Postmodernist Theory and Cultural Practice - Book Report/Review Example

Reading of Antonio Buero Vallejo's El tragaluz and Ana Rossetti's Indicios Vehementos In the in the Light of Postmodernist Theory and Cultural Practice. In the first half of the 20th century the whole of Europe was in a state of political turmoil. This was all the more true in the case Spain, which was grappling with internal turbulence of unprecedented magnitude. A state of political unrest, uncertainty and repression may not be the right soil for the flourishing of culture. It is only in the 70s that Spain unfettered itself from this hostile milieu and then onwards, Spanish literature said to have blossomed and came to its own. According to Foster, The return to institutional democracy in 1975 not only led to an enormous production of all forms and varieties of culture that had not only lacked official endorsement but also that had been actively censored and persecuted ( viii) The two authors are diverse in the time of their writing, the genre of their literary expression and the themes that they handled in their works. While Antonio Buero Vallejo born in 1916 died only in 2000, Ana Rossetti was born in 1950. The predominant vehicle for the literary expression of Vallejo was drama while Rossetti chose to use poetry as her medium of expression. The recurring theme of Vallejo was the fate of the dissenter in a modern society. Rossetti experimented the gay aspect of human sexuality in her works. However, both writers are the representatives of the postmodern school of writers who stole the lime light with the emancipation of Spanish literature in the early 70s of the century from the political and religious clutches that was a integral part of Spanish life and society. The reading of these authors who handle diverse genre of literature and whose literary activities were spread over chronologically as well as politically different facets of Spanish life is bound to give the scholar insight into the post modern trends in Spanish literature in its vibrant cultural and political context. The opening of Buero Vallejo's Historia de una escalera (Story of a Staircase) in 1949 was the dawn of new era for the theater of Spain after the crippling period of the Spanish Civil war of 1936-1939. The Spanish theater earlier doled out an escapist fare to the audience. In contrast to the huge strides that the European theater had made, it can truly be called that the Spanish theater was in its infancy. The great Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen was taking drama to new heights with his Doll's House. According to Sheparrd Barr (149) the writings of Ibsen resulted in France a debate on the possibility of an expression of counter-culture in drama that questioned the existing of norms of French morality. In England it resulted in the questioning of the Victorian concepts of social issues and drama became a lively expression of the debate of social issues by using characters as mouthpieces for different social ideas. In England Bernard Shaw emboldened by the success of Ibsen was experimenting with the problem plays. In Shaw's own words: I created nothing; I invented nothing; I imagined nothing; I perverted nothing; I simply discovered drama in real life. It took a few decades for Spanish Drama to come to its own stature in Europe. It is surprising that the Spanish drama remained unaffected by the cataclysmic changes that were sweeping through Europe in the realm of literature. It was in this context that we have to evaluate the contributions of Vallejo. All the plays of Vallejo are tragedies that make critical explorations to inquire the problems of Spain and her destiny. However they are also journeys into human conditions. This gives his plays topicality as they are centered on Spanish affairs and at the same time the human interest makes it truly universal in its impact and appeal. Vallejo considers tragedy as the finest expression of our struggle to liberate ourselves from the shackles that enslave us. Some of these shackles are external and internal while other are social and personal. The main impediments to the emancipation from these shackles are self-deception and unwillingness to face the harsh realities of life. In Vallejo's thinking tragedy does not indicate any deep-rooted pessimism but rather a hope that springs from the desperate situation. While Goethe's idea of tragedy is based on impossibility of finding solution Vallejo's is based on desperate hope. This concept of tragedy found in Goethe is beautifully summarized: Thus, in essence, Mephistopheles is as powerless in the second part of the tragedy as he was in the first (Funke, Brown, and King 112). So compared to Goethe, his concept of tragedy is broadly hopeful in a hopeless situation. Placed in the historic context of Spain his tragedies reflect his understanding of the nature of history and offers hope, though a remote hope to his audience, that all have to collaborate in shaping a better future. El tragaluz (The Basement Window 1967) demonstrates the effect of the civil war on society and individual. The drama unfolds in the dark basement of an apartment where a family is forced to take refuge at the end of the war. Since history is a continuum, investigators from a future century interrogate the family members. The spectators watch the play that takes place actually in the minds of the characters. Since the investigators are from a future century the spectators themselves are forced to examine their own guilt. Vallejo forces a message of solidarity with all the people who lived in the past and who will live in the future. What begins as a portrayal of the Spanish society in the Franco era, soon unfolds as a painful investigation of the human condition. The trauma that is experienced by all the Spaniards after the Spanish civil war is brought out forcefully in El tragaluz. At the same time he suggests that the Spaniards should come to terms with what had happened to them and work out ways of establishing new relation with one another. The years following the death of Franco in 1975 were a turning point in Spanish poetry. A couple of notable developments mark this era. There was a vehement reaction to the intellectualism and avant-garde spirit of poets of early 1970s. This resulted poetic composition based on poetry of experience. However the most significant development took place in 1980s with the appearance on the scenario of a group of women poets. For the first time women take center stage in Spanish poetry. Their poetry was daring in theme and often calls in question the beaten track vies on gender and human sexuality. Ann Rossetti's poetica erotica have been specially noted for the impact on the reading public. Indeed the appearance of women as poets had to compete with the times. With the boom of audio-visual media poets were somewhat marginalized in Spain as elsewhere in the world. In this hostile climate it is daring feat that Rossetti and writers like Garcia Montero remained a pivotal part of the culture of contemporary Spain. The salient feature of Rossetti's poetry is indeed its blatant eroticism. This she does in a luxuriant style choosing images even from contemporary advertisement. The poem under our study, Indicios Vehementes (Vehement Signs)(1985) is a striking example of her daring experiment in employing familiar examples from the advertisement media. The end of the Franco regime gave opportunity for poets to engage in open discussion on hitherto forbidden themes. Perhaps generation of sex-starved Spaniards was only happy to find their poets indulging in themes shunned by the earlier poets. When Rossetti explored the nature of human desire in such stylistic brilliance, the Spaniards only welcomed it. The prevalent eroticism and the revolutionary exploration of male body as an object of attraction have lead many to think that sexual theme is the forte of Rossetti.Indeed there is the celebration of the man right handsome in the works of the author however the extraordinary artistry with which she has employed language and allusion for bringing out her themes are some times lost on the reader. According to Debicki, Rossetti's early poetry is fundamentally and artfully allusive, intertextual, perspectival, and distancing, dependant for its effect and range on a number of ways of juggling and counterposing diverse echoes, sources, texts, planes of reality, and forms of expression to create unique experiences for its readers. (89) The poem, Indicios Vehementes, is strewn with many examples of this approach. Cibeles ante la Ofrenda Anual de Tulipanes [Cybele at the Annual Offering of Tulips], shows the use of allusions and intertexts. Apparently the poem constitutes the evocation of a speaker's sensual attraction to a tulip. But the power of description strongly impersonates a female sexual desire for a male: Like rings, my breasts enclose you, I join them, you get incrusted in me, my lips open slightly and a drop appears on your purple apex. In this poem the use of Cybele as the speaker creates distance from the present century and shows that woman's sensuality as old as the world. This makes the images of female desire one of the many archetypal patterns that is hidden in the inner most self of woman from time immemorial. Rossetti's deliberate message to her readers is that the hitherto suppressed libido of the Spaniard in the Franco era is nothing to be shy off but is only part of the archetypal pattern that Jung asserted in his works. Perhaps Rossetti believed that archetypes indicate the need to live by its dictates by integrating it in our self. Evans quoting of Jung adequately sums up this drive. For instance, the way in which a man should behave is expressed by an archetype. (Evans 47). Rossetti uses classical intertexts and allusions in poems of Indicios Vehementes. In Paris, the reference to the Greek hero and his meeting of the three goddesses who wanted him to select the most beautiful, while dramatizing the situation also reveals the sublimel quest for the ideal male: Sprouting around you the gladiolus, anal key, perennial violator, and three goddesses want to bite with you the apple By great subtlety the meaning of the mythic tale becomes a contest among Juno, Venus and Minerva for possessing the desirable male and a yearning for his favours. The golden apple is turned to a real apple making room for lot of sensual fantasy. In the rich Christian tradition of Spain the story also echoes the apple Eve gifted Adam with. In Christian tradition often the apple alluded to the consummation of sexual love of our first parents. Though Biblical scholars debate what the apple in the book of Genesis stands for, in the popular mind the images of sexual delight is entrenched in the tasting of the forbidden fruit. (Genesis). The long Catholic tradition in Spain and the rule of Franco might have created a society, which is inhibited. In the works of Vallejo there is the dissenter who stands in the periphery of society and prescribes remedy for the evils of the society that has neither seen freedom nor peace for many decades. In the poems of Rossetti we can see the new emerging Spanish woman who is not ready to swallow the ancient theory of Spanish machismo always glorified from the male point view only. The reading of these authors while gives us a glimpse of the post-modern and post-Franco Spain, also tells us the myriad ways in which literature is a true reflection of life. ============= Works cited. Barr, Shepherd. Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890-1900. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. Brown Calvin, Funke Eric and King Rolf. Goethe on Human Creativeness, and Other Goethe Essays. University of Georgia Press.Athens.1950 Debicki, Andrew P. "Intertextuality and Subversion: Poems by Ana Rossetti and Amparo Amors." Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 17, no. 2 (1993): 173- 80. Evans Richard.Conversations with Carl Jung and Reactions from Ernest Jones.D.Van Nostrand Company.Princeton.1964 Foster, William David. Spanish Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes: A Bio- Critical Sourcebook.Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Revised standard Version of the Bible Shaw Bernard. Shaw on Theatre, ed. E. J. West. New York: Hill & Wang, 1959 Read More