Su historia íntima nos cuenta que iba alimentándose a expensas de las plantas más débiles de su contorno, darwinianamente; siento tener que decirlo haciéndolo antipático” (53) [Its private story tells us that it fed on the weakest plants around it, Darwinianly; making it, I’m sorry to say, disagreeable]. As stated above, the setting of this hyperbolic story is neither an alien planet nor a mythical or otherwise imaginary land, but rather an identifiable region in the Argentine Northeast, from which a giant gourd threatens the whole Earth. Its fast growth gives rise to the wildest speculations and far-fetched proposals, ranging from armed confrontation to biological clash, this latter possibility consisting in nurturing and promoting the swift growth of another pumpkin in Japan, so as to provoke the plants’ mutual annihilation. Amidst the prevailing confusion, the author intrudes with a question: ¿Y Einstein?” (54), perhaps conveying the idea that science has no answers for the marvels and mysteries of Nature. Most probably, though, his question is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the discovery of the expansion of the universe in the 1920s (Ferris 120) or to black

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holes, which, in fact, were imagined for the first time by the English astronomer John Michell in 1783 (Sagan 241). What at first appeared to be a curiosity and a source of humorous situations turns out to be an actual, unsolvable menace. The only way out seems to be a move into the gourd, ridiculous and humiliating as it may be, because “ya no va quedando mundo fuera del zapallo” (54) [There is little world remaining outside the gourd]. By the end of the story Fernández indulges in ontological speculations attributing soul and will to each cell: “¡Cuidaos de toda célula que ande cerca de vosotros!” (55) [Beware of any nearby cell!] is the author’s warning, because, given proper and comfortable living conditions, the gourd will take control of all matter, it will become the One-All, the Individual-Universe. It will achieve Immortality and become the single, unique power in the cosmos. Far from being an allegory of faith in science, the story laughs off all scientific theories; even death becomes meaningless, given the possibility of eternal life for any living organism inside the gourd. Immortality—man’s history-long quest—is granted by a simple reversal of conditions previously taken for granted, by science, at least. The new “metafísica cucurbitácea” [cucurbitaceous metaphysics] propounded by Fernández frees man from existential anguish. He resorts to Einstein once again, this time to assert that, given the relativity of all dimensions, nobody will ever know whether life develops inside a gourd, or a coffin, or has just developed into cells of the Immortal Plasma. Death is finally defeated by an all-inner, bounded-by-thegourd-skin Immortality, or shall we say singularity? If we think of the heart of a black hole, “where space and time cease to exist, and matter is crushed to infinite density” (Shermer 2002), Fernández’s mindboggling story proves to be inspired by scientific knowledge. Even Kepler’s laws of planetary motion must contend with the expansion of the gourd, which, after sweeping up all life-forms on Earth, tries to satisfy its appetite by progressing toward the Milky Way. In an appropriate ending to a comic story woven around a banal object, the gourd will ultimately become the Being, Reality, and . . . its skin. The entanglement of space and time shown by Einstein was another theme that captured the imagination of the literate public of the twentieth century, becoming a favorite scenario of most science fiction writers, including Adolfo Bioy Casares, who develops the idea of parallel universes in “La Trama Celeste” (1948) [The Celestial Scheme]. The plausibility of the story is granted by a first person narrator who refers to a document about an otherwise implausible event whose literal truth is then carefully elaborated upon. Things that would not

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generally happen in everyday reality are not explained until the end of the story, though the narrative is imbued with verisimilitude through the inclusion of actual dates, places, and facts in the familiar setting of Buenos Aires during the early stages of the history of the Argentine Air Force. It should be remarked that most critical interpretations of “La trama celeste” focus on the magic or supernatural elements of the story, as associated with Celtic myths and medieval legends about other worlds. Beatriz Curia (1986), for instance, makes a detailed analysis of this story quoting passages of her interview with the author, an analysis in which he presents his own account of the sources of inspiration. Curia acknowledges the scientific explanations provided by Bioy at the end of his story, but, as she says, they do not serve the purpose of putting forward new theories, nor do they explore the consequences for mankind as science fiction does. She does not preclude, however, Bioy’s acquaintance with the physics of his time (178), though Classical Greco-Roman philosophy is acknowledged by the author himself as the main source of strength and universality for his tale. My concern here is to contribute to the already existing studies by drawing attention to the probable influence of scientific theories on Bioy’s created world. It should be pointed out that Bioy Casares was a close friend of Borges and that they coauthored many works under the pen names of H. Bustos Domecq and B. Suárez Lynch. In Museo (2002), a collection of some of their previously unpublished texts and literary fragments, Bioy Casares admits that among principal topics of his conversations with Borges were relativity, the fourth dimension, time theories and interpretations, eternity, Swedenborg, and H. G. Wells (21–22). We should add that Rutherford’s and Cantor’s theories, as well as thermodynamics, were familiar topics for Borges, as becomes evident in his short stories and essays.4 Notions of black holes, singularities, and parallel worlds are built into his own metaphorical conception of the space-time continuum (Vucetich); no wonder, then, that Borge’s “Aleph” may have been located at one end of a wormhole (Cerejeido 60). The foregoing observations aim at demonstrating that the same scientific ideas that permeate Borges’s works might likewise have been transformed into aesthetic matter by Bioy Casares. At the outset of “La Trama Celeste,” Bioy Casares provides a realistic frame that heightens the effect of the material so framed. Thus, the supposed author refers to the mysterious disappearance of two men: Captain Ireneo Morris, a test pilot in the Argentine Army, and Dr. Carlos Alberto Servian, a homeopathic physician; the latter seems to be the author of a manuscript, “The Adventures of Captain

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Morris,” which becomes the principal story within the story. Servian’s narration is based on the retelling of the events by Captain Morris himself, who suffered a strange accident while testing a new plane, the Breguet 309. His plane apparently collided with “una vasta mole oscura (quizás una nube), tuvo una visión efímera y feliz, como la visión de un radiante paraíso . . . Apenas consiguió enderezar el aeroplano cuando estaba por tocar el campo de aterrizaje” (90) [a vast dark mass (perhaps a cloud), he had an ephemeral and happy vision, something like a radiant paradise . . . . He could hardly level the plane just before landing]. The pilot awakens in the Military Hospital where a succession of characters (first a nurse, then some officers, and lastly a lieutenant whom Morris considers a lifelong friend) regard him as a total stranger. Moreover, neither his test flight nor a plane with that serial number is acknowledged by the Army. Morris’s insistence and the nurse’s complicity result in a chance of proving the veracity of his assertion: he is allowed to repeat the test on board a Dewotine and the whole story repeats itself. Only this time he is charged with selling the Breguet 304 (despite his claim that the serial number of the first plane is 309) during an absence for which he cannot account. A malleable reality is constructed in the story as the author portrays two Buenos Aires set in two different universes, in one of which neither Wales nor Carthago exist. The author seems reluctant to abandon the realm of magic, as evidenced by his recurrent references to “pases,” as if by some wizard-like effect on Morris’s planes carried him to and from parallel worlds. The coherent explanation offered by the alleged author is based on Democritus’s theory of the plurality of worlds: “según Democrito, hay una infinidad de mundos, entre los cuales algunos son, no tan sólo parecidos, sino perfectamente iguales” [According to Democritus, there is a multiplicity of worlds, among which some are not only similar but absolutely identical as well] and on his own assumption of a multiplicity of worlds as “haces de espacios y de tiempos paralelos” (113) [Beams of parallel spaces and times]. This brief summary of the story points toward those aspects that I want to highlight. Firstly, the mention of the collapse into a dark mass, probably a cloud, brings to the contemporary reader’s mind similar stories about the disappearance of ships and aircraft near the zone known as the Bermuda Triangle, where white fog is quite common. In fact, the abundant gas hydrate deposits beneath the sea erupt at times as waterspouts. Although the theory has not been proven, “gas hydrate blowouts are as likely an explanation as the other violent physical phenomena which have been advanced to account for the Bermuda

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Triangle” (Nursky 29). An odd event deserves a brief aside: Shortly after the end of World War II, a five-aircraft U.S. Air Squadron was reported missing in the area of the Bermudas. Recently, the five planes were apparently found lying at the bottom of the Mexican Gulf, but far from solving the mystery, this finding revealed that the planes in the Gulf had different series numbers on their sides and that those numbers were not recorded in U.S. military files (Vorontsova). This discrepancy recalls, of course, the case of Captain Morris’s Breguet 309, which was not registered by the Argentine Army. Bioy Casares might well have heard about the mysterious 1945 incident and then let his imagination take over, toying with the enigma of the serial numbers, while further obscuring the already blurry line that separates fact from fiction. Likewise, cases of transportation in space and time were also reported during the past century. Bizarre as they may sound, according to Einstein’s theory of gravity, “when negative energy or mass . . . bends space-time, all sort of amazing phenomena might become possible: traversable wormholes, which could act as tunnels to otherwise distant parts of the universe . . .; and time machines, which might permit journeys into the past” (Ford and Roman 31). The multiple-universes model that Bioy Casares offers in his story allows several Morrises to take off on the same day and several alternative outcomes to branch out as each Captain Morris appears, be it in a replicated Buenos Aires of a parallel world or even in Uruguay or in Brazil. Moreover, the splitting of the Universe into infinitely many copies of itself has been admitted, in principle, by following certain interpretations of quantum physics and mechanics that, pushed to their limits, would allow even such bizarre schemes as teleportation. In turn, the notion of wormholes as gateways or portals to another universe or as a shortcut between two different locations in space lies at the heart of “El atajo” (1967) [The Shortcut], an ostensibly simple story set in the countryside of Buenos Aires Province, near the capital city. In this case a salesman and his companion take a shortcut and pop out into another world. As Beatriz Curia states (182), there are anticipatory clues in the conversation between the main characters that something extraordinary is taking place. Indeed, they talk about the possibility of several worlds, several Argentinas, and multiple futures; nonetheless, no scientific explanations are provided. However, the recurrent references to something unusual in the distance point out at the slowing down or the speeding up of time or the anomalies of transportation through space. An old car is, in this case, the time machine that permits their passage from one world to the other, and back to the actual time and place, a lot like the Einstein-Rosen bridge.

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To the group of writers we have considered to this point, we may add Santiago Dabove, friend of Macedonio Fernández and Jorge Luis Borges. Dabove, the youngest of the three, outlived the other two and wrote enthusiastically about the invaluable, though scant, literary production of his friends. The tales of Dabove himself were collected almost a decade after his death into a small volume, La muerte y su traje (1961) [Death and its Raiment]. In one of these short stories, “Finis,” Dabove addresses the theme of Earth changing its rotational speed and the catastrophe that naturally follows it. He builds a pseudoscientific account of the facts leading to a de-evolution of human civilization, much in the same way as the American Kurt Vonnegut does in his novels Slapstick and Timequake. Unlike Vonnegut, who, despite his apocalyptic vision, offers some glimpse of hope for the human race, Dabove’s obsession with death results in an utterly pessimistic story. Not even love can triumph over the physical calamity, since the struggle for survival proves to be stronger than affections that are ultimately relegated to a dream-like hallucinatory vision preceding death. A framed narrative like “La trama celeste,” “Finis” begins as a mystery tale about a premonition written on a manuscript safeguarded by a skeleton inside a coffin. The first narrator vanishes into oblivion as the second narrator, and alleged author of the document, unfolds his own account of the events he witnessed. Whether the story is a forewarning of future events by a time-traveler, or just a literary creation, is never revealed, though the dating of the event sometime well into the one hundred and tenth century (“En el primer tercio del año 1..34”) (69) [In the first third of the year 1..34] leads the first narrator to infer that it is an anticipatory document. According to the report, the harmonious music of the spheres seems to have been disrupted as the minute asteroids between Mars and Jupiter suddenly alter their course without any apparent cause. In fact, despite mathematical models that show that planets have maintained a regular orbit “for almost the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the solar system . . . It is widely accepted . . . that many of the smaller bodies in the solar system—asteroids, comets, and the planets’ moons—have altered their orbits . . . some more dramatically than others” (Malhotra 47–48). The erratic behavior of Dabove’s planetoids, like night bugs swarming around a lightbulb, brings about a wide range of speculations among scientists and astronomers, the most plausible being the presence of distant, interplanetary dusty bodies acting as giant electromagnets. Taking into consideration the metal components of the Earth, particularly its iron core, predictions

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about the likelihood of our planet being attracted by those strange bodies are soon confirmed in the story by the sheer accumulation of facts. Actually, subtle adjustments of the giant planets’ orbits have been theorized, though these conjectures still await supporting evidence (Malhotra 48). A brief paragraph poignantly refers to the ironic position of scientists whose verification of the accuracy of their theories is counterpoised by the fear of dreadful outcomes. Dabove’s concern seems to be not so much with the technological development of his fantastic world, since the only device he provides the inhabitants is a mechanical pair of wings that would turn men into a kind of “bearded angels.” The author employs this phrase ironically, since humans are “angels” only as regards their capacity for flight; indeed, despite the passing of centuries, moral growth still lags behind technological development. Dabove’s words echo Solzhenitsyn’s dictum that if human nature will ever be modified, it will be no faster than the earth as it passes through the stages of its geological history. Dabove chuckles at the nineteenth century’s faith in the accuracy of the scientific method, as represented in astronomy by the success of Leverrier (1811–1877), who was able to predict the orbit of Neptune by using mathematical calculations. The Argentine author’s fictional characters overtly plan to reform classical mechanics so as to put forward new principles and calculations fittingly adapted to the new experience in such a way that the Universe would once again submit to the laws dictated by science. The disturbance in the uniform motion of planet Earth, due to the gravitational influence of the unknown objects in outer-space, not only lengthens and/or shortens days and nights in such a way that the 24-hour system used to keep time becomes obsolete, but it also influences seasonal times in such a way that they succeed each other in periods of a few days or even hours. Once again, science and technology attempt to bring order into chaos by counteracting the disastrous effects of the “flea-like behavior” of the planet. Applied science provides the new abode in which human beings will have to survive— anticipating a scientifically and socially possible descent of civilization into barbarism. Underground refuges were rapidly built (was Dabove thinking of antinuclear shelters, perhaps influenced by the mentality of cold war?). In these caves Fourier’s three conditions are met. Huge furnaces supply the heat needed for both human comfort and the creation of mechanical energy to keep basic industries working. However, the descent of civilization to caves, far from being a bucolic or romantic return to a primal past, exposes the most sordid aspects of human nature, recapitulating and reinforcing the author’s pessimism

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about the moral progress of the human race. He envisions future scenes of cruelty, famine, brutality and even cannibalism, should the fuel for the furnaces last longer than the food supplies, currently so jealously stored and guarded by men armed with machine guns. Along with vegetation, most natural resources disappear in this climatic cataclysm, so scientists resort to a new recipe on the basis of oil. Once again, Dabove poses an ethical dilemma: the significant change in diet not only implies feeding on petroleum and fungus, but it further widens the gap between the rich and the poor. Indeed, the most expensive oil food is tasteless, though the cheapest one, available for the poor, leaves a nauseating aroma of lamp oil in the consumers’ mouths. A new and impending Ice Age threatens part of mankind as the Earth stops its rotation in such a way that one hemisphere is condemned to an endless night, while the other half of the globe, like a lidless eye, is permanently exposed to sunlight. Furthermore, it is soon discovered that the segment of the former elliptical orbit that the Earth followed in its revolution around the Sun, that is, the segment from the aphelion (the farthest point from Sun) to the perihelion (the closest point from the Sun) is nearing a straight line, meaning the inexorable extinction of all forms of life. A sort of two-page requiem for the universe, “El recuerdo” [A Memory], appears as the logical continuation to “Finis”: La humanidad había perecido. La vida entera, animal y vegetal, también. Lo restante, la tierra, la piedra, el agua, los metales, la sal, el aire, eran como un sueño vano, pues todo se había gastado y las excesivas compresiones y nivelaciones convirtieron el Universo en un polvo cósmico. (105) [Mankind had perished. So had all life, vegetable and animal. The rest of it, soil, stones, water, metals, salt, air, were like a futile dream, because everything had worn out, and the excessive crushings and levelings had turned the Universe into cosmic dust.]

Certainly, questions concerning the beginning and the ending of the universe have almost always preoccupied scientists, with the arguments oscillating between poles of optimism and pessimism. The discovery of the expansion of the universe in the late 1920s predicted a future as grim as the one presented in Dabove’s tale. According to Barrow and Silk, First as the singularity approaches and the temperature rises, all galaxies, stars, and atoms will dissolve into nuclei and radiation. Then the nuclei will be dismembered into protons and neutrons. They, in turn,

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will be squeezed until the quarks confined within them are liberated into a huge cosmic soup of freely interacting quarks and leptons . . . Only after a fantastic 10100 years will the black holes that were once galaxies evaporate away, leaving behind unpredictable naked singularities and a sea of inert particles and light. (425–27)

Though Dabove does not speak of quarks and leptons, his poetic vision of an eternal night occasionally illuminated by lightning is similar to the scientific account. According to Dabove, the uncountable mutations and transformations of matter since the original chaos were so critical that finally the atoms acquired the faculty of memory and moral consciousness, becoming a vague dust that in some ways resembled a living being or a brain of some sort. In that endless night, the funerals of Life and the Soul take place. In spite of the eternal, unforgiving flow of Time, atoms would keep the saddest memories of mankind put to rest in a Pantheon formed by heavenly walls at the end of Infinite. The Universe becomes an old sepulcher, full of dust, without a historian to tell its sad history. Paradoxically, that cosmic nothingness is filled by poetry, a nostalgic feeling, whose origin is unexplainable since “todo había perecido” (106) [everything had perished]. The gloomy mood set by “El Recuerdo” is consistent with Dabove’s pessimistic view of his fellow creatures. Even the last reference to the nostalgic feeling invading the cosmic void, rather than figuring as a ray of hope, has the bitter taste of tears. Whether or not the theme be utopian societies, paranormal occurrences, the creation of spectral images, parallel worlds, or the ultimate fate of the Universe (either comic or tragic), the works discussed in this chapter share a common feature: the inspiration of their authors in the revelations of science. This study represents an attempt to give an overview of some of the best Argentine writers with a special focus on the least-reviewed aspects of their literary production. By relating the beginnings of lay science in Argentina with the origins of our fantastic literature, I hope to have revealed the important historical connection between the emergence of the new nation and the birth of an intellectual class ready to accept the challenges posed by the achievements of the human mind. In a similar vein, I believe the harsh reverses of the promising dreams of a rapidly developing country were also reflected in the literature at the turn of the century. Limitations to the industrialization of the country certainly had an impact on the collective imagination, closing the public’s eyes to major achievements of Argentine scientists. In view of the general disregard for science and technology, one could reasonably argue that

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understanding the world through scientific logic and deduction was not the main concern of these writers. It is my contention that despite their undisputed familiarity with scientific truths, they chose to maintain a sense of awe about what the ordinary mind would regard as supernatural phenomena. Far from diminishing the value of their literature, the intertwining of the illusory with the realistic scenario of a tangible Argentina endows their authors’ creations with a unique flavor. Finally, then, like a background light, the aura of science illuminates the mysterious: “the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science” (Einstein 1954).

Notes 1. Some critics reckon Juana Manuela Gorriti’s “Quien escucha, su mal oye” (1865) as the first Argentine science fiction story. It is a speculation on mesmerism, a popular ‘science’ at the time. 2. It should be remembered that Einstein put forward his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. 3. Though born in Uruguay, Horacio Quiroga lived most of his life in Argentina. The Mesopotamia region, particularly Misiones Province, became the setting of his best-known stories. 4. See, for instance, Historia de la Eternidad (75–77, 85, 88).

Works Cited Arocena, R., and J. Sutz. “Inequality and innovation as seen from the South.” Technology in Society 25.2 (2003): 171–82. Barnes-Svarney, Patricia, ed. The New York Public Library. Science Desk Reference. New York: Macmillan, 1995. Barrow, John D., and Joseph Silk. “How Will the World End?” In The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, ed. Timothy Ferris. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. 425–27. Bioy Casares, Adolfo. “El Atajo.” In El Gran Serafín. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1967. 155–82. ——. “La trama Celeste.” In Los Universos Vislumbrados. Antología de Ciencia Ficción Argentina, ed. Jorge Sánchez. 2nd edition. Buenos Aires: Andrómeda, 1996. 83–113. Borges, Jorge Luis. Historia de la eternidad. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1992. Borges, Jorge Luis, and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Museo. Textos inéditos. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2002. Cerejeido, Marcelino. “Borges visto por un científico.” In Borges y la ciencia, ed. Lucila Pagliai. 2nd edition. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2004. 45–74. Curia, Beatriz. La concepción del cuento en Adolfo Bioy Casares. Mendoza: Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Literaturas Modernas, 1986.

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Dabove, Santiago. “Finis.” In Los Universos Vislumbrados. Antología de Ciencia Ficción Argentina, ed. Jorge Sánchez. 2nd edition. Buenos Aires: Andrómeda, 1996. 69–80. ——. “El recuerdo.” In Fantasía y Ciencia Ficción, ed. José María Ferrero. Buenos Aires: Brami Huemul, 1994. 105–106. Einstein, Albert. “The World as I See It.” In Ideas and Opinions, based on Mein Weltbild, ed. Carl Seelig. New York: Bonzana Books, 1954. 8–11. Also available online at http: //www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm. Fernández, Macedonio. “El zapallo que se hizo cosmos.” Los Universos Vislumbrado: Antología de Ciencia Ficción Argentina, ed. Jorge Sánchez. 2nd edition. Buenos Aires: Andrómeda, 1996. 53–56. Ferris, Timothy, ed. The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. Ford, Lawrence H., and Thomas A. Roman. “Negative Energy, Wormholes and Warp Drive.” Scientific American (January 2000): 30–37. Gandolfo, Elvio E. “Prólogo: La ciencia ficción argentina.” In Los Universos Vislumbrado: Antología de Ciencia Ficción Argentina, ed. Jorge Sánchez. 2nd edition. Buenos Aires: Andrómeda, 1996. 13–50. Holmberg, Eduardo Ladislao. Olimpio Pitango de Monalia. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Solar, 1994. Lugones, Leopoldo. Las fuerzas extrañas. Biblioteca Digital. Vol. I. CDROM. Windows, 2003. Lynch, Benito. El Inglés de los Güesos. Mexico: El Libro Popular, 1955. Mainer Baqué, José-Carlos. Atlas de literatura latinoamericana (Siglo XX). Barcelona: Ediciones Jover, 1983. Malhotra, Renu. “Migrating Planets.” Scientific American (September 1999): 46–53. Nurski, Janice. “Energy in Cold Storage.” Science Dimension 16.5 (1984): 26–29. Pagés Larraya, Antonio, ed. Cuentos fantásticos. De E. L. Holmberg. Buenos Aires: Librería Hachette, 1957. Quammen, David. “Was Darwin Wrong?” National Geographic 206.5 (2004): 2–35. Quiroga, Horacio. El salvaje y otros cuentos. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1963. ——. El Más Allá. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1964. Rojas, Ricardo. Historia de la Literatura Argentina. Buenos Aires: Edición Kraft, 1960. Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Barcelona: Planeta, 1987. Shermer, Michael. “The Chronology Protection Conjecture.” Scientific American Online. August 12, 2002. http: //www.sciam.com. Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr. Archipiélago GULAG. Barcelona: Plaza & Janes, 1974. Vorontsova, Ekaterina. “Lost US Air Force Squadron.” Pravda.com Online Publication. February 2, 2003, http: //english.pravda.ru Vucetich, Héctor. “Espacio y tiempo en Borges.” In Borges y la ciencia, ed. Lucila Pagliai. 2nd edition. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2004. 93–112.

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Jorge Luis Borges and Early Quantum Labyrinths Floyd Merrell

We have Borges’s Funes, the “memorious” (1962a), that inveterate hypernominalist and hard-core realist for whom every perceptual grasp of aspects of his world was committed to memory in all its particulars as an autonomous atom of experience, and for whom at every moment what he perceives is fresh, spontaneously arisen, and as if entirely new. Funes’s problem is that he can forget nothing; hence he can not think, for to think is to abstract, select, forget almost everything in order to focus on some things. Likewise, there are those inhabitants of the imaginary planet Tlön (1962a), Berkeleyan nominalists and idealists, capable of conjuring up bits and pieces of their world wherever and whenever they so desire, as if there were no separation whatsoever between themselves and their world, in contrast to Funes whose world is always “out there,” ready and waiting for his registering it. And then there is the fanciful Zahir (1962a) that—like a sign as an empty set, a serial signifier, though by no means a “floating signifier”—is capable of linking up with all the items of the world in one-to-one fashion, as if positivist and analytic philosophy concepts of reference and correspondence were cut-and-dried issues, each a closed book. The Zahir fulfills the dream of negative theology, the via negativa, grand enumerator or nominalizer of the universe in the form of the Eastern path to enlightenment that takes one through successive cancellation of all things: neti, neti . . . n [not this, not this . . . n]. On the other side of the ledger, we have those grand apriorist constructors of their world. For instance, Lönnrot, of “Death and the

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Compass” (1962a), that hyperreasoning detective, was out to catch Scharlach in a trap of his own making by forcing the world into a logically sublime, symmetrically precise, rationally clear and distinct conceptual scheme. But he failed miserably, because he was not objectively superhuman; he was all too human. Thus it was Scharlach who set a trap for him, and he, Lönnrot, became the fourth and final assassination victim. Our enterprising Emma Zunz (1962a) nurtured none of Lönnrot’s totalitarian dreams. Rather, she was supremely pragmatic. She constructed her world like a creative bricoleur, fashioning what she had at hand in order to avenge her father’s demise due to his boss’s conniving ways. She posed as a prostitute, sold herself to the boss, and then shot him, telling the police he raped her and she was only defending herself. We also have those Borges characters who were obsessed with “textualist idealism” in a Richard Rorty mold (1982). They constructed their world with words, as if there were no physical reality to be seriously reckoned with, as if signifiers were divorced from the thingness of things, and as if signifieds were slaves to the wishes and whims of their makers and takers. For example, by hook or by crook, Pierre Menard (1962a) reduplicated and created a textual simulacrum of a few paragraphs of Cervantes’s celebrated novel without having merely copied it: he wrote it by somehow bringing his mind in tune with that of Cervantes. And how did the literary critics take his text, Intertextually? They marveled at how Menard’s enriched text bore allusions to works of Bertrand Russell, William James, and others, while Cervantes’s relatively impoverished novel could do no more than allude to early seventeenth-century Spain. Then there is that Islamic philosopher Averroës (1962a), who was caught in a bind when he could come up with no viable translation of “tragedy” and “comedy” in Aristotle’s Poetics—because in his culture—theatres, tragedies, and comedies were nonexistent. After a number of hits and misses, he finally arrived at a solution that was quite comfortable. Satisfied with his textual expertise, he caught a peek of himself in his mirror as he prepared to retire for the night, and his entire physical world, including himself, disappeared, dissolved in a vast, choppy, rhythm-breaking sea of words. As a counterpart to worlds of particularity in (1) and of obsessive textuality in (2) we have the whole of things. Argentino Daneri was privileged to gaze upon the mysterious Aleph (1970)—that golf-ball size, self-contained, self-reflexive, self-sufficient sphere—that allows a grasp of the entire universe, past, present, and future. Daneri’s vision was of the nature of a mystical insight akin to that of the hopeful

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Tzinacán of “The God’s Script” (1962a) and of the Magician of “The Circular Ruins” (1962a). This is the alternative to the via negativa whereby through prolonged meditation on what enlightenment is enlightenment of—namely, the emptiness of everything—the whole, that is, nothingness, enters. Textually speaking, this everythingness of nothingness and nothingness of everythingness is incorporated in Borges’s enchanting yet disconcerting Library of Babel (1962a). The Library holds all possible texts that, according to the narrator’s information, have been mathematically computed at 102,000,000 books (Rucker 1983: 130). The sheer magnitude of this monstrous construction would seem to be a hopeless situation for those who are looking for an intelligible text, because the vast majority of them would be completely unintelligible! However, we are told in a footnote that the entire aedificium is not really necessary. One solitary book will suffice, that is, if it sports an infinity of pages. This is precisely the focus of interest in Borges’s “Book of Sand” (1978), where the protagonist, trying to thumb his way through the infinitesimally thin pages without success, concludes that there can be no middle page, nor is there a first or a last page. The message of the story is that sheer textuality, in its ultimate— spelled i-n-f-i-n-i-t-e—extension, has no need of material pages, or any other aspect of physical reality for that matter. Ideally speaking, textuality is a matter of mind, and mind alone. Textuality’s nightmare would be tantamount to the Lottery of Babylon (1962a), where whatever happens is no more than a chance affair, or perhaps it is the machinations of the “Company,” that vile institution capable of controlling the destiny of all Lottery players, that is, all living and breathing humans. Like the Library, if the Lottery is merely textual, then the physical world is not really of any account: words and nothing but words. To top it all off, there is the “Garden of Forking Paths” (1962a). This tale is about a book written by Ts’ui Pên in the form of a temporal rather than spatial labyrinth, a form that one of the characters describes thus: The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts’ui Pên conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor [Ts’ui Pên] did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. In the present one,

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which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost. (Borges 1962a: 28)

Incidentally, this citation became an epigraph for a book published by Princeton University Press, outlining the “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum theory by Hugh Everett in 1956 (DeWitt and Graham 1973). The “Many Worlds Interpretation” takes the physicist’s involvement in the phenomena under study at face value. It implies what Everett’s mentor John Archibald Wheeler (1980a, 1980b, 1990, 1998) termed the “Coparticipatory Universe,” contending that just as we could not be who we are without the whole of the universe, so also the universe could not be what it is without us as coparticipants. In an uncanny way, the implications (4) bring it into an embrace with (1), (2), and (3), even though, metaphysically speaking, they are well-nigh incompatible with one another. More on this later. For the moment, let us turn to the period leading up to quantum theory. Physicists during the first half of the twentieth century often found themselves arriving at wild, even outlandish, conclusions regarding the unexpected phenomena that nature had deceptively put before them. What were these cruel tricks? Could the world really be as bizarre as it seemed? If the West’s most prominent physicists intuitively resisted the only answers they could see to their questions, other thinkers remained firmly lodged in the past, fearing to strike out on the menacing paths before them. Indeed, perhaps one could go so far as to suggest the same about philosophers, social scientists, and humanists as recent as the past few decades. They have more often than not tended to ignore radical ideas propagated by biologists, chemists, physicists, and mathematicians and have prefered to cite Lacan, who cites Freud, an inveterate mechanist, Foucault who cites Nietzsche, for whom nothing should be accepted save that which is open to the senses (e.g., angels cannot be real, since he has no empirical proof of their existence), and Derrida, who cites relatively few sources of his thought, yet his work reveals (1) undecidability, that is actually nothing new at all (as found in the work of Kurt Gödel, Emil Post, Alfred Tarski, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church), (2) double-binded, double-dealing ambiguity and complementarity (comparable in spirit to the work of Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr), and (3) the end of certainty (pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Max Born, and Ilya Prigogine).1

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The fact is that during the nineteenth century, alarm over the problems of classical science was squelched by the relentless march of the mechanistic band led by 76 blaring trombones and high-stepping baton twirlers. After all, mechanistic philosophy, accompanied by the development of science and technology, was putting on an impressive show and reaping remarkable yields and promising unlimited rewards in the future. It was difficult to argue with such apparent success. Those intrepid minds such as Goethe, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Kierkegaard who had attempted navigating against the flow were either ignored or pushed aside so the stream could go forth, uninhibited. Mechanism, however, hit rough waters during the latter years of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the next century. Above all, the great machine image came under attack. Heisenberg (1958a: 198) wrote that there was something seriously wrong with the classical accounts of “fundamental concepts like matter, space, time and causality that had been so extremely successful in the history of science.” The fact of the matter is, however, that physics, long considered source of all sciences, was in the throes of the decline and fall of one of its most cherished principles: mechanical causality (Waisman 1961). Many of the fundamental battles between mechanism and nonmechanism or “field theory” had been fought during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, many scientists were unwilling, and strangely enough we still remain to an extent unwilling, to abandon a worldview that has yielded so much success. Then in the next century, Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and his General Theory in 1916 passed the physicist’s baton from the engineer and experimental scientist to the mathematicianscientist. Although Relativity continued along the lines of classical physics in some respects, the notion of Euclidean space as autonomous in regard to time was thrown for a loop. It was now a matter of mathematical equations depicting the curvature of time and space and bodies in motion relative to one another. Space and time— those formidable absolutes of the commonsense world—lost their independence. They were welded into a single four-dimensional continuum of space-time. If the mechanistic universe was not yet entirely overthrown, it was surely altered (not to say disfigured) beyond recognition. Non-Euclidean geometries became the watchword. J. W. N. Sullivan considered these new geometries “one of the most remarkable feats in the intellectual history of man. For two thousand years Euclid’s axioms had reigned unchallenged. That they were ‘necessary truths’ . . . . was admitted by all the philosophers. Merely to

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wonder whether these truths could be transcended . . . was an effort of extraordinary imaginative daring” (1933: 18; also Whittaker 1958). In Whitehead’s words, The stable foundations of physics have broken up. . . . The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics. (Whitehead 1948: 17–18)

Einstein cleared up an important issue, perhaps once and for all. Any and all theoretical assumptions and our perception of certain phenomena according to those assumptions, even our notions of space and time, are “forms of intuition, which can no more be divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of color, shape, or size. Space has no objective reality except as an order or arrangement of the objects we perceive in it, and time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it” (in Barnett 1958: 19). As Sullivan put it: “Nature, it appears, knows nothing of the distinction we make between space and time. The distinction we make is, ultimately, a psychological peculiarity of ours” (1933: 55). It was not only that physicists no longer knew what they meant by mechanics; they were ceasing to think at all in mechanical terms. As a result, there was no more faith in objective reality. Physicists were gradually forced to admit that their picture of the world, unlike the idea of a photograph reduplicating reality, was becoming more and more like a painting subjectively created by an avant garde artist. A painting is no replica at all, but a figment of an imaginative mind. The “quantum world” is considerably more than so-called revolutionary discoveries such as the discovery of radioactivity. In fact, many onlookers maintain that the new physics represents more of a break with the past than has the introduction of any new theory in science since 1600 (Conant 1954: 66–67). First, Max Planck at the turn of the twentieth century startled the scientific community with the idea that energy is not generated in a continuous stream but comes in discontinuous packets or quanta (Planck 1959: 18–20). It was not simply the problem of quanta resisting articulation in mechanistic terms. It did a slam-dunk in the face of classical science’s cherished cardinal belief that nature is uniformly continuous and harmoniously patterned (Jeans 1943: 140; Broglie 1953: 14). After the birth of quantum ideas, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty

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Principle and Niels Bohr’s “metaphysically” oriented Complementarity Principle relegated Cartesian clear, distinct, and indubitable thought to the trash bin. The Principle of Uncertainty, mathematically expressed by Heisenberg in 1927, declared that it was precisely the kind of information that was assumed by classical physics as the prerequisite to exact prediction—that is, the simultaneous knowledge of position and velocity—that was impossible of attainment in microphysics. The relationship of the two variables, position and velocity, is such that the more accurately we measure one, the less accurately are we able to define the other; and this degree of uncertainty is governed by an irreducible minimum. Since the state of a particle is defined together by its position and velocity, we can never know exactly what that state is; consequently, we can never decide whether a given initial state determines subsequent states; therefore the existence of rigorous causal connections and laws cannot be tested at all. In short, we can never be certain of the future because we are never in fact quite sure of the present. Percy Bridgman writes that “if Heisenberg’s principle is right. This means nothing more nor less than that the law of cause and effect must be given up” (1950: 93). Heisenberg uncertainty is not sheer randomness, blind chance, complete disorder, unmitigated chaos, however. The possibility of prediction is not categorically forbidden. There is prediction, but it is in terms of pure probability rather than of pristine certainty. The difference is between quantum probability predictability and classical deterministic predictability. For example, you flip a coin. Classical predictability tells you that the coin existed when it began its flip-flopping and it exists as the same coin when it came to rest with either heads or tails showing. The situation it totally different with respect to quantum predictability, according to which, from the time you flipped the coin until either heads or tails came up, the coin did not exist. While your Newtonian coin was in the air there was now heads, now tails, now heads, and so on. The quantum coin, in contrast, before showing either heads or tails, is in a “wave amplitude” mode. While in this mode, there was no heads, no tails, and no coin. There was the coin and either heads or tails only after a table or the floor “collapsed” the “Coin wave amplitude” into a “Coin particle” with either heads or tails staring you in the face. In the meantime there was nothing (no-thing) at all—like the pure possibilities in Borges’s “Garden of Forking Paths.” This is all very strange. It is as if when climbing a flight of stairs, you pop into existence only when a foot is placed on the next step,

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and when you are in the transition mode from one step to another, you are no more than a wave probability that, when “collapsed,” may have jumped up two steps, remained on the same step, stopped to contemplate the trees through the window, stumbled and gone tumbling downward, or whatever. All possibilities are there when you are in a “wave amplitude” mode between steps. And there is no knowing for certain which of the possibilities will materialize. Classical Newtonian thinking dictated nature as an independent reality that is objectively apart from the observer. There was no need to take either the means of observation or the role of the observer into consideration (de Broglie 1960: 114–16, 131–32). Subject and object, knower and known, were presumed in eternal separation. No longer. From the very outset of the quantum revolution, physicists realized that they influence what is happening. In Born’s words, We may compare the observer of a physical phenomenon not with the audience of a theatrical performance, but with that of a football game where the act of watching, accompanied by applauding or hissing, has a marked influence on the speed and concentration of the players, and thus on what is watched. (Born 1956: 105)

What this means is that the focus of scientific explanation has shifted from the “thing itself,” from Nature as an independent reality “out there,” to our observation of nature. The author of the Uncertainty Principle has lucidly described the new perspective: [W]e can no longer consider “in themselves” those building stones of matter which we originally held to be the last objective reality. This is so because they defy all forms of objective location in space and time, and since basically it is always our knowledge of these particles alone which we can make the object of science. . . . From the very start we are involved in the argument between nature and man in which science plays only a part, so that the common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul, is no longer adequate and leads us into difficulties. Thus even in science the object of research is no longer nature itself, but man’s investigation of nature. Here, again, man confronts himself alone. (Heisenberg 1958b: 24)

Science thus loses part of its objective character, its fixed nature. It becomes a hand-to-hand struggle where the scientist succeeds in matching certain bits of information from the physical world with one another, matches that will hopefully allow him to make predictions that are incomplete, and in general only probable (Broglie 1960: 131).

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This modern (or postmodern) image of the scientist as “participantobserver” rather than “detached spectator” has led to renewed consideration of the process of observation as a form of interaction or “transaction”—terms that stress the fact that contributions are being made from both sides of the measuring apparatus. Thus Bridgman has asserted that “the mere act of giving meaning through observation to any physical property of a thing involves a certain minimum amount of interaction”—and indeed that this implies not merely a definite action on the part of the observer but also one that entails “certain universal consequences” (1950: 96). There was once the dream of perfect precision and infallible prediction. No more. There was once the confidence that the power of science would conquer all problems, and whatever errors that might endure would be cleared up with a few adjustments here and there. No more. There was once the bold assertion that total knowledge would be at hand. No more. Determinism was once an article of faith. No more. Classical physics gave way to no more than probability predictions. There is no longer any hard-core predetermined world. It was Bohr who most effectively responded to the uncertainty crisis with his Principle of Complementarity.2 The concepts “wave” and “particle” are “complementary,” meaning that they are mutually exclusive if applied at the same time; yet, they can never conflict with one another because they can never meet. There are two examples of complementarity that are often given: (1) between wave and particle, and (2) between position and velocity. Whichever example is used, the point of Bohr’s principle is its recognition that either of the alternatives is partial and inadequate by itself; that, in fact, it represents an “idealization” that is essentially artificial until supplemented by the other of the two factors. A striking illustration of this point has been cited by de Broglie in the relationship of an individual physical unit, such as an electron, with the system in which it has its being. Seeking to describe the individual entity with exactness is, so to speak, to sever it from its world, but this forcible isolation cannot be accomplished without a “mutilation of the individuality” of the unit, for the system in quantum physics “is a kind of cognition, within whose unity the elementary constituent units are almost reabsorbed.” The dilemma this poses for the investigator, and the conceptual compromise it necessitates, reveals the new and unaccustomed tolerance for ambiguity that characterizes the perspective of quantum physics: “The particle cannot be observed so long as it forms part of the system, and the system is impaired once the particle has been identified” (Broglie 1939: 179). Bohr’s complementarity has

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been described by one of his colleagues as “the culmination of the modern philosophy of science” (Born 1956: viii), and by another as “the clue which unravels the entire domain of atomic experience” (Oppenheimer 1954: 82). These and other high tributes to Bohr’s adventurous complementarity hypothesis suggest that the concept has had reverberations far beyond its original reference to the problem of quantum uncertainty (Broglie 1939: 179). Broad intimations have been drawn by Bohr with respect to the possible application of complementarity in the human sciences. Inspired largely by this premonition, a substantial body of physical scientists has turned their attention to the possibilities of extrapolation— or, more modestly, of analogy—from their “exact” inorganic science to the more complex and confused sciences of life and man. Bohr, himself the son of a distinguished physiologist, came to be scarcely less concerned with the analogies and implications of quantum theory for the study of life than with its inorganic matrix (Bohr 1934: 22–24). Nevertheless, hang-on mechanists continued insisting that life is a matter of production and control. But there were others who—like the philosophers of an earlier age and the quantum physicists of our own time—contended that the aim of any human science is finally to understand rather than to manipulate its subject matter, and that this understanding cannot but be the product of complementary or alternative approaches. Michael Polanyi describes the nature of this complementarity thus: The most important pair of mutually exclusive approaches to the same situation is formed by the alternative interpretations of human affairs in terms of cause and reasons. You can try to represent human actions completely in terms of their natural causes. . . . If you carry this out and regard the actions of men, including the expression of their convictions, wholly as a set of responses to a given set of stimuli, then you obliterate any ground on which the justification of those actions or convictions could be given or disputed. You can interpret, for example, this essay in terms of the causes which have determined my action of writing it down or you may ask for my reasons for saying what I say. But the two approaches—in terms of causes and reasons—mutually exclude each other. (Polanyi 1951: 22)

The point is that the two alternative perspectives are mutually exclusive if applied simultaneously, but mutually compatible if considered as opposite sides of the same coin. They are different faces of the same reality. This implies that rigorous physical and mathematical descriptions may be something less than complete or universally applicable

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either in the study of the quantum world or of human behavior. Put another way, the principle of complementarity in its analogy to human affairs is not so much what it says, as who is saying it: the most profound intellectuals in the most exact sciences, the product not of poetic inspiration but of sober scientific observation and experiment. What we have from Borges with respect to complementarity, I would suggest, is a provocative combination of Aleph-Zahir (or Funes), Lönnrot-Tlön, subject-object, particular-general (nominalismrealism), Menard-Cervantes, and possibility-actuality (“wave functionparticulate”). But before returning directly to Borges, let me briefly encapsulate certain aspects of the new physics that have a bearing on his work. At the turn of the twentieth century, Ernst Mach repeatedly warned, “science does but construct a model of what our senses tell us about Nature, and . . . mechanics, far from being necessarily the ultimate truth about Nature as some believe it to be, is but one aspect from which that model may be regarded” (qtd. in Dampier 1943: 317). In fact, Mach the phenomenalist once went so far as to say that “physicists are on the surest road to becoming a church . . . I hereby abandon the physical manner of thought, I will be no longer a regular physicist” (qtd. in Frank 1945: 104). In a comparable vein, Jeans remarks that a scientific model “is only a hypothesis, introduced into science by physicists who, taking it for granted that everything must admit of a mechanical explanation” (1958: 101). What, in the final analysis, is the consequence of abstract, formalized theories and their accompanying models? For Arthur Eddington, they are like a fishnet that is incapable of catching and accounting for certain types of fish, namely, certain types of ichthyosaurs: Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of ichthyological knowledge, and is not part of the kingdom of fishes which has been defined as the theme of ichthyological knowledge. In short, what my net can’t catch isn’t fish. Or—to translate the analogy— “if you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods.” (Eddington 1939: 16)

Jeans takes us down the road of the modern mind, with a “bias towards mechanical interpretations.” This may be in part “due to our early scientific training; part perhaps to our continually seeing everyday objects behaving in a mechanical way, so that a mechanical explanation

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looks nature and is easily comprehensible.” Yet, “the outstanding fact would seem to be that mechanics has already shot its bolt, and has failed dismally, on both the scientific and philosophical side” (1958: 179). In other words, mechanism’s “fishnet” could not grasp and explain some of the most important aspects of the world. Jeans points out that it behooves the physicist to remember that “there is a wide measure of agreement which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality” (1958: 181). We see once again that the mechanical mode was quickly withering. Full development of what Jeans refers to as a nonmechanical reality would depend on fecund scientific imagination, with a healthy shot of mathematics and thought experiments for a chaser. In other words, scientific imagination is in need of artistic imagination. Indeed, just as scientific imagination is in need of artistic imagination, so also artistic imagination can pattern scientific imagination. This story has been told time and time again. Regarding the twentiethcentury scientific paradigm switch, texts abound suggesting how painting patterns the emergence and development of Relativity and Quantum Theory (see references to the humanities in note 1). Concerning narrative, few writers convey the notion of paradigms and paradoxes of science more lucidly than Borges’s artistic-scientific imagination. Linear, sequential, superpositivist, hyperphenomenalist thinking is likely no more effectively portrayed than in Funes’s perceptual and mental aplomb. Even the Zahir reveals the limitations of one perceptual grasp of the world after another in linear series. Funes and Zahir, which mechanically push along the rail of perceiving and naming, are objectivist through and through. However, our strange mentalistic-idealistic Tlönian nominalists hardly fare any better. What they see is what they bring into existence, one perceptual bite after another and from one moment to another. But as soon as they forge what is, it is not: it is negated; its diametrical opposite enters and hogs the scene, at least for a moment, complementarily speaking. Even the Magician of “The Circular Ruins,” capable of creating an imaginary son and presumably interpolating him into the physical world, in the final analysis, proves his own incapacity: he realizes that he is also a figment of another mind’s imaginary construct. But after the story has been told, we become aware that what remains is mind, and mind alone. In this vein, Jeans once wrote, [T]he universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into

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the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. (1958: 181)

Jeans went on to present his notorious argument that since the universe has the appearance of a great thought, it must be a thought in the mind of a “Great Mathematician.” Many physicists summarily disregarded or dismissed Jean’s speculative proclamation; nevertheless, it is by and large congenial with scientific philosophy espoused during the years of the quantum revolution (Matson 1964). Along comparable—and complementary—lines, we have Lönnrot’s dilemma. Funes and the Zahir attend to concrete particulars “out there” and the Tlönians to particulars “in here.” Lönnrot, in contrast, is exceedingly more ambitious. He will accept nothing less than a consideration of the world in terms of iron-clad universals. He is a hypothetico-deductivist of the first order. As far as he is concerned, the world follows a precisely symmetrical and logically clear and distinct structure that yields the most rigorous order. His “fishnet” is like an inflexible wire basket that, he believes, catches the world’s essence completely and consistently. Scharlach knows better. Neither Lönnrot’s space nor his time are perfectly symmetrical. Like the world’s transient substance, there is always a blemish somewhere in the symmetry; there is always either inconsistency or incompleteness, or both. Consequently, Scharlach is quite easily able to catch Lönnrot in his tragic flaw. And yet, not a small number of early twentieth-century scientists would wish to replace the machine with mind, even thought they had become disenchanted with the machine model. We find this notion most trenchantly put forth in the above quote from Jeans. Eddington writes in this respect that “all the laws of nature that are usually classed as fundamental can be foreseen wholly from epistemological considerations. They correspond to a priori knowledge, and they are wholly subjective” (1939: 57). Eddington did not mean all knowledge is subjective, he meant only epistemological theory, knowledge of the world and knowledge of that knowledge, this he dubbed “selective subjectivism” in which subjective items of experience strongly predominate over objective content. Now we are approximating Tlönian mentalism. Or perhaps more precisely, Tlönian metaphysics, the whole of which contains possible doctrines and their antidoctrines, the combination of which leave nothing, zilch, the void. This is tantamount to mysticism, for which Borges took a liking. Physicists during the early years of quantum theory were notorious for their wandering interests in human issues. This even includes

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mysticism, of the Aleph sort, where there is no longer any subject/ object split. Wolfgang Pauli’s interest in the occult led him to explore the influence of archetypal concepts in the development of physical theories (Jung and Pauli 1955: 149–240). Schrödinger’s study of Eastern and Western philosophy prompted him to write extensively on mystical and metaphysical issues (1954, 1964). Eugene Wigner (1970), Heisenberg (1958a), and Jordan (1944) developed new thrusts in the philosophy of science and its ethical and social applications. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1980) pondered the relationship between Eastern metaphysics and Western science. And Einstein (1950) frequently alluded to the bond between science and religion. As a result of these deterritorialized forays, and with mind rather than machine as a viable model that was creeping in here and there, the role of consciousness in the physical world was eventually entertained. Some of Schrödinger’s words are especially revealing in this respect: It is the same elements that go to compose my mind and the world. This situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of “cross-references” between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. (1967: 137) [C]onsciousness is that by which this world first becomes manifest, by which indeed, we can quite calmly say, it first becomes present; that the world consists of elements of consciousness. (1964: 40)

De Broglie also felt keenly about the role of consciousness: Science is therefore a strange sort of penetration into a world which through human consciousness and reason has learned to become aware of itself. (1962: 221) Even the most exact of all the natural sciences, in Physics, the need for margins of indeterminateness has repeatedly become apparent—a fact which, it seems to us, is worthy of the attention of philosophers, since it may throw a new and illuminating light on the way in which the idealizations formed by our reason become adaptable to Reality. (1939: 281–92)

In his own way, Einstein the realist offers his now classic speculation, that, from the view of the conceptualizing mind, whether it exists aloof from the world or not, is the author of world portrayals: The system of concepts is a creation of man [and woman] together with the rules of syntax, which constitute the structure of the conceptual

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systems. . . . All concepts, even those which are closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen conventions, just as is the case with the concept of causality. (1949: 13)

In the course of developing a new concept of the physical world, speculations and their appropriate inferences by noted physicists can be summarized thus: (1) physical theory cannot be complete until consciousness is somehow introduced as an active element, (2) quantum theory cannot but be interdependent, interrelated, and interactive with consciousness, (3) consciousness can somehow influence the world, to however minimal a degree, and (4) more extensive and reliable data on the interaction of consciousness with physical systems must be forthcoming before such interaction can become a component in scientific theory. The final say from the quantum perspective is not forthcoming, and likely it will not be available to us in the near future, given the nature of the complex, mind-numbing quantum quandary. Nevertheless, the quantum adventure seems to point toward the notion of flowing into one another of Cartesian subject and object, and mind and world, and the interdependent, interrelated interaction of consciousness with that which in the physical world is becoming in such a way that it is becoming something other than what it was becoming. Does this sound like a paradox. Of course! That is why it is of the nature of the quantum quandary. It was not without reason that Bohr often said that on first being introduced to quantum reality, if you do not experience conceptual vertigo you have not understood it at all. Some of Borges’s characters in their own way pattern failures of the scientific community to acknowledge the implications of quantum theory. Funes looked out on his world as if he were in possession of a “view from nowhere” (Nagel 1986). The Zahir as a sign remains divorced from the physical world and entrenched in language as if it were no more than a floating signifier, a sign out of some Saussurean nightmare (merrell 1996). Lönnrot has no doubts about his hypothetico-deductive prowess, and so he conducts his conceptual affairs as if the world were no more than an autonomous mind in the sense of the British neo-Hegelians (Bradley 1897). The Library of Babel’s inhabitants and victims of the Lottery of Babylon scurry about and agonize over their sorry lot in a cold, impersonal, alienating world that remains for them incomprehensible. Even the character Hladik in “The Secret Miracle” (1962a)—who, standing in front of the firing line when the command to fire bullets was given, was granted “time” by God’s act of stopping “time” for a year so that he could finish the

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play he was working on—mentally finished writing and revising his opus as if he were completely detached from it. In all cases, subject/ object and mind/world rule. Also, in all cases as well, the characters are a pathetic bunch. If, according to an assertion above, even terms in Cartesian dualisms are perpetually in interdependent, interrelation interaction, then there must be some form of coparticipation in the world’s self-organizing process. And so there is, according to many early and later giants of quantum theory, especially in the work of John Archibald Wheeler, as also mentioned in passing. Let us begin with Heisenberg: [I]n the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by man [and woman]. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility Descartes could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the world and I impossible. (1958a: 81)

And over to de Broglie who says, The ⌿ function [Schrödinger function in “wave mechanics”], in fact, does not represent something which would have its place in a point of space at a given instant considered, of the physical reality that [the physicist] studies; there is nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that the function varies from one observer to another. (1955: 131)

Indeed, if we take these two quotes at face value we are forced to conclude that the whole of the universe is interconnected—like the Aleph. It is not interconnected in terms of a static fabric, but as a flow, a process. Let us listen to Hermann Weyl: Between the physical processes which are released din the terminal organ of the nervous conductors in the central brain and the image which thereupon appears to the pg subject, there gapes a hiatus, an abyss which no realistic conception of the world can span. It is the transition from the world of being to the world of the appearing image or of consciousness. Here, we touch the enigmatic twofold nature of the ego, namely that I am both: on the one hand, a real individual which performs real psychical acts, the dark, striving and erring human being that is cast out into the world and its individual fate; on the other, light which beholds itself, intuitive vision, in whose consciousness pregnant with images and

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endowed with meaning, the world opens up. Only in this “meeting” of consciousness and being both exist, the world and I. (1934: 19–20)

Where is the place of this ego, this consciousness of which Weyl writes? Heisenberg offers a clue with an image that has become stock in trade among quantum theorists: “The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole” (1958a: 107). If there are few lines of comparability between Relativity and Quantum Theory, as some physicists believe, others hold that both theories are in agreement on one important issue. In Henry Margenau’s words, both theories “conceive physical reality as represented by continuous fields, not mechanically explicable” (1949: 253). And what do these continuous fields hold? Pure possibilities of the “Garden of Forking Paths” sort, that is, the universal wave function (Quantum Theory) or the space-time manifold (Relativity), according to how we conceived it. This also includes ourselves. Schrödinger put it beautifully: “The reason why our sentient, percipient, and thinking ego is met nowhere in our world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is ITSELF that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it” (1967: 138)—that is, Lönnrot’s failure coupled with the Aleph’s promise. Eddington often reiterates in his writings that the stuff of the world is “mind-stuff ” as well as physical-stuff; Einstein tells us that insofar as mathematics interrelates with reality, it is vague, and insofar as it is precise, mathematics does not interrelate with it; Heisenberg repeats his dictum that our knowledge is not directly of the world but of our knowledge of the world. In the big picture, the inclination has it that every part of the whole is tantamount to that whole. Where in Borges do we find this idea of the whole the parts of which are tantamount to that whole? Above all, in that archetypal story, “The Aleph” (1970). The Aleph is a self-contained, self-sufficient whole, it is the whole universe, past, present, and future. Yet it is contained within the universe, for there it is, giving itself up to Daneri’s contemplation. It is a matter of the universe imaging itself and seeing itself all in one whack. Borges reconstructs a couple of apparently diametrically opposed yet complementary concepts, nominalism and realism, condensed in those two strange objects, the Zahir and the Aleph. This pair of concepts actually embodies the Argentine fabulist’s intellectual leanings: Borges is

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a fox (as author of the Zahir) who nurtures nostalgia for the simplicity and certainty of the hedgehog (as author of the Aleph) (Wheelock 1969: 24). The fox is a wily nominalist who slips in and out of the numbing complexity of particulars, while the hedgehog is a realist who desires to see everything—through the same tinted goggles—in terms of their relatively simple universal properties. The conflict is essentially between a plurality of simples and the complex singularity of a holistic “universal vision,” that is, between the Zahir and the Aleph. The Aleph is the whole, presumably containing those particulars to which the Zahir is capable of referring. The Aleph also affords a mystical vision, as Daneri testifies, and following him Tzinacán of “The God’s Script,” as well as Borges’s account of quasi-mystical happening in “A New Refutation of Time” (1962a). However, there is still a problem here. In view of the above quote from the “Garden of Forking Paths,” there are virtually countless possible timelines, all of which are actualized to then take off along their own tangential paths. The whole—according to Borges’s story, the many-worlds interpretation, and to the general holistic view of the universe of Relativity and Quantum Theory—is not merely what is, but also what could have been and will have been, though it is not, at this particular space-time slice. In other words, the idea behind the “Garden of Forking Paths,” like that of the “Many Worlds Interpretation,” consists of all possibilities actualized. It entails a mind-numbing array of particularities (such as the Zahir) making up a remarkably coherent and consistent whole (such as the Aleph). This is utterly astounding! And confounding. As I see it, the only way we can come to grips with this predicament is by way of Bohr’s complementarity. Oppenheimer has a few words in this regard: [W]hen a student of physics makes his [/her] first acquaintance with the theory of atomic structure and of quanta, he [/she] must come to the rather deep and subtle notion which as turned out to be the clue to unraveling that whole domain of physical experience. This is the notion of complementarity, which recognizes that various ways of talking about experience may each have validity, and may each be necessary for the adequate description of the physical world, and yet may stand in mutually exclusive relationship to each other, so that to a situation to which one applies, there may be no consistent possibility of applying the other. (1954: 189)

Of course complementarity was originally intended for use in describing mutually exclusive aspects of the quantum world such as waves and particles. However, Born writes that the fact that in “an exact science

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like physics there are mutually exclusive and complementary situations which cannot be described by the same concepts, but need two kinds of expression, must have an influence, and I think a welcome influence, on other fields of human activity and thought” (1956: 107). This notion was entertained by a number of physicists during the early years of quantum theory, most notably Bohr himself. It is chiefly the possible ramifications of this notion that led Wheeler to his conception of the quantum universe and the macroscopic universe, both in terms of coparticipation. Wheeler’s development of this hypothesis came after Borges’s time. Yet, the idea, however vague, emerged in many speculations on the implications of quantum phenomena. From Heisenberg we read that “in the Copenhagen interpretation . . . we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals but we cannot disregard the fact that . . . natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning” (1958a: 81). Elsewhere he tells us that “our experiments are not nature itself, but a nature changed and transformed by our activity” (1966: 81). And Bohr adds, “The development of atomic physics, which forces us to an attitude toward the problem of explanation recalling ancient wisdom, that when searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators” (1949: 236). As has been implied, the common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and mind, no longer holds: they imply complementary rather than binary interrelations. Even in the most abstract sciences, “the object of research is no longer nature itself, but man’s investigation of nature. Here, again, man confronts himself alone” (Heisenberg 1958b: 24). That was during the first decades of quantum theory. In recent times, if we allow Ilya Prigogine his say, we are no longer alone, but rather, we now have the possibility, at long last in Western science, to enter into a grand “dialogue with nature” (Prigogine and Stengers 1983). If I might avail myself of Eddington’s livid image, We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own. (1978: 200–01)

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It is like the quantum concept of subatomic “events.” As far as our knowledge goes, is there is a wave function? Yes and no. Is it particulate? Yes, and no. But the answer is also neither yes nor no to both questions. It is neither the one nor the other because in their combination the two mutually exclusive perspectives must include something else, all other wave functions and particles, including the observer herself, and all other observers, actual and possible. Everything is wrapped up into the universe’s self-organizing process, as a whole. Borges concurs, in his complementary combination (1) of Funes, the Zahir, and the Tlönians as realistic or idealistic hypernominalists, (2) of Emma Zunz, the Magician, and Hladik, as constructors of their worlds, worlds that either became “real” or stood no chance of becoming “real” because they assumed a detached posture with respect to their constructions, and (3) of the Aleph, Tzinacán’s mystical experience, and Borges’s moment of epiphany. What happens when we combine them? We end up with everything canceling everything else to leave us nothing, zilch, emptiness, as in Borges’s provocative essay, “Everything and Nothing” (1962a). This is like the universal wave function with the implication that virtually anything is possible and nothing is (yet) actual or materialized. It is the image offered by the “Garden of Forking Paths,” where every possibility is always already there, in the “dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel” paths, all of which move out tangentially along a vertiginous array of paths. We tend to lose sight of the fact that individuality, the thingness of things, ourselves included, is not possible except by severing and mutilating the whole. Without this severance, we are like the character of “The South” (1962b) and the end of Borges’s story: an individual gaucho who is at one and the same time all gauchos—that common Borgesian theme anew. An impressive number of physical scientists have turned their attention to the possibilities of extrapolating from the “hard sciences” into the life and human sciences, the “soft sciences.” The disparities between their efforts and those of their Newtonian predecessors, who ended in that abominable doctrine, “social Darwinism,” are scarcely less conspicuous than the theoretical differences between classical mechanics and the quantum view. Fortunately, twentieth-century scientists have not pressed for a systematic reduction of life and human societies to inorganic physical principles. Rather, they have pondered over the principles of complementarity, uncertainty, and the vagueness and ambiguity of mathematical applications to physical existence and, above all, to the limitations of knowledge (Bohr 1958: 62–64; Heisenberg 1958a: 154–55; Born 1956: 52; Weizsäcker 1949: 122–25, 172–74).

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These themes, I cannot overemphasize, are found throughout Borges’s writings: labyrinths that confound, vague allusions, disconcerting indeterminacies, thwarted teleologies, vacuous visions of omnipotence, all bringing us to an awareness of our unknowing knowing, our humble uncertainty.

Notes 1. For undecidability and the limitative theorems in mathematics and mathematical logic, see Nagel and Newman (1958), DeLong (1970), Kline (1980), Rescher and Brandom (1979), Stewart and Golubitsky (1992), for complementarity and uncertainty in science and mathematics, Bohr (1958), Capek (1961), Cartwright (1983), Denbigh and Denbigh (1985), Eddington (1958), Gibbins (1987), Gross (1990), Grunbaum (1967), Heelan (1983), Heisenberg (1958a), Hesse (1980), Jammer (1974), Jeans (1958), Melhuish (1967), Pagels (1982, 1988), Penrose (1989), Prigogine (1980), Redhead (1987), Schrödinger (1967), Smith (1995), Wheeler (1990), Wigner (1970), Zajonc (1993), for the science of complexity and the mathematics of chaos, Prigogine (1980), Stewart (1989), for ramifications in poststructuralism and the humanities, Hayles (1990, 1999), Plotnitsky (1994), Shlain (1991), Szamosi (1986), Waddington (1970), merrell (1985, 1991a, 1991b, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2003). 2. See “The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory,” reprinted in Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (1934); also “Causality and Complementarity” (1937), and “On the Notion of Causality and Complementarity” (1948).

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Stewart, Ian, and Martin Golubitsky. Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer? London: Penguin, 1992. Sullivan, J. W. N. The Limitations of Science. New York: Viking, 1933. Szamosi, Géza. The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Waddington, Conrad H. Behind Appearances: A Study of the Relations Between Painting and the Natural Sciences in this Century. Cambridge: MIT University Press, 1970. Waisman, F. “The Decline and Fall of Causality.” In Turning Points in Physics, 84–154. New York: Torchbooks, 1961. Weizsäcker, C. F. von. The History of Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949. ——. The Unity of Nature, trans. F. J. Zucker. New York: Ferrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980. Weyl, Hermann. Mind and Nature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934. Wheeler, John Archibald (1990). A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime. New York: Scientific American Library. ——. “Beyond the Black Hole.” In Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. H. Wolff. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1980a. 341–80. ——. Geons, Black Holes and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. ——. “Law without Law.” In Structure in Science and Art, ed. P. Medawar, and J. H. Shelley. Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica, 1980b. 132–68. Wheelock, Carter. The Mythmaker: A Study of Motif and Symbol in the Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969. Whitaker, Edmund. From Euclid to Eddington. New York: Dover, 1958. Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. New York: Mentor, 1948. Wigner, Eugene, P. Symmetries and Reflections. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970. Zajonc, Arthur. Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind. New York: Bantam, 1993.

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Carlos Fuentes’s Evolution Toward Ecological Awareness in His Essays and Narratives Alicia Rivero

Concerns about overdevelopment in Mexico and Latin America are constants in Carlos Fuentes’s writings. Nature also tends to appear in conventional ways as the background in many of his texts. However, Fuentes has progressed over time toward a genuine, ecological cognizance of the interdependence of all living things and the dangers of international pollution. He grants nature and women a significant role in at least some of his works, even if his stance is still lacking from an ecofeminist perspective, as we will see. Given constraints of space, this largely unstudied evolution of Fuentes will be explored only in a sampling of his representative narratives and essays from the 1980s and 1990s, especially those that have not received much critical attention, comparing them to earlier texts.1 I would date the turning point of this ecological awareness in his writings in the 1980s because Cristóbal Nonato [Cristopher Unborn] came out in 1987. Perhaps not coincidentally, during the mid-1980s environmental literary studies emerged as a recognized, academic field in an age of environmental crisis, even though isolated examples of ecocriticism can be found in the 1970s (Glotfelty, “Introduction” xvi–xvii) and even earlier.2 In fact, a major theme in Cristóbal is the threat to life that pollution poses for Mexico and for the world in general. A brief excerpt from Cristóbal was published in Artistas e intelectuales sobre el ecocidio urbano [Artists and Intellectuals on Urban Ecocide] in 1989, which was coedited by Homero Aridjis, an

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ecologically committed author. Artistas e intelectuales contains consciousness-raising texts by Mexican writers, artists, and scientists who want to call attention to the contamination of Mexico City’s air, soil, and water, thereby hoping to bring about positive changes to protect them. From Fuentes’s early works and those that came thereafter, there are characters who exist in accord or at odds with nature, though the results of this dichotomy are not always what one would expect. Ixa Cienfuegos in La región más trasparente [Where the Air Is Clear] is a good example of the type in accord with nature. In this respect, Ixa is similar to Jipi Toltec in the dystopian Cristóbal. Ixa is representative of Mexico’s mythic, Aztec past, whereas Jipi possesses aspects of demythologized, Aztec deities who are associated with nature, such as Xipe Totec3 and Quetzalcóatl. Cienfuegos is related to nature—not only does his name evoke fire in Aztec cosmology, but he also walks “como si no caminara, como si lo fuera empujando la brisa de verano”(122) [as if he were not walking, as if the summer breeze were pushing him].4 Yet, Ixa is not a character to be emulated because, like Jipi, he can be destructive to others. Ixa seeks to restore his country’s origins. Jipi’s goals are to avenge nature, punish Mexico for forgetting its roots and redeem his nation from its imitation of foreign consumption and overdevelopment.5 The Aztec past that Ixa and Jipi represent is not idealized by Fuentes, albeit our author does recognize the importance of his country’s indigenous ancestry that he evokes in La región and Cristóbal. Julio Ortega calls Ixa “un signo flotante, que interroga, registra, y devuelve las imágenes de la identidad problemática” (55–56) [a floating sign that questions, registers, and returns images of the problematic identity] of Mexico. Mexican identity also constitutes a basic theme in El espejo enterrado [The Buried Mirror], Valiente mundo nuevo [Brave New World], and other works by Fuentes.6 Nevertheless, nature is not foregrounded in La región as it is in Cristóbal or more recent texts. When the protagonist of La muerte de Artemio Cruz [The Death of Artemio Cruz] lived as an innocent child with Lunero by the river, Artemio existed harmoniously with nature and is described in natural terms: “Los reflejos verdes del río y los helechos húmedos acentuaban ese corte pálido . . . de la cara. Peinado por el río, el pelo se enriscaba. . . . El sol le había dado tonos de cobre. . . . Todo el tono de fruta verde corría por los brazos delgados y el pecho firme” (283) [The green reflections of the river and the wet ferns accentuated that pale cut . . . of his face. Combed by the river, his hair curled. . . . The sun had given him copper tones. All the tone of green fruit ran though

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his thin arms and firm chest]. The river becomes a leitmotif in the narrative; there are multiple references to Artemio crossing it with his son, Lorenzo. Artemio hopes to relive this Eden of yore vicariously through the figure of his son when Artemio returns to reclaim the homestead at Cocuya, but that paradise is lost to him, for he is now a corrupt and alienated adult. MaartenVan Delden indicates perceptively that in Cocuya, “Artemio’s nostalgia is for the life he had with Lunero. The world Artemio tries to recreate with . . . Lorenzo is in the first place one of intense proximity to nature. . . . Yet, in the end, he fails to free himself from the legacy of the Menchacas” (65).7 Water reappears in Una familia lejana [Distant Relations], but in this text Fuentes relates rivers to writing through Branly’s comments to Fuentes’s persona/namesake about the former’s view of the selfreflexive novel that contains them.8 When Branly explains the multiple narrators/authors of the novel to Fuentes, he refers to Hugo Heredia as “otro autor de esta narración, un río más de esta carta hidrográfica que estamos dibujando . . . usted y yo” (157) [another author of this narration, one more river of this hydrographic chart that you and I are drawing]. Whether it is depicted utopically in La muerte as part of Artemio’s remembrances or metafictionally in Una familia for Branly, nature has a secondary role, for it is couched in similes, metaphors, and images that allude to its significance for man. The same can be said of women in the majority of Fuentes’s writings. In “Las dos Américas” [The Two Americas], a short story from El naranjo [The Orange Tree], a fantastic Christopher Columbus lives in concord with the natural world until the multinational Paradise Inc. turns Antilia into a polluted resort, with “permission” coerced out of him.9 What is different in “Las dos” is that nature has at least somewhat of an active role in and of itself and is not just the background. This is evident in Columbus’s companion animal, a wolf he considers “mi lobo maestro” (258) [my wolf teacher], who instructs the marooned mariner on the interconnectedness of life and the ethical stewardship of nature: Yo miro las enormes orejas felpudas del lobo pardo que todas las noches se acerca a mi puerta. . . . Es el símbolo de la vida en el trópico, donde todo está preparado para vivir bien si se quiere prolongar la vida y respetar su flujo natural. Todo se vuelve contra uno, en cambio, apenas nos mostramos hostiles y queremos dominar, dañándola, a la naturaleza. Los hombres y las mujeres de mi nuevo mundo saben cuidar la tierra. (248) [I look at the enormous, plushy ears of the dun-colored wolf that approaches my door every night. . . . He is the symbol of life in the

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tropics, where everything is ready for living well if one wants to prolong life and respect its natural flow. Everything turns against one, however, as soon as we show ourselves to be hostile and we want to dominate nature, damaging her. The men and women of my new world know how to take care of the land.]

Columbus also gives import to the ecosystems of raptors and microorganisms, as well as to the state of the flora and fauna that he perceives in Antilia before and after the arrival of Paradise Inc. The devastation of nature, in addition to air pollution and other types of contamination that Paradise Inc. causes, constitute major themes in the work. Not only in “Las dos,” but also in Cristóbal and Valiente, Fuentes examines how human beings relate to other people, as well as to nature. Valiente affirms that man arrogantly believes he is “ ‘el amo de la Creación’ ” [“the master of Creation”], whereas he should realize that he has harmed nature and himself (105–06).10 In “Las dos,” woman is connected to the earth through Ute Pinkernail.11 Ute is killed simultaneously with the wolf. As they die, Columbus’s prized orange trees are destroyed, trees that he had, like his historical counterpart, introduced to the New World; from their juice he had nursed symbolically as if being suckled by breasts. Ute is a secondary character, but it is she who disabuses Columbus of the contamination and human rights abuses that Paradise Inc. started in Antilia. She reminds him of his responsibility for all of the injustice and pollution that Paradise Inc. has occasioned. Therefore, Ute assumes an active role, rather than just being a passive mediator, albeit she remains a sex object for Columbus. Cristóbal incorporates the motifs of Columbus and pollution that reappear in “Las dos.”12 Both narratives decry contamination, social injustice, and corruption by the powerful. By comparison to Ute, in some of Fuentes’s more recent narratives, women have become protagonists. Even though nature is not the principal theme in Los años con Laura Díaz [The Years with Laura Díaz], Laura is a more rounded female character than previous ones and there are assertions concerning ecology, nature, and development in the text that are of interest, as I will show later on. Most of the short stories in La frontera de cristal [The Crystal Frontier] share the leitmotifs of the exploitation and mistreatment of Mexican workers across the U.S. border or by North American firms in Mexico, such as “Malintzin de las maquilas” [Malintzin of the Maquilas] and “Río Grande, río bravo” [Rio Grande, Río Bravo]. Mexico itself is criticized for its treatment of the poor and for choosing

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to work for its economic self-interest, and failing to protect its people from foreign companies. Referring to the U.S. assembly plants in “Malintzin,” a Mexican businessman cynically admits to a North American that “Ustedes mismos, si en México les ponemos normas de medio ambiente, se van. Si aplicamos estrictamente La Ley Federal del Trabajo, se van” [You yourselves leave if we impose environmental regulations on you in Mexico. If we apply the Federal Labor Law strictly, you leave], the prevailing situation puts Mexico in a double bind (153–54). “La pena” [Pain] in La frontera discusses the period of the oil boom of the 1970s after significant petroleum deposits were discovered in Mexico. With its false sense of prosperity for Mexico and concomitant problems, the boom is a theme that is found in several of Fuentes’s essays and in some of his narratives, such as La cabeza de la hidra [The Hydra Head] and Cristóbal. Los años praises President Cárdenas for ridding Mexico of foreign companies, since the latter disregarded the consequences of the Mexicans’ lust for petroleum, consequences that would affect the Mexicans themselves. The novel cites a verse intertextually from López Velarde’s “La suave patria” [Sweet Land]—“los veneros del petróleo [te escrituró] el diablo” [oilfields (were deeded to you by) the devil]—without identifying the poem or poet who predicted the negative impact that petroleum would have on Mexico (285). Fuentes also uses López Velarde’s “La suave patria” as a leitmotif in Cristóbal,13 contrasting the poet’s almost utopian vision of his country in the past with the present dystopia in which vegetation has been decimated by acid rain, there have been oil spills, and the air, soil, and water are contaminated, as is evident in cities such as D.F. and Acapulco. A similar view of a polluted, dystopian Mexico City is evident in Aridjis’s ¿En quién piensas cuando haces el amor? [Whom Do You Think of When You Make Love?] In several of his works, Fuentes probes how uncontrolled industrialization and modernization are problematic for developing nations such as Mexico. For instance, in Valiente he points out that instead of the miracles promised by “magos capitalistas, marxistas o económicamente mixtos . . ., la vida urbana de la América Latina es el espejo fiel de una situación generalizada de injusticia económica y deformación social” [capitalist, Marxist, or economically mixed magicians . . ., Latin America’s urban life is a true mirror of widespread economic injustice and social deformation] (15–16), which the D.F. exemplifies in many of the texts we will plumb. In Tiempo mexicano [Mexican Time], Fuentes refers to the “Pepsicóatl” generation, which he later renames in Cristóbal “Opepsycola” [OPECsycola (referring again to

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the oil boom)], as a way of censuring models of development and consumption imported by Mexico; he alludes to North America through the Pepsi Cola brand contained in these neologisms. In La frontera de cristal, a short story by the same title describes air pollution in Manhattan and a type of biodegradable glass cleaner that Mexican window washers there insist on using, because “Aquí uno se muere de cáncer nomás de respirar” [Here one dies of cancer just by breathing] (214). Contamination in D.F. is merely mentioned in “La pena.” “La apuesta” [The Bet] talks about the contaminated air in Mexico City, whose topography does not help, for its mountains trap smog, which is contrasted to the pristine atmosphere of Cuernavaca. The theme of air pollution in D.F., more fully elaborated by Fuentes in Cristóbal, resurfaces in Los años. There are lyrical descriptions of plants and of the land in many of Fuentes’s texts that do not foreground nature. Jorge Maura’s soul is like a desolate landscape, while skyscrapers are soulless in Los años. The leitmotif of the desert is often contrasted to the sea or to the Río Grande in several tales of La frontera. Metaphorically, cities can be alienating deserts for their inhabitants, as are, for instance, Detroit and the D.F. in Los años. The concrete jungle of Manhattan’s urban landscape appears in the story “La frontera de cristal.” Life in the cities is viewed as artificial in “La raya del olvido” [The Line of Oblivion] and natural light is preferred to the bright artificial lights of the cities in Los años. People are compared to the land in La frontera. In a patriarchal mode, nature is seen as female (as Mother Earth); conversely, females are perceived as nature in “La raya,” similar to Ute Pinkernail in “Las dos.” In Los años, a parallel is established between women and the jungle. Laura’s deceased grandmother Cosima, whose soul is embodied in a white crow, offers Laura a beautiful vision of the jungle landscape. There is a pre-Columbian goddess hidden there, a goddess she often evokes nostalgically. Women are associated with trees such as the ceiba [silk-cotton tree]. This tree, which alludes to Aztec mythology,14 protects itself with thorns sharp as knives so no one will embrace it. Laura feels close to nature and needs to be in contact with it when she finally returns to the old family estate to perish in the jungle; she considers the ceiba to be a protective mother and embraces it, fully cognizant of her self-inflicted end. Laura’s aunts, Hilda and Virginia, whose deaths she partially imitates, commit suicide by disappearing into the jungle. For Fuentes, nature and its relation to human beings is epitomized in Los años during Laura’s journey to the childhood jungle of her adult demise: “la naturaleza nos sobrevive y nos pide no ser dueños sino

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parte de ella, regresar a ella” [nature survives us and asks us not to own her, but to be a part of her, to return to her] (587). Los años provides a sarcastic perspective of development, technology, and industry that dehumanizes workers. Autos and trains are seen negatively, even nefariously, for example, when the painter Frida Kahlo, a character in the text, is “raped” by a train in the horrible accident that incapacitated her for life. Detroit, a city with denuded trees under a sooty sky, is “el holocausto urbano, la promesa de las ciudades inhabitables” [the urban holocaust, the promise of the inhabitable cities] (20). It heralds the future of Latin American cities “en el presente de la urbe industrial más industrial de todas” [in the presence of the industrial metropolis, the most industrialized of all], Detroit (13). As in Cristóbal, the D.F. becomes the paragon of this type of city in Los años. Cynthia Deitering points out that in the nineteeth century, nature was considered a “spiritual healer,” whereas for most of the twentieth century, society “valued nature as an economic resource” (201). More recently, texts suggest that we live in a “postnatural world” with a superficial need for nature (201). Instead of figuring as an Heideggerian “standing reserve” of resources, nature is viewed as already exhausted in a postnatural world of waste and decay (2000–2001). Deitering adds that the toxic landscape is used as a metaphor for a contaminated, natural world that “transmogrifies one’s experience of the earth itself” as our “primal home” (196, 200). Characters in toxic texts are “poised on the precipice of an epistemic rupture—between knowing the earth as ‘the landforms, flora and fauna which are the home in which life is set’ and knowing the earth as a toxic riskscape” (200). Furthermore, concern about the toxic environment “seems to function . . . both as a cultural metaphor for a society’s most general fears about its collective future and as an expression of an ontological rupture in its perception of the Real” (197). Toxic consciousness, then, is a way of perceiving one’s complicity in “postindustrial ecosystems, both personal and national, which are predicated on pollution and waste” (197). Even though Deitering examines North American fiction, many of her sagacious comments can be fruitfully applied to Fuentes’s texts and to those of other Spanish American authors. For instance, in Fuentes’s “Las dos,” Ute and Columbus display the toxic consciousness that Deitering discovers in North American texts; it is equally evident in Cristóbal. Garbage, a theme in some of Fuentes’s narratives, is another good example of Deitering’s postnatural world. In Cristóbal, the D.F.’s mountains of garbage, its human and industrial wastes, become a leitmotif throughout the novel. The dump in

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Chalco that made it possible for Serafín Romero to survive as a child is antithetical to the clean dessert he smells in “Río Grande” in La frontera. This story also draws a parallel between sick people and garbage, for in the filthy sea of the city’s humanity, the ill become the flotsam of its littered shores. Faris suggests that “the negative implications of the city as a collective protagonist reinforce criticism of urban society. Strong individuals with integrity do not flourish there. The rise to wealth and power seems inevitably to involve a moral fall” (“Cities and Towns” 6). Likewise, this sort of decadence is often evident in La región, La muerte, Cristóbal, and Los años. Nature in the city and the country is contrasted in Los años, as in the case of the sub-tropics in Tepoztlán, whose soothing, natural sounds and landscape Fuentes juxtaposes over against the irritating, artificial ones of the city. In the D.F., old architecture is torn down to give way to urban sprawl and poverty, although Los años also provides poetic descriptions of the Mexican landscape. Detritus and the grotesque homelessness of the denizens of Detroit and later on of the D.F. are censured in the novel, standing in stark contrast to the jungle that the protagonist loved as a child or to the luminous Catemaco in which young Laura was raised. The postnatural urbanscapes of the D.F. become the focus of Laura’s photos, eloquent testimonies of her time, for which she becomes famous. The perfume of Cuernavaca’s flowers is described idyllically, but also scatologically due to Cuernavaca’s abnormal toxicscape: “Era una naturaleza perturbada, olorosa a bugambilia y verbena, a piña recién cortada y a sandía sangrante, olores de azafrán pero también de mierda y basura acumulada en los barrancos hondos que rodeaban cada vergel, cada barrio, cada casa” [It was a perturbed nature, not only fragrant with bougainvillea and verbena, recently cut pineapple and bleeding watermelon, smells of saffron, but also reeking of excrement and accumulated garbage in the deep ravines that surrounded each garden, each neighborhood, each house] (452). The riskscapes of Cuernavaca and Veracruz also enter into this comparative scenario. The last text by Fuentes to which I will refer briefly is a good summary of his position and of what we have observed. In “Hacia el milenio” [Toward the Millennium], he states that the commitment Mexico and Latin America need to make with respect to the planet’s ecological survival and the prevention of “ecological suicide” is asegurar la supervivencia ecológica a pesar de las repetidas agresiones contra los muros pacientemente levantados de nuestra casa común, la Tierra. Lagos y vías fluviales, bosques y tierras, se están muriendo a una

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velocidad sin precedente. Crece el hoyo de la capa de ozono, los mares van a hervir, empieza a llover vinagre desde el cielo y corremos el riesgo de perder el delicado equilibrio de la biosfera. . . . En México, llevamos varias generaciones ya envenenando el agua, negándoles renovación a los bosques, degradando los suelos y sobreexplotando a las especies. La caridad empieza por casa. La reforma a una economía depredadora, también. (16) [to ensure ecological survival in spite of the repeated aggressions against the patiently put up walls of our common house, the Earth. Lakes and waterways, forests and lands are dying at an unprecedented rate. The hole in the ozone layer grows, the seas will boil, it is beginning to rain vinegar from the sky and we run the risk of losing the delicate balance of the biosphere. . . . For several generations already, in Mexico we have been poisoning the water, preventing forests from renewing themselves, degrading the soil, and overexploiting species. Charity begins at home, as do reforms to a predatory economy.]

This is the threat and the challenge that the double-edged promise of sustainable development holds for Mexico and for other developing nations.

Notes 1. My current book project, Nature in Latin(a) American Literature: Ecology, Gender, and Race, analyzes said topic in greater detail than is possible here. 2. See Mazel. 3. Reyes-Tatinclaux studies the connection of Jipi to Xipe Totec, but not to other Aztec gods. 4. See Van Delden 24–26. All of the translations of quotes are mine. Translated titles of works in print appear as they have been published. 5. See Rivero, “Columbus’ Legacy” 316. 6. See, for instance, Boldy, Filer, Méndez-Ramírez, Ordiz Vázquez, and Trejo Fuentes. 7. See also Van Delden 63–64 and 66. 8. See Faris, “Devastation” 175. 9. See Rivero, “Ecocide.” 10. See Meeker 42–45, 49, 63 and Elgin 9 on the egocentric way one often regards nature and the consequences of such a perspective. 11. The representation of woman as nature has been debated extensively by feminists and ecofeminists over the years in terms of its negative and positive connotations. For example, see Kolodny, Merchant, and Legler, among others. 12. See Rivero, “Carlos Fuentes’ Dystopia” and “Ecocide.” 13. See Rivero, “Columbus’ Legacy” 317.

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14. Hall connects the ceiba not only to Aztec mythology, but also to Diego Rivera’s mural, “Detroit Industry,” which interweaves both (210–11). He and this painting are featured prominently in Los años.

Works Cited Aridjis, Homero. ¿En quién piensas cuando haces el amor? Mexico DF: Alfaguara, 1996. Aridjis, Homero, and Fernando Césarman, eds. Artistas e intelectuales sobre el ecocidio urbano. Mexico DF: Consejo de la Crónica de la Ciudad de México, 1989. Boldy, Steven. “Facing Up to the Other: Carlos Fuentes and the Mexican Identity.” Third World Quarterly 10 (1988): 289–98. Deitering, Cynthia. “The Postnatural Novel: Toxic Consciousness in Fiction of the 1980s.” In The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. 196–203. Elgin, Don. “Literary Fantasy and Ecological Comedy.” In The Comedy of the Fantastic: Ecological Perspectives on the Fantasy Novel. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985. 3–30. Faris, Wendy. B. “Cities and Towns: The Development of a Collective Voice.” In Proceedings of the Xth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association/Actes du Xe Congres de l’Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée (New York 1982), ed. Anna Balakian. New York: Garland, 1985. 3–13. ———. “Devastation and Replenishment: New World Narratives of Love and Nature.” Studies in the Humanities 19.2 (1992): 171–82. Filer, Malva. “Los mitos indígenas en la obra de Carlos Fuentes.” Revista Iberoamericana 50 (1984): 475–89. Fuentes, Carlos. Los años con Laura Díaz. Mexico DF: Alfaguara, 1999. ———. La cabeza de la hidra. 1978. Mexico DF: Joaquín Mortiz, 1985. ———. Cristóbal Nonato. Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987. ———. El espejo enterrado. Madrid: Taurus, 1997. ———. La frontera de cristal: una novela en nueve cuentos. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1995. ———. “Hacia el milenio.” In México 2000: Los compromisos con la nación, ed. Carlos Fuentes et al. Mexico, DF: Plaza y Janés, 1996. 9–37. ———. La muerte de Artemio Cruz. Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1962. ———. El naranjo. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1993. ———. La región más trasparente. 1958. Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1963. ———. Tiempo mexicano. 1971. Mexico DF: Joaquín Mortiz, 1973. ———. Una familia lejana. Mexico DF: Era, 1980. ———. Valiente mundo nuevo: Épica, utopía y mito en la novela hispanoamericana. Madrid: Mondadori, 1990.

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Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis.” In The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, 1996. xv–xxxvii. Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Hall, Nancy A. “Dreaming a Mural of Mexico: Fuentes, Rivera, Siqueiros.” In Studies in Honor of Enrique Anderson Imbert, ed. Nancy A. Hall and Lanín A. Gyurko. Newark, DE: 2003. 207–20. Kolodny, Annette. “Unearthing Herstory: An Introduction.” In The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. C. Glotfelty and H. Fromm. 170–81. Legler, Gretchen T. “Ecofeminist Literary Criticism.” In Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, ed. Karen J. Warren. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. 227–38. Mazel, David, ed. A Century of Early Ecocriticism. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2001. Meeker, Joseph W. The Comedy of Survival: In Search of an Environmental Ethic. Los Angeles: Guild of Tutors, 1980. Méndez-Ramírez, Hugo. “Estrategias para entrar y salir de la globalización en La frontera de cristal de Carlos Fuentes.” Hispanic Review 70.4 (2002): 581–99. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989. Ordiz Vázquez, Francisco J. “Carlos Fuentes y la identidad de México.” Revista Iberoamericana 58 (1992): 527–38. Ortega, Julio. “Carlos Fuentes: Los lenguajes de la ciudad.” Taller de Letras [Chile] 27 (1999): 53–62. Reyes-Tattinclaux, Leticia. “Cristóbal Nonato: ¿Descubrimiento o clausura del Nuevo Mundo?” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 30 (1989): 99–104. Rivero, Alicia. “Carlos Fuentes’s Dystopia: Cristóbal Nonato.” Ometeca: Humanities and Science 8.1 (2004): 113–32. ———. “Ecocide in Paradise: The Turn of the Century in Fuentes’ ‘Las dos Américas.’ ” Latin American Literary Review 63.32 (2004): 5–23. ———. [Rivero-Potter]. “Columbus’ Legacy in Cristóbal Nonato by Carlos Fuentes.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 20 (1996): 305–25. Trejo Fuentes, Ignacio. “En busca de la mexicanidad.” Quimera [Barcelona] 68 (1987): 28–33. Van Delden, Maarten. Carlos Fuentes, Mexico, and Modernity. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998.

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Life Signs: Ricardo Piglia’s Cyborgs J. Andrew Brown

Ricardo Piglia’s La ciudad ausente (1992) [The Absent City] has received a considerable amount of critical attention in the ten years following its publication, including chapters or sections in three of Duke University Press’s most recent books on Latin American culture and narrative.1 This attention has confirmed Piglia’s prominent position in Latin American (specifically Argentine) contemporary narrative landscape, a position that he established with his 1980 novel Respiración artificial [Artificial Respiration] and that he has maintained with his most recent novel Plata quemada (1997) [Burnt Silver]. La ciudad ausente’s combination of science fiction and exploration of the aftermath of dictatorship, along with its innovative use of a mechanical female narrator, has served as one of the principal focal points in Piglia criticism to date. Francine Masiello opens her analysis of intellectuals and cultural minorities in Argentina with Piglia’s image, commenting that “Piglia, who otherwise has earned considerable respect as one of Argentina’s main intellectual forces, obliges us in this recent novel to think of the ways in which women are transformed by a technological culture in order to serve the political and esthetic projects of men” (239). Masiello’s 1994 characterization of machine technology as a masculine tool for the transformation of women is contested to some degree by Eva-Lynn Jagoe’s article in which she reads the image in a much more positive light: “The gendered machine’s role is powerful, a symbol of possibility, of resistance. Stories create identities. To speak the horror is to resist, to create languages that deconstruct ideas of individuality. . . . She is all the stories, and she is the teller of all the stories. Technology is the storyteller” (7).2 Other critics, while not focusing on the image of the female

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machine, always include reference to it as evidence of Piglia’s ongoing interest in science fiction.3 The power of the image, especially when understood in the light of Donna Haraway’s influential articulation of a feminist cyborg myth, would seem to extend Masiello’s initial reaction along lines Jagoe suggests. While such is indeed the case, I would argue that the presentation of Piglia’s mechanical narrator simultaneously excludes and alters other essential aspects of current cyborg theory. That is, the focus on the machine narrator and its connections with Haraway’s cyborg myth, while enlightening in many respects, is also somewhat problematic when one considers the other real and metaphorical cyborgs, male and female, that populate the novel as well as an accompanying meditation on the cybernetic nature of narrative. If Piglia’s use of a female machine to narrate his novel activates both the gender-focused analysis Jagoe suggests as well as the criticism Masiello argues, the image of the cybernetic organism he develops is one that also explores the nature of the traumatized body within an oppressive political state. When examined along these lines, La ciudad ausente suggests a reading of the possible cyborgs that populate Piglia’s earlier work, principally his novel Respiración artificial. In all cases we see an articulation of cyborg and posthuman identity that, while participating in (and anticipating) much of the theoretical work undertaken by U.S. and European thinkers, proposes new and different directions in our understanding of the mechanized body, especially in a Latin American context. La ciudad ausente begins with Junior, an Argentine journalist of English descent, who is drawn into investigating a mysterious museum purported to hide an equally mysterious machine. As he does so, he encounters several characters who tell him stories that branch out from the narrative line of Junior’s inquiry. When he arrives at the museum, he continues in that mode, able now to combine his reading of the various stories with the exhibits that complement and expand the written texts that he discovers. As the journalist’s investigation develops, he learns that the museum does indeed house a story-telling machine inhabited by the consciousness of one Elena, the deceased wife of the Argentine writer Macedonio Fernández. This Elena, now a machine, turns out to be the narrator of many of the stories that Junior came across along the way, not to mention of the novel itself. The novel concludes with a monologue explicitly evocative of Molly Bloom’s meditations at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses. One of the stories she tells, “Los nudos blancos” [“The White Knots”], works in counterpoint to the main narrative. The story is that of a woman, also named Elena, interred in a mental institution

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who believes that she is a machine. She and the other patients in the clinic suffer interrogation and torture disguised as therapy at the hands of the doctors there, in a thinly veiled allusion to the human rights violations of Argentina’s most recent military dictatorship. Elena resists the torture but is forced to observe as friends and associates also undergo both the torture and the ubiquitous mechanical surveillance that defines the hospital where she is trapped. The story functions as both a microcosm for the rest of the novel, as well as a possible alternate explanation for the Elena-machine that Junior finds in the museum. If the machine Elena is not the narrator, the patient Elena may well be, a possibility that is never ruled out. In addition to the central image of the Elena/Machine enclosed in the museum, an image of one who also exists—either literally or figuratively—in the clinic, the novel provides several examples of what cyborg theorists might term posthuman identity. Many of the characters in the intercalated stories appear as bodies not easily defined as separate from the machines and other technologies that surround them. In one story, “La nena,” [“The Young Girl”] a girl who possibly suffers from autism, perceives the world through her experience with the spinning fans in her room and is described as “una máquina lógica conectada a una interfase equivocada” (54) [a logic machine connected to the incorrect interface] (48). In the previously mentioned story, “Los nudos blancos,” the women in the clinic describe themselves as indistinguishable from the tubes and medical machinery that substantially alter their sense of being. Nor are the cyborgs all women. A Russian friend of Macedonio Fernández who appears near the end of the novel is described as more metal than flesh as a result of his many battle wounds. He exists as a kind of walking robot whose prostheses keep his body functioning, while they simultaneously serve as medals of honor commemorating his several battles. The novel itself appears as a kind of mechanism akin to the cyborgs that inhabit it, a network of stories, intertextual references and mirrored events and images that exists not in a single textual “body” but in the relationships between the different narrative lines. While we will explore each of these points in more detail later, to understand better the revision of cyborg theory that Piglia’s novel proposes, we should turn briefly to an analysis of cyborg and posthuman theory as it currently stands, and especially of cyborg identity as Donna Haraway has imagined it. Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” has been particularly influential in the cultural theory of the past decade. The revolutionary possibilities of the boundary-crossing cybernetic life forms that fuse organic body

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with mechanical prostheses, both real and metaphorical, have found an important place in much of postmodern thought where the rigid hierarchies of earlier systems of thinking have come under criticism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri hold up her ideas as visionary and influential in their description of Empire, noting that “Donna Haraway’s cyborg fable, which resides at the ambiguous boundary between human, animal, and machine, introduces us today, much more effectively than deconstruction, to these new [revolutionary] terrains of possibility” (218). The hybridity she describes as central to cyborg identity has become emblematic of late twentieth-century postmodernity, and her work has been extended and developed by many critics and theorists, especially those who work on issues of posthuman identity. N. Katherine Hayles, in her 1999 book, How We Became Posthuman, explains that this hybridity is essential to the conception of the posthuman: The posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals. (3)

It is important to note that posthuman identity includes both the physical reality of flesh fused to metal and the metaphorical combinations that occur in the daily interactions between organic body and technology. Posthumans can have artificial implants, but they can also have an identity based on the relationship between them and their machines. It is the seamlessness between the organic and the technological parts of the body, the absence of traditional boundaries that keep humans, machines, and animals in their previously assigned places, that identifies and empowers posthuman and cyborg identity. Haraway specifically describes the cyborg as female, a machine-animal hybrid with important possibilities for the women’s movement, well suited to challenge the hierarchies she sees as inherent in patriarchal capitalism. Haraway defines cyborg identity in the following manner: A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. . . . The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. (149)

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Haraway combines the hybridity, the seamlessness, of the posthuman identity (one that Hayles would later describe) with the revolutionary role of feminist theory. In that sense, the cyborg ideal suggests an alternate societal construction that would afford, according to Haraway, a way to escape the oppression perpetuated in noncyborg societies. One of the sources of the cyborg’s power lies in its avoidance of Western notions of origin and unity and subverting traditions that maintain these boundaries, despite the presence of machines that hark to the military-industrial complexes that first generated them. Again, Haraway explains, The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. This is its illegitimate promise that might lead to subversion of its teleology as star wars . . . . The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. (151)

Haraway’s cyborg occupies, then, a central (if one can use such terminology while talking about cyborg theory) role in theories of gender and revolution that are against accepted power structures. Her cyborg views origin stories as immaterial to the struggle against “patriarchal capitalism,” dismissing its provenance as inessential to the power of its myth. If cyborgs were first conceived within capitalism, their hybrid bodies erase the father as neatly as they avoid the familial structures that have provided the meaning for terms such as “father” and “mother.” As theorists of the posthuman Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston have argued, the posthuman body is also a “postfamilial” body (10). It is also for this reason that Haraway’s theories have been used persuasively in the analysis of texts that propose similar revolutions in the construction of gender. At first consideration, the machine Elena appears to fulfill Haraway’s characterization of cyborg identity, confirming Jagoe’s observation that “La ciudad ausente, is, in some senses, the postmodern text that Haraway invokes, and with that label comes the problematic of politics, of deciding the use-value of this text, whether it is liberating or repressive, both or neither” (8). Elena’s double existence either as the woman interned in a mental clinic who believes that she

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is a machine, or as the actual machine in the heart of the “museo,” [museum] contributes to a sense of the cyborg that Haraway suggests. Her hybrid nature functions as a threat to the masculinized hierarchies suggested by the doctors in the clinic and the officials of the state. The experience of the clinic in “Los nudos blancos” strongly reinforces on several levels the connection between the cyborgs proposed by Piglia and Haraway. In the clinic, Elena not only constructs herself as a machine, but is also presented as a kind of medicalized cyborg, the patient whose continued life depends upon the artificial support of various medical devices. In both cases, the machine woman is viewed as dangerous and is contained and questioned within a clinic that bears a close resemblance to the Argentine police state of the 1970s and early 1980s. On one occasion, Doctor Arana, the psychiatrist, interrogates Elena in such a way as to make the historical reference clear: —Hay que operar —dijo—. Tenemos que desactivar neurológicamente. —Arregla televisores— dijo Elena. —Ya sé —dijo Arana—. Quiero nombres y direcciones. Hubo una pausa, en el consultorio los vidrios blancos del armario reflejaban el vaivén del ventilador. —Hay un telépata —dijo Elena—. Me sigue y me lee los pensamientos. Se llama Luca Lombardo, viene de Rosario, todos le dicen el Tano. Si digo lo que usted me pregunta, va a hacer estallar las microesferas que tengo implantadas en el corazón. —No sea imbécil —dijo Arana—. Se ha vuelto psicótica y tiene un delirio paranoico. Estamos en una clínica de Belgrano, esto es una sesión prologada con drogas, usted es Elena Fernández. —Se detuvo y leyó la ficha:—Trabaja en el Archivo Nacional, tiene dos hijos. —Estoy muerta, él me trasladó aquí, soy una máquina. —Vamos a tener que aplicarle un electroshock —le dijo Arana al médico que tenía cara de bebé. (79) [“We have to operate,” he said. “We have to disactivate her neurologically.” “He repairs television sets,” Elena said. “I know,” Arana said. “I want names and addresses.” There was a pause. The white glass of the cabinet in the consulting room reflected the spinning fan. “There’s this telepath,” Elena said. “He follows me around and reads my thoughts. His name is Luca Lombardo, he’s from Rosario, everyone calls him the Tano. If I tell you what you are asking me for, he is going to blow up the microspheres implanted in my heart.” “Don’t be stupid,” Arana said. “You have become psychotic and are in the middle of a paranoid delirium. We are in a clinic in the

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neighborhood of Belgrano, this is an extended drug session, you are Elena Fernández.” He stopped and read her chart. “You work in the National Archives, you have two children.” “I am dead, he moved me here, I am a machine.” “We are going to have to use electric shock treatment on her,” Arana said to the doctor with the baby face.] (69)4

Throughout the questioning, the woman’s body is described as machine-like, not merely in her own protestations where she identifies herself as machine, but also in the reference to deactivating her brain as doublespeak for the questioning that would follow. The electroshock therapy is especially disturbing, a clear reference to the use of the picana [electric cattle prod] as a central element in the Argentine military’s torture machine. In addition to her cyborg characteristics, Elena’s stay in the clinic, combined with her interrogation and the figurative (perhaps real) torture implied by the electric therapy, presents her as emblematic of the body of the desaparecido/a [disappeared] in Argentine history.5 The combination of the cybernetic images that construct Elena’s identity with her role as symbol of the so-called subversive element in 1970s Argentina further strengthens the representation of Elena as an example of Haraway’s cyborg myth. She functions as the feminized hybrid figure whose existence contests the categories imposed by a masculine society. Furthermore, Elena’s continued existence suggests the kind of resistance that Haraway identifies as essential to the cyborg and that theorists such as Hardt and Negri have championed in their consideration of cyborg identity. Piglia unites the physical imagery of the cyborg that characterizes Elena in both her guises as machine and patient with a consideration of the cybernetic language as used in the novel and even of the nature of narrative itself, a strategy that Bratosevich has called an “estética cibernética” (215) [cybernetic aesthetic]. La ciudad ausente contains at least seven different stories that Junior encounters, as well as several more told by Elena to herself that exist both as separate narratives and as thematically and situationally related stories. The web-like structure of the novel suggests an almost hypertextual experience of reading, an idea suggested by the image of Junior in the museum, seeing the paintings and exhibits that reproduces the images of the stories he reads. Note, for instance, Junior’s observations of the museum after emerging from a story that tells of a woman who abandons her family and commits suicide in a hotel: En el Museo estaba la reproducción de la pieza del hotel donde se había matado la mujer. En la mesa de luz vio la foto del hijo apoyada contra

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el velador. No recordaba ese detalle en el relato. La serie de los cuartos de hotel aparecía reproducida en salas sucesivas. [ . . . ] Lo asombraba la fidelidad de la reconstrucción. Parecía un sueño. Pero los sueños eran relatos falsos. Y éstas eran historias verdaderas. Cada uno aislado en un rincón del Museo, construyendo la historia de su vida. (“Una mujer” 49) [The room in which the woman committed suicide was reproduced as a picture in the Museum. Junior saw the picture of the son against the lamp on the night table. He did not remember this detail from the story. The series of hotel rooms was reproduced in successive halls. [ . . . ] He was astonished by the precision of the reconstruction. It seemed like a dream. But dreams were false stories. And these were true stories. Each one isolated in a corner of the Museum, building the story of their lives.] (“A Woman” 43)

The series of exhibits that provide a visual confirmation of the story suggests a vision of writing where meaning appears at the juncture of image and text; Junior sees, for example, a photo in the exhibit that forces him to rethink his reading of the story. We see this character negotiate potential meanings between image and text, as provided by a device designed to deliver content in accordance with that reader’s decisions. Junior receives the narrations as related by a machine (museum) that encloses both the texts and the apparatus that permits their reading. Junior becomes a kind of hypertextual reader: he is told the stories by a truly cyborg narrator, even as he participates as a kind of writer/reader (or “wreader” as some hypertext theorists would have it), moving from story to story and making connections between his physical location (the museum) and the stories that he encounters.6 In that same sense, Elena as a biomechanical narrator also becomes the mechanical element of a kind of cyborg “wreader” that also incorporates an organic Junior and the mechanical museum/ textual repository within her own biomechanical body. Mark Amerika has argued that hypertext opens a space for a “cyborg-narrator” whose creation of “discourse networks” serves as the basis for the new narrative form (Ryan, 9). Piglia not only describes a figurative hypertextual situation, he also provides the literal cyborg-narrator. In that sense, Junior’s experience as a reader becomes that of Baudrillard’s museum visitor. This critic observes, For example, some museums, following a sort of Disneyland processing, try to put people not so much in front of the painting —which is not interactive enough and even suspect as pure spectacular consumption— but into the painting. Insinuated audiovisually into the virtual reality of the Déjeuner sur l’herbe, people will enjoy it in real time, feeling and

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tasting the whole Impressionist context, and eventually interacting with the picture. (22)

Junior’s insertion in the museum and the stories it exhibits produces a situation in which text is presented as a kind of virtual reality, a reality made all the more virtual by Junior’s own position as a character within the novel that Elena narrates. If Baudrillard saw such a virtual reality as negative, as a kind of device designed to imprison the masses, Junior’s experience as a reader is even more ambiguous, caught within the text, but not necessarily forced into submission by a controlling state.7 In that sense, Junior appears to benefit from what hypertext theorists have identified as the narrative form’s liberating potential. George Landow has argued: “As long as any reader has the power to enter the system and leave his or her mark, neither the tyranny of the center nor that of the majority can impose itself” (281).8 Junior’s discovery of narratives that the state has attempted to suppress suggests that his hypertextual reading experience promises similar revolutionary possibilities. While Junior’s position as reader within the museum suggests the hypertextual nature of his reading experience and the web-like structure of the novel, Piglia reinforces the image of mechanical language with many of the stories that Junior examines. The cyborg girl in “La nena” speaks like a machine, “canturreando y cloqueando, una máquina triste, musical,” her limited linguistic abilities revealing the mechanical sounds at the foundation of language [singing softly, clucking, a sad music machine] (58). The section called “La isla” [“The Island”] is especially indicative of this characteristic, a story about an island where languages change from day to day and the only reliably decipherable book is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (since it is written in all languages at once). The inhabitants attempt to read the book biblically, using what they can glean from it to form belief systems and scientific approaches to language. In all their attempts, the idea of language appears as a fake, mechanical construct that is at once impossible to control and hopelessly artificial. The language of the island is described as follows: El carácter inestable del lenguaje define la vida en la isla. Nunca se sabe con qué palabras serán nombrados en le futuro los estados presentes. A veces llegan cartas escritas con signos que ya no se comprenden. A veces un hombre y una mujer son amantes apasionados en una lengua y en otra son hostiles y casi desconocidos. Grandes poetas dejan de serlo y se convierten en nada . . . (121)

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[The unstable character of language defines life on the island. One never knows what words will be used in the future to name present states. Sometimes letters arrive addressed with symbols that are no longer understood. Sometimes a man and a woman are passionate lovers in one language, and in another they are hostile and barely know each other. Great poets cease being so . . .] (102)

The unstable meanings of the constantly shifting languages accentuate the tenuous relationship between sign and meaning and by doing so, create a sense of artificiality, one that we see in the conceptualizations of narratives proposed by Junior, the cyborg “wreader,” and Elena his narrator. The island narrative serves, then, as a microcosm of the novel, contrasting the linguistic systems of the island-dwellers with the narratives produced by the cyborg narrator. This section of the novel also emphasizes once again the revolutionary potential of language when situated against the state. As Francine Masiello has observed in her more recent analysis of La ciudad ausente: “Insofar as the machines always translate from language to language, they facilitate a subversive communication that eludes the market-run state” (2001:165). With the novel’s attention to cybernetic themes, and more importantly, with its attention to the idea of language as cybernetically organized, La ciudad ausente functions as what David Porush calls “cybernetic fiction.” This critic explains, Therefore, not only do these authors confront technology—and in particular cybernetics—thematically, they also focus on the machinery or technology of their fiction, remaining uniquely conscious that their texts are constructed of words, that words are part of the larger machinery of language, and that language is shaped by the still larger machinery of their own consciousness and experience. Yet paradoxically, each of these texts calls attention to itself not merely as a machine but as a fictional work. . . . Because both the theme and form of this sub-class derive from cybernetics, I call it cybernetic fiction. (19, italics in original)

In turn, Hayles has observed the impact of cybernetic theory on literature to be of an even greater extent, arguing that the mechanical form of the text is inseparable from the meaning that a reader infers. In her book Writing Machines, this critic shows how the materiality of the text, be it a book, a hypertext, or something else entirely, combines with the text’s theme to challenge notions of human and textual identity. Essentially, the physical presence of the text recasts the work in terms of the reader’s relationships with the textual and technological

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machinery that delivers the language. With its combination of a cyborg narrator and a hypertextual “wreader”—recalling, if not actually influenced by Haraway’s model, La ciudad ausente—would appear to propose just such a rethinking of narrative theory. In that sense, Piglia’s novel seems to present itself as a poster-child for contemporary cultural theory, at least if it were really that easy to fit literary texts within already established cultural theory. However, cultural production precedes theory much more effectively than it incorporates it. In fact, it is precisely at the point at which a machine literally narrates his novel that we begin to observe a marked tension between literary cybertheorists and the Argentine novelist’s project. La ciudad ausente is still a traditional book; it does not allow the actual reader options like a hypertext narrative would, nor does it create for him or her a virtual reality. What Piglia’s novel does is provide are the tools for the reader trapped inside the novel. If it is Junior who becomes a “virtual” reader, one who acts out the implications of hypertext, the real reader of La ciudad ausente cannot access these same opportunities or possibilities. The book is, then, a paradoxically virtual novel, one in which the technological experience described is “virtual” only because it is not. In a fashion Baudrillard would have enjoyed, virtuality, like everything else in the work, is a simulacrum and the novel remains a traditional, paperbound volume that only pretends to offer hypertextual possibilities. This surprising ambiguity in the narrative’s own hypertextual possibilities suggests similar wrinkles in the novel’s exploration of cyborg identity through the bodies that populate the text. While Piglia develops an image of the cyborg consistent with many of Haraway’s ideas, a closer look at La ciudad ausente reveals an expression of cyborg identity that is peculiarly Argentine. Jagoe claims that “In this novel, women are cyborgs: they are dolls, statues, figures in mirrors, machines. Their easily programmable identities invoke a postmodern ideal of heterogeneity and fluidity of identity, yet it is always up to the men whether this retelling of the woman will be an act of love or an act of torture” (8). While such a statement is generally accurate, it tends to exclude the implications of the male cyborgs that also populate the novel (8). If we include in our examination the male-gendered cyborgs of Piglia’s novel, we better perceive the theory of an Argentine cyborg that Piglia attempts to present, not only in La ciudad ausente, but also in his earlier Respiración artificial. Near the end of the novel, Junior discovers the story of the conversion of Elena the human being into Elena-cyborg. Upon her death, Macedonio both relates and relates to the story of an anarchist who

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had sacrificed himself during a bombing in order to save an innocent family, an event his friend Rajzarov witnessed firsthand. The bomb had left the Russian alive, but horribly disfigured. Macedonio sees the pain of that series of events as akin to the pain he felt at the death of his wife. The narrator notes, “El que ha perdido a la mujer amada queda como el hombre al que le estalla una bomba en el cuerpo y no muere” (152) [A man who has lost his beloved wife is like a man who has had a bomb go off inside his body, but who still remains alive]. As he undergoes such trauma, Macedonio begins to experience a transformation in his identity, a transformation that the narrator describes immediately after relating the tale of the anarchist: Macedonio se sentía un hermano del impetuoso Rajzarov, que estaba hecho de metal más que de vida. Su dentadura de acero centelleaba al hablar, bajo su peinado había una placa de plata, un enrejado de oro entretejía un tatuaje tridimensional en medio de los leves despojos de cartílago y hueso que le quedaban en la articulación de la rodilla derecha, un sello de dolor hecho a mano, cuya forma siempre sentiría como un recuerdo doloroso y a la vez el círculo de fuego libertario, una condecoración de combate que llevaba con el máximo orgullo por ser invisible y estar grabada en su cuerpo. [ . . . ] Macedonio había quedado así, metálico, maltrecho, sostenido con operaciones y prótesis, el mismo dolor, el mismo cuerpo rehecho artificialmente, porque Elena de golpe estaba ausente. Congelado, de aluminio, caminaba con los brazos y las piernas separados del cuerpo, como un muñeco de metal, no podía sonreír ni alzar la voz. (152–53) [Macedonio thought that the impetuous Rajzarov was like his brother, that Russian who was made more of metal than life. His steel teeth sparkled when he spoke, he had a silver plate in his head, a gold lattice interwoven like a three-dimensional tattoo held together the few strands of cartilage and bone that were left in his right knee—a manmade badge of pain that he would always recall simultaneously as a painful memory and as a circle of liberating fire, a medal of honor that he carried about with the utmost pride. [ . . . ] That is how Macedonio had ended up, metallic, impaired, held together by operations and prostheses, the same pain and the same body artificially reconstructed, because Elena was suddenly absent. Frozen, made out of aluminum, walking as if his arms and legs did not belong to his body, like a metal doll, he was unable to smile, he could not raise his voice.] (126)

Rajzarov becomes the visual manifestation of Macedonio’s grief. Rajzarov’s scars, steel teeth, and the silver plate in his head serve as reminders not only of the violence the Russian suffered, but also of the trauma that Elena’s death caused Macedonio. Rajzarov’s literal

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prostheses transform into Macedonio’s figurative artificial body, a body made cyborg not by physical violence, but by the emotional injury of grief. In both cases, the posthuman body comes into being because of trauma, be it physical or psychological or both. Pain becomes the defining characteristic of the birth of the cybernetic organism. The presentation of Rajzarov as cyborg, and as a model for the identity that Macedonio begins to construct in a post-Elena reality, contributes to a vision of the cyborg that extends and transforms Haraway and Hayles’s ideas in an Argentine context. Rajzarov functions as a cyborg whose amalgamated body works against its own hybrid nature. All of the metal prostheses, instead of fusing with his flesh to produce a new identity, merely testify to the violence of their origins. That is, the mechanical prosthetics act as grotesque replicas of the human body and constantly remind the human beings, in this case both Rajzarov and Macedonio, of the trauma that brought this hybrid body into existence. Cyborg identity for Piglia becomes the identity of the violated and injured body whose mechanical appendages merely signal the absence of living tissue, rather than the presence of a new kind of cybernetic life. If Rajzarov views his injured body with pride, the artificial parts functioning as war medals, Macedonio’s psychological conversion into a figurative cyborg suggests a negative interpretation of the prosthetics. Despite the difference in reaction, both see the metallic components as symbols of violence and suffering. Macedonio’s sense of self as artificial is grounded completely in the trauma of his being separated from his wife. His survival is compared with the prosthetic arm that always fails to replace the real one, a prosthesis whose mere presence constantly signifies the traumatic experience that caused the loss of the still-preferred living arm. The cyborg bodies of Rajzarov and Macedonio are complemented and contrasted with the description given by Doctor Arana, the psychiatrist in “Los nudos blancos,” who is responsible for the care of Elena in the clinic. Elena describes him as he enters her room: Sabía que la Clínica era siniestra, pero cuando vio aparecer al doctor Arana se le confirmaron las premoniciones; parecía estar ahí para hacer reales todos los delirios paranoicos. Cráneo de vidrio, las venas rojas al aire, los huesos blancos brillando bajo la luz interna. Elena pensó que el hombre era un imán donde se incrustaban las limaduras de hierro del alma. (66) [She knew the Clinic was a sinister place. When Doctor Arana came in, he confirmed her worst fears. He seemed to be there just to make every single paranoid delirium come true. A glass skull, the red windows

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facing out, white bones shining in the artificial light. Elena thought the man was a magnet that attracted and drew the iron shavings of the soul to itself.] (58)

Arana appears as a kind of medical robot, his parts disassociated from any kind of living body and transformed into a monstrous magnetic machine. She later remarks on his aluminum teeth, a comment that further distances Arana from any kind of organicity (72). If Elena, Rajzarov, and Macedonio appear as truly cybernetic organisms, hybrids of human being and machine, Arana is a kind of pure robot that embodies only the mechanical side of their, and especially Elena’s, cyborg nature. He is, then, strongly associated with the exercise of political power in his interrogations of Elena, his complicity with state terror clearly linked with his mechanical nature. Furthermore, Arana highlights the connection that Piglia forges between mechanical imagery and the police state. The suggestion provided by these three male examples, Rajzarov, Macedonio, and Arana, is that the subversive power of cyborg identity does not necessarily lie in the boundary-challenging hybridity of its body, but in the fact that the cyborg body inherently testifies to trauma. The cyborg becomes a remembering figure that can never forget the dismembering reasons for its prosthetic grafts and metallic replacements. Indeed, it views those apparatuses as the by-products of torture. Haraway’s characterization of the fusion of flesh and technology as “pleasurably tight coupling” seems wildly inappropriate here (152). The power of the cyborgs’ hybridity that Piglia creates comes because their undead bodies cannot be buried and forgotten. Their artificial lives continuously reveal their violent origins and, for this reason, they continue to threaten the cultures and regimes of silence that have plagued Argentina. They also suggest a different way of reading Elena’s cyborg body, one that seems to engage Haraway’s ideas and then extends them within a view of cybernetic identity that is specific to its Argentine context. Understood in that sense, the electroshock therapy that Elena receives in the clinic and that represents the torture suffered by the victims of the dictatorship gains further significance. While “Los nudos blancos” makes reference to that therapy, the novel also refers to the actual acts of electroshock torture that had become commonplace in twentieth-century Argentina. Toward the end of the novel, Junior encounters a museum exhibit dedicated to the son of the poet Leopoldo Lugones. Named after his father, he achieved notoriety as a police chief who “pioneered” the use of the cattle prod in police

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questioning and torture. The narrator reports, En el Museo Policial había una sala dedicada a la vida del comisario Lugones, llamado igual que su padre, Leopoldo Lugones (hijo) que fundó la Sección Especial e introdujo una mejora sustancial en las técnicas argentinas de tortura, usó la picana eléctrica, que tradicionalmente se había empleado con las vacas para embarcar el ganado en los trenes ingleses, meterlas en los bretes, la usó en el cuerpo desnudo de los anarquistas encadenados de los que quería obtener información. (160) [In the Police Museum there was a room dedicated to the life of Lugones, the chief of police, whose name was the same as his father’s, Leopoldo Lugones. He founded the Special Division and introduced a substantial improvement to the torture techniques utilized in Argentina: he took the electric prod, which was traditionally used with cows to direct the cattle up the short ramps and into the English trains, and used it on the naked bodies of the shackled anarchists from whom he wanted to get information.] (131–32)

The exhibit recalls the electroshock therapy suffered by Elena and the other patients in “Los nudos blancos,” strengthening the already established connection between the psychiatric clinic and the Argentine police state. It simultaneously anticipates a remark made by Elena a few pages later in the Molly Bloomesque monologue that concludes the novel, where she completely reveals her mechanical nature: ¿Y ahora quién está ahí? ¿Fuyita? ¿Russo? No, quién va a venir a esta hora, sos loca, por qué esperás, te morís de cáncer, sos otra loca más, una loca cualquiera al borde de la muerte y ahora siento como un golpe de corriente, el suave refucilo en las vértebras, el electroshock que hacía empalidecer de terror a mi hermana María. (167) [And now who’s there? Fuyita? The Russian? No, who would come around here at this time of day, you’re crazy, what are you waiting for, you’re dying of cancer, you’re just another crazy woman, a crazy nobody waiting at the edge of death. Now I feel like there’s a current blowing, the soft flash of lightning in my vertebrae, the electric shock that used to make my sister María turn white with fear.] (137)

These apparent ramblings ambiguously position Elena’s voice both within the clinic of “Los nudos blancos” and near the point at which Elena, wife of Macedonio, would succumb to disease. She succumbs at a time when Macedonio would be converted into the sort of cyborg described earlier, with her death from cancer figuring as the traumatic experience that linked Macedonio’s robot feelings with Rajzarov’s metallic scars and gave birth to the novel’s specific brand of cyborg

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identity. Furthermore, the inclusion of the electric shocks in those ramblings associates the police torture with the moment of cyborg birth. That is, the traumatic events that caused Macedonio to become posthuman and, in turn, to create a cyborg Elena are, through a kind of textual metonymic, made equal to the trauma of torture on the victim’s body. The electricity that tortures and scars the flesh simultaneously converts that body into a cybernetic organism. The picana serves, then, as the sexual prosthesis of the mechanized state, one that begets the cyborg body on the feminized (though not necessarily female) organic body of the victim. With that kind of horror present at the inception of the cybernetic body, the mechanical appendages and prosthetics, those elements that make Piglia’s cyborg a cyborg, become the scars of torture and the testimonies to the violence that brought it into being. It is because of the testimonial nature of Piglia’s cyborg body that it is so subversive, a kind of Frankenstein’s monster whose presence continually reminds the viewer of the artificial experiments performed on violated flesh that gave the creature its existence.9 The mechanized police state must attempt to contain the body, not because the cyborg challenges the limits or boundaries of what is human and what is machine (the state already did that in the torture chamber): it must contain the cyborg body because it is a continual witness to the horrors of the past and the crimes of the mechanical father. It is in that representation of the subversive nature of the cyborg body that we see most clearly a theorization that extends beyond the ideas presented by Haraway and others. That is, the illegitimate cyborg is unfaithful to its militaristic father not because it makes the father unnecessary, but because it refuses to let that father disappear into postdictatorship oblivion. The cyborg is the traumatized storyteller, whose remembered and remembering body recalls the trauma and horror of dictatorship and state-sponsored terror in the face of national attempts to forget the past. At the same time, the machine half of the hybrid is constructed as the remnant of the mechanical father, a horrible grafted emblem of pain that the living body suffers as a continual reminder of the living tissue that was destroyed by that father. The posthuman body’s hybridity is not embraced as inherently positive; it merely exists as the inevitable painful result of state-induced trauma. In that light, the origin stories that Haraway rejects are, for Piglia, an essential element of cyborg identity. It should not surprise us, then, that Piglia names Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s La Eva futura [The Future Eve] as an important source for La ciudad ausente, a text whose use of a female robot reinscribes Western origins, rather than erase them.10

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Additionally, this theorization of the Argentine cyborg invites a reevaluation of one of the characters of Piglia’s earlier novel, Respiración artificial, not to mention of the book title itself. Respiración artificial has been regarded as one of the principal novels of the Dirty War period: its combination of investigation of fear and oppression with a decidedly postmodern textual aesthetic marks it as one of principal novels of late twentieth-century Argentine narrative. Brett Levinson calls the book “one of the most profound literary meditations on nationalism and dictatorship in the Latin American Southern Cone” (91). The novel details, roughly, an investigation conducted by Piglia’s alter ego Renzi, an intellectual character who appears throughout much of Piglia’s narrative. Renzi’s investigation into Argentina’s past is accompanied by letters and diaries that include episodes from the nineteenth century, a strategy that emphasizes the hybrid nature of a text moving constantly between the 1830s and 1970s. The first page begins with the phrase “¿Hay una historia?,” [Is there a History/Story?] and Renzi’s subsequent search mirrors the search for those individuals and their histories who were made absent during the most recent military dictatorship in Argentina. The novel’s publication at the lowest point of the dictatorship makes its critique of intellectual life and history during the Dirty War all the more powerful. At one point in his investigation, Renzi is hired by a man named “El Senador,” a former politician who has played an active role in many of the Argentine governments of the twentieth century. The description of the Senator anticipates many of the details of the cyborg identity that Piglia would describe more fully in La ciudad ausente. Y uno de sus entretenimientos, dijo, “es pasear con mi carrito, mi carricoche, mi berlina, de un lado a otro, de una pared a otra, en mi silla de ruedas, por este cuarto vacío. Porque ¿en qué se ha convertido mi cuerpo sino en esta máquina de metal, ruedas, rajos, llantas, tubos niquelados, que me transporta de un lado a otro por esta estancia vacía? A veces, aquí donde reina el silencio, no hay otra cosa que el suave ruido metálico que acompaña mis paseos, de un lado a otro, de un lado a otro. El vacío es total: he logrado ya despojarme de todo. Y sin embargo es preciso estar hecho a este aire, de lo contrario se corre el riesgo de congelarse en él. El hielo está cerca, la soledad es inmensa: sólo quien ha logrado, como yo, hacer de su cuerpo un objeto metálico puede arriesgarse a convivir a estas alturas. El frío, o mejor”, dijo el senador, “la frialdad es, para mí, la condición del pensamiento. Una prolongada experiencia, la voluntad de deslizarme sobre los rayos niquelados de mi cuerpo, me ha permitido vislumbrar el orden que legisla la gran máquina poliédrica de la historia.” (53–54)

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[And one of his diversions, he said, was “to wander around in my wheelchair, my rattletrap, my stagecoach, from one place to another, from one wall to the opposite one, in my wheelchair in this empty room. Because my body is now no more than a machine made of metal, wheels, spokes, tires, nickel-covered tubes, which transports me from one end of this empty room to the other. Sometimes here in this kingdom of silence there is no noise other than the smooth metallic hum that keeps me company on my excursions, back and forth. The emptiness is absolute: by now I have managed to give up everything. And yet one must be prepared for the thin air, otherwise one runs the risk of freezing in it. The ice is close by, the solitude is immense: only someone who has managed, as I have, to turn his body into a metallic object can risk living at these altitudes. The cold, or rather,” said the Senator, “coldness is for me propitious for thought. Prolonged experience and the desire to slip between the nickel spokes of my body have granted me the possibility of glimpsing the order that rules the polyhedral machine of history.”] (51)11

The Senator’s metallic body appears in conjunction with the emptiness to which this figure aspires, while the mechanical nature of his identity is inextricably linked with the solitary nature of power and the great machine of history that he claims to understand. The Senator has achieved a sense of identity, not unlike that described by Hayles, where the entire body is considered as one more prosthetic assembly. At the same time, this process of cyborg conversion is one in which the flesh is slowly eliminated and replaced by metal. In this case, the positive, or even neutral, fusion of elements that Haraway and others ascribe to posthuman identity does not occur and the flesh/technology hybrid remains, rather, a failed, unreconciled dialectic. If we read Respiración artificial from the anachronistic vantage point of La ciudad ausente, we see a similar kind of cyborg in the identity of the Senator. In this case, the character’s wheelchair continually reminds both the Senator and those that view him of the assassination attempt that put him there. The Senator appears as one whose mechanical parts signify his close association with the historical power structures that dominated Argentine politics during the twentieth century. The clear and important difference between the Senator as cyborg and Elena as cyborg is that the mechanical testimony that the Senator’s cybernetic body gives is of his own political crimes, while Elena’s body testifies to the crimes committed by the state against the body of the oppressed. That said, the testifying function of the cyborg body is the same. In Respiración artificial, we see the beginnings of a posthuman theory that adds an Argentine perspective to the work being

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conducted in the United States and Europe, while anticipating much of the writing on cyborg identity that would appear more than a decade later.12 Piglia’s cyborg Senator additionally suggests an alternate interpretation of the title of Piglia’s first novel. Most critics have, justifiably, read the title as a reference to the state of Argentina under dictatorship, a nation in such bad shape that it needed artificial respiration in order to continue breathing. The cyborg theory that these two novels propose suggests a complementary reading of the title, one in which breathing persists in the presence of the artificial. In that sense, the cybernetic combination of breath and artificiality suggests a cyborg Argentina whose respiration tells the stories of hybrid life created by the aggression of the artificial state. Levinson notes that the Senator’s voice “is his only movement, the very sign that he is alive” (111). The cyborg’s continued breath manifests signs of life in the face of the violence that has given birth to its prosthetic existence. This emphasis on the signs of life that emanate from the cyborg embodies the earlier paradox we noted in the development of the virtual hypertext. The human figures that are at once caught within the hypertextual machine and are yet essential to its function complement the living breath of the cyborgs who use their bodies to testify to the violence of their creation. Idelber Avelar has described convincingly the role of mourning in Latin American fiction and specifically in Piglia’s first two novels. This critic notes, “Restitution depends on the survival of storytelling because that which is to be restituted belongs in the order of memory. Only in this terrain, La ciudad ausente claims, can the tasks of mourning work be posed to thought” (135). In the end, we see a conceptualization of posthuman identity that embraces its revolutionary potential while at the same time refusing to recognize any pleasure in the couplings that join their organic and mechanical bodies. Piglia’s cyborgs are breathing, speaking machines that carry grafted onto them the commemorative prosthetic emblems of the horrors of Argentine history.

Notes 1. See Idelber Avelar’s, Gareth Williams’s, and Francine Masiello’s recent books. 2. Jagoe tempers that position somewhat, recognizing the female’s subjugation to the male in several instances in the novel. 3. See Avelar, Williams, and Balderston. Also see Bratosevich’s “¿Hacia una estética cibernética?” (215–60).

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4. This and all following translations of passages from La ciudad ausente come from Waisman’s 2000 translation. 5. See Laura Demaría’s excellent analysis of the use of these patients and other characters as emblematic of the oppression and torture of the dictatorship (155–86). 6. Marie-Laure Ryan uses the term “wreader” in an ironic mode to describe the different kind of reader that appears when a traditional reader is confronted with hypertext (9). 7. Ryan’s analysis of Baudrillard’s work on virtual realities, in Narrative as Virtual Reality 27–35, in which she mentions specifically that latter critic’s description of the Disneyland museum, has guided my thinking here. 8. Ryan’s discussion of the development of hypertext theory is enlightening here; she also first highlighted the quotation from Landow (8). 9. The various Frankenstein movies that show the role of lightning in the creation of the monster suggest yet another connection between Piglia’s cyborgs and Shelley’s creature. 10. See his interview with Marco Antonio Campos in Cuentos con dos rostros, p. 101. 11. From Balderston’s 1994 translation. 12. Without referring specifically to the Senator’s cyborg nature, Levinson argues for a related interpretation of “the Senator’s body . . . [as] . . . a product of both mourning and melancholy. On the one hand, the unspeakable portions of Argentina’s past cling to the Senator’s body like a disease, like melancholia: ‘una extensión de mi cuerpo, algo que está fuera de aquí.’ They remain as an incessant presence that overwhelms his body, leaving him fixed in the same spot, crippled, virtually immobile: al living corpse. On the other hand, speech about history allows the Senator to continue: to recall, to account for and thus to move past the past, to mourn and to live.” (111).

Works Cited Avelar, Idelber. The Untimely Present: Postdictatorial Latin American Fiction and the Task of Mourning. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Balderston, Daniel. “Lecturas repetidas.” In Ricardo Piglia: Una poética sin límites, ed. Adriana Rodríguez Pérsico. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2004. 293–98. Baudrillard, Jean. Art and Artefact, ed. Nicholas Zurgrugg. London: Sage, 1997. Bratosevich, Nicolás. Ricardo Piglia y la cultura de la contravención. Buenos Aires: Atuel, 1997. Colás, Santiago. Latin American Postmodernity: The Argentine Paradigm. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. Demaría, Laura. Argentina-s: Ricardo Piglia dialoga con la generación del 37 en la discontinuidad. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1999.

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Halberstam, Judith, and Ira Livingston. “Introduction: Posthuman Bodies.” In Posthuman Bodies, ed. Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. 1–22. Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1999. ———. Writing Machines: Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2003. Jagoe, Eva-Lynn Alicia. “The Disembodied Machine: Matter, Feminity and Nation in Piglia’s La ciudad ausente.” Latin American Literary Review 23.45 (January–June, 1995): 5–17. Landow, George. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Levinson, Brett. “Trans(re)lations: Dictatorship, Disaster and the ‘Literary Politics’ of Piglia’s Respiración artificial” Latin American Literary Review 25.49 (January–June 1997): 91–120. Masiello, Francine. “Este pobre fin de siglo: Intellectuals and Cultural Minorities During Argentina’s Ten Years of Democracy.” In Latin American Postmodernisms, ed. Richard Young. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. 239–55. ———. The Art of Transition: Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Crisis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Piglia, Ricardo. Respiración artificial. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2001 (Original published 1980). ———.The Absent City. Trans. Sergio Waisman. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. ———. Artificial Respiration. Trans. Daniel Balderston. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994. ———. La ciudad ausente. Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 1992. ———. Cuentos con dos rostros. Mexico City: UNAM, 1992. Porush, David. This Soft Machine: Cybernetic Fiction. New York: Metheun, 1985. Ryan, Marie-Laure. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Williams, Gareth. The Other Side of the Popular: Neoliberalism and Subalternity in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

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CHAP TER

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On Science and Mexican Nationalism: The Politics of Identity in Jorge Volpi’s In Search of Klingsor Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste

Aquí está el problema, hay que darle una solución. Jorge Volpi, In Search of Klingsor

In his bestselling novel In Search of Klingsor, Mexican author Jorge Volpi narrates the story of Francis Percy Bacon, an American soldier who, at the end of World War II, is assigned the task of searching for and identifying Klingsor, Adolph Hitler’s nuclear program advisor. The text reads like a scientific, historic thriller and employs abundant theoretical elucidation to substantiate its plot. Yet, while In Search of Klingsor signified an overwhelming literary success, won Volpi the Premio Biblioteca Breve Seix Barral in 1999, and was translated to many languages, Mexican critics pondered the national relevance of a text that failed to include—at least in an explicit fashion—any Mexican aspect within its narrative. Though Klingsor certainly symbolized a new highlight for Mexican letters, perhaps suggesting the arrival of a new generation of writers, common assessment centered repeatedly on how its storyline failed to incorporate features that were specifically Mexican in nature. In this sense, the novel was the likely object of selective misapprehension. At first glance, the novel, in which an American mathematician is recruited at Princeton University to join the army and travel to Europe for a secret mission, fails to sound particularly Mexican. In fact, there are no Mexican characters in the entire plot. Much of the

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narration oscillates between the story of Francis Bacon, the young spy, and the accounts of Gustav Links, another scientist involved in the search for the elusive Klingsor. From the phenomenal array of potential suspects and scientific celebrities—Werner Karl Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr, and such others—to the romantic trysts involved in the yarn, Mexican identity seems, aside from the fact that the author is of Aztec origin (by way of Italian descent), particularly missing. Yet, what I wish to argue regarding this novel is the following: in truth, In Search of Klingsor encloses an inspired meditation on Mexican identity, according to which, just as in Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (which serves as theoretical ground to certain chapters of the story), as well as in certain other key concepts emanating from twentieth-century physics, the exact location of Mexican identity cannot be explored or determined through direct observation or contact, given that such a relation between observer and observed will invariably affect the nature of its observation. Such is the power of the Mexican cultural establishment. In order to explore Mexican identity accurately, Volpi prefers to center on Mexico’s primordial Other, the United States of America, at the precise instant in which historical circumstances, Hitler and Nazi Germany, allow the United States to become a world superpower. Thus, by exploring the dynamics of identity of its Other, what Volpi is really trying to accomplish is to expand the notion of a suitable Mexican identity, one that is not fashioned or limited by the dictates of the Mexican cultural or political establishment that seems to have a stranglehold on the subject. In this way, In Search of Klingsor embodies an innovative exploration of mexicanidad [Mexicaness] and redefines its boundaries within the literary canon. Jorge Volpi Escalante (b. 1968, Mexico City) is best known as part of the group of the crack, a team of six Mexican writers—Volpi, Pedro Ángel Palou (b. 1966, Puebla), Vicente Herrasti (b. 1967, Mexico City), Ignacio Padilla Suárez (b. 1968, Mexico City), Ricardo Chávez Castañeda (b. 1961, Mexico City), and Eloy Urroz (b. 1967, New York)—who, in August 7, 1996, astonished the Mexican and Latin American literary world by issuing a manifesto in which they proposed a more universal approach to the subcontinent’s literature (Palou). A distinctive characteristic of their production is the fact that their novels, in accordance with the ideas sketched in their Manifiesto [Manifesto], are often set in places far away from their country. Padilla Suárez’s Amphitryon [The Host] (2000) and Herrasti’s Diorama (1998), for example, are set in Europe. Their concerns, though, were not unique. Other Latin American authors, such as those from the

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South American writers’ movement of McOndo (a play on Macondo, Apple computers, and McDonalds), issued similar criticisms. As it turns out, having been translated into 16 languages and received the Premio Biblioteca Breve Seix Barral, sponsored by the distinguished Spanish publishing house Seix Barral, In Search of Klingsor has become the best-known product of this effort (although Padilla Súarez garnered the Premio Primavera with Amphitryon). Volpi graduated from law school at Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma (UNAM), where he also studied literature and earned a doctorate in Spanish philology at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. Unlike previous Mexican literary generations, whose literary formation was mainly self-taught, this type of background, with formal education in the field of literature emerging mainly from European universities, is relatively common among the authors of the crack. While Volpi has maintained a steady production, with titles such as A pesar del oscuro silencio (1992) [In Spite of the Dark Silence], Días de ira (1994) [Days of Rage], La paz de los sepulcros (1995) [The Peace of the Dead], El temperamento melancólico (1996) [The Melancholy Soul], Sanar tu piel amarga (1997) [To Heal Your Bitter Skin], and El juego del apocalipsis: Un viaje a Patmos (2000) [The Game of Apocalypse: A Voyage to Patmos], Klingsor is his best-known piece of work and has established him as one of the most prominent authors of his generation. He has also published essays and short stories, including La imaginación y el poder: Una historia intelectual de 1968 (1998) [Imagination and Power: An Intellectual History of 1968]. As is typical among Mexican authors with ties to officialdom, he has worked for the national government: for three years, as secretary to the capital district’s—and later the country’s—attorney general; as cultural attaché at the Mexican embassy in Paris; and as director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in the same city. As part of the crack, Volpi has shared some of the criticism for what his group defines as the universality of their production, that is, the fact that, thematically speaking, the works of the crack are not particularly concerned with local contexts. Thus, much of their production is situated in settings away from Mexico (Germany, Scotland, etc.), and their plots usually fail to include aspects of Mexican reality in the fashion that the plots of authors from the previous generation did. In fact, Volpi, as part of the crack, has clarified that his dispute is not with García Márquez or other members of the Latin American literary boom, whose work the crack respects and whose enactment of magic realism has become a staple of Latin American culture. Instead, their quarrel is with the immediate successors of the boom, a generation

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that, the members of the crack argue, has not progressed beyond magic realism and other literary genres, such as testimonio [Testimonial], and failed to implement new possibilities for Latin American literature. In other words, while the crack values its relation with its “grandparents,” its authors seem very critical of the generation immediately preceding them. For this reason, the crack’s objective is to break with what they regard as a stale tradition and propose new directions for Mexican letters. A good example of the sort of response generated by the crack is Mexican author Elena Poniatowska’s sarcastic comment about Pedro Ángel Palou’s recent novel, Con la muerte en los puños (2003) [With Death in His Fists], celebrating the fact that, unlike the rest of his friends, Palou finally produced a successful novel that is close to Mexico in subject, narrating the story of the prize-fighter Baby Cifuentes. In her column, within her appreciation and celebration of Palou’s work, Poniatowska cleverly disguises her skepticism for the crack’s fondness for sophistication, clarifying that it was about time that this young group of authors produced a work that, while universal, touched a chord that is closer to home. Given that the column is about boxing and the fact that Poniatowska can easily be included (in terms of age and literary styles) with the group of authors that the crack attacked so passionately, the text can be read as a bout amongst literary pugilists. According to her, the novel’s virtue lies in its coverage of a sport that, while enormously relevant in terms of identity matters for the Mexican population, has not been explored as much as its cultural and national importance would suggest (after all, Mexico is well known as a nation of eminent prize-fighters). Most of her references to the novel deal with Mexico’s pop culture and urban context and lack the European proclivities customary of the crack’s production. Within this context, it is obvious that, in Mexico, there is a certain penalty in terms of literary appreciation for works that habitually depart from local interests. As I intend to demonstrate, Klingsor is, in this respect, one of the most effective attempts in dealing with national identity from a more complicated standpoint. In an interview for an online literary magazine, Volpi states that Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante has described Klingsor as a German novel written in Spanish (Aguirre Romero). Such a statement, given the numerous references in the text to the works of Goethe and Mann, is easy to understand (Goebel). Yet, from my point of view, while I agree with Cabrera Infante’s remark, I would also like to highlight the fact that Klingsor’s debt to the U.S. literary tradition, be it in terms of pop or high-brow culture—after all, the novel can be

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read as a scientific thriller bent on the search for identity—is considerable. The interests of Volpi are strongly bound to metropolitan literary canons, that much is clear. Hence, the influence of European and U.S. letters is remarkable in his work. Volpi has lived in the United States as a visiting scholar at renowned universities (e.g., at Emory University in Atlanta) and is well acquainted with the academic environment on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus, it would be shortsighted to discount the heavy influence of U.S. letters upon Mexican literature, in general, and think that his literary influences are exclusively European. This consideration is crucial to my argument that equates his appreciation of the laws of physics with literary dictates, though not in the extensive, reductive fashion that has become typical of grand physical concepts, such as relativity or indeterminacy. What Volpi does in his work is not so much a broad utilization of the general concepts of physics, as a close application of certain ideas that, together, endorse a novel construct of identity. When it comes to axioms, Volpi employs them as guidelines for the amusement that is Klingsor, which, I reiterate, does not mean that these are laws with a greater extent of literary implication. They do, however, include basic literary truths that, to the degree that they appear in all works, contribute to the complexity of Klingsor as text. Then again, as we shall see, Volpi is very careful and quite meticulous when it comes to assertions that serve as backing to his literary framework. In terms of literary structure, much of Klingsor is framed as a mathematical treatise, with laws, hypothesis, disquisitions, and abundant corollaries. The reasoning behind this type of arrangement is not a matter of style, as some critics would like to believe, but rather the idea that the novel in itself is a sort of performance of mexicanidad [Mexicaness]. In the act of writing Klingsor, Volpi is writing (and thus creating and enacting) a way of being Mexican. Klingsor, which deals with three sets of laws, is divided into three books, one for each set of laws: the laws of narrative motion, the laws of criminal motion, and the laws of traitorous (or deceptive) motion. Thus, in essence, what the book is suggesting is a game of particles in motion. In the case of the first book, the three stated laws or axioms set in motion a narration that will, in the end, envelope Volpi’s construct of Mexican identity. They are followed by five separate hypotheses that link key figures from the world of science (John Von Neumann, Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel) to more seemingly pedestrian matters: war, love, and fate. In turn, these hypotheses are followed by a set of disquisitions pertaining to subjects as varied as childhood, youth, freedom, lust, the search of absolutes, and the

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arithmetic of infinity. As a group, they portend a relation between hard science and political theory. According to the narrator, the German mathematician Gustav Links (and also according to the second of the axioms listed) all accounts have a narrator, who in turn offers a unique truth that is substantiated by a particular motivation. Thus, the very name Links, a fictional graduate of the prestigious University of Leipzig, can be construed as the voice that will link all events involved in the story—the love affairs, the actual search for Hitler’s advisor, as well as a brief account of the failed attempt by members of the German military to assassinate their leader near the end of World War II. Volpi, as author of this yarn, even admits to the artificial nature of the account, to the fact that Links, as Hayden White has argued, is responsible for the arrangement of events within a particular order, positing a particular understanding of the actions. Links even ponders, “¿Por qué me obstino entonces, tantos años después de aquellos sucesos, en conectar movimientos del azar que en principio nada tienen que ver? ¿Por qué continúo presentándolos unidos, como si fuesen sólo manifestaciones distintas de un mismo acto de voluntad?” (18, italics mine, page numbers from Spanish edition) [Why do I insist, so many years after the fact, to connect these two unrelated incidents? Why do I continue to present them as one, as if they were two manifestations of one single act of will?]. Therefore, while alluding to the random nature of events in the story, Volpi is accepting his responsibility—through Links—as the fabricator of this account, thus corroborating his narrative theory. The admission also conceals a suggestion of Brownian motion in the acts that will play a significant role in the story of Francis Bacon. First observed by botanist Robert Brown in 1827 and then satisfactorily explained by Einstein in 1905, Brownian motion alludes to the irregular movement of minute particles of matter when suspended in a fluid. Hence, from the beginning, it is evident that randomness, a key consideration for the contemplation of uncertainty, plays an important role in the story. As we will see, aside from its reflection on the importance of the random nature of events, Klingsor is a text strongly supported by a definite set of scientific concepts emerging from the fields of mathematics and physics. Volpi chooses three main notions, based on the work of Erwin Schrödinger, Kurt Gödel, and Werner Heisenberg, to configure the narrative order of his novel. Each of these concepts represents an important piece of the greater fictional framework of the novel and, as such, should be covered in a detailed fashion and explained separately.

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Erwin Schrödinger (pronounced SHROY-dihng-ur) is best known among physicists for his contribution to the field of wave mechanics. He was born on August 12, 1887 in Vienna, Austria. Schrödinger was an only child, born to the owner of a successful textile factory and the daughter of a chemistry professor. The father, a gifted man with a broad education, was an enormous influence on young Erwin, who, at the age of eleven, entered the Academische Gymnasium to study math and physics, as well as classical languages and German poetry. In 1906, he was admitted to the University of Vienna, where he earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1910. He later served in the Imperial Army during World War I and taught in Vienna, Jena, Stuttgart, and Breslau. By 1921, he had accepted an offer from the University of Zurich to assume the professorship of theoretical physics previously held by Einstein and Max von Laue. In the winter of 1925–1926, while resting and recuperating from a bout of tuberculosis in Arosa, Switzerland, he discovered his famous wave equation, which today serves as the backbone of the field of wave mechanics. It was mainly for this work that in 1933 he, jointly with British physicist Paul Dirac, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Also, by that year, he had fled to Oxford, England, given Hitler’s rise to power. In 1936, he returned to Austria to teach at the University of Graz, only to flee once again in 1939, this time to Dublin. During his seventeen-year exile, thanks to the encouragement of Eamon de Valera, head of the new Irish state, he assumed a position at the new Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, Ireland. The Institute was modeled, to a fair extent, on the one at Princeton. In 1956, Schrödinger returned to Austria to teach at the University of Vienna, where he died in 1961. This summarized account of Schrödinger’s life, I must make clear, is in sharp contrast with his representation in the novel, in which he is portrayed as a Casanova, a man who, despite his intensely somber appearance, dedicated considerable attention to the affairs of heart. Thus, the Austrian physicist is a perfect character for a novel such as Klingsor, which combines love and science in such an intimate way (Alvarez Ulloa; Moore). As suggested previously, in addition to setting a tone for the novel, the first group of axioms also contributes to the proposition of a theory of identity, a basic theme of Klingsor. Using the work of Schrödinger, Volpi summarizes identity as yo soy lo que veo (24) [I am what I see]. In plaín terms, this is akin to the admission that truth is relative. According to the Mexican author, subjectivity, for lack of a better word, determines who we are, while perception and awareness of our surroundings shapes our consciousness of the self. In narrative

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terms, the idea has simpler implications: Volpi is admitting to the basically subjective nature of any narrative account and denouncing objectivity as a fallacy. If we are only what we can see, true objectivity is impossible, for then we would have to detach our vision of the world from our observations. Perhaps, then, it is possible to be only more or less objective. Volpi goes even farther, as he states, “Recuerden a Schrödinger: para que haya un verdadero acto de conocimiento, debe haber una interacción entre el observador y lo observado, y ahora yo me encuentro en esta segunda (algo incómoda) categoría” (26) [Remember what Schrödinger said: for a true act of recognition to occur, an interaction must take place between observer and the observed, and I now find myself in the latter (and somewhat less comfortable) category]. Certainly, as a hypothetical narrator, Links is now the object of our scrutiny, yet as the creator of the universe of Klingsor, he is also an observer (and chronicler) of events. The interaction between the observer and the observed, between us as readers and Klingsor as text implies that our knowledge of the story will be dictated by the extent of our literary competence, the degree to which we are able to extract clues and make sense of the narrative, that is, our capability to see this interaction as a challenge, a mathematical and literary problem, if you will. Thus, the performance nature of the text is evident from the start, even if its success will finally be determined by the skills of the examiner. Within this mindset and literary framework, our engagement with the work of Volpi becomes a zero-sum game, one in which, as he concedes (56), the object of players is finite and in which the success of a party consecutively implies the failure of its opponent. Yet, for Volpi to admit to the character of zero-sum game of his novel is akin to the suggestion that his consideration of historical events also involves a somewhat analogous assertion with respect to identity. Thus, the advancement of one form of identity implies accordingly the diminution of a corresponding one, a statement that conceals, in a single stroke, the contemplation of deculturation that involves taking away a culture, and acculturation that involves imposing a new one. At this point, if identity—or its construction—is a zero-sum game, then, in the end, only the most successful version will prevail, managing to validate itself at the expense of the others. Thus, while anybody can manufacture his/her own identity (and even embody, through transculturation—that is, an exchange between two cultures, both of them active—the emergence of a new, transformed and complex reality), only those who manage to transcend, to develop highly portable and accessible versions, are better known. Following this logic, if what

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I argue with respect to Klingsor is true, if Volpi’s examination of a particular instant in the history of the United States (as Mexico’s ultimate Other) is pertinent, it is because, unlike other parties involved in the brutal game of war, the United States was able to make the most of Germany as an enactor of identities. The Allies may have defeated the Axis, but, within the victors, some definitely fared better than others. World War II may have engendered the cold war, but from this tension only one party made the most and thus prevailed. In plain terms, the Soviets were not as effective as the United States in their implementation of a global network that, thanks to their role as vanquishers of the Nazi project, empowered their construct of identity throughout the world. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union stand as proofs of this statement. Volpi, I argue, is particularly interested in this period in time, because within it, while he explores a moment crucial to the history of the United States (his country’s neighbor) as a superpower, he envisions the possibility to posit an identity beyond the traditional dictates of Mexican society. Volpi’s exploration of this decisive moment entails the recognition of certain aspects that, if properly assimilated, embody a lesson of identity; that is, what is it, in the act of engaging and defeating the Germans, that made the United States so successful? And, even further, what can Mexico extract from this experience that will ultimately prove beneficial to its relationship with its northern partner? Is there a lesson to be learned in the actions of the United States at this crucial point in time? As it becomes increasingly obvious to the reader, the story of Klingsor is a literary puzzle, though it is posited in scientific terms. Thus, to arrive at a solution—regardless of its propriety—reading involves a mastership of the codes, both literary and scientific. For that reason, the struggle to understand, to make sense out of a string of events—to solve a problem, in plain scientific terms—will lead the reader to contend with praxis and theory, replicating the conflict chronicled in the story between theoreticians and empiricists, as scientists in the latter days of World War II pondered the most effective path to follow to achieve nuclear predominance. The field of physics may be divided between those who follow theory and those who favor experimental corroboration (63), but to Volpi, a most prominent member of the crack, a group trying to come up with new formulae for Latin American literature, this conflict must not sound altogether different. In terms of the contrast between those who argue for the theoretical advancement of a “proper” agenda and the few who actually engage in the work necessary to explore new alternatives, the

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sciences and the humanities are remarkably similar. Thus, it is only logical that Volpi has embraced the language of science to explore what is, quite basically, a cultural matter. As a scientific topic, quantum mechanics may set the stage for the story of Klingsor, but, as defended by the Dane Niels Bohr (who established, amongst other things, that randomness was not an accidental element of nature, but an aspect connatural to the laws of physics), it also sets the stage for a radical split in the scientific community of the mid-twentieth century. Disputing Bohr’s view, Einstein had written to Max Born, “God does not play dice with the universe” (63). This difference in judgment sparked the creation of widely differing perspectives across the Atlantic, divided the world of science, and, within the novel, marked boundaries. Though he had an active role in the storytelling, Francis Bacon is clearly identified as a champion of theory. Unlike Links, whose duty is to suggest “connections” between characters and the development of events, playing the part of a virtual editor, Bacon is the vehicle of association between the realm of scientific theory and the more humdrum aspects of human behavior: economics, war, and love, three very similar matters according to Volpi (76). After all, during his conversation with Bacon, John Von Neumann muses, “En estas tres actividades se resume la lucha que llevamos a cabo unos contra otros. En las tres, hay al menos dos voluntades en conflicto. Cada una intenta sacar mayor provecho de la otra sin arriesgarse demasiado . . .” (76) [These three activities effectively represent all the battles we men wage against one another. In all three, there are always at least two wills in conflict. Each one attempts to take the greatest possible advantage of the other, at the least possible risk to himself]. In addition, Bacon’s erratic behavior in love—his affair with an African American girl, leading to a broken engagement with a waspy socialite and his eventual recruitment by the Army, improvising a decorous exit for the ensuing scandal at Princeton—serves also as an excuse for the introduction of game theory, an aspect highlighted in the text through the introduction of diagrams (59, 326). The contemplation of game theory as a highly relevant branch of the sciences ratifies the understanding of the novel as a game concocted by the author to challenge the competence of his readers. Game theory, as embodied by the square charts in the text contemplating the eventual resolution of the war (proposed by Von Neumann, Bacon’s mentor) and the outcome of the mythical encounter between Heisenberg and Bohr (proposed, much later, by Bacon), becomes a crucial element for the consideration of viable results to any situation imagined by Volpi.

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A second crucial component of the puzzle that is Klingsor lies in the work of Kurt Gödel, covered in the fourth hypothesis of the first book of the novel. Born on April 28, 1906 in Brünn, Moravia (what is now Brno, Czech Republic), Kurt Gödel (pronounced GEHR-del) was an extremely curious child in his earlier years. Though his best subjects were math, languages, and religion, at 15 he became interested in philosophy. In 1929, he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, with a dissertation on logic. In 1930, he proposed his theorem on the existence of true but unprovable sentences in arithmetic, to the general astonishment of logicians and mathematicians throughout the international scientific community. In this way, he ended the presumption that formal consistency can be given to all forms of mathematics and subverted the claim that mathematics is akin to logic. Attacked by rightist students in Vienna in 1939, in 1940 he traveled to the United States and became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which he had visited previously and where he held a close relationship with Einstein. In 1948, he became a U.S. citizen. Subsequently, he developed a model for a rotating universe, providing a solution for Einstein’s equations. On January 14, 1978, he died in Princeton, New Jersey. Gödel’s serious, logical, and naive temperament is best exemplified by an anecdote during his citizenship ceremony. Having heard from the judge that the United States was a country in which a dictator could not arise, Gödel detected a logical flaw in the Constitution by which a dictator could legally take power. Though he was keen to argue, Einstein promptly silenced him (Dusek; Yourgrau). The gist of the accomplishment of Gödel’s theorem is as follows. In his writings on the Principia Mathematica, by English mathematicians Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Gödel tried to rebut the set of problems posited by a fellow mathematician from the University of Göttingen, David Hilbert (the so-called Hilbert’s program that had remained a challenge to mathematicians throughout the world), and asserted the existence of an unverifiable proposition within any set of axioms. The implications of this assertion, analogous in spirit to Epimenides’s ancient paradox, caused uproar in the scientific community of his day. In plain terms, it suggested that within any set of numbers existed a theoretical proposition that could not be demonstrated with that same set of numbers. Or as the Cretan sage Epimenides proposed, “All Cretans are liars,” an assertion that certifies the impossibility of finding a solution to a problem. If all Cretans are liars, the reasoning goes, then Epimenides, being a Cretan himself, lied. But this act in itself negated his assertion. If, on the other hand, the statement

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was wrong and all Cretans were truthful, then his assertion was true, which in turn ratified the fact that, being a Cretan, he lied. Truth, in this respect, becomes ambiguous. To ratify the point, Volpi reiterates this theoretical premise near the end of the third portion of the text, the portion on his three final laws of traitorous motion: all men are weak, all men are liars, and all men are traitors, a trio of assertions that, in themselves, become enactments of Epimenides’s paradox. Likewise, upon introducing Gödel to the reader, Volpi suggests in a manner very concerned with matters of identity, “Esta idea sobre mí no puede ser demostrada desde el interior de mí mismo” (italics mine, 88) [It is impossible to prove this idea I have about myself]. This interpretation of Gödel’s theorem substantiates, in turn, my reading of Volpi’s text as an act of mexicanidad: This version of mexicanidad cannot be demonstrated from within a Mexican setting. Mexico, as a society and culture regulated by a set of rules, must contain a version of itself that cannot be demonstrated with such a set of rules. Thus, Klingsor is not only a literary game posited in scientific terms, but it also follows a mathematical premise: the idea that in order to suggest an alternate version of the author’s identity it has to do so by embracing a theme and subject matter beyond the traditional scope of what is customarily considered proper for an author of Volpi’s origin. Gödel’s work, to make a long story short, justifies the fact that a Mexican author has chosen the conflict between the United States and Germany in order to talk about Mexico. It also justifies the fact that Volpi has chosen to write Klingsor as a narrative governed by a set of rules, complicating the likelihood of attainment of an eventual solution, an aspect that will be evident as the reader finishes the book. In the process, Volpi produces a novel that, to the eye of the Latin American reader who is highly conditioned to a series of traits when it comes to Mexican cultural products, appears strange. Whether Volpi is successful or not is a matter left for the reader to decide, in accordance with the ambiguity sustained by both Epimenides and Gödel. At a primary, literal level, it is clear that the main motivation for the narrative is the search for the identity of Hitler’s scientific counsel. In this sense, the narrative remains true to Gödel. As the reader finds out at the end of the book, a solution is far from clear. While Bacon concludes that the narrator Links is Klingsor, Links himself is bent on the idea that Heisenberg was Hitler’s advisor. The honesty of Links’s suspicion is espoused by the implication of sincerity in the narration, a suspicion that Bacon, as character within the novel, unfortunately does not share. Consequently, there is no clear solution and the plot ends in ambiguity. At a second, more metaphorical level, in which

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identity comes into play, the idea that a Mexican national can propose a successful version of mexicanidad—a version that is theoretically free from the conventions of representation of Mexican society that is largely involved in the discussion of issues that, prima facie, appear to concern foreign parties only (the United States and Germany)— seems to be addressed successfully in Klingsor. In this sense, Volpi’s work is a ratification and contradiction of Gödel. Klingsor, according to Gödel, contains a version of mexicanidad beyond mexicanidad. Then again, the key concern is how one would define the boundaries of mexicanidad, for someone else could also argue the opposite: if Klingsor is highly successful, it is precisely because it has been uttered from within the rules of system, through everything this entails for Volpi as a person (the fact that he is a recognized Mexican author, enjoys official support, serves as cultural attaché in Paris, etc.). Thus, for purposes of clarification, I will say that my reading, while contemplating the benefits Volpi has borne as a distinguished member of the cultural establishment, centers mostly on the text, its considerations of nationality, and the fact that, in terms of identity, it suggests an external frame of reference. And even then, the fact that Klingsor remains in ambiguity at a second, more metaphorical level is still in accordance with the postulates of Gödel. Gödel, it seems, rules the universe of the narrative. When Francis and Elizabeth, his waspy fiancée, break up, Volpi hints at Gödel and set theory (97). Elizabeth shows up at Princeton unannounced and interrupts Gödel’s lecture on Georg Cantor’s continuum hypothesis that involves the identification of a theoretically possible number of integers within a set. Since Cantor’s work centers on how many points exist in a given line on Euclidean space, it suggests the breakup of the line into integers. Thus, the breakup between Francis and Elizabeth is essentially posited as a resolution toward individualism, as social integers: where we once had a set of two, we now have two individuals. At a class level, the fact that Bacon is unable to empathize with the world of Princeton, a word that he dislikes, suggests that for Bacon to find a way in his life he will have to venture beyond the boundaries of his class and nationality, thus conveniently replicating the actions of his Mexican creator. Ultimately, Bacon’s failure at love is framed also by the account of Gödel’s own traumatic pursuit of love for a dancer of ill repute (110). By the end of Bacon’s U.S. experience, Volpi, in a typically literary move, resolves the issue by combining, via a section title, the world of science, exemplified in set theory, with the political, represented in totalitarianism. Thus, the following section of the story is titled “Brief Autobiographical Disquisitions: From Set Theory to

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Totalitarianism.” Through this ingenious move, the author insinuates the passage from the realm of parts of a set to the realm of the whole. Hence, the move to a different dimension in the life of the main character, one in which political issues will reign supreme, is completed. As stated previously, the third main component or theoretical premise for the work of Volpi—and perhaps the most important one—is the work of German physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg (pronounced HI-zehn-berk). One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, Werner Heisenberg was a child of privilege. Though he lived his entire lifetime in Germany—or, more precisely, because he failed to leave Germany—he endured two world wars, a soviet-styled revolution, a military regime, two failed republics, and, worst of all, Hitler’s time in power. Heisenberg was a prodigy. By the time he was 25, he had a full professorship in theoretical physics; by 32, he had won the Nobel Prize for his work on matrix mechanics that led to the creation of quantum mechanics (Firman; Powers). Heisenberg was born on December 5, 1901 in Würzburg, Germany. The son of a professor of Greek at the University of Munich, he was educated at the universities of Munich and Göttingen, where he obtained doctorates in 1923 and 1924. From 1924 to 1927, supported by a Rockefeller Foundation grant, Heisenberg worked with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, where the Dane’s family, with the possible exception of Bohr’s wife, warmly accepted him. It was during those years that he developed his most legendary work. In 1925, Heisenberg formulated a version of quantum theory that became known as matrix mechanics, a version that was later shown to be formally equivalent to the wave mechanics of Schrödinger. Though it was soon replaced by Schrödinger’s easier-to-use approach, Heisenberg’s work was, in essence, the first complete formulation of quantum mechanics. It was for this research that he was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for physics. In 1927, Heisenberg formulated his fundamental uncertainty principle that it is not possible to determine simultaneously both the position and momentum of a particle. In other words, his principle restricts the precision with which two complementary quantities—for example, energy and time—can be measured at the same time. Thanks largely to the enormous impact of matrix mechanics on his reputation, Heisenberg returned to Germany in 1927 to take up the professorship of theoretical physics at Leipzig. He remained in Germany throughout World War II and the entire Nazi era. Though certainly no Nazi himself—Heisenberg was known to be apolitical—in 1939 he was called upon to direct the program to construct the German atom bomb. It was during this period that he returned to

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Copenhagen to meet Niels Bohr, an event that led to the end of their friendship. The meeting was swiftly consolidated into scientific mythology and is the object of much speculation (an aspect that Volpi appropriates deftly). Though Heisenberg argued he had shared his intentions to sabotage and control the atomic research of the Nazis, forcing politicians to yield to the interests of science, Bohr reported that he had failed to grasp such comments. At the end of the war, together with other members of the German atomic team (Walter Gerlach, Otto Hahn, Max von Laue, Paul Harteck, Karl Wirtz, Ernst Bagge, Carl Friederich von Weizsäcker, Horst Karsching, and Kurt Diebner), Heisenberg was taken to England to stay at Farm Hall, an estate near Cambridge, where their conversations were secretly recorded for six months. Unveiled in the early 1990s, the recordings failed to show any evidence that Heisenberg had contemplated sabotage of Nazi atomic research. Though the novel fails to highlight this aspect, it does focus on some other events in Heisenberg’s life. Francis Bacon’s pursuit of German scientists at the end of war, for example, is based on the work of Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash, who headed the ALSOS unit, in charge of verifying the status of the Nazi atomic project and securing all personnel and material related to the project prior to the arrival of the Soviet Army in Germany. The remarkable effectiveness with which the U.S. forces acted at the end of the conflict insinuates what was to come: the fact that the U.S. approach—less idealistic, and more pragmatic, and to the point—will eventually prevail. Ironically, the magnitude of the implications of quantum mechanics lies in the consideration of the size of systems. For large objects, Newtonian mechanics functions well. Yet, on a smaller scale, considering particles with insignificant mass, Newtonian mechanics does not work well. Heisenberg developed a theory that, while unable to state exactly what happens or will happen to a minute particle, manages to calculate the possibility of events at a very small scale. In order to do so, it forsakes determinism and embraces randomness. Thus, his theory, which essentially describes a universe composed of random particles, has enormous implications for the world in which we live. When it comes to the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg’s theory also seems to embrace indeterminacy. In fact, it is an extension of the indeterminacy that is proper to quantum mechanics, which, in quite straightforward terms, describes the effect of measuring upon the system being itself measured, or, as Volpi would prefer it, the effect of observation upon a system being observed. The question may thus be posited in the following fashion: In the act of observing an object

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(e.g., mexicanidad), how does my observation affect the way in which I perceive it? In Klingsor, to set the stage for the consideration of Heisenberg’s experience of life—the fact that his commitment to the German atomic endeavor was of a problematic nature—Volpi clarifies through the voice of a Bavarian native, the narrator Gustav Links, that the prevailing social values in Germany at the time prior to world conflict were discipline, austerity, and nationalism (114). Vaterlandsliebe, or the carefully nourished love for the fatherland, the object of wellseasoned instruction, did much to explain the way in which many Germans—Heisenberg notably amongst them—assimilated the rule of the Third Reich (116). While remaining apolitical, Heisenberg must have felt that it was his duty—regardless of the fact that he despised those in power (in a fashion similar to the Mexican author, I surmise)—to work for the benefit of the nation. In Links’s view, the youth of Germany is alienated by modern civilization and growing industrialization, this in turn feeds the reactionary spirit that would, in the end, support Hitler’s rise to power. It is feasible to intuit an analogy in the Mexican case, given the visible implications of globalization and increased trade, on national identity. In a way, the text suggests, economic crisis and accelerated modernization, two phenomena experienced by Germany prior to World War II and duplicated in Mexico through the 1990s, prepare the way for the ascent of rabid nationalism. Likewise, while Heisenberg was no reactionary, it becomes apparent that he was a product of his times. Regardless of the atrocity of the actions of the Nazis, it is clear that the German people had undergone a process of fervent nationalism, which, according to individuals such as Heisenberg, prevented many from grasping the full extent of the horror. Nationalism is thus depicted in a critical light as the source of the greatest mistakes of the proud German nation (and as the potential cause for the failure of the Mexican national project at the hands of the political class). At this point, Volpi also discusses the onomastic importance of Klingsor, the character, identifying him as the villain from Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval ou il Conte du Graal, popularized by Wagner in Parsifal (161). This opera focuses on Parsifal, a young orphan who arrives at the Grail castle and, unbeknownst to him, becomes the chosen one to redeem Amfortas, Wagner’s version of the wounded king of the legend of the Grail, of his sins. After various tests of virtue and temptation, Parsifal is victorious, and he himself becomes King of the Grail. Yet, in Klingsor’s portion of the world, the story seems to suggest, appearances deceive. Nothing is certain, beauty is deceiving.

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As a character, Klingsor is best personified as a narcissist and it is Amfortas, his rival, who dies (though he should not). In essence, this plot synthesizes, much in the same spirit as the novel, the story of a conflict between good and evil. Consequently, a parallel is clearly delineated, in an almost too evident fashion, between Bacon and Parsifal, with Links in the role of Amfortas. The justification for Volpi’s emphasis on the plot of the opera becomes painfully evident on page 394, when nuclear research is proposed as the Holy Grail, indeed, as the object of the quests of scientists on both sides of the Atlantic. In this way, the convoluted plot of the novel begins to conclude, suggesting at least four different initiatives: the quest for the fission of the atom, the quest for narrative resolution within the plot of Wagner’s opera, the search for love in the life of Francis P. Bacon, the protagonist, and the obvious search for Klingsor, that most despised figure of the German scientific establishment. Thus, the stage is set for the final resolution of the novel, in which Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle plays a principal role. Summarized in a short paper titled “On the Perceptual Concept of Quantum Theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics,” Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle stated that, in the very act of illuminating an electron in order to observe it and measure its position, the illumination changes the motion of the electron and therefore the electron’s exact location cannot be measured with certainty. Thus, when a scientist explored reality, exploration affected reality in such a way that it hindered accurate observation. The implications of Heisenberg are enormous. In the realm of identity, which is the one that interests us here with respect to Klingsor, the consequences are even more striking. If we are what we see and, through observation, we change the way things are, then, we are constantly changing who we are. To examine an object— let us say mexicanidad—it would not be feasible to do so from within the space of mexicanidad, as the object changes during the act of observation (or representation) and the conditions of observation would undoubtedly affect the end result. A more effective way to deal with the elusive nature of identity would suggest exploration through inference, from elsewhere, through indirect scrutiny, thus avoiding the possibility of direct impact or changing conditions upon the object of our observations. It is in this way that Volpi implements a way to discuss mexicanidad, by way of the Other. In the act of discussing the United States in the act of becoming a superpower, empowered by the presence of the Third Reich, Volpi manages to assert something substantial about Mexico’s relation to U.S. culture and about Mexico itself, expanding the boundaries of permissible

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identity. The fact that his novel is a spy thriller, a most English of genres, debunks stereotypical notions of what is acceptably Mexican. In the same way, Volpi’s main achievements involve the association of his name and origin to a legitimate construction and discussion of modernity—the quest for atomic supremacy—and the problematization of modernity in a distinctly Latin American context, that of a cultural product, a novel that discusses science and power. To sum up, Klingsor is a most extraordinary exemplar of the conjugation of literature and science. The fact that it manages to discuss identity and the implications of scientific and political discourse upon this very subject in such an effective fashion attests to its viability as a literary exercise. This criticism, though, seems to be closely connected to a critique of the State and nationalism. As Volpi reminds us, “En nombre de las ideas más absurdas e incomprensibles—raza, religión, partido, frontera—se cometen los peores pecados” (180) [The very worst sins have been committed in the name of the most absurd, abstract ideas—race, religion, political affiliation, national borders]. From this point of view, the novel serves as an indictment of how certain ideas of identity can be adopted as excuses to promote the most barbaric acts. Later on, Volpi insists, “El enemigo peligroso es el Estado, cualquier Estado. El absceso del fascismo ha sido extirpado, pero la idea sigue viva, hoy día, en sus implacables enemigos . . . . (italics mine, 280) [The dangerous enemy here is the government, any government. The abscess of fascism has been eliminated, but the idea is still kept alive in the minds of those ruthless enemies . . . .]. In this case, the reader will have to determine which state Volpi is alluding to. Is it the overwhelming Mexican state, which accomplishes such a fantastic job of propaganda and generates such an ardent feeling of attachment among the population that even its most forgotten members wave its symbols? On the other hand, in the case of fascism, the text seems to suggest that the conclusion is quite straightforward: fascism will survive in its enemies, that is, the United States and the Soviet Union, for they will both, in the act of justifying their actions, appeal to the naive messianism of their masses. Any of these judgments, however, do not exempt the Mexican writer from straying too far from his literary background. Volpi is a man of letters, regardless of his love for science. Consequently, the mixture of the two forms of knowledge has inherent risks. In the first Spanish edition that I quote through this text, there are two significant mistakes. They were, I suspect, swiftly corrected in latter versions. On page 103, when he discusses Einstein’s theory of relativity,

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he mistakenly defines mass as energy multiplied (not divided) by the square of the speed of light: “Más precisamente, que la materia es la energía multiplicada (sic) por la velocidad de la luz al cuadrado” [More precisely, matter is energy multiplied by the square of the speed of light]. Unlike the language of math, based on variables and constants, evincing precision and brevity, words have a duplicitous nature. Thus, what appears correct in a phrase is clearly misguided as an equation. On page 112, when Links located his place of birth upon an imaginary Cartesian plain, he confuses the x (horizontal) and y (vertical) axes: “Hacia arriba, en el eje de las x, está todo lo positivo . . . . A la derecha, en el eje de las y, encuentro los actos que me definen . . . .” [Toward the top, on the x axis, is the positive . . . . To the right, on the y axis, I find the acts that define me . . . .]. The implications of language as a tool that fails to grasp correctly our constructs of space and time become painfully evident. Language may hold the beauty of poetry, the rhythm and rhyme of words in action, the suggestiveness of metaphor, but, in terms of thought, the world of equations is vastly superior and more elegant. In view of this distinction, when it comes to identity, there are no absolutes.

Works Cited Aguirre Romero, J. M., and Y. Delgado Batista. “Jorge Volpi, las respuestas absolutas siempre son mentiras.” Espéculo 11 (1999), http://www.ucm.es/ info/especulo/numero11/volpi.html/ Álvarez Ulloa, Rosa. “Erwin Schrödinger.” In Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 1998: 1166–68. Brennan, Richard P. Heisenberg Probably Slept Here. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Dusek, Val. “Kurt Gödel.” In Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 1998: 520–22. Goebel, Robert. “Un germanista en busca de Klingsor.” Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea 7.14 (2001): 32–41. King, Firman D. “Werner Karl Heisenberg.” In Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 1998: 576–80. Moore, Walter. Schrödinger, Life and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Palou, M. Á., E. Urroz, I. Padilla, R. Chávez Castañeda, and J. Volpi. “Manifiesto del Crack.” Lateral 70 (2000), http: //www.lateral-ed.es/ revista/indice/070. htm Poniatowska, Elena. “Box y literatura del crack.” La Jornada. June 26, 2003. www.jor nada.unam.mx/2003/06/26/03aa1cul.php?origen ⫽ index.html&fly ⫽ 1

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Powers, Thomas. Heisenberg’s War. New York: Knopf, 1993. Rose, Paul Lawrence. Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Volpi, Jorge. En busca de Klingsor. Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1999. ———. Searching for Klingsor. New York: Scribner, 2002. Yourgrau, Palle. Gödel Meets Einstein: Time Travel in The Gödel Universe. Chicago: Open Court, 1999.

CHAP TER

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Disease as a Dis/Organizing Principle in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Benito Pérez Galdós, Leopoldo Alas, and Emilia Pardo Bazán Anne W. Gilfoil

Disease and suffering as experiences profoundly affect us, touching upon our most basic human issues, because illness transforms the body into something alien and alienating. It involves an “othering” of the body, our most basic cultural unit. Disease poses a challenge to the existing status quo through an imposition of a partial or total eclipse of the human being’s social being by his natural state. Illness is, after all, an implicit critique of the dominant, naturalized concept of healthfulness (Gilbert 2–16). In an article entitled “Medicine: Symbol and Ideology,” Jean Comaroff asserts that illness places in the foreground the universal paradoxes of human existence that, in turn, are mediated by particular cultural concepts and values. These paradoxes involve the unity and duality of mind and body, the ambiguity of self as both subject and object, and the opposition between the natural and the social being (51). Disease is always both an individual and a social experience. The social aspect of disease is further intensified during an epidemic. Often perceived as collective calamities and as judgments on a community, an epidemic simplifies a complex self by reducing it to a figment of its sick environment (Sontag 133). Every self is potentially,

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if not actually, sick, because social contact carries with it the possibility of contagion. For many centuries the prevailing theory of disease transmission supported this view. Well into the eighteenth century, disease was thought to be spread by person-to-person contact. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, with the advent of new ideas/discoveries about the etiology of infectious diseases, the atmosphere itself was deemed to be diseased and requiring purification. While disease could randomly strike anyone anywhere, the cities seemed to be the hotbeds of infections (Cooter 99). Throughout the nineteenth century, the attitude toward disease was no longer fatalistic, but rather interventionist, while the nexus between medicine and social reform lead to the hygienist movement. This movement’s particular marriage of science and urban renewal subjected the city to the clinical gaze. In his study of the spatial component of urban history, Álvarez Mora emphasizes the city’s simultaneous role as a social product and as a social agent of discipline (31). In the capitalist spirit of the nineteenth century, financial speculation produced and consumed the city. Capitalism would act on the traditional compact city, effectively compartmentalizing populations into distinct areas according to class and occupation. This segregation reinforced bourgeois notions of self and other following class distinctions and gender roles. In this regard, both the hygienist movement (the social medicine of the times) and urban planning can provide rich contexts—to borrow the words of Comaroff—“for examining how universal human paradox is invested with specific sociocultural value and how interest-serving ideologies become part of tacit everyday assumptions” (63). Intellectual products and material circumstances merge and are mutually constitutive of the society that foments them. Accordingly, the realist fiction of the times comes to reflect these values and ideologies in its descriptions of disease and health, infection and cure. It is my intention in this chapter to examine how three writers’ key works within the Spanish realist tradition focus on disease; from this examination I hope to draw some conclusions about the interplay of medicine, society, and reform in Restoration Spain. It is no exaggeration to state that the material circumstances of life in nineteenth-century Spain were bleak. In the 1880s, at the time that Galdós, Alas, and Pardo Bazán were writing, Spain was in its second phase of industrialization, a particularly stressful process for a country with serious problems of infrastructure (Duarte 35). Workers were pouring into the cities in search of work. Pascual Madoz recorded the entry of 1,500 workers daily into Madrid (Sambricio 68). The overcrowding, the lack of sanitation, and poor housing conditions, all

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contributed to the spread of disease. Successive epidemics of cholera and yellow fever ravaged the urban poor. In a century known for its epidemics, the defining disease of the nineteenth century was cholera. Spain suffered no fewer than five outbreaks: 1834–1835, 1855–1856, 1860, 1865, 1885 (Vicens 14–15). More feared than smallpox, this disease consisted of violent vomiting and traumatic “rice water” diarrhea. Loss of body fluids led to dehydration, shock, and death, usually within 24 hours of the onset of the disease. Moreover, sewage contaminated the water supply and thus spread the disease (Gurney 89). Because of the apparent perversity with which it struck—devastating certain towns or areas of towns while sparing others nearby—cholera contributed to the abandonment of the old contact-model of disease transmission and to the adoption of the miasma theory, which held that disease was caused by emanations from the earth produced by putrefying organic matter and excrement that poisoned the air. Therefore, the stench of sewage had to be avoided at all costs. According to Alain Corbin, the vapors that rose from mud became the subject of an anxiety-laden discourse, as people became obsessed with fissures and faults that might permit foul air to escape the soil. Additionally, old walls were the repositories of ancient filth and posed a threat to health (Foul 13–32). The miasma theory of disease transmission dominated the first half of the century, coexisting along with Pasteur’s germ theory, which would come to prevail in the latter part of the same century (Sontag 130). Until the great epidemics, the metropolis of the rich had little to do with the metropolis of the poor. For example, after the 1832 epidemic, people became obsessed with the notion of “the human swamp,” emanations from human beings that could spread disease (Corbin, Foul 142–43). This decaying organic matter became identified with urban squalor and explained, to some extent at least, the disease’s propensity to strike the urban poor, who lived in such deplorable conditions. Unfortunately, this inclination gave cholera a social stigma and led to the belief that it was a retribution for immoral behavior, filth, and social disorder. In this regard, Fuentes Peris points out that words such as “vicio” [vice] and “enfermedad” [disease] were used constantly by hygienists when referring to the lower classes and that public health discourse during the period was saturated with moralizing commentary.1 The poor were the diseased “Other” to be treated as scarcely more than savages. Suspicion grew that an outwardly progressive city rested on layers of putrefaction concealing depths of human degradation. As a result, the working classes came to be perceived as a threat to the physical and moral health of the nation (Fuentes Peris, “Drink” 65–72).

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Another “social” disease that obsessed nineteenth-century Spain, one which increased in frequency at an alarming rate throughout the century, was congenital syphilis. Contemporary literary references to this disease, particularly in evidence in metaphors of the diseased body, reflect both a focus on the role of women in society and concerns with the excesses of capitalism. Since the prostitute was obligated to ply her trade in the public space, she was associated with the filth in the streets (Fuentes Peris, “Control” 37). In turn, the proximity of latrines and sewers was thought to hasten the spread of venereal disease and thus increase mortality (Corbin, “Commercial” 212). Noel Valis points out the contradiction inherent in the bourgeois analogies between the prostitute’s body and the cloacal imagery of sewers and drains, existing at once as sites of infection and as cleansing agents, sites that rid the social body of potentially deadly excess (201). The acceptance of the bourgeoisie’s double standard, viewing prostitution as a necessary evil, made it necessary to oversee and control commercial sexuality; as a vehicle of commerce, the prostitute constituted a nexus between the working and middle classes, and as such, a prime source of potential infection. Hygienists such as Hauser and Méndez Alvaro considered prostitution a grave threat to public health, and under their influence Madrid in 1865 passed its first ordinance to control it (Cuevas 166–67). As with the great epidemics, prostitution was associated with the city, and consequently the city itself could be figured as a disease—“el cosmopolitismo” (Casco Solís 241) [cosmopolitanism]—one that definitely weakened the bonds of matrimony. Ultimately, the body’s dysfunction “diseases” the harmony established in the human being’s physical, social, and moral being and initiates the search for reconstitution. Healing in Western societies concentrates on the opposition between the human being and nature, focusing, to the exclusion of social factors, on what may physiologically be out of harmony with the natural order. In doing so, Western medicine often ignores the mutual influence of mind and body. Therefore, once achieved, healing sanctions a society’s fundamental ways of organizing itself and, by extension, its values (Comaroff 51–60). In other words, if disease activates our deepest fears, healing may perpetuate them. Within the context of late nineteenth-century Spain, the revolution known as the “Gloriosa” (1868) and the subsequent attempt at a republic (1873–1874) led to a decisive shift in attitude of the bourgeoisie. If until the Gloriosa the liberal middle classes had been at the vanguard of progressive movements, after the First Republic these same bourgeois forces would oppose any real liberalizing

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tendencies, primarily out of fear of the social disorder that might ensue. The years between 1868 and 1874 represent the end of the “bourgeois revolutionary cycle” (Bernecker 142). Consequently, the Restoration period (1875–1923) that followed the revolutionary upheaval represents the culmination of a rigid and disciplinary society, a society determined to impose bourgeois values and to isolate and contain elements perceived to be dangerous or threatening (Tsuchiya 201). With the breakdown of class distinctions that the process of industrialization set in motion and the proximity of the working class to the middle class, this containment became more urgent. Any attempt to heal the individual in such a society would entail her/his submission to existing norms. It is within the Bourbon Restoration that the realist novel reaches its highest expression in the decade of the 1880s in the novels of Benito Pérez Galdós, Leopoldo Alas, and Emilia Pardo Bazán. These writers reflect the spirit of their times by ascribing much importance to the milieu in which character is formed (Furst, All 99). The principal axis of the realist novel is the intersection of time and place. This latter concept becomes a dynamic force through the ethical and social charge it carries as a complex system of values (“Realism” 108–112). The novel acquires its credibility, not through any referential connection, but through the reality it attains intrinsically as a motivating influence on the minds of its characters. Lilian Furst speaks of “the convincing persuasion of its associative, imagistic rhetoric, its mythic undercurrents” that relate the fiction by metonymic extension to a known system of reference (“Realism” 115). In the case of these three prominent Spanish writers, the known system of reference may be the different streets or quarters of Madrid, as in the numerous novels of Galdós, or a city’s sewer system, as in Leopoldo Alas’s La Regenta (1885)[The Magistrate’s Wife], or a crumbling country estate as in Emilia Pardo Bazán’s Los pazos de Ulloa (1886)[The House of Ulloa]. These authors and their novels all illustrate aspects of disease as a crucial social phenomenon—both in its literal sense as a threat to the physical health of individuals and society and in its metaphorical sense as a reflection of the spiritual dangers of capitalism, as reflected in Galdós’s La desheredada (1881)[The Disinherited Woman]. In his turn, Alas uses disease metaphorically to examine Spanish social institutions, particularly the Church, within a provincial setting. Pardo Bazán will use it to analyze the patriarchal system as the invisible pathogen infecting all of society. In La desheredada, the first of his contemporary novels, Benito Pérez Galdós chooses the newly reformed capital city of Madrid, the

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archetype of liberal ideology, as the dynamic force that shapes the mind of his protagonist Isidora Rufete while interacting with her; ultimately, this force will bring about her downfall. In this novel, the city functions as the focal point for the spread of disease in a variety of forms. At the time that the novel takes place, during the Interregnum (1871–1875), that is, just before the Bourbon Restoration, Madrid had suffered the reform imposed on it by the engineer Carlos María de Castro’s geometrical plan, designed to accommodate the new leisure class and an industrial capitalist economy. In addition to a functional, economic, and administrative differentiation designed in accord with what he thought a “capital” city should be, Castro’s plan imposed a radical social zoning, a segregation of classes, with the wealthy occupying the city’s new residential areas and the “dangerous” and poor relocated on the periphery (Bahamonde 442–45). Méndez Alvaro, the conservative hygienist, recorded the effects of such a zoning in 1874: Las grandes poblaciones para ensancharse y embellecerse parece que han ido lanzando de su seno, como si estuvieran apestados, a los trabajadores y a los infelices que la suerte maltrata, obligándoles a ocupar míseras viviendas que ha improvisado la codicia. (132) [It seems that the large cities in order to expand and to beautify themselves have thrown from their bosoms, as if they were diseased, the workers and the unfortunate who are down on their luck, obliging them to live in miserable housing that greed has improvised.]

Galdós describes the effects of this zoning at the outset of the novel when Isidora arrives in Madrid and visits her aunt in the Barrio de las Peñuelas, one of Madrid’s poorest neighborhoods, and considered the origin of the dreaded cholera epidemic of 1865 (Fernández 128). Off the Paseo de Embajadores with its posh houses, there is a street that ends in a “vertedero, en los bordes rotos y desportillados de la zona urbana” [a rubbish dump, on the broken and chipped edges of the urban zone]. Here children play in the mud of a city described as made of “cartón podrido” [rotten cardboard]. This part of the city was a “piltrafa de limpieza para que no corrompiera el centro” (38) [dust rag so that the downtown area would not be corrupted]. Later on in the novel, Isidora flees a similar working-class area of Madrid because of its “bulla, mal olor y el polvo” (338) [crowd, bad odor, and dust]. Periphery is clearly identified with disease. Likewise, the agents infecting the city are identified—albeit obliquely—as industrialization and commercial speculation, both forces of a nascent capitalism. As an example of the danger these

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forces represent for the inhabitants of the city, we see that water from several tanneries and dye factories in the Barrio de las Peñuelas have formed “ríos de veneno” (38) [rivers of poison] and that Madrid will evacuate “sobre el Manzanares lo que no necesita para nada” (87) [everything for which it has no use into the Manzanares]. The novel thus vividly reflects nineteenth-century fears of being both overwhelmed and contaminated by industrial wastes (Labanyi 20–26). The new economy is fuelled by a fever of speculation. Galdós notes with irony: “Mil agentes bullían en Madrid, realizando con maravillosos beneficios, esas combinaciones oscuras entre el Tesoro y los usureros, entre los servicios y las costumbres, de que resultaban los únicos milagros del siglo XIX” (140) [A thousand agents crowded into Madrid carrying out with marvelous benefits those obscure deals between the Treasury and the moneylenders, between services and customs, from which came the only miracles of the nineteenth century]. In the hands of these agents, Madrid becomes simply another object to exploit. As new residential neighborhoods were built and stench was eliminated, the value of urban real estate increased. The city itself became the means to achieve wealth: the metropolis thus became the property of the “rentistas,” a new class forged from the union of old aristocracy and the industrial bourgeoisie—represented in the novel by the character Sánchez Botín, one of Isidora’s more unsavory clients/lovers. Along this same vein, the rampant corruption evident in the “new” order reveals the urge to reform as a hypocritical process at best. After mid–nineteenth century, reform in Spain had evolved from private charity to a public intervention at the hands of the State (Casco Solís 233). After the revolution of 1868, the “Gloriosa”—which proclaimed the principles of democracy and, during the Interregnum, a more “enlightened” attitude toward the working classes—emerged. Debate swirled around the type of housing most appropriate to accommodate them. The Second Paris World Exhibition of 1867 gave preference to the theme of housing for the working class. In Madrid, one such plan for a working-class quarters was presented by the architect Altolaguirre in 1868 to City Hall. This plan would promote “buena moral y sana doctrina bajo el ojo de la sana vigilancia” [good morality and healthy doctrine under the eye of healthy vigilance], the ever-present paternalism fostered by liberal ideology. This housing reform reflects two competing visions: one viewed decent housing as prevention of the social unrest so abhorrent to the bourgeoisie after the Paris Commune of 1870, and another viewed such reform as essentially humanitarian and sponsored the Constructora Benéfica,

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a philanthropic concern formed in 1875 to provide affordable housing for the poor (Díez de Baldeón 123–28). In Galdós’s novel the quintessential schemer Melchor represents this latter view. He invents a “rifa para los pobres” (299) [raffle for the poor], “una idea humanitaria” (300) [a humanitarian idea] whose prospectus contains an image of Sisters of Charity leading the poor to the “asilo ideal con columnas giegas y un sol con la insignia triangular de Jehová” (328) [ideal home with Greek columns and a sun with the triangular insignia of Jehovah]. The product “más parecía madriguera que humana vivienda” (328) [looked more like a burrow than a dwelling fit for humans]. Clearly, in La desheredada philanthropy is just another scheme designed to enrich a few while taking advantage of the poor. Emphasizing without ambiguity his profound suspicions regarding such charitable efforts, Galdós depictts the character of “el digno señor comisario de Beneficencia” [the dignified Welfare Commissioner], the official agent of reform and author of “tanto y tan hermosos expedientes” (113) [so many and such beautiful files]. Described with typical Galdosian irony as being the most dignified representative of the most venerable and meritorious qualities that there are in modern nations, the “apóstol de la Beneficencia oficial” (109) [apostle of official welfare], the Comisario is examining the Barrio de las Peñuelas for the purpose of establishing a school there when Isidora’s brother, Mariano, kills another young boy. As a result of the crime, a curious crowd of the idle congregates. The fact that Mariano’s experience in school has driven him to the streets is never addressed by this official who simply limits himself to lamenting indignantly the lack of authority while issuing orders in an authoritarian manner. He is finally dispatched by Mariano’s blow to his head, much to the crowd’s delight. If capitalism contributes to the development of such foci of infection, the bourgeoisie’s effort to separate “dangerous” elements is subverted by the depiction of mental disease in the text. In Galdós’s work, diseased minds may be physically separated from the culture, as done in the case of the insane asylum Leganés, located on the outskirts of Madrid, where Isidora visits her father. Yet such manifestations of insanity are revealed to be a product of the culture—much like the city itself—and as such participate in fomenting that same culture. It becomes a question of where Leganés ends and Madrid begins, or as Rufete sententiously states: “Hay muchos cuerdos que son locos razonables” (16) [There are many sane people who are reasonable madmen]. Thus, the “mad” world of Madrid comes to be represented by the city as a commodity, as “abierto bazar, exposición de alegrías y

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amenidades sin cuento” (229) [an open bazaar, an exhibit of countless amenities]. The city’s center, the Puerta del Sol, attracts Isidora with its shop windows, “origen de vivísimos apetitos” (117) [origin of lively appetites], displaying “infinitas variedades y formas del lujo y de la moda” (117) [infinite varieties and forms of luxury and fashion]. All these promote greed focused mostly on useless objects, along with a grandiose form of thinking given to “aparentar” [pretending to be] more than one is, an ambition born out of envy that those with less have of those with more. This “aparentar” can be enacted in the city as a spectacle, that is the Paseo de la Castellana, the great boulevard that runs on the city’s north/south axis. The visual display of finery belies a reality of debt and a world described as a “cloaca de vicios” (74) [a sewer of vices], a world where dressmakers’ workshops are in reality “centros miasmáticos” (368) [miasmatic centers], because they foster desire for what cannot possibly be afforded or attained. In the end, Isidora cannot resist the urban lure of luxury. Refusing the advice of her doctor/hygienist friend, Miquis, who advises her to embrace “el régimen, la rutina y el método” (362–63) [regime, routine, and method] and marry for financial security, Isidora is devoured by “el voraginoso laberinto de las calles” (480) [the vortex-like labyrinth of streets]. The social surface swallows her up and remains calm, because the city as swamp has engulfed both Isidora and the body politic. The irony is that just as the city has infected her, she will, as a prostitute and an agent of infection, will be crossing social barriers and possibly infecting the middle class in spite of its best efforts to protect itself. Disease is thus shown to be self-perpetuating, despite society’s attempts at containment. Unlike Galdós, who chose Madrid, the national capital, as the setting for his work, Leopoldo Alas would select the mythical provincial capital of Vetusta as the setting for his novel La Regenta (1885) [The Magistrate’s Wife]. However, Vetusta proves to be as dangerous as Madrid as a source of infection. The importance of this provincial city in the novel cannot be overstated; Vetusta figures as a force in her life that Aza Ozores, the protagonist, must confront at all times. Frank Durand calls it “the force of gravity which holds the theme and action together and gives the work unity” (325). That this city’s essence and identity are pointedly provincial definitely warrants further examination. As mentioned earlier, the Bourbon Restoration represented the implantation of bourgeois values after the years of turbulence and civil strife that followed the “Gloriosa” in 1868 (Fusi 76–77). Bourgeois ideologues proposed the regeneration of the Spanish nation by converting conflictive elements into a homogeneous whole (Zavala 65).

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Such attempts to legitimize centralization must appeal to the timeless existence of the Spanish nation and its traditions as the culmination of a historical evolution. As a result, Spain took on a dual character: at once rural and urban. In this manner, liberal discourse reinforced the importance of the provincial capital as the representation of national values while promoting the idea of material and social progress (Sazatornil Ruíz 223–24). In the opening chapter of the novel, Magistral Don Fermín gazes at the coveted city from the vantage point of the cathedral tower. His gaze is scientific, minutely inspecting his subject “como el naturalista estudia con poderoso microscopio las pequeñeces de los cuerpos” (I, 105) [like the naturalist studies with a powerful microscope the smallest details of the specimen]. His gaze is focused: “No miraba a los campos; no contemplaba la lontananza de montes y nubes; sus miradas no salían de la ciudad” (I, 105) [He did not look at the countryside; nor did he contemplate the background of mountains and clouds; his gaze did not leave the city]. Don Fermín’s “science” is Vetusta itself: “La conocía palmo a palmo, por dentro y por fuera . . .” (I, 105) [He knew every inch of her, inside and out]. The object of his gaze further reflects the politics of urban planning as imposed on cities during the Restoration, that is, zoning with the goal of segregating populations. So it is that the Magistral observes the old city, the Encimada, “el primitivo recinto de Vetusta” [the original Vetusta], as a reality-in-flux, because the medieval wall, once the defining and cohesive element of the city, now only divides gardens (I, 110). The Campo del Sol, the new industrial area with its factory and its workers “negros por el carbón” (I, 113) [black from coal], is located on the outskirts of the city. The shift from center to periphery is also evident in La Colonia, “el barrio nuevo de americanos y comerciantes del reino” (I, 112) [the new quarter of merchants and businessmen]. The ascendancy of this commercial class has not safeguarded the community from the bad taste of the nuevo rico [new rich], aptly described as “anarquía cromática” (I, 114) [chromatic anarchy]. Likewise, the Church must adjust to the new utilitarian spirit of urban planning. Having once occupied half of the Encimada, several of its convents have been requisitioned by the State. The Magistral does not despair, however. If the Revolution effectively has broken down the edifice of the Church, the Restoration will be filled with a zeal for rebuilding. So, there are graphic signs of a rebirth of faith in the new convents that are being constructed to the west and north of the old city. The Magistral’s satisfaction with the Restoration is confirmed later in the reaction of the Vetustan clergy to the “ensanche”

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[enlargement of the city]: Preciso es declarar que el clero vetustense, aunque famoso por su intransigencia en cuestiones dogmáticas, morales y hasta disciplinarias, y si se quiere políticas, no había puesto nunca malos ojos a la proximidad del progreso urbano, y antes se felicitaba de que Vetusta se transformase de día en día, de modo que a la vuelta de veinte años no hubiera quien la conociese. Lo cual demuestra que la civilización bien entendida no la rechazaba el clero. . . . (I, 521) [It is necessary to state that the Vetustan clergy, although famous for its intransigence on questions of morality, dogma, and even discipline, and if you will, of politics, never had looked askance on the proximity of urban progress, but has instead congratulated itself on the fact that Vetusta changed daily such that twenty years hence no one would know her. All of which shows that the clergy did not reject progress or civilization when properly understood . . .]

The clergy’s support for urban reform reflects Bernecker’s observation concerning the Constitution of 1876, the constitutional basis of the Restoration, as a pact between the Church and the Spanish bourgeoisie (144). Thus, Vetusta’s population may have shifted from its center to outlying districts, but the city’s spiritual center remains in the Encimada, because the inhabitants of La Colonia scrupulously follow “las costumbres distinguidas” [the distinguished customs] of the old families of the Encimada (I, 114). As the spiritual center of Vetusta, the Encimada is the object of the Magistral’s desire. It is also the quintessential medieval city, a compact, heterogeneous space where old palaces stand in close proximity to “tugurios donde se amontonaba la plebe vetustense” (I, 110) [shacks where the Vetustan people were crowded together], those too poor to move to the Campo del Sol. The association of the medieval with disease is extended when its streets are described as “estrechas, tortuosas, húmedas sin sol” (I, 110) [narrow, twisted, humid without sunlight]. Urban planning has entailed displacement from the center to the periphery, though such new designs have had little impact on the Encimada. Its narrow streets and damp stone walls figure as a breeding-ground for corruption and disease. In a discussion of factors contributing to the cholera epidemic that swept Spain in the nineteenth century, the hygienist Hauser mentions the deficiencies of the streets of Madrid that are “inherentes al sistema antiguo de urbanización, cuando la higiene urbana era poco conocida y no había entrado aún en la vida práctica de los pueblos: tales son las calles irregulares, tortuosas y estrechas . . . inaccesibles al aire y a los

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rayos solares” (I, 336) [inherent in the old system of urbanization, wherein urban hygiene was little known, and it was yet to enter into the practical lives of people: deficiencies seen in the lack of amenities such as irregular streets, twisted and narrow . . . inaccessible to air and to sunlight]. Both the accumulation of filth and lack of sunlight were long held to be causes of cholera (Donaldson-Evans 154). Nonetheless, the vain inhabitants of the Encimada believe their houses to be palaces; in reality, these dwellings are also associated with disease when they are described as “madrigueras, cuevas, montones de tierra, labor de topo” (I, 107) [burrows, caves, mountains of dirt, the work of moles]. Notwithstanding the effort to safeguard the “new” Vetusta from the problems of the “old,” there is no safe place in the city, because “los rigores de la intemperie,” (I, 116) its ever-present humidity exercises a contaminating effect. These effects are captured in a vivid repertoire of images related to water and dirt, humidity and rain, “lodo” [mud], “fango” [mud], and “charcos” [puddles] of its streets. At this rate, no surface can remain unsullied for long. Any efforts at urban reform will be further undermined given what exists under the city: an underworld of sewers, gutters, and “pozos negros” [septic tanks] that hold and convey corruption. The convent of Las Salesas, for example, is located “dentro de Vetusta, cerca de los vertederos de la Encimada, casi sepultadas en las cloacas . . .” (I, 112–13) [inside Vetusta, near the rubbish dump of the Encimada, almost buried in the drains]. The insidious poisoning of the town from beneath its surface is mirrored in the poisoning of young minds. Here the daughters of the aristocracy are educated “en la eterna idolatría” (II, 202) [in eternal idolatry]. Due to the unhygienic conditions, their cells become “nichos” [tombs] (I, 113), as is the case with Rosa Carraspique who is slowly dying in the convent. She becomes the subject of controversy between the local physician, Dr. Somoza, and the Magistral, the two contesting control of the situation. This struggle, portrayed on the surface as one between science and religion, also reflects the novel’s deeper concern for control over the female body, in this case the daughters of Vetusta’s aristocratic families who have been encouraged to enter the convent. Indeed, the female body and its propensity for disease occupy center stage in La Regenta. Medical and religious discourses most notably converge and contest for control of the female body in the person of Ana Ozores. Trapped in a sexually frustrating marriage and subject to fits of hysteria, Ana falls ill. The physician Somoza is called in and promptly diagnoses her problem as “La Primavera médica” (II, 110) [medical spring].2 His incessant monitoring of Ana’s body is ineffective, so a

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“new” specialist is called in, though the cure he prescribes, based on hygienic principles, also proves futile. Likewise, the Magistral’s cure based on religious piety fails miserably. The implication is that there can be no real cure for Ana, religious or medical, because she is unable to express her sexuality within the bonds of her marriage—an expression upon which both Science and the Church insist. Moreover, it was also a generally accepted belief that the female vascular system, characterized by the passing of polluted blood during the menses, contaminated the sewers with syphilis, and that syphilis was contracted as a result of an extramarital economy (Valis 201). Advised of Ana’s need for “un estímulo fuerte” (II, 404) [a strong stimulus], her husband recognizes the operative metaphor when he confuses body functions with those of a city’s waterworks. In this example, Alas mirrors Galdós’s preoccupation with female sexuality and disease, depicting his own right sexuality within marriage as a foundation of individual and social health. Accordingly, city and body are never distinct entities in La Regenta. In the opening paragraph, Vetusta is characterized as one big digestive system gone awry; its free-floating anxiety is reduced to the painful contractions of the lower gastrointestinal tract. In the end, however, the city prevails over Ana who succumbs to its manipulations and is left a huddled mass on the Cathedral floor, an expiatory sacrifice to the diseased institutions of provincial Spain. In contrast to Alas and Galdós, Emilia Pardo Bazán turns to a preindustrial rural Spain, her native Galicia, for the setting of her novel Los pazos de Ulloa (1886) [The House of Ulloa]. Critics of the work have recognized the importance of the novel’s setting, concentrating their attention on the nature and degree of literary naturalism present in the work, that is, the question of the means and extent to which nature or the environment prevail over or otherwise determine the trajectory of human existence and endeavor.3 This approach has produced many insightful readings of Los pazos de Ulloa. However, focusing on disease transmission as an ontological entity enlarges the scope of the social analysis made in the text of the novel in question. Whereas Galdós and Alas place disease, medicine, and science in the context of their moral reflection on the soul, Pardo Bazán utilizes the germ theory of disease transmission to pinpoint patriarchy as the source of infection. Theories of the spread of infectious diseases were to be permanently altered by Louis Pasteur’s discoveries in 1864 of pathogenic microorganisms and their diffusion by contact or air-vection (Lambert 51). However, it was Koch who isolated the tubercular

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bacillus in 1882, a breakthrough that together with his discovery and description of the organism that causes Asiatic cholera in 1883, proved that each disease is caused by a specific germ (Furst, Medical 13). Thus, bacteriology became the center of all medical investigations (Carter 259), as bacteriologists proposed a three-stage process in their approach to any disorder: (1) a search for the general etiology of the disorder, (2) the identification of a specific microbe, (3) interventionist measures to produce an acquired immunity in the diseased host (Harris 100). Pasteur, as early as 1880, had succeeded in mitigating the noxiousness of microbes; as he examined the concept of acquired immunity, the idea occurred to him that each organism possesses its own innate defenses against certain germs (Vigarello 210). Such discoveries suggested an environmentalist orientation toward infection, an orientation that stressed the invasion by a germ of a susceptible terrain. The importance given to the environment would have consequences in all the social sciences, especially in that of criminology, although, as Ruth Harris points out, the emphasis continued to be on the actual germ/criminal, rather than on the unacceptable conditions of the milieu (102). For the great majority of scientists, the germ theory would effectively strip away the social and moral underpinnings of disease. In accord with this sort of reasoning, in Los pazos de Ulloa Emilia Pardo Bazán examines the breeding-ground for the microbes affecting nineteenth-century Spanish society, moving beyond Galdós’s or Alas’s concerns with disease from a moral perspective. The first image in the novel foretells the outcome of events already in progress: the unsteady equestrian on the road to Ulloa simply cannot control his mount. The horseman is Don Julián, who has recently completed his studies for the priesthood in Santiago and has been appointed as chaplain to Ulloa, a “señorial” estate owned by Pedro Moscoso, the Marquis of Ulloa. The very layout of the road indicates a hidden political valence within the novel, since such broken-down by-way would never be acceptable in any urban setting. On the journey to Ulloa, Don Julián responds to the new environment where Nature threatens to overwhelm the road: “país de lobos” [wolves’ country] he calls the place, while remembering stories of travelers robbed and even murdered along such spaces (10). These imaginings of violence are confirmed when he discovers by the side of the road a cross that marks the site of just such a violent death. Such phenomena constitute machinations, visible and invisible, as violence escalates even to the point of murder, while an untamed and untamable Nature complements and compounds the rural environment that confronts Julián.

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The presence of invisible agents of infection extends into the description of Don Pedro and his upbringing. Although innately a paragon of masculine traits, this last of the Ulloas has been reared without a formal education. Instead he was influenced by his maternal uncle Gabriel, the second son, who acted as administrator of the property after Pedro’s father’s death. The patriarchal system of mayorazgo [right of the eldest] is the invisible agent that marks the young marquis’s temperament: “Y el chico adoraba en aquel tío jovial, especie de señor feudal . . . , que enseñaba . . . al heredero de los Ulloa . . . el abuso de la fuerza” (38) [And the boy adored that jovial uncle, a type of feudal lord, who taught the heir of the Ulloas the use of force].4 When his uncle retires, Don Pedro is unable to continue on his own. Since a pattern of symbiotic debauchery has consistently been Don Pedro’s model, “so Primitivo” [a sly servant] and his provocative daughter Sabel move into the Ulloa mansion. By the time that Julián arrives, Pedro has fathered a son with Sabel. The association of the feudal order with disease and decay is evident in the description of the estate: “una ruina vasta y amenazadora” (37) [a vast and threatening ruin] where dust and debris continue to accumulate and even the noble coat of arms is overgrown with weeds. A visit to the neighboring gentry confirms that the dissolute strain of disease that corrupts the Ulloa family has infected the entire decadent social body. Parasitic plants have taken over “la casa infanzona más linajuda de toda la provincia” (144) [the estate along with the most distinguished lineage of the entire province].5 In any case, agrarian structure based on the minifundio [small land holding] is the invisible infecting agent with its “subdivisión atomística” (40) [atomistic subdivision] of property.6 After observing the terrain, Julián will undertake reform at the Ulloa manor, beginning his efforts in the library, where he would soon identifies the specific microbe: “la hipoteca es como un cáncer: empieza atacando un punto del organismo y acaba por inficionarlo todo” (41) [a mortgage is like a cancer: it begins by attacking a point of the organism and it ends by invading everything]. Likewise, lawsuits fuelled by Ulloas’s neighbors’ covetousness and offended pride have added to the “desmoronamiento general” (41) [general disintegration] of the family holdings. Julián’s efforts are not confined to the library. Once he identifies Pedro’s relationship with Sabel as the cause of the Marquis’s degenerate behavior, the young cleric is determined to extract Don Pedro from the corrupting environment at Ulloa, persuading him to enter into the Christian institution of marriage. This dramatic change of status entails a trip to Santiago in order to find

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Pedro an appropriate wife among the five daughters of his Tío Manolo. Country and city values initially seem to collide during this visit. However, on closer examination, one notices that the aura of decay so evident in the bucolic setting is equally pervasive in the city, with its “altas tapias verdosas” [high, moss-covered walls] and its “edificios que parecían calabozos y mazmorras” (121) [buildings that seemed like jails and dungeons], all recalling the countryside. Moreover, Tío Manolo figures as an urban reflection of Pedro: “Magnífico ejemplar de una raza apta para la vida guerrera y montés de las épocas feudales, se consumía miserablemente en el vil ocio de los pueblos . . .” (83) [A magnificent specimen of a race suitable for war and mountain life during feudal times is nowadays consumed miserably in the awful idleness of the towns]. The city has only made a once-active lifestyle sedentary and still more anachronistic. In this sense, Julián’s belief in civilization and progress is revealed to be unfounded, since the city bears within itself a festering corruption as well. While in the city, Pedro will choose Nucha, one who of all the daughters is the leastsuited for country life, in large measure due to the patriarchal order’s interpretation of acceptable conjugal relations: “indulgentísima para el esposo e implacable para la esposa” (100) [indulgent toward the husband and implacable when it comes to the wife]. Ultimately, Don Julián’s interventionist efforts prove futile. The agent infecting the social body is borne by the individual and affects the very will to change and regain health. Julián himself is characterized as an irresolute person without real initiative, one who always finds an excuse to postpone any action. His urge toward reform is impulsive, while his view of the goings-on around him is narrow. Therefore, for every step forward taken by the characters in Los pazos de Ulloa, they take two steps backward, as Julián’s efforts in the library illustrate. He endeavors to restore all the volumes except Voltaire’s works, leaving them at the mercy of a less-than-benign Nature. These neglected tomes will, of course, re-infect the library, thereby undermining the curate’s efforts at restoration. For his own part, Don Pedro, his vanity flattered, offers at first to help with the restoration of his family and fortunes, though he soon desists when more immediately attractive pursuits lure him elsewhere. Both characters, Julián and Don Pedro, are ineffectual; the only difference is that the latter man is capable of violence: a “siniestra señal” [sinister sign] evident on Nucha’s hands will trigger the violent desenlace [denouement] of the novel (229). This same sort of violence is the germ affecting the social body, as well as the individual, and it is an all-pervasive and invisible presence,

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much like Primitivo’s presence at the Ulloa estates. As a matter of fact, even the “highway” at the beginning of the novel augurs the violence endemic to this benighted region. Later on, Julián learns of a robbery perpetrated at Ulloa by local people occupying positions of public trust. This connection between outright criminality and the patriarchal political system of caciquismo [bossism]is developed during the novel’s detailed and almost clinical examination of the internal workings of local politics, described as “vanidad microbiológica, combate naval en una charca” (218) [a microbiological vanity, a naval battle in a puddle].7 When Nucha fails to produce a male heir, the prospects for real change in the Ulloa household fade. Julián cannot usurp the positon of the legitimate patriarch and must finally abandon his position and efforts at “los pazos de Ulloa” [the house of Ulloa]. For her part, Nucha cannot “adapt” to the situation and dies. Julián’s projected reforms have failed, in large measure because he confused the effect of the illness, Pedro’s relationship with his servants, with its cause, the patriarchal system. At the novel’s close, Julián visits the cemetery where Nucha is buried. There he finds a symbiosis of flourishing plants and decaying tombs. Nonetheless, the exuberance of Nature remains the effect, rather than the cause of a society’s inability to thrive.8 The decadent social order is finally the host that enables the germ to live and multiply. In the final analysis, disease as organizing principle informs and relates themes, images, character development, and settings in the Spanish realist novel. With definite symptoms that progress in a logical sequence, disease may structure an ongoing narrative of a particular character’s or a society’s trajectory of recovery or demise. In this instance, diagnosis becomes prognosis (Rosenberg xiii–xxiii). As a principle of disorganization, framed within the competing models of a personally uncontrollable attack from without and the direct and controllable result of sin and vice from within, disease activates our deepest fears (Gilbert 44). The fear of dissolution is projected onto the Other in an attempt to distance ourselves from it (Gilman 5). These sorts of tensions threaten individual and social integrity within the novelistic universe. The authors of these 1880s novels find in the theme of disease a powerful tool to evoke, literally and metaphorically, the social ills of their day. The irony of these novels is that, while they are contextualized in the medical discourse that constructed and conflated disease and immorality with Spain’s urban problems and its working class, they systematically subvert the medical model by indicating the dominant classes as the source of decay and the transmitters

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of disease. In this regard, reform is revealed to be a product of the society that it purports to change. Therefore, the social order holds a vested interest in the preservation and maintenance of the status quo. In such a world disease and decay are unavoidable; indeed, they are intrinsic to the society. Disease in these novels is characterized as an insidious, self-perpetuating process at work in both the individual and the social hierarchy. Whether the setting is urban Madrid or provincial Spain, the protagonists, alienated from self, as well as from the wider social and moral issues, must necessarily fail in their attempts to reform or even to survive in a world from which they remain so estranged.

Notes 1. All translations are mine. 2. This may be what is known today as seasonal depression. 3. Robert E. Lott argues for a mitigated naturalism, whereas Darío Villanueva concludes the work to be “lejos del naturalismo” (136-38) [far from naturalism]. Carlos Feal Deibe concurs with Villanueva, though more recently, Mary Lee Bretz and Lidia Bardina assert that Los pazos de Ulloa is indeed a naturalist work. 4. Mayorazgo is the accepted custom, practice or law of passing inherited property from father to eldest son. In this case, Manolo is the eldest, so Gabriel must look for his living elsewhere. 5. Many physicians during the decade of the 1880s wanted to label the germ theory of disease the “parasitic theory of disease” (Farley 34). 6. A minifundio is a small property, typical of land holdings in the north of Spain. 7. Caciquismo is a form of local government in the hands of a cacique, i.e. a local political boss. 8. Jo Labanyi supports this reading of the cemetery scene, when she attributes the fall of the House of Ulloa to other factors, rather than to the action of Nature (346).

Works Cited Alas, Leopoldo (“Clarín”). La Regenta. 2 vols., ed. Gonzalo Sobejano. Madrid: Castalia, 1981. Álvarez Mora, Alfonso. “La necesaria componente espacial en la Historia Urbana.” In La Historia Urbana, ed. Carlos Sambricio. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 1996. 29–59. Bahamonde, Ángel, and Jesús A. Martínez. Historia de España. Siglo XIX. Madrid: Cátedra, 1998. Bardina, Lidia. “Presencia y función del paisaje en el discurso naturalista: Zola, Pardo Bazán y Clarín.” Hispanófila 35: 2 (1992): 17–24.

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Bernecker, Walther L. España entre tradición y modernidad. Política, economía, sociedad (siglos XIX y XX). Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1999. Bretz, Mary Lee. “Masculine and Feminine Chronotopes in Los pazos de Ulloa.” Letras Peninsulares (Spring 1989): 45–54. Carter, K. Codell. “Germ Theory, Hysteria, and Freud’s Early Work in Psychopathology.” Medical History 24 (1980): 259–74. Casco Solís, Juan. “La higiene sexual en el proceso de institucionalización de la Sanidad Pública española.” Asclepio 42: 2 (1990): 223–52. Comaroff, Jean. “Medicine: Symbol and Ideology.” In The Problem of Medical Knowledge: Examining the Social Construction of Medicine, ed. Peter Wright and Andrew Treacher. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982. 87–108. Cooter, Roger. “Anticontagionism and History’s Medical Record.” The Problem of Medical Knowledge: Examining the Social Construction of Medicine. Eds Peter Wright and Andrew Teacher. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1982. 87–108. Corbin, Alain. “Commercial Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France: A System of Images and Regulations.” In The Making of the Modern Body. Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. 209–19. ———. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination. Trans. Miriam Kochan, Roy Porter, and Christopher Prendergast. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Cuevas, Matilde. “Aproximación a la consideración social de la prostitución madrileña.” In Madrid en la sociedad del siglo XIX, ed. Luis E. Otero Carvajal and Ángel Bahamonde. 2 vols. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid. Consejería de Cultura, 1986. II: 163–73. Díez de Baldeón, Clementina. “Barrios obreros en el Madrid del siglo XIX: ¿Solución o amenaza para el orden burgués?” Madrid en la sociedad del siglo XIX, ed. Luis E. Otero Carvajal and Ángel Bahamonde. 2 vols. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid. Consejería de Cultura, 1986. II: 117–34. Donaldson-Evans, Mary. “The Morbidity of milieu: L’Assommoir and the Discourse of Hygiene.” In Literary Generations. A Festschrift in Honor of Edward D. Sullivan by His Friends,Colleagues and Former Students, ed. Alain Toumayan and Robert Goheen. Lexington: French Forum, 1992. Duarte, Ángel. La España de la Restauración (1875–1923). Barcelona: Hipotesi, 1997. Durand, Frank. “Structural Unity in Leopoldo Alas’s La Regenta.” Hispanic Review 31 (1963): 324–35. Farley, John. “Parasites and the Germ Theory of Disease.” In Framing Disease, ed. Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet Golden. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 33–49. Feal Deibe, Carlos. “La voz femenina en Los pazos de Ulloa.” Hispania (1987): 214–21.

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Fernández, Antonio. Epidemias y sociedad en Madrid. Barcelona: VicensVives, 1985. Fuentes Peris, Teresa. “The Control of Prostitution and Filth in Fortunata y Jacinta: The Panoptic Strategy in the Convent of Las Micaelas.” Anales Galdosianos 31–32 (1996–1997): 35–52. ———. “Drink and Social Stability: Discourses of Power in Galdós’ Fortunata y Jacinta.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 73 (1996): 63–77. Furst, Lilian R. All is True: The Claims and Strategies of Realist Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. ———. Medical Progress and Social Reality. A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Medicine and Literature. Albany: SUNY University Press, 2000. ———. “Realism and its ‘Code of Accreditation.’ ” Comparative Literature Studies 25: 2 (1988): 101–26. Fusi, Juan Pablo, and Jordi Palafox. España 1808–1996. El desafío de la modernidad. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1997. Gilbert, Pamela K. Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women’s Popular Novels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gilman, Sander L. Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. Gurney, Michael S. “Disease as Device: The Role of Smallpox in Bleak House.” Literature and Medicine 9 (1990): 79–92. Hauser, Philiph. Madrid bajo el punto de vista médico-social, ed. Carmen del Moral. 2 vols. Madrid: 1902. Repr. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1979. Labanyi, Jo. Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Lambert, Royston. Sir John Simon (1816–1904) and English Social Administration. London: Macgibbon and Kee, 1963. Lott, Robert E. “Observations on the Narrative Method, the Psychology, and the Style of Los Pazos de Ulloa.” Hispania 52 (1969): 3–12. Méndez Alvaro, Francisco. “De la habitación del menesteroso considerada bajo el aspecto higiénico-social (1874).” In Francisco Méndez Alvaro y las ideas sanitarias del liberalismo moderado, ed. José Luis Fresquet Febrer. Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, 1990. 127–95. Pardo Bazán, Emilia. Los pazos de Ulloa. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1985. Pérez Galdós, Benito. La desheredada. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988. Rosenberg, Charles E. Introduction. Framing Disease, ed. Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet Golden. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. xii–xxvi. Sambricio, Carlos. “De los libros de viajeros a la historia urbana: el origen de una disciplina.” In La historia urbana, ed. Carlos Sambricio. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 1996. 61–85. Sazatornil Ruiz, Luis. “Entre la nostalgia y el progreso: La sociedad burguesa y las artes.” In La cultura española en la Restauración, ed. Manuel Suarez Cortina. Santander: Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 1999. 223–62. Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Doubleday, 1978.

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Tsychiya, Akiko. “The Female Body under Surveillance: Galdós’s La desheredada.” In Intellectual Pursuits. Literary Mediations in Modern Spanish Narrative, ed. Jeanne P. Brownlow and John W. Kronik. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1998. 201–21. Valis, Noël. “On Monstuous Birth: Leopoldo Alas’s La Regenta.” In Naturalism in the European Novel: New Critical Perspectives, ed. Brian Nelson. New York: Berg, 1992. 191–209. Vicens Vives, J. Historia de España y América. Tomo V. Barcelona: Editorial Vicens- Vives, 1961. Vigarello, Georges. Concepts of Cleanliness. Changing Attitudes in France Since the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Villanueva, Darío. “Los pazos de Ulloa, el naturalismo y Henry James.” Hispanic Review 52 (1984): 121–39. Zavala, Iris. “Temas de la literatura burguesa y prosa intelectual. Historia y Crítica de la Literatura Española. Romanticismo y Realismo. Primer Suplemento, ed. Francisco Rico. 64–82.

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Ido del Sagrario’s Alimentary Madness Kevin S. Larsen

Throughout his enormous literary production, Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920), arguably the greatest literary figure of his age writing in Spanish, describes in detail various physicians and diverse medical matters. He was closely acquainted with prominent doctors of his time, such as Manuel Tolosa Latour (see Ricard 87–90, Schmidt 91–94), and apparently studied particular questions in considerable depth, whether in actual medical tomes or in “case histories,” as recounted in other writers’ fictional treatments. His interest in the works of his British contemporary, Henry Maudsley, author of Physiology and Pathology of Mind (1867), illustrates the scope of this applied afición [zeal] (Randolph 49–56). There are also various instances of Galdós’s personal experience of medical issues that, along with matters he had studied or discussed with physicians in person, would enter into his fictional discourse: migraine and arguably syphilis constitute cases in point.1 Among his eighty novels, Fortunata y Jacinta (1886–1887) offers some of the most salient examples of such medical intersections, evidencing Galdós’s diverse (and sometimes diffuse) medical knowledge and interests. An instance of a character with this kind of interdisciplinary focus is José Ido del Sagrario, who moves among the various social strata during the course of the novel here in question, as well as seven other novels in which he is, in Geoffrey Ribbans’s phrase, “the recurring character par excellence” (73). Even the casual reader will immediately perceive Ido’s peculiar personality quirk, one that distinguishes him from all other characters in Fortunata y Jacinta and throughout

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Galdós’s literary corpus: periodically he goes mad, though only when he eats meat. He rants and raves, enduring—and making everyone around him endure—what William H. Shoemaker terms “una borrachera de carne” (99, 105–08) [drunkenness on meat]. Ido himself characterizes his attack as “cierta excitación”2 [“a certain excitation”] though the narrator is less euphemistic, describing how this character feels “un prurito irresistible, una imperiosa necesidad orgánica, como la que sienten los borrachos” (1:336) [an irresistible itch, an imperious organic need, like that drunkards feel]. Afterward, the poor fellow “dormía la mona de carne” (1:352) [was sleeping off the drunk from meat]. In his own defense, Ido asserts his strict avoidance of intoxicating spirits of any kind, though he does seem to become “drunken” on flesh, which he cannot tolerate in even the smallest quantity (1:298; 2:427). The physiological and aesthetic implications of this carnivorous crisis, what the narrator terms “aquella increíble desazón” [that incredible discomfort] (1:351), will be the substance of this study. As Ribbans has cautioned, with Ido, as with the other colorful individuals in Fortunata y Jacinta, “care must be exercised in treating characters as medical case-histories and . . . in speculating beyond what is given in the text” (93). Nonetheless, there is room for postulation (if not expostulation), when established securely on the details Galdós provides in relative abundance. The depiction of Ido is profoundly drawn and felt, not so much as a “case history,” but more as a physiologically and psychically realistic human configuration in fiction. Even Ido’s surname indicates, albeit colloquially, his relative craziness, the exit of his wits (Ribbans 71). There is, however, a method to his madness. Contrary to certain readers’ objections, Ido’s affliction is “explicable racionalmente” [rationally explainable] and does not stand “en contradicción con el realismo” [in contradiction to realism], be it scientific or artistic (Ortiz Armengol 271). As with one of his obvious literary antecedents, don Quijote, Ido’s antics suggest more than mere comic relief.3 It may be that Galdós describes in him some sort of “pellagrainduced psychosis” (Ullman and Allison 15). For her part, Ido’s wife, Nicanora, also notes that her husband suffered once from typhus: “se puso tan malo que estuvo suministrado y creíamos que se iba” (1:352) [became so ill that he received extreme unction and we thought he was leaving us]. The infection, from a strictly physiological standpoint, could certainly have permanently affected his perception. Moreover, the distraction of the fleas that spread the illness and the raging rash that characterizes its appearance and duration leave their

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permanent reminder in his almost perpetual agitation. The typhus could also have damaged Ido’s liver, a condition that would doubtless also affect his mind, should certain toxins not be metabolized properly.4 In the words of his wife, “[s]anó y le quedaron estas calenturas de la sesera, este dengue que le da siempre que toma sustancia” (1:352) [he got better and ended up with these brain fevers, this dengue fever that he gets whenever he eats anything of substance]: the “real” Ido may have “gone away” during or after his illness. Not that he has been infected with dengue fever, although the effects of his malady, both physiological and metaphorical, are similar to the tropical sickness that is sometimes termed “breakbone fever.” Along with these lay diagnoses, it may also be that Galdós here indicates some inkling of an actual allergy to the animal flesh. This is not to characterize Galdós as some sort of proto-allergist anticipating later work on the subject. He merely offers an intuition of an adverse physiological reaction to the meat in question. But the novelist never employs the word “alergia” or any variant thereof in Fortunata y Jacinta. Nonetheless, as various critics suggest, Galdós may establish in Ido—a sometime writer of potboiler romances—an authorial counterpart or foil for himself.5 In light of possible allergies implicated, or at least intuited, in Ido’s behavior, one might speculate concerning that character’s role as a sort of histamine or antigen for the author and his text. Galdós’s vivid descriptions of Ido’s attacks are in keeping with his practice of avoiding exhaustive clinical categorizing. His novels are neither romans expérimentals nor case histories in the exact sense of the term. On occasion, he may drop names or terms, but typically Galdós rejected this facet of Zola’s Naturalistic discourse. His Naturalism, as he makes explicit throughout Fortunata y Jacinta, particularly in the section entitled “Naturalismo espiritual” (2:173–237) [spiritual naturalism], is more “spiritual” than strictly materialistic or carnal.6 Likewise, what is called in the novel “el trabajo digestivo del espíritu” (2:535) [digestive labor of the spirit], whether for the characters, for the reader, or for the author himself, is at once physical and spiritual.7 In this same regard, Galdós formulates his alimentary Naturalism as a blend of both states. Thus, the narrative of Ido’s episodes of induced madness figures as a sort of medical objective correlative, where the psychotic or psychotropic possibilities of food intolerance are insinuated.8 It may be also that Galdós suggests, again more indirectly than otherwise, some sort of Darwinian connection here. Ido may experience such an adverse reaction to animal flesh because he is too evolved—or not evolved enough—to assimilate meat.9

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The role of meat in modern society was, in fact, a serious contemporary question. The American physician, George M. Beard (1839–1883), who achieved great distinction in Europe and the United States, suggested that a major cause of modern maladies such as neurasthenia was that highly evolved and hypersensitive “brainworkers” were not eating sufficient meat for the physiological and mental demands placed on them. He argued that “the best food for man is that which is just below him or nearest to him in the scale of development.”10 Dr. Beard also posits, with chauvinistic aplomb, that Spaniards and other Latin types “who take their half-bottle of wine with rice and soup, must always give way, in battle or labor, to the properly fed Englishman or American” (278). In turn, Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) is no less explicit about the dominance of meatfed Englishmen over other less carnivorous races and national groups (247–57; cf. Rodríguez Abaytúa 175). Northern Europeans are superior because of their superior diet. Therefore, it is in keeping with contemporary medical practice for a physician to recommend to Ido the consumption of meat. Still, the poor man laments: “Los médicos me dicen que coma carne. Como carne y me pongo peor” (1:298) [The doctors tell me to eat meat. I eat meat and I get worse]. It may be that Ido is not sufficiently evolved to tolerate the flesh of beasts “below him or nearest to him” on the alimentary Great Chain of Being. Or it may be that his system (digestive, as well as nervous) is so sensitive and so long-deprived that what is actually good for him is, at least initially, poisonous. So flesh becomes a sort of pharmakon, at once curative and harmful.11 In this regard, Dr. Rodríguez Abaytúa argues that in this “siglo de la neurastenia . . . el gran culpable es el exceso de la carne en la alimentación cotidiana” [century of neurasthenia . . . the real culprit is the excess of meat in the daily diet]. The purported cure for Dr. Beard’s epidemic of “neurasthenia” is, if not its cause, at least “entre los factores de su etiología” (174–75) [among the factors of its etiology]. In her own right, Ido’s wife recollects that the doctor with whom they have consulted has diagnosed her husband’s condition in the following terms: “tiene el cerebro como pasmado, porque durante mucho tiempo estuvo escribiendo cosas de mujeres malas, sin comer más que las condenadas judías” (1:352) [it is like his brain is stunned, since for so long he was writing about wicked women, eating nothing except the damned beans]. It is a diagnosis, for whatever it is worth, to which Juanito Santa Cruz, another principal character in the novel, adds, “de escribir tanto adulterio, no comiendo más que judías, se le resblandeció el cerebro” (1:303) [writing so much about adultery, not eating anything except

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beans, his brain got soft]. Of course, such a softening of the brain is Juanito’s extrapolation, figuring more as a metaphorical description of madness, than as a physiological one. Though in both poetic and real terms, it remains that Ido needs the meat, yet cannot tolerate it. Another contemporary school of thought held the opposite view, arguing that meat consumption constituted a major problem in the society at large, as well as in the individual. In other words, flesh stoked the fires of the fleshly passions. Such appetites, if unchecked, would surely lead to the sort of madness to which Ido falls prey. Certain nineteenth-century religious movements, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, as well as scientists such as the American physician, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943), preached a strict avoidance of meats. For them, such abstinence would become a moral, as well as a social and biological, issue. In one respect, Ido del Sagrario’s attacks are an example of what many such writers and preachers claimed was occurring on a much larger scale in the rapidly decaying Western culture: for him, meat becomes as poisonous as it purportedly was for the rest of his contemporaries (Gardella 44–45, 51–52). Thus, the physiological dimension figures as an extension of the moral and vice versa. Nonetheless, it must be conceded that Ido’s wild imagination seems to have fed well enough on “las condenadas judías” [the damned beans], as his wife terms them. The fires kindled by these vegetables have burned sufficiently hot. In this regard, Galdós seems well aware of what has been labeled as one of the principal metaphors of the nineteenth century: thermodynamics (Donato 231–38; Brush; Serres). At least according to popular mythology, meat is the best fuel, though other dietary elements can also serve as combustibles. Flesh may make a hotter fire, but other foodstuffs still smolder, waiting to burst into flame. It may be that certain dimensions of Ido’s dietary discourse originate in other literary texts, for instance, in Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1838–1841). Here, the title character—whose “madness,” according to another individual in the novel, is the result of his having been “overfed,” principally with meat—may function as a counterpart or even as a progenitor of Galdós’s character (Hoddie 40). In this same regard, Ido’s “fantasía folletinesca” (Montesinos 245–46) [pulp fiction fantasy], the maze of pulp literary plots that he is so involved in creating, ought not to go unmentioned (G. Gullón, “Imaginación” 160). Montesinos also posits that for Galdós, Ido and his “esperpentic” ilk figure “como máscaras de la commedia dell’arte, prontos siempre a entrar en cualquier situación grotesca” (264–65; see also Tarrio 137) [like masks in the commedia dell’arte, always ready to enter into any

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sort of grotesque situation]. Moreover, Ido’s picaresque antecedents are also potentially significant: ever since Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache, and Pablos, the Buscón of Segovia, the motif of hunger (both biological and metaphorical) has remained profoundly influential.12 Not that Ido is necessarily a lineal descendant of such characters, although his perpetual hunger and perversely comical reaction to food seem to intimate—if not actually to implicate—the pícaros as probable predecessors. Ido’s reaction to meat may also suggest another element of culture associated with the Spanish picaresque. Since at least the fifteenth century, the conspicuous consumption of pork has stood as a hallmark (or as a hope) of Old Christian status. If an individual of New Christian background were to seek to appear to be of non-Semitic background, creating for himself ultra-Catholic and castizo antecedents, he would consume mass quantities of the flesh in question (Castro, Cervantes 25–32). Even the word that almost exclusively is used to refer to the meat that drives Ido mad, “chuleta” [chop], can have a bearing on this interpretation. Granted, a “chuleta” is not necessarily pork. On at least one occasion in Fortunata y Jacinta, specific mention is made in this context of “biftec” (2:458) [beefsteak], which is almost exclusively of bovine origin. So at least one other species is involved in the question. On another occasion “magras” (1:351) is used, a word that always indicates slices of ham or pork loin. Indeed, the nexus of culinary nexus is mostly species-specific, albeit not with absolute exclusivity. It is a question mostly of the porcine. Even the frequent repetition of “chuleta” suggests this association, however roundabout. This word calls to mind an epithet—“chueta”—used to refer to converted Jews, especially those of Majorca, from the Golden Age on. This almost universally pejorative term was probably derived from “chulleta, loncha de tocino” [chop, slab of bacon]. In short, the word “chuleta” displays its own symbolic significance.13 Likewise, Ido’s morbid preoccupation with matters of honor (1:349) may suggest, whether literally or metaphorically, his condition as a descendant of conversos, this given his extreme marginalization. Ido’s disquiet concerning honra and honor reinforces his picaresque link, since a preoccupation with these matters has been a hallmark of the belief system of the converted and their descendants, at least since the Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). It could be that Ido’s tragically comedic delusions of his wife’s great beauty and her adultery with a “grande de España” (1:302–5, 350–52) [grandee of Spain], as well as of his own honra, constitute an ironic critique of “la negra que llaman honra” [the bitch they call honor]. This same preoccupation

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characterizes Lazarillo and his picaresque posterity, who, almost by definition, are of converso [convert] stock.14 In a similar vein, other principal characters in the novel, members of the Rubín family, also seem to be of converso background, tracing out matters that are also related to Ido’s case in their own novelistic lives (1:447–48).15 Each of the three Rubín brothers, Pablo, Juan, and Maximiliano, has a curious relationship with pork, which for them, just as for Ido, figures in the role of a naturalistic and spiritual pharmakon, poisoning and curing at the same time. All the siblings, especially Maxi, suffer from devastating migraines, a fleshly reaction to the flesh in question. However, Juan also claims to alleviate his pain by consuming ham (1:674).16 Critics have suggested that Maxi Rubín and Ido del Sagrario share a peculiar bond, a spiritual and metaphorical kinship in which they live aspects of each other’s lives and literatures and may even be each other’s “double.”17 It may be that Ido is poisoned by the “chuletas,” just as is his counterpart, Maxi. Each man’s body and, perhaps even more pointedly, his soul cannot tolerate the meat he eats. Additionally, given their outcast status, it may be that Maxi, Ido, and those like them are effectively spiritual conversos; in their mutual intolerance for pork, Galdós depicts the social intolerance they both endure. It could also be that in both Ido and Maxi a residual ethnicity asserts itself in the face of the callous and coercive Christianity of their commensals. Like Maxi’s, Ido’s organism rejects the food of his (possible) progenitors’ persecutors. Or it may be that he is rejected, through whatever metaphorical or physiological mechanism, by the food indicative of the Old Christianity to which, even after so many generations, he still cannot attain. The culinary taboo of his putative ancestors may still assert itself, or it may be that the Christian culture he (they) tries (try) to penetrate disallows him (them) passage. One way or another, the intolerance for flesh serves as an emblem for the social intolerance of the body politic that Galdós so decries. With such mordant irony, the author represents how in effect the Statutes of Purity of Blood remain: Inquisitorial “genetics” have been internalized by generations of persecutors and persecuted to such a degree that these groups are sometimes difficult to distinguish from each other. Also typical of the ambiguity with which Galdós treats the Jews and possible Jews in his works is the role that Juanito Santa Cruz plays in Fortunata y Jacinta. This playboy protagonist figures as a principal tormentor of both Maxi and Ido, cuckolding the former man and terming the latter “el loco más divertido que puedes imaginar”

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(1:297) [the most amusing madman you could ever imagine] (see also Whiston, “Language” 85). Nonetheless, Juanito may actually be a sort of double, or a mirror image, of these two forlorn figures. For instance, his own wife, Jacinta, recognizes that Ido is of “la misma estatura de [su] marido” (1:304) [the same stature as her husband]. With regard to their appetites for flesh, Ido and Juanito are also comparable (G. Gullón, “Subtexto” 102, 107–9). Moreover, the Santa Cruz family may also be originally conversos (1:447).18 The ultraChristianity implied in the surname may originally have been (and may still be) a cover for its religious and ethnic opposite. Even Juanito’s parody of honor, which he labels “un sentimiento convencional” (1:302) [a conventional feeling], offers a negative (re)vision of Ido’s preoccupation. Again, Santa Cruz, like Ido, has gone to extremes, though both approach la picaresca with their often parallel styles of life. In Juanito’s ongoing torment of Ido and Maxi, as well as in his possible condition as a converso, Galdós may recapitulate to some degree the horrific atmosphere of suspicion and persecution provoked by Inquisitorial attempts at discrimination between Old and New Christians. In this context, a potential suspect could often become the persecutor and the informer. To this effect, one could note that malsín [slanderer] was at first a Hebrew word describing a phenomenon in the juderías [Jewish ghettos]. In Galdós’s fictional world, as was also the case 400 years earlier, a “good” way, besides the avid consumption of pork, to divert suspicion away from oneself was to persecute the outcast group all the more vehemently.19 Even Tomás de Torquemada, a Grand Inquisitor and a prime mover in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, was most likely the scion of a converso family.20 Likewise does his namesake, Torquemada, the persecuted and persecuting usurer who makes an appearance in Fortunata y Jacinta, while dominating the cycle of all four novels that bear his name (see Schyfter 55–77). For centuries, the Inquistion stood as a scourge of the Iberian world, though some of the tactics and attitudes of the Holy Office may actually come as an outgrowth of certain practices within the Semitic communities of the Peninsula.21 Also potentially suggestive of the converso question is Ido’s wife’s characterization of his alimentary affliction: she recounts how he lived “por mucho tiempo . . . sin comer más que esas condenadas judías” [for a long time . . . without eating anything but these damned beans]. In the botanical sense of the word, these are beans of the kidney or string variety. But the play on words—where “judía” is a “female of Jewish extraction”—may reveal Ido’s (as well as his wife’s)

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deeper sociocultural resentments and dietary dilemmas.22 In this same figurative sense, Nicanora calls the existence that she, her husband, and their family must live a “vida de perros” (1:352) [dogs’ life]. There is a fairly straightforward sense to these words, for theirs is a miserable life, one hardly fit for a canine, let alone a human being. But in context, her words also take on an additional sense: “perro” figures as a principal epithet of opprobrium for the Jews and conversos from the late Middle Ages until contemporary times. In fact, the title character of Nazarín (1895), one of Galdós’s later novels, is described in these terms: “Y si ustedes le dicen perro judío, se sonríe como si le echaran flores” (1690) [And if you call him a Jew dog, he smiles as if you were complimenting him]. Likewise, the other Hispanic Semites, the moriscos, were labeled (and libeled) by their enemies according to such canine sobriquets. In a similarly metaphorical vein, Ido and his family may lead a dog’s life because of their social and ethnic status. They stand condemned a priori by the still hostile milieu in which they attempt to live, not merely because of any lack of economic success, but because of their very being.23 In this same context, Ido’s jocular reference to the family’s religious status also takes on additional significance. As she meets with doña Guillermina, Nicanora explains that she earns a little extra money as a “lutera” [maker of objects associated with mourning] to which her husband adds: “somos luteranos” [we are Lutherans]. The narrator then interjects that Ido was “sonriendo, muy satisfecho por tener ocasión de soltar aquel chiste, que era viejo y había sido soltado sin número de veces” [smiling, very satisfied at the opportunity to toss out that joke, that was ancient and had been told endless times already]. Of course, “la rata ecclesiástica” [the ecclesiastical rat] (as Guillermina is more or less affectionately called) is suitably horrified by such reference to Protestantism, a theme that, as Caudet notes, “tendrá en Fortunata y Jacinta un significativo protagonismo” (1:327) [has a leading role in Fortunata and Jacinta]. But it is not just non-Catholic Christianity that is implicated in Ido’s “alusión humorística” [humorous allusion] or in Guillermina’s reaction to it. Henry Kamen illustrates how in the popular mind—as in Inquisitorial policy—Lutherans and Jews were lumped together under the general heading of “heretics.” Often, Protestants were referred to as Jews or vice versa; Philip II went so far in one decree as to affirm that “all the heresies which have occurred in Germany and France have been sown by descendants of Jews, as we have seen and still see daily in Spain” (quoted by Kamen 238; see also 91, 244). Ido admits to no overtly Semitic affiliation, though his jest may be more serious than a reader

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might initially realize. For its part, the Holy Office tended to take such jokes quite seriously, reading into them an irony that, whether intentional or otherwise, could be damning. Likewise, the import that imbues his comment, as he confesses cryptically what he suspects his family’s inquisitorial visitor may already have intuited. Galdós again seems to indicate the family’s marginalized status as at least metaphorical conversos: theirs could be a once and future New Christianity, whether for explicitly ethnic or for more or less economic, social, and finally symbolic reasons. In this sense, there is potential for additional significance in Nicanora’s ostensibly jocular and ostensibly innocent reference to the Roman Catholic catechism, suggesting that in her husband’s case “la carne es uno de los enemigos del alma” (1:352–53) [the flesh is one of the enemies of the soul]. Her listeners seem to make nothing of this witticism, where “carne” indicates both “meat” and “flesh.” Though the question could be posed: why does she say “alma” and not “cuerpo” [body]? After all, the meat Ido eats hurts his body. Whether consciously or not, Nicanora has hit upon the real nature of his ailment, as a token of an unassimilated Catholicism or of a sort of Neo-Lamarckian New Christianity, where the tradition of taboo is inherited across generations. The flesh is not especially willing and the spirit is weak(ened). Granted, such ambiguous usages may all be explained away according to the millennia-old practice of ascribing everything untoward in one’s life and in society at-large “to the Jews.” Ido’s frequent companion, José Izquierdo, often uses “judío” as an epithet or expletive, as when he alludes to “el judío pueblo” (1:342) [the Jew people], “esta judía tierra” (1:344) [this Jew land], and “la judía cosa” (1:348) [the Jew thing]. It may be that his oaths are merely the drunken rantings of an inconsequential man, one who sees the “Jews” at the root of all his failures. Or such usages may reflect a pervasively popular perception of the society. Caudet’s note concerning Izquierdo’s expletives is illuminating: El alcohol conseguía que Izquierdo se olvidara, aunque sólo momentáneamente, de su condición de fracasado y, al mismo tiempo, se inventara un protagonismo en la “grave historia.” En cuanto a Ido del Sagrario, sus borracheras (o monas) de carne, le hacían imaginar dramas de honor en los que él tenía el papel de protagonista. Dos formas de escapismo con evidente paralelismo. [Alcohol made Izquierdo forget, though only momentarily, his condition as a failure, and at the same time he invented for himself a principal role in the “solemn history.” With regard to Ido del Sagrario, his bouts of drunkenness on meat, made him imagine dramas of honor

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in which he played the role of the protagonist. Two sorts of escapism running parallel to each other.] (1:348)

Though Izquierdo may not realize the ironic import of what he says, there is an element of “in vino veritas” in his ravings. He intuits Ido’s condition and possibly his own. Another possible explanation of Ido’s attacks—one no less metaphorical and physiological—is a common malady of his time: hysteria.24 By the time Galdós composed Fortunata y Jacinta, this multifarious illness had become an equal opportunity ailment. In other words, it was not just an affliction of women, but attacked the men as well—and particularly Jewish men—in life as in literature. Galdós evidenced strong affinities, mostly by way of anticipation, for the psychological theories of Jean-Martin Charcot and his disciple, Sigmund Freud, both prime movers in the debate over male hysteria.25 Indeed, Freud’s coauthor, Josef Breuer, describes a series of neurological symptoms he has observed in hysterical patients, symptoms that correspond closely with those Ido experiences. He elaborates on “an organism’s major physiological needs,” studying the “excitement” through which it may pass due to deprivation or the actual near presence of the desired entity. Ido is another of the restless, “starving” men that Breuer characterizes (199–200). This is not to say that Galdós somehow was aware specifically of such research on hysteria and food anxiety. Rather, he and the Austrian scientists follow the same trajectory with regard to the psychobiology of their subjects. Moreover, during his ongoing “dialogue” with contemporary writers of fiction and their works (see Stephen Gilman 154–86), Galdós could have noticed the prevalence of male hysteria and hysterics in, for instance, Flaubert’s life and works. Not that he necessarily patterned Ido’s “wild aberrations of the hysteric personality, sometimes lost in torpor, at other times violent and frenzied” after Mâtho in Salammbô, or after Flaubert himself, who clearly recognized his own disease.26 Such case histories, of which there were many in contemporary fiction, would reinforce, if not initially delineate, the outline of Ido’s hysteria. His particular manifestation of the disease coincides with the typically sexual psychogenesis and etiology of this protean complaint. Such a display could involve repression and frustration or their correlative, a typically “inappropriate” expression (read: outburst) of pentup passions. Ido’s focus during an attack is his suspicions of marital infidelity, charges that Nicanora has patiently endured for years. In so doing, he releases all his frustrations and fantasies, giving vent to his repression, sexual as well as dietary.27

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In Ido’s case, as in numerous others, meat consumption is categorically associated with masculinity and with the male sex drive.28 Ido is hardly an able provider; nor is he much of a husband. Nonetheless, Nicanora insists to Jacinta, “¡ . . . si supiera usted qué buen hombre es!” (1:352) [if you only knew what a good man he is!]. Such adjectival usage seems innocuous enough, though, given Galdós’s preference for subtle allusions, it may connote more than a reader initially imagines. The novelist may be referring to Lazarillo’s mother’s counsel (in the first Tratado): “arrimarse a los buenos por ser uno dellos” [spend time with the good in order to be one of them], which is definitely more than mere maternal advice to “be good.” In the vernacular of the Golden Age (and thereafter), “los buenos” were those of Old Christian pretension, as well as those of New Christian background, who were trying to “pass” (S. Shepard 28–32). Moreover, Castro points out that this usage of “buenos” may harken back to the Hebrew, where the “bene tovim,” the “hijos de bienes o de buenos” [children of those of substance or of the good], constituted “una institución, una clase nobiliaria” (Realidad 222–23) [an institution, a class of nobility]. For his own part, Ido is a good person, at least when he is not crazy; his wife emphasizes: when he “está tranquilo” [is calm], he is “incapaz de matar una pulga” (1:352) [he is incapable of killing even a flea]. But there may be more to Ido’s “goodness” than initially meets the eye. Preyed upon by such moral and physical infirmities, Ido is simply no powerful predator or hunter neither in the urban jungle of Madrid nor in his bedroom. After an attack, his wife puts him to bed, “manejándole como a un muerto” (1:351) [handling him as if he were a dead man]. The flesh he cannot master becomes a poison for him, physiologically as well as psychologically. In turn, his inadequacy with regard to amorous affairs manifests itself in his impassioned discourse and hyperactivity, in his mad ravings. Following the literary “conventions of concealment,” as Susan Sontag terms them (7), one sort of “carne” suggests the other: according to the tortuous “reasoning” of his morbid jealousy, the demented Ido is sure that he is being cuckolded. His weakness with regard to his own body and flesh translates into the weakness of other flesh, which is only a reflection of his own deep-seated sense of inferiority, coupled with his vivid imagination. This sort of “emasculation” or outright “feminization” of Ido also reinforces what could be construed as his condition as a cultural converso. Various writers have noted that since the Middle Ages and particularly—though not exclusively—when they constitute a minority in a Gentile milieu, Jewish males have often taken on an aura of

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“compromised masculinity,” if not of actual femaleness. This involves a condition of “weakness,” of the individual and of the collective. Such a state is even projected onto and through the supposed menstruation of Jewish men. In other words, “the very body of the male Jew becomes the image of the anxiety generated by the potential sense of the loss of control,” whether on a personal level, or on the level of the minority group as it relates to the majority. The man ends up at least figuratively emasculated (at times, with a measure of his own “complicity”). Explicitly and/or implicitly, he finds himself persecuted from outside his culture by the majority group(s) and from within his society by the female(s) in his life.29 Epilepsy may also be involved in Ido’s madness. This multiple malady would occur with considerable frequency in nineteenth-century literature, as well as in life, as a counterpart, if not an actual coefficient, of hysteria. It has been suggested, for example, that Ido’s seizures are really nothing short of “an epileptic fit.”30 These seizures are typically presaged by a spasmodic twitching of the eyebrow and of the cheek. Then the full-scale electric storm begins. Ido himself characterizes his state as “eléctrico” (1:298) [electric]. Indeed, relatively recent studies of epilepsy have likened it to an electrical storm in the brain, where nerve impulses are discharging in an apparently random and thoroughly frenzied manner.31 Ido does not lose consciousness, though he does forget names and things. His wife also has noticed different degrees of severity in the attacks: this is not so much a question of petit or grand mal, but it rather indicates sensitivity to the level of electrical disturbance involved in the attacks. Moreover, from earliest times, meats, particularly pork, have been proscribed for those suffering from the “falling sickness” (Tempkin 11, 67, 69). More recent medical research has demonstrated that certain metabolic disorders, typically occurring as a result of what the patient ingests or should not ingest, can provoke epileptic attacks (Niedermeyer 112–13; McIntosh 24). So it may be that the consumption of meat, or even its relative proximity to the patient, could cause a seizure as described. Other characters in Fortunata and Jacinta also seem to experience epileptoid seizures that are somewhat akin to those of Ido, highlighting his situation and providing Galdós with a venue to represent other facets of the disease. A case in point is the moment when Jacinta is first taken in by Ido’s tale of Pitusín, Juanito’s supposed son by Fortunata, whom the “legitimate” wife wants to adopt as her own, and “parecía que le entraban convulsions” (1:309) [it seemed as if convulsions entered him]. In turn, Fortunata experiences what the author calls “exaltación deliriante” (2:498) [delirious exaltation], as she rants to

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Maxi about Juanito’s “unfaithfulness” to her, trying at the same time to persuade her husband toboth her lover and his lover. Her passion, of course, recalls Ido’s fits of epileptic jealousy. It may be that the actual corporeal expression of Ido’s antic imagination somehow communicates itself to both women. As an author (and Galdós’s counterpart), he gives “literary” form to his ideas in their lives, as well as in his own. The message is the medium, and vice versa. Likewise, it could be that Maxi Rubín is an epileptic, as indicated by his intense migraines: the dolorous and creative dimensions of the auras of these two maladies seem to coincide.32 Such coincidences also recall Ido, whose pain and imaginative madness invoke the tortured “genius” that writers such as Cesare Lombroso would associate with epilepsy and epileptoid states. Ido’s literary production probably does not qualify as “great” by any definition of the word, but his undeniably creative imagination is at least linked to, if not actually derived from, his “electric” madness. Moreover, with regard to their epileptic imaginings, Maxi and Ido both call to mind similar traits in other contemporary writers and their literary characters, for instance, Dostoevsky and his Prince Myskin (in The Idiot).33 Maxi goes so far as to argue that “la inspiración poética es un estado insano” (2:425) [poetic inspiration is an insane state]. In his case, as in that of his counterpart, Ido, this condition seems to obtain. In both characters, “la loca de la casa” (1:565, 2:283) [the madwoman of the house] is truly mad.34 Both Ido and Maxi are possessed of a sort of Dionysiac, if not epileptoid, frenzy that is the essence of their “art,” in life as in literature. In Ido this involves not only the brain, but also the bowel: it is thus, what another character terms his “inspiración artístico-flatulente” [artistic-flatulant inspiration], the product “de la cabeza de un novelista que se alimenta con judías” (1:413) [of the head of a novelist who nourishes himself with beans]. In other words, his agudeza [acuity] discharges at both ends of his body. Literally and literarily, he is ingenioso [ingenious] from head to tail. Numerous allergists now postulate an “intimate relationship between allergic reactions or diseases and epilepsy” (Breneman 133–34). So Ido’s apparently epileptic episodes may result from his being allergic, whether in physiological or more spiritual terms, to the flesh he consumes or attempts to consume. Not that this character exists exclusively in what Robert Lord has called (with regard to Myshkin) “an epileptic mode of being” (81–101): his literary and medical modes are truly as multiple, even eclectic, as are his symptoms. In Ido, as in other figures depicted in Fortunata y Jacinta, Galdós investigates what near the end of the novel he terms “misterios

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del cerebro” (2:425) [mysteries of the mind]. In this sort of characterization the novelist’s art approaches true realism, medical as well as aesthetic, far more than any clinical profile or outline could.

Notes 1. Concerning the role of medicine and physicians in Galdós’s works, see, for instance: Eoff 120–47; Granjel, Baroja 247–69, and “Personajes”; Pérez Bautista; López Piñero 664–77; López-Herrera 83–88; Amat and Leal 181–206. With regard to syphilis, see: Chamberlin, “The Blind” 151–63; Larsen, “Maxi’s Migraines” 415–18, 432–35. With regard to migraine in Fortunata y Jacinta, see: Stephen Gilman 213; Ullman and Allison 29–30; Larsen, “Maxi’s Migraines” 410–38. 2. Fortunata y Jacinta (1:298). Further references to this novel will be noted parenthetically in the text of the essay, according to volume and page number(s) in the Caudet edition. 3. Concerning the role of Cervantes and don Quijote in the character of Ido, as well as throughout the whole of Fortunata y Jacinta, see: Shoemaker 102; Smith 47–50; Cardona 200–1; Montesinos 252, 268; Stephen Gilman 171–73; G. Gullón, “Subtexto” 101–2, “Imaginar” 103; Benítez; Larsen, “Maxi’s Migraines” 418–21, 436–38, “El caso” 615–36, and Cervantes and Galdós. 4. I have discussed this paper with a number of practicing physicians, several of whom have suggested the possibility of liver damage as a rationale for Ido’s “mad” behavior. 5. Rodríguez 96–97, 102–5; Stephen Gilman 201, 203; Hoddie 40–41; cf. Shoemaker 89; Correa 88–105; Goldman, Hoff, and Rice 88. 6. Comparing Galdós to Zola, Eoff writes concerning the former novelist: “he was interested in man as a product of nature and of society, but his attention was directed more to the upper reaches of the evolutionary slope and hence showed a greater interest in psychology that physiology” (120, cf. 142). Nonetheless, in Fortunata y Jacinta, as in most of Galdós’s other works, the psychological in large measure becomes a function of the physiological, just in more subtle ways than were generally expected in Naturalistic fiction. As Germán Gullón writes, Galdós “insinúa con la historia de Ido la gravitación de lo fisológico sobre la realidad” (“Subtexto” 103) [insinuates with the story of Ido the gravitation of matters physiological on reality]. Gravity, however, is just one of the forces at work in the novel. See also Caudet 219–33. 7. At the end of the novel, another character, Segismundo Ballester, asserts: “Sin olvido, no habría hueco para las ideas y los sentimientos nuevos. Si no olvidáramos, no podríamos vivir, porque en el trabajo digestivo del espíritu, no puede haber ingestión sin que haya eliminación” (2:535) [Without forgetting, there would be no empty space for ideas and new feelings. If we didn’t forget, we wouldn’t be able to

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8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

live, because in the digestive work of the spirit, there can be no ingestion unless there is elimination]. See also: Goldman, “Juanito’s chuletas” 82–101, and “Trabajo digestivo” 177–78; Hoddie 39–50; King 79–88; Gold 49–73; Chamberlin, “Carnal Appetites” 51–59; Vilarós 102–16; Turner 193–94, 200; A. Gullón, “Bird Motif” 53; R. Gullón 505–8. A selection of materials dealing with the psychiatric, psychotic, or otherwise mood-altering possibilities of foods would include: Breneman 133–42; Philpott et al 11–13; Lessof and Brueton 189–92. Specifically with reference to meat allergy, see: Cassens, Greaser, and Hayden 1–36, and Kulczycki, Jr., who states that “true allergy to meat alone is rare” (387). Mackarness discusses the Darwinian implications of food allergies, noting that “allergy or intolerance to environmental substances is no new thing and has probably always been a by-product of man’s evolution in a changing world.” He also writes in this present context that “it is very much rarer to find a patient disabled by eating meat . . . than it is to find one made ill by eating wheat or inhaling the petro-chemicals in the air on a street full of heavy motor traffic” (38). Beard 271. See also: Drinka 20–22, 182–97; Ellenberger 242–44; Rosenberg 98–108; Showalter 30, 129; Gosling. Concerning the concept of the pharmakon, see Jacques Derrida’s study, focusing principally on Plato’s Phaedrus, as well as on certain other dialogues (95–171). Derrida also discusses the notion of “allergy” in this context (101–2). Additionally, Vilarós has posited the presence of the pharmakon in Fortunata y Jacinta (71–91). Stephen Gilman suggests in passing at least an incidental parallel, if not an actual approximation, to the Quevedo of the Sueños (rather than specifically of the Buscón) in Galdós’s characterization of Ido and his family (299). See Domínguez Ortiz 102; Caro Baroja 3:48–52, 217–19; Braunstein; Porcel; Selke. Others elaborating on Ido’s fixation on honra include: Correa 144–46; Whiston, “Language” 88–89; G. Gullón, “Imaginar” 106–7. With regard to the picaresque and the conversos, see: Castro, Edad conflictiva 137–87; S. Shepard 97–101. See also: Caro Baroja 3:214–16; Ullman and Allison 10–11; Schyfter 40–54; Ortiz Armengol 301–4. Concerning the Rubín brothers, their individual variants of migraine, and their dietary proclivities, see: Garma; R. Gullón 506–7; Larsen, “Maxi’s Migraines” 410–38. See: Shoemaker 109; Hoddie 40–43; Goldman, “Feijoo” 119; Tsuchiya 24; R. Gullón 507. See: Caro Baroja 3:216; Ortiz Armengol 114; Schyfter 40–54. So argue: Castro, La realidad 48–60, 521–60; Caro Baroja 1:295–302.

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20. See: Castro, La realidad 54; Baer 2:288; Caro Baroja 2:408–11. 21. See: Castro, La realidad 48–54; de Bofarull 207–16. Cf. Baer 2:444–56, 513–14. 22. On dietary taboos and similar curtailments concerning meat-eating of various sorts, see Simoons. With respect to the ongoing interface in Spanish literature of “judías” as “beans” and as women of Jewish ancestry and/or persuasion, see S. Shepard 65–69. 23. Among others, see: Vásquez; Herrero García 564, 636; Larsen, “Observations” 68–69; Kamen 211. 24. Rodríguez Acosta writes that “histerismo” was a “frecuente recurso galdosiano” [frequent recourse for Galdós], citing various characters in his works that are hysterics (though not Ido) and mentioning various possible sources for his knowledge of “los casos de histerismo” (307) [cases of hysteria]. 25. Concerning the still-vexed question of male hysteria, see, for instance: Fernández-Sanz 261–66; Schwartz 7; Veith 190, 198, 232, 263–64; Ellenberger 142–44, 301, 437–42; Hertz 27–54; Haley 29; Drinka 100; Showalter 167–94; cf. Pérez Bautista 101–9. On the hysteria of the Jewish male in particular, see Sander Gilman, Love ⫹ Marriage 48–49, 99–107. Concerning Freud and Galdós, see, for instance: Elliott and Kercheville, who, though not mentioning Ido, discuss other Galdosian characters who illustrate “the sexual basis of the neuroses [which] forms the core of Freudian psychology” (30–36); Penuel 66–75; López Baralt 339–61. Also relevant are: Goetz 116–17; Ellenberger 301, 338, 437–42; Breuer and Freud 236; Schwartz 7. 26. See: Williams 166–67, 195–201; Bart 313–21; Goldstein 134–65. 27. Veith discusses a number of instances of food consumption (or lack thereof) and hysteria (161–63, 165–67, 186). 28. See: Adams 26–28, 34–38; P. Shepard 169–74; Picherit 139–48. 29. Concerning the “feminization” of Jewish or converso males, see: Sander Gilman, Love ⫹ Marriage 68–69, and The Jew’s Body 63–64; Trachtenberg 50, 149–55, 228; Mariscal 59–60. See also Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, and Boyarin. 30. See: Whiston, “Determinism” 116, as well as Rodríguez Acosta, who describes the epilepsy of various other characters in Fortunata y Jacinta, though not mentioning Ido (303–11). 31. For instance, Niedermeyer discusses the epileptic attack as “that thundercloud forming in a split second out of a cloudless sky, generating lightning and thunder” (1). 32. Concerning the relationship between migraine and epilepsy in Maxi Rubín, see Larsen, “Maxi’s Migraines” 419–21, 436–38, and “El caso” 615–36. 33. With regard to the possible impact of Dostoyevsky and Prince Myshkin on Galdós’s literary production, see: Serrano Plaja 47–99; Earle 55–56; Stephen Gilman 171, 173; Welsh 9–10; Larsen, “Maxi’s Migraines” 420–21, 437–38.

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34. Albeit in passing, it is worth noting the association of other illnesses with Ido’s thoroughly diseased imagination: he is described as an author who “intentaba llevar a la vida real los productos de su imaginación llena de tuberculosis” [attempted to bring to real life the products of his imagination that was full of tuberculosis]. Unable to separate life and literature, he suffers from a “tisis de la fantasia” (1:307) [phthisis of fantasy]. His creative imagination is not just infected, it is the sickness itself. See Engler 242–47, 251. With regard to imagination in Fortunata y Jacinta, especially in the case of Ido del Sagrario, see G. Gullón, “Imaginación” 155–69, and Ortiz Armengol 458.

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Caudet, Francisco. Zola, Galdós, Clarín. El naturalis˙mo en Francia y España. Madrid: Ediciones de la University Autónoma de Madrid, 1995. Chamberlin, Vernon A. “A Further Consideration of Carnal Appetites in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Anales Galdosianos 20 (1985): 51–59. ——. “The Blind and Other Physically Handicapped Characters in the Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós.” Dissertation. University of Kansas, 1957. Correa, Gustavo. Realidad, ficción y símbolo en las novelas de Galdós. Madrid: Gredos, 1977. Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1981. Domínguez Ortiz, Antonio. Los judeoconversos en la España moderna. Madrid: Mapfre, 1992. Donato, Eugenio. “The Museum’s Furnace: Notes toward a Contextual Reading of Bouvard and Pécuchet.” In Textual Strategies, ed. Josué V. Harari. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979: 213–38. Drinka, George Frederick. The Birth of Neurosis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Earle, Peter G. “Pérez Galdós: Meditación de la muerte.” In Actas del Segundo Congreso Internacional de Estudios Galdosianos. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular, 1979. 1: 49–59. Ellenberger, Henri F. The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic Books, 1970. Elliott, Leota W., and F. M. Kercheville. “Galdós and Abnormal Psychology.” Hispania 23 (1940): 27–36. Engler, Kay. “En torno a la estructura narrativa de Fortunata y Jacinta.” “Fortunata y Jacinta” de Benito Pérez Galdós, ed. Germán Gullón. Madrid: Taurus, 1986: 235–53. Eoff, Sherman. The Modern Spanish Novel. New York: New York University Press, 1961. Fernández-Sanz, E. Histerismo, teoría y crítica. Madrid: Librería de Francisco Beltrán, 1914. Gardella, Peter. Innocent Ecstasy. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Garma, Angel. “Jaqueca, seudo-oligofrenia y delirio en un personaje de Pérez Galdós.” Ficción 14 (1958): 84–102. Gilman, Sander L. Jewish Self-Hatred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. ——. The Jew’s Body. New York/London: Routledge, 1991. ——. “Love ⫹ Marriage ⫽ Death” and Other Essays on Representing Difference. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Gilman, Stephen. Galdós and the Art of the European Novel: 1867–1887. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Goetz, Christopher G. “Commentary.” In Charcot the Clinician. Trans. Christopher G. Goetz. New York: Raven Press, 1987. Gold, Hazel. The Framing of Realism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

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Goldman, Peter B. “El trabajo digestivo del espíritu: sobre la estructura de Fortunata y Jacinta y la función de Segismundo Ballester.” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 31 (1984): 177–87. ——. “Feijoo and the Failed Revolution: A Dialectical Inquiry into Fortunata y Jacinta and the Poetic of Ambiguity.” In Conflicting Realities, ed. Peter B. Goldman. London: Tamesis, 1984: 95–145. ——. “Juantito’s chuletas: Realism and Worldly Philosophy in Galdós’s Fortunata y Jacinta.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 18 (1985): 82–101. Goldman, Peter B., Paul J. Hoff, and Neil A. Rice. “Being, Doing, and Representing: Characters and Third-Rate Fictions in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Crítica Hispánica 13 (1991): 87–97. Goldstein, Jan. “The Uses of Male Hysteria: Medical and Literary Discourse in Nineteenth-Century France.” Representations 34 (1991): 134–65. Gosling, F. G. Before Freud. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Granjel, Luis. Baroja y otras figuras del 98. Madrid: Guadarrama,1960. ——. “Personajes médicos de Galdós.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 250–52 (October 1970–January 1971): 256–63. Gullón, Germán. “El subtexto de Fortunata y Jacinta.” Crítica Hispánica 13 (1991): 99–109. ——. “La imaginación galdosiana: su funcionamiento y posible clasificación.” In Actas del Segundo Congreso Internacional de Estudios Galdosianos. 2 vols. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular, 1978. 155–69. ——. La novela como acto imaginativo. Madrid: Taurus, 1983. Gullón, Agnes Moncy. “The Bird Motif and the Introductory Motif: Structure in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Anales Galdosianos 9 (1974): 51–75. Gullón, Ricardo. “De metáforas, arquetipos y silencios.” In Galdós: Centenario de “Fortunata y Jacinta” (1887–1987). Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 1989. 505–17. Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. Herrero García, Miguel. Ideas de los españoles del siglo XVII. Madrid: Gredos, 1966. Hertz, Neil. “Medusa’s Head: Male Hysteria Under Political Pressure.” 4 (1983): 27–54. Hoddie, James H. “Need, Honor, and Romance in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Anales Galdosianos 20 (1985): 39–50. Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1997. King, Sarah E. “Food Imagery in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Anales Galdosianos 18 (1983): 79–88. Kulczycki, Jr., Anthony. “Food Allergy and Adverse Reactions to Foods,” In Allergy: Theory and Practice, ed. H. James Wedner. Orlando, FL: Grune and Stratton, 1984. 383–94. Larsen, Kevin S. “ ‘El caso de Mauricia debe de examinarse detenidamente’. Aspectos médicos de un personaje de Fortunata y Jacinta.” La Torre 3:9 (1998): 615–36.

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——. Cervantes y Galdós in “Fortunata y Jacinta”—Tales of Impertinent Curiosity. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999. ——. “The Medical Background of Fortunata y Jacinta: The Case of Maxi’s Migraines”/“El trasfondo de Fortunata y Jacinta: El caso de las jaquecas de Maxi Rubín.” Ometeca 3–4 (1996): 410–38. ——. “Observations on the Animals and Animal Imagery in Cervantes’ Theater.” Modern Language Studies 14 (1984): 64–75. Lessof, M. H., and M. H. Brueton. “Gastrointestinal Reactions and Food Intolerance.” In Allergy, ed. M. H. Lessof Chichester, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1984: 175–217. López-Baralt, Mercedes. “ ‘Lo que una sueña tiene su aquél’: La exploración del inconsciente en Fortunata y Jacinta.” La Torre 2:6 (1988): 339–61. López-Herrera, Francisco D. “El médico y el señorito: dos tipos galdosianos.” Explicación de Textos Literarios 8 (1979–1980): 83–88. López Piñero, José María. “La medicina y la enfermedad en la España de Galdós.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 250–52 (October 1970–January 1971): 664–77. Lord, Robert. Dostoevsky: Essays and Perspectives. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University California Press, 1970. Mackarness, Richard. Not All in the Mind. London/Sydney: Pan Books, 1976. Mariscal, George. Contradictory Subjects. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. McIntosh, Gerald C. “Neurological Conceptualizations of Epilepsy.” In The Neuropsychology of Epilepsy, ed. Thomas L. Bennett. New York/London: Plenum, 1992: 17–37. Montesinos, José F. “Fortunata y Jacinta,” In Galdós. 3 vols. Madrid: Castalia, 1969: 2. 201–73. Niedermeyer, Ernst. The Epilepsies. Baltimore/Munich: Urban and Schwarzenberg, 1990 Ortiz Armengol, Pedro. Apuntaciones para “Fortunata y Jacinta”. Madrid: Editorial de la Universidad Complutense, 1987. Penuel, Arnold M. “Galdós, Freud, and Humanistic Psychology.” Hispania 55 (1972): 66–75. Pérez Bautista, Florencio. El tema de la enfermedad en la novela realista española. Salamanca: University de Salamanca, 1972. Pérez Galdós, Benito. Fortunata y Jacinta, ed. Francisco Caudet. 2 vols. Madrid: Cátedra, 1983. ——. Nazarín. Obras completas. Madrid: Aguilar, 1950. 5: 1677–1768. Philpott, William H. et al. Brain Allergies. New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1980. Picherit, Jean-Louis G. “Bonne chère et maigre chère.” Neophilologische Mitteilungen 91 (1990): 139–48. Porcel, Baltasar. Los chuetas mallorquines. Barcelona: Barral, 1971. Randolph, E. Dale. “A Source for Maxi Rubín in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Hispania 51 (1968): 49–56. Ribbans, Geoffrey. Pérez Galdós: Fortunata y Jacinta. London: Grant and Cutler, 1977.

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Ricard, Robert. “Tolosa Latour, el P. Lerchundi y La loca de la casa.” Anales Galdosianos 3 (1968): 87–90. Rodríguez, Alfredo. Estudios sobre la novela de Galdós. Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1978. Rodríguez Abaytúa, Nicolás. Bioenergética y termoquímica alimenticia. Madrid: Nicolás Moya, 1921. Rodríguez Acosta, María del Carmen. “Las enfermedades nerviosas en algunos personajes galdosianos.” In Actas del Tercer Congreso internacional de Estudios Galdosianos. 2 vols. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular, 1989. 303–11. Rosenberg, Charles E. No Other Gods. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Schmidt, Ruth. “Manuel Tolosa Latour: Prototype of AugustoMiquis.” Anales Galdosianos 3 (1968): 91–94. Schwartz, Otto. Curiosidades del histerismo. Madrid: Rafael Caro Raggio, n.d. Schyfter, Sara E. The Jew in the Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós. London: Tamesis, 1978. Selke, Angela S. The Conversos of Majorca. Jerusalem: MagnesPress, 1986. Serrano Plaja, Arturo. Realismo “mágico” en Cervantes: “Don Quijote” visto desde “Tom Sawyer” y “El idiota.” Madrid: Gredos, 1987. Serres, Michel. Feux et signaux de brume. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1975. Shepard, Paul. The Tender Carnivore. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973. Shepard, Sanford. Lost Lexicon. Secret Meaings in the Vocabulary of Spanish Literature During the Inquisition. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1982. Shoemaker, William H. Estudios sobre Galdós. Valencia: Castalia, 1970. Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady. New York: Penguin, 1985. Simoons, Frederick J. Eat Not This Flesh. Madison: University Wisconsin P, 1961. Smith, Paul C. “Cervantes and Galdós: The Duques and Ido del Sagrario.” Romance Notes 8 (1966): 47–50. Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978. Spencer, Herbert. Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical. Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1963. (Reprint of 1860 edition). Tarrio, Angel. Lectura semiológica de “Fortunata y Jacinta”. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular, 1982. Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness. 2nd edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. Trachtenberg, Joshua. The Devil and the Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943. Tsuchiya, Akiko. Images of the Sign: Semiotic Consciousness in the Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós. Columbia: University Missouri Press, 1990. Turner, Harriet. “La verdad metafórica en Fortunata y Jacinta.” La Torre 10 (1989): 185–203. Ullman, Joan Connelly and Geroge H. Allison. “Galdós as Psychiatrist in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Anales Galdosianos 9 (1974): 7–36.

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Vásquez, Ángel. La vida perra de Juanita Narboni. Barcelona: Planeta, 1976. Veith, Ilza. Hysteria: The History of a Disease. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1965. Vilarós, Teresa M. Galdós: invención de la mujer y poética de la sexualidad. Madrid: Siglo Veitiuno, 1995. Welsh, Alexander. Reflections on the Hero as Quijote. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Whiston, James. “Determinism and Freedom in Fortunata y Jacinta.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 57 (1980): 113–27. ——. “Language and Situation in Part One of Fortunata y Jacinta.” Anales Galdosianos 7 (1972): 79–91. Williams, Roger L. The Horror of Life. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1980.

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CHAP TER

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Pío Baroja’s Parascientific Epistemology Beatriz Rivera-Barnes

Having been a medical student, then a physician for a short while, Pío Baroja was familiar with the nonsocial sciences of his time. He certainly found his way around the theories of Lamarck, of Linnaeus, and of Darwin, and had no qualms about making pronouncements about heredity, environment, and human behavior obeying some simple biological laws such as the survival of the fittest. But Baroja was also a moralist and chronicler of his epoch, as well as a curious spirit, so he incorporated disciplines such as history and anthropology into his cultural baggage, and certainly took from them what he could when creating his characters. A familiarity with the sciences, particularly medicine and biology, was instrumental in Baroja’s career as a writer. Carmen Iglesias believes that medicine allowed him to delve deeper into his knowledge of human nature and to see mankind “como sólo un médico puede, desde el punto de vista biológico y moral” (Iglesias 124) [as only a doctor can, from both a biological and a moral perspective]. Oftentimes, Baroja’s approach, or method, resembled the scientist’s— particularly the sociologist’s and the biologist’s—in that he began not only by observing behavior, but also by putting his own behavioral patterns, or subjectivity, into the observation (and accepting that it could be no other way). Such a lifelong and steady connection to Science, and a constant application of the Sciences, implies a theory of knowledge, an epistemology; in this case, Baroja’s epistemology. I am not, however, proposing that Baroja founded a system of knowledge, or that he was

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out to demonstrate how the sciences worked and how knowledge came about. Baroja’s epistemology simply suggests that he stopped to reflect on the sciences and then used some sciences in an effort to comprehend the nature of the world and of the human psyche. Given this, and in light of Jean Piaget’s thesis that there are three different categories or types of epistemologies—metascientific, or those that tend to arrive at a general theory of knowledge; parascientific, which I discuss below; and scientific, those that tend to remain purely scientific—I shall argue that Baroja’s epistemology is “parascientific.” Piaget described the parascientific epistemologies as those whose point of departure is indeed the sciences, but whose ultimate aim is to establish an understanding of a different order, “un mode de connaissance distinct de la connaissance scientifique (en opposition avec celleci et non plus en son prolongement)” (16) [a form of knowledge other than scientific knowledge (opposed to scientific knowledge and no longer stemming from it)]. (All translations from Piaget are mine.) In Baroja’s case, the knowledge resulting from an acquaintance with the sciences is one of human condition, particularly of how the human condition manifests itself through suffering. Initially, Baroja’s approach to suffering is scientific. The outcome, however, is something nonscientific: the story, the novel, as well as the personal viewpoints expressed in the novel. For example, being somewhat acquainted with Darwin’s theories, Baroja proceeds to draw his own conclusions that are at times racist (Templin 169), and even to preach hardness and immorality (Templin 70). In El árbol de la ciencia [The Tree of Knowledge] a medical doctor affirms that in Spain, “desde un punto de vista moral, hay dos tipos: el tipo ibérico y el tipo semita. Al tipo ibérico asignaba el doctor las cualidades fuertes y guerreras de la raza; al tipo semita las tendencies rapaces, de intrigua y de comercio” (El árbol 68) [from a moral point of view, there are two ethnic types in Spain: the Iberian and the Semitic. To the Iberian type the doctor attributed the strong and martial qualities of the race; to the Semitic type the rapacious leanings toward intrigue and commerce]. These are obviously parascientific conclusions and pronouncements, especially coming from a man of science. La lucha por la vida (1904) [The Struggle for Life] is yet another example of a parascientific approach to epistemology. Knowing Baroja’s acquaintance with the sciences, a novel with such a title directly brings to mind Darwin. But that is where science stops and a detailed observation of the Madrid underworld begins. According to Longhurst, “. . . the life-in-the-raw approach hides a good deal of conscious contrivance and of the most deliberate kind of selectivity . . . .Baroja is

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uncertain as to whether he wants the reader to take for real life what is after all a literary artifact” (32). What Longhurst is suggesting is that in its oscillation between subjectivity and objectivity, The Struggle for Life presages, in fact, the impossibility of realism. The title of Baroja’s 1893 doctoral dissertation was “El dolor, studio psicofísico” [Pain, a Psychophysical Study]. Iglesias affirms that this was a “pretty bad” dissertation where Baroja “defendía que la vida normal daba una sensación de indiferencia ni dolorosa ni placentera” (107) [argued that everyday life provoked a sensation of indifference that was neither painful nor pleasant]. However mediocre it may be, a dissertation such as Baroja’s not only announces all the novels that he is yet to write but also points to an axiom. Pain was what the 21-year-old medical student chose to focus on for a dissertation; pain, both physical and psychological. In the beginning there was pain, and pain was personally, physically, and psychologically with Baroja who sensed that it could be a subject of study. Pain could be held up to the light, scrutinized, prodded, dissected, analyzed, explained, and perhaps even eradicated. Although he abandoned his medical career soon after the doctoral dissertation, pain continued to be one of the most important, if not the most important, themes in Baroja’s novels. Baroja’s literary trajectory can easily be described as that of a prolonged explanation of pain. It is a constant effort to understand it, and perhaps come to terms with it. Flores Arroyuelo suggests that Baroja’s dissertation was surely a product of recent experiences. “En su sensibilidad, a flor de piel, todo lo que le rodeaba le hería” (11) [His sensitivity was so heightened that anything could hurt him]. It is in this effort to discern the pain he is feeling that Baroja uses all the sciences within his reach. Needless to say, he is more acquainted with some sciences than with others. If in the beginning there was pain, it was medicine that was first called to rescue. Granted, Baroja does affirm that he chose a medical career for lack of anything better to do and that he pursued his medical studies as one would swallow a bitter pill (Iglesias 105). Nonetheless, his choice of careers could still be seen as the product of his relationship with pain. His indecision as to what goals to pursue must have caused pain, a pain that was made sharper by his hypersensitivity and his feeling of helplessness before the spectacle of selfishness and misery that the world presented to him (Iglesias 107). It could very well be that in 1893, the young medical student, in spite of feeling as jaded as he did, chose medicine because it was “the art of healing” (Flores Arroyuelo 12). In this sense, medicine was a possible solution.

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Baroja’s youth coincided with an epochal enthusiasm for Science. There was widespread belief that Science would be a cure-all for humanity. Like Hurtado in El árbol de la ciencia, Baroja went to medical school full of illusions, hoping to find “una disciplina fuerte y al mismo tiempo afectuosa, y se encontraba con una clase grotesca . . . .” (El árbol 43) [a strong and welcoming discipline, and found a grotesque class instead . . . .]. Before broaching the collapse of confidence in the ability of science, I would like to apply Piaget’s thesis to Baroja. I propose that Baroja’s point of departure was psychophysical pain in its scientific manifestations, and that, as already mentioned, his point of arrival is literature. The present study will concentrate on Baroja’s work dating from before 1912, specifically two novels: Camino de perfección (1902) [The Way to Perfection], and El árbol de la ciencia (1911) [The Tree of Knowledge]. According to Beatrice Patt, Camino de perfección is a pivotal point in Baroja’s development as a writer and thinker because it is with the publication of this novel that Baroja emerges as a serious writer (88). As to El árbol de la ciencia, it can be read as a different, revised, and more mature version of Camino de perfección. According to Pío Baroja’s nephew, Pío Caro Baroja, the respective central characters, Fernando Ossorio in Camino and Andrés Hurtado in Arbol, are hypersensitive beings struggling to come to grips with certain issues, Hurtado with his search for a scientific truth, Osorio with his idea of a vital truth (Caro Baroja 18). As Longhurst notes, after El árbol de la ciencia, the publication of El mundo es ansí [Thus is the World] in 1912 closes the first—or personal—phase of Baroja the novelist: “After El mundo es ansí, between 1912 and 1930, Baroja was to devote himself almost exclusively to a long series of historical novels which dealt with aspects of Spain during the first half of the nineteenth century” (31). Although it appears that Baroja pursued his medical studies without much enthusiasm, Beatrice Patt believes that this experience left a deep impression on him. “An abiding if not wholly unqualified admiration for science and the scientific method persists in his works until his last years; the number of physicians appearing on the pages of his collected works has been estimated at more than two hundred. For Baroja, at any rate, if literature was his wife, medicine was his mistress” (Patt 15). E. H. Templin’s reaction to such a statement could very well be that, “Some sense and much nonsense has been written on the influence of medical science on Baroja” (Templin 168). Whichever be the case, we should also keep in mind that Baroja’s “medical acuity has

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merged into a general more or less scientific method for describing generic and individual characteristics, with much more of the anthropologist than of the doctor, when dealing with tipos, and with as much or more of the painter than of any kind of scientist” (Ibid.). Let us now stop to look at how two of these characters, these medical students, are observed in the light of science, and at how the author applies the sciences within his reach in an effort to explain the pain that is at the very core of their existence. This will demonstrate that Pío Baroja remains suspended between nineteenth-century realism and twentieth-century relativism, between an effort to believe in the truth of the external world and the value of scientific enquiry, and a feeling that, because of its distorting mechanisms, the mind can only know subjective reality. Camino de perfección, written in 1902, is a novel of youth, a bildungsroman of sorts. Fernando Ossorio, the protagonist, is a young medical student about to set out on a painful existential journey, knowing well that there might not be any light at the end of the tunnel he is willfully entering. I say “willfully” because at no time does Ossorio make any effort to talk himself out of his seemingly impulsive decisions, but then again he may have already attempted to do so— before the observer and the reader came into play. Perhaps this is not “said” in the beginning of the novel because it did not catch the “eye” of the observer, or because the reader and the observer arrived in medias res, after the die had been cast. Although Ossorio does not hesitate to abandon his medical studies, the novel is clearly not about this decision, nor does it describe in detail the protagonist’s life as a medical student as does El árbol de la ciencia. Ossorio simply explains that he used to like medicine but that now it disgusts him, extraordinarily so. “Al principio me gustaba; ahora me repugna extraordinariamente” (Camino 8) [At first I liked it; but now I find it extraordinarily repugnant]. He then explains that some “spring” (like a mattress spring or watch spring) has broken in his life. At this moment Ossorio and his observer go their separate ways, only to meet again a year later. By then Ossorio has abandoned medicine and has dedicated himself wholly to painting. It is important to keep in mind that in the first two chapters of Camino it is Ossorio and the narrator who do the telling, whereas El árbol is always narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator who announces Hurtado’s fate at the end of the first chapter. “Su preparación para la ciencia no podia ser más desdichada” (El árbol 43) [His initial encounter with science could not have been more ill-fated].

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In the very first paragraph of Camino, Ossorio is described both physically and mentally by a first person singular, a grammatical “I,” an observer, nothing else, an observer to the point that at times it is as if an “eye” were doing the talking and the writing. “Entre los compañeros que estudiaron medicina conmigo, ninguno tan extraño y digno de observación como Fernando Ossorio [ . . . ]” (Camino 5) [Of all the medical students who studied medicine with me, none was as bizarre or as intriguing as Fernando Ossorio]. (All translations of Baroja are mine.) I used the word “intriguing” to translate “digno de observation,” but what the narrator is in fact saying is that Ossorio was worth “observing.” Now, observation is one of the first and foremost issues of the epistemology of biology. According to Francois Meyer, the observer is, in fact, what makes the epistemology of biology so ambiguous. Quant aux sciences biologiques, elles semblent souffrir d’une sorte de dépression épistémologique qui les condamne à hésiter entre une humilité exprérimentale tenue pour le vertu meme, et une prétention “philosophique” . . . .Il semble que la biologie . . . perde son sang froid dès qu’elle consent à poser les “grands problèmes”. . . . Il semble que la biologie n’ait pas réussi à trouver, entre la physique et la métaphysique, la place qui lui revient. . . . . C’est pourquoi, . . . il lui faut tenter de rester spectateur impartial. (Meyer 781–82) [As to the biological sciences, they seem to suffer from an epistemological depression that condemns them to hesitate between an experimental humility that is taken for virtue itself, and philosophical ambitions. . . . . It appears that biology loses its cold blood the minute it begins to deal with the great problems. . . . It appears that biology has not succeeded in finding, somewhere between physics and metaphysics, its own place. . . . That is why . . . he [the biologist] needs to try to remain an impartial observer.]

Let us not forget that during Baroja’s lifetime (1872–1956) the biological sciences were already confronted with ambiguities such as those described by Meyer. Perhaps the biologist needed to try to remain an impartial observer. He needed to try, because that is all he could do, try. Baroja, in fact, plays with this impossibility of being an impartial observer. The first person singular telling the story could also very well be the third person singular being observed. Such is often the case with Baroja, often seeming to observe the medical student he once was, although Baroja does claim that Ossorio’s story is

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not his story, and, in fact, he clearly states that Ossorio was based on a medical student who had been an acquaintance of his (Patt 89). From the very beginning of Camino, therefore, there is this ambition of scientific enquiry. The first person singular doing the talking and the writing is not saying that he/she wishes to go out and have a good time with Ossorio, or study with him, or play a trick on him, but rather this “I” simply remarks that Ossorio is worth observing (for the sake of observing). Immediately afterward, Ossorio is quickly described both physically (tall, dark, silent, with restless eyes, and melancholy expression) and mentally (either talented or slow, depending on other students’ observations). It is as if the “I” doing the telling, is eager to get these preliminary observations or niceties out of the way and get to the heart of the matter, which is the behavior itself. Ossorio happens to be a collector. What he collects are scapulars, amulets, medals, and ribbons, from corpses. We can certainly agree with Templin who writes that for Baroja, collecting “becomes a (solipsistic) chifladura, with no other justification than the supreme (and empty) one of the thing for an in itself” (Templin, “Three Pivotal Concepts” 308). This is also, however, the narrator’s first observation that has to do with Ossorio’s behavior. Ossorio takes from corpses and what he takes are what could be considered trinkets of superstition. After all, the function of amulets and scapulars is to protect the bearer from harm. Here we have a corpse, an object of study, on the one hand, and magic paraphernalia on the other. This is how the reader is led on to this way of perfection, as the title says, a way to perfection that is in fact the genesis and etiology of Ossorio’s degeneration or decadence. Instead of listening to his professors, Ossorio stares at bodies that are either ailing or dead and sketches them. The narrator, in turn, contemplates Ossorio’s sketches with lukewarm admiration. They are very good, but they do not resemble the originals. “Who cares?” is Ossorio’s immediate reaction. “Lo natural es sencillamente estúpido. El arte no debe ser nunca natural” (Camino 6) [What is natural is simply stupid. Art should never be natural]. Ossorio’s conviction is that art should never be natural because it is Nature itself. In this particular instance, Baroja’s itinerary goes from the scientific to the nonscientific, a personal opinion, even a paradoxical one, of art as nature itself. This is possible, of course, if one assumes that nature encompasses everything, even the nonnatural. Baroja applies Darwin’s theory of natural selection and of the struggle for life to Ossorio, and this leads to Ossorio’s self-diagnosis: “es que soy un histérico, un degenerado” (Camino 6) [it is that I am

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a hysteric, a degenerate]. From there, Ossorio/Baroja proceeds to describe the genesis of his affliction. At this point Ossorio becomes the observer and the observed. “Dès que l’on aborde en sciences humaines un problème quelconque,” Lucian Goldmann writes, “. . . on se trouve à l’intérieur d’un cercle qui est l’expression du fait que le chercheur fait lui-même partie de la société qu’il se propose d’étudier. . . .” (Goldmann 992) [Whatever the problems that the human sciences are faced with, they are immediately put inside a circle that is the expression of the fact that the observer himself is part of the society he is studying. . . . ]. From the very beginning, both Ossorio and his observer are inside this circle. Baroja—who is inside the circle as well—uses medicine, biology (the theory of heredity), psychology, and sociology to sketch Ossorio’s trajectory from child prodigy to degenerate. Flores Arroyuelo writes that “Fernando Ossorio es un tipo clásico de inadaptado, no sólo socialmento or artísticamente, sino incluso con la religión . . . .” (51) [Fernando Ossorio is a classic case of someone incapable of adapting, not only socially and artistically, but even as far as religion was concerned . . . .]. At times it is as if Baroja were taking the writer and physician Max Nordau’s diagnosis of degeneration and applying it to his protagonist. “But the physician,” Nordau writes, “. . . recognizes at a glance . . . the confluence of two well-defined conditions of disease, with which he is quite familiar, viz. degeneration (degeneracy) and hysteria” (15). It was a French psychiatrist, B.A. Morel, who popularized the term “degeneration” in the mid 1800s, and described it as a morbid deviation from an original type. Nordau explains that when an organism becomes debilitated, its successors will not resemble the healthy, normal type of the species, but will form a new subspecies capable of transmitting the deviancy to its offspring (16). So it goes with Ossorio who calculates that his intelligence began to wane when he was in secondary school, following his grandfather’s death after he uncovered a painful family secret that deeply troubled his soul (he does not, however, reveal the secret to the narrator): “. . . de tal modo que me hice torpe, huraño, y mis brillantes facultades desaparecieron, sobre todo mi portentosa memoria” (Camino 7) [I became stupid, timid, and my intellectual prowess disappeared, especially my superb memory]. Ossorio’s mother was so troubled by her son’s change for the worse that she sent him away to a seminary where he was to spend the next four years of his life and where he claims to have become vicious and ill-intentioned.

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It was not until his father’s death that Ossorio returned to Madrid, his native city. At 18 he began to study medicine, “. . . y yo, que antes había sido un prodigio, no he llegado a ser depués ni siquiera un mediano estudiante. Total: que gracias a mi educación han hecho de mi un degenerado” (Camino 8) [ . . . after having been a prodigy, I was not even able to become a mediocre student. Result: I am a degenerate thanks to my education]. Ossorio/Baroja uses the word degenerate often. As the etymon implies, degenerate comes from degeneratus, the past participle of degenerare. The word contains the suffix de, which subtracts from or lessens, and the verb generate, to produce, to reproduce, to multiply the genes, or the genus. According to Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language the degenerate “departs from its race or kind.” Another definition is to have sunk to a “lower order than one’s ancestors of former self.” To degenerate, therefore, is to subtract from the genes, to make them lesser or of lesser quality. Once again, Nordau’s diagnosis perfectly fits both Ossorio and Hurtado. Nordau explains that all degenerates lack a sense of morality and of right and wrong (18), so do Ossorio and Hurtado at different points in their lives. This leads to what Nordau calls a moral insanity whose psychological roots are unbounded egoism and impulsiveness (18). Another fitting characteristic is the condition of mental weakness that is also to be observed in them. Nordau came to these conclusions by studying psychologists such as Charcot, Lombroso, Broussais, Broca, and, obviously, Morel. Now it could very well be that Baroja used the Nordau shortcut. Given the symptoms and the diagnosis, Baroja proceeded to create a degenerate protagonist. Baroja could have been also thinking of Darwin’s principle of natural selection when he makes Ossorio reiterate that he is a degenerate. In this case, Ossorio is judging himself as he would a species. So perhaps Baroja is suggesting that this species, this Ossorio species, having undergone one transformation, will undergo yet another. We should keep in mind, however, that according to Darwin, species do not necessarily enjoy a fixed existence, but are rather a commodity or sorts that change in response to the demands of the marketplace, and allow him to establish the theory of natural selection and transformation. What has happened to Ossorio in the course of the first 18 years of his life is that he has gone from being “the fittest” to a lesser being. It is quite interesting that a novel entitled Camino de perfección contains this trajectory in the very beginning. It seems to be the wrong way around. Instead of there being a survival of the fittest, we see instead the ongoing decadence of he who started out as the fittest, a child

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prodigy. Instead of there being a struggle for life, there appears to be a progressive renunciation of it. As the years go by, Ossorio progressively gives up on life. We should keep in mind, however, that Ossorio opted for the medical career after having lost his prodigious intelligence. The decision to study medicine, consequently, could be considered a life option, since the ultimate goal of medicine is to preserve and save lives. Ossorio decided to do this even after he considered his intelligence doomed. Soon afterward, Ossorio gives up on medicine, and decides to paint instead. Once again, Ossorio and the narrator go their separate ways and lose track of each other for several years. It is at an arts exposition, several years later, that the narrator comes across one of Ossorio’s paintings. It is hanging in an upstairs room along with what the jury considered to be the worst of the worst. “El cuadro se llamaba Horas de Silencio. Estaba pintado con desigualdad; pero había en todo él una atmósfera de sufrimiento contenido, una angustia, algo tan vagamente doloroso, que afligía el alma” (Camino 9) [The painting was entitled Hours of Silence. Although it lacked consistency of technique it was infused with an atmosphere of contained suffering, anguish, something so vaguely painful that it afflicted the soul]. Chance has it that the narrator and Ossorio meet again at the precise moment when the narrator is contemplating Ossorio’s painting. This allows Ossorio to further develop his definition of art. When they met a few years before he had defined it as nature itself, now he adds that art is life. This does not mean that art copies life, or that art needs to be a faithful rendering of life. The tautology “art is life” identifies and at the same time distinguishes life from art, since there can only be identity of a difference. According to Longhurst, nineteenthcentury realism was built on the assumption that there existed a reality outside of the work or art, a reality that could be copied or imitated. Once this belief was shaken, all that was left was the sense that reality is the creation of the artist’s consciousness, “. . . the world may still be there, but it is no longer seen with the same eyes” (Longhurst 11). Thus, art ceases to want to be mimesis and becomes an exploration of its own possibilities instead. As for life, it can be considered and defined as an exploration of its own possibilities as well. Ossorio and the narrator further explore these issues when the narrator remarks that Ossorio has painted from memory, without models. Ossorio’s immediately reacts, “¡Claro! Así se debe pintar! ¿Qué no se recuerda, lo que me pasa a mí, los colores? Pues no se pinta” (Camino 10) [Obviously! That is the way to paint. What does one forget? What is going on inside me? Colors? Then do not paint them!]. In other words, knowledge, in this case art, has ceased to be an effort to

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express reality or the outside world. If there is truth to be found, it is in the act of perception itself, whether this perception be the artist’s or the scientist’s. We are being catapulted back into Plato’s cavern after having realized that there are no truths outside. Ossorio blames his bitter thoughts about his entire being on heredity. “Sí, la influencia histérica . . . se marca con facilidad en mi familia. La hermana de mi padre, loca; un primo, suicida; un hermano de mi madre, imbécil, en un manicomio; un tío, alcoholizado . . . . ¡Si yo supiera para qué sirvo!” (Camino 13–14) [Yes, the hysterical influence, . . . can easily be seen in my family. My father’s sister, insane; a cousin who committed suicide; one of my mother’s brothers, an imbecile in a madhouse; an alcoholic uncle . . . . If only I knew my purpose in life!]. Once again, Baroja’s point of departure is a scientific concept, heredity, which he is applying to a character, and taking it elsewhere, away from science. He is toying with the idea that heredity would provide us with certain answers, notably “. . . a key to historical evolution, the nature of races, the nature and cause of cultural flowering and decay” (Templin 169). He is going from an idea of predetermination to one of purpose, specifically the protagonist’s purpose in life. Templin believes that at times Baroja favors heredity over environment since he often points to the immutability of human nature. Yet, at the same time, Ossorio wonders what he is good for, because he wants to do something to rise above what he considers to be his dull and seemingly worthless human condition. What this something is he does not know, but he is out searching for it. This means that in spite of the fatality of heredity and of human nature, there is still a missing piece, the vital truth that will become Ossorio’s quest in life. In fact, as Templin writes, “Baroja combines the culto del yo soberano with the Darwinian struggle for existence . . . and with a tincture of Macchiavellianism and of the Nietzschean Superman . . . .” (170). Donald Shaw points out that Baroja learned from Schopenhauer that suffering is a basic element of life, that the amount of suffering is proportional to the intellectual consciousness (134). Ossorio is an illustration of this suffering to which Baroja gives different names, such as disgust, fear, bitterness, anguish. The rest of Camino will be a search for the vital truth or the purpose of life, and the road will lead away from science as a discipline. It is a road that takes Ossorio from religion, to love, to moral ethics. Caro Baroja believes that in Camino Baroja spares the artist, whereas he kills the scientist in El árbol. In 1902, Baroja did not appear ready or willing to narrate his experiences as a medical student or to interpret his decision to abandon his

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medical studies. He would wait nine years to do so, for the beginning of El árbol (which vividly describes the protagonist as a medical student) could very well have been the beginning of Camino. The first part of El árbol is entitled “La vida de un estudiante en Madrid” [The Life of a student in Madrid]. Now Templin’s question is “Would it matter for Baroja’s purposes if they were students of some other science?” And the answer is “Yes, to the extent that medicine places hand and mind in the human wound, is in contact with what one may call the religious realities of life and death . . . no, because human wounds, including neuroses, are no more a monopoly of the medical profession than the broad scientific, philosophical and political discussions in El árbol de la ciencia . . .” (166). This takes us back to the idea of a parascientific epistemology. As a matter of fact, Templin’s answer to the question “How much does Baroja know about science?” is that only an expert could really tell, but that in any case he displays both professional and unprofessional attitudes toward it (167). Both Ossorio and Hurtado fail to find the strong and welcoming discipline they were expecting medicine to be. They also have similar reactions when standing in front of death itself, in its most concrete and least mysterious manifestation—the corpse. The attitude is quite unprofessional. While Ossorio takes amulets and other trinkets from corpses, Hurtado and his companions show no respect for the dead. In mockery, they shake hands with them, put bugs in their mouths, paper hats on their heads. Baroja is also very anecdotal and farcical when it comes to the corpse stories. To give but one example, Hurtado’s companions talk about a brain being sent to a doctor’s house, and the housekeeper believing that these were cow brains prepares them for dinner. Initially, such anecdotes could be cast aside by the reader, and labeled nonsense—but in fact, they are there to be weighed against other attitudes toward the meaning of life, suffering, and death. All this takes place in the human brain, the same brain that could very well be mistaken for a main course and served at the dinner table, warm and well-seasoned. The point of departure is medicine, studying medicine, going to classes, hating the textbooks. There are the body parts and the vital organs thrown in a barrel, an eyeball floating next to a heart (El árbol 57). Then there is Hurtado’s hope that perhaps physiology will be interesting, more interesting than a novel, because it studies the functions of life. “Pero se engañó . . . .” (El árbol 64) [But he was lying to himself]. The point of arrival is philosophy, particularly the philosophy

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of Kant and of Schopenhauer, and also literature. At times in El árbol, it is as if Baroja—the man of science—has gone back to double check the conclusions he had drawn nine years back in Camino. These conclusions have to do with the collapse of confidence in the ability of science and with the demise of both protagonists’ illusions. With El árbol Baroja is determined to explain and to understand how this has happened. The Spanish title is El árbol de la ciencia. It is translated into English as The Tree of Knowledge, undoubtedly because science is knowledge, and it opens up the possibilities of the story. There was, after all, a tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This could be a story about disobedience, or about how bliss was lost and pain made its way into the world. On the other hand, a literal translation of the title could possibly mislead a potential reader. A book called the The Tree of Science could be a simple classification of the sciences, some placed at the roots, others at the tip of the branches. This is not what Hurtado or Baroja are after. “A Hurtado no le importaba nada la cuestión de los métodos y de las clasificaciones, ni saber si la sicología era una ciencia o un ciempiés inventado por los sabios . . . .” (El árbol 73) [Hurtado could not care less about the question of methods and classifications, or of knowing if psychology was a science or an insect invented by wise men . . . .]. The narrator, however, does stop to mention that this is not one of Hurtado’s preoccupations. This means that the idea was definitely taken into consideration, and then discarded. The way of knowledge began with the question of methods and classifications, it began with an epistemology of science— medicine, biology, heredity, psychology—only to arrive at something other than science. “Lo que quería encontrar era una orientación, una verdad spiritual y práctica al mismo tiempo” (Ibid.) [What he wanted to find was a direction, a spiritual and practical truth]. In other words, what he was searching for, at that point in his life, was an answer to two of Kant’s three questions: What should I do? What can I expect? (The first question having been an epistemological one: What do I know?) Thus, like Kant, Hurtado is going from (1) knowledge, to faith, or the possibility of faith; (2) from science, to something other than science, to something parascientific. La ciencia entonces, el instinto de crítica: la cantidad de mentira que se necesita para la vida. Andrés Hurtado piensa que es Adán, él quiere y piensa tomar la fruta del árbol de la Ciencia, quiere apartar al árbol de la Vida, frondoso y que da la inmortalidad, y que tapa y aniquila al árbol de la Ciencia. El árbol de la Vida ha sido impuesto por la cultura

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semítico-griega y hay que reemplazarla por la cultura de los hombres del norte, por la mentalidad científica. (Flores Arroyuelo 108) [Science, then, is the critical instinct: the quantity of lies one needs to survive. Andrés Hurtado thinks he is Adam, he wants the fruit from the tree of Science, he wants to forget the tree of Life, for it is tufted and promises immortality, and it covers and threatens the tree of Science. The tree of Life was planted by the Greco-Semitic culture that has to be replaced by the culture of the North, by the scientific mind.]

This is, precisely, the scientist that Baroja will kill in Hurtado. In the course of Hurtado’s fourth year of medical school, one of his classmates suggests that they attend a class on venereal diseases, the lecture will be given by a professor at San Juan de Dios Hospital. This experience renders Hurtado so depressed and melancholic that he wonders if Schopenhauer’s pessimism can be reduced to a mathematical truth. In other words, no matter how often Hurtado/Baroja repeats that classifications and methods are of little or no significance, there is nevertheless an eternal return to the sciences in this effort to comprehend pain. Here Hurtado is establishing an interdisciplinary relationship between the mathematical and psychosociological sciences. In other words, he is trying to explain the psychological by means of the mathematical. Piaget points out that mathematicians had no qualms about appealing to psychology. “Par exemple chacun invoquait au XIXe siècle les nombres naturels comme source de l’arithmétique et H. Poincaré encore fait l’hypothèse d’une intuition primitive du n ⫹ 1 . . . .” (Piaget, “Le système” 1201) [For example, in the nineteenth century, everyone invoked the natural numbers as the origin of arithmetic and H. Poincaré has again put forth the hypothesis of a primitive intuition of n ⫹ 1 . . .]. In El árbol it is the other way around, the psychosocial is appealing to the mathematical. Unfortunately, the mathematical remains mute and the world becomes a mixture of insane asylum and hospital for Hurtado (El árbol 81). Such uneasiness, compounded by the pain felt over the loss of his little brother’s life, increases Hurtado’s need for truth and meaning. He does not quit his medical studies, unlike Ossorio before him, but goes on to become a doctor instead, and the scientist in him searches for what he calls a philosophy “que sea primeramente una cosmogonía, una hipotesís racional de la formación del mundo; después una explicación biológica del origin de la vida y del hombre” (El árbol 167) [that would primarily be a cosmogony, a rational hypothesis having to do with the beginnings of the universe; and also a biological explanation of the origin of life and man]. Here, it is as if Baroja were

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unable to leave the man of science behind. It is interesting to note that more time separates Hurtado than Ossorio from the medical profession, but Hurtado is closer to the man of science than Ossorio. Furthermore, Hurtado’s objectives are far more scientific than Ossorio’s. Ossorio, however, was chronologically closer to the physician in Baroja. Hurtado’s uncle Iturrioz, also a physician, rewords Hurtado’s problematic. “Tú quieres una síntesis que complete la cosmología y la biología; una explicación del Universo físico y moral” (Ibid.) [You want a synthesis of cosmology and biology; an explanation of the physical and moral universe]. Such reflections, especially coming from men of science, can be analyzed in light of the epistemologist and biologist Czeslaw Nowinski’s hypothesis that one should expect to find specific methods of research every time one undertakes the study of phenomena in their historical development (dialectic methods). With this in mind Nowinski pays close attention to the dialectics of nature as opposed to the dialectics in the biological sciences (863). By dialectics, I am referring to the split logos, opposing forces, the origin of movement and change. The dialectics of nature can be something as simple as life and death, night and day, whereas the dialectics in the biological sciences have to do with the dialectic methods that characterized the work of certain biologists, Darwin, for example. Nowinski reminds us that Darwin did not consciously apply the dialectic method. Darwin’s theory, however, is a historical biological one that allows us to follow dialectic thought in biology at the moment of its genesis (Nowinski 863–64). When Hurtado’s uncle Iturrioz states that Hurtado is searching for a synthesis of cosmology and biology, he is perhaps suggesting that cosmology is the thesis and biology the antithesis. It is at this point that the epistemology being brought to the forefront becomes parascientific. Hurtado utters, “Uno tiene la angustia, al desesperación de no saber que hacer con la vida, de no tener un plan, de encontrarse perdido, sin brújula, sin luz a donde dirigirse. ¿Qué se hace con la vida?” (El árbol 167) [One has the anguish, the desperation of not knowing what to do with life, of not having a plan, of being lost, without a compass, without a guiding light. What does one do with life?]. Even Kant’s epistemology becomes parascientific in these conversations, since the conclusion Hurtado draws from reading Kant is that all the marvels described by the philosophers were fantasies. I take it that this is Baroja’s interpretation of The Critique of Pure Reason, of Kant having put forth that the senses and certain categories (space and time) condition our entire knowledge; in other words, that man

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cannot strive for a truly objective way of knowing the world; all he can do is rely on the categories of his understanding, time and space, in order to arrive at his own interpretation of the world. The conversation ends with Hurtado’s remark, “Podemos suponer que un tiempo y un espacio sigan para los demás. ¿Pero eso qué importa si no es el nuestro, que es el único real?” (El árbol 169) [Let us suppose that both time and space continue to exist after us, for others. But what does that matter to us, since only our own time and our own space have any reality for us?]. Once again, Baroja is making a direct reference to Kant and the fact that these two categories imply an eternity that man cannot seize, but one that he can conceptualize. The only ending I am giving away here is that, indeed, Baroja spares the artist in Camino and kills the scientist in El árbol. “Estas dos novellas paralelas y gemelas son las que más han hecho pensar a la juventud que las ha leído, porque en ambas se encuentran a dos jovenes con los problemas eternos, el amor, la religion, y la ciencia, tres palabras—solamente tres palabras—capaces de hacer morir o de prolongar la existencia” (Caro Baroja 19) [These two parallel and twin novels are the ones that have given the youth, who read the most, food for thought, because in both these novels we encounter two youths faced with the eternal problems, love, religion, and science, three words—only three words—capable of annihilating or prolonging existence]. In this case, the order of the eternal problems would matter, the point of departure being science, and the last stop, the parascientific, either religion or love. In between, we have the relationship with science go from belief to doubt, to illusions lost.

Works Cited Baroja, Pío. El árbol de la ciencia, ed. Caro Baroja, Pío. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995. ——. Camino de perfección. New York: Las Américas Publishing Company, (n.d., copy of the 1920 edition). Caro Baroja, Julio, ed. Las inquietudes de Shanti Andía. Madrid: Cátedra, 1988. Flores Arroyuelo, Francisco. Las primeras novelas de Pío Baroja. Espinardo: La torre de los vientos, 1967. Goldmann, Lucien. “Epistémologie de la Sociologie.” In Logique et Connaissance Scientifique, ed. Jean Piaget. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Gréco, Pierre. “Epistémologie de la Psychologie.” In Logique et Connaissance Scientifique, ed. Jean Piaget. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Iglesias, Carmen. El pensamiento de Pío Baroja. México: Antigua Librería Robredo, 1963. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Prometheus, 1990.

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——. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977. ——. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. New York: Prometheus, 1988. Longhurst, C. A. Pío Baroja. El Mundo es Ansí. London: Tamesis Books, 1977. Meyer, Francois. “Situation Epistémologique de la Biologie.” In Logique et Connaissance Scientifique, ed. Jean Piaget. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Nordau, Max. Degeneration. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska, 1968. Nowinski, Czeslaw. “Biologie, Théories du Développement et Dialectique.” In Logique et Connaissance Scientifique, ed. Jean Piaget. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. 862–90. Patt, Beatrice P. Pío Baroja. New York: Twayne, 1971. Piaget, Jean. “L’Epistemologie et ses Variétés.” In Logique et Conaissance Scientifique, ed. Jean Piaget. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. ——. “Le système de la classification des sciences.” In Logique et Conaissance Scientifique, ed. Jean Piaget. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. ——, ed. Logique et Connaissance Scientifique. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. Shaw, Donald L. “A Reply to Deshumanización—Baroja on the Art of the Novel.” Hispanic Review XXV (1957): 105–111. ——. La generación del 98. Madrid, Cátedra, 1982. Templin, E. H. “Pío Baroja and Science.” Hispanic Review XV (1947): 165–92. ——. “Pío Baroja: Three Pivotal Concepts.” Hispanic Review XII (1944): 306–29.

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CHAP TER

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“Aquel Madrid”: Science, Literature, and Art in the Edad de Plata Cecelia Cavanaugh SSJ

When Manuel Losada Villasante accepted a doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Huelva in 2002, he dedicated his discurso de investidura [acceptance speech] to his compatriot, the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. This address, Bendita sea la luz [Blessed be the Light], figures as a brilliant integration of Don Manuel’s own lifetime work in photosynthesis, the history of scientific curiosity and research, and the literary and scientific ties between Spain and the New World, with the imagery of light—la luz—as a trope and a reality in science, literature, art, and faith. This eminent scientist, recognized for his work in botanical science, as well as for his consistent contributions to the Spanish press coverage of faith and belles lettres, exemplifies the integration of science, literature, art, and belief. The interdisciplinary nature of his discourse and his impressive familiarity with history, the arts, and the sciences underline his insistence that knowledge is one, and that dedicated specialization in one field is only enhanced by work in others. As a disciple of Severo Ochoa, Don Manuel traces his professional and vocational lineage to the Residencia de estudiantes, the interdisciplinary educational experiment and enterprise where both his scientific mentor and his poetic subject, Juan Ramón, had put down deep roots. An heir to the Edad de Plata—The Age of Silver, the years from 1890 to 1936 in Spain—Manual Losada proves himself an ideological descendant of the scientists and poets who frequented his nation’s laboratories, salons, tertulias, and lecture halls.

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Bendita sea la luz is a beautifully developed, clearly articulated consideration of light as a physical phenomena, not to mention as a literary and artistic motif, and as a spiritual metaphor. In its presentation of genius from the perspective of both the scientific and the artistic communities, Don Manuel’s discourse certainly resembles other ensemble portraits of places, eras, and movements. These collages assemble personalities from multiple fields in order to represent the totality of creative production experienced in particular circumstances. As Manuel Losada Villasante invokes the memory and contributions of Juan Ramón Jiménez, he too cites other prominent contemporaries of this Nobel Laureate poet: the histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, both depicted in Juan Ramón’s writing; the neurologist Nicolás Achúcarro; other renowned scientists, including José María Albareda and Severo Ochoa; educators of note such as Francisco Giner and Alberto Jiménez Fraud. Almost 60 years earlier, another residente, the poet José María Moreno Villa, had also presented such an ensemble, drawn from his memories of the Residencia and Madrid. In his memoir, Vida en claro [Life in Clarity], Moreno Villa recalls being in New York, though harkening back to Madrid in his mind’s eye: Sé que en este preciso momento, el pintor Juan Echevarría está pintando su enésimo retrato de Baroja, que Ortega está preparando su clase de filosofía o su folletón para “El Sol,” que Menéndez Pidal redacta su libro La España del Cid, que Arniches ensaya un sainete; que Manuel Machado entra y sale en la Biblioteca del Ayuntamiento. (140) [I know that in this very moment the painter Juan Echevarría is painting is nth portrait of Pío Baroja, that Ortega is preparing his philosophy class or his piece for “The Sun,” that Menéndez Pidal is editing his book The Spain of the Cid, that Aniches is rehearsing a play; that Manuel Machado is going in and out of the town library.]

Moreno Villa proceeds to name other luminaries and their activities: Antonio Machado works with his character Juan de Mairena; Juan Ramón Jiménez seeks ways to probe the silence; Ramón y Cajal studies ants; Américo Castro wrestles with historical figures including Saint Teresa, Lope de Vega, and Erasmus. Other personalities evoked in Vida en claro include Gaos, Navarro Tomás, Martínez Sierra, Valle Inclán, and García Lorca (140–41). Two striking examples in Moreno Villa’s text illustrate how talent in diverse disciplines can converge in the mind and work of an author to influence the author’s discourse. Moreno Villa’s description of a

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renowned histologist—“Don Pío del Río-Hortega está sobre el microscopio dibujando no sé qué célula del cerebro” (140) [Don Pío del Río-Hortega is bent over his microscope, drawing who knows what brain cell]—recalls a similar language characterizing Azorín’s efforts at literary exegesis: “Azorín desmenuza la carne de un clásico–momia ya–y consigue extraer un globulillo perfumado” (140) [Azorín shreds the flesh of a classic—now a mummy—and is able to extract a perfumed globule]. Portraying the author as a scientist provides a rich, layered metaphor. This lengthy description of Madrid is actually limited to a catalog of individuals: poets, painters, scientists, and philosophers going about their business; except for references to libraries or offices, there is no mention of locations, streets, buildings, or monuments. The simultaneity, not only of various individuals’ activities, but also of the author’s visualization, underlines the interconnectedness that constituted an essential aspect of life in the Spanish capital, especially in the Residencia as Moreno Villa knew it. The Residencia de Estudiantes was more than a place: it was the convergence of many multitalented individuals from as many different disciplines, whose dialogues provided a rich cross-fertilization to all concerned. These sorts of ensemble portraits offer striking literary parallels to the genre of painted group portraits of the members of a tertulia or literary movement, typical of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such group portraits served a similar function, at once documenting the gatherings of these groups of gifted individuals, and recognizing that the coming together of such geniuses on a consistent basis provided synergy and greatly augmented their individual production. History, whether literary or social, is replete with studies of such groups. Paintings and, later, photographs record their relationships for posterity. We would do well to read the choice to portray these individuals as a group as significant. Such portraiture emphasizes the interdisciplinary fertility of a given moment in time and in a particular space. The essay from which this current study takes its title is the work of Jorge Guillén, an important member of the literary generation of 1927. Written as a prologue to Federico García Lorca’s complete works (1954), “Federico en persona” [Federico in Person] includes an ensemble portrait depicting the company in which Lorca would move during his stay at the Residencia: Aquel Madrid, sí señor, aquel Madrid, con su aire de ociosidad . . . un zumbido laborioso. Ciencia y literatura: desde don Santiago Ramón y

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Cajal hasta Juan Ramón Jiménez y Ramón Pérez de Ayala; desde don Ramón Menéndez Pidal hasta don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán y Ramón Gómez de la Serna. . . . (xxxviii) [That Madrid, yes sir, that Madrid, with its air of leisure—the charm of the court—buzzing with activity. Science and literature: from don Santiago Ramón y Cajal to Juan Ramón Jiménez and Ramón Pérez de Ayala; from don Ramón Menéndez Pidal to don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Ramón Gómez de la Serna . . . .]

Writing in 1954, Guillén cites Moreno Villa’s Vida en claro (141) in his own text, layering his portrait of a Madrid of a bygone era. Moreno Villa’s words depict the capital as it was at the moment of his writing, validating Guillén’s memory of an intellectual “village” buzzing with creative activity. This chapter presents and ponders the context Guillén describes, focusing in particular on two scientists, Ramón Santiago y Cajal and Pío del Río-Hortega. These men were exemplary figures in contemporary intellectual circles; they were, in Guillén’s words, “personas de primer orden” [persons of the first order], initially though only in science, they were later recognized for their excursions into literature and art also. Clearly, Guillén considered the encounter between science and belles lettres essential for the reading of Lorca, the ostensible subject of his essay. In turn, we will here examine the role of science in García Lorca’s poetry, drawing, and philosophy in general. The Edad de Plata of Spanish science, literature, and art comes as the result of an assembly of diverse talents and energies. As I have shown elsewhere, the openness of these sorts of individuals to the discourse and achievements of other fields enhanced their practice of their respective disciplines. Guillén not only appreciated the fertile interaction among the artists, philosophers, scientists, and other litterateurs that were his contemporaries, he also articulated it. His observations position him and others like him as active participants in the rich interdisciplinary production of the early twentieth century. Artists and writers were collaborating in new and astonishing ways, moving out of their disciplines on creative excursions into others. Scientists, through their associations with writers and artists, offered each other new eyes to their individual endeavors. From such associations would arise a demonstrably mutual influence. Thus, in his article, “The Mad Doctors: Medicine and Literature in Finisecular Spain,” Richard Cardwell is led to observe, It is when we recognize the discursive formations for what they are and for what they signify that the full richness of a literary period becomes

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apparent. Neither “literature” nor “history,” nor “literary history” are entities which can stand separate, innocent, inviolable from the discursive formations and the “archaeology of knowledge” of the age in which they have their being. In recognizing the power and the pressure of dominating discourses, especially that of the natural sciences and medicine in the late-nineteenth century, we perceive how seamless is the web of literature, philosophical ideas, science, ideologies, etc. in any age, and particularly in the fin de siglo in Spain. (167) An examination of literary and journalistic production of the time reveals a consistent pattern of such interaction among artists, writers, and scientists. Take for example the literary response in 1918 to the premature death of Nicolás Achúcarro, a promising Spanish scientist. Pío Baroja included Achúcarro in his book El hotel del cisne [Swan Hotel], while Juan Ramón Jiménez, Ortega y Gasset, and Unamuno each offered elegies of the scientist. Such tributes reflect not only their acquaintance with the man on a personal level, but also take note of his place in the emerging Spanish school of histology, not to mention in the intellectual and artistic circles in which he moved. (Oliva Aldamiz 127–29)

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the 1906 Nobel laureate for Medicine was a prominent member of Madrid society who interacted on numerous levels and occasions with artists and writers, as well as with his fellow scientists. Moreover, Cajal was himself a master craftsman whose scientific drawings might rival those of any other artist in terms of composition and execution. Also, his work in photography included many portraits, not to mention experiments in microphotography. We will see that Cajal’s consistent excursions into literature and art greatly enhanced his investigative skills and helped him to see things in ways that greatly augmented his scientific labors. Cajal was not just a representative of science, to his contemporaries, he was science itself. Any mention of Ramón y Cajal in the press of his day included a reference to his scientific activity, providing the public with references to science, though without guaranteeing an understanding of what they were reading. Laín Entralgo cites Ortega’s assessment that while Ramón y Cajal was glorified for his scientific achievements, most easily represented for the average Spaniard by his winning of the Nobel Prize of 1906, few of his countrymen truly grasped the details of his research (21). In popular consciousness, Cajal straddled across what Laín Entralgo calls “el desconocimiento y la beatería” (21) [ignorance and sainthood]. As he was the first Spaniard to be awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine, he was feted upon: multiple tributes were offered and many monuments constructed (streets were even renamed after him), all in his honor. His retirement in

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1922, and his death in 1934, elicited reams of press coverage. As Spain struggled to enter the modern world and achieve parity with her European counterparts, a Spanish scientist gained international prestige. Throughout his life, Cajal complained about a lack of support for scientific research, but it is clear that his success brought with it much change, and his accomplishment promoted interest in and support for the sciences in Spain. Ramón y Cajal frequented the cafés and tertulias of Madrid—he was a daily visitor to the Café del Prado—and was often seen in the Plaza de Santa Ana. He attended gatherings in the Ateneo and persistently asserted his opinion on a gamut of topics in the newspapers. Even after his retirement, the Residencia “era frecuentada por Cajal” (Lewy Rodríguez 15) [was frequented by Cajal]. He faithfully attended the annual Feria del Libro [book fair]. Cajal was almost omnipresent in the consciousness of his fellow Spaniards, especially the intellectuals of Madrid society. In that social and intellectual context, with science increasingly becoming a subject of interest to writers and artists, Ramón y Cajal figured as an essential element in the paradigm, though he remained a paradox. By virtue of his great accomplishments, coupled with his independence—he was a true selfmade, self-supported scientist who enjoyed very little government economic support in his early career—Ramón y Cajal dealt with the sorry state of science in Spain, while at the same time realizing science’s highest distinction. Among Cajal’s writing are included: his memoirs, Historia de mi vida y mi labor científica [History of My Life and Scientific Labor]; Cuentos de vacaciones [Vacation Stories], a fascinating collection of short narratives, each written on a scientific premise; Charlas de café [Café Talks], a series of social observations and commentaries; Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica [Rules and Counsels on Scientific Investigation]. Just as it did during his lifetime, even today Cajal’s writings elicit interest among students of literature as a result of his style and what might be termed his genius that is demonstrated in his scientific methodology. The theory of creativity that he lived and articulated in his writing would continue to exert influence not only on the scientific community but also on other disciplines and on society at large. Cajal’s assistant, Enriqueta Lewy Rodríguez, recalls a typical episode that demonstrates the scope of this influence: Y en mi libro Así era Cajal, publiqué una carta, firmada por Galdós, Azorín, Pio Baroja, Valle-Inclán, Joaquín Dicenta y otros, invitando al maestro a que honrara con su presencia un mitin que preparaban en defensa de las libertades democráticas. Decía así: “Nadie como

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usted—terminaba la carta—para llevar en esta protesta la voz de la Ciencia española.” (20) [And in my book So was Cajal, I published a letter, signed by Galdós, Azorín, Pio Baroja, Valle-Inclán, Joaquín Dicenta and others inviting the master to a meeting about the defense of democratic liberties. It read: “There is no one better to represent the voice of Spanish science.”]

The appearance of Santiago Ramón y Cajal in literary texts documents his role in society and the extent of his influence. Azorín (the penname of José Martínez Ruiz), Miguel de Unamuno, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Gregorio Marañón (himself a scientist of note) were all admirers and correspondents of Ramón y Cajal, engaging in debates and other polemics concerning science and scientific discoveries, and their importance and application in society. These litterateurs and others provide insight into Cajal’s reception and stature outside of the scientific circles during his lifetime. For instance, Juan Ramón Jiménez includes Ramón y Cajal in Españoles de tres mundos [Spaniards of Three Worlds]: Cajal vive, con su amiga la Inteligencia. . . . Se va al laboratorio. . . . Y La Inteligencia sale a la puerta de la calle . . . a despedirlo. (in Oliva Aldamiz, “epilogue” n.p.) [Cajal lives with his friend Intelligence. . . . He leaves for the laboratory and Intelligence walks him to the door to say good bye to him.]

In turn, in 1913, Azorín included the article “Un libro de Ramón y Cajal” [“A Book by Ramón y Cajal”] in his own volume Los valores literarios [Literary Values] Azorín classifies Reglas y Consejos as a book that ha sido fundamental en la ideología de un país–en determinado momento–y ha constituido uno de los factores de su evolución social ó literaria. (75) [has been fundamental in the ideology of a country—in a certain moment—and has constituted one of the factors of its social or literary evolution.]

This inclusion of the literary world within the sphere of Ramón y Cajal's influence was not a passing fad; indeed, Azorín goes on to emphasize the influence of Reglas y consejos beyond the laboratory: Nada más lejos—aparentemente, al menos—de la biología que la crítica literaria; sin embargo, pocos laboradores podrán sacar tanto provecho

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de estas reglas y normas que dicta—sin dogmatismo alguno—nuestro sabio, como los críticos literarios y los historiadores de las letras. (76) [Nothing is further—apparently, at least—from biology than literary criticism; nevertheless, few could get more out of the rules and norms established by Cajal—without dogmatism—than our literary critics and historians.]

Azorín further praises Ramón y Cajal as un hombre que por sus trabajos parecería ajeno al arte de la prosa, escribiendo en un estilo verdaderamente literario, un estilo claro, preciso. (77) [a man who for his work seemed foreign to the art of prose, writing in a truly literary style, clear and precise.]

The critic also insists that by virtue of his writings, Ramón y Cajal belongs . . . plenamente dentro de la tradición española; de una tradición creada por un núcleo—renovado a través del tiempo–de pensadores y artistas literarios. (77) [. . . fully within Spanish tradition; a tradition created by a nucleus— renovated through time—of thinkers and literary artists.]

In large measure, Ramón y Cajal achieved this status due to his independence of spirit. Additionally, Azorín cites his rebellion “contra la superstición de lo sancionado y consagrado” (78) [against the superstition of that which is sanctioned and consecrated]. Finally, Azorín voices his admiration, not only for Ramón y Cajal's questioning stance and his demonstrated powers of observation and analysis, but especially also for the scientist’s intuition of what lies beneath, or beyond, the phenomena he has helped to discover: “¿No hay más que lo que nos dicen los sentidos? ¿Y si tuviéramos un sentido más o dos o tres más?” [Is there nothing more than what the senses tell us? And what if we had one more sense, or two or three more?] Azorín agrees with Cajal that humanity requires more than its five senses to “percibir la realidad exactamente y en su esencia” (79) [perceive reality exactly and in its essence]. The Nobel Laureate was fully aware of the attention that was paid to his work. The archives of the Instituto Ramón y Cajal include a collection of newspaper clippings that he kept of any and all reports on his writings, as well as of his correspondence with his reviewers and critics. In 1915, two years after the publication of “Un Libro de Ramón y Cajal” [A Book by Ramón y Cajal], the scientist wrote to

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Azorín about his plans to issue a revised edition of his memoirs (López Piñero, “La literatura” 581). Ramón y Cajal also published in nonscientific journals, exposing a wider audience of readers and the authors whose work appeared in the same volumes to his writings and thought. Among this company is Lorca: the 1924 issue of Cuadernos literarios [Literary Notebooks] in which Ramón y Cajal’s “Pensamientos escogidos” [Selected Thoughts] were published included Lorca’s Suites and Canciones [Songs] (Epistolario completo 252). During Cajal’s lifetime, numerous reviews of his nonscientific writing were published, and in 1935, one year after the Nobel Laureate’s death, Angel del Río wrote, Pero no sólo la significación y el influjo ejemplar de su obra y de su vida, sino también varios de sus libros traspasaron los límites de su especialidad científica. Pues alguna de ellos ocupa puesto distinguido en la literatura española del siglo actual. (98) [But not only the significance and the exemplary influence of his work and life, but also several of his books went beyond the limits of his scientific specialty. Some of them occupy a place of honor in contemporary Spanish literature.]

Though many testimonials were never intended as critical evaluations of Cajal’s literary efforts, such articles, together with reviews and other more scholarly considerations of Ramón y Cajal’s literary production and his accomplished style, served to document public consciousness of the literary component of the Nobel Laureate’s obra. At the time of his death, Ramón y Cajal was much revered for his contributions to Spanish science and society. Gregorio Marañón judged Reglas y Consejos as “uno de los libros que han influído más en el espíritu actual de España” [one of the books that has most influenced the current spirit of Spain] and as “un verdadero Evangelio de la busca santa de la verdad” [a true Gospel of the holy seach for truth] (Estampa Madrid November 3, 1934). In a tribute to Ramón y Cajal, written ten years later, Pío del Río-Hortega quoted the playwright Jacinto Benavente: ha dicho Jacinto Benavente que Ramón y Cajal es el mejor ejemplo de la diferencia que media entre la profesión y la vocación. (Ramón y Cajal 18) [Jacinto Benavente has said that Ramón y Cajal is the best example of difference measured out between profession and vocation.]

The playwright's knowledge of Ramón y Cajal and the histologist's familiarity with the playwright's observations testify to the

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cross-fertilization between the cultural and intellectual circles the two occupied respectively, as well as to Cajal’s presence and influence in all of those circles. In addition to his research and writing, Cajal promoted the study of the sciences in general, while advocating the elevation of educational standards in Spain. We have seen that a significant aspect of Cajal's legacy is his personification of the multidisciplinary individual. The scientist insisted that “la innovación científico-tecnológica no es posible . . . sin el diálogo interdisciplinar que surge de la libertad y del pluralismo” (quoted in Trillas, JAE, 9) [scientific and technological innovation is not possible . . . without the interdisciplinary dialogue that arises from freedom and pluralism]; it was a dialogue that he exemplified in all his work. César Juarros, an early biographer and personal acquaintance of Cajal, attributes his subject’s success to his creative, “nonscientific” side: Cuantos se han plantado ante el problema reconocen que sabio no es cosa distinta de poeta; poeta que, en vez de rimar versos, idea hipótesis. Ya tendremos ocasión de comprobar cómo las ideas de Ramón y Cajal acerca de la estructura del sistema nervioso suponen prodigioso fermentar de una imaginación poética. (48) [All who have studied the issue believe that scientific genius is no different than poetic genius; one rhymes verses, another hypotheses. We can show that the ideas of Ramón y Cajal on the structure of the nervous system reveal the prodigious creativity of the poetic imagination.]

In his own right, the renowned novelist Pío Baroja, whose literary production similarly reflects his medical training, went so far as to name Luis Simarro, Cajal’s contemporary, as a member of the generation of 1898 (496). Much akin to Cajal, Baroja reflected on the needs of his nation, concluding, “lo que no pasará es la necesidad del Arte y la Ciencia” (522) [what shall not pass away is the necessity of art and science]. He further observed that Spaniards would continue to produce literature and art, in spite of a lack of public appreciation or resources: La mayoríá de los escritores y artistas españoles no hemos tenido la menor protección: muchos no hemos ganado con nuestras obras ni lo que gana un peón de albañil, y, sin embargo, seguimos trabajando, claro que sin esperanza de éxito ni de premio. (523) [The majority of Spanish writers and artists have not had even the least protection: many of us have not earned with our works even what a hod carrier earns, and nevertheless, we keep on working, of course without hope of success or of reward.]

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Like Cajal, Baroja insisted on the importance of training a new generation of Spaniards, schooled in the theory and practice of science: “Pero por encima de todas estas condiciones, lo que necesita el científico son armas apropriadas, es decir, un material vasto y complejo” (522) [But beyond all these conditions, what the scientist needs most are the appropriate arms, that is, a vast and complex array of material ítems]. Citing Pasteur’s emphasis on the critical need for laboratory experience in scientific formation, Baroja concludes, “Crear el laboratorio, crear la técnica, sería formar el sabio” (522) [The creation of the laboratory, the creation of technique, will mark the formation of the scholar]. Whereas in the previous century, medicine and psychology had gained a place of prominence in popular awareness, in the early 1920s, biology and physics came into the limelight of public discourse (Cardwell 168). In the early years of his career, while engaged in the research that would ultimately win him the Nobel Prize, Cajal was something of an anomaly. He bemoaned the shortfall in Spanish attitude, values, and resources that, in turn, would result in his own condition: at once solitary and outstanding. Eventually, other figures, many of them students of Cajal, would rise to prominence in science and society. We have mentioned the person and influence of Nicolás Achúcarro in literary discourse, as well as Baroja’s appraisal of the place of Simarro, the scientist, in literary history. The generation that followed Ramón y Cajal continued to integrate the sciences and the arts, not only in their persons and productions, but also in the sociocultural contexts in which they collaborated. One important contribution to that context was the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas [Junta for the Increase of Scientific Studies and Investigations], formed in 1907 by prominent scientists, authors, artists, and politicians, many of them were members of Cajal’s generation, people with whom he had rallied and railed against the condition of Spain’s educational system. Until his death in 1934, Cajal served as the president of the Junta; thereafter the organization continued to embody his goals and achievements. Under the Junta’s auspices, in 1910, the Residencia de estudiantes opened. This educational experiment was set in motion with the express purpose of educating its students as well-trained practitioners of their respective disciplines, while constituting them as integrated, well-rounded members who can recapture their cultural past, keep abreast of innovations in literature and the arts, and claim their place in a scientific-technological revolution resounding throughout Europe and the Americas. Javier Solana Madariaga observes

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that the Residencia program created un campo de experimentación en el que convergieron todas las corrientes de aquel mundo que entonces nacía: desde la física relativista a la nueva arquitectura, del surrealismo a la plástica novísima, la literatura y la filosofía, las exploraciones arqueológicas y la biología. (7) [a field of experimentation in which converged all the currents of that world that was then in process of being born; from the physics of relativity to the new architecture, from surrealism to the newest plastic arts, literature and philosophy, archeological explorations and biology.]

In an article published in 1987 to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Junta, Enrique Trillas, the president of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas [Superior Council of Scientific Investigations]—into which the Junta eventually had evolved— aligned the goals of the CSIC and the Residencia according to their mutual origins: Que en ella pueda realizarse un debate permanente, y los más amplio posible, entre quienes hacen la cultura y quienes hacen la investigación de este país, convirtiéndose en caja de resonancia de nuestro proyecto de innovación ante la sociedad española (“Ochenta años” 11) [To realize a permanent debate, the widest possible, between scientists and artists, turning it into a sounding board for the renovation of Spanish society.]

The Edad de Plata in Spain first witnessed the realization of this innovation, that is, of Cajal’s “diálogo interdisciplinar” [interdisciplinary dialogue] what Trillas calls the “derrumbar importantes barreras” (9) [knocking down of important barriers]. Cajal’s disciples in the study of the nervous system would on their own diversify the master’s focus, for instance, Gonzalo Lafora specialized in psychiatry and Pío del RíoHortega investigated nerve cells in cancer. Likewise, Gregorio Marañón, with whom Cajal maintained an extensive correspondence, conducted extensive research into the endocrine system, advancing scientific theories with societal repercussions: theories including the physiology of women and their role and rights in society, as well as complex issues of gender identity and homosexuality. Marañón also did several studies from a physiological perspective on literary and historical figures: Don Juan, Amiel, and others. Both Del Río-Hortega and Marañón achieved fame in their own right for their contributions to medicine and to science in general; both men continued to identify themselves as disciples of Cajal, counting monographs on this Nobel Laureate among their published works.

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In turn, José Ortega y Gasset’s teaching, writing, and immense personal influence guided the Residencia and its students; he lectured and published material on philosophical issues and advanced scientific theories. His Revista de Occidente [Review of the West], which embodied the values that he advanced, contained in its pages contributions from contemporary poets and artists, as well as translations of the latest scientific hypotheses (Cate-Arries 504). Additionally, Ortega was responsible for arranging many of the lectures at the Residencia, among which, perhaps most notably, was the visit of Albert Einstein in 1923 (Glick 130). The Residencia de estudiantes promoted both excellence in the sciences and the interdisciplinary dialogue on which its founders insisted. Santos Casado explains: En ese ambiente, la Residencia desempeñó un papel singular como sede del diálogo entre ciencias y artes. . . . un clima de intercambio entre disciplinas que fue característico de la Residencia. (par. 7) [In that atmosphere, the Residence played a unique role as the seat of the dialogue between the sciences and the arts. . . . a climate of interchange between disciplines that was characteristic of the Residence.]

These sorts of lectures and conversations, a compulsory fare for all of the residentes, no matter what their area of study, paralleled other offerings at the core of the Residencia experience, including a welldeveloped library whose collection of monographs and journals was readily accessible to the students, and, most important, state of the art laboratories run by leading scientists. In this regard, Santos Casado observes, Aunque de ella se ha difundido una imagen más ligada a lo artístico y lo literario, la Residencia de Estudiantes . . . fue también, desde sus inicios, sede de una intensa actividad científica, que ha formado, y sigue formando, parte indispensable de su proyecto cultural. (par. 2) [Although the popular image of the Residence is one linked to art and literature . . . it was also, from the beginning, home to intense scientific activity, that formed, and continues to form, an indispensable part of its cultural project.]

Access to these laboratories allowed students of medicine and the other sciences significant hands-on experience that went with their theoretical leaning in the university lecture halls. Access to the laboratories and familiarity with the scientists and other students who frequented them provided those studying art and literature—Lorca and Dalí among them—with a rich source of new ideas and images.

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How much more would this sort of interdisciplinarity be enriched as the Residencia’s teachers emulated its values in their own lives and works! In this mode, Pío del Río-Hortega emerged as a mentor par excellence. Renowned for his scientific acumen, he drew visitors and disciples from around the world to visit his laboratory. A firm believer in the tenets of the Institución Libre de enseñanza and the Junta para la Amplicacion de Esudios (JAE), Don Pío insisted that his students be well-rounded: to this end, he would organize field trips, assign readings in the classics of literature, and even preside over a tertulia frequented by artists and writers, not to mention his own students. His nephew, Juan Del Río-Hortega Bereciartu recalls that la relación de Río-Hortega con el mundo intelectual español en los años 20 y 30 fue muy intensa: de hecho, la mayoría de sus amigos más queridos no eran médicos, sino pintores y escultores (García Lesmes, Juan Cristóbal, Victoria Macho, Picasso) músicos (Arbós, Turina) escritores (Gabriel Miró) y poetas (Valle Inclán, Manuel Machado). (53) [the relation Río-Hortega had with the Spanish intellectual world in the 1920s and 1930s was very intense: in fact, the majority of his friends weren’t doctors, but rather painters and sculpters (García Lesmes, Juan Cristóbal, Victoria Macho, Picasso), musicians (Arbós, Turina), writers (Gabriel Miró), and poets (Valle Inclán, Manuel Machado).]

It is no coincidence that such a lover of art and literature should excel in a discipline that demanded command of language, manual dexterity, an appreciation for the apprehended image, and acute powers of observation, all qualities obviously useful in drawing and painting, as well as in the practice of histology. His contemporaries and students attest to Del Río-Hortega’s gifts in these areas. Witnesses such as Alberca Lorente do not hesitate to associate his science with the arts: A la manera como los viejos pintores preparaban sus telas y sus pinturas con un sentido personalmente creador, nuestros histólogos–Del Río en primer plano–inventaban sus propias técnicas y las modificaban a dirario según los requerimientos del momento. (Alberca Lorente 20) [In the same way that the old painters prepared their canvases and paints with a personal, creative touch, our histologists—Del Río above all—invented their own techniques and modified them as necessary.]

The result of such interaction, “el fruto del maridaje entre sus aficiones artísticas y su actividad científica” [the fruit of the marriage of their artistic drives and their scientific activity], as the editor of the

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journal Residencia would express it (191), was readily evident: “Obras de arte es lo que salían de las manos de este gran sabio y gran hombre” (Díaz Ferrón 52) [Works of art were what left the hands of this great scholar and great man]. By its very nature, histology lends itself to such interdisciplinary comparisons, since the scientist must select his subject, arrange it on a slide, prepare a “palette” after choosing the stain with which to treat it, observe the subject, draw it, and then “read” his drawing. It is to this sort of scientific procedure that Del Río-Hortega compares the artistic movements of his time. In his essay, he treats his histological drawings as paintings and portrays the histologist not only as an artist—producer of the drawing—but also as a viewer and interpreter of the truth the drawing portrays. Fernando Castro observes, “en los trabajos de Río Hortega. . . . Hay en ello, sin duda, mucho de arte. . . .” (xiv–xv) [in the works of Río Hortega. . . . There is, without doubt, much that is art . . .]. In addition to his scientific work, so enriched by his consistent practice of drawing, Del Río-Hortega’s experience of his craft was enhanced also by his immersion in the art world. His essay “Arte y artificio en la ciencia histológica” [Art and Artifice in the Science of Histology], published in 1933, though first presented as a lecture, enumerates the connections the histologist observes between the discipline of cell biology and the art of painting and drawing. It is striking to note how Del Río-Hortega employs literary rhetoric and the language of art criticism to elaborate such connections. In turn, López Piñero observes, Del Río Hortega no tenía ya una visión tradicional del arte, como la que Cajal defendió hasta el final de su vida, sino que estaba familiarizado con las nuevas corrientes, en buena parte a través del ambiente de la Residencia. (Morfología 61) [Del Río Hortega didn’t have a traditional view of art, like the one Cajal defended up to his dying day, but he rather familiarized himself with the new currents, in good part by way of the Residencia.]

In “Arte y artificio,” then, Del Río-Hortega explores the differences between traditional and emerging schools of art and then aptly applies these differences to the observation essential in histology. Comparing the roles of the artist, the scientists, and those who observe their work, while considering the universal importance of observation for all concerned, Del Río-Hortega proves himself an insightful student of art and literature whose talents in both fields would greatly augment his success in science. One’s eye for detail, the emotional investment in

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one’s subject, the freedom with which modern artists might depict images, all find their way into the essay to offer a convincing argument for the “aesthetic emotion,” or the “arte y artificio” [art and craft], that Del Río-Hortega deemed so essential to his science. It becomes evident in biographical studies that the younger generation of residentes enjoyed personal interaction with the scientists of the Residencia. In their memoirs and memories, many figures, including Luis Buñuel, Rafael Alberti, José Bello, Emilio Prados, Rafael Méndez, Salvador Dalí, and García Lorca, recount anecdotes and impressions received during their time living, working, and socializing in the Residencia and its environs. Severo Ochoa, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1959, recalls, Recuerdo mis primeros pasos en el laboratorio de Fisiología, ¡qué gran oportunidad para un joven estudiante de Medicina que, estimulado por la lectura de Cajal, el ejemplo de Río Hortega, y la presentación por Negrín y otros maestros de amplios horizontes y modernos conceptos científicos. (62) [I remember my first time in the Physiology laboratory. What a great opportunity for a young medical student, stimulated by Cajal’s lectures, the example of Río Hortega, Negrín’s presentations, and other masters of modern scientific concepts.]

Even those not dedicated to the study of science regarded it with fascination and intuited in many cases its potential as a source of new imagery. Cajal’s memoirs, Del Río-Hortega’s essay, the tracts of other scientists as translated and published by Ortega y Gasset, all penetrated into and profoundly influenced poetic and artistic circles. In his article “Realidad y sobrerrealidad” [Reality and Surreality], Salvador Dalí refers to a “film de procesos de fecundación microscópica” (283) [film of processes of microscopic fecundization]. On another occasion, Dalí expounded, I do nothing more than read books that I don’t understand. Scientific books. I cause myself terrible problems. But I make a synthesis of these problems and arrive at valid conclusions, so much so that, at times in conversations with scientists and Nobel Prize winners, they ask me: “How did you get to know this?” and I reply, “This I have deduced by reading things I don’t understand.” (Glick 278)

In the works of both Lorca and Dalí, then, one can detect the presence of images extracted from science, microscopic and macroscopic images viewed firsthand in the laboratory or in the drawings executed

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by talented scientists. In addition to their drawings, both Dalí and Lorca refer to the process of science while articulating their own aesthetics. Among others, Xon de Ros, Paul Julian Smith, and Dennis Perri have pondered the role of science in specific texts by Lorca: the Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, Yerma and “Suite Newton.” Moreover, Candelas Gala has recently published an article detailing the influence of the theories of relativity on Cubism in general and Lorca’s Suites in particular. These and other studies clearly indicate the presence of Ramón y Cajal, Marañón, and Einstein in Lorca’s works, as in the workings of his mind. It remains my thesis that science played a far more pervasive role in Lorca’s creative development, throughout his literary and artistic corpus. For example, one can note the influence of Jacob Von Uexküll’s theories in Lorca’s oeuvre, including Impresiones y paisajes, Mariana Pineda, “La monja gitana,” and La imagen poética de Don Luis de Góngora. Lorca and other writers of his generation learned of Uexküll’s theories about organisms and their environments through the efforts of José Ortega y Gasset. Ortega translated and published Uexküll’s work, which had influenced Ortega’s emerging theory of phenomenology. Lorca’s insistence in the lecture on Góngora that “su sensibilidad le puso un microscopio en las pupilas” (OC 3:58) [his sensibility gave him a microscope in his eyes] as he “enters into the world of each thing” (233) echoes Uexküll and reveals that he has identified with, if not appropriated, the discourse and method of science in his poetics. Such possible allusiveness may also mark a reference to Cajal’s short story “El pesimista corregido” [The Corrected Pessimist], in which the protagonist awakens one morning with his eyes transformed into microscopes. Elsewhere, I have shown that Lorca was familiar with Cajal’s memoirs, if not directly, then at least through the writings of his friend Melchor Almagro Fernández, whose reviews of Cajal’s work provided Lorca with quotes and images (Cavanaugh, “Reading Lorca” 191–201). In addition to references to Cajal’s writings—whether on leukocytes or on microscopes—in his lectures and letters, Lorca’s drawings also offer evidence of scientific allusions. “La Vista y el tacto” [Vision and Touch] depicts nerve structure and, by means of a playful merging of microscopic and macroscopic imagery, traces the path from visual stimulus along nerve paths to a response of the tactile nerves. Likewise, “La fecundización del niño azuceno” [The Fecundization of the Lily Child], a deliberate reference to Dalí and his work on the Narcissus theme, contains imagery easily associated with the “microscopic fertilization processes,” as Dalí termed what he had

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earlier witnessed via the microscope. Drawings such as “Epitalamio,” “Serenata,” “Brisa del mar,” and “Brisa de tierra” all evince neuron structures and neural “arborizations,” as well as arrows and letters reminiscent of scientific drawing, not to mention textures that call to mind tissues or the shimmering microscopic field. Such renderings illustrate Lorca’s detailed grasp of microscopy, as well as of the relationships between stimuli and nerve cells. Both Dalí and Lorca would also integrate elements of macroscopic imagery into their work. Incorporating the lessons of anatomy as observed in the laboratories at the Residencia in their writings, as in their drawings or paintings, both men illustrate dismembered or otherwise dissected flesh. Although such violence becomes a trademark of the surrealist vision with which Dalí would become associated, it is important to note that the exploration of suffering in and through the lenses of science had a critical role in the development of his aesthetic. For Lorca, images of flesh violated in the name of experimentation served to articulate the experience of making art, allowing him as an artist to identify with suffering victims, be they martyrs or laboratory specimens. In turn, the Romancero gitano depicts a martyrology of sorts, while its discourse resonates with the methods of modern laboratory. Eyes with nerves dangling become aquatic plants in “Santa Lucía y San Lázaro” [Saint Lucia and Saint Lazarus]. In that poem and then in his film script Viaje a la luna [Voyage to the Moon], Lorca also explores the human circulatory system, tracing the pattern of veins seen through Lucy’s skin, while presenting a walking anatomy model as the protagonist of the film, Santa Olalla is flayed by a scalpel. In turn, Christ’s heart beats like that of a frog held in a glass flask by scientists; Rodegunda lies on a dissecting table, accompanied by one of the dogs that Lorca had once held outside of the Residencia laboratories, prior to their being taken inside for experimentation. In a series of letters to the art critic, Sebastià Gasch, Lorca expresses his search for images much like Pío del Río-Hortega had in his essay. The artist and the scientist go to great lengths in order to describe the experience of being confronted by a multitude of images, along with the need to elicit the essential information in them, sorting out and interpreting what their vision has provided. Such careful observation, articulation, and synthesis are typical of the works of both Del Río-Hortega and Lorca. Moreover, Cajal, Del Río-Hortega, and Lorca considered emotion to be a constitutive element in the creative process. The two scientists’ writings affirm their affective relationship with their subjects. This is not to negate the objective, fact-based methodology demanded by science. Rather, what Del Río-Hortega calls “la emoción aestética”

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[aesthetic emotion] enriches both the researcher and his results. In the initial creative process, the attraction toward beauty motivates and sustains the scientist’s engagement of the phenomenon. Cajal remarks, . . . la admiración ingenua de la forma celular constituía uno de mis solaces más gratos. Porque, aun desde el punto de vista estético, encierra el tejido nervioso cautivadores atractivos. (HMLC 99) [. . . the ingenuous admiration of cellular form constituted one of my most cherished consolations. Because, even from the aesthetic point of view, nervous tissue contains captivating attractions.]

Such enthusiasm for beauty is no auxiliary characteristic, no by-product of scientific investigation. For Cajal and for Del Río-Hortega, as for many of their contemporaries in an emerging new biology, a relationship with the living subject provided a fresh lens through which to observe, to analyze, and to hypothesize. On the quest for beauty that he considered to be at the heart of the histological vocation, Del RíoHortega confesses, Tan amalgamadas y confundidas están en la histología las verdades de la ciencia y las bellezas del arte, que no puede saberse si el histólogo se apasiona . . . por la belleza de la verdad o por la verdad de la belleza. (“Arte y artificio” 200) [So interwoven in histology are the truths of science and the beauties of art that one doesn’t know if the histologist is drawn to the beauty of truth or the truth of beauty.]

Employing a double-entendre, he alludes to the practice of staining—as it were, of impregnating—nerve cells, all the while insisting on establishing an intimate relationship with his subject: No basta examinar, hay que contemplar, impregnemos de emoción y simpatía las cosas observadas; hagámoslas nuestras tanto por el corazón como por la inteligencia. (“Don Santiago Ramón y Cajal” 19) [It is not enough to examine, one must contemplate, let us impregnate with emotion and sympathy the things we observe, let us make them ours by means of the heart, as well as of the intelligence.]

Del Río-Hortega summarizes both the process and the product of his labors in these words: Cuando tras el empleo de uno de estos artificios técnicos en el que fue preciso combinar meticulosamente varios colores complementarios: rojo

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y verde, amarillo y azul, el histólogo obtiene un verdadero cuadro pictórico, puede encontrar en él tres limpias fuentes de emoción purísima: la que dimana de la propia belleza del paisaje, con su policromía, su entonación y sus calidades: la que brota del propio observador, que siente la recóndita satisfacción del propósito logrado, y la que emerge de la novedad de los hechos puestos en evidencia del descubrimiento de ignoradas verdades. (“Arte y artificio” 200) [When after using one of these technical artifices in which it was necessary to meticulously combine various complementary colors; red and green, yellow and blue, the histologist obtains a truly artistic image, he can find in it three sources of pure emotion: that which comes from the pure aesthetic beauty of the image, with its interplay of colors, subtle intonations, and so on: that which springs from within the artist, who feels the satisfaction of a job well done, and that which comes from having revealed hitherto unknown truths.]

We may conclude that, for Cajal, as for Río-Hortega, their artistic sensibility, the infusion of emotion and the investment of the self into the cell or whatever other structure they were studying made a work of art out of the object being observed and an artist out of the scientific observer. In his own right, Lorca echoes this same attitude, writing in Imaginación, inspiración, evasión to this effect that el poeta “quiere” comprender los misterios, y ese es su pecado: querer. No se debe querer, se debe amar. El que ama no quiere . . . la poesía no quiere adeptos sino amantes. (III: 265–66) [the poet desires to comprehend mysteries and that is his sin: desiring. One should not desire, one should love. He who loves does not desire. Poetry does not want followers but rather lovers.]

Throughout his multidisciplinary artistry, the poet would insist not only on the role of mystery, but also on the importance of emotion. Speaking of a set of drawings, Lorca wrote to Gasch: . . . yo titularía estos dibujos que recibirás . . . Dibujos humanísimos. Porque casi todos van a dar con su flechita en el corazón. (III: 970) [. . . I would call these drawings you are about to receive . . . heartfelt drawings. . . . Because each one will strike deep into your heart.]

As should be evident in the course of this chapter, Lorca shared this philosophy, not only with Ramón y Cajal and del Río-Hortega, but also with the other poets of his generation. Francie Cate-Arries notes,

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Luis Cernuda has stated that “la condición primera para comprender y animar la realidad es amarla” (1367) [the prerequisite for understanding nature is to love it]. Lorca explains the power of the poet’s “mirada amorosa” [loving look]; “La imaginación poética viaja y transforma la cosas, les da su sentido más puro y define relaciones que no se sospechaban” (OC 86) [The poetic imagination transforms things into a purer form, revealing unexpected relationships]. According to Ortega, this “loving look” would fulfill the potential of each fragment of reality, thus making of “cada cosa centro del universo” (1:351) [each thing the center of the universe]. All of the members of the Generation have voiced the opinion that a contemplative stance on the part of the poet is absolutely indispensable to the eventual passion of the “otra realidad más honda” (OC 1:340) [another, deeper reality] lying beyond the prosaic world of impressions. (509)

We have noted that such a stance is not at all opposed to the scientific method Cajal, Del Río-Hortega, and others. This “loving look,” however, would mark a division between the aesthetic of Lorca and that of Dalí. This difference is noted by Gala in her study of physics and relativity in Lorca’s Suites: Lorca is wondering about the universe and its laws and is aware of scientific advances in the field, as he refers directly to Newton in this suite. It is thus surprising that his solution for deciphering the mysteries around us is to wait for the genies and gnomes to make a careless mistake so that we can have a chance to figure it all out. Lorca chooses to deal, or not deal, with a serious matter by holding on to a world of fantasy and imagination. This approach fits with his overall defense of mystery and enigma over an art that is excessively pure and aseptic. As he wrote in his “Ode to Salvador Dalí,” Lorca recognized his friend’s talent while warning him about the world of chaotic, measureless forces and penumbra that Dalí’s excessive asepsis was trying to ignore. Mystery had to remain for Lorca; if revealed, our desire and imagination would die with it. (521)

In turn, in his study of the poem “Suite Newton,” Perri concludes that Lorca is rejecting science; whereas, Gala describes the degree to which the poet is attuned to the discourse that was provoked in the scientific community by Einstein’s theories (517). Exposed to the debate between traditional physics and biology and emerging theories that moved away from absolute certainties, Lorca embraced a view that rejected an authoritative, finite interpretation of the

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mysteries of the world. In his own right, Cajal had insisted that el fruto más preciado obtenido de los consabidos ensayos experimentales fue la profunda convicción de que la naturaleza viva, lejos de estar agotada y apurada, nos reserva a todos, grandes y chicos, extensiones inconmensurables de tierras ignotas. (HMVLC 30) [the most valuable fruit of these experiments was the profound conviction that living nature holds for all of us, old and young alike, vast realms of unexplored territory.]

This is not at all a rejection of the realities uncovered and explained by science. Rather, it is an expression of true humility and humanity in the face of nature, a respectful embrace of an infinity of possibilities that nurtures the scientist’s curiosity and urges his research onward. Just as relativity had first undermined and then extended the understanding of time and space, so physics and biology were coming to terms with the very real element of serendipity in research, and with the ever-emerging nature of knowledge. Speaking of Del RíoHortega’s philosophy of science, Alberca Lorente summarizes that a pesar de todo, tendemos a identificar ciencia y objetividad y mantenemos por objetivo los hechos, lo fáctico, lo que . . . tocamos con nuestras manos y vemos con los ojos de la cara. . . . Pero. . . . Es que esta objetividad tan tangible, tan concreta, tan sólida, tan lograda y tan real es de lo menos firme de mundo. (16) [in spite of everything, we tend to identify science with objectivity, and we define the objective world as the things we can touch with our hands and see with our eyes. . . . But. . . . This objective reality so tangible, so concrete, so solid and so real is the least certain thing in the world.]

This is a dynamic reading of reality in which observer and observed act upon each other. Lorca had obviously engaged Zubiri’s philosophy in his reading of his own drawings, on one occasion addressing Gasch he says, He procurado escoger los rasgos esenciales de emoción y de forma, o de super-realidad y super-forma, para hacer de ellos un signo que, como llave mágica, nos lleve a comprender mejor la realidad que tienen en el mundo. (III: 969) [I have tried to choose the essential characteristics of emotion and form, or of superreality and superform, in order to make of them a sign, like a magic key, that carries us to a better understanding of the reality that they have in the world.]

As Gala has aptly observed, the reaching through, and even beyond, appearance in order to grasp the “rasgos esenciales” [essential features]

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of a subject acknowledges the chaos in which that subject exists. Accepting emotion and form as essential ingredients of knowledge involves a struggle, one in which Lorca engaged consistently. “Dalí’s excessive asepsis” and Lorca’s belief that the “chaotic, measureless forces and penumbra that (Dalí) was trying to ignore” was the very stuff of poetry, both constitute an aesthetic divergence that the two could not bridge. This gulf is articulated by Dalí, who describes “the opposite side of the St. Sebastian’s magnifying glass” in these words: “Everything in it was anguish, obscurity and tenderness” (Sebastian’s Arrows 148). As I have noted, the figure of Saint Sebastian provides one final locus of consideration, both of this aesthetic debate and of the influence of science on Lorca and Dalí. Certainly, other critics have pondered Saint Sebastian’s place in Lorca’s and Dalí’s artistic worlds, including the critical role the martyr played in their collaboration with and communication about their relationship. In turn, I have focused on the influence of science on their approach to the saint, on their depictions of him, and on their reading of his significance with respect to their respective aesthetics. As we have noted, Lorca’s depictions of this and other martyrs in his poetry and drawings contain references to the tools and practices of the physiology laboratory. Dissection becomes martyrdom as Christ, Olalla, Lucy, Rodegunda, and Sebastian are confined, opened, observed, each of these steps marking another measure of suffering. Lorca’s identification with these figures further emphasizes his vision of art as a form of martyrdom. His affective response to Sebastian flies in the face of Dalí’s more objective depiction of the martyr. Whereas Dalí proposes measuring the suffering of Sebastian by means of some mechanical apparatus—“a simple gauge served to measure the agony of the saint”(Sebastian’s Arrows 144)— Lorca embraces the saint and his pain. He writes to his friend, Las flechas de San Sebastián son de acero, pero la diferencia que yo tengo contigo es que tú las ves clavadas, fijas y robustas, flechas cortas que no descompongan, y yo las veo largas . . . en el momento de la herida. Tu San Sebastián de mármol se opone al mío de carne que muere en todos los momentos y así tiene que ser. [The arrows of Saint Sebastian are made of steel, but the difference I have with you is that you see them already in him, short metal stubs jutting out, while I see them at the moment they begin to enter. Your marble Saint Sebastian contrasts sharply with mine of flesh and blood, caught in the inevitable act of dying.]

Then Lorca notes, Lo que a mí me conmueve de san Sebastián es su serenidad en medio de su desgracia . . . me conmueve su gracia en medio de la tortura, y esa

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carencia absoluta de resignación que ostenta en su rostro helénico, porque no es un resignado sino un triunfador. [What moves me about San Sebastian is his serenity in the midst of disgrace . . . his grace under torture, and the absolute lack of resignation that shows in his Hellenic face, because he is not defeated but rather triumphant.]

Then he argues that this grace posa y construye su cuerpo dando eternidad a lo fugitivo y logrando hacer visible una abstracta idea estética, como da una rueda la idea completísima del movimiento perpetuo. Por eso yo lo amo. (Epistolario 511–12) [poses and constructs his body in such a way as to make the fleeting appear eternal, and so making visible an abstract aesthetic idea, much like a wheel evinces the concept of eternity.]

Recall in this regard Alberca Lorente’s insistence that the scientist must acknowledge the two faces of his discipline: . . . los hechos, lo fáctico, lo que unos y otros—a veces sólo los avisados y los expertos—tocamos con nuestras manos y vemos con los ojos de la cara; lo real y lo permanente en definitivo. [. . . the facts, reality, what we touch with our hands and see with our eyes, that which definitely exists.]

along with the . . . rasgo esencial de las cosas reales—junto a la patentización en que se manifiesta su riqueza interna, y la seguridad en que se expresa su solidez y firmeza—la constatación que denuncia su “estar siendo.” (16) [the essential feature of reality—together with its internal richness and the security with which it expresses its firmness and solidarity—is the certainty of its being in existence.] (Alberca Lorente 16)

If we read Alberca Lorente in the spirit of the ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue that pervaded Madrid in the early twentieth century and that so influenced our present subjects, then these characteristics also may be acknowledged as the two faces of any poetic or artistic subject. That science and art, or science and poetry, differ significantly with regard to their methodology and in their readings of the world is incontestable. However, the geniuses whose work we have considered were prophetic in their insistence that one discipline enriched the other and vice versa, anticipating as they did the revelations of our

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contemporary science that has come to recognize that knowledge is the property of no one discipline. In that spirit, Manuel Losada Villasante reminds us, como agudamente percibió el genial artista y científico Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1518), figura cumbre del Renacimiento, “no existe diferencia esencial entre la ciencia y el arte. Una y otro son los medios para descubrir el Universo creado por Dios.” Suya es también la frase de que “la verdadera ciencia empieza con la observación . . . Lo primero son los hechos, después las interpretaciones.” (58) [as the celebrated Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1518) observed, “There exists no essential difference between science and art. Both the one and the other are the means by which we discover the universe created by God.” Also his is the phrase “True science begins with observation. . . . First come the observations, and then the interpretations.”]

The art and poetry produced during the Edad de Plata was also the fruit of observation, and, in Losada’s words, “las interpretaciones” that follow the facts are garnered from that observation. As poets, artists, and scientists observed and then went on to articulate the world within and around them, they doubtless advanced their own disciplines. In turn, as a result of the cross-fertilization made possible by such interdisciplinary dialogue, they also exercised a profound influence on the works of others outside their fields. ¡Qué maravilla! . . . Un centenar de personas de primer orden trabajando con la ilusión máxima, a alta presión. ¿Qué más puede pedir un país? (Moreno Villa 141) [What a wonder . . . A hundred people of the first rank working with the maximum enthusiasm, at full speed. What more could a country ask for?]

Works Cited Alberca Lorente, R . “Del Río-Hortega en mi recuerdo.” Revista española de oncología. 12(1965): 15–24. Baroja, Pío. Obras completas. Madrid: Biblioteca nueva, 1948. Cardwell, Richard A. “The Mad Doctors: Medicine and Literature in Finisecular Spain.” Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 4 (1996): 167–86. Casado, Santos. Ciencia en la Colina de los Chopos. Eidon. Revista de la Fundación de Ciencias de la Salud. 1(1999). March 3, 2005, http://www.fcs.es/fcs/esp/eidon/Introesp/eidon1/eidon.htm.

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Castro, Fernando de. “Pío del Río-Hortega 1882–1945.” Trabajos del Instituto Cajal de Investigaciones Biológicas 37 (1945): vii–xvii. Cate-Arries, Francie. “Poetics and Philosophy: José Ortega y Gasset and the Generation of 1927.” Hispania 71 (1988): 503–511. Cavanaugh, Cecelia J. “The Most Congenial and Eternal Site of True Poetry: The Figure of Saint Sebastian in Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca,” Lecture, Furman University, Greenville, SC. January 31, 2005. ——. “Reading Lorca through the Microscope.” Hispania 86.2(2003): 191–201. Dalí, Salvador. “Realidad y sobrerrealidad.” La Gaceta literaria 1 (1927–29): 283. ——. “Saint Sebastian.” In Sebastian’s Arrows, ed., trans., prologue Christopher Maurer Chicago: Swan Isle Press, 2004. 139–150. Del Río, Angel. “La literatura de hoy. Santiago Ramón y Cajal.” Revista Hispánica Moderna 2 (1935): 97–99. Del Río-Hortega Bereciartu, Juan. Letter to Cecelia J. Cavanaugh, September 18, 2002. ——. “El Epistolario de Pío del Río-Hortega.” 2 vols. Dissertation. University de Valladolid, 1992. Del Río-Hortega, Pío. “El Maestro y yo.” In Insula, ed. Alberto Sánchez Alvarez. Madrid: CSIC, 1986. De Ros, Xon. “Science and Myth in Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías.” Modern Language Review 95.1 (2000): 114–26. Díaz Ferrón, E. “Las manos de Don Pío.” Revista Española de Oncologí. 12 (1965): 51–52. Gala, Candelas. “Lorca’s Suites: Reflections on Cubism and the Sciences.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 80 (2003): 509–524. García Lorca, Federico. Epistolario completo, ed. Andrew A. Anderson and Christopher Maurer. Madrid: Cátedra, 1997. ——. Obras completas. 3 vols. Madrid: Aguilar, 1989. Glick, Thomas F. Einstein in Spain: Relativity and the Recovery of Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Guillén, Jorge. “Federico en persona.” In Obras completas Vol. I, ed. Federico García Lorca. Madrid: Aguilar, 1989. xxxviii. Lewy Rodríguez, Enriqueta. El Madrid de Cajal. Madrid: Artes Gráficas Municipales, 1985. López-Piñero, José María, and Felipe Jerez Moliner. “Arte y artificio de la ciencia histológicaR (1933), de Pío del Río-Hortega.” Archivo español morfológico 3 (1998): 57–66. ——. “La literatura en la vida de Cajal.” In Estudios de literatura española de los siglos XIX y XX: Homenaje a Juan María Diez Taboada. Madrid: CSIC, 1998. 578–84. Losada Villasante, Manuel. Bendita sea la luz. Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2002. Marañón, Gregorio. Cajal, su tiempo y el nuestro. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1951.

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McInnis, Judy B. “José Ortega y Gasset and Federico García Lorca.” In José Ortega y Gasset, ed. Nora de Marval-McNair. New York: Greenwood, 1987. 143–49. Morena Villa, José María. Vida en claro. México: Fondo de Cultura Económico, 1944. Ochoa, Severo. “Un recuerdo.” Residencia (1963: número conmemorativo): 62. Perera, Arturo. “Cajal, poeta.” Medicina de España 2 (1966): 65–79. Perri, Dennos. “Lorca's ‘Suite Newton’: The Limits of Science and Reason.” Hispanófila 100(1990): 25–36. Pratt, Dale. Signs of Science: Literature, Science, and Spanish Modernity Since 1868. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001. Ramón y Cajal, Santiago. Historia de mi labor científica. Madrid: Alianza, 1995. ——. Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1995. Río-Hortega, Pío del. “Arte y artificio de la ciencia histológica.” Residencia IV 6 (1933): 191–206. ——. “Don Santiago Ramón y Cajal.” In Ramón y Cajal, homenaje en el décimo aniversario de su muerte, ed. Pío del Río-Hortega and C.Estable. Montevideo: Institución cultural español del Uruguay, 1944. 11–42. Smith, Paul Julian. “Yerma y los médicos: García Lorca, Marañón y el grito de la sangre.” In Federico García Lorca, clásico moderno (1898–1998). Granada: Diputación de Granada, 2000. Solana Madariaga, Javier. Introducción. Alberto Jiménez 1910–1936. Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior DL, 1983. Trillas, Enrique, et al. La Junta de Ampliación de Estudios. Madrid: CSIC, 1987. ——. “Ochenta años de ciencia en España.” Arbor 126 (1987): 9–13. Villacorta Baños, Francisco. El Ateneo científico, literario y artístico de Madrid (1885–1912). Madrid: CSIC, 1985.

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Representations of Humans and Technology: The Construction of Identity in Miguel Bardem, Pedro Almodóvar, and Alejandro Amenábar Juan Carlos Martin

Extensive theoretical, literary, and cinematic work in the last century confirms the interest of scholars, filmmakers, and the general public in the topic of individual and collective identity. But such work has focused much of its attention on issues of sex, gender, ethnicity, and national or global identity, while disregarding the impact of science and technology. Science and technology have played important roles in the construction of identity in Spanish narratives, Cervantes being an early precursor, and even today continues to be central to the work of contemporary writers and filmmakers. Unfortunately, Spanish literary or cinematic criticism1 has paid little attention to this phenomenon. This chapter will attempt, in some small measure, to correct this oversight by delineating the role that science, technology, and technological discourse have played in the construction of human identity in Spanish literature and film, beginning with Nobel Prize winner Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) and concluding with Miguel Bardem’s film, La mujer más fea del mundo (1999) [The Ugliest Woman in the World]. As issues of identity are central to this chapter, we need to begin by analyzing how the complexity of the so-called posthuman condition

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urges critics to reconsider and approach with caution the concept of human subjectivity. For Katherine Hayles,2 “the posthuman evokes the exhilarating prospect of getting out of some of the old boxes and opening up new ways of thinking about what being human means” (285). Hayles gives an example of these new ways of thinking when she states that “the posthuman offers resources for rethinking the articulation of humans with intelligent machines” (287). According to Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston,3 Posthuman bodies are the causes and effects of postmodern relations of power and pleasure, virtuality and reality, sex and its consequences. The posthuman body is a technology, a screen, a projected image; it is a body under the sign of AIDS, a contaminated body, a deadly body, a techno-body. (3)

Posthuman identity forces critics to reconsider the meaning of human subjectivity since the materiality of the posthuman subject results from the combination of an organic body and artificial or prosthetic extensions: “In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals” (Hayles 3). This fusion of human beings and machine gives birth to a new identity, the cyborg, as depicted by Donna Haraway in her seminal work The Cyborg Manifesto. Haraway states that “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (69). Technically speaking there are millions of cyborgs in the world today, living beings that carry prosthetic extensions and, indeed, implants of all sorts. In one of her definitions of the posthuman, however, Hayles states that “central to the construction of the cyborg are informational pathways connecting the organic body to its prosthetic extensions” (2). Not only are there real-life examples of artificial limbs that are governed by implanted mechanisms, but there is also the fact that these same scientific and technological developments have stimulated the emergence of narrative constructions that attempt to bridge the gap between theory and praxis; between dream and realization. Man needs fictions, states J. Hillis Miller, “in order to experiment with possible selves and to learn to take our places in the real world, to play our parts there” (69). Through fictions, we order or reorder the givens of experience. We give experience a form and meaning, a linear order with a shapely beginning, middle, end, and

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central theme [and therefore] the human capacity to tell stories is one way men and women collectively build a significant and orderly world around themselves. With fictions we investigate, perhaps invent, the meaning of human life. (69)

Fictions recreate reality but also fabricate other realities where identity is constantly reinvented, thus leaving a trace of our presence in history. For philosopher Michael Foucault, “Continuous history is the indispensable correlative of the founding function of the subject: the guarantee that everything that has eluded him may be restored to him” (Hutcheon 158). A historical continuum guarantees a continuum of human identity. Todd Feinberg4 concludes that “from the standpoint of neurobiology, it is not clear what the self really is or how the brain creates it” (4). The intricacy of determining scientifically what constitutes human subjectivity—especially when the posthuman subject may confuse rather than clarify the concept of subjectivity—persuades writers and filmmakers to often rely on philosophical approaches to explore the concept of technologically mediated identity in both narrative and film. In this regard, two important approaches are those of the nineteenthcentury philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) and the twentieth-century philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995). Schopenhauer is one of the prominent nineteenth-century thinkers who approach the concept of identity from a physiognomic point of view: “the outer man is a graphic reproduction of the inner and the face the expression and revelation of his whole nature” (634). Moreover, continues Schopenhauer, “we all test the physiognomy of everyone we meet and secretly try to know in advance from his features his moral and intellectual nature” (634). Like Schopenhauer, Levinas theorizes human subjectivity by appealing to exteriority (to the appearance of the self, the face to face, and its gaze). For Levinas “Being is exteriority [because] the true essence of man is presented in his face [. . .] Man as Other comes to us from the outside, a separated—or holy—face” (290–91). In the same vein as Schopenhauer and Levinas, the majority of literary and cinematic works in this chapter use externalist rhetorical and narrative strategies to negotiate individual or collective identities mediated by technology. In other words, when narrative constructions discuss issues of identity meditated by technology, they rely on human physiognomy, especially the face, as the main referent for human subjectivity. To explore how the integration of technology into the body alters or reshapes depictions of human subjectivity in

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Spanish narratives and films, it is mandatory to briefly comment on how the relationship of human beings to machine is first established. For Lewis Mumford,5 “Machines have developed out of a complex of nonorganic agents for converting energy, for performing work, for enlarging the mechanical or sensory capacities of the human body, or for reducing to a measurable order and regularity the processes of life” (10). The relationship between man and machine was strictly determined by the functionality of machines—machines helped humans lessen the toil of their physical endeavors, accelerate the completion of tasks, and guaranteed more spare time to allow the subject to perform other activities. According to Mumford, “In the back of the development of tools and machines lies the attempt to modify the environment in such a way as to fortify and sustain the human organism . . . to manufacture outside of the body a set of conditions more favorable toward maintaining its equilibrium and ensuring its survival” (10). The material functionality of machines alone, however, is not the only stimulant that motivated humans to invent machines. As time passed, the functionality of machines competed with other catalysts for mechanical development. The human subject’s longing for knowledge, for example, increased his desire for developing new machines. At first, machines were conceived of as an extension of a human body, but as the industrial revolution began to take shape and new technologies became available, humans began to mechanize themselves, that is, they began to depend more and more on machines, thus making machines an important component of daily human activity. After a very scientifically and technological productive nineteenth century, some machines that were developed during the twentieth century were purely for their functionality, but at the same time other technologies were developed to be an integral part, physically and psychologically speaking, of the subject and his identity. These developments reshaped the relationship between human beings and machine because the machine, or the technology, ceased to be an extension of the human body and began to coexist in a symbiotic relationship6 with the biological, with the purely human, thus reshaping the concept of identity. Technological and scientific progress, as well as its impact on human activity was an important component in understanding the concept of Modernity, a concept that represents a complex relationship, sometimes harmonic, sometimes dissonant, between literature and technology.7 In the nineteenth century, this relationship focused its attention on technological progress. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers and filmmakers, both supporters and detractors of industrialization,

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illustrated how technological advance reshaped both society and the construction of the individual. In coming to terms with industrialization, Spanish writers from the Generacion del 98, always so preoccupied with the concept of individual and national Spanish identity, confronted industrial progress with both praise and disapproval. For instance, industrialization and scientific progress were for Pío Baroja a way to remedy Spain’s decadence, while for Miguel de Unamuno, industrialization was responsible for the dehumanization and mechanization of the individual, as reflected in his short story “Mecanópolis.” The story depicts the nightmarish vision of a world subjugated by technological progress and a new dominant race, the machines: Pero de pronto me asaltó una idea terrible, y era la de que las máquinas aquellas tuviesen su alma, un alma mecánica, y que eran las máquinas mismas las que me compadecían. Esta idea me hizo temblar. Creí encontrarme ante la raza que ha de dominar la tierra deshumanizada. (373) [But suddenly a terrible idea assaulted my mind, and it was that those machines were endowed with a soul, a mechanical soul, and that machines themselves were the ones that had pity on me. That idea made me tremble. I thought I was face to face with the race that will dominate the dehumanized Earth.] (My translation)

After this dreadful encounter with these new artificial identities, with mechanical souls, Unamuno feels “un verdadero odio a eso que llamamos progreso” (373) [a genuine hatred toward what we call progress]. Unamuno's skepticism and fear of the machine and its potential to displace humans as the dominant form of life coincides with the fear of the posthuman. For Hayles “the prospect of becoming posthuman both evokes terror and excites pleasure . . . [simply because the post] hints that the days of ‘the human’ may be numbered . . .” [as the human being is replaced] “by intelligent machines” (283). Unamuno’s rejection of progress and machines contrasts with the optimism expressed by well-renowned Spanish scientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal a decade ago. Cajal, winner of the Nobel Prize for his scientific work in 1906, used his physiological and histological discoveries to support his narrative fiction. Through his literary works Cajal hoped to convince both the scientific audience and the general public of the potential represented by scientific research for the development of Spain, as well as of the need for government to invest in scientific research, emulating countries such as France and Germany. A dedicated researcher and man of science and, above all, an artist throughout his life, Cajal combines his medical training and his passion for literature in Cuentos de Vacaciones (1905) [Vacation Stories].

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Laura Otis8 explains that Vacation Stories is a collection of short science fiction stories “dealing with scientific ethics, biological warfare, and the social responsibilities of scientists” (vii). In Vacation Stories, Cajal invites the public to see and experience the microscopic world of cells and microorganisms. As Dale Pratt has so eloquently put it, Cajal has the talent of “painting verbal pictures of what he actually sees through his microscope” (118). He delineated complex and accurate drawings of neurons that are used even today in neuroscience textbooks (Otis); but most importantly, Cajal also had the talent of imprinting such pictures in the minds of the common reader. In one of his short stories, “El pesimista corregido” [Corrected Pessimist]—which appeared published, along with Unamuno’s “Mecanopolis,” in a recent anthology of Spanish Science Fiction9 covering the first two decades of the twenty century—Cajal illustrates how technology becomes an important part of scientific development by uncovering through the use of the microscope the mysteries forbidden to the naked eye. In this particular short story the main character, Juan Fernández, a young studious and talented doctor stricken by pessimism and disappointment, receives the visit of the spirit of science, a spirit that endows him with a vision 2,000 times greater than his normal vision. When Juan awakes the following morning, “sus ojos se habían convertido en microscopios. . . . Por consecuencia de tan estupendo perfeccionamiento, percibía nuestro protagonista (situado a la distancia de la visión distinta) las cosas como si estuvieran colocadas en la platina de potente microscopio” (179–80) [His eyes had been turned into microscopes. . . . As a result of this extraordinary perfection, our protagonist perceived things as though they were laid out on the stage of a powerful microscope (as long as they fell within his normal visual range)] (Otis 139–40). The fantastic gift of microscopic vision that Juan receives from the spirit of science transforms his identity from human to machine. Nil Santiáñez-Tió10 points out that “el doctor Fernández [es], en cierto modo el primer mutante de la literatura española: merced a su nueva capacidad visual, Fernández percibe el mundo y sus objetos desde una óptica radicalmente distinta” (31) [Dr. Fernandez is, in a certain sense, the first mutant of Spanish literature: thanks to his new visual capability, Fernandez perceives the world and its objects from a radically different point of view]. This new entity possesses technological precision that only machines are capable of rendering. Almost 60 years later, the idea of having such visual powers still fascinates writers and filmmakers. In 1963, Roger Corman directed the film The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963). In this film, the character

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Dr. Xavier desires, as did Juan Fernandez, to unveil the secrets hidden to the naked eye. Doctor Xavier carries out scientific experiments in an attempt to obtain X-Ray vision. Unlike Juan Fernandez, whose exceptional gift is obtained through fantastic means, Dr. Xavier appeals to science, using a serum to obtain the desired results. In both instances, technologies modify their perception of the reality that surrounds them. But integrating technology into their bodies also makes them vulnerable. The spirit of science warns Juan Fernandez that obtaining microscopic vision is dangerous since he lacks “a brain sufficiently well organized to register and combine these new inputs” (Otis 137). Dr. Xavier is similarly incapable of adjusting to the changes his brain must go through to accommodate his new optical powers that make him a seer. Like Juan Fernandez' gift, the extraordinary gift of Dr. Xavier becomes a nightmare as he is unable to adapt effectively to his new identity. In both cases, integrating technology into their bodies has transformed them into monsters. After a year of misfortunes and terrifying experiences, Juan Fernandez recuperates his normal vision as the spirit of science had foretold him. Dr. Xavier’s fate, however, is more dramatic. Driven almost to insanity because of the side effects of the drug, he ends up pulling his eyes out after listening to a preacher’s admonition. Despite his championing of scientific progress, with El pesimista corregido, Cajal seems to bewail the misuse of science, thus the moralistic ending that accompanies each story. According to Santiáñez-Tió, Cajal, aware of the treatment of scientific development in science fiction publications such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), “manifiesta . . . unos recelos hacia las mutaciones biológicas del ser humano, nada infrecuentes en la ciencia ficción europea del siglo XIX” (32) [manifests skepticism toward human biological mutations, a common trait of nineteenth-century science fiction]. As Cajal’s and Unamuno's short stories illustrate, over the course of the twentieth century, science fiction in Spanish narratives and films became a fertile field to explore concepts of identity mediated by technology. Science fiction narratives and films are usually inhabited by characters that challenge the traditional notion of a fixed identity. Despite the fact that science fiction, as a genre, continues today to be relegated to a secondary position within Spanish literary works, special attention must be paid to the study of identity mediated by technology within this genre. Manuel Pedrolo, a prominent Catalan writer known especially in the 1970s and 1980s for cultivating the genre of the detective novel, also cultivated the genre of science fiction to produce a collection of short stories, Trayecto Final (1984) [Final Distance], where the

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relations between identity and technology are explored in detail. The plot of each individual short story is specifically built around the concept of identity. In “Cadáveres” [Cadavers], Mathieu, a common thief, enters an office during the night with the intention of stealing but, to his surprise, he finds several surgical tools and the corpses of three mutilated women. After escaping this gruesome scene, the protagonist comes back to the office a few days later and finds nothing unusual in the place. While he questions a secretary about the owner of the business, he notices the presence of a woman that he finds very attractive, but he realizes from her clothes and her looks that she is a prostitute. Later on, he has an affair with this same woman. Mathieu notices that she has a firm and flexible body, and a very soft skin without blemishes. One night, the woman, who is named Olga, tells Mathieu that she is going to be retired from service. Mathieu, fearing for her life, breaks into the office at night, only to find Olga’s body completely cut open from her vagina to her breast. Mathieu is surprised when he notices that although Olga is made of flesh and blood her body is also composed of several cables and metallic threads that make her a cyborg. During their relationship, Olga tells Mathieu that she is a woman made to please men: “Pero yo estoy hecha para ir a la cama, no para pasear” (58) [But I am made to make love, not to promenade]. She tells Mathieu that Dr. Landris has made her special but sometimes he needs to make changes in her: “El doctor Landris dice que conmigo se pasó de rosca. Y ahora cuesta ajustarme” (57) [Dr. Landris says that he went overboard with me and now it is hard to adjust me]. Olga provides several clues to her artificiality, but Mathieu is incapable of discerning them until it is too late. He is fooled by her perfect human physiognomy. Olga also acknowledges the perfection of her ideal silhouette and proportionate body: “Soy perfecta, ya lo sé. Se pasó las manos por los pechos, las caderas, a lo largo de los muslos. Perfecta. . . . Todas lo son” (60) [I am perfect, I already know that. She touched her breasts, the hips, along her thighs. Perfect . . . All of them (referring to the other prostitutes) are]. But when Olga and Mathieu discuss abstract issues of love and emotions, Olga’s perfection seems to be more than questionable. Either Dr. Landris failed to provide a coping device to allow her to deal with emotions and feelings, or Olga herself was still in the process of learning as she interacted with human beings. Pedrolo does not provide Olga’s age, or the period of time she has lived among humans. It is inferred from the narrative that Dr. Landris is perfecting his models by gathering information as they establish contact with their sexual partners.

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Olga resembles a more contemporary cinematic character that, like her, is created to provide sexual services to human beings. In AI: Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick depict a dystopia in which MECHA (mechanical beings) are produced to serve a degenerate human society. Gigolo Joe is, as his names implies, a sexual mechanical commodity designed to please women’s desire for sexual experience, that is, a coital experience with technology itself, with a machine. Olga provides a similar service for men, but with a slight, but significant variation: in Joe’s case, technology is introduced into the human body through penetration; in Olga’s case, the organic penetrates the inorganic, that is, the organic invades the inorganic, but it is also through penetration. Olga and Joe are both sex slaves (monetary gain derives from their services), aware of their inorganic nature and knowing that their survival depends upon their performance and the satisfaction that they give without interfering too much in human affairs. Olga jeopardizes her life when she begins to provide clues about her true identity to the main character of the story. Olga also acquires an interest in the life of her partner: “Me contarás cosas. . . . . Y cómo eras tú cuando eras un muchacho, un niño. . . . Sí, eso es, empieza por cuando eras un niño. . . .” (61–62) [You will tell me things. . . . And how were you as a young man, a boy. . . . Yes, that’s right, start when you were a boy. . . .]. Sadly, Olga ceases to exist when she is terminated in the manner other prototypes were before her, thus being deprived of the dream of humanizing herself as she learns the essence of human life. In the case of Joe, a misfortune is responsible for his termination. Joe is accused of the murder of one of his clients. Contrary to the fate of Olga, Joe suffers a more tragic death when he confronts a highly stylized and sadistic futuristic version of the World Wrestling Federation where MECHA are utterly destroyed for real. The introduction of technology into the body through a sexual experience as portrayed in these two science fiction narratives serves as an example of the introduction of technology into the body in a real life event. In November 2004, journalist Kevin Krolicki wrote the following: Picture a chip the size of a grain of rice that can be injected into your body and give detailed information about you to anyone with the right scanning equipment. A scene from a bad science fiction film? A radical research project in some secret government laboratory? The chip is neither fiction nor obscure science, but a soon-to-be-marketed product ready to make its way to customers in the year ahead. (Los Angeles, Reuters)

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This integrated technology, the VeriChip Health Information Microtransponder System for medical applications, created and marketed by Applied Digital—a provider of security products—is implanted under the skin of patients. Through a reading device doctors can quickly retrieve medical information of patients. Among other things, the implanted microchip enables doctors to “find out how and where patients with pacemakers, artificial joints and other surgically implanted devices have been treated” (Krolicki). The FDA granted clearance to market the VeriChip, a technology that will cost approximately $200 each and can be programmed with information such as a person’s name and Social Security number and a list of medications taken by the patient or any medical allergies that the patient suffers from. The storage capacity of the microchip and its easy implantation and reading with the right equipment—basically a device that scans the equivalent of a barcode implanted in the arm—has raised several issues about the use of technology to reshape the concept of identity. Many would agree that quick access to medical information can save lives in critical instances. And many already consider the microchip as some sort of identification device to avoid the trouble of showing an ID card or a passport, or of accessing a bank account. That is, there is no longer any need for an external identification since identity is now placed under the skin. These uses of technology are far from being merely theoretical. In fact, the microchip has already been implanted in staff that has access to a high-security crime database in Mexico. Nevertheless, detractors of this type of technology argue that the potential of the microchip can be misused in the future by the government to invade privacy. As if it were a product of a science fiction narrative, such as the blockbuster Enemy of the State (1998), some already envisage the microchip as a way to monitor, via satellite, the location of an individual. Unlike Enemy, however, in which a device is attached to clothing or shoes to monitor the main character’s movements, the Verychip would be implanted directly into the body. Such visions of a melded microchip into the body are reminiscent of early cyberpunk fiction as portrayed in Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer. Perhaps a more poignant and recent cinematic account that illustrates this idea appears in the blockbuster movie The Bourne Identity (2002), where the central character carries a microchip implanted in his hip, which contains a bank account number in Swtizerland. Ironically, the main character suffers an accident that causes him amnesia, depriving him of his identity. Later on, the microchip provides the character with thousands of dollars along with not just one

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passport stating his alleged identity, but with numerous passports conferring upon him multiple identities. In this manner, technology itself, the microchip, carries the identity of the individual under the skin. Today, the VeriChip is probably one of the latest and most significant examples of the potential that technology has in redesigning the concept of identity. But other integrated technologies preceding the microchip have been around for decades. I refer here, for example, to medical prostheses and implants to improve the individual’s life expectancy. The use of such devices has also become the subject of fiction. I do not speak here of science fiction, but about the representation of an accepted reality where technology and human beings commune with each other daily. One example is the Spanish novelist Juan Marsé’s El amante bilingüe (1990) [The Bilingual Lover], a work translated into several languages and adapted for the big screen by Spanish director Vicente Aranda. El amante bilingüe is a grotesque satire about the social classes and linguistic duality of Catalan society. Marsé narrates the story of Juan Marés—and Faneca (Mares’s alter ego)—a man cheated and abandoned by his sexy, rich, and distinguish wife, Norma, a member of one of Barcelona’s high-society families. Ten years after their separation, Marés, now a drifter in the streets of Barcelona, still unable to forgot Norma, decides to get closer to her in an attempt to recover her love. Ironically, as Marés initiates his adventure to transform himself into a charnego—a pejorative word in Catalonia for immigrants from other regions of Spain—Marés gradually turns into Faneca, a murciano charnego [an immigrant from Murcia] for whom Norma feels an enigmatic attraction. Marés points out that cuando empecé a sospechar que Norma me engañaba, pensé en Eudald Ribas o en cualquier otro señorito guaperas de su selecto círculo de amistades, pero no tardé en descubrir que su debilidad eran los murcianos de piel oscura y sólida dentadura. Charnegos de todas clases. Taxistas, camareros. . . . (11) [when I started to suspect that Norma was cheating on me, I thought of Eudald Ribas or another of those cute young guys from her select circle of friends, but soon I discovered that her weaknesses were darkskinned and solid-toothed men from Murcia. Charnegos of all classes. Taxi drivers, waiters. . . .]

Marsé's detailed description of this Spanish prototype becomes central for the development of the plot. Marés transformation into Faneca becomes a slow journey through questions of personal identity and an obscure side of a split-personality disorder. Each night, for several

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weeks, Marés experiences a dream in which a charnego of green eyes and long sideburns confesses to Marés that he, the charnego, is going to seduce Norma. This charnego, Marés points out, is Marés himself: “Soñé que entraba a mi cuarto y me llamaba por mi nombre. Era yo pero casi no me reconozco. . . . Una pinta de charnego de caerse de espaldas. Pelo negro ensalivado, ojos verdes, patillas” (50) [I dreamt that I entered my room and was calling out my name. It was me but I almost did not recognize myself (. . .) I could not deny my charnegos’ appearance. Dark greasy hair, green eyes, sideburns]. This recurrent dream slowly contributes to Marés psychological transformation into Faneca, although the real physical transformation is only attained when Marés turns to disguises to alter his real identity. Marés wears a black curly wig that he bought to cover the burn injuries his head had suffered as a consequence of a riot in the streets of Barcelona. He adds a black patch to cover his left eye and rehearses a new accent, thus making him sound like a real, illiterate charnego. But what completely transforms his identity is a green eye-lens belonging to a next-door neighbor Griselda. Through this green lens, Faneca ceases to be just a dream and becomes a reality: “Probó a ponerse la lentilla verde en el ojo derecho, con algún esfuerzo, y se miró de nuevo al espejo. . . . Escocía, pero el sereno fulgor verde le maravilló. . . . Podrías taparte el otro ojo con el parche negro y no te reconocería de Dios” (71) [He tried putting on the green lens in his right eye, with some exertion, and again looked at himself in the mirror. . . . It stung, but the green peaceful brightness marveled him. . . . You could cover your other eye with the black patch and even God would not recognize you]. The integration of technology in El amante bilingüe occurs not under the skin, as with the Verichip, but in contact with the eye. The technology is in contact with the body, yet without penetrating it. Faneca checks for any possible flaw in his new identity by visiting his next-door neighbor Griselda. Faneca impersonates a government worker from the Generalitat—the Catalonian autonomous government. This impersonation contributes to reaffirming his new identity. Faneca’s identity is so convincing that he succeeds in persuading Griselda to make love to him. Slowly Faneca makes friends with Norma, once again impersonating an old friend of Juan Marés, a friend that Norma has never met. Subsequent meetings with Norma enable Faneca to fulfill the admonition he made to Juan Marés in his dream, and in the end he seduces Norma. After a very enlightening sexual encounter with Norma, Faneca becomes the dominant personality, but not Juan Marés, who now has turned into Faneca's alter ego: “Faneca le estuvo mirando [a Juan Marés] con la mano apoyada en la pared y lágrimas en los ojos

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hasta que desapareció” (215) [Faneca, with his hand leaning against the wall and tears in his eyes, was looking at Juan Mares until he disappeared]. At the end of the story, we are told that eight months later the police stopped looking for Juan Marés, who has completely vanished. Three years later, Faneca, a popular street performer who responds to the name of The Masked Matador— famous for his accordion and his music selection of well-liked Catalonian songs—is now a popular sight in the plaza Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. In film, identity itself becomes a product of technology. In other words, when exploring identity mediated by technology, one must take into account that such identity is already an a priori technological construction of the apparatus.11 When exploring the semiotics of film some authors suggest that cinematic narratives resemble literary narratives. These critics rely on Saussure's schema of langue and parole to explore the semiotics of film by conceiving film also as a system, containing cinematographic language capable of rendering a visible world through cinematic semantic signs—lighting, montage, camera movements, sound, the relationship between speech and image, and so forth—that Boris Eikhenbaum calls “a particular system of figurative language” (Stam 34). Other critics, such as Christian Metz,12 liken the film shot to a statement (or many sentences). Even though this view has been contradicted by other critics, it is appropriate to consider how cinematic narratives are essentially technological in nature. According to Nicholas Daly, film exists not only in a collision “between bodies and machines, but between bodies and cinema stars, those who have been given a second body, a body filmic, as it were, through the industrial magic of the cinema” (8). Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar is a seminal artist known for his outrageous treatment of national identity in many of his movies. Two films, Kika (1993) and Todo sobre mi madre (1999) [All about my Mother], are particularly interesting in terms of the concept of identity meditated by technology. In his detailed study of Almodóvar's films, Mark Allinson13 observes that “the principal source of humour in Kika is satire of the excesses of media . . . coverage of sensational(ized) events” (134–35). This is true if one observes Kika’s exhaustive rape that is secretly filmed by her voyeuristic husband Ramón in “Lo peor del día” [The Worst of the Day], a television show by Andrea—Ramon's former lover. Moreover, the use of media technology is especially important for the construction of Andrea's identity. Andrea, a former psychologist, becomes a frantic hunter of appalling news for her television show. In an attempt to get the scoop of her career, Andrea turns into a walking camera, always ready to film

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on location. Toward the end of the movie Andrea confronts serial killer Nicholas, Ramón's step father. Andrea is wearing a Jean-Paul Gaultier techno-skin outfit composed of a mobile camera that is attached to her head, while her breasts are formed by two lights that illuminate Nicholas’s face, facilitating recording inside the house. Allinson states that Andrea’s outfit “represents the ultimate in humanturned-machine” (181). The fusion of camera and lights into her body—not under the skin, but, as with the lens, in contact with the body—make Andrea a recording device. In other words, through the integration of technology Andrea turns into a voyeuristic machine, “making concrete the association between the voyeur’s eyes and the camera lens” (Allison 181). The traditional representation of physiognomy as a marker of identity has been challenged by contemporary representations of the inner body as signifier of human identity. Diverging from the formulations of Schopenhauer and Levinas, Bernadette Wegenstein explores how “organs, tissue, cells, and blood—once the denizens of a terra incognita of highly specialized medical knowledge—have in recent times come into circulation as markers of individual and group identity” (221). For Wegenstein, in the twenty-first century the body has turned into an “organ without a body”—or better, into an “organ instead of a body.” In this synechdotal move, the first, and probably most important, body part that had to be overcome was the face. The face, which has always overcoded other body parts, has now ceased to be the most representative signifier of human appearance: “under the skin,” every organ has an (inter)face; potentially, every organ may stand in for the whole body. (222)

So far, the body, and especially the face, has been the main referent to explore the notion of identity within the literary and cinematic narratives discussed in this chapter. But outer appearance, that is, physiognomy, as the main signifier of identity, is replaced, in postmodernity, by inner appearance, as interior organs come to occupy a place of prominence as the new signifiers of human identity. The Oscar-winning All about my Mother takes this latter approach to subjectivity. Manuela, the main character of the film, is a nurse that works coordinating organ donations in the Ramón y Cajal hospital in Madrid. When tragedy strikes and her son is killed in a car accident, Manuela's life changes completely. Faced with the same dilemma as many organ donors, Manuela finally decides to give her son’s heart to a male recipient in the north of Spain. In a few sequential shots, the film portrays

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the critical process of extraction, transportation, and implantation of the healthy heart into the recipient’s body. Three weeks later, a devastated Manuela travels all the way to the north of Spain to discover the identity of the recipient of her son’s heart. When asked by a friend, Manuela confesses that she went to see her son’s heart. For Manuela, the donated organ, the heart, stands for the missing body of her son, since, obviously, the outer appearance of the recipient, his physiognomy, no longer signifies her son’s identity. In All about my Mother technological advances in the medical field that allow the manipulation and implantation of organs are as important as the use of cosmetic surgery and the use of silicone. The latter, silicon, contributes to create one of the most poignant characters of the film. When Manuela goes back to Barcelona to find the father of her son, she encounters an old friend, Agrado, a transsexual halfway through the series of operations necessary to complete a physical transformation. Agrado tells Manuela that she is always concerned with her appearance, and that one must always keep up with the latest advances in surgery and cosmetics in order to look cute. Agrado states “lo único que tengo de verdad son los sentimientos y los litros de silicona que me pesan como quintales” [All I have that’s real are my feelings and the liters of silicone that weigh a ton]. Later on in the film, Agrado becomes the personal assistant to Huma Rojo and Nina Cruz—actresses who in the movie maintain a turbulent relationship between them, and who every night perform the play A Street Car Named Desire. One night, Nina and Huma are indisposed and Agrado takes the stage to communicate to the public the reasons for canceling the show. But instead, Agrado provides a memorable performance that steals the show. She relates to the public the vibrant and hilarious story of her sexual transformation, and her personal relationship with silicone and cosmetic surgery. Agrado provides a detailed list: Tetas, dos, porque no soy ningún monstruo, 70.000 cada una. Silicona en labios, frente, pómulos, cadera y culo. Un litro cuesta unas 100.000, así que echa las cuentas porque yo ya la he perdido. Limado de mandíbula, 75.000. Depilación definitiva laser . . . 60.000 cada sesión. [Tits, two, because I am no monster, 70,000 a piece. Silicone in lips, forehead, cheekbones, hip, and ass. A liter cost about 100,000, so work it out because I have lost count. Jaw reduction, 75,000. Complete laser depilation . . . 60,000 a session.]

Agrado states that on top of being “agradable” [Agrado, or pleasing to others], she is very authentic: “soy muy auténtica. Miren que

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cuerpo. Todo hecho a medida” [I am very authentic. Look at this body, all custom made]. Agrado warns the audience that authenticity does not come easy: “Cuesta mucho ser auténtica, y en estas cosas no hay que ser rácana, porque una es más auténtica cuanto más se parece a lo que ha soñado de sí misma” [It costs a lot to be authentic, and one cannot be stingy when it comes to these things because the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed you can become the more authentic you are]. Price has never been a problem for Agrado. Cosmetic surgery and silicone are her best friends because they have contributed to transforming her into the woman she is now. Clearly, Agrado also appeals to physiognomy when it comes to representing her identity: her body, especially her face and her breasts, completely altered by cosmetic surgery and silicone, function now as signifiers of her true identity.14 The integration of technology into the body to mediate the concept of identity has been important to other Spanish filmmakers as well, including Alex de la Iglesia and Alejandro Amenábar. In Acción Mutante (1933) [Mutant Action], filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia manages to successfully represent the dystopia of a futuristic Spain. Unlike Amodóvar's melodramas, in which the treatment of technology still coincides with a conventional use of it in real life experiences, the use of technology in Acción Mutante, can best be compared to that within the cyberpunk culture.15 Like William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, which thematizes the innovative and complete fusion of human beings and artificial intelligence, Acción Mutante also explores—despite its mocking treatment of the subject matter—the way technology can be employed to alter human identity. Acción Mutante is the name of a terrorist group formed by grotesquely disfigured characters shaped by integrated technology. Ramón, the mastermind behind the terrorist group, angrily asks the members after five years in jail, “¿Qué erais cuándo os encontré?” [What were you when I found you?]. The gang responds, “Éramos basura; desecho de hospital” [We were garbage; hospital waste]. To that Ramón responds by asking, ¿Qué sois ahora? [What are you now?]. In unanimity, they all answer, “Mutantes, mutantes, mutantes” [Mutants, mutants, mutants]. The integration of technology within the bodies of these mutants stands out, especially in the case of Ramon’s face, which is made of flesh and metal implants, but also in that of the body of their spaceship’s engineer, a body that is composed of a limbless human torso attached to an artificial device that allows him to move around the spaceship. They perceive themselves as soldiers of a mutant army fighting against a world dominated

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by beauty, consumerism, and multinationals. El mundo esta dominado por niños bonitos, por hijos de papá. Dios, basta ya de mierdas light, basta ya de colonias, de anuncios de coches, de aguas minerales. No queremos oler bien, no queremos adelgazar. . . . Somos mutantes no pijos de playa, ni maricones diseño. [The world is dominated by cute boys, mama’s boys. God! Enough of those shitty light products, enough of perfumes, car commercials, mineral waters. We don’t want to smell well; we don’t want to loose weight . . . we are mutants; we are not snobs or queer designs.]

Ramón and the rest of the mutants discriminate themselves from the rest of society by rejecting societal standards of beauty and attractiveness, and accepting instead that they are shaped by the technology in their bodies, a technology that has radically altered their physiognomy. Their appearance makes them different and therefore they vindicate their right to reject the status quo of what they see as a degraded and inhuman society. As the movie progresses, however, one realizes that these mutants, while physically different, are as psychologically tainted and perverted as the very individuals they are trying to eliminate. Scientific developments in the fields of cyberspace, evolutionary biology, and cryonics become central themes for exploring how the synthesis of human beings and intelligent machines alters the concept of identity in Alejandro Amenabar’s blockbuster Abre los ojos16 (1997) [Open your Eyes]. The film depicts the story of a disfigured protagonist, César, accused of murdering his girlfriend, and now confined in a mental institution. Antonio, a psychiatrist, struggles to decipher Cesar’s nightmares and suspicions about his real identity. Only at the end of the movie is the public made aware that Cesar has been dead all this time, after committing suicide, and was kept frozen by a company specializing in cryonics. Attached to Cesar’s brain is virtual-reality technology capable of recreating a perfect life. Through this technology, and by receiving revolutionary cosmetic surgery, Cesar recovers his business, the girl he loves, and his physical beauty that he had lost after the accident that left him grotesquely disfigured. Unfortunately, as Cesar experiences this restoration of his physiognomy, nightmares caused by his own brain activity, and flaws in the virtual reality program, make Cesar’s life a real ordeal. At the end of the movie, Cesar discovers that his life is a figment of virtual reality technology covering the last 100 years, while he lay frozen in a laboratory waiting for the time when technological developments would allow the reconstruction of his face. Contrary to what happens with the mutants in Acción,

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in Abre los ojos, technology aims to restore Cesar’s good looks. The fusion of human beings and machines to reshape the concept of identity pushes the envelope in Abre los ojos because it makes come true man’s most cherished dream, that of immortality. In this case the preservation of a life after death is created by Cesar’s own memories and the fictions generated by the virtual reality program. Paradoxically, the very mechanical intelligences dreaded by Unamuno—whose constant preoccupation for immortality made him conceive of autonomous fictional characters such as Augusto Pérez in Niebla (1914)—provide, decades after, an inspiration for the preservation of human life. Literary and cinematic narratives facilitate the integration and diffusion of technological and scientific developments in popular culture. Today, in a world where many discourses are mediated by technology, technology itself becomes a discourse capable of restructuring the notion of identity. I refer specifically to information technologies such as the Internet. In Arturo’s Pérez Reverte’s La piel del tambor (1995) [The Seville Communion], the net is used to construct a hacker’s identity. This hacker succeeds in infiltrating into the pope’s personal computer and leaves a mysterious message about a small church that, according to the hacker, “kills to defend itself.” This hacker—named Vísperas [early hours] by the priest that discovers it— represents a menace to the Vatican, but Father Cooey is helpless to trace it because “Vísperas ha disfrazado su entrada en el sistema saltando por diversas redes telefónicas. . . . [y] Cada vez que hace un bucle a través de una de ellas, hay que rastrearla hasta el conmutador de entrada” [Vísperas has disguised its entrance jumping between multiple telephone nets. . . . (and) Each time it makes a loop in one of them, it has to be traced to the switch where it first originated]. As it is traced through the net, Vísperas’s identity looses its materiality, that is, Vísperas looses its body. The priests cannot trace it by relying on its physiognomy. The moment Vísperas enters the net it becomes a signal, a diffuse technological entity that can travel through the net and be in different places at the same time. If the materiality of the body, its exteriority and interiority, was employed in the literary and cinematic narratives throughout this chapter as the main signifier in determining identity, then in Reverte's narrative the main signifier of identity is technology itself: a technology that has lost its body. As Katherine Hayles states, the disembodiment of information (technology) occurs the moment it is “conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms in which it is thought to be embedded” (2). Moreover, Vísperas’s identity resembles Deleuze17 and Guatari’s notion of rizhomes or lines of deterritorialization where the subject

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escapes control and paranoia. For Deleuze and Guatari, “desire becomes the primary reality of subjectivity and social being signals a shift away from modern theories of representation, totality, and subjectivity” (Best 86). As Vísperas jumps from link to link, it appropriates for itself a schizophrenic identity that cannot be traced, controlled, or fixed. The multiple examples in this chapter demonstrate that literary and cinematic narratives in Spain have explored in detail the concept of identity mediated by technology. The complexity of identity forces many of these narratives to approach the subject by relying on human physiognomy as delineated by philosophers Schopenhauer and Levinas. In this approach, the face and the body become the main signifiers of identity. As the posthuman emerges, however, other signifiers of identity—such as internal organs or body parts, or even technology itself as depicted in La piel del tambor—replace physiognomy as the main signifier for human subjectivity. More recently, new scientific and technological discoveries such as the Visible Human Project or the Human Genome Project18 have contributed to the appearance of new signifiers of identity at a genetic level. Genes have replaced faces and organs. DNA matches are now used to identify suspects and to determine paternity. Art has kept pace with these new developments, and so genetic alteration and human cloning now provide fertile scientific and technological ground for literary and cinematic narratives. In the film La mujer más fea del mundo (1999) [The Ugliest Woman in the World], which takes place in Madrid in the year 2011, identity is constructed by meddling with genes. In this film, the groundbreaking genetic technology of doctor Wermer transforms Lola Otero, the ugliest woman in the world, a monster, into the most beautiful creature on earth. Ironically, the manipulation of genes, as signifiers of identity in the new millennium, functions in this film to transform Lola’s physiognomy, namely from that of the ugliest to that of the most beautiful woman in the world. This perhaps confirms the fact that, after all is said and done, our human identity is still ultimately signified and determined not by interiority, but by our appearance, despite the fact that new technological and scientific discoveries continue to generate new discourses that challenge the notion of human subjectivity. This turn to the innate, the instinctive, begs the question of the relation between the postmodern turn to constructed knowledge (identity in our cases here) and a genetic predisposition that will not be altered by technological constructions.

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Notes 1. The study of identity in Spanish critical or theoretical works has not addressed technological mediated identity. For instance, Jo Labanyi’s Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain is a collection of essays that study specific areas of Spanish culture in regards to the formation of identity or identities focusing in issues of Ethnicity and Migration, or Gender. In the same manner, Marsha Kinder’s Blood Cinema examines popular cinema and television using theoretical approaches from feminism, psychoanalysis and cultural studies. 2. Katherine Hayles negotiates the posthuman condition using three interrelated stories: “how information lost its body; how the cyborg was created as a technological artifact and cultural icon . . . and how a historically specific construction called the human is giving away to a different construction called the posthuman” (2). 3. Confirming Ihab Hassan’s premonition about posthumanism Judith Halbarstam and Ira Livingston argue that “a posthuman condition is upon us.” Their book is an invitation “to engage discursive and bodily configurations that displace the human, humanism, and the humanities” (vii). 4. Drawing on his own personal experience, neurologist Todd Feinberg explores the way the brain creates the self. The author provides multiple clinical studies of patients that have suffered various neurological damages that disturb their ego structures by transforming the boundaries of the self. 5. Thirty years after Technics and Civilization Mumford published The Myth of the Machine: Techniques and Human Development, in which the author analyzes in detail the double functionality—the constructive and destructive aspects—of machines: “From the beginning the human machine presented two aspects: one negative, coercive, and too often destructive; the other positive, life-promoting, constructive” (191). 6. In Treatise of Man, Decartes insisted that “man is a machine, and can only be understood as such. . . . [H]is Treatise of Man, which was published after his death, is founded on a comparison between a human being and a hypothetical ‘statue or machine’, which operates like a clock or a hydraulic fountain” (Wood 6). 7. In his study on the impact of the industrial revolution in Spain from 1900–1933, Juan Cano Ballesta explores how Baudelaire faces the challenge of writing poetry in a world dominated by industrialization. 8. The English version of Cajal's Cuentos de vacaciones comes from Laura Otis' Vacation Stories (2001). 9. In the new millennium there seems to be a renewed interest in the Science Fiction genre in Spain. See publications such as La ciencia ficción española (Fernando Martínez de la Hidalga, et al. Madrid: Ediciones Robel, 2002), or Ciencia ficción en español: una mitología moderna ante el cambio. (Yolanda Molina-Gavilán. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).

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10. Like the above mentioned works on Spanish Science Fiction, Nil Santiáñez-Tió's anthology is a collection of Science Fiction short stories from 1832–1913, featuring, among others, well-renowned writers from Generación del 98 such as Azorín and Unamuno. 11. For Jean-Louis Baudry, The cinema effect (an impression of reality) created by the apparatus—an entire process that involves “film technique, different connections, from the recording images to their reproduction”—causes “[an artificial] process of identification. . . . A return to a primitive narcissism by the regression of the libido (773) . . . [an] archaic satisfaction, returning the spectator to a time when separation between the subject’s body and the world was illdefined” (Lapsey 81). 12. Central to this idea is Metz' study of cinematographic syntax (grande syntagmatique). This conception of syntagmatic structure has been contested for different reasons, most importantly on the basis of the accuracy of equating the concepts of linguistics, developed by Saussure, to the semiotics of the cinema. 13. In his work A Spanish Labyrinth,Mark Allinson provides a very convincing and comprehensive introduction to the films of Pedro Almodóvar. The author explores issues that range from National Identity to Gender and Sexuality. 14. In All about my Mother, and other examples that I have used in this essay, there are instances where the construction of identity can be studied appealing to feminist, gender, or queer theory; however, such implications are not the focus of my analysis. 15. Cyberpunk refers to science fiction dealing with future urban societies dominated by computer technology, but also, it refers to an opportunistic computer hacker, like Vísperas in La piel del tambor. 16. Vanilla Sky (2002), starring Tom Cruise and Penélope Cruz, became Hollywood's remake of Amenábar's Abre los ojos. 17. See Deleuze and Guattari’s “A Thousand Plateaus” in Rivkin 514–23. 18. For the Human Genome project see http://www.ornl.gov/sci/ techresources/Human_Genome/home.shtml. Also for the http:// www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/animations.html in the National Library of Medicine.

Works Cited Abre los ojos. Dir. Alejandro Amenábar. Prod. José Luis Cuerda. Int. Penélope Cruz, Eduardo Noriega, Chete Lera. Sogepaq, 1997. Acción mutante. Dir. Álex de la Iglesia. Prod. Pedro Almodóvar. Int. Antonio Resines, Álex Angulo, Frédérique Feder. El Deseo, SA, 1993. AI. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Prod. Kathleen Kennedy. Int. Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law. Warner Bros. Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures, 2001. Allinson, Mark. A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001.

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Benítez, Ruben. “La novela científica en España: Ramón y Cajal y el Conde de Gimeno.” Revista de estudios hispánicos 6 (1979): 25–39. Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner, eds. Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: Guilford, 1991. The Bourne Identity. Dir. Doug Liman. Prod. Doug Liman. Int. Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper. Universal Pictures, 2002. Braudy, Leo, and M. Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987. Cano Ballesta, Juan. Literatura y tecnología: las letras españolas ante la revolución industrial, 1900–1933. Madrid: Editorial Orígenes, 1981. Daly, Nicholas. Literarature, Technology, and Modernity, 1860–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Davis-Floyd, Robbie, and Joseph Dumit, eds. Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots. New York: Routledge, 1998. Enemy of the State. Dir. Tony Scott. Prod. Jerry Bruckheimer. Int. Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight. Buena Vista, 1998. Feinberg, Todd E. Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Halberstam, Judith, and Ira Livingston, eds. Posthuman Bodies. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Posthumanism, ed. Neil Badmington. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 69–84. Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Hoeg, Jerry. Science, Technology, and Latin American Narrative in the Twentieth Century and Beyond. London: Associated University Press, 2000. Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. Kika. Dir Pedro Almodóvar. Prod. Agustín Almodóvar. Int. Verónica Forqué, Peter Coyote, Alex Casanovas, Victoria Abril. October Films, 1993. Krolicki, Kevin. “Microchips Under the Skin Offer ID, Raise Questions.” Available online at http: //www.mindcontrolforums.com/news/digitalangel-awarded-uspatent-raise questions.htm. Last accessed on September 31, 2005. Labanyi, Jo, ed. Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. La mujer más fea del mundo. Dir Miguel Bardem, Prod Francisco Ramos. Int. David Pinilla, Elia Galero, Hector Alterio. Nucleus Films Ltd., 1999. Lapsey, Robert and Michael Westlake. Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.

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Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Lyotard, Jean-François. “Can Thought Go On Without a Body.” In Posthumanism, ed. Neil Badmington. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 129–140. The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Dir. Roger Corman. Prod. Roger Corman. Int. Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold Stone. MGA/UA (1963). Marsé, Juan. El amante bilingüe. Barcelona: Planeta, 1991. Miller, Hillis, J. “Narrative.” In Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 66–79. Morris, Barbara. “Almodóvar’s Laws of Subjectivity and Desire.” In PostFranco, Postmodern: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, ed. Kathleen M. Vernon and Barbara Morris. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995. Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966. ——. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934. Pedrolo, Manuel. Trayecto Final. Barcelona: Hogar del libro, 1884. Pérez Reverte, Arturo. La piel del tambor. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1995. Pratt, Dale. Signs of Science: Literature, Science, and Spanish Modernity since 1868. Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2001. Ramón y Cajal, Santiago. Vacation Stories: Five Science Fiction Tales. Trans. Laura Otis. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. ——. Cuentos de vacaciones: narraciones seudocientíficas. Madrid: Libros Clan, 1995. Santiáñez-Tío, Nil, ed. De la luna a la mecanópolis: Antología de la ciencia ficción española. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1995. Schopenhauer, A. Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. Stam, Robert, et al. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, PostStructuralism, and Beyond. London: Routledge, 1992. Todo sobre mi madre. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Prod. Agustín Almodóvar. Int. Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz. El Deseo SA, 1999. Unamuno, Miguel. “Mecanópolis”de la luna a Mecanópolis: Antología de la ciencia ficción española, 1832–1913, ed. Nil Santiañez-Tió. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1995. 171–75. ——. Niebla. Tarragona: Tárraco, 1986. Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Getting Under the Skin, or How Faces Have Become Obsolete.” Configurations 10 (2003): 221–59. Wood, Gaby. Living Dolls: The Quest for Mechanical Life. London: Faber and Faber, 2002.

Index

“A agonia de um filósofo” (dos Anjos), 20–21 Abre los ojos, 237–38 Acción Mutante, 236 Achúcarro, Nicolás, 194, 197, 203 Agiropolis (Sarmiento), 31 AI: Artificial Intelligence, 229 Alas, Leopoldo, 129, 130, 133, 137, 141–42, 146–47, 149 Alberca Lorente, R., 206, 214, 216 Allinson, Mark, 233–34, 241 Almodóvar, Pedro, 221, 233, 241–43 Amenábar, Alejandro, 221, 236–37, 241 Amerika, Mark, 94 Amphitryon (Suárez), 110, 111 Aranda, Vicente, 231 Argentina fantastic literature of, 29–30 Holmberg and, 31–34 Lugones and, 34–36 in Piglia’s writing, 87–89, 92–93, 97, 99–101, 103–5 sociopolitical changes affecting, 30–32 technology and influence on literature, 37–38, 40, 42, 44, 46–47 Argentine Academy of Science and Literature, 30, 31 Aridjis, Homero, 75, 79 Artistas e intelectuales (Fuentes), 75–76 Avelar, Idelber, 105 Azorín, 195, 199–201, 241

Baird, John, 37 Bardem, Miguel, 221, 242 Baretto, Tobias, 11–12, 18 Baroja, Pío, 175–90 Baroja, Pío Caro, 178, 185 Beard, George M., 154 Benavente, Jacinto, 201 Bendita sea la luz (Villasante), 193–94 Blade Runner, 236 Bohr, Niels, 8–9, 52, 55, 57–58, 63, 66–67, 68, 110, 118, 122–23 Borges, Jorge Luis, 49–69 complementarity and, 58–59, 65–67 contemporaries, 38, 40 influence of science on, 29 narrative style, 60–61 quantum theory and, 54–58, 63–64 Born, Max, 52, 56, 66–67, 118 Bourne Identity, The, 230–31 Bratosevich, Nicolás, 93 Braun, Ferdinand, 37 Bridgman, Percy, 55, 57 Broca, Paul, 34, 183 Brown, Robert, 114 Cabrera Infante, Guillermo, 113 Camino de perfección (Baroja), 178–83 capitalism Fuentes on, 79 patriarchal, 90–91 urbanization and, 130, 132–34, 136

INDEX

Capra, Fritjof, 4 Cardwell, Richard, 196–97 cartography, and world view, 6–7 Casado, Santos, 205 Casares, Adolfo Bioy, 29, 38, 39, 40, 42 Casteñeda, Ricardo Chávez, 110 Castro, Américo, 162, 194 Castro, Carlos María de, 134 Castro, Fernando, 207 Caudet, Francisco, 159 Cervantes, 50, 59, 165, 221 Charcot, Jean-Martin, 161, 183 Chrétien de Troyes, 124 Chomsky, Noam, 7 Comaroff, Jean, 129, 130 Comtean Positivism, 12, 17, 30 Con la muerte en los puños (Palou), 112 Conselheiro, Antonio, 14, 15, 17 conversos, 156–60, 162 Coparticipatory Universe, 52 Corbin, Alain, 131 Corman, Roger, 226 Cortázar, Julio, 29 crack, the, 110–12, 118 Cristóbal Nonato (Fuentes), 75, 78 Crookes, William, 37 Curia, Beatriz, 40, 42 Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway), 89–90, 222 cyborg myth, 88, 93 cyborgs Haraway on, 222 Hayles on, 240 in Piglia’s work, 87–97, 99–105 posthuman identity and, 88–91 in Trayecto Final, 228 da Cunha, Euclides, 12–17, 25 influence of Canudos on, 14–17 Dabove, Santiago, 29, 43–46 Dalí, Salvador, 205, 208–10, 213, 215 Daly, Nicholas, 233 Darwinism, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 153, 176, 183, 189

245

de Broglie, Louis, 52, 57, 62, 64 De la Iglesia, Alex, 236–37 De Ros, Xon, 209 de Santana, José, 16, 25 Deitering, Cynthia, 81 del Río, Angel, 201 del Río-Hortega, Pío, 195, 196, 201, 204, 206–8, 210–14 Del Río-Hortega Bereciartu, Juan, 206 Derby, Orville, 16 Derrida, Jacques, 52 Dickens, Charles, 155 Diorama (Herrasti), 110 Dirty War, 103 disease bacteriology and, 142–43 cholera, 131, 134, 139–40, 142 epidemics, 129, 131–32, 134, 139 hygienist movement and, 130–32, 134, 137, 139–41 in La desheredada, 133–37 in La Regenta, 137–41 in Los pazos de Ulloa, 133, 141–45 Pasteur and, 131, 141–42, 203 syphilis, 132, 141, 151 urbanization and, 130–31, 134–35, 137–40, 142, 144–46 dos Anjos, Augusto, 12–14, 18–21, 22, 25, 26 Dos partidos en lucha (Holmberg), 31 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 37 Durand, Frank, 137 dystopia, 29, 76, 79, 83, 85, 229, 236 Eddington, Arthur, 59, 61, 65, 67 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 233 Einstein, Albert, 35, 38–39, 42, 53–54, 62, 65, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 126, 205, 209, 213 El amante bilingüe (Marsé), 231–32

246

INDEX

El árbol de la ciencia (Baroja), 176, 178–79, 185–90 El Inglés de los Güesos (Lynch), 34 El pesimista corregido (Unamuno), 209, 226–27 “El recuerdo” (Dabove), 45–46 “El Vampiro” (Quiroga), 37 Enemy of the State, 230 Entralgo, Laín, 197 Epimenides, 119–20 Eu (dos Anjos), 21 Everett, Hugh, 7, 52 Feinberg, Todd, 223, 240 feminism, 75, 83, 88, 91, 240 Fernández, Macedonio, 29, 38–39, 43, 88, 89 Fernández, Melchor Almagro, 209 field theory, 53 “Filigranas de cera” (Holmberg), 32–33 “Finis” (Dabove), 43–45 Finnegan’s Wake (Joyce), 4, 95 Flaubert, 161 Flores Arroyuelo, Francisco, 177, 182 Fortunata y Jacinta (Pérez Galdós) epilepsy in, 163–64, 167, 171 Judaism in, 157–58, 159 meat in, 153–54, 156–57 medical details in, 151–53 , 161 naturalism in, 165 Foucault, Michael, 52, 223 Francis Percy Bacon (In Search of Klingsor), 109–10, 114, 118, 120–21, 123, 125 Freud, Sigmund, 52, 161 Freyre, Gilberto, 11 Fuentes, Carlos industrialization and, 79–83 nature in the works of, 75–76 water imagery and, 76–77 women in the works of, 78 Fuentes Peris, Teresa, 131 game theory, 118 Gasch, Sebastià, 210, 212, 214

General Theory, 53, 176 Generacion del 98, 225 Generation of the 80s, 31 German School of Recife, 11–12, 25 Gibson, William, 230, 236 Gloriosa, 132, 135, 137 Gödel, Kurt, 52, 113, 114, 119–21 Goldmann, Lucian, 182 Guillén, Jorge, 195–96 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 6–7 Haeckel, Ernst, 13, 25, 26 influence on dos Anjos, 18–21 Halberstam, Judith, 91, 222, 240 Haraway, Donna, 88, 89–92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104, 222 Hardt, Michael, 90, 93 Harpas sevagens (Sousândrade), 22–23 Harris, Ruth, 142 Hauser, Philiph, 132, 139 Hayles, N. Katherine, 90, 91, 96, 99, 104, 222, 225, 238, 240 Heisenberg, Werner, 52, 53, 54–55, 56, 64–66, 110, 114, 118, 120, 122–25 Herrasti, Vicente, 110 Hilbert, David, 119 Historia de la Literatura Argentina (Rojas), 31 Hitler, Adolf, 109–10, 114–15, 120, 122, 124 Holmberg, Eduardo Ladislao, 30, 31–35 Horacio Kalibang o Los autómatas (Holmberg), 33 Human Genome Project, 239, 241 Humboldt, Alexander von, 13, 15, 21, 23–24, 26 hygienist movement, 130–32, 134, 137, 139–41 identity disease and, 137 gender and, 204

INDEX

identity––continued in In Search of Klingor, 110, 112–13, 115–17, 120–21, 124–27 Mexican, 76 in Piglia’s work, 88–91, 93, 96–100, 102–5 posthumanism and, 88–91, 104–5, 221–23, 239 technology and, 221–41 Iglesias, Carmen, 175, 177 In Search of Klingmar (Volpi), 109–27 identity in, 110, 112–13, 115–17, 120–21, 124–27 structure of, 113–14 industrialization, 46, 81, 124, 130, 133–34, 224–25, 240 Jagoe, Eva-Lynn, 87–88, 91, 97, 105 Jeans, James, 59–61 Jiménez, Juan Ramón, 193, 194, 196–97, 199 Jordan, Pascual, 62 Joyce, James, 4, 88, 95 Juarros, César, 202 Júnior, Martins, 11 Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios (JAE), 203–4, 206 Kamen, Henry, 159 Kant, Immanuel, 24, 187, 189–90 Kellogg, John Harvey, 155 Kika, 233 Krolicki, Kevin, 229 Kubrick, Stanley, 229 La ciudad ausente (Piglia), 87–88, 91, 93, 96–97, 102–5 La desheredada (Galdós), 133–34, 136 La frontera de cristal (Fuentes), 78–80, 82 La Invención de Morel (Casares), 29, 38 La lucha por la vida (Baroja), 176–77

247

La muerte de Artemio Cruz (Fuentes), 76–77 La muerte y su traje (Dabove), 43 La mujer más fea del mundo, 221, 239 La pipa de Hoffman (Holmberg), 32 La region más transparente (Fuentes), 76 “La Trama Celeste” (Casares), 39–41, 43 Landow, George, 95 “Las dos Américas” (Fuentes), 77–78 Las fuerzas extrañas (Lugones), 35 Levinas, Emmanuel, 223, 234, 239 Levinson, Brett, 103, 105, 106 Lewy Rodríguez, Enriqueta, 198–99 Liberation Theology, 6, 7 Lima, Luiz Costa, 12, 17 Links, Gustav, 110, 114, 116, 118, 120, 124–25, 127 Livingston, Ira, 91, 222, 240 Lobo, Luiza, 22, 24, 26 Lombroso, Cesare, 164, 183 López Piñero, José María, 207 Lorca, Federico García, 194–96, 201, 205, 208–10, 212–15 Los años con Laura Diaz (Fuentes), 78–82 Los pazos de Ulloa (Pardo Bazán), 133, 141–42, 144–45 Losada Villasante, Manuel, 193, 194, 217 Lugones, Leopoldo, 29, 34–36, 38, 100–1 Lynch, Benito, 34 Mach, Ernst, 59 machines in Abre los ojos, 237–38 cyborgs, 87–97, 100, 102, 104–5 film and, 234 mind vs., 60–62 relationship with humans, 222, 224–26, 233, 240 sexuality and, 229 Madoz, Pascual, 130

248

INDEX

Madrid Baroja and, 183, 186, 190 disease and urbanization, 130, 132–37, 139, 146 in Fortunata y Jacinta, 162 in La lucha por la vida, 176 in La mujer más fea del mundo, 239 Moreno Villa and, 194–95 Ramón y Cajal and, 197–98 Man with the X-Ray Eyes, The, 226–27 many-worlds interpretation, 52, 66 Maroñón, Gregorio, 199, 201, 204, 209 Marsé, Juan, 231 Martí, José, 2–3, 5–6, 22, 24, 25 Marún, Gioconda, 33 Más Allá (Quiroga), 37 Masiello, Francine, 87–88, 96 Maudsley, Henry, 151 McOndo movement, 111 mechanism, 53–54, 60 Mendel, Gregor, 35 Méndez Alvaro, Francisco, 132, 134 Metz, Christian, 233, 241 Meyer, Francois, 180 mexicanidad, 110, 113, 120–21, 124, 125 Michell, John, 39 Miller, J. Hillis, 222–23 modernity technology and, 224 Volpi and, 126 “Monólogo de uma sombra” (dos Anjos), 19–20 Mora, Álvarez, 130 Morel, B.A., 182, 183 Moreno Villa, José María, 194–96, 217 Mumford, Lewis, 224, 240 Museo (Borges and Casares), 40 Nalimov, V.V., 4 naturalism, 146, 165 Holmberg and, 31–32 in Fortunata y Jacinta, 153, 157

in La Regenta, 138 in Los pazos de Ulloa, 141 Nazarín (Pérez Galdós), 159 Negri, Antonio, 90, 93 Neruda, Pablo, 25 Neto, Santos, 18 Neuromancer (Gibson), 230, 236 Newton, Isaac, 51, 55–56, 68, 123, 209, 213, 219 Niebla, 238 nominalism, 59, 65 Nordau, Max, 182, 183 Nowinski, Czeslaw, 189 O Guesa Errante (Sousândrade), 21–25, 26 Ochoa, Severo, 193, 194, 208 Olimpio Pitango de Monalia (Holmberg), 31–32, 33 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 66 Ortega, Julio, 76 Ortega y Gasset, José, 2, 194, 197, 205, 208, 209 Os sertões (da Cunha), 12, 14–17 Otis, Laura, 226 Pagels, Heinz, 3 Palou, Pedro Ángel, 110, 112 Pardo Bazán, Emilio, 130, 133, 141–42 Pash, Boris T., 123 Pasteur, Louis, 131, 141–42, 203 Patt, Beatrice, 178 Pauli, Wolfgang, 62 Pedrolo, Manuel, 227, 228 Pérez Galdós, Benito, 130, 133–37, 141–42, 151–53, 155, 157–64, 165, 167, 169 Pérez Reverte, Arturo, 238 Perri, Dennis, 209, 213 Peter, Arno, 6–7 physics classical, 6, 57 divisions in study of, 117–18 evolution of, 2–4, 8–9, 66–67, 203–4, 213–14

INDEX

Heisenberg and, 122 in In Search of Klingsor, 110, 113–14 mechanism and, 53 metaphysics, 61–62 quantum, 7, 42, 54–55, 57, 59 Schrödinger and, 115 picaros, 156 Piaget, Jean, 176, 178, 188 Piglia, Ricardo, 87–105 Planck, Max, 52, 54 Plata quemada (Piglia), 87 Poe, Edgar Allan, 36–37 Polanyi, Michael, 58 pollution, danger of, 75, 78, 80–81 Poniatowska, Elena, 112 Porush, David, 96 posthumanism fear of, 225 Hayles on, 240 identity and, 88–91, 104–5, 221–23, 239 trauma and, 99, 102 predictability, 55 Principle of Complementarity (Bohrs), 7, 8, 55, 66, 68 examples of, 57–59 Principle of Uncertainty (Heisenberg), 54–55, 56, 110, 122, 123, 125 “Psicologia de um vencido” (dos Anjos), 18–19 quantum theory, 52, 58, 60, 61, 63–67, 122 quantum world, 54, 59, 66 Quiroga, Horacio, 36–38, 47 Ramón y Cajal, Santiago, 194, 196–204, 207–14, 221, 225–27, 234 realism, 165, 177, 179, 184 Borges and, 65 magical, 111–12

249

Reglas y consejos (Ramón y Cajal), 198, 199, 201 relativism, 179 Relativity, 7, 40, 53, 60, 65–66, 113, 126, 209, 213–14 religion, 5, 15, 62, 70, 119, 126, 182, 185, 190 Residencia de Estudiantes, 193–96, 198, 203–8, 210 Respiración artificial (Piglia), 87, 88, 97, 103–4 Revista de Occidente (Ortega y Gasset), 205 Ribbans, Geoffrey, 151, 152 Rojas, Ricardo, 31 Romero, Silvio, 12 Rosenblueth, Arturo, 8 Russell, Bertrand, 50, 119 Sampaio, Teodoro, 16, 25 Santiáñez-Tió, Nil, 226–27, 241 Sarmiento, Domingo F., 31, 33 Schrödinger, Erwin, 52, 62, 64, 65, 110, 114–16, 122 Schwarz, Roberto, 13 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 51, 53, 185, 187–88, 223, 234, 239 science fiction Argentinian writers and, 29, 32, 34, 39–40, 47 identity and, 227–28 Piglia and, 87–88, 90 sexuality and, 229 Spanish, 240, 241 technology and, 230–31 Sciencepoetry, 1–5, 7–9 elements of, 3–4 “Scientific Education” (Martí), 3 set theory, 121 Shelley, Mary, 36, 106, 227 Shoemaker, William H., 152 Simarro, Luis, 202, 203 Smith, Paul Julian, 209 Solana Madariaga, Javier, 203–4 Sontag, Susan, 162

250

INDEX

Sousândrade, Joaquim de, 12, 21–25 Spain disease and, 129–32, 135, 138–39, 141, 145–46 Edad de Plata, 193–94, 196–98, 201–4, 217 Inquisition, 158–59 Interregnum, 134, 135 national identity, 225 Restoration, 130, 133–34, 137–39 science and, 176, 178 Spencer, Herbert, 30, 154 Spielberg, Steven, 229 Suárez, Ignacio Padilla, 110–11 Sullivan, J.W.N., 53, 54 surrealism, 204, 210 syphilis, 132, 141, 151 Talbot, Michael, 4 Talbot, William Fox, 37 Templin, E.H., 178–79, 181, 185, 186 Tiempo mexicano (Fuentes), 79–80 Todo sobre mi madre, 233–36 Tolosa Latour, Manuel, 151 Torquemada, Tomás de, 158 Trayecto Final (Pedrolo), 227–28 Trillas, Enrique, 204 Uexküll, Jacob Von, 209 “Un fenómeno inexplicable” (Lugones), 35–36 Una familia lejana (Fuentes), 77 Unamuno, Miguel de, 2, 197, 199, 225–26, 227, 238, 241 urbanization disease and, 130–31, 134–35, 137–40, 142, 144–46

in Latin American literature, 79–82 Urroz, Eloy, 110 Vacation Stories (Ramón y Cajal), 198, 225–26 Valiente (Fuentes), 79 Valis, Noel, 132 VeriChip, 230–32 Viaje maravilloso del señor Nic-Nac (Holmberg), 32 Vida en claro (Moreno Villa), 194, 196 Volpi, Jorge the crack and, 110–12, 117 Heisenberg’s influence on, 122–24, 125–26 identity and, 109–10, 113–14, 120–21 influences, 112–13, 126–27 subjectivity and, 115–16 See also In Search of Klingmar Von Neumann, John, 113, 118 Wegenstein, Bernadette, 234 Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von, 62, 123 Wells, H.G., 40 Weyl, Hermann, 64–65 Wheeler, John Archibald, 7, 52, 64, 67 White, Hayden, 114 Whitehead, Alfred North, 54, 119 Whitman, Walt, 22, 24–25 Wigner, Eugene, 62 World War II, 42, 109, 114, 117, 122, 124 Writing Machines (Hayles), 96