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The Circular Structure of Valle-Inclán's Ruedo ibérico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Harold L. Boudreau
Harold L. Boudreau*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

The intricate architectural structure of Valle-Inclán's Ruedo ibérico is one of the trilogy's most original features. Not only does the work portray what is going on throughout that ruedo during the last months of Isabel II's reign, but the individual novels and their constituent parts have been constructed in the form of circles as well. Books i and ix, ii and viii, iii and vii, and iv and vi in both La corte de los milagros and Viva mi dueño bear many and close relationships with each other, leaving Book v in each case as the axis upon which the others revolve. Therefore, every book of Corte and Viva, with the exception of the two central books, has a sister book within the given novel with which it shares setting, characters, and subject matter. However, this broad general circularity is the merest beginning of the total revolution of the Ruedo. In addition to the relationships between certain books within a novel, each book is itself constructed in the form of a circle, as are some of its chapters. Finally, given books in one novel are parallel to their counterparts in the other. Valle-Inclán's use of the circle as an organizational device was not an arbitrary choice. On the contrary, the Ruedo ibérico is a synthesis of form and content whose origin will be found to lie in certain concepts expressed in such earlier works as La lámpara maravillosa and La media noche.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 128 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 Editions used: La corte de los milagros and Viva mi dueño: Obras completas de don Ramón del Valle-Inclán, ii (Madrid, 1954). Baza de espadas (Madrid, 1961). All references are, however, to book and chapter rather than to page. Such a procedure simplifies working with the trilogy and makes the choice of edition immaterial for most purposes.

2 Naturally Baza must be omitted in this discussion of the circular relationships between books because of its incompleteness. It ends with Book v, that is, one book short of the point where these relationships would begin to become apparent.

3 The present discussion extends the application of Jean Franco's germinal observations on “The Concept of Time in the Ruedo ibérico,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, xxxix (1962), 177–187. Miss Franco provides the basic insight into the general relationship between books, notes several of the points of concentricity of books within a novel, and suggests a relationship between the concepts expressed in La lámpara maravillosa and the Ruedo ibérico.

4 A major exception to this statement is Baza, iv, which, like Viva, i and ix, is circular from first to last. Chs. i and xiii concern Paul and his group, while ii–iv and x–xii treat of Prim, with all of these revolving around v–ix, which deal with Don Carlos.

5 Exceptions are Books i and ix of Viva and Book v of Baza. Unlike any other book in the Ruedo, Viva, i and ix, are without a fixed passage of time and without a fixed setting. The action moves freely from country to country and it is impossible to determine the length of time covered. The still different treatment of Baza, v, is excellent evidence that Valle-Inclán, at the very end of what he was able to finish of the Ruedo, was still finding new techniques of organization. Baza, v, in fact has multiple settings (Sevilla, Córdoba, Vichy, Cádiz, etc.), but, to compensate, it has its focal point always in the latter city. All action, settings, characters, bear direct relationship to Cádiz and what is intended to happen there on 9 August. Also, like Books i and ix of Viva, it is not possible to ascertain the exact amount of time covered by the book, but once again the time center is the day of 9 August. Most of the chapters of the book, therefore, take place in Cádiz on that date. Those that do not tend, nevertheless, to keep our attention always on that day and that city. By these new methods Don Ramón is able to avoid breaking the unity of the organization of the whole work while at the same time making use of the time and space spread needed for the action.

6 Despite all of these marked coincidences, the two books, when one is reading them, have very different profiles: the Queen, prominent in viii, plays no part in ii aside from a wordless appearance at the Bufos. The Church, absent in the early book, is most important in the later one. Valle-Inclán himself has little to say in Book ii, but Book viii contains more authorial comment than any other in the trilogy. The main subject of the former book is Vallín's plight, while that of the latter is the Queen's lost letter to the Pope.

7 This major distinction aside, the two exhibit many similarities typical of those to be found in other paired books. In both we find the southern setting with an emphasis on class relationships not found elsewhere. Matters revolve around the Torre-Mellada family and the politico-moral personalities of the Marqués and Adolfo Bonifaz are explored. The latter courts a local girl (Tio Juanes' daughter; the Vicario's niece) with the worst of intentions. The principal topics of each book (the burial of Dalmaciana; the story of Juan Caballero) play no part elsewhere in the novel. Finally, both end in disillusionment after the “celebration” (the lively wake and burial; the tumultuous fair) as the participants go home, while in the distance is heard the sound of a conveyance associated with the Marqués de Torre-Mellada (the bells of the mules pulling his carriage; the whistle of the train taking him back to Madrid).

8 There is one reference made by Adolfo Bonifaz to the coming battle between the Carlists and the moderates if “Don Ramon estira la pata” (v, xv).

9 I am indebted to Jean Franco, p. 183, for the original suggestion concerning the Carlist Wars.

10 Obras completas, ii, 617.

11 Valle-Inclán often relates seemingly trivial and unrelated coplas, of which there are many in the Ruedo, to important matters of content. Witness the reference to the palo in the one at the end of Viva, vii, xiii, and its relationship to the death of el Zurdo, the subject of the unit. A very subtle example that runs through several chapters is the many references in song in Viva, i, vi, xiv, and xv, to fatherless children, all in preparation for Ch. xvi's discussion of rumors about the Principe Alfonso's illegitimacy.

12 P. 177. I must question Miss Franco's implication that the passage of time within the Ruedo is not chronological. That the books are concentric and parallel in no way affects their chronology. However, it is true, as she states, that the episodes of the threatened killing of Pineda's son (Corte, iv, xiv) and the near drowning of Capitán Romero García (Viva, i, vi) are representative of Valle-Inclán's attempt to escape time and enter momentarily into eternity.

13 Obras completas, ii, 632.

14 P. 605. The reference to a vision “fuera de positión geométrica” appears not only in the “Breve noticia” preceding La media noche, but also in the epigraph to the work, a quotation that also reveals in other ways its close relationship to La lámpara.

15 Evidence of Valle-Inclán's evaluation may be found in Esperanza Velázquez Bringas, “Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán en México,” Repertorio Americano (7 Nov. 1921), p. 171, and in Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Don Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (Buenos Aires, 1944), p. 14