Ana María Matute, one of Spain's most important novelists, recently observed that each author actually rewrites the same work through the continual elaboration of a few favorite subjects. This statement is particularly applicable to her own literature, with its limited number of themes and attitudes within a relatively large body of work. Time is one of these themes, and she explores it as a means of subtly transmitting her consistent literary philosophy.

Time is significant even as a simple plot element. The author endows her characters with an almost desperate awareness of the fleeting quality of the moment. The feeling appears most poignantly in the face of death, carrying with it an affirmation of life's values. (p. 282)

As if to emphasize the importance of the subject, Ana María Matute entitled her first collection of short stories El tiempo. The thematic basis of this book—the passage of time which implies destruction, the loss of affection or disillusionment—is echoed throughout her literary production. The most extensive novel, Los hijos muertos, spans three generations of the same family. Each character can see the ravages time has wrought in his older relatives, yet stands defenseless before the similar fate which awaits him. (pp. 282-83)

[Time] fits into the total picture as one of the key motifs correlative to other major themes, such as death, the question of one's existence, or the justification of man's place on earth. Yet time assumes another prominent place in these works, entering into the very interpretation of reality.

Ana María Matute's foremost concern is man and human nature, to which she attributes unchanging characteristics conveyed to the reader by fixed literary patterns. The interpretation of the eternal condition of mankind moves from a study of individual situations to a view of history, and both specific characters and the wider perspective of history—and this is history in the sense of private history, not great events—derive from an original notion of time. Time patterns hint at a dark side of life and emphasize man's unhappiness, loneliness and the difference between the reality of life and ideal possibilities. (p. 283)

Autoanalysis and retrospection, common devices in most of Matute's works, justify the complex counterpoint of past and present. Yet as the past surges up into the present, parallel episodes eerily meet, fused by the repetition of an action in the present that had already occurred in the past…. Such ironic repetition reminds the protagonist of the futility of his struggles and foreshadows a more complex interpretation of time.

[Certain] works move from the linear conception of history into the spiralling succession of events. For these investigations, the novelist turns to archetypes well known in Biblical history: the Cain and Abel pair. No less than seven works elaborate this theme, lifting the brothers out of the Biblical setting to deal with an unchanging action which fits contemporary behavior as easily as it does Old Testament literature…. The reiteration of the same attitude in these characters suggests a spiral conception of history, in which man's own nature traps him into committing the same actions. Ancient conflicts are thus brought up to date and differ only in their modern dress.

This idea is developed in Primera memoria. With a technique considerably more sophisticated than anything up to this point, Ana María Matute systematically confuses the past and present of the subject and the narrator, who are actually the same person. (pp. 283-84)

Primera memoria is the first novel of the trilogy Los mercaderes, a term also bearing on Matute's theory of human constants. It refers to the selfish side of man's nature; today's mercaderes (kin to those whom Christ drove from the temple) take advantage of others or even traffic in their own ideals….

The broadest significance of time patterns in the trilogy falls into place in the final novel, La trampa….

The time sequence in La trampa is inverted and fragmented through flashback, but here chronological time is secondary to a continuum which reveals the same mercaderes, the same heroes, and the same sacrifice, with very slight variations. As in the Cain-Abel story, the betrayal and sacrifice of Christ recurs enough to connect disparate incidents into a widening spiral of repetition within the eternal flow of time. (p. 285)

Temporal patterns emphasize generalizations on human nature; time also enters into the conception of character types in these works. The author's idea of her protagonists conforms to a curious set of time values which do not always agree with normal chronology. There is nothing unusual about her marked division between the periods of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, but the transition between these stages is occasioned by a strange timetable. Children grow suddenly when forced to abandon a world of fantasy and accept the harshness of reality. If they cannot adjust to the adult world or refuse to do so, they must die, and the mortality rate for children in these works is exceedingly high. (p. 286)

Adolescents incorporate an awareness of linear time in their lives; their past often appears in a nostalgia for their lost childhood; they attempt to define themselves in the present and look toward the future with hope. This period is an age of faith, but once his ideals are shattered, the youth moves into adulthood. (pp. 286-87)

The adult, on the other hand, returns to the child's position. He purposely creates his place in the eternal present. Disillusionment with life makes him apprehensive about the future; the past is a wound continually opened to torture him. (p. 287)

The success that Ana María Matute enjoys today is due in great part to the subjective nature of her literature, in which certain themes, ideas and archetypes appear with regularity. Also noteworthy are the strong impression of sincerity and the rich variety of style which conveys her ideas so adequately. By the synthesis of form and idea she constructs a novelistic world which deals with problems of man and human nature. One means of commentary on these problems is through time patterns. Human time contrasted with conceptual time; linear action as opposed to the spiral or circular notion of history are only a few of the aspects of her work which have intrigued her readers and helped to earn her the place as one of the most promising writers in Spain today. (pp. 287-88)