[In the following essay, Halsey discusses Buero Vallejo's techniques for exposing the human condition in his La Fundación and other plays.]

From En la ardiente oscuridad (1950) to La Fundación (1974) a paramount concern in the theater of Antonio Buero Vallejo has been alienation, our inability to face the tragic reality of the human condition. The dialectical struggle between tranquil blindness and painful awareness that occurs on both the socio-political and metaphysical levels characterizes all of Buero's dramas. However, it is in La Fundación that this struggle is seen in all of its complexity and where ideas presented in earlier dramas are developed most skillfully. Indeed this tragedy is one of Buero's most significant plays to date for both its ideas and dramatic technique. The reflections in the present paper constitute an interpretation of this drama and an attempt to situate it within Buero's theater.

Both the Center for the blind of En la ardiente oscuridad and the dark basement apartment of El tragaluz (1967) are microcosms of Spanish society and precursors of the prison cell of La Fundación. In their tranquil self-deception and unwillingness to confront the abnormality of their situation, the students of the first drama refuse to admit their blindness—an affliction that may be interpreted as both political and metaphysical. In accord with the former interpretation, the Center that, with its atmosphere of artificial gaiety and material comforts, inculcates an absurd optimism, represents any established order based on a lie. In this case the lie is that its citizens are normal, free, and happy.¹ By maintaining the illusion that all is well, this order denies its citizens responsibility for their own destiny. Furthermore, as we see with the murder of the rebel student Ignacio, it never hesitates to resort to violence when its authority is challenged. The same fiction, hypocrisy, and cheerful negation of reality are seen in El Concierto de San Ovidio (1962). Like the Center of En la ardiente oscuridad and the hospice of El Concierto, the basement apartment of El tragaluz also is a refuge from the “light,” in this case, the uncomfortable truth of certain tragic events that occurred in the family shortly after the end of the Civil War.

However, the alienation of contemporary Spanish society (or society in general) is nowhere more evident than in La Fundación, where, in a delusion, Tomás sees a squalid prison cell as a beneficent “Foundation” for writers and scientists. His absurd optimism is reminiscent of the attitude of the blind students of En la ardiente oscuridad. Self-interest and fear deform reality, and we often see luxury, comfort, and miraculous sunlit vistas where there are really only prison bars and death.

This blindness is not unlike the self-deception of Barnes, a National Security Policeman in La doble historia del doctor Valmy (1976), who convinces himself that torture of political prisoners is justified. This blindness is likewise similar to the deafness of the Grandmother, who refuses to hear the truth about Barnes' activities, and to the madness of two of Doctor Valmy's former patients, who inform us that the psychiatrist's story of torture and mutilation by Barnes is false or, at least, exaggerated. When we later learn that these same former patients once interrupted the doctor to call him a liar as he was telling the policeman's case history to fellow patients in an insane asylum, it becomes obvious that the patients, are we, the spectators of the play, as we are encouraged to share in this self-deception. As will become evident, the alienated characters of La Fundación, like those of La doble historia …, also include the spectators; for we, too, are invited to enter the hospitable “Foundation.” In both plays Buero makes it clear that those who refuse to believe in the existence of crimes, torture, suffering, and imprisonment are guilty of escaping into a world of illusion.

Buero himself has emphasized the influence of Calderón and especially Cervantes upon his theater—from En la ardiente oscuridad, the very first drama he wrote, to the one under consideration, which portrays the gradual confrontation with—and acceptance of—reality by the protagonist. Tomás' inner journey from illusion to reality parallels closely the change in attitude of the blind Carlos of En la ardiente oscuridad—proof of the basic unity of the playwright's theater. Like Don Quijote, Buero's alienated characters live in a world of illusion and deception that they themselves create and, like the former, they too must return to reality—as must also, in Buero's view, the spectators. Like Don Quijote or La vida es sueño, Buero's dramas describe “un proceso que podríamos llamar de desalienación. Seres sumergidos en una atmósfera irreal y engañosa terminan por llegar, con dolor, a la realidad, a la verdad.”² Many of Buero's characters, like Tomás of La Fundación, are victims of an alienation that permits them beautiful but illusory visions. Nevertheless they eventually achieve a lucid comprehension of reality. Unwilling at some point to confront their situation, they at last face harsh and terrible truths necessary to a solution of their problems.

At the beginning of La Fundación the action appears to take place in an elegant center for research, as we see a comfortable room with a view of a magnificent landscape with majestic mountains, green forests, and a silver lake that sparkle like jewels; at the end, we find ourselves in a prison cell and understand that the five major characters are not writers and scientists but prisoners condemned to death for activities against the established order—the circumstances of which are purposely left unspecified. As later becomes clear, this change in our perception is the result of the change in that of Tomás, as he gradually overcomes his alienation to perceive the same pathetic reality seen by the other condemned men. Tomás, who was arrested for distributing political propaganda and who revealed the name of a comrade when tortured—a betrayal that eventually resulted in the arrest of his cellmates—was incapable of facing the reality of his guilt. He therefore created an illusory world, a world without pain, torture or death, thus rejecting the truth for a lie. Buero suggests, in effect, that Tomás suffers from a type of schizophrenic delusion.

From the beginning of La Fundación the spectators see what Tomás sees in his delusion, as the curtain rises to reveal a room pleasantly furnished with fine crystal, silver, and linen as well as a television, magazines, a book of color reproductions of paintings, porcelain figurines, lamps, and leather armchairs. A picture window opens upon a luminous Turner landscape with far-off buildings resembling strange cathedrals. As its rainbow-hued light floods the room and the serene music of Rossini is heard on the stereo, we hardly notice the incongruously bare grey walls and polished concrete floor or the numbers on the shirts of the men who share the room with Tomás. Tomás states that these men are Tulio, an exceptional photographer, Max, an eminent mathematician, Lino, an engineer, and Asel, a doctor—all recipients of grants from the “Foundation.”

In La Fundación we perceive reality through the eyes of the protagonist. Just as we become blind to reality with the students of En la ardiente oscuridad or deaf with Goya in El sueño de la razón, we become alienated with Tomás. Through techniques of psychic participation or interiorization that have been termed “efectos de inmersión,” Buero often forces us to confront certain deficiencies of our own.³ This technique is particularly prominent in La Fundación.

The illusory reality into which we are plunged in La Fundación is not static but constantly changing. We begin by sharing the perplexities experienced by Tomás at certain words and gestures of his cell-mates that do not seem to correspond to the situation as he—and we ourselves—perceive it; and we end up by losing our confidence in his and our own vision. The playwright's purpose is to disconcert us with the contradiction between the world of Tomás and that of the other prisoners and thus to make us question the former by plunging us into a world of falsehood, so that we may slowly emerge into a world of truth. Buero's technique of portraying realistically the subjective and inner perceptions of his protagonist has been called the visualization of an interior monologue.⁴

Similar effects of interiorization have been utilized in El sueño de la razón; Buero not only makes us deaf with Goya (by having the other characters move their lips without uttering any sound when the latter is on stage) but lets us experience his terrifying obsessions and hallucinations. In Llegada de los dioses the dramatist blinds us in the conventional sense but lets us perceive the horrible threatening visions of the world experienced by the sightless Julio. Moreover, in such earlier plays as Irene o el tesoro, Casi un cuento de hadas (1953) and Mito, for at least brief moments we share visions experienced by alienated protagonists considered deranged by other characters. So common is alienation in contemporary society that, at the beginning of La Fundación, we feel little discomfort in sharing a vision not far removed from our own.

In La Fundación, one of Buero's most carefully structured dramas, it is Asel, the most mature and experienced of Tomás' cellmates who, with his skillful questions, undertakes gradually to “cure” Tomás by leading him to discover the lie represented by the “Foundation.” Like Dr. Valmy, Asel is clearly a surrogate for Buero himself—who is, as Sheehan has so aptly stated, the real “médico de su obra.”⁵ Under the guidance of Asel and with the acquiescence of the other prisoners, Tomás begins his slow journey to reality. He starts to demand explanations for strange occurrences that, he realizes, surprise only him and not his companions. For example, when Tulio attempts to amuse him by pretending to take pictures, the camera he thinks the latter is using disappears to be replaced by a simple metal cup; when the prisoners go through the motions of drinking beer, Max seems to take a drink without pouring it; the glasses Tulio pretends to remove while clearing the table are not the same ones that Tomás sees; the tobacco Tomás is sure he put into his pocket cannot be found; the lights, television, and stereo fail to function; and familiar objects disappear or are replaced by strange ones.

The drama depicts the dialectical struggle between illusion and reality, in regard to both the “Foundation” and our own world that the latter symbolizes. This tension is evident, from the beginning of the drama, in a dialogue that Tomás sustains with Berta, the fiancée who he believes visits him at times. Berta, who is perceived by only Tomás and the audience, appears with a white mouse used in laboratory experiments that she calls “Tomás” and speaks of saving. It is significant that twice she declares: “Aborrezco a la Fundación.”⁶ Like the Elf and the Voice of Irene o el tesoro, Berta is a manifestation of the protagonist's subconscious.

The dialectical tension is seen, likewise, in the dialogue Tomás sustains with El Hombre, a cellmate whose death the prisoners conceal so that they may divide his ration and whose silence they explain to Tomás as being the result of severe illness. In this dialogue we see Tomás' struggle between his desire to deny suffering, pain and death and his need to acknowledge them. As Tomás describes the beauty of the sunlit landscape and the joy of the persons he sees through the window, Asel asks him if he does not see the sadness in their faces. Then, when Tomás declares that men are beginning to become human, El Hombre—like Berta a manifestation of the former's subconscious—shouts in opposition such phrases as “¡Fieras! ¡Hipócritas! … ¡Asesinos!” and speaks of “la pesadilla de los antropoides” (p. 182). In Tomás' refusal to accept the words of El Hombre, we see our own refusal to accept the truth of our own world. Part I of the drama ends with the discovery by the officials—and by Tomás—of El Hombre's death, which constitutes a significant step in the protagonist's journey to reality.

This journey continues in Part II as Tomás notes the disappearance of the lamp and telephone he attempts to use as well as other changes such as the darkening of the landscape hitherto sunlit regardless of the time of day or night. After a second dialogue with Berta in which he asks “¿Por qué es tan inhóspita la Fundación?” he tells her to go into the bathroom as his cellmates awaken. In order to prove to the latter the reality of her visit, he calls her to join them. When she fails to merge, Tomás confesses for the first time that she really never came at all. In answer to Asel's question Tomás is now able to admit that they are all in prison and have been condemned to death. The final apparition of Berta holding a dead mouse suspended by its tail signals the death of the old, alienated Tomás.

By the end of the drama Tomás is able to confess his betrayal of his comrades. Lino and Max, we now learn, are not an eminent engineer and mathematician but a simple lathe operator and a bookkeeper, just as Asel is not a doctor but an engineer. Unable to face his guilt, Tomás invented the immense fantasy of the “Foundation”—from the sunlit landscape to the sparkling bathroom he imagined behind the curtain in the corner of the cell—as he also invented the doctor he needed to cure him.

The “immersion effect” in La Fundación is one of Buero's most elaborate and complex experiments with this technique. From the very beginning of the drama the spectators share Tomás' perceptions as illusion (the “Foundation”) gives way to reality (the prison). This return to reality is completed only in the fourth and final scene. It has been pointed out that while some of the words and actions of Tomás' cellmates seem inexplicable to us when they first appear, “the fact that many of his own words and actions, though natural and understandable to us, seem strange and suspicious to the other characters, intensifies both our involvement in the mystery and our identification with him.”⁷

However, the perceptions of Tomás that we share are not only aural but visual; the set undergoes constant modifications, both during and between the four scenes. These modifications both maintain our curiosity and underscore the dialectical opposition of the two worlds depicted—that of Tomás and the spectator and that of the former's companions. The luxurious furnishings of the “Foundation” gradually disappear as Tomás discovers the stark truth of his grim prison cell. Armchairs are replaced by bedrolls; wall panels descend to cover the refrigerator, bookcases, and telephone; the impeccably dressed “waiters” who serve exquisite meals appear in aprons, grey shirts and old pants to collect the trash; crystal and linens are replaced by metal cups and spoons; the hanging lamp with the elegant shade vanishes into the ceiling; the bit of landscape visible through the open cell door disappears to be replaced by a dull grey wall with rows of identical doors; the sunlit landscape seen through the picture window darkens; and finally the window itself vanishes behind a portion of the wall, signifying the final triumph of reality.

As in many of his dramas, Buero makes effective use of light and darkness. After the discovery of the dead man, the rainbow-hued light that emanated from the window disappears and a white light, which becomes harsher as wall panels hide various luxuries, marks the boundary between what remains of the reality Tomás sees and the reality the other prisoners see. When the curtain that Tomás believes conceals an elegant bathroom finally disappears above and the light in the corner comes up like that in the rest of the room, we see only a toilet without a lid. Tomás, who believed himself hidden, is seen squatting over the bowl. At this point he has lost his last refuge. The set prescribed by Buero, who was once a painter, thus becomes a metaphor.⁸

After leading us to identify emotionally with Tomás and to see the world through his eyes, Buero now invites us to reflect critically, along with the protagonist, upon the significance of this experience. For Buero Vallejo tragedy always implies both emotive identification and critical reflection since both are necessary to bring about the active contemplation for which he believes all art strives.⁹ Again, it is Asel who guides Tomás and the spectators as the former attempts to find answers to questions that are also his own. While realizing that his “Foundation” is not real, Tomás now asks himself if the rest of the world is any more real—if the prison, their suffering, death sentences, and even they themselves, are not equally illusory. If this is true, he wonders, why attempt to escape—as Asel wants them to do—only to discover another prison or a freedom that is equally deceptive? The only true freedom, Tomás reasons, would be to destroy the illusion, to find the authentic reality which, if it exists at all, must exist within their prison or within themselves, wherever they are and whatever happens to them. Asel agrees that perhaps nothing is more than a gigantic hologram, like the ones Tulio, the photographer, worked to perfect before being imprisoned.¹⁰ However Asel points out the inadequacy of Tomás' response:

asel.—Tal vez todo sea una inmensa ilusión. Quién sabe. Pero no lograremos la verdad que esconde dándole la espalda, sino hundiéndonos en ella. [ … ] Yo sé lo que te pasa en este momento.

tomás.—(Trémulo.) ¿El qué?

asel.—No es que desprecies la evasión como otra fantasía, sino que te acobardan sus riesgos. No es desdén ante un panorama quizá ficticio, sino temor. [ … ] [Duda cuanto quieras, pero no dejes de actuar. No podemos despreciar las pequeñas libertades engañosas que anhelamos aunque nos conduzcan a otra prisión. … Volveremos siempre a tu Fundación, o a la de fuera, si las menospreciamos. Y continuarán los dolores, las matanzas … ].

(p. 240)¹¹

The solution to the problem of human suffering, Buero suggests, is action. It is not enough to face our limitations; we must struggle to overcome them. The fear that all life may be nothing but an illusion must not paralyze us and no progress, however limited, must be disdained. We move from one prison to another, from one illusion to another. But just as each of Tomás' responses to Asel's probing brought him one step closer to the realization that his “Foundation” was false, each step may bring us closer to reality. Only through action—represented symbolically by the excavation of the dark tunnel planned by Asel—can we hope to reach truth and freedom.

asel.—Has descubierto una gran verdad, aunque todavía no sea la definitiva verdad. [Yo la encontré hace años, cuando salí de una cárcel como ésta. Al principio, era un puro deleite: deambular sin trabas, engendrar un hijo. … Pero pronto noté que estaba en otra prisión.] Cuando has estado en la cárcel acabas por comprender que, vayas donde vayas, estás en la cárcel. Tú lo has comprendido sin llegar a escapar.

tomás.—Entonces …

asel.—¡Entonces hay que salir a la otra cárcel! (Pausa.) ¡Y cuando estés en ella, salir a otra, y de ésta a otra! La verdad te espera en todas, no en la inacción. Te esperaba aquí, pero sólo si te esforzabas en ver la mentira de la Fundación que imaginaste.

(pp. 240–241)

After journeying with Tomás from the comfortable “Foundation” to the inhospitable prison and after reflecting with him upon Asel's advice—that is, after emotional identification and critical distancing—we witness the former's efforts to overcome the obstacles of this newly discovered reality. After Tulio is called to be executed, Asel explains to Tomás and Lino his plan for their escape, an escape possible only if they are moved to certain basement cells which are used for punishment, that will require six nights of excavation and that must be finished under constant fear of their execution before its completion.

For Asel himself it is too late. The authorities, aware of his desire to be sent to the basement cells, call him for interrogation. Afraid that he will break under torture and reveal the truth, Asel then commits suicide in order that Tomás and Lino may have the opportunity to escape. Through his action to avoid betraying his comrades, Asel reveals himself as an idealist whose precursors are Silvano, the idealistic history professor of Aventura en lo gris (1963), who lets himself be killed by enemy soldiers in order to save an innocent child, and Eloy, the actor of Mito, who draws police fire upon himself to protect a companion.

After the death of Max, who is impetuously killed by Lino for having informed the authorities of Asel's desire to be taken to the basement cells, Tomás and Lino are summoned—to be led either to the basement from which the tunnel to freedom may be possible, or, more probably, to their execution. It is upon a lucid awareness of their situation that they base their hope. Having learned the necessity of action, Tomás decides that they will attempt the tunnel if given the opportunity. However, it will be with the realization that their dream may be only an illusion and with the resolve that, if death becomes his fate, he will accept it. Only after the worst possibilities have been confronted can human hope be genuine; only after the darkest tunnels have been excavated can ascent to the light be possible. Even if the two manage to survive, however, the world that awaits them outside will be a deceptive one that still attempts to blind them with its false lights instead of encouraging them to open their eyes.¹²

That this deceptive world continues is seen clearly when the Encargado appears once again dressed as a hotel manager to welcome new occupants of the cell, which is once again transformed into the comfortable room seen at the beginning of the drama. The spectators are thus invited to reenter the “Foundation” together with the new occupants as the drama begins all over. Will we enter or have we, through our identification with Tomás, begun to reach a new lucidity and commitment that will prevent us from closing our eyes, from being deceived by “Foundations” that alienate us? As Asel has reminded Tomás, one day even prisons will have televisions, books and music, and it will be difficult to remember that we are not free. Co-protagonists with Tomás of the drama we have witnessed on stage, we now become protagonists of our own dramas that we must live out in life. One critic observes: “La catarsis constituye, cara al héroe, el punto de llegada a la lucidez, y, cara al espectador, el punto de partida de la lucidez. Para ambos la existencia o la condición humana [ … ] arroja su máscara y desnuda su rostro. El héroe termina sabiendo y el espectador empieza a saber.”¹³

For Buero tragedy is always positive. The playwright himself explains the purpose of his dramas: “El pesimismo de salir para llegar a creer que la cárcel es una ‘Fundación’ … y la esperanza—¡incluso el optimismo!—de salir para comprender, y advertir a los demás, que la ‘Fundación’ es otra cárcel. Cuando eso se advierte, cuando se logra comunicar, las rejas se corren, la humana liberación empieza a ser realmente posible. Tragedias que se muestran para liberar, no para aplastar … Sí. Eso ha pretendido ser mi teatro, escrito frente a ‘Fundaciones’ que nos deforman, o nos miman, o nos anulan.”¹⁴

Both the “Foundation” and the Center of En la ardiente oscuridad are images of our world seen through the eyes of estrangement or alienation. In both a limited happiness is possible but only at the cost of a full life, i.e., of our freedom. It is against such repressive socio-political systems that blind us to our enslavement with the lure of material comforts that Asel has warned, speaking of prisons that will one day have luxuries. Both the “Foundation” and the Center of En la ardiente oscuridad are institutions founded on a lie.

It is precisely this revelation of a lie that is achieved through the effects of identification of “immersion” used in both dramas. In En la ardiente oscuridad we identify initially with the view of reality held by Carlos and the other students, who are content and happy in the belief that their blindness is normal until Ignacio makes them aware of the reality of their situation. By means of a slow blackout of the stage and house lights as well as of the stars shining in the distance Buero makes us share the students' newly-felt anguish. Ignacio's words to Carlos as he explains how sighted people close their eyes to imagine the horror of blindness insure the impact of this brief stage effect. At the end it is with Ignacio's view of reality that we, like Carlos, finally identify, as well as with the former's yearning for light.

In La Fundación we identify initially with Tomás' vision,¹⁵ then, however, we gradually come to realize that the vision of Asel and the other prisoners is the more valid. Neither Ignacio nor Asel has reached the light; neither has achieved a vision that is definitive. However Asel—perhaps a more mature Ignacio—has reached partial insights. His advice to Tomás to attempt the difficult tunnel represents a call to life. Asel thus combines the most positive qualities of Ignacio—his contemplative nature and his passion for truth—and of Carlos—his iron will and conviction that life, although harsh, is worth living. Just as Carlos inherits the intransigent realism and the idealism of Ignacio, Tomás makes his own the insights of Asel.¹⁶

In La Fundación, a much more complex and mature drama than the earlier one, the extended “immersion” effect permits us to experience the entire dialectical struggle within Tomás; his entire journey from alienation to lucidity. Moreover, at the end we share the new vision Tomás achieves as the set is dismantled, as Tomás' fictitious world crumbles and reality emerges. This is a vision not afforded us in the first drama. In La Fundación what we see when the process is completed is our own world, now exposed for what it always has been and still is despite our refusal to recognize it.

On the socio-political level La Fundación is Buero's response to the reality of Franco Spain—or any other country where man is not free.¹⁷ The drama thus expresses the profound solidarity that may come, paradoxically, to a great writer as the result of the distance and solitude demanded by his craft. This dialectical relationship is expressed in Asel's answer to Tomás' request for an explanation as to why they are in prison, condemned to death (a restatement of the question posed earlier by his subconscious: “¿Por qué es tan inhóspita la Fundación?”). Asel's explanation, his denunciation of a civilized world in which people are still condemned by secret tribunals and slaughtered for reasons of race, religion, dissidence or so-called subversion, is reminiscent of Eloy's indictment of contemporary civilization in Mito or Goya's description of Spain under Fernando VII in El sueño de la razón.

Nevertheless, Buero's conviction is that this world can be made as beautiful as we see it in our illusions. “[Has soñado muchas puerilidades],” Asel tells Tomás, “pero el paisaje que veías … es verdadero” (p. 241). This landscape, although it fades away like everything else Tomás sees in his delusion, can become the future: “Una deslumbradora evidencia. El mundo es ya un vergel … Los hombres lo han logrado al fin, amasando agonías, lágrimas” (p. 181). Tomás, in his delusion, believed that this future was theirs; however, El Hombre reminded him that it is yet to be achieved since the nightmare of the anthropoids has not ended. However, if achieved, this future will be more beautiful than a Turner landscape because it will be real.

The terrifying vision seen in Asel's denunciation of contemporary society must not paralyze us. The luminous Turner landscape into which our dark reality may be transformed represents a vision similar to those seen in prior Buero dramas. If La Fundación develops ideas that have their genesis in En la ardiente oscuridad, it also expands upon an ideal suggested in Aventura en lo gris, El sueño de la razón, and Mito. In the sordid grey reality of a country overrun by enemy soldiers, Silvano of Aventura … dreams a recurrent dream of green fields abundant with tranquil water and proud matrons and men like angles without wings. Goya speaks of a citadel in the hills beyond his villa, far removed from the cruelty and hate below, inhabited by flying men. Eloy of Mito sings of a distant galaxy at peace, whose inhabitants will one day sow our universe with seeds of grace. Such descriptions of the ideal are indeed a constant in Buero's tragedies. Furthermore, it is an ideal that is true, that cannot be destroyed. Asel explains: “El mundo es maravilloso. Y esa es nuestra fuerza. Podemos reconocer su belleza incluso desde aquí. Esta reja no puede destruirla” (p. 187). The drama thus expresses the playwright's hope for a better future which, even though hidden and glimpsed only through the eyes of delusion, may become reality.

In the dialectical process depicted metaphorically by the drama, the sordid reality of the prison vanquishes the imaginary “Foundation.” Nevertheless, the ideal—symbolized by the landscape beyond the window—remains, enriching the sordidness of our life in the prison or mouse's cage and suggesting a future liberation. In his delusion Tomás, like Irene of Irene o el tesoro, the Father of El tragaluz, or Julio of Llegada de los dioses, glimpses or envisions a facet of reality that reason cannot always illuminate. Nevertheless, this future liberation can be achieved only by recognizing the sordidness that surrounds us—by keeping our eyes open when we dream—and by acting to overcome it. Here we see one of the major ideas in Buero's tragic theater: the need for both contemplation—solitary by nature—and action in solidarity with others. It is through his dream (initially negative in that it is associated with his evasion of reality) that Tomás is finally led to the acceptance of the need for action. The same can be said of Eloy of Mito and Silvano of Aventura en lo gris, whose dreams lead to positive action to help save the future for generations to come. Tomás' vision of the sparkling landscape thus becomes part of the truth the drama imparts and symbolizes his hope for a better future, if not for himself, for future generations.¹⁸

This better future so ardently desired by Buero is possible only if individuals succeed in overcoming their egoism. La Fundación constitutes a judgment on contemporary society but also a meditation on the politics necessary to transform it. Asel explains to Tomás: “¡Debemos vivir! Para terminar con todas las atrocidades y todos los atropellos. [¡Con todos!] Pero … en tantos años terribles he visto lo difícil que es. Es la lucha peor: la lucha contra uno mismo. Combatientes juramentados a ejercer una violencia sin crueldad … e incapaces de separarlas, porque el enemigo tampoco las separa” (p. 220). In view of the tactics of the established order, historical violence employed to liberate may be necessary, but never cruelty. The murder of Max by Lino to avenge the execution of Tulio is condemned by Asel as unnecessary and even possibly counterproductive. Buero thus returns to the denunciation of cruelty and torture seen in such plays as La doble historia del doctor Valmy and Llegada de los dioses.

Efficacy depends upon moderation and prudence. “Prudencia, astucia, puesto que nos obligan a ello. Pero ni un error más,” states Tomás, who has learned the lessons of Asel. “Si no acertamos a separar la violencia de la crueldad seremos aplastados” (pp. 255–256). We have the right to become indignant at injustice, but overriding this is the duty to win. The necessity for caution and intelligence is a major idea in La detonación (1977), Buero's drama dealing with Larra. The writer is attacked as a moderate (as Buero himself has been) merely because, unlike Espronceda for example, he puts results over empty gestures and heroic stances, achieving the possible. Buero underscores the importance of each step, of each political gain, each concession won from an authoritarian regime—no matter how provisional or illusory—as we journey from one prison to another in a struggle for a freedom we must always work for despite our recognition that we may never achieve it completely. The hope with which La Fundación ends springs from the synthesis of Asel's insights, which are inherited by Tomás, and Lino's youthful determination.

If La Fundación is an attack upon socio-political systems that deceive and enslave—against the oppressive “Foundations” of our world and their ideology—it is, even more importantly, a parable of the human condition. The question “¿Por qué es tan inhóspita la Fundación?” must be answered not only on a political, but on a metaphysical level; the prisons that Buero speaks of are not only those that enslave the body but those that enslave the mind as well. La Fundación, like all tragedy, represents a search for the truth that may enable us to be spiritually free. For Buero all art represents an intuitive investigation of a reality that is not only physical but spiritual, a quest for meaning in an enigmatic world.

As we have seen, the passion for truth evinced in Buero's theater is often symbolized by light. It is a passion expressed most clearly in the well-known words of Ignacio of En la ardiente oscuridad: “¡Ver! Aunque sé que es imposible ¡ver! … No puedo conformarme.”¹⁹ That the vision for which Ignacio yearns is not merely physical but spiritual is clear, for he knows that if he could see the distant stars, “moriría de pesar por no poder alcanzarlas.”²⁰ This yearning reappears in Mario of El tragaluz, Asel of the present play, and other characters who embody the playwright's own Unamunian passion for the absolute.

In La Fundación the symbolism of light and darkness is seen primarily in the discussion in which Tomás comments upon three paintings in the imaginary book of reproductions. The Turner painting, “un diamante de luz” almost as splendid as the landscape beyond the window, represents the truth and freedom that may exist at the end of the tunnel from the prison—the mouse's cage of another of the paintings. Buero's own preoccupation with light and the mystery it represents may be reflected in the third painting: Vermeer's “The Art of Painting.” Just as the artist seeks to capture this mystery on his canvas, so the playwright struggles to find it through his writing. (It is significant that in Las Meninas Buero makes Velázquez' questions about the meaning of light synonymous with his inquiry into the ultimate meaning of reality.) Since transformations of light peculiar to primitive lens systems are a striking feature of Vermeer's painting, the latter's work is not unrelated to the art of holography discussed by the prisoners. Holography represents still a further step in the search for the meaning of light. And although the world may be only an hologram or illusion, the truth behind this illusion, Buero suggests, must still be sought.

The journey from darkness to light is one in which appearances are deceptive. Like La vida es sueño, La Fundación deals with the confusion of dreams or illusions with reality as well as with the question of human freedom and its limitations. If Calderón's drama depicts the education of Segismundo, who is initially imprisoned in a dungeon, through his own experiences and the awakening of his conscience, Buero's drama shows a very similar process. A parallel process, of course, occurs in El Criticón. Buero's drama thus has deep roots in the best tradition of Spanish literature.

Given this human tendency toward delusion or self-deception, our journey, Buero suggests, must be gradual; we must proceed with the desperate hope that, with each step, our blindness will be less and our vision greater as we progress toward a truth that may never be definitive. This process has been Buero's own. His trajectory as a playwright represents a search for truth in which, if definitive answers have seldom been found, the questions at least have become clearer. Truth and freedom are never achieved instantaneously. The journey, his play suggests metaphorically, must be both inward (in Tomás' case to his own true past) and outward, through a universe that consists of a series of concentric prisons from which we must open tunnels toward an ever-brighter light. “Cuando has estado en la cárcel,” Asel has stated, “entonces hay que salir a la otra cárcel” (pp. 240–241). This journey is obviously similar in certain respects to the inward journey of the soul described by Santa Teresa de Jesús through concentric rooms until it meets God, whose light is perceived more brightly at each step of the way.²¹

In Buero's tragic theater—which is obviously existentialistic rather than dogmatic—this definitive light is not reached, if indeed it exists and is not a mere hologram. Asel declares that Tomás' luminous landscape is true; nevertheless, his words may indicate the former's desperate hope rather than any irrefutable affirmation on the part of the playwright. As in Calderón's play the solution is to be found in the acceptance of life and its responsibilities. Tomás' alienation—and our own—are thus condemned as inauthentic.

In summation, La Fundación, like En la ardiente oscuridad and other plays, represents Buero's attempt to unmask the institutions or “Foundations” that alienate us, to make us truly see. The playwright's attitude toward this struggle continues to be one of hope—a tragic hope encompassing both faith and doubt. It is the same hope he expressed early in his career when he stated that tragedy affirms nothing definitive regarding our limitations but rather proposes “el encuentro con aquellas verdades o, al menos, aquellas búsquedas que podrían, acaso, liberarnos de nuestras cegueras.”²² Even if Tomás is denied the opportunity to excavate the tunnel to freedom, there remains the hope that we, the spectators, may work at our own private tunnels. This lucid renewal of hope is precisely what Buero proposes to accomplish by the catharsis he achieves through the extended “immersion” effect in La Fundación—perhaps his most profound portrayal to date of the human condition.²³

Notes

1. This interpretation follows Jean-Paul Borel's in his Teatro de lo imposible (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1966), p. 241, and Ricardo Doménech's in his El teatro de Buero Vallejo (Madrid: Gredos, 1973), p. 53. See, also, the introduction to Hoy es fiesta, ed. Martha T. Halsey (Salamanca: Ed. Almar, 1978), pp. 9–39.

2. Antonio Buero Vallejo, comments in Teatro español actual (Madrid: Fundación Juan March/Cátedra, 1977), p. 76.

3. It is Doménech who first used this term in his book cited above, pp. 49–51. However, the most thorough study of this subject is the excellent article of Victor Dixon, “The ‘immersion-effect’ in the plays of Antonio Buero Vallejo,” in Themes in Drama 2: Drama and Mimesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 113–137.

4. Emilio Bejel, “La Fundación de Buero Vallejo: ¿un holograma de un holograma?”, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 25 (1978), 53. See also Bejel's “El proceso dialéctico en La Fundación de Buero Vallejo,” Cuadernos Americanos, 219 (1978), pp. 232–243.

5. See Robert Sheehan's “Buero Vallejo as ‘el médico de su obra’,” Estreno, no. 2 (1975), pp. 18–22.

6. Antonio Buero Vallejo, El concierto de San Ovidio. La Fundación (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1977), pp. 140, 143. Colección Austral, no. 1569. Subsequent page numbers refer to this edition.

7. Dixon, p. 131.

8. Critics strongly praised the ingenious set designed for the opening of La Fundación, in 1974, by painter Vicent Vela. José María Claver states: “El aparato escénico [ … ] un decorado ‘activo,’ diríamos, con su alevoso giro de goznes; paneles metálicos en función de celosía, laberinto, guillotina y jaula, no puede ser más congruente y adecuado a la metamorfosis, de situación y de significado, en que la pieza abunda.” Review from Ya (January 17, 1974), reprinted in Teatro español 1973–74 (Madrid: 1975), p. 217.

9. Buero Vallejo, “Sobre teatro,” Cuadernos de Agora, no. 79–82 (1963), p. 12.

10. A hologram is a photograph of the light waves reflected by a laser-illuminated object. It is three-dimensional, just as real objects are. Buero employs this concept of images also in El tragaluz, where the two investigators from a future century project holograms, representing thoughts as well as actions, from a remote past, which is really our own present.

11. Brackets around portions of the text indicate parts omitted during the play's performance in order to make it conform to the usual length of works presented in Spain, where there are two performances nightly.

12. See Buero's comments in José Monleón, “Entrevista con A. Buero Vallejo,” Primer Acto, no. 167 (1974), p. 6.

13. Francisco Ruiz Ramón, Historia del teatro español. Siglo XX. (Madrid, 1975), p. 383.

14. José Monleón, “Entrevista con A. Buero Vallejo,” p. 13.

15. It is, of course, well known that in many of Buero's dramas it is the character who suffers physical limitations who is the most perceptive. In many ways the blind David of El concierto de San Ovidio, the tormented Father of El tragaluz, the unbalanced Irene of Irene o el tesoro and the deaf Goya of El sueño de la razón, intuit certain realities which escape others who are considered normal. Here, however, it is the character with the physical limitations who is the most in error.

16. Ignacio is the realist in that he insists upon facing the fact of his blindness; at the same time, however, he dares to dream the seemingly impossible: that the blind may some day see.

17. The prison, like the beaterio of M. Recuerda's Las arrecogías del Beaterio de Santa María Egipciaca, is one of the clearest examples of the “espacio cerrado” that Francisco Ruiz Ramón considers one of the major structuring devices in the committed theater of the Franco era. See his Estudios de teatro español clásico y contemporáneo (Madrid: Fundación Juan March/Cátedra, 1978), pp. 195–214.

    The Center of En la ardiente oscuridad is, also, in many respects, a prison and it is significant that the idea for the play was conceived while Buero was incarcerated at the end of the Civil War for having fought on the Republican side. La Fundación draws even more heavily on this experience. Furthermore, it is obvious that for the political prisoners who, like Buero, were eventually released, Franco Spain represented still another prison. See Buero's comments in Javier Alfaya, “Antonio Buero Vallejo: En la ardiente lucidez,” La Calle (Madrid, September 25, 1979), and, also, the interview with J. Monleón cited in note 14.

18. At a session of the MLA in December 1978, Buero related how, as a child of four, he thought he saw two sparkling jewels on top of the father's desk only to discover that they were merely round silver-plated finials at the ends of the volutes of an old-style ink well. Buero stated that this anecdote suggests the problem of any committed writer: “el de restaurar la verdad, [ … ] aunque ésta fuese fea; pero recuperando, al hacerlo, la más bella y sutil fantasía; es decir, volviéndose a apropiar del brillante.” “Respuesta de Antonio Buero Vallejo,” in Estreno, 4, no. 1 (Spring 1979), p. 11. This idea is quite relevant to the present drama. We must exchange the false “Foundations” that we create for the truth, but without rejecting our ideals or dreams—which are much “brighter” than the false lights of our contemporary world that lure and blind us to reality.

19. En la ardiente oscuridad (Madrid: Escelicer, 1951), p. 30.

20. Ibid., p. 60.

21. Echoes of the Spanish mystics are obviously present in En la ardiente oscuridad, as the title itself shows.

22. Buero, “Sobre la tragedia,” Entretiens sur les Lettres et les Arts, no. 22 (Rodez, France, 1963), p. 53. If Buero wrote tragedy about Spain in the difficult Franco era it was obviously because he did not resign himself to the irreconcilability of the situation. See his recent comments in “De mi teatro,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 30 (1979), p. 224.

23. La Fundación is one of the three plays of Buero (the others are El concierto de San Ovidio and El sueño de la razón) that have achieved the greatest international acclaim, having been performed (often in the official state theater) in Rostock (German Democratic Republic), 1976; Kaposvar (Hungary), 1978; Timişoara (Hungary), 1977; Bucarest, 1978 (and later performed by the same Rumanian Company in Paris); Stockholm, 1977; Tampere (Finland), 1978; Helsinki, 1980–81; and Oslo, 1979. The reader may find of interest Buero's drawing captioned “El Dueso, sin el cual no se explica La Fundación” reproduced in Juan Emilio Aragonés, “Buero Vallejo, sin tapujos,” Nueva Estafeta, no. 30 (1981), pp. 52–61, as well as Buero's poem entitled “La Fundación” published in El Urogallo, no. 33 (Madrid, 1975), pp. 5–6.

    On this play, see also the following excellent articles: Peter L. Podol, “Reality Perception and Stage Setting in Griselda Gambaro's Las paredes and Antonio Buero Vallejo's La Fundación,” Modern Drama, 24 (1981), pp. 44–53 and Robert Sheehan's “La Fundación: Idearium for the New Spain,” Modern Language Studies, 8 (1978), pp. 65–71.

The author wishes to thank the American Philosophical Society whose grant made this article possible.