New Art, New Woman, Old Constructs: Gmez de la Serna, Pedro Salinas, and Vanguard Fiction

Author(s): Robert C. Spires

Source: MLN, Vol. 115, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 2000), pp. 205-223
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3251372
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New Art, New Woman,

Old Constructs:
G6mez de la Serna, Pedro Salinas,
and VanguardFiction
Robert C. Spires

As a manifestation of the modernist movement of the first half of the

twentieth century a subcategory known as vanguard or avant-garde
literature emerged in the Hispanic world and most of western Europe.'
Often referred to as the "newart"when it began to assert itself in Spain
and Latin America in the 1920s and into the mid-1930s, it also boasted
of representing a "new woman," a claim that I propose to examine
here. When some critics of the time (male of course) objected that the
anti-conventional mode of this artejovenand its attempt to change the
historical representation of women were expressions of deficient
virility, of effeminacy (see for example Perez Firmat 37), they drew
attention to a gender issue central to vanguard art. These same
detractors at times went so far as to charge that the new mode was guilty
of emasculating the male image.' Yet today many would answer the
charge of masculine emasculation by counter-charging that the
For representative studies of the Hispanic expression see Buckley and Crispin,
Harris, Hernando, Ilie, Nagel, Perez Firmat, Pino, Soria Olmedo, Unruh, Urrutia, and
Videla. For more general European surveys of the movement see Benjamin, Burger,
and Poggioli.
2The nineteenth-century realistic novel tends to stand as the benchmark of
masculine narrative, against which effeminate vanguard fiction is compared. Susan
Rubin Suleiman's remarks, although directed to the more contemporary works of
Robbe-Grillet and Roche, also apply to Spanish vanguard works: "the realist novel was
MLN 115 (2000): 205-223 ? 2000 by TheJohns Hopkins University Press
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206

ROBERT C. SPIRES

vanguardists in fact were guilty of perpetuating feminine violations. By

examining some representative examples from El novelistaof Ram6n
G6mez de la Serna and from Visperadelgozoof Pedro Salinas,3I propose
to demonstrate how these male-authored vanguard texts project female representations that can be considered both seditiously threatening and stereotypically comforting to a virile discursive tradition.
Conventional gender constructs serve as the comfort zone for the
male protagonists and narrators of the works to be discussed. When
faced with the threat of a new and disquieting female image, they
turn to historical and canonized models for reassurance. Each male
character seems to find in these stable and familiar constructs the
support to counteract the vicissitudes of his own existence; he
apparently needs the reassurance of woman's materiality to counteract his anxiety over his own ethereality. In addition, for each of these
protagonists woman seems to represent what Peter Brooks defines as
"an inextricable link between erotic desire and the desire to know"
(22). Yet in the Spanish examples the search for knowledge may be
labeled more accurately a quest for reassurance; the textual strategies
involve either killing off the unfamiliar female or, even more significantly, relying on comparisons to familiar older models as a means to
explain, and thereby negate the threat of, a new breed.
The first work I propose to analyze, G6mez de la Sernas's El
novelista, fits the conventional definition of novel in title only. It
consists of a series of disconnected and often absurd vignettes of
widely varying length and content, each of which features a distinct
internal focalizer. These narrative fragments represent a series of
novels written by Andres Castilla, who serves as both dramatized
codified as male: unitary, phallic, teleologically moving toward a single meaning, a
single story. The feminine text [the avant-garde], by contrast, was synonymous with the
plural, the erotic, the experimental, the new" (40).
3 The two authors of the works I
propose to analyze are prototypical examples of the
Spanish avant-garde movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Ram6n G6mez de la Serna is
often cited as the initial Spanish practitioner of the vanguard movement and he is one
of the more unorthodox writers in Spanish literature. In an interesting essay Ignacio
Soldevila-Durante discusses G6mez de la Serna's art in reference to the French school
of surrealism. Pedro Salinas is known primarily as a poet, but his collection of stories,
Visperadelgozo,was the first publication of the "Nova novorum" series dedicated to the
"new art" sponsored by Ortega y Gasset's Revista de Occidente.Jose Ortega y Gasset was
the high priest of the vanguard movement, and his journal served as the unofficial
forum for examples of and ideas on the new art. Both G6mez de la Serna and Salinas
were active contributors to the journal (indeed one of the stories I will examine in
detail, "Aurora de verdad" by Salinas, appeared in the April 1926 issue). For more on
the role of Ortega y Gasset'sjournal see L6pez Campillo and Soria Olmedo.

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207

author and unifying thread for the disjointed collage.4 Andres in turn
is subject to the narrative presentation of an analytic non-character
narrator.5Yet final textual authority resides in the posited author or
the implicit creator of the strategies outlined.6 In the following
analysis I propose to demonstrate how the posited author manipulates this contrived fictional edifice to underscore, consciously or
otherwise, an equivocal attitude toward gender issues, an attitude that
in effect echoes certain discursive practices of the 1920s.7
The chapters dedicated to "Pueblo de adobes" (20-26) offer a
good example of how the text creator blends gender and genre issues
in El novelista. The dramatized narrator is Andr6s Castilla and the
novel he is writing, the intertext, appears in italics. In short, process
(the narration about Andr6s) and product (his supposed novel) are
seemingly juxtaposed, although the true process, that concerning the
posited author who is creating Andr6s and the non-character or
anonymous narrator, remains hidden.
A significant portion of Andr6s's "novel" involves three characters:
Clemente, an orphaned bachelor, Dona Prepedigna, an aging spinster intent on marrying Clemente, and the young and sensuous
4Rugg, Tasende, and Valis (1989) provide insightful analyses of the distinction
between the dramatized fictional author Andres Castilla and the real author Ram6n
G6mez de la Serna. Richmond also addresses this aspect and provides a useful
summar) of most of the stories of the novel.
I am trying to incorporate the terminology of the famous Brooks and Warren
paradigm, "Focus of Narration" (588-94). As we know, Genette (NarrativeDiscourse)
refined their model and labeled what they call a non-character analytic narrator as
extra-heterodiagetic (see chapter 5, "Voice,"212-62). Without trying to detract from
the value of Genette's contribution, I think the Brooks and Warren categories sound
lessjargonistic.
' For convenience sake the
posited author can be called G6mez de la Serna. But
when I speak of Gomez de la Serna or Salinas, I will not be referring to the biographical
person but to the image of the author created by his own text-hence the term posited
or implied author (Bakhtin and Booth, respectively). For example, Ramon Gomez de
la Serna had a friendship and love affair with Carmen de Burgos, both of which ended
when he allegedly seduced her daughter (Ugarte makes passing reference to this
apparent betrayal, 86). This episode in his life could be cited as evidence of his
negative attitude toward women, yet to leap to that conclusion strikes me as dangerous
without knowing all the details and motives involved in the alleged seduction (an
impossibility of course). In fact countering the misogynist implications of that scandal
are the words of praise Don Ramon directs to Carmen de Burgos in his autobiography.
7In her book Highfill discusses the "woman question" that was a favorite theme for
many of the tertuliashosted by Ortega y Gasset and frequented by G6mez de la Serna,
as well as the subject of several essays appearing in Revistade Occidenteduring the 1920s.
As Highfill documents in her chapter onJarnes, in spite of an attempt at a more liberal
attitude toward women, in the final analysis the discussions and the essays published in
the journal tend to reaffirm male superiority.

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ROBERTC. SPIRES

Engracia, nicknamed the Giant. Engracia is marginalized from society not only because of her size, but because of her manifest
sensuality and above all because she intimidates men, indeed "tenfa
una misi6n como de encanijar al mas cumplido don Juan del pueblo,
estrujandole en sus garras, dandole una muerte peor que la muerte
en garrote vil" (164).8 Clemente is more captivated than intimidated
by this sensual outcast, and one evening pays her an amorous visit. At
this point the focus switches from the product to the process: "Erael
peniltimo capftulo, y en su desenlace daba a dos capitulos posibles, a
cual mas violentos pero contradictorios" (165). Andres faces the
choice of having Clemente kill Dona Prepedigna, or having the older
woman follow Clemente to the rendezvous and murder the impetuous youngsters while they are making love. He opts for the latter
solution, after which "respir6 el novelista liberado de una nueva
novela" (165).
This enigmatic story seems to point in opposite directions in
reference to gender issues. By opting to make Doiia Prepedigna the
assassin and victor, a woman earlier characterized by the very familiar
discursive phrase, "la causa reptilica de todo . . ." (148), the posited
author hiding behind Andres may convey the misogynist attitude that
women are indeed the devil incarnate. But by shifting the focus from
the narrated story to the act of narrating, and stating that Andres
decided the ending, the implication changes. The idea of an inexorable denouement is completely negated. Dona Prepedigna is not
necessarily some innate evil force, some symbol of corrupting womanhood that implacably punishes expressions of raw passion, but a
product of Andres's artistic instinct, and above all a pragmatic means
for him to draw to a speedy conclusion a long project. Certainly
Andres's decision suggests certain sexist attitudes, but because of the
textual strategy employed those attitudes can be attributed to him
El novelista was published originally in 1923. I am citing from the Espasa-Calpe
edition, and will note the page number of quotes in parentheses. G6mez de la Serna
was exceedingly prolific as a writer, and his works include autobiographies, biographies, fiction, drama, essays, and poetic word plays for which he coined the term
greguerias.Fidel L6pez Criado attributes 50 novels to Don Ramon, while Antonio del
Rey Briones lists 74. Apparently the eclectic and nonconventional nature of G6mez de
la Serna's writing, along with the clouded distinction between story and novel, explain
the discrepancy. His professional writing career began in 1910 and continued up to his
death in 1963. In addition to the articles by Rugg, Richmond, Tasende, and Valis
already mentioned, for representative studies of G6mez de la Serna and his fiction see:
Cam6n Aznar, Cardona, Gaspar G6mez de la Serna, Gonzalez-Gerth, Granjel, Lopez
Criado, Nigel, Rey Briones, Serrano, Soldevila-Durante, Spires, Umbral, and Valis
(1992, 1993).

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and not to some force of nature. In fact, there is even a hint of

censorship of Andres on the part of the posited author responsible
for this narrative strategy. Yet if it is intended as criticism of sexist
discourse it certainly has to rank as a very timid step in that direction,
so timid in fact that one may be more inclined to label this as another
example of female bashing rather than a plea for gender tolerance.
Another story implying censorship of gender attitudes concerns
female Siamese twins (chapters 38-39). Again there is a non-character
analytic narrator who presents Andres as the fictitious author of the
text, which is again set in italicized type.
At the birth of the twins the narrator notes that for the mother, "la
parecia una doble desgracia, pues no s6lo la nacia mujer en vez de
var6n, sino que la mujer que la nacia estaba sometida y mediatizada
por otra mujer, es decir, seria doblemente desdichada la hija ..."
(224). Notwithstanding a humorous tone, there is a tragic implication
to this discursive tradition of favoring male offspring. Shortly thereafter the mother dies, and the father is left with the responsibility of
raising "aquella hija duplicada [que] le parecia que no le podia
querer" (225). After this expression of patriarchal intolerance the
father is also allowed to die and an uncle assumes the responsibility of
raising this "doble hija" (224).
In spite of the repetition of the word "doble," the twins reveal two
very distinct personalities; Gracia is somber and bitter while Dorotea
is cheerful and optimistic. Later, when Dorotea falls in love, Gracia
feels betrayed and kills herself. Since the one cannot live without the
other, an operation is attempted to separate them but Gracia also dies
during the surgery. After her death the separation is completed and
they are buried in individual graves.
When the focus shifts back to Andres as creator, the basic narrator
states that the writer "sentia mayor pena que cuando mat6 a otros
personajes" (235). The story suggests the injustice of treating women as
one, of the discursive practice of allowing gender commonality to
negate individual differences. In effect and notwithstanding an initially
satirical tone, the characters in this example are drawn with more
sympathy than those of most other tales in the collection. In addition,
the posited author here more openly criticizes gender prejudices than
he does in the story of Clemente, Engracia, and Dona Prepedigna. But
even so the protest is likely to strike present readers as excessively
muted, and in spite of Andres's remorse it is difficult to ignore that he
opts for the all-too-easy solution to this conflict between generic and
individual identity by again killing off the renegades.

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By far the most intriguing and equivocal treatment of gender

themes concerns a woman with a glass eye. Again the story consists of
a protagonist, a non-character analytic narrator, Andres as dramatized author, and the hidden posited author responsible for everything. Chapters 40, 41, and 42 of El novelistarelate how the protagonist, significantly named Corpus, meets a beautiful woman named
Beatriz at a formal dinner party-the narrator later affirms the
eponymic link to Dante's character, thus seemingly encasing the
female character within a familiar discursive frame. Yet the illusion of
familiarity disappears almost ridiculously when, while walking with
the protagonist along a corridor on the way to the dining room, she
responds to one of his comments by "dejandole caer el ojo derecho
en una mano, gesto por el que descubri6 Corpus que aquel ojo
derecho era un ojo desviado" (236-37). The protagonist immediately
becomes obsessed with this unorthodox visual organ: "Durante toda
la comida Corpus estuvo pendiente de aquel ojo cuya desviaci6n
demostraba un antecedente negro en aquella mujer tan blanca o
revelaba que era de cristal y, por lo tanto, le faltaba el ajuste estricto
que tienen los ojos vivos (237). Perhaps threatened by the suggestion
of the petrifying power of a Medusa gaze, this man whose very name
signifies body cannot deal with a body part that abandons the body.
The protagonist's fascination/intimidation inspired by the mobile
eye may be explained, along with the enigmatic thread tied to
corporeality, by considering some recent ideas concerning the phallus. Lacan and others insist that the phallus is a sign of discursive
power and is not synonymous with the penis. Indeed any body part,
female as well as male, could potentially serve as a phallic symbol (for
a more recent discussion of this thesis see Butler "The Lesbian
Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary" 57-91). But when men
successfully play the role of the aggressor in sexual encounters, power
and penis tend to fuse. Yet as Corpus ogles Beatriz's body his
comments to himself, "iCuantas veces habra desenvainado sus brazos
para las grandes paradas en vez de desenvainarlos para la acci6n!"
(237), reveal that he feels inhibited rather than emboldened in the
presence of this very un-Dante-like woman. Obviously intimidated by
Beatriz's air of independence yet intrigued by her unorthodox eye,
Corpus seems to realize that her ocular organ has more power over
him than his sexual organ over her.9
9
According to L6pez Criado, "All of Ram6n's protagonists are 'half beings' who are
conscious of their divided existential unity, and who are always worried about and
frightened at the prospect of disappearing in a sexual embrace" (11).

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But there is an added dimension to the eye's Medusa and phallic

connotations. This is a member capable of dismembering itself, and
that display of displacement seems to intensify the protagonist's
apprehension. Apparently in Corpus's mind the detachable eye is
menacing because, unlike the penis with the power inherent in its
exclusive gender identity, this organ is disjoinable and transferable,
and therefore potentially it can outmaneuver and overpower its male
rival."'In effect, from his new perspective the power of the phalluseye seems to connote the threat of castration. This sudden revelation
of the vulnerability of the flesh in turn directs all his attention to what
Butler might call the "matter"of the eye, to whether it is glass or flesh
and to what degree its matter matters.
When all other efforts to determine the organic composition of the
visual organ fail, Corpus even considers marrying Beatriz as a means
of satisfying his curiosity. That supreme sacrifice becomes unnecessary when near the end of the narrative Beatriz inexplicably dies
during an operation, and to Corpus's question if the eye was indeed
glass, an attending nurse responds "Si, se escap6 a su 6rbita contraida
con tal fuerza, que se rompio contra su propia imagen en el espejo
del cuarto" (250). This enigmatic response points back to a process
that has both redefined and reinforced the construct labeled woman.
Initially the narrative leads to the conclusion that Beatriz is indeed
a new woman, an authentic social rebel. For example, a man says that
Beatriz was about to marry his cousin when in the last minute she
changed her mind, thus avenging all those young women who
dedicate their lives to marriage, only to find that no man wants them
as a spouse. Also, rather than playing a subservient role to the
numerous men who profess their love for her, Beatriz expresses pity
for them because, as she makes clear, she could never bring herself to
love in return the likes of any of them.
But her primary expression of non-conformity centers on the eye
that refuses to stay put, that protests at being the stationary object of
Corpus's and other men's vision: "Ante las miradas tan apremiantes
que Corpus la lanzaba, el ojo le hufa, se disimulaba, daba los quiebros

"1JudithButler seems to make a similar point when she says: "insofar as it operates at
the site of anatomy, the phallus re-produces the spectre of the penis only to enact its
vanishing as the very occasion of the phallus" (89). If I read her correctly here, Butler
is suggesting that the combination of anatomical and gender specificity of the penis
underscores its precarious role as phallus. It lacks the maneuverability to engage in a
power struggle with something as free from spatial and gender restraints as a
detachable eye.

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mas rapidos a sus pesquisas. Corpus ante eso se ensanaba . ." (239)."
As Corpus's fear and frustration increase over the enigma of Beatriz
and her disembodied body part, there is a switch of narrative voice
and the anonymous narrator announces that Andres the fictitious
author is going to perform an autopsy of this "mujer desdenosa"
(240). The dissection consists first of textualizing Beatriz, and then
placing her wayward eye under the microscope.
With Andres the dramatized author and Corpus the protagonist
serving as dual surgical instruments, Beatriz's frigid exterior is
dissected to reveal some recognizable traits: "Tenia envuelto en sigilos
atroces su engano de mujer. Su seducci6n era rec6ndita y encubierta"
(242). In addition to this very familiar discursive construct of the
seductress lurking behind a seemingly impenetrable exterior, the
mysterious visual organ serves to screen an equally common text:
En el ojo aquel habia desde luego esa desviaci6nnegra que se encuentra
tantoen los ojos de mujer,como antiguapropensi6nde los ojos reojadores
y desconfiadosde la selvaprimeracuyo recuerdogravitaen su perezay en
su haber pasado de inervacionesen inervacionesa traveslos siglos. (244)
The passage conjures forth the timeless norm of the defenseless
female. The narrator makes clear that this woman who initially
seemed so different is really just a generic reprint of a model that
emerged with the beginning of human life. The discursive familiarity
of the design in turn points to the logical conclusion that her
disquietingly nonconforming visual organ actually is only another
manifestation of the seductive essence of all women's eyes. The
hermeneutic process of familiarizing through textuality the initially
unfamiliar diminishes the character's enigmatic nature and leads to
the supposition that "la desviaci6n, pues, de su mirar podia ser muy
bien ese algo primitivo que recuerda el antecedente selvatico de la
mujer vestida de lentejuelas y seda" (244). This supposedly "new"
woman turns out to be nothing more than a very old construct
clothed in modern garb. His control of the discourse has allowed the
anonymous narrator, with Andres and Corpus serving as mediums, to
classify and thereby tame Beatriz. As far as they are concerned she is
1 Commenting on a scene from another vanguard novel, Rosa Chacel's Estaci6n.Ida
y vuelta (1930), Elizabeth Scarlett says of a description of young girls running with their
breasts bouncing up and down: "These disturbingly active and trapped breasts defy the
usual rendering of a passive female body for the male gaze, a convention that male
avant-garde writers were not concerned with subverting" (65). Apparently Scarlett had
not read El novelistawhen she made this statement.

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a mere iteration of the very first verbal and plastic renditions of the
female gender.
But textual deconstruction does not suffice. It becomes obvious
that the narrator and his accomplices feel they cannot impose closure
on Beatriz until they subject her eye to a physical postmortem.
Assuming the role of Deus ex machina,the narrator exercises his poetic
(and gender?) license by having her die, just as Andres deposed of
Engracia (and Clemente who dared to allow himself to be attracted to
this man hater) and the twins. Yet in this case the solution of one
riddle creates another. First confirming that the eye was glass, the
nurse then introduces the new enigma with her explanation that the
organ escaped from its constraint with such force that "it shattered
against its own image in the mirror" (250). This polysemic statement
serves to reopen the text at the very point where it seemed to be
closing. Among the options suggested, the shattered-mirror image
could point to a splintering of the pictorial tradition of women
viewing themselves as object.12But the image could also signal an end
to the illusion that representation faithfully reflects reality. It could
also indicate an assault on the image of woman as the speculum for
male identity. Or it could suggest that the construct of woman itself is
an illusion destined to be shattered by the very object it supposedly
reflects. Above all, this glass phallic symbol that shatters its own image
may say more than the author himself intended about the matter that
determines sexual roles."'
If initially G6mez de la Serna set out to represent a "new woman,"
the text suggests that he found himself enslaved by the convention
12This tradition, often labeled
Vanitas,refers to paintings of women, usually in the
nude, observing themselves in a mirror (see Berger). Pointon discusses this type of
pictorial representation as a discursive practice in which woman is trapped in a cycle of
perpetual imitation or "re-presentation outside which she has no existence" (29).
According to Pointon, the female figure staring into a mirror views the image
conceived by men and imposed on women. Considered within this pictorial tradition,
the shattering of the mirror in Gomez de la Serna's text can be interpreted as an
expression of female liberation from the prison house of male discursive practices.
13At best Ram6n G6mez de la Serna was ambivalent about women and their role in
society, and at times he can be accused of outright sexism. As an example of the latter,
he published a book of drawings and word plays exclusively about women's breasts
(Senos). On the other hand, in his essay "Lo cursi," a term that conveys very generally
the idea of bourgeois materialistic bad taste, the author criticizes early twentiethcentury Spanish society for, according to Valis, transforming this word into "a
feminized, domestic object of desire" (1992, 388). I believe that the narrative just
analyzed conveys Gomez de la Serna's vacillation between traditional male views of
women and a criticism and rejection of such attitudes, the same type of vacillation
expressed in the "woman question" debated in Revistade Occidenteat the time.

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called mimesis, which dictates that novelistic representations be

familiar. Thus the force of discursive tradition began to undermine
his attempt at artistic sedition. In the reading I am proposing,
convention dictates that just as Dante in creating Beatriz could not
escape from the social and fictional constructs that ancient Western
civilization had created for him, neither can G6mez de la Serna
transcend the limits that modern society and literary tradition have
imposed on him. Don Ram6n tries to counter-challenge that implacable force of artistic and generic imprisonment by shattering the
image in the mirror. But such a metaphoric splintering leaves behind
so much residue that its connotations may have exceeded G6mez de
la Serna's intentions.
The next work I propose to discuss, Pedro Salinas's Visperadel gozo,
reveals some of the same ambiguities concerning gender found in El
novelista.Although Salinas avoids the narratological traps that snare
G6mez de la Serna, he also ultimately becomes entangled within the
subversive gender web he weaves in his fiction.14
"Cita de los tres" offers what on the surface appears to be a switch
in gender roles. The male protagonist is timid, ingenuous, and
completely lacking in self-confidence until rescued by an assertive
woman. The incident is inspired by a group of university friends who
tell Matilde of the charms of a statue, Alfonso de Padilla, housed in
the cathedral. After listening to their praise of its artistic merits
Matidle, "dijo firmemente, mirando derecha a Angel: 'Manana, a las
seis, ire a la catedral"' (47).15Angel, who is also called Jorge, gets the
message and arrives at the cathedral before 6:00 for this date
suggested by Matilde rather than by him. As he listens to a series of
church bells all announcing six o'clock but also one after the other,
thereby extending the moment, he is able to tell himself that
although Matilde has still not arrived she will appear at the designated time. But finally the clock on the city hall, without the benefit
of bells, marks 6:00 and shortly thereafter the tolling ends. Now Angel
knows that Matilde has stood him up. But he then rationalizes that
the date she made was not with him but with Alfonso de Padilla,
whom he pictures in his mind as a real person. Finally, as the sacristan
14Although as noted Pedro Salinas is known primarily as a poet, he also wrote drama
as well as fiction. In addition to Visperadel gozo, his other works of fiction are the
collection of stories, El desnudo impecabley otras narraciones(1951), and the novel La
bombaincreible(1950). Salinas died in 1951.
15I cite from the Alianza edition and indicate the page of quotes in parentheses.

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is closing the cathedral, Matilde appears as the pagan goddess Diana.

But the reference to this classical literary model involves a contradiction: the speaker tames the young woman in the very act of labeling
her a pagan.
Her total domestication quickly follows: "perversay femenina, con
su poder divino, en una habil metamorfosis no ovidiana, tom6 la
apariencia respetuosa y timida de una sefiorita que llega tarde a la
catedral, la figura misma, los rasgos exactos de Matilde" (50). She
then laments weakly that she has arrived late and unfortunately will
not have time to see the statue. With Matilde at his side Angel now
sets off into the sunset. Angel, apparently brimming with new selfconfidence, now feels "un placer satanico y secreto" (50). Whereas
one is initially inclined to think that he has been saved by this new
woman, the narrator suggests that in fact he has been eternally
damned. Eve rather than Diana now appears to be the model. In
addition, the speaker relies on the female pejorative stereotypes
"perverseand feminine" to characterize her seductive strategy.Whereas
Dona Prepedigna is represented as a vengeful succubus intent on
punishing expressions of carnality, Matilde is her seductive polarity.
She may seem to act out of gender character when she initiates the
date, but she is far too familiar to qualify as really "new."Indeed both
she and Dona Prepedigna are defined by all-too-common discursive
categories that attribute man's downfall to woman.
"Volverlaa ver" offers yet another example of a new woman made
familiar by virtue of canonized male discourse. The first-person
narrator has gone to an unnamed city to see an old flame, Miss
Priscilla Beexley. As he appears at the balcony of his room the
morning he is to meet with her again, he sees the letters of her name
on a large billboard. The L suggests her silhouette, the X her
contradictory behavior, the S her sense of humor, the B her breasts,
the Y a pose she struck one day on the tennis court. But the
protagonist says that "en ninguna me detenia tanto como en esa
deliciosa V" (74). Of course that letter does not figure in the name
Priscilla Beexley, but it is a common and demeaning means for
representing female genitalia.16 As a result, the protagonist reveals
himself to be a stereotypical male who relies on a ribald discursive
tradition to reduce women to their sexual function. The story ends
when he finally encounters Priscilla as she steps out of the elevator.
Before she has an opportunity to speak he says to himself that in spite
16

Gertz also points out this implication (97).

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of the three years that have passed since they last saw one another, in
effect time has stood still. If indeed she is totally physical matter for
him, then his statement about static time may apply to the very male
practice he has just demonstrated. Women in this sense are timeless
because their anatomy rather than their personality defines them.
Apparently Priscilla has not physically deteriorated in the three years,
and since the story ends at this point there is no way of knowing if she
has changed in other ways. But of course that is the point. The
protagonist relies on a vulgarized geometrical figure to reduce her to
a purely physical being, and never allows her to express herself
beyond that material level.17
Perhaps the most interesting treatment of gender issues occurs in
"Aurora de verdad." The story concerns Jorge, who awakens at 8:30
a.m. to discover that his lover Aurora, with whom he dreamed he
spent the night, is absent. He then discovers in his notebook that he
had made a date with Aurora for 10:00 a.m., and thus begins what
Peter Brooks seems to have in mind when he speaks of the "eroticization of time" (20). On his way to their rendezvous, Jorge semiotically
constructs his lover from glimpses of shadowy forms, the flash of a
parasol, the glint of the posture of young women on a streetcar, and
the caress of a sea breeze, all familiar gender-specific images. In
effect, Jorge begins what Peter Brooks defines as a semioticization of
the body and a somatization of the story (i-27). To complete the
representation all the protagonist needs is Aurora's presence to
supply the gaze, smile, and voice. Yet when he arrives at the art
museum where they are to meet he finds a whole collection of female
models, ancient and modern, that allows him to complete the mental
picture without her physical presence. When she finally comes up
behind him unperceived, and he turns to face her, he finds that this
Aurora in the flesh is not at all the one he expected, and "la figura
inventada y esperada se venia abajo de un golpe" (69).18
In this story no extradiegetic narrator or dramatized author
intrudes with his surgical hand to perform a clarifying autopsy of the
17In another story from the collection, "Mundo cerrado," the male protagonist is on
a train en route to visit an old girl friend, Alice Chesterfield. Yet as he remembers their
moments together the protagonist's thoughts are disturbed by reference to a Lady
Gurney, which turns out to be Alice's new married name. Torn by a desire to live in the
past of Alice Chesterfield yet unable to erase the present reality of Lady Gurney, his
dilemma is resolved when he arrives at his destination to find a letter informing him
that Alice has died. The timely death of the female character as a solution to the
protagonist's quandary echoes somewhat G6mez de la Serna's strategies.
18 For other critical
readings of this story see Feal, Gertz, Newman, Pino, and Spires.

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female character. Yet this supposedly very modern ("novisima" 85)

young woman who at the end of the story stands before Jorge in the
museum also displays some very familiar traces from the past.
Initially Jorge is disturbed by Aurora's ephemeral nature. Awakening in anticipation of her presence, he encounters her absence. Very
soon, however, he discovers that her absence allows him to create an
even more desirable presence for her. Now he can supplement the
oneiric and "discursiva" (84) Aurora of the night before with an
invention so real that in effect it will predetermine "la otra verdadera
y silenciosa que iba a encontrar muy pronto en el Museo" (62-63).
Relying on discursive models that dictated his dream, what he claims
to be an invention is already defined as an imitation.
As he leaves his house, Jorge begins the task of constructing the
already familiar model. Walking along the city streets toward their
meeting place at the museum he begins to encounter fragments of
Aurora in various scenes along the way. Yet he reconciles this
disjointed process of discovery by arguing epistemologically that it is
"como da el fil6sofo con la verdad" (63). According to his reasoning,
the semioticization in which he is engaging is merely a preliminary
step toward totalization. Indeed, Jorge decides that the key to reordering chaos begins with recognizing a foundation of familiar ideal
forms:
Poco a poco la figuraaiin invisibley distantese formabapor la coincidencia
de aquellos abigarradoselementos exteriores que la ciudad le ofrecia
sueltos,incoherentes,pero que el, graciasal modelo, a la imagen ejemplar
que llevabagrabadaen el coraz6n,iba colocandocadauno en su sitio igual
que las piezas de un puzzle. (65)

Jorge draws on nonliterary icons as well to construct an enclosing

frame for Aurora, such as a "cierta linea exquisita y dificil de una
escultura de Estrasburgo" (64). His cultural memory serves as a deep
structure that restores a tranquilizing order to a threatening chaos.
Yet despite the "imagen ejemplar que llevaba grabada en el coraz6n,"
as he arrives at the museum Jorge admits that only Aurora and her
simple formula for greeting him, "buenos dias," can complete his
carefully constructed icon by supplying the three fundamental ingredients: gaze, smile, and voice.
As he enters the museum the multiple yet essentially identical female
icons on the gallery wvallsreinforce the validity of his construction, to
which he now merely needs to "poner ojos, dibujar labios e infundir
palabra, hacerla obra vivificada y perfecta" (66). Aurora actually

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ROBERTC. SPIRES

facilitated his imitative task by agreeing to Jorge's proposal to meet

each day in a different section of the museum (today it is the Turner
room), a plan that "ofrecia a Aurora un fondo cambiante y siempre
bellisimo, de acentuada progresi6n hacia la luz y el color, haciendola
pasar por delicadas transiciones ..." (67). Whereas the backgrounds of
the paintings evolve, the narrative makes clear that the foregrounded
female representations are disconcertingly iterative. In fact, in this
paradise of pictorial images Aurora becomes Eve, but an Eve who, he
claims, preceded rather than emerged as a product of man.
Yet everything belies the assertion of reverse creation. Although
apparently incapable of recognizing it, Jorge is indeed Aurora's
creative Adam. Even the act of referring to her as Eve robs her of her
own identity, which in turn merely underscores how her image is
iterative, a reconstruction from previous models. But in effect Aurora's
physical self had been predetermined even before Jorge embarked
on his project. She is a construct constructed from previous constructs, many of which surround Jorge in the museum. Therefore,
"desdenoso de los cuadros en torno, se volvi6 hacia su imaginaci6n"
(68). Because the plastic images are so engraved in his being he can
easily transform Aurora's material absence into an ideal presence:
"estaba ahora tan familiar, alli dentro tan parecida, hecha casi por 1e,
que su aparici6n no le sorprenderia" (68). Although he claims to
have created this object of desire, in fact he has not acted as creator
but mimic; this portrait does not carry his own signature, but that of
countless others who have collaborated over the centuries to reproduce the verbal and visual construct called woman. Anticipating an
encounter with this discursive construct, Jorge is totally unprepared
to meet Aurora in the flesh.
His fantasy world first begins to evaporate when, rather than the
melodious "buenos dias" anticipated, he hears the more mundane,
"Vengo un poco tarde dverdad?"(69). Then as he turns to face the
person of flesh and blood, ideal-ization yields to real-ization: "La
creaci6n fidelisima, de la manana y el pensamiento, la figura inventada
y esperada se venia abajo de un golpe, porque Jorge la habia labrado
con lo conocido, con los datos de ayer, con el pasado" (69). He is
guilty of imitating discursive practices that inevitably contrive to make
all women conform to familiar and ideal constructs. Yet finally he
proclaims to himself that the Aurora before him, "intacta y novisima
. . . era la vida de hoy, era Aurora de verdad" (69). But is she really so
brand-new?
Since the posited author of this story is never dramatized, some

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readers will want to distinguish between Jorge as the focalizer, and the
posited creator who stands apart from his creation. Jorge characterizes
himself as a person unable to transcend discursive practices and
therefore a slave to past constructs, while implicitly the author recognizes his character's limitations and utilizes the text to signal the need
to accept and even encourage a play of differences. In his narrative,
G6mez de la Serna seems to concede the discursive force that strivesfor
order and familiarityand consequently he inserts an authorial voice to
effect artistic conformity, even though he undermines that authority in
the end. Salinas in his fiction, on the other hand, deflects the blame for
imitation onto Jorge. Yet there may be something contradictory in a
message of change and liberation conveyed by a style that celebrates a
conventional expression of femininity. To represent Aurora's essence
the text relies on gender-associated images: she is "fluida, preciosa"
(64), like an "imagen en el fondo del estanque" (63), like an
"ondulaci6n suave del Mediterrineo" (65), like elements "sueltos,
incoherentes" (65), and like "unablusilla azul y levisima que temblaba"
(65).19 One of the more concrete descriptive nouns, "el descote de
Aurora" (65), tends to reduce her to her sexual identity, a status
reinforced by the adjective "desaprovechada" (64). Although this
vocabulary is designed to convey Jorge's focalization, there is nothing
to counteract or correct his vision. For example, never is there an
opportunity in Visperadel gozo to look through the woman's eyes. In
short, this collection of stories, which Valis so aptly characterizes as
"one of the most libidinized texts to come out of the vanguard period"
(1993, 12), celebrates woman as iconic construct even as it pretends to
protest against that practice.
Visperadel gozo and El novelista continue to present women as
objects of desire rather than as desiring subjects. Aurora may strike
Jorge as "novisima,"but Salinas does not afford her the opportunity
to assert her new being.2" Her representation echoes what Peter
1'It seems to be more than coincidental that the meetings occur in the Turner Room
of the museum. Turner's paintings tend to fuse air, land, and water,just as in Jorge's
mental pictures of Aurora the fusion of these basic elements blur her image to the
point that it becomes insubstantial, fluid, one might argue prototypically feminine.
Also, she is wearing gray, the most characteristic color of Turner's paintings. Again, this
may represent more evidence thatJorge's supposed creations are really imitations of
discursive models from the past.
20Feal offers an alternative
reading for the ending: "The final Aurora-woman,
world-has been liberated from the self that thinks her, that turns her into an
extension of his mind" (95). Again, since Jorge is the sole focalizer, it is not clear to me
how she expresses her liberation from him, let alone from the posited author.

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Brooks notes in reference to Flaubert's Emma Bovary who, he says,

"has no body-of her own. Her body is the social and phantasmatic
construction of the men who look at her" (95). In spite of their "new
art" with its alleged rejection of nineteenth-century technologies of
representation, as G6mez de la Serna and Salinas strive to transgress
mimesis they continue to mimic the female constructs passed on to
them through the ages. The two writers' ties to a male discursive
tradition is underscored by an observation made in reference to Don
Ram6n's fiction but that also applies to Don Pedro's: "the erotic
theme serves as an experiential laboratory for his own doubts and
hopes and where, like the hand of the alchemist, he examines the
possibilities of finding mans reason for being" (L6pez Criado 7,
emphasis added). Yet the textual representation of Julio's, Angel's,
Corpus's and the other characters' discursive imprisonment provides
readers with a possible key to their own freedom. Whereas the
personages and the narrators of these stories essentially treat women
as objects of erotic desire, for readers they satisfy, to one degree or
another, the desire to know, and above all to know, or recognize, the
incarcerating effect of treating woman as mere objects of desire.
In spite of its label "new art," the Spanish vanguard movement
perpetuated old practices at least as far as gender roles are concerned. Women were limited to being the object of men's gaze and
quest and never allowed to be the gazing and questing subject.2 Yet I
would argue that these two writers' obsession with the representation
of women, as that of Jarnes and many of the other vanguardists, had
an effect on subsequent literature and society.
In a sense, the Spanish protestors of the vanguard movement of the
1920s and 1930s had motive to be concerned. The positions assumed
by the agents of the "new art" helped realign the field called
modernism, and with it gender constructs. As Pierre Bourdieu states
it, position-taking changes the whole cultural field where it occurs
because it offers new or different options for "producers and consumers to choose from" (30). Although the arte joven was guilty of
reiterating gender constructs even as it claimed to represent a
novisima woman, in fact its position-taking did change those time21
Even the most prominent female vanguard writer, Rosa Chacel, creates a male
protagonist and focalizer for her Estacion: Ida y vuelta (1930). In the plastic arts,
Goya's Maja vestida and Maja desnuda along with Manet's later Olympia were
considered revolutionary precisely because they represented female gazing subjects, a
technique that implicitly transformed the posited male viewers into the object of the
gazes.

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honored constructs. Not only did it provide an opportunity for

readers to read "woman" differently, but thanks to the vanguardists
artists began to enjoy the freedom to opt for new methods and
models of representation. In addition, those critics who decried the
effeminacy of vanguardism also contributed to making it and subsequent art more female-centered. Their protests provided a "discursive
occasion" (Butler 109) for resistance and change. By calling attention
to woman as a social construct, they underscored the potential for
changing the very concept of woman, for what has been constructed
can also be de- and reconstructed.
Rather than failed novelistic and social projects, G6mez de la
Serna's and Salinas's texts serve as testaments to the power of
discourse, and to the long and painful process required to change it.
However far society still may be from the goal of positioning women
as well as men, blacks as well as whites, Hispanics as well as Anglos,
and gays as well as straights as equal agents of discursive practices, I
believe that the goal would be even more distant than it is today were
it not for the position-taking of vanguard models such as El novelista
and Vispera del gozo.
The Universityof Kansas

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