[In the following essay, Macklin traces how the private and political intersect to create the tragedy in Buero Vallejo's Jueces en la noche.]

Jueces en la noche (1979)¹ may not be one of Buero Vallejo's best plays, but it is the one which most directly engages with the issues of the day, namely, the political dangers besetting the Spanish state in the immediate post-Franco era.² On one level, then, it is an overtly political play, dealing with the transition from the old to the new order and with the difficult accommodations which established politicians have to make in order to survive. This fundamental theme is set in the context of the rise of the Left, the continued power of the Right and, above all, the threat of terrorist violence to the stability of the new democratic institutions. This engagement with actuality on Buero's part has attracted both criticism and praise; criticism, because it is felt that the theatre is not the place for political statements, praise, because it is an act of moral courage to deal with such issues on the contemporary stage. At the same time it is important to recognise that, as in all of Buero's work, the play's exploration of problems confronting the collectivity is firmly rooted in the portrayal of the individual and his tragic dilemma. In Jueces en la noche private and public interact in conformity with the dramatist's assertion, in a phrase with unmistakable Unamunian resonances, that in all his artistic endeavour “lo social nos interesa por cómo repercute en seres concretos de carne y hueso”.³

Jueces en la noche was written in 1978 and 1979 and received its first performance in the Teatro Lara in Madrid on 2nd October 1979. The immediate reaction was not favourable. Alberto Fernández Torres and Moisés Pérez Coterillo described the play as “una incómoda y patética confesión de impotencia teatral”,⁴ and Fernández Torres, writing alone, claims that Buero has put himself into “un claro callejón sin salida” and that the play is flawed technically.⁵ For this critic the language is careless, the staging conventional, the use of dream sequences excessive and clumsy, and all the characters save the protagonist are portrayed with a rigidity and coldness which deprive them of all authenticity and vitality. Fernández Torres' real concern, however, is that Jueces en la noche aims to be a political play but has no statement to make on politics. The issue is rather “la de un conflicto ético entre un hombre agobiado por sus muchas contradicciones y su mala conciencia”, with the result that we are faced with “un texto agarrotado, que intenta impotentemente decir algo sobre la política, cuando lo único que puede decir es algo sobre la moral”. Moreover, the play says precisely the opposite of what it intends to say: a political reading will lay the blame for the failure of democracy on the centre, whereas the theatrical reading shows an individual struggling with his conscience and being justified, indeed being absolved, “ante la Historia”. This is a curious commentary upon the play, to say the least. For one thing, it is difficult to see how a political and a theatrical reading can be separated, or even defined, and, for another, how a man's conscience and the “presente histórico-político” can be conflated. One might be forgiven for thinking that Fernández Torres is attempting to be over-subtle. Nevertheless, one has no difficulty in accepting the notion of the play's moral dimension, although one would want to argue that this is a strength, not a weakness. Buero Vallejo is not making an original political statement in the sense of a commentary on contemporary events—major writers rarely do—but he is drawing on an immediate set of political circumstances in order to dramatise a clash of values and to explore the interrelated questions of guilt, responsibility and punishment. What one might concede is that the political references are a little too intrusive in a play which purports to be the artistic representation of an acute personal dilemma. At the same time, questions of guilt and responsibility lie at the heart of Buero's analysis of post-Franco society, and the crucial point of convergence between the theatre and politics is their mutual concern with role-playing, with the mask. In Buero's previous play, La detonación, the protagonist Larra, as he puts the pistol to his head, looks at his own image and asks himself who he is: “Ahora comprendo que también es una máscara. Dentro de un minuto la arrancaré … y moriré sin conocer el rostro que esconde …, si es que hay algún rostro. Quizá no hay ninguno. Quizá sólo hay máscaras”.⁶ The role that one is called upon to play in life is, of course, corrosive of authenticity and it is the falseness at the root of human affairs, and hence their fundamental unreality, which forms the theme of Jueces en la noche, and nowhere is it more clearly seen than in the political sphere.

While Jueces en la noche is far from being a political tract, the political positions portrayed in it are relatively straightforward. Juan Luis Palacios, a former minister under the Régimen, is now a centrist deputy whose main aim is to hold on to his political position, but is unable to free himself from the phantoms of his past, a past in which his private life and public role, as a result of an unscrupulous, though hidden, deceit, are inextricably intertwined. The main action of the play concerns the slow and painful revelation of this secret, namely, that Juan Luis had used his dubious right-wing associations to trick his wife into marrying him by alienating her from her boyfriend, a left-wing activist. This act of deception returns to destroy his present life, although it is clear that his marriage, conceived in falsehood, was vitiated from the outset. Here we find a classic Buerian theme, that in the moral order acts of wrong-doing will inevitably haunt their perpetrator and that relationships can only prosper if they are genuine and authentic. The return of the agent of his deception, Ginés Pardo, apparently planning an act of political assassination, offers Juan Luis the opportunity to act honourably and restore the moral order, but he is prevented by the fear that his wife will leave him if the truth of their marriage is revealed. This dilemma is thus explored in the context of a very real political situation, the early years of Spain's tentative emergence from dictatorship to democracy. The fragility of the new order and the reality of Buero's fears about the survival of the new institutions were confirmed in less than two years in the attempted coup of 23-F. The forces that characterised Spanish society of the late 1970s are represented emblematically in a number of characters: Padre Anselmo (the Church), D. Jorge (capitalism, the business world), Un General (the Army), Cristina (the Left), Ginés Pardo (the militant Right), Julia (the apolitical middle class) and, as we have seen, Juan Luis himself (the politically opportunist centre).

The symbolic nature of the characters is made manifest from an early stage (and, if early reviews of the play are to be believed, the nature of the acting tended to emphasise this) when Anselmo calls the general and says “La Iglesia tiene que decirle algo a la Milicia” (p. 39), thereby reminding the audience of the alliance of Church and Army in Franco's Spain as well as of the power of the Church and the idea of Spain as a unified Catholic State. Indeed, the general recalls the ideal of the Christian soldier (“fiel cristiano y velando las armas”). The General, in fact, plays no major role in the play other than to be assassinated (or perhaps more accurately to signify the assassinated general). The priest, on the other hand, plays a major role in the second act. As we have seen, Juan Luis suspects strongly that Ginés Pardo is in Madrid to organise an assassination in order to destabilise the country and provoke a right-wing coup, but is afraid to go to the authorities lest his wife learn, through Pardo's confession, the truth about the past. This crisis of conscience leads him to consult Padre Anselmo. Juan Luis's Catholicism is rooted in his upbringing and naturally forms part of his fundamental conservatism. It is embodied in the presence of the large crucifix in his room, but it is a Catholicism which is outward and conventional and Julia casts serious doubts on its sincerity: “No cree en nada, salvo en Dios … si es que en realidad cree en El” (p. 83). If this is so, then religion is part of the social fabric and hence Juan Luis goes to the priest to seek confirmation or justification of the course of action he wishes to take. The Church can find justification for all kinds of actions depending on the circumstances. As an illustration, it is evident that Juan Luis once shared the attitudes of Ginés Pardo: “La agresividad nos parecía un deber, una defensa de España contra la subversión”, a position which Anselmo can qualify as “fanatismo, a veces bien intencionado” (pp. 106–07). The priest speaks using the typical formulae of the Church, which signifies unoriginal thinking and narrow-mindedness, but he can still recognise Juan Luis's sophistry and point it out to him, despite Juan Luis's desire to keep the whole issue on an abstract level. Nevertheless, the Church's capacity for prevarication is apparent, as is its desire to preserve the social order of which the family is the cornerstone. Political circumstances may change, but “la integridad de la familia cristiana debe defenderse a toda costa, en bien de nuestra fe y de la estabilidad social” (p. 109). Juan Luis can read this as an indication that he should do nothing. At the very least, Anselmo's advice is ambiguous and the interview serves to underline the moral impotence of the Church. Anselmo himself is aware of this when he contacts Juan Luis after the assassination and both seek justification. To Anselmo's question “¿se decidió dar algún aviso?” Juan Luis replies “Usted no me lo recomendó”, to which the priest further replies “¡Tampoco se lo desaconsejé! … ¡Yo le remití a su conciencia!” (p. 140).

The telephone conversation also raises a point about terrorism which is a recurrent theme in the play. Anselmo accepts the conventional view that terrorism is the weapon of the left, but the ensuing dialogue expounds the thesis that the right have a vested interest in creating this scenario:

P. ANSELMO: (Distante) Rece mucho, hijo. Todos tenemos que rezar para que la extrema izquierda no nos lleve al caos.

J. LUIS: No olvide que la extrema insania no es exclusiva de ese campo. No olvide a los militantes de izquierda asesinados últimamente … y años atrás.

P. ANSELMO: No lo olvido. Pero hechos como el de hoy imponen la evidencia: terroristas de la izquierda. No lo dude.

J. LUIS: Aunque así sea, puede haber alguien detrás

(p. 140).

This is merely a repetition of what he had said earlier to Ginés Pardo: “Algo que parezca ejecutado por revolucionarios, y que acaso lo lleven a cabo verdaderos fanáticos de la extrema izquierda …, porque en sus organizaciones hayan sabido infiltrarse hábiles agentes como tú” (p. 74). This is indeed the role played by Ginés Pardo, a former policeman and agent provocateur, who appears in the first dream sequence in the play. Present, though initially passive, he re-enacts, in a flashback, his role in the destruction of Julia's relationship with Fermín Soria. This scene reveals the sinister relations of power under the dictatorship in which Juan Luis's right-wing allegiances are made clear, firstly through his father (“Medalla individual en la Cruzada y miembro de la Casa Militar de su Excelencia”), then through his employer (“Sanz Moles. Ya sabe, fundador del partido”), and finally through the fraternal solidarity of the victors of the Civil War (p. 48). Ginés Pardo's presence suggests the secret police, detention, interrogation and torture, all employed to “defender la paz de España” (p. 50), and is intended to indicate the continued existence and clandestine power of right-wing elements: “Organizaciones de ultra-derecha, policías paralelas del exterior …” (p. 72), with whom some sectors of the police are in sympathy, if not connivance: “Nunca son tan eficientes mis antiguos compañeros, entre otras razones porque algunos no quieren serlo” (p. 74). In a moment of candour, Juan Luis admits his real political beliefs, which continue to be rooted in a non-democratic past and from which even Ginés Pardo, in a spirit of “Hay que adaptarse a la nueva situación” (p. 72), has evolved: “Ahora todos tenemos que jugar esta partida miserable de la democracia, pero con la esperanza de recobrar un día la España verdadera. Y si para ello hay que llegar a la violencia, Dios nos perdonará” (p. 72). Ultimately Ginés Pardo, although involved in political activity for mercenary ends, comes to recognise the emptiness of political ideals and accept that all sides fundamentally are self-seeking and that personal motive and ambition always take precedence over professed beliefs:

Yo tuve mis ideales, que eran los tuyos. ¿Y qué he visto durante años y años? Que todos los traicionabais. Por dinero, por ambición o por subsistir. En toda esa gentuza de la izquierda no se podía creer; pero resultaba que tampoco se podía creer en los nuestros. (Baja la voz) El mejor de todos, un farsante

(p. 142).

From a different perspective Julia is equally cynical about politics, as her initial dialogue with Cristina makes clear: “Toda la política es una engañifa” (p. 54). Cristina, however, is the voice of radicalism and revolt in the play and makes the most potent political intervention in the play when she says: “No vale dar la espalda a los problemas que nos acosan” (p. 56).⁷ For her, Julia has the luxury of despising politics and hers is essentially the argument of the Right and one which permits the status quo to continue. To be cynical or devoid of interest implies acquiescence. Cristina sees this in part as a legacy of the regime, which cultivated apathy among the population, but also led to political immaturity among the committed, who are victims of “impaciencia, oportunismo, sectarismo” (p. 56). But Cristina still believes in the possibility of change and is conscious of the need to guard against the forces standing against it, those who are aided by terrorism. Democracy can be blamed for instability when there is still “mucho nostálgico de la dictadura” (p. 80) on the part of those who wish to “asustar el país con el coco rojo” (p. 56). Julia's disillusionment is of course largely due to the circumstances of her life which is characterised by emptiness (“años vacíos”, “insustancial”) and lack of idealism caused by her conviction that Fermín betrayed both her and his colleagues: “Desde entonces no he podido creer en nadie ni en nada” (p. 85). In other words, the personal and the political are entwined in her relationship with Juan Luis Palacios.

Juan Luis is the classic politician of the “transición”, the former minister trying to find a role and hold on to his position. What he most fears is obscurity and in the first dream sequence he sees his guests make their excuses and depart since they recognise that “Está hundido” (p. 44). It is an insecurity which is inherent in politics but is even more acute in Palacios' case because of his past, revealed in the reconstructed scene involving himself, Ginés Pardo and Julia. In a sense, Juan Luis is a prisoner of his time, his allegiances formed in “la atmósfera de triunfalismo y de privilegios en que crecí” (p. 153), the ambivalence of his new position seen in his unwitting use of “procuradores” instead of “diputados”, and in his uncertainty as to which political grouping to belong. His rumoured intention of joining the Socialists cannot be separated from Cristina's revelation of the electoral gains being made by the Left. Indeed, Juan Luis's desire to be all things to all men is evident in his appropriation of historically incompatible affiliations: “Católico, liberal y socialista” (p. 59). His new socialist leanings have also to be seen in relation to his associations with the business world and also in his hard-headed and prophetic observation in the context of Spanish socialism that “las decisiones de la alta politica no se pueden tomar ignorando los grandes poderes económicos” (p. 62). In fact, it is to Don Jorge that he confides his thoughts about a change of party not in order to “abandonar la moderación” but to “ocupar áreas que no debemos dejar escapar” (p. 87) and to dilute the worst tendencies of socialism by making it come to terms with “la economía del mercado y el incentivo de beneficios legítimos” (p. 88). Curiously, Don Jorge in the dream sequences is given the role of Fermín's father in which he represents the voice of the vanquished of the Civil War and of the oppressed under the dictatorship. His son and Eladio González, to whose execution Juan Luis had agreed, represent the militant opposition and their strength resides in their capacity to resist and oppose. This is their victory: “decir ‘no’ es vencer” (p. 98). Their victory is a personal one and in it lies the hope for a more humane future against the dark impersonal forces which seem to intervene anonymously in human affairs. The argument that the system is too complex to identify personal responsibility is Don Jorge's justification. The idealist seems naive to the sophisticated man of the world:

Ni usted ni yo somos niños. Los dos sabemos que en el mundo actúan intereses poderosos y que a veces no vacilan en recurrir a métodos reprobables … Cumplamos honestamente nuestro trabajo sin especular demasiado acerca de esas oscuras fuerzas, con las que quizá estemos condenados sin saberlo a fatales conexiones, dada la intricada estructura de la economía moderna

(p. 137).

There is a fundamental divide, however unreal, between the two sides and in the ideology of the right the battle against the left is a war against evil which threatens all the traditional values. As the violinist points out to Juan Luis, he has created his own undoing: “Y eres tú quien sigue enarbolando como un garrote el fantasma de las Españas” (p. 163). So whereas Don Jorge expresses the view that Juan Luis's time has come (“la patria te va a necesitar” [p. 159]) while his personal life is ruined, the violinist sees clearly that “no creo que tú puedas ayudar a nuestra patria … Tu pasado te lo impide” (p. 163).

While Jueces en la noche may ultimately concern the personal tragedy of a man who is destroyed by his own ambition, it nonetheless makes a coherent statement on political conditions in contemporary Spain which, while in no sense original, correctly identifies the forces at work and the vital issues at stake to the extent of being, in a sense, prophetic. To that extent we can agree with Carlos Muñiz's assessment of Buero as a committed writer: “El escritor está comprometido en la medida en que se pone en contacto con los problemas de su tiempo y adopta, frente a ellos, actitudes radicalmente críticas. En este sentido no se puede negar a Buero su condición de autor comprometido”.⁸ Drama, however, is not made of political statements alone and it is now necessary to see how this context underpins and indeed embodies a characteristically Buerian modern tragic vision. In fact, Buero views the tragic dimension of his work as a safeguard against its falling into pure propaganda or, for that matter, merely committed literature. If it is excessively affirmative a work “se saldría del marco de la tragedia para entrar en el de la propaganda doctrinal”.⁹ Even on the level of politics, Jueces en la noche transcends its immediate historical context to embody more universal concerns—the nature of democracy, the interaction of private and public, freedom and historical inevitability, the workings of power. Thus, while Buero wishes his audience to see in his work a reflection of their own times, he also wishes them to consider individual, as well as national, destinies, and to recognise the inevitability of suffering in human affairs.

While it is undeniable that the contemporary political and social dimension of Jueces en la noche forms part of its impact, no play by Buero has ever limited itself to a specific time or restricted its relevance to a call for a specific kind of social action. He makes this clear in his essay on the nature of tragedy: “si ante una obra de tema social de nuestros días el espectador sólo experimenta deseos de actuación inmediata y no se plantea—o siente—con renovada viveza el problema del hombre y de su destino, no es una tragedia lo que está viendo” (T, 67–8). If, up until now, we have seen Juan Luis simply as the embodiment of the unscrupulous politician, it is important to recognise that he is not a unidimensional creation devised simply to carry the weight of an ideology which is the object of the playwright's critical focus. In fact, in the case of Juan Luis it is probably inappropriate to speak of an ideology at all. Juan Luis is disembodied of conviction, “no tiene nada dentro” (p. 83), in Julia's words. But he is a complex individual whose identity has disintegrated into the roles he is called upon to perform and who seeks a core of being in an authentic relationship with another being, although he himself has condemned that relationship to inauthenticity from the start. Juan Luis is essentially divided between his inner self and his public projection, not only in the sense of the external image of the politician, but also in the sense of the pathetic reality of his life which is hidden behind the façade of his public success. In the words of Luis Iglesias Feijóo, he is “un personaje complejo, dubitativo por debajo de su aparente seguridad y contradictorio”,¹⁰ and this makes the play ultimately more compelling in terms of its dramatic conflict. If Juan Luis's public self is located in history, his intimate self is revealed in the manifestation of his agony. Buero dramatises the inner torment of his protagonist as he wrestles with his past, his conscience and his unshakeable feelings of guilt. The judges who come to interrogate him in the dream sequences are his own creation and the interplay of dream and reality is also the persistence of the past in the present. We could in fact say that the reality of the political world is unreal whereas the dream scenes are those which are most real. This technique, as well as Juan Luis's monologues, objectifies the inner forces to which he is subject and provides the dynamics of the dramatic action. On the structure of the play, Gregorio Torres Nebrera writes: “Jueces en la noche se construye mediante sucesivos enfrentamientos dialécticos, en varios planos y en diversas direcciones, que van delimitando las responsabilidades de un pasado—el de Juan Luis y Julia—cuando se enfrentan con un presente crítico que exige actitudes de diverso signo moral”.¹¹

The moral dimension is of course a constant in Buero's theatre and he himself has written: “La belleza estética no es una categoría divorciada por fuerza de la ética … Lo estético lleva implícitos con gran frecuencia valores éticos” (T, 68–9). The form of Jueces en la noche is carefully structured and crafted in order to provide a series of perspectives on the question of responsibility for one's actions and for the consequences of those actions.

That the consequences of Juan Luis's actions are tragic in the broad sense is undeniable, for death and suffering, essential ingredients of any tragic work, are integral parts of it. What we are concerned with, however, is not any rigid formal notion of tragedy, but a combination of elements which may be said to constitute a tragic vision. These may be seen to be fate, guilt, death, suffering and recognition, and must operate in a sufficiently complex and awe-inspiring way to produce in the spectator the appropriate tragic emotions of pity and terror. For this to occur, it is important that the tragic hero should stand above ordinary man, that his fall should in some way be momentous. It is not easy to concede the title of hero to Juan Luis Palacios, though his eminence as a public figure makes his plight more dramatic. What does border on the tragic is that curious interaction of character and circumstance which is essential to tragedy in the idea that the tragic figure in some measure contributes to his own downfall. While Juan Luis is a prisoner of the society into which he is born, he also makes the choices which eventually shape his destiny. Tragedy implies a view of human existence where the threat of suffering is always present, and this suffering is neither willed nor totally unmotivated. This paradoxical quality is central to the tragic vision, which is founded on tensions and ambiguities. Characters are forced to make decisions and choices upon which their future happiness depends, but these choices involve of necessity either sacrifice or conflict with the desires of other people. Such situations are the seed-bed of tragedy and for them to occur it is necessary for the tragic hero to be in some way divided within himself. To undergo the truly tragic experience, he must attain a growth of self-knowledge, a state of recognition. Arguably, this recognition is to be found only in Julia, for Juan Luis is always aware of his dilemma and seeks merely a way out of it. By making Juan Luis so manifestly guilty, Buero robs him of the potential to be great tragic figure. Recognition can of course be transferred from the characters to the audience or spectator, and it is in this sphere that Buero Vallejo makes his particular contribution to a concept of modern tragedy.

Buero's views on tragedy are relatively straightforward and he has expounded them in several of his essays, most notably in “La tragedia”, to which I have already made reference, published in 1958. His fundamental idea that tragedy and hope are not incompatible underscores his thinking to such an extent that David Johnston can write: “The phrase ‘tragedia esperanzada’ has become emblematic of his theatre as a whole”.¹² His essay “La tragedia” is an extended justification of this notion of “tragedia esperanzada”, drawing on Greek tragedy both in its formal characteristics and also on what he sees as its essential spirit, the recognition of suffering leading to a greater humanity and dignity. In many of his plays, this vision is made explicit, but in Jueces en la noche, concerned as it is with the inauthenticity of contemporary politics, it is revealed more obliquely. Arguably, the recognition is on the part of the spectator rather than of the characters themselves. This is the special meaning Buero gives to dramatic catharsis: “La catarsis no es ya descarga, sino mejora” (T, 67). The awakening of pity and terror, and their sublimation, lead us to “actitudes humanas de valor permanente”, and is therefore an ennobling experience. Morality, as we have implied already, is inseparable from Buero's tragic vision and in his essay he in fact writes of “la moral trágica” (T, 68). He accepts the Greek idea of error followed by punishment, hubris leading to nemesis, and therefore acknowledges man's complicity in his own downfall. While there may be at work some inscrutable fate, a set of unavoidable circumstances, this is only part of the pattern for, in Buero's words, “el destino no es ciego ni arbitrario, y … no sólo es en gran parte creación del hombre mismo, sino … a veces, éste lo domeña” (T, 69). To violate the moral order is to court suffering. In this way, Buero does not conceive freedom and fate as opposites, but as existing in a dialectical relationship. It is not a simple pattern of cause and effect, for often man's actions are ambivalent and their consequences can be similarly ambivalent. Tragedy is born in this imprecise area of the conflict and interaction of partial truths and so when he describes tragedy as “el género más moral” (T, 71), he is not advocating moralistic or didactic writing in a narrow sense, but rather seeks through drama “una aproximación positiva a la intuición del complicadísimo orden moral del mundo” (T, 71). If the protagonist is brought to this kind of awareness, it is possible to speak of a happy ending to tragedy: “El protagonista sabe, o llega a aprender por la fecunda lección del dolor, la fuerza desencadenante de la reflexión” (T, 73). In this way, Buero denies the existence of a pessimistic vision in tragedy and, as Derek Gagen shows, he has been immersed in the debate between optimism and pessimism which goes back to the early nineteenth century.¹³ The dramatist's view is quite simple: if the vision presented in a play is irredeemably bleak, then there is no stimulus for struggle and change; if it is too positive, it will not engage the audience. True tragedy is built upon the tension between these two poles, it is engendered by “la fe que duda” (T, 77). This dialectic is inherent in both the political sphere, and also in the realm of individual self-affirmation, and is thus doubly applicable to Jueces en la noche. One of the ways in which Buero distinguishes tragedy from pessimism is his belief that it can contribute to an improvement in the human situation rather than be a simple exposition of life's suffering: “la tragedia representa en el terreno del arte un heroico acto por el que el hombre trata de comprender el dolor y se plantea la posibilidad de superarlo sin rendirse a la idea de que el dolor y el mundo que lo partean sean hechos arbitrarios. No hay pesimismo más radical que el de dar por segura la falta de sentido del mundo” (T, 75). In fact, Buero firmly believes in an underlying moral order which can be perceived in the enactment of the dramatic work through the behaviour and interaction of individuals in moments of extreme tension and conflict. In the case of Jueces en la noche death itself is seen as a kind of triumph and a re-establishment of the moral order in that, as we shall see, it functions both as a kind of poetic justice wrought against the guilty and as a liberation offered as a kind of hope to the victim. Such an order can pertain only to the ideal world of art but it holds out to the audience the prospect of a more human set of values by which life can be organised. In this way Buero sets out to show that man's complicity with human destiny can be organised for his good and that fate is not an abstract force but is created by man's own actions. “La tragedia”, he writes, “intenta explorar de qué modo las torpezas humanas se disfrazan de destino.”¹⁴

Although she is not the prime mover of the action, Julia is perhaps the most tragic figure in the play. Her willingness to believe in the charade enacted by Juan Luis and Ginés Pardo undermines her faith in Fermín and leaves her completely disillusioned. Her dignity resides in the fact that she is prepared to face this reality without evasion: “Prefiero la tristeza a la mentira” (p. 56), and thus immediately emerges as morally superior to her husband. The irony is that her sadness is based upon a lie, and therefore her present is founded upon an unreal past. Her whole life is past-directed, as she herself recognises both in her words: “Sé que no tengo futuro porque veo sólo el pasado” (p. 91), and in her actions: she seeks out Cristina, returns to the student café, refuses to move on. Julia's belief in Fermín's betrayal led to her death to the world. Her remark “Y ahora estoy tan muerta como tú” (p. 67) is a recognition of this and also a premonition of her actual death at the end of the play. When the play opens, it is as if the intervening twenty years have not occurred and now the significance of the original events is being unravelled. Part of Cristina's function in the play is to bring Julia to a new awareness.

Julia, however, has become so identified with her error that there is no other reality for her. Despite Cristina's assurance that “atreverse a cambiar es empezar a curar” (p. 92), to change would be to destroy the role she has created for herself. From this point on the past becomes ever more present in Julia's life, though it is progressively reconstructed. The key point in her transformation is after the assassination of the general and the visit of Ginés Pardo to Juan Luis, when she does realise that her husband had deceived her. A recurrent theme is the melodramatic nature of the deceit: “una historia de tebeo”, “mi tragedia de veintiún años ha sido un folletín” (p. 152), and this recognition puts the wider tragedy in perspective. What is known as “la tragedia española” was converted, through official propaganda, into a “retórica y topiquera película de buenos y malos” and in this climate it was easy to adopt the same device “para hacer de mi pobre tragedia de señorita burguesa otro folletín” (p. 153). In this frame of mind, devoid of self-pity, Julia is brought to a recognition of her own guilt. If Juan Luis's deceit led to the destruction of all three of them, Julia herself had not enough strength or faith to resist. Her fear of Fermín's way of life and her passive acceptance of Juan Luis's version are the two main elements of her complicity: “Los dos lo matamos” (p. 154). She had fallen into guilt by doing the apparently guiltless thing. Julia reaches her moment of tragic recognition: “Ya me he iluminado”, “Lo veo todo tan claro” (p. 133), and her acceptance of her own error, her own guilt, leads to her death through suicide and to the final scene of the play where, in the poetic world of the theatre, a proper order is restored. Julia finally recovers her true identity.

Juan Luis too has a false identity. On one level this is part of his protean nature as a politician, taken to an extreme in the telling phrase: “Cuando la libertad es mayor hay que ser más hipócritas” (p. 72), and in different situations he adopts a series of personae. But the play itself opens with a false identity for Juan Luis, portraying him as a doctor, happily married with two children. In the opening dream sequence, he appears to appropriate the identity of Fermín Soria, just as he had usurped his role as Julia's partner. The theme of identity is further developed in the mystery surrounding the two musicians and in the absence of the third member of the trio. The sense of unease and strangeness which characterises the opening sequence is paralleled by the sense of order and harmony when the scene is re-enacted at the end of the play. In between, the gradual revelation of both the secret and of the relationships between the various identities provides the means of unravelling the mystery of the play. In fact, Buero gave his play the subtitle “Misterio profano”, which naturally evokes the medieval mystery tradition, although without religion in the sense of a specifically Christian dimension. Given Buero's views on the ethical nature of drama, it is difficult not to think also of the morality plays and of the notion of theatre as being in some way corrective and recuperative. Nevertheless, the underlying belief in meaning, as opposed to pure chance and contingency, is fundamental, even if this can be only dimly apprehended, and here we shade into the other more obvious meaning of mystery. The tragic writer, observes Buero, “plantea una y otra vez el enigma del mundo y de su dolor precisamente porque lo cree enigma—cifra poseedora de significado—y no amargo azar. Si sus convicciones religiosas, filosóficas o sociales son concretas y positivas, el enigma poseerá sus claves y de simple enigma pasará a ser misterio” (T, 77). One way in which Buero conveys this sense of mystery and meaning is through the use of music, the March of Beethoven's Trio Serenata, which is used to begin and end the play, though with a different effect on each occasion. The trio of musicians performs the role of a Greek chorus, but they do not stand apart from the action and simply comment on it, for they are intimately involved in the action. In Buero's thinking on tragedy, the chorus, though different from the protagonists, is part of the action: “Nada, pues, de ‘espectador ideal’, sino actor. Pero, eso sí: actor colectivo” (T, 80). The chorus provides the link between the individual and the community.

The trio of course provides the title of the play, for they are the judges who appear in the night to haunt Juan Luis, and it is only at the end of the play that the identity of the third judge is made known. One way in which Buero interconnects the various identities is by giving Don Jorge a dual role, as a father-figure to Juan Luis and, in the dream sequences, as the father of Fermín. In this guise, he appears towards the end of the first part of the play as Juan Luis, in his altered state, approaches madness and, in another dream, is made aware of his responsibility for the death of the general. This is part of the symmetry of the play's treatment of the theme of revelation and concealment: both Fermín and Juan Luis kept silent but whereas Fermín's silence was an act of heroism and solidarity, Juan Luis's was based on fear and self-centredness. Cristina explains the destructive nature of Juan Luis's passion for Julia:

CRISTINA: … No me parece que puedas enorgullecerte de tu pasión por ella.

JUAN LUIS: Es lo más noble de mi vida.

CRISTINA: Tal vez. Pero es, sobre todo, tu fracaso … La quieres … porque, muy adentro, sientes que nunca la has conseguido. En tu cariño no hay abnegación, sino vanidad contrariada

(pp. 120–21).

At this point, Juan Luis's judges reappear and it is clear that it is he who calls them, that he is in fact his own judge. In the final scene, which takes place in some unreal world, the cellist implies that Palacios's constant seeking out of these judges, his constant visits to the place of the dead, means he is seeking his own escape through death. It is death in fact which provides the solution to this private and political tragedy. Buero wrote in “La tragedia” that “El último y mayor efecto moral de la tragedia es un acto de fe. Consiste en llevarnos a creer que la catástrofe está justificada y tiene un sentido” (T, 71), and earlier in the same essay, he wrote “La tragedia no sólo es temor, sino amor. Y no sólo catástrofe, sino victoria” (T, 69). The spectacle of human suffering offered in Jueces en la noche is far from being an edifying one. The moral cowardice of Juan Luis is heightened by its being located firmly within the world of opportunist politics, but the paradoxical convergence and divergence of his “yo íntimo” and his “yo público” underscores man's uncertain struggle between freedom and destiny as well as the audience's ambivalent reaction to the competing claims of “fe” and “duda”. If tragedy is to have the element of hope, the sense of underlying purpose which Buero perceives as being essential to its very nature, then death cannot be the sole outcome. That death must be set in some context suggesting a wider purpose or transcendence. In Jueces en la noche the dream element is made to provide this kind of denouement, for the same dreams that had been the substance of Juan Luis's tortured conscience become the scenario, in theatrical or artistic terms, for a positive reversal of the disruption of the moral order. The emptiness of Julia's life, which had been symbolised in the empty box containing no anniversary present, is filled in the other world. It is filled by the present of the viola which reveals Julia to be Juan Luis's third victim and final judge. This act completes the trio, thereby restoring the disrupted order, and also reunites Julia with her rightful partner as Juan Luis is enveloped in the obscurity he had feared all his political life. The pattern of tragic inevitability adumbrated in the opening stages of the play is allowed to work itself out but, in keeping with the fundamental tenets of Buerian tragedy, the vision of human suffering is firmly contained within a humanist ethic of purpose and perfectibility. Underlying it is an almost religious view of the interconnectedness of all things, “aquella intuición, muchas veces inefable, por la que el hombre advierte su dependencia de una grandiosa Unidad sin fronteras y que determina las más diversas actitudes religadoras con el mundo o con sus semejantes” (T, 83). Seen in this light, Jueces en la noche, as so many of Buero's works, stands as a powerful warning against the dangers, in both public and private affairs, of excessive awareness of the self and against the tragic consequences of its concomitant, the denial of selfhood to others. In true tragic fashion, Buero traces patterns of death in life but, as always, a spirit of affirmation pervades his work so that even in death life is made to triumph and tragedy, like la Marcha del Trío Serenata, asserts itself as “un himno a la vida, a la esperanza en el futuro” (p. 114).

Notes

1. All references are to Jueces en la noche, edited by Luis Iglesias Feijóo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1981), and are incorporated in the body of the text in the form of page references.

2. This is of course not surprising for the abolition of censorship led to increasing engagement with contemporary issues on Buero's part in successive plays, culminating in the rider, more typical of the cinema, attached to Música cercana (1989): “Los personajes y el argumento de esta obra son ficticios. Cualquier posible semejanza con personas y acontecimientos reales será casual y no debe entenderse como alusión a ellos”. Significantly, the writer's relation to censorship is the source of the dramatic conflict in La detonación (1977), Buero's first ‘democracy’ play.

3. “De mi teatro”, in Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 30 (1979), 222.

4. Pipirijaina, 11 (November-December, 1979), 30.

5. Insula, 396–97 (November-December, 1979), 31.

6. La detonación, edited by David Johnston (Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1989), 238.

7. This attitude is very reminiscent of that of Verónica in La llegada de los dioses (1978), whose words “Moriremos caminando” end the play in an exhortation not to despair but to hope in the face of apparently impossible odds.

8. Carlos Muñiz, “Antonio Buero Vallejo, ese hombre comprometido”, in Estudios sobre Buero Vallejo, edited by Mariano de Paco, Los trabajos de la Cátedra de Teatro de Murcia, 2 (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1984), p. 17.

9. “La tragedia”, in El teatro, Enciclopedia del arte escénico, edited by Guillermo Díaz-Plaja (Barcelona: Noguer, 1958), pp. 63–87 (p. 86). All subsequent references to this work will be incorporated in the text in the form T, followed by page reference.

10. Luis Iglesias Feijóo, La trayectoria dramática de Antonio Buero Vallejo (Santiago de Compostela: La Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1982), p. 505.

11. Gregorio Torres Nebrera, “Construcción y sentido de Jueces en la noche de Antonio Buero Vallejo”, in Estudios sobre Buero Vallejo, p. 336.

12. David Johnston, Antonio Buero Vallejo, El concierto de San Ovidio, Critical Guides to Spanish Texts, 48 (London: Grant and Cutler, 1990), p. 91.

13. Derek Gagen, “The Germ of Tragedy: The Genesis and Structure of Buero Vallejo's El concierto de San Ovidio”, Quinquireme, 8 (1985), 37–52.

14. “Sobre teatro”, Cuadernos de Agora, 79–82 (May-August, 1963), 14.