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Repetition and Excess in Tiempo de silencio

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Gustavo Pérez Firmat*
Affiliation:
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
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Abstract

Luis Martín Santos' Tiempo de silencio displays a peculiar vulnerability to commentary. The novel both invites interpretation and “thematizes” the invitation. In this essay I offer a reading of the novel that explores—and exploits—such vulnerability. More concretely, I offer a reading anchored in two related notions, repetition and excess, for in and through them the work discloses its hermeneutic complexity. Accordingly my discussion moves from substances to events; it moves, that is, from a consideration of how excess is embodied in certain emblematic substances (Secs. 1 and 2) to a consideration of the repetitiveness of the novel's events (Secs. 3 and 4). Such an exercise should not only shed new light on one of the most significant Spanish novels of this century but also, implicitly, raise important questions about the relationship between a commented text and its commentary.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 96 , Issue 2 , March 1981 , pp. 194 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1981

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References

Note 1 A fairly complete, annotated bibliography can be found in Alfonso Rey, Construction y sentido de “Tiempo de silencio” (Madrid: Porrûa, 1977), pp. 255–63. Other recent studies (not mentioned by Rey) include: John Caviglia, “A Simple Question of Symmetry: Psyche as Structure in Tiempo de silencio,” Hispania, 60 (1977), 452–60; Carmen de Zulueta, “El monólogo interior de Pedro en Tiempo de silencio,” Hispanic Review, 45 (1977), 297–309; Felisa L. Heller, “Voz narrativa y protagonista en Tiempo de silencio,” Anales de la Novela de Posguerra, 3 (1978), 27–37; Betty Jean Craige, “Tiempo de silencio: ‘Le Grand Bouc’ and the Maestro,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 13 (1979), 99–113.

Note 2 Martin-Santos, Tiempo de silencio, 8th ed. (Barcelona: Seix Barrai, 1971). Translations from the novel are my own, though I have profited from George Lee-son's English version, Time of Silence (London: John Calder, 1965).

Note 3 The connection between Muecas and Ortega y Gasset is treated below in Sec. 2 and in n. 13. See also Gonzalo Sobejano's remarks on the “choque pensión-chabola,” in Novela espanola de nuestro tiempo (Madrid: Editorial Prensa Española, 1970), p. 360.

Note 4 Pedro's description, notable for the repetitive intensity of the writing, and thus reminiscent of Matias' anaphoric catalog, is worth quoting in extenso:

Entre los genes de estos ratones habia uno determinado que catalizaba la producción de una enzima que esti-mulaba la puesta en marcha de la tumultuosa reproduc-ción incontrolable que, escapando a las leyes de la armonía, mediante un paso al metabolismo relativa-mente anaerobio, acaba por destruir al portador. Aun-que bien pudiera ser que, en lugar de un gene, fuera un virus, un virus que transmitieran las mismas células reproductoras, que se alojara en el mismo núcleo celular, en íntimo contacto con los cromosomas, tanto que ya casi no se pudiera distinguir de un gene, puesto que sólo en el seno del propio aparato reproductor de la célula viva podria autorreproducirse y porque, como los genes, también ejercería su acción a distancia, mediante sustancias catalíticas que deformarian la norma metabélica de los ácidos desoxiribonucleicos hasta conseguir esas proliferaciones monstruosas que se denominan mitosis multipolares, mitosis asimétricas, mitosis explosivas, sin que—y esto es lo maravilloso—a pesar de tan gigantesco estropicio y pérdida de norma, la vida se hiciera imposible para la célula individual (con lo que el problema quedaria resuelto por si mismo), sino que el protoplasma circundante, trabajosa-mente sí pero lujuriantemente, seguía desarrollándose, asimilando, escindiéndose, creciendo, consumiendo sangre del mismo ser que era él mismo y hasta necro-sándose in vivo, cuando el crecimiento reactivo de los vasos sanguíneus no fùera suficiente para seguir su atropellada carrera.

Among the genes of these mice there was a particular one that catalyzed the production of an enzyme that stimulated the commencement of the tumultuous uncontrollable growth that, escaping the laws of harmony by moving to a relatively anaerobic metabolism, ends up destroying its host. Although it could well be a virus and not a gene, a virus lodged in the same cellular nucleus, in intimate contact with the chromosomes, so much so that it could hardly be distinguished from a gene, since it could only reproduce itself within the reproductive apparatus of the living cell and since, like the gene, it would act from a distance, by means of catalytic substances that deform the metabolic rate of the desoxyribonucleic acids creating those monstrous proliferations we know as multipolar mitoses, asymmetric mitoses, explosive mitoses, without—and in spite of so gigantic a disruption and departure from the norm —without—and here is the amazing thing—making life impossible for the individual cell (thus solving the problem) but instead letting the surrounding protoplasm, painfully though luxuriantly, continue developing, assimilating, dividing, growing, consuming blood from that being that was itself, and even becoming necrotic in vivo, when the reactive growth of the blood vessels becomes insufficient to allow it to continue its riotous career. (pp. 196–97)

Note 5 My discussion can thus be considered an oblique gloss of the following excerpt from Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor (New York: Farrar, 1977): “Nobody conceives of cancer the way TB was thought of—as a decorative, often lyrical death. Cancer is a rare and still scandalous subject for poetry; and it seems unimaginable to aestheticize the disease” (p. 20). In the identification of cancer and writing one can perceive the beginnings of such an aestheticization. One is tempted, for example, to view Martin-Santos' style, with its intricate, proliferating periods, as a scriptural analogue of cancer. A passage like the one quoted in n. 4, with its elaborate process of qualification, of conceptual division and subdivision, might be regarded as a sort of textual mitosis. Or, moving in the opposite direction, one might say that a tumor is a biological “amplification,” a cellular hypotaxis.

Note 6 Cloacal theory has been defined as “A sexual theory of children which ignores the distinction between vagina and anus. The woman is pictured as having only one orifice, which is confused with the anus. The orifice is thought to serve for both parturition and coition” (J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith [London: Hogarth, 1973], p. 69).

Note 7 “Está ahí aplastadito, achaparradete, imitando a la parrilla que dicen, donde se hizo vivisectión a ese san-lorenzo de nuestros pecados, a ese sanlorenzaccio que sabes, a éste que soy yo, a ese lorenzo, lorenzo que me des la vuelta que ya estoy tostado por este lado” ‘There it is, flattened out, stunted, imitating the grill where it is said that Saint Lawrence was vivisected, Lawrence who died for our sins, the one you've heard about, the one I've become, that one, Lawrence of the turn me over because I'm already done on this side,‘ etc.

Note 8 One might also connect the image of Madrid as body with the superposition of bodies in the vertical burials. In Florita's grave, three bodies lie on top of her; in the city, three (layers of) bodies “lie” on top of the chabolas.

Note 9 Gemma Roberts, Temas existenciales en la novela española de postguerra (Madrid: Gredos, 1973), p. 191.

Note 10 Collected Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Joseph Horrell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), i, 247. Swift is here advising an interlocutor who is somewhat put off by the discovery that his lady “sh—.” The fragment from Quevedo is quoted by Octavio Paz in Conjunciones y disyunciones (Mexico City: Joaquin Mortiz, 1969), p. 34.

Note 11 M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), p. 26.

Note 12 This might be the opportune moment to interject that the sadistic fantasy of the mutilated, immobilized body recurs several times in Tiempo de silencio. In addition to Florita bleeding to death, those images include Saint Lawrence on the grill, the eunuchs buried in the sand (of which more later), and above all, the mice under the microscope. This fantasy is important because it points to the existence of a counterplot aimed at arresting the expansive urges of the grotesque body, especially through mutilation directed at the locus of growth—the embryo (Florita), the testicles (the eunuchs), the tumors (the mice). But how can the grotesque body possibly be restrained? The project announced by these images is undermined everywhere in the book.

Note 13 Muecas himself, head of his neighborhood, might thus be regarded as a disfigured Ortega y Gasset. He is clearly something of a philosopher. On hearing his theories about the breeding of mice, one of his daughters remarks: “A dónde va usted a parar padre? Y como que se engloria en sus explicaciones y no hay quien lo pare. Lo que es mi padre debia haber sido predicador o sacamuelas. Y aûn dicen de él que es bruto. Bruto no le es más que en lo tocante a caráter, pero no en el inteleto” ‘ “Where are you going to stop, father?” Once he starts into his explanations there's no stopping him. That's why my father should have been a preacher or a dentist. And still people say he's stupid. He might do stupid things but he's intelligent’ (p. 52).

Note 14 See, respectively, Carlos Feal Deibe, “Conside-raciones psicoanalíticas sobre Tiempo de silencio,” Re-vista Hispánica Moderna, 36 (1970–71), 117–27; Julian Palley, “The Periplus of Don Pedro,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 48 (1971), 239–54; Roberts, pp. 129–203.

Note 15 See, e.g., Rey's study.

Note 16 Janet Winecoff Díaz, “Luis Martin-Santos and the Contemporary Spanish Novel,” Hispania, 51 (1968), 234–35.

Note 17 If one passes from the beginning of this episode to its conclusion one discovers that it ends in a symmetrical manner. As Pedro is leaving the hovels after Florita's death, Amador tries to detain him by shouting, “iDon Pedro! Don Pedro! El certificado!” (p. 114). The episode is thus framed by two calls directed at Pedro; an initial acoustic stimulus is succeeded by an auditory lapse. The narration of Dorita's murder falls into the same pattern. The first sign of the verbena ‘fair’ is the “pleasant hum” of the orchestra (p. 226). Then when Cartucho assaults her, Dorita screams, but Pedro does not hear her: “Dorita dio un grito, pero nadie se enteró” ‘Dorita screamed, but no one heard her’ (p. 232). And with this phrase—“nadie se enteró” —the novel takes us back to its beginning: “Ha sonado el teléfono y he oído el timbre. He cogido el aparato. No me he enterado bien. He dejado el teléfono” ‘The phone sounds and I hear it ringing. I pick it up. I can't hear clearly. I put the phone down’ (my italics). The same pattern of perception and deafness, with Pedro at its center, is repeated, uncannily, at three important junctures in the novel. If one of the visual metaphors for Tiempo de silencio is the neoexpressionist painting, the appropriate aural metaphor could well be the repetitive ringing of a telephone.