Resumen sobre la novela Sin Rumbo, Apuntes de Literatura

¡Descarga Resumen sobre la novela Sin Rumbo y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura solo en Docsity! Misreadings of Arthur Schopenhauer in Sin rumbo by Eugenio Cambaceres1 The novel Sin rumbo (1885), by the Argentinean Eugenio Cambaceres, has been seen almost unequivocally as the clearest example of Spanish American Naturalism, especially -- it has been said -- because of its direct adherence to Emile Zola’s prescription for what he called the Experimental Novel. Such a direct association with biological determinism and environmental influences, has led critics to say that Cambaceres’s novel, expressing unmediated ideas of its author, is a documentary narrative of the conflictive social conditions of the Argentina of his times, especially those of a ruling class2. A prime example of this would be the novel’s protagonist, Andrés, whose anguished life is seen as an example of the decadent existence led by a rich and powerful oligarchy. One important critic states that the novel’s hypothesis, which is confirmed at the end with the protagonist's suicide, shows how a “biologically strong human being, affected physically and morally by a dissolute life [is . . .] unavoidably condemned to failure”3. Such interpretations might indeed foreground a not so erroneous sociological understanding of Argentinean society, but what caught my eye in this novel follows a very different path. As I hope to show, an important yet misunderstood component in the novel Sin rumbo, bears heavily on some ideas put forth by Germany’s 19th century philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, whose name is mentioned several times as being a favorite author of the novel’s protagonist. The work, however, is not clear-cut in this respect and, I believe, plays with its readers by testing them on their knowledge of the German philosopher’s ideas. Let us, then, move forward and see if I can be convincing with respect to my particular reading of this novel. We should begin with a brief reference to a contradiction that has polarized literary critics. Because of the novel’s references to Schopenhauer, some have concluded that it ultimately proposes a nihilistic view of life, as expressed by its narrator and its protagonist’s behavior4. Others, however, state the opposite, that the novel denounces a pessimistic view of existence, and that its aim is to force Buenos Aires's aristocracy to take a close look at itself and learn from its mistakes5. Such contradictory positions seem to result from an attempt at identifying what traditionally has been called the “author's intent”. For years now, Narratology, in order to discern what may be called the “ideology” of a novel, has taught us to separate the words or ideas expressed by a character from those of its narrator. As we shall see, it is precisely through a complex and interesting discursive dialogue between character, narrator, and reader that one can find a key to unlock a better understanding of this novel. Gerard Genette has shown that studies on the so called “point of view” have confused two issues which, although closely related, are quite different. Briefly, these are “who sees” versus “who speaks” in a novel. Both may stem from the same narrative agent or person, but one must also recognize that someone can narrate what someone else sees or perceives. Speaking and seeing may come from the same agent, but they can also come from different ones. If one loses track of this difference it is possible to fall into an erroneous reading of the ideological sense of a novel. The one speaking, the agent to whom the words being narrated belong, is the narrator, and the one who 1 All quotes from the novel, whose title may be translated as Aimless, are my translations from the Spanish, as well as much of the critical commentaries, sometimes paraphrased. My translated texts -- other than the novel’s -- will always be identified as such. 2 “Cambaceres’s main preoccupation is that of the spiritual abandonment of a whole generation lacking in goals, without superior principles, nor true objectives in their lives”. Juan Epple, “Eugenio Cambaceres y el naturalismo en la Argentina”, Ideologies and Literature, 3, 1980, pp. 40, 43 (my translation). 3 Epple, “Eugenio Cambaceres”, pp. 40, 43 (my translation). And elsewhere, Epple explains: “Sin rumbo is the story of a man who, having sufficient biological strength [. . .] inteligence and material riches to triumph in society, irremediably fails, ending his life with suicide at the same time that his ‘hacienda’, his family’s patrimony is being destroyed by fire. Since this story is presented as a ‘study’, the narrator’s purpose will be to explain the reasons behind such a failure [. . .] the narrator begins the novel with a detailed description of space and the character’s disposition; he then follows the latter’s oscillating process of disillusionment, seeing him under the incitements of the city and the country, carrying the dark syndromes of a deragend psyche, to finally offer, at the end, the horrible spectacle of self-destruction”. Epple, “Eugenio Cambaceres”, p. 91 (my translation). 4 Anthony Castagnaro, for example, in reference to Andrés’s characterization states: “the stark verisimilitude of this characterization undoubtedly stems, in part, from Cambaceres’s abandonment of his former, formally separate role as narrator and from the simultaneous incorporation of the deeper layers of his own subconscious in the psychological evolution of Andrés, who indeed is, in many respects, Cambaceres himself. His previously mellowed biliousness is here developed and deepened into a masochistically agonizing despair of such proportions as to bring Cambaceres close -- closer than any other Spanish American novelist of the 19th century -- to the spiritual travail of contemporary man". Anthony Castagnaro, The Early Spanish American Novel, New York: Las Americas Publishing Co., p. 124. Similarly, Isabel Santacatalina, in the prologue to her edition, affirms that in the novel “society is presented diminishedly and nothing seems to be able to improve it. The author does not offer, therefore, programmatic ethical projects; he only verifies the social upheaval that torments him”. Eugenio Cambaceres, Sin rumbo, Isabel Santacatalina (ed.), Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul, S.A., 1966, p. 16 (my translation). 5 Epple, “Eugenio Cambaceres”, p. 46. H.E. Guillén shares with Epple a preference toward the reformist or didactic aspect of the novel. In reference to its author, he says: “from his innovation arose a cycle of novels of crisis, testimonials, committed to an early declaration of the decline of moral values that controlled private and public life, seen mainly through political and economic activities”. H. E. Guillén, “El realismo de Eugenio Cambaceres”, Nordeste, 5, 1963, p. 200 (my translation). sees or perceives what is narrated is a focalizer. It is possible -- especially in 19th century novels -- that the narrator may simultaneously be the focalizer, in which case he is called a focalizing narrator 6. In Sin rumbo this traditional narrative format is common. The novel begins with a description by an outside narrator who is able to both see and speak about what is taking place: In two piles, the animals made their way towards a table full of wool, which several men were tying together [. . .]. The bundles [. . .] placed on a great leather scale hanging from the ceiling were later thrown to the end of the barn and there they were piled up in such a way that made them look like a kilt of ice from a thawing mountain7. This external focalization should be differentiated from other narrative occasions in which, although the words in the text belong to the narrator, the focalization (or observation) belongs to the protagonist, Andrés. For example, when he goes to the house of one of his workers, whose daughter, Donata, he intends to seduce, one can detect a shift from the narrator’s view from the narrator’s view (as focalizer) to that of the visual observation by the character. The expression “to sneak a quick look” introduces the narrative shift: “muffling the sound of his steps, he walked toward the hall connecting the two rooms [. . .] and there, through a crack he sneaked a quick look”8. Immediately we read the following description of Donata: “the almond shaped oval of her black and passionate eyes [. . .] the lines of her small and gracious nose, the coarse but provocative and lascivious shape of her mouth biting nervously her lower lip”9. The sight, not quite flattering of the country girl, does not correspond to an opinion on the part of the author or the narrator. Rather, it is a focalization by the character Andrés that underscores his sexual whim. Such focalizations have led some critics to assert that “Cambaceres shows us the story through Andrés's eyes, or from his point of view, although it may not be told by him as narrator”10. All “points of view,” however, do not belong to Andrés: there is a narrative voice that conflicts with the ideas and words of the protagonist.11 Throughout the novel the narrator will show Andrés immersed in long meditations that echo Schopenhauer’s pessimism, a philosopher whom he calls his favorite master; and it has been argued repeatedly that it is Andrés’s readings conflated with an adverse fate that lead him to commit suicide. We should wonder, however, if the novel’s ideology corresponds to the protagonist’s ideas, or, for that matter if they coincide with those of the narrator. That Andrés’s pessimism may be partly a result of his reading of Schopenhauer is clear. In one of many internal focalizations (in other words, when the narrator-focalizer is allowed to penetrate the thoughts of the character)12 we note that Andrés’s reflections echo those of Schopenhauer’s so-called misogyny, especially with regard to his treatise “On Women”. We read that Andrés “was thinking of the sad condition of women marked at birth by fatality, weak of spirit and body, 6 My narratological approach follows, in part, Schlomith Rimmon-Kenan’s Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, London and New York: Methuen, 1983, where she brings together some of the most important contributions to narratology, among them, those of Mieke Bal, Claude Bremond, Gérard Genette, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Gerald Prince, and Boris Uspensky. By the “ideology” of a novel, I am referring to what Uspensky calls “the norms of the text”: “In the simplest case, the ‘norms’ are presented through a single dominant perspective, that of the narrator-focalizer. If additional ideologies emerge in such texts, they become subordinate to the dominant focalizer, thus transforming the other evaluating subjects into objects of evaluation [. . .]. Put differently, the ideology of the narrator-focalizer is usually taken as authoritative, and all other ideologies in the text are evaluated from this ‘higher’ position. In more complex cases, the single authoritative external focalizer gives way to a plurality of ideological positions whose validity is doubtful in principle. Some of these positions may concur in part or in whole, others may be mutually opposed, the interplay among them provoking a non-unitary, ‘polyphonic’ reading of the text”. Schlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, p. 81. As we shall see in this essay, Sin rumbo’s “meaning” is indeed subordinate to the narrator’s ideas, but presented through a complex narrative construction. For a more complete exposition of focalization see Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative fiction, pp. 71-77. 7 Eugenio Cambaceres, Sin rumbo, María Luisa Bastos (ed.), Buenos Aires: Anaya, 1971, p. 35. (In subsequent citations, abbreviated as SR) 8 SR, p. 47. For the many expressions or words that serve as “connotateurs de relais”, see Marjet Berendsen, “The Teller and the Observer: Narration and Focalization in Narrative Texts”, Style, 18, 1984, pp. 143-145. 9 SR, p. 47. 10 George Schade, “El arte narrativo en Sin rumbo,” Revista Iberoamericana, 44, 1978, p. 24 (my translation). 11 Epple is correct in distinguishing between narrator and Andrés, but his hypothesis involves a Darwin-Schopenhauer opposition with which I do not agree. He says that the novel’s narrator “with a superior knowledge, aware of a reality that is more complex than that which can be comprehended by the character, slowly imposes a distinction between appearance and reality: he confronts the philosophical ideas to which Andrés adheres, with what the world really is like (Schopenhauer vs. Darwin). Such world uncovers Andrés’s destructive temperament to show an optimistic world driven by nature”. Epple, “Eugenio Cambaceres”, p. 40 (my translation). He then adds that “social criticism is therefore directed against some pusillaminous attitude of aristocratic sectors of Argentina at the time that society is pressured by new ideas, pointing out as a positive ‘aim’ the positive actions that can result from such an open and flexible conception of the world as that of Darwin's”. Epple, “Eugenio Cambaceres”, p. 43 (my translation). However, as we shall see in this essay, a “Darwinist” and “Anti-Schopenhauarean” position is not at all what drives the novel’s logic. The narrator is indeed a “Schopenhaurean”, whose ideas are offered to the reader through an interesting and original narrative strategy. 12 According to Rimmon-Kenan there are two modalities by which a narration can enter into the thoughts of a character: “either by making him his own focalizer (interior monologues are the best example) or by granting an external focalizer (a narrator-focalizer) the privilige of penetrating the consciousness of the focalized (as in most nineteenth-century novels)”. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative fiction, p. 81. -- Damned day; this is all I needed! -- mumbled Andrés speaking to himself, exasperated and angry at the lost time brought about by the rain, as an obstacle placed in his way toward fulfilling his desires26. Again there is a double focalization: both Andrés and the narrator (or narrator-focalizer) look at the same space, but their perceptions are different. For Andrés -- in opposition to the other's -- the view is only an obstacle for his self-interest. Often, when Andrés looks out the window, he feels “an unbearable annoyance, a hatred, a weariness toward that sight contemplated over and over, thousands of times”27. It is important to note, then, that the narrator clearly and explicitly alludes to Andrés's lack of contemplative capacity, as I have suggested, but let us return momentarily to the already quoted passage from Schopenhauer that the protagonist seems to be reading: “the tedium of one's awareness of time is taken away by distraction; then, if life is happier when it is least felt, the best thing would be to be rid of it”. Ironically, as the reader may have already noticed, the narrator says that “half an hour later Andrés closed his eyes” on those words by Schopenhauer. What has not been understood, then, is that the lack of life-purpose and ultimate suicide by the protagonist does not result from being influenced by Schopenhauer's pessimism, but rather from a misreading of his philosophy. Schopenhauer, far from advocating suicide, all along his works repeats that self-destruction is a futile action against the Will since being is only one of its phenomena. In his World and Will as Idea, he is quite clear about this: Suicide, the actual doing away with the individual manifestation of the will, differs most widely from the denial of the will to live, which is the single outstanding act of free will [. . .] and is therefore [. . .] the transcendental change [. . .]. As life is always assured to the will to live, and a sorrow is inseparable from life, suicide, the willful destructor of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act; for the thing-in-itself remains unaffected by it28. As we have seen, the only means of escape are the immersion into nothingness and artistic contemplation -- both outside of Andrés’s reach. The importance of this fact, shared by the narrator and a properly qualified reader, which has given us a better understanding of the novel, is made even more explicit in some other passages that I will now briefly mention. Amorini’s enigmatic question upon arriving at Andrés’s garçonniere of “why so beautiful inside and so ugly outside”29, something which has been seen as an expression of the protagonist’s psychological “split” personality, can now be understood in a new way. His apartment is full of artistic pieces. For example, “towards the middle of the room, a Carrara marble, a life-size Jupiter and Leda. Here and there on top of onyx supports, other marble pieces, obscene bronze Pompeii reproductions”30. What should be noted, then, is that the apparent meaning or importance that Andrés gives to these objects is neither “artistic” nor disinterested; rather, it is utilitarian, to impress and seduce his women, to satisfy his sexual instinct. Also, one needs to recognize that the attraction that our protagonists shows toward the opera -- a favorite genre of Schopenhauer -- is not artistic, but rather a venue for his sexual conquests. When an Italian company arrives in Buenos Aires, Andrés attends its first rehearsal, apparently showing great interest. The company's manager praises the singer Amorini's talent: “stupendous organ [. . .] she has created fanaticism, a mad fanaticism at the Scala”. But Andrés's reaction reveals his true interest: “stop with your fanaticisms and get to the point: is she pretty?”31. Once again, therefore, we see that aesthetic appreciation is relegated to a secondary position in favor of the sexual instinct32. 26 SR, p. 136. 27 SR, p. 52. 28 Schopenhauer, The World as Will, vol. 1, pp. 514-515. Rafael E. Catala, for example, falls into the common error of thinking that Schopenhauer favored suicide: “Let us note [. . .] Schopenhauer's great influence with his ideas on suicide. In his ‘Studies in Pessimism’ from Parerga and Paralipomena (vol. III), Schopenhauer gives Cambaceres the basis for suicide as an act of will and freedom, as a natural act.” Rafael E. Catala, “Apuntes sobre el existencialismo en Sin rumbo, de Eugenio Cambaceres,” Estudios de historia, literatura y arte hispánicos ofrecidos a Rodrigo A. Molina, Madrid: Insula, 97, p. 106 (my translation). It should be speculated that perhaps what has led most people toward a misreading of Schopenhauer's ideas on suicide is his essay “On suicide”, in which what he does is actualy criticize Western religion's condemnation of suicide as a crime. Schopenhauer, Parerga, vol. 2, pp. 306-311. 29 SR, p. 106. 30 SR, p. 105. 31 SR, p. 85 32 There has been some confusion with regard to the question if Schopenhauer truly considered opera as a great artistic genre. This has been studied conclusively by Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schpenhauer, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, pp. 184-185, where he shows that the error stems from a terminological confusion since Schopenhauer (like Wagner) criticized “Grand Opera” as a spectacular and popular activity created in Paris in the 19th century. Schopenhauer attacked such spectacles calling them vulgar and empty in Parerga, vol. 2, pp. 432-436, but he was not referring to Opera, which he praises extensively in his World as Will, vol. 3, pp. 232-235. If we now turn to the end of the novel, we shall see even more clearly that the complicity between the narrator and a reader properly aware of Schopenhauer's philosophy is an important narrative strategy in this novel. Andrés's spectacular and well-known suicide takes place after the death of his infant daughter, Andrea, whom he thought, had brought meaning to his life. Again the reader should note a certain irony: by “identifying” himself with his daughter, Andrés is only displacing the value of his existence toward something external, something which for the German philosopher would be another blind handing over to the Will. For Schopenhauer, in contrast with the “genius” the normal man [. . .] as regards the pleasures of life, relies on things that are outside of him and thus as possessions, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and so on: these are the props of his life's happiness. It therefore collapses when he loses such things or is disillusioned by them. We may express this relation by saying that his center of gravity lies outside him33. At another instance, Andrés's desire is explicit: “an unconscious need emanated from the bottom of his soul, as an all powerful desire [. . .] to be personified in someone, of embodying into a strange and superior entity the source of all the happiness he felt”34 . When turning to our protagonist’s final suicide -- after his daughter's death --, the narrator informs us that Andrés had arrived at his decision “with the cold and serene composure that inform great, supreme resolutions”35. What we should note, however, is that this “supreme resolution”, that for most critics has been seen as a last act of freedom, of life-affirming action, is again one more example of the narrator's ironic critiques36. While Andrés is preparing himself to commit suicide, his worker Contreras whom he had mistreated at the beginning of the novel, carries out an act of vengeance: he sets fire to his master’s house. Andrés, after having opened his abdomen with a hunting knife, a weapon which the narrator, significantly, describes as “a work of art”37, in a last expression of what he believes to be a negation of being, screams: “fucking life, bitch, whore [. . .] I will uproot you!” and immediately “he tears out his bloody guts”38. Simultaneously, outside, his workers are attempting to put out the fire, which will soon burn his house to the ground. The novel's last irony, which revisits the futility of Andrés's suicide is that no one will know anything about his final action. His death will be seen as a result of the fire brought about by the revengeful act of his disgraced worker, an action selfishly “human” which, under these conditions is no different than Andrés's own suicide.39 Notably, the last sentence of the novel, by its narrator, is a detached and aesthetic description of this supposed “tragedy”: “the black smoke spiral, carried away by the wind's breeze, extended through the sky like an immense funeral shroud”40. In other words, the novel's narration, like the Will, which according to Schopenhauer controls the existence of all things, survives Andrés's futile attempt at negation. To conclude, we should underscore that the salient meaning or “purpose” of the novel Sin rumbo (Aimless) lies not in affirming or condemning a vital pessimism which supposedly ailed a certain social sector of Argentina in the 1880's, but rather in narrating a possible understanding, or misunderstanding of life according to Schopenhauer's ideas. In this novel Andrés is not a victim either of the pessimism of his times or of his social standing, but rather of his incapacity to comprehend and follow the teachings of his “favorite mentor”. 33 Schopenhauer, Parerga, vol 1, p. 339. 34 SR, p. 175. Textually, the identification between the two is noted not only in a coincidence of names (Andrés / Andrea), but also through various seemingly unconscious actions by the protagonist. His daughter has fallen victim to croup, cannot breathe, and has had surgery on her throat, a tracheotomy. Interestingly, the narrator, when describing Andrés's suffering tells us that “he would grasp his neck as if wishing to pull out the anguish that oppressed his throat.” SR, p. 190. And only a few pages later, we read that Andrés “tried to speak, but an inarticulate sound, as a salvage scream came from his throat [. . . and] with a tug he pulled off his tie, unbuttoned his collar." SR, p. 193. 35 SR, p. 205. 36 According to Jean Franco, for Andrés, “his only freedom is that of self-destruction.” Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish American Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 118. 37 SR, p. 206. 38 SR, p. 106. 39 The identification between Andrés and his worker is also carried out formally in the novel. In the first chapter Andrés is presented to the reader anonymously as “a man” or as “the boss”. In a parallel fashion, at the end of the novel the peon appears only as a “man who carries out his vengeance and runs away” -- without any reference to his name. The fact that the novel establishes such a parallel between the two takes us back again to Schopenhauer's idea that individuality is only a phenomenon of a totality, which is the Will. 40 SR, p. 206.