SOURCE: "Pascual Duarte and Orestes," in Symposium, Vol. XXII, No. 4, Winter, 1968, pp. 301-18.

Classical mythology has continued to be a fruitful source of themes for the contemporary writer. Although no comprehensive survey exists of the presence of mythological material in modern European literature, several partial treatments have appeared. Classical mythology has also been a suggestive basis for studies in criticism and literary aesthetics. The modern writer often finds important stimuli in mythological motifs. A case in point is the Spaniard, Camilo José Cela, whose first novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte, appeared in 1942.

The diversity of critical estimation of this work bespeaks the presence in it of profound human issues and of several questions left unresolved by the author. We encounter in the novel a remarkable number of correspondences with the Orestes myth. Although to my knowledge no critical attention has been paid to these, J. van Praag Chantraine perhaps voices a hint of them when she says that the violence of Pascual Duarte "se acerca a los trágicos griegos por el 'fatum' que pesa sobre el protagonista." On the other hand, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester thinks the intention of the novel is clearly humorous. Juan Luis Alborg seeks to explain the work's impact as due to its expressive language and striking situation. Julian Palley doubts its verisimilitude. Sherman Eoff attributes Pascual's actions to an inferiority complex growing out of mistreatment in childhood. J. M. Castellet thinks Pascual Duarte is to Spanish literature what L'Etranger is to French, John J. Flasher concurs when he suggests a general existentialist quality in Cela. The violence and episodic character of the novel have been considered picaresque, hence "traditional" in Spanish literature. Yet, R. L. Predmore considers the violence a mark of the novel's "tremendismo" and a response to distinctly contemporary conditions. Jerónimo Mallo has discussed "tremendismo" in the modern Spanish novel with reference to Cela. In this study, I shall deal with the parallels between the novel and the Orestes tale.

La familia de Pascual Duarte purports to be the autobiography of a condemned murderer, written in prison while awaiting execution. His crimes include the murders of his wife's lover, his mother, and a wealthy landowner. He also performed other acts of a violent sort: shooting his pet dog, stabbing his mare, and wounding his friend. Zacarías, in a tavern fight. Pascual gives a full account of all his violent acts except the last one he commits, the murder of don Jesús, the one for which he is condemned to death. This event is shrouded in mystery, although it is precisely this one which costs Pascual his life.

The prime motive behind Orestes' matricide is the fact that he is the son and heir of Agamemnon: the revenge of Orestes, though it is carried out under divine injunction from Apollo, belies a strong identification between the hero and his father. Pascual's father, Esteban Duarte Diniz, was a strong man, given to violent fits of temper. There is an indication in his name of his marginal status in society; his two surnames are not Spanish but Portuguese. The family occupies a marginal status economically, due in part to Esteban's occupation as a smuggler. The family is marginal in a spatial sense as well, because they live in Extremadura, on the western edge of the country. Moreover, they do not even live in the "center" of this region—Badajoz, the capital of Badajoz province—but in Torremejía, a town some thirty miles east of the capital. Pascual says that the tried to stay out of his father's way, to avoid beatings, and that he soon learned not to intervene in the frequent quarrels between his parents. He says of his feelings toward his father, that "le tenía un gran respeto y no poco miedo." His father, but not his mother, could read, and often read the newspaper to the family. At his father's insistence, and over his mother's objections, Pascual was sent to school where he received a minimal education. When his father told him of the need for education "su voz en esos momentos me parecía mas velada y adquiría unos matices insospechados para mí … […] y acababa siempre por decirme, casi con carino:—No hagas caso, muchacho. Ya voy para viejo!" This affection, rare enough in Pascual's experience, was very real, and formed part of the basis for the less critical attitude he shows toward his father than toward his mother.

Although Esteban died of rabies, and not at the hands of his wife and her lover, a reminiscence of Clytemnestra's hatred of Agamemnon can be seen in Esteban's wife's reaction to his demise: her laughter betrays a hostility similar to Clytemnestra's, Her callousness caused Pascual to stifle the tears he would have shed for his father. At Esteban's burial, Manuel, the parish priest, gave Pascual a sermon about honoring his father's memory, to which Pascual replied that it would be better not to remember him. When Manuel then defended Esteban, Pascual was impressed with the priest's support of his father: his gratitude toward the priest for expressing support or affection for Esteban as he himself could not is seen in that, from the day of the burial on, "siempre que veía a don Manuel lo saludaba y le besaba la mano."

Pascual's relations with his father, while not full of unmixed affection, were characterized by a relatively strong identification, Pascual in fact had positive relationships with several men older than himself, among them Manuel, Conrado (the Prison warden), and Santiago (the prison priest). These relationships contrast strongly with the bitter hatred and hostility present in his relationships with his mother and first wife.

Esteban's death occurred two days after the birth of Pascual's half brother, Mario. The child's paternity was not certain; Pascual suspected that his mother had earlier taken Rafael as lover. Rafael, if not before Esteban's death then surely after, became Pascual's mother's lover: Rafael "en casa estaba porque, desde la muerte de mi padre, por ella entraba y salía como por terreno conquistado." Here is the note of adultery central to the Orestes myth. The adultery them was presented perhaps even earlier, although it is not stressed, when Pascual's sister was born. Esteban's only comment to his wife was to the effect that she was a zorra, 'slut.' Although Pascual did not actually kill Rafael he leaves no doubt that he would have, if he had had the chance. His hatred for Rafael almost defied the restraints imposed by Rafael's taboo status as his mother's lover. In response to an act of cruelty by Rafael against Mario, Pascual controlled his impulse to soothe Mario tenderly because he feared Rafael might criticize him: if he had, "por Dios que lo machaco delante de mi madre."

Pascual's relationship with his sister. Rosario, parallels Orestes' with Electra. Rosario's name means "rosary," and signifies the seemingly endless series of unfortunate situations in which she was involved: repeated sojourns in houses of prostitution, interrupted by respites at home to recover from illness. While it is true that Rosario bears a very common Spanish name, the fact is that she is called by that name and not some other. Rosario seemed beautiful to Pascual. He expresses their mutual love: "Yo la quería con ternura, con la misma ternura con la que ella me quería a mí." Rosario cared for him on his release from prison. Pascual defended his desire to continue his intimacy with her against Estirao's intention to take her away with him. The erotic undertones in their relations are apparent. Graves, commenting on Electra's significance in the myth, remarks: "In the revised account [given by the Attic dramatists], endogamy and partrilinear descent are taken for granted, and the Erinnyes are successfully defied. Electra, whose name, 'amber', suggests the paternal cult of Hyperborean Apollo, is favourably contrasted with Chrysothemis [Orestes' third sister], whose name is a reminder that the ancient concept of matriarchal law was still golden in most parts of Greece, and whose 'subservience' to her mother had hither to been regarded as pious and noble. Electra is 'all for the father', like the Zeus-born Athene." In a similar vein, H. D. F. Kitto mentions the "unaffected tenderness for each other that they display."

Just as Electra was "all for the father," Rosario had a special bond of affection with her father, Esteban. He used to sit by the side of her crib, "y mirando para la hija se le pasaban las horas, con una cara de enamorado." Their affection was mutual, as is shown by the fact that Rosario was the only one who wished to or was able to restrain Esteban's rages and violence by other than violent means: "Era a ella la única persona que escuchaba; bastaba una mirada de Rosario para calmar sus iras." Further, she seemed to have no relationship with their mother.

An additional point of contact with the Orestes myth lies in Pascual's relationship with Sebastián. A young gentleman, (he is called "el señorito Sebastián"), he is therefore from a relatively high social stratum; Pylades was the son of a king. Sebastián was Pascual's best man when the latter married Lola. He also was present during the fight between Pascual and Zacarías, and accompanied Pascual home afterwards. Though their relationship is surely not notable for its firmness—Sebastián appears on only three occasions—Sebastián's last appearance occurred after Pascual's return home from prison, and just before he murdered his mother. Finally, paralleling the marriage of Pylades and Electra, Sebastián took Rosario as mistress. Sebastián did not, as had Pylades, urge the matricide, nor bolster his friend's flagging resolve by recalling any divine injunction. There is a sense, however, in which Sebastián functioned as a facilitator of Pascual's murderous impulses and wrath. When Pascual was seeking Estirao after Lola's death, it was Sebastián who disclosed his whereabouts. This instance of Sebastián abetting and enabling is an echo of Pylades' function in the myth.

Another parallel with the myth occurs upon Pascual's return to Torremejía from prison. He had imagined a great reception at the railroad station; during the day and a half on the train Pascual visualized a hero's welcome. This is in a way absurd, for none of the townspeople knew that he was returning; he had been released after serving only three years of a twenty-eight year sentence for the murder of Estirao. The reality of his reception is quite the reverse of his phantasy. The station was deserted except for Gregorio, the station-master. He greeted Pascual indifferently and without great surprise. Like Orestes' return to Mycenae, Pascual's return was unheralded and almost unnoticed. The first place he passed on the way to his mother's house was the cemetery. Orestes' first act after his return was to visit Agamemnon's grave and offer suitable homage; the cemetery was naturally the resting place of Pascual's father. The cemetery has an additional function in the novel, for it was there that Pascual first possessed Lola.

After some indecision as to how best to gain entrance to the house, Pascual finally knocked at the door. His mother, not expecting him to be out of prison, and perhaps still drowsy, needed a few moments to realize who it was at the door. This recalls the fact that Clytemnestra did not recognize Orestes when he came to the palace, believing him to be a messenger bearing news of Orestes' death. The lack of recognition is repeated in the scene of the matricide: when his mother awoke, she demanded: "¿Quién anda ahí?"

Like Pascual, Orestes was married twice. Shortly after Pascual's return he married Esperanza, "hope," the niece of Engracia. She was very different from Lola: "De natural consentidor y algo tímida,… era muy religiosa y como dada a la mística." As her name seems to indicate, there appeared to be some hope that Pascual's life with her would be better than it had been with Lola. Lola's name is a shortening of Dolores, "pain, suffering," and pain seems indeed to have characterized her relationship with Pascual, for the brief happiness of their honeymoon soon deteriorated into mutual denigration and torment. Esperanza's mystical quality is probably an inheritance from her aunt, since Engracia was a quasimystical figure in the town, with power over life and death. Her name, "in grace," i.e., favored by God, and her function place her on the side of superhuman powers; Pascual says she was "nuestra providencia." She was an "especialista en duelos y partera, medio bruja y un tanto misteriosa."

An echo of the Orestes myth is present here also, although a distant one. Agamemnon returned from Troy with Cassandra, who had been endowed with the power to prophesy the truth, but cursed with the fate of never having anyone believe her prophesies. Cassandra correctly prophesied Agamemnon's imminent death. Similarly, Engracia appeared at the moment of Esteban's death, and uttered a prophesy. However, in this case, her words were believed and acted upon. She declared that since Esteban was rabid, one look from him would suffice to cause his wife to miscarry. Therefore, Esteban was locked in a closet where he died two days after the birth of Mario. In line with Esperanza's symbolic position as a person beyond human frailties, she is endowed with prophetic vision, for she has prescience of the matricide. She was present at the murder, holding a candle in her hand. After killing his mother, Pascual rushed from the house, jostling Esperanza and causing the candle (the beacon of hope) to go out.

Pascual's matricide comes as no surprise. As if the novel were, like the myth, the retelling of a story with which we are already familiar, the occurrence of the murder does not shock us. The shocking clement, if any, lies in the method used. Pascual's mother was a repugnant creature who had the power of the evil eye, and was inadequate as a mother. She was incapable of sympathy, and had an adulterous affair with Rafael. Pascual deplores her complicity in Rafael's cruelty toward her son, Mario; nor did she cry when Mario died. Early in the novel, Pascual expressed his hatred for his mother. His recurring contacts with her serve to increase his hatred, which matured over the course of the book; many hints are provided which allow the reader to see the sinister outcome of his hatred. The reader knows that the murder will take place, furthermore, because Pascual carried out in phantasy the crime as it finally occurred, at a point well in advance of the actual event.

The murder is symbolically a sexual attack on his mother. He stabbed her in the throat; the blood which flowed is equated with the blood of a warm belly. As is true in Orestes's murder of Clytemnestra, the event took place at night, in the mother's bed. Clytemnestra "fights for her life, inch by inch of the way." Pascual's mother struggled also, but her fighting was physical rather than verbal. Another similarity is the great relief both murderers feel when the act is done: Pascual says: "Podia respirar…." Finally, as in the Greek myth where no divine figure came forward to defend Clytemnestra or accuse Orestes, Pascual's mother—as is indeed true of his sister and Lola also—was very distant from religion and the Divinity. Pascual, on the other hand, had many contacts with priests and makes continual reference to God, and to God's forgiveness. Pascual had an affectionate bond with Manuel, was married in church, confessed often and fasted in prison; that is, a large measure of his spiritual sustenance derives, as is the case with Orestes, from religion. Though Pascual's references to God and religion may be thought conventional rather than deeply personal, the fact remains that he is associated with religion when his mother is not. This piece of irony—Pascual's piety—characterizes his last years in prison; clearly his piety, if he had any in earlier years, did not succeed in restraining his violent impulses.

Several subsidiary parallels with the Orestes myth may be pointed out. Early in the novel, Pascual tells us of killing his dog, Chispa. The event took place when Pascual sat on a favorite stone: "Una piedra redonda y achatada como una silla baja, de la que guardo tan grato recuerdo como de cualquier persona … […] Cuando me marchaba, siempre, sin saber por qué, había de volver la cabeza hacia la piedra, como para despedirme, y hubo un día que debió parecerme tan triste por mi marcha, que no turve más suerte que volver mis pasos a sentarme de nuevo." When he returned to sit on the rock, Chispa sat down before him and looked at him with "la mirada de los confesores, escrutadora y fría, como si no me hubiera visto nunca, como si fuese a culparme de algo de un momento a otro…." Pascual became enraged and shot his dog. This act provided relief from the mounting tension he felt while the dog was looking at him.

Though it is true that the rock Pascual sits on functions as part of the setting for his action, Cela has made a great deal more of it than merely that. Thanks to the details used to describe the rock, it has become personified for Pascual. The personification of rocks and stones, and of nature generally, is a stylistic trait often encountered in Cela's writings. In his first work, we find this couplet: "Bien sabe Dios que yo siento doler las piedras; / Siento los huracanes heridos en el vientre." In Pascual Duarte an addition example is found in the stones of Pascual's kitchen floor which wounded the soles of his feet when he went, barefoot, to kill his mother. This is an instance of the congruence between an individual author's stylistic tendency or predilection, and the mythical account of the origin of the Delphic Oracle. For the rock Pascual sits on—which Cela personifies and describes in such detail—is the place where he gains relief from the accusation of Chispa: likewise, the stone of the Delphic Oracle, or one like it, is a prominent part of the myth.

Another thematic reminiscence centers on one version of Clytemnestra's dream. According to Aeschylus, on the eve of Orestes' return, his mother dreamed that she suckled a snake which bit her, drawing blood as well as milk. When Orestes learned of this dream he accepted the role of snake and promised to draw his mother's blood. The symbolism of the snake, be it in Eden, Mycenae, or Torremejía, is sufficiently well known. In Pascual Duarte the dream is present, but turned about. It is Pascual's mother who bit him on the nipple (actually tearing it off) and drew his blood. Since the bite signifies suckling as well, Pascual is symbolically cast in the role of the nurturing mother. Thus, just as his mother did not have milk enough to suckle Rosario, i.e., did not nurture her. Pascual does not nurture his mother at this moment. Rather he stabs her in the throat which, in addition to a symbol of the womb here, is part of the alimentary tract, the passage through which nurturing milk, which he could not and did not provide, would flow. At the moment Pascual stabs her and she bites him, their blood, flows together, and this blood union is patently a sign of incest.

If we prefer what Graves considers an earlier version of Orestes' death, then his execution as pharmacos (by having his throat slit) is the same as the method by which he actually puts his mother to death, and as that by which she had killed Agamemnon. Pascual is executed, through not for the matricide, by the garrote, this being the mode of execution of lowly criminals in Spain. His throat is also penetrated by the band tightened by the screws of the garrote, as was his mother's by his knife.

The many similarities between the Orestes myth and Pascual Duarte explored here for would not constitute quite so remarkable a phenomenon if it were not for the fact that analogous expression is given in Pascual Duarte to the second aspect of the myth, the trial and acquittal of Orestes with its attendant political and social meanings. The trial (in Aeschylus" and other versions) injects a deliberative element into the judgment of crimes. Normally, Orestes would have been punished by death or exile, and by confiscation of his property. Yet the hearings before the Areopagus interrupt the automatic execution of the usual penalties. At the point where Athene's defense of Orestes was heeded the proceedings became a deliberative consideration of extenuating circumstances. Schlegel believed that Aeschylus' "Principal object […] was the recommending as essential to the welfare of Athens the Areopagus, an uncorruptible yet mild tribunal, in which the white pebble of Pallas [Athene] in favour of the accused does honor to the humanity of the Athenians." In the struggle of social ideologies Aeschylus produced a triumph for the patrilinear system through dramatic action. Richard B. Sewall has remarked that "Aeschylus,… was the first to subject the idea of justice to the full dialectic of action." In addition, he expressed in the Oresteia his partisanship of certain political factions in contention at the time. It would carry us too far afield to detail these disputes; suffice it to point out the existence of political overtones in the Oresteia, a primary source of the myth.

Pascual's matricide was not the last murder he committed. His punishment for it was not execution but imprisonment, for a period not specified by Cela. The effect of this punishment, is similar to the outcome in Orestes' case. The judgment is a blow against matriarchy and a vote for the dominance of patriliny. This fact is bolstered by the lack of mention of the mother's name. All the major characters have names which may be read as symbolic of their personalities or circumstances; thus, they are limited, confined within the restrictions of their novelistic personalities. The mother is nameless. She is the generalized, pervasive, and repulsive maternal principle which elicits a punitive, exterminative impulse.

The fictional world of Pascual Duarte is in effect a matriarchy. While the major male characters. Esteban, Estirao, Rafael, Jesús (strength through wealth), and Pascual are strong, they are subdued by women or die by violence. The secondary male characters, the priests and the warden, are ineffectual and weak. The women in the novel, on the other hand, are clearly dominant. The mother controls a good deal of the action and is the person against whom Pascual continually reacts. Engracia and Esperanza are assigned powerful positions and endowed with extra-human powers. Rosario is the one constant affectional tie for Pascual. Lola, Pascual's first wife, is really not particularly feminine; she displays masculine aggressive characteristics, which is perhaps why she meets an enigmatic death. Lola's aggressiveness is seen in her continual taunting of Pascual. At one point she enacted the function of Electra in the myth by recalling Pascual's father to him; but in that case it was to criticize his passively suffering his mother's nagging, more than to urge him to her murder in a show of solidarity with him.

Lola, as did Rosario (who could calm their father's rages with one look), and the mother (who was a basilisk when angry), had the power of the evil eye. Edward S. Gifford has written about the belief in the power of the evil eye as a means of isolating a taboo (i.e., dangerous) person, thereby insulating the believer against harm. Lola's death is due to an apparent heart attack, after Pascual forced her to reveal that the father of her unborn child was Estirao.

Naturally, the world of Pascual Duarte is not a matriarchy in strict anthropological terms: the novel is not a treatise on kinship. However, in the main, that world is marked by the three primary traits of matriarchy: female dominance, female kinship, and female inheritance. In the novel, Pascual is dominated by the female characters. After the death of his and Lola's son, Pascualillo, his wife and mother unsettled him by their constant nagging. Many of his violent actions were stimulated by women or occurred in response to them. On at least two occasions his friendly and humane impulses were stifled by women. His mother's laughter when his father died prevented Pascual from expressing the mourning he felt. And it was Lola's taunting about his masculinity that caused him to stop greeting the priest and kissing his hand. He murdered Estirao because the latter insulted his marital honor by referring to Lola's love for him. He killed his mare because the animal threw Lola, causing her to abort. In this regard, the matricide's motivation is obvious. Further, Pascual tells us that he was surrounded by "tries mujeres a las que por algún vínculo estaba unido…." He conceives of his relationships in terms of his being related to the women, not their being related to him. In addition, particularly in adulthood, Pascual had no male friends or companions, save Sebastián whose friendship was less than constant. The last mark of matriarchy is perhaps equivocal: although his mother inherited the house upon Esteban's death, and Pascual returned there to live instead of setting up a separate household with Lola or Esperanza—that is, his world is matrilocal in part—Lola and Esperanza do both live where he does, hence there are also traces of patriliny.

Given the foregoing resemblances to the Orestes myth's account of contending social orders, we can conclude that, in a primitive way, Pascual Duarte constitutes a kind of destruction of the matriarchal principle, the defeat of Mutterrecht, and a vindication of patriarchy.

The last murder in Pascual's series of crimes, but the first one alluded to, in the epigraph to the novel, was the killing of don Jesús. Cela does not describe the event in the book, beyond calling it a killing off, or polishing off ("rematar"). From the vague details of chronology provided we can only conclude that the event took place during the Civil War. Don Jesús himself was a shadowy character, mentioned on only a few occasions. He was a wealthy aristocrat and Count of Torremejía. He owned the town's only two-story house, and owned property at the edge of which Pascual hunted partridges. Pascual's description of the town is meaningful for he mentions only three buildings, each of them representative of the "Establishment": the town hall, don Jesús' house, and the church. The church was "detrás de la plaza, y por la parte de la casa de don Jesús." That is, it was on the side of don Jesús. The State, the economically powerful, and the Church, are Pascual's points of reference in Torremejía. In the first pages of the novel we are already involved in the politics of the Spanish Civil War, but in a veiled way characteristic of the literatura de evasión which marks so much of Spanish líterature of the last twenty-five or thirty years.

Each of the three buildings mentioned, moreover, was defective in some way. The town hall clock had stopped; it was only an ornament "como si el pueblo no necesitase de su servicio." The church was the scene of the first act of violence that Pascual tells us about in the novel proper; it was not Pascual's killing of his dog, Chispa, but rather the crippling fall of a stork, a life-bearer: "La cigüeña cojita, que aún aguantó dos inviernos, era del nido de la parroquial, de donde hubo de caerse, aún muy tierna, asustada por el gavilán." Don Jesús' house had the defect of vulnerability, as if subject to imminent attack: "Sobre el portal había unas piedras de escudo, de mucho valer, según dicen, terminadas en unas cabezas de guerreros de la antigüedad, con su cabezal y sus plumas, que miraban, una para el levante y otra para el poniente, como si quisieran representar que estaban vigilando lo que de un lado o de otro podríales venir" [my italics].

The alliance between the economic elite and the Church is seen also when Pascual attended Mass; having had little formal training in religion he was directed by the priest to follow Jesús' actions during the mass. Jesús is the model in religion—hence his name. The enigma surrounding Jesús' death involves the use of the verb "rematar." The novel's epigraph reads as follows: "A la memoria del insigne patricio don Jesús González de la Riva, Conde de Torremejía, quien al irlo a rematar el autor de este escrito, le llamó Pascualillo y sonreía." Though we might speculate on the circumstances of this killing—whether Pascual was part of a firing squad charged with administering the coup de gráce, whether he happened upon Jesús, already wounded, and merely "put him out of his misery"—two salient facts about it are clear. Jesús smiled at Pascual, and called him "Pascualillo," i.e., the same affectionate diminutive which Lola and Pascual apply to their beloved son. In evident contrast to the myth, Pascual is not, as was Orestes, the son of a king. He is, if anything, the opposite, given Esteban's marginal social status. However, it is not altogether surprising that Jesús, the only man in the novel who might conceivably embody kingly qualities and status, calls him by the "son" diminutive, "Pascualillo." Further, Pascual says he hopes Jesús will receive God's pardon in heaven, just as Jesús "a buen seguro" had pardoned him.

This killing, though not perfectly clear in detail, is the only one in the novel in which factors other than the purely personal are prominent. Pascual expresses no hatred toward Jesús; there is even doubt whether Jesús considered the killing a hostile or merciful act. Yet it is for this murder, not for the murder of his mother, that Pascual was condemned to death. The reason is not hard to discover; this is the only crime in the book with a political context. The murder may be seen as an attack by the proletariat upon a defective and ineffectual aristocracy which is already in decline.

Though Pascual's other killings were the result of his passion or intolerance of anxiety (Chispa), this one was devoid of any purely personal motivation; it was not vengeful. Therefore, as Treston says of Greek crimes of vengeance: "Once murder becomes a sin against the gods, or a crime against the State, the day of private vengeance has passed: that of State trial, State imprisonment. State execution takes its place." The political context of this crime is betrayed also by the fact that the novel closes with two letters, supposed to have been written respectively by the prison priest. Santiago (the Church), and Cesáreo Martín, a Civil Guardsman (the State). They describe Pascual's demeanor at his execution; that is, the Church and State preside over the execution of rigorous justice upon Pascual. This is to be contrasted with the clemency shown after the murder of Estirao: he was released from prison twenty-five years early. The then warden, don Conrado (the State), was a benign, almost jovial witness to and dispenser of leniency. Likewise, Pascual's punishment for the matricide was not death, but imprisonment.

Some light is shed on the problem of juridical severity by Ganivet: "En España, se prefiere tener un código muy rígido y anular después sus efectos por medio de la gracia. […] Castigamos con solemnidad y con rigor para satisfacer nuestro deseo de justicia; y luego, sin ruido ni voces, indultamos a los condenados, para satisfacer nuestro deseo de perdón." The same severity exercised in punishing Pascual is at work in Pascual's own crimes. Marañón has commented that a "Duarte es mejor persona que sus víctimas y que sus arrebatos criminosos representan una suerte de abstracta y bárbara pero innegable justicia." The relative clemency shown Pascual in his earlier killings seems indeed to satisfy a Spanish "deseo de perdón," while Pascual's first two murders seem to respond to his "deseo de justicia."

In the murder of Jesús, the criminal deserves to be punished to the degree which fits the enormity of the crime. Cela's injection of the political question into the novel, in addition to providing a reminiscence of the political matters surrounding the Oresteia, is a way of impressing upon the reader the more serious nature of crimes against the State (i.e., against the regime and its supporters) than of crimes of personal vengeance.

Although the shift from private blood-vengeance to societal judgment of offenses in the Greek myth represents a shift from greater to lesser primitivism or brutality—Orestes' sentence is, after all, rather mild—in Cela, this shift is in the opposite direction. The ironic reversal centers on the contrast between the mercy and due consideration (of the "degree of punishment already suffered") shown him when he was paroled after three years' imprisonment for the murder of Estirao, and the merciless and perfunctory condemnation meted out for the killing of don Jesús. The movement here is from lesser to greater brutality, and constitutes an evasive commentary on contemporary political conditions. The perfunctory nature of Pascual's last punishment contrasts with the trial of Orestes before the Areopagus. There, Athene had intervened to insist upon "an examination into motives" and mitigating circumstances. Now, however, because of the vagueness surrounding the killing of don Jesús, the reader must conduct this "examination into motives" for himself; the reader is forced to assume the role of the twelve Athenians of the Areopagus, to become the judge of Pascual's behavior.

The relative severity of the sentence for his last murder reflects also the need felt by society to maintain an equilibrium between "indulgence and punishment. […] Without it (so we dimly feel) the whole psychological and social structure on which morality depends is imperiled." Pascual is made the exemplary sufferer of this severity; he is singled out for punishment, in a sense as a scapegoat atoning for all the sins committed during the Civil War on both sides. Hence his name, 'Paschal,' the sacrificial lamb. We can see a displacement onto this last murder of the punishment which, following the outcome in Orestes' case (i.e., acquittal), could not be meted out to Pascual. Moreover, that aspect of the myth concerned with the persecution of Orestes by some still recalcitrant Furies, even after his acquittal, is represented in Pascual Duarte by a contemporary analogue, the unremitting persecution of political criminals and dissenters. As Grant puts it: "Orestes is vindicated by an appeal to patriotic feeling." Pascual Duarte is condemned thanks to the same appeal.

The correspondences between Pascual Duarte and the Orestes myth do not bespeak a process of imitation on Cela's part, but rather an imaginative re-creation of the atmosphere and feeling surrounding the myth, together with an adaptation of various of its principal features. Cela shares with the writers of antiquity the artistic freedom to mold inherited mythic material, to accept or reject aspects according to their suitability for his purposes and particular genius. As I understand the relationship between the novel and the myth, Pascual Duarte exhibits a constellation of characters' relationships, personal motivations, and socio-political undertones remarkably in consonance with those of the myth. I would suggest that the myth is an expression of a certain nuclear problem, or set of potential actions, found in Western man's experience. When an author confronts that nuclear problem and writes about the human reality which had informed and animated the myth, the same human reality also informs his creation, producing echoes and parallels of other works of which he may have been ignorant. As I understand this aspect of Pascual Duarte then, the novel is animated by a similar problemática vital or constellation of life problems, as are the Oresteia and other versions of the Orestes myth (as well as, for example, Flaubert's St. Julien and Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons); thus, Pascual Duarte himself can be termed an Orestean hero.