[In the following essay, Rodriguez discusses The Day of the Swallows as a tragic play.]

The literature on tragedy as an aesthetic form is very extensive. And although critics do not agree on which works are classifiable as tragedies, there seems to be a general consensus over those elements which reveal a sense of the tragic in a given work of art. Our comments are based on the assumption that there is a confluence of qualities which render a vision of the tragic in The Day of the Swallows (1969), a drama in three acts by Estella Portillo. Our intent is not to classify the play, for in order to do that adequately, we would have to test the play's impact on the readers (or the audience) with respect to the arousal of pity and fear, an element that Aristotle thought indispensable in a genuine tragedy. Rather we will isolate those features which interrelate to give the play its tragic vision.

The following is a definition of tragedy advanced by Marjorie Boulton, which helps us to place The Day of the Swallows in its proper context. Tragedy is:

a play with a sorrowful ending, usually of at least one death; the action and thoughts are treated seriously and with a respect for human personality. The central character, according to Aristotle—and this still holds—is a person of admirable character such as the impetuosity of Oedipus, the ambition of Macbeth or the credulity of Othello. It is usual for the diction to be dignified, but not necessarily poetic or even dignified in the sense of being correct English—dignity comes from within and expresses the tragic importance of the human beings and their situations, as in the colloquial language of A Streetcar Named Desire, parts of Children in Uniform, or Arthur Miller's The Crucible and Death of a Salesman. An important feature of true tragedy is that we are left with a sense of greatness of man as well as of the suffering involved in human life; these small but passionately individual creatures who struggle with their destiny are curiously important. In tragedy after tragedy, after one of the crises, the human dilemma becomes insoluble; there is no going back and no easy answer or happy ending; the emotional conflicts are deep and almost unbearable; but the creatures suffering these agonies are worth our concern.¹

SUMMARY OF THE PLAY

The setting is Lago de San Lorenzo, a village in the Southwestern desert where the tempo of life conditioned by myth and ritual. It is the eve of the fiesta of San Lorenzo, named after its patron saint. Once a year, in the month of July, the village gathers in the chapel at daybreak and the fiesta is begun with a mass. Afterwards there is a procession to the lake led by the local priest, Father Prado, and an “honored member” of the church. For many years Josefa, a single woman of 35, the central character of the play, has had the distinction of leading the procession, and this year she is expected to do the same, because she enjoys the reputation of being a model of virtue and charity. At the lake, the people witness the Bathing of the Virgins, a ritual performed by the young village maidens professing their readiness for matrimony. Outwardly, Josefa carries to perfection every aspect of the religious and social traditions, but inwardly she detests her religiosity and the norms imposed on her by society. At a given moment the reader (audience) catches a glimpse of the real Josefa, who is haunted by fear of disapproval from others, obsessed by her disdain for men and dominated by her lesbian passion for Alysea, an innocent victim of society whom Josefa has saved from a wayward life. In an attempt to conceal her true identity and her passion for Alysea, Josefa tries to silence David, a pre-adolescent who lives with her after having been rescued from his drunken father. She cuts his tongue with a knife because he surprises them making love. To make matters worse, Tomás, Josefa's “shiftless uncle” knows of her homosexual affairs and threatens to reveal the secret, and Alysea has determined to leave her and run away with Eduardo. Finally, she decides to confess everything to Father Prado, who is also her intimate friend and counselor. Father Prado is stunned at the truth, but recognizes the value of Josefa as an individual. However, Josefa is unable to control her guilt feelings, nor can she bear the thought of the village's reaction to the truth, so she commits suicide by drowning in the lake.

THE TRAGIC CONFLICT

Although Josefa's psychological conflict is deep and devastating, that in itself is not tragic; it is merely the result of a greater conflict. David D. Raphael suggests that tragedy, as a literary genre, always presents a specific type of conflict, one “between inevitable power, which we may call necessity, and the reaction to necessity of self-conscious effort.”² “Tragic conflict differs from the conflicts presented by other forms of drama in that the victory always goes to necessity. The hero is crushed.”³ In The Day of the Swallows necessity is represented by the particular set of norms imposed by society. Josefa pits herself against those norms because she deems them to be wrong. Within herself she says no to the forces that oppress her. But there is a point where she alone, with a different set of values, can no longer resist, much less overcome, her social environment. In The Day of the Swallows, human resistance to necessity is glorified. But in the end, Josefa, the heroine, is destroyed.

Karl Jaspers explains the same phenomenon in terms of a “clash of ways of life.” The two opposing ways of life, he says, “do not replace each other suddenly. The old way is still alive while the new unfolds itself. The mighty breakthrough of the new is bound at first to fail against the staying power and coherence of the old way of life not yet exhausted.”⁴ And inasmuch as Josefa's individuality represents a “mighty breakthrough,” within the stagnant social environment of Lago de San Lorenzo, it is not strong enough for two basic reasons: 1) the private mythology that she attempts to create for herself is not sufficiently coherent and 2) it is not shared by anybody else. The values she subscribes to are completely alien to her social milieu. Also, she is not able to reconcile her entirely concrete desires with society's abstract norms.

THE TRAGIC PROTAGONIST

Following the Greek idea of tragedy, the author creates a character of eminent position. Josefa, the protagonist, is a person who wields authority and influence in Lago de San Lorenzo. She isolates herself in her old mansion, which is like a sanctuary that she keeps impeccably clean and full of light. Her austere manner and severe appearance, plus the stern discipline she imposes on herself, commands the respect of the people of her village, who regard her as an exceptional personality. Like all other tragic protagonists, Josefa is a paradox. She is torn between her desires and her fulfillment, between guilt and guiltlessness. She displays serenity and self-control, but she is tormented by fears. She knows she has the inner freedom to live out her own beliefs in spite of social ostracism, yet she also feels determined by some inexplicable force, which is perhaps her own inner conflict more than society's pressures. She disdains men, yet she holds Father Prado in high esteem, and confides in him. All these tensions and ambiguities are fundamental in the character of Josefa, and they remain unresolved until the end. Moreover, they are directly related to the suffering of the protagonist. Josefa is a highly refined individual who searches for beauty and harmony, and her suffering stems from the basic disharmony she perceives in the world around her. Even more, she is repelled by evil, but she sees it in her own deeds. As Josefa confesses her actions to Father Prado her ambivalent nature becomes apparent:

JOSEFA:
… Suddenly … there was David … in the middle of the room. The horror in his eyes … Why? Why? There was horror in his eyes …
FATHER Prado:
He did not understand …
JOSEFA:
Oh, Father! Now … I can see why … now! But last night … it was not the Josefa he loved that David saw … I could not stand what he saw! I could not!
FATHER Prado:
God forgive you!
JOSEFA:
Something happened in me … I don't know what it was … I ran … I ran into the kitchen and found a kitchen knife … Somehow … somehow I knew David would tell … the barrio people would look at me that way too …
FATHER Prado:
I never thought you would care about what people …
JOSEFA:
Oh Father … until last night I never knew my fears …(5)

Another important facet of Josefa, which is accentuated in protagonists of modern tragedies, is her radical solitude. At the deeper spiritual level she communicates with no one. However, for a moment she believes that Alysea is that person with whom she can identify. But Alysea complies with her wishes out of respect and gratitude, for she ends up falling in love with Eduardo. The following excerpt from a scene in which Josefa appears with two other characters, Alysea and Clara, bring out her individual sensitivity and her sense of solitude:

The church bell rings midday; suddenly two swallows are seen outside the window.

ALYSEA:
Look!
JOSEFA:
They're coming … the advance guard … every year.
CLARA:
You love them … don't you? your magicians let you find so many things to love … lucky … lucky Josefa.
JOSEFA:
The swallows are safe here … after the long, long lonely flight …
CLARA:
Lonely? … they come in droves …
The three look outside the window for a minute. Choir practice begins.
JOSEFA:
Look at the lake … it shimmers with love … (turns to Clara) I said lonely, Clara, because finding direction … is lonely … it is too personal a thing …
CLARA:
I see what you mean … Josefa (looks out the window pensively) why don't I see the love shimmering in your lake?
Josefa smiles.
ALYSEA:
Her magicians … isn't it Josefa?
JOSEFA:
Yes … my magicians.

(p. 174)

Impelled by her existential despair, the protagonist tries to create her own beauty and harmony. She tries to formulate her own system of values. But this endeavor is interrupted by her tragic error, a false step, which Aristotle considered a flaw of character necessary in the protagonist of a tragedy. The error is an act committed consciously, but without intending an evil result. Max Scheler quotes Madame De Stael's dictum to the effect that “everyone has the mistakes of his virtue: The same traits of character which permitted a man to do his best have brought him to catastrophe.”⁶ This is precisely what happens in the case of Josefa, a woman with an iron will, whose tragic flaw of character is manifested in her impulsive act to silence David. This is the turning point that spells disaster in the life of the protagonist. Her sense of beauty and harmony is seriously maimed, and her emotional distress is intensified, for she suddenly sees herself as a perpetrator of the type of violence she abhors.

The tragic protagonist is also defined by his/her suffering. Richard B. Sewall offers an incisive comparison:

The element of guilt in tragic suffering distinguishes it from the pathetic suffering of the guiltless and from the suffering of the sentimentalist's bleeding heart. On the other hand, tragic man's sense of fate, and of the mystery of fate, distinguishes his suffering from the suffering (which is little more than embarrassment) of the man of corrective comedy, and satire. The suffering of the epic hero has little of the element of bafflement or enigma; it is not, characteristically, spiritual suffering. The Christian in his suffering can confess total guilt and look to the promise of redemption through grace. The martyr seeks suffering, accepts it gladly, ‘glories in tribulation.’ Tragic man knows nothing of grace and never glories in his suffering. Although he may come to acquiesce in it partly and ‘learn from it,’ his characteristic mood is resentment and dogged endurance. He has not the stoic's patience, although this may be part of what he learns. Characteristically, he is restless, intense, probing and questioning the universe and his own soul.⁷

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

One of the peculiar characteristics of tragedy is the presentation of the evil that causes suffering. As such, it is treated from a strictly humanistic, rather than religious, standpoint insofar as it makes no commitment to the solution of the problem. In this context, David D. Raphael suggests that tragedy “merely gives repose by presenting ‘brilliant images’ of the suffering that poses the problem. It suspends judgment and loses itself in aesthetic contemplation.”⁸ Tragedy, furthermore, presupposes that there is something meaningful surrounding human beings in this world, and that good coexists with evil. In its “view of the overwhelming proportion of evil to good and its awareness of the mystery of why this is so,” tragedy tends to have pessimistic overtones. But its optimism lies precisely “in its faith in a cosmic good.”⁹

In The Day of the Swallows, Josefa's first encounter with evil takes place very early in her childhood. She suffers a traumatic experience which conditions her whole outlook on life and leads her to regard the opposite sex as the incarnation of evil on earth. Her story, as she shares it with Alysea, helps to explain the causes for her rejection of men and her preference for women:

She seems to be remembering something painful; she goes to the rocking chair; places the bird on her lap and strokes it gently.
JOSEFA:
When I was seven … the swallows … they came one hot dry dawn … and continued all day … on the edge of the desert that still hotter afternoon … I saw noisy boys with desert time on their hands … playing … I watched the playing become violence … they stoned them … plucked them … laughing with a fearful joy … the sand was a sea of dead birds … I … couldn't stand it … I ran … I hit them … I said, ‘Stop! Stop!’ (pause) they laughed; then for a joke … for a joke they said … they held me down, the burning sand against my back … In spite of all my terror, I opened my eyes … a boy … a big boy … held a swallow over me; he took a knife … cut the bird … Oh, God! so much blood … all that blood. (Josefa strokes the bird gently and shakes her head, closes her eyes) It spilled … spilled into my face … ran into my mouth … warm … warm … salt warm … was it my tears? the blood?
She stands and goes to the window still with the bird: she caresses the bird with her cheek and places it gently in the birdhouse. The rosary bell begins to toll. It is sunset. Josefa looks out in silence.

(p. 182)

The wounded bird Josefa holds in her hands is also reminiscent of the wounded Clara, who has suffered heartbreak in the hands of Eduardo, and of the wounded Alysea when men tried to sell her into prostitution. For Josefa the bird becomes the symbol of all women who are oppressed and abused by men, a situation she is extremely sensitive to and tries in her own way to correct. Her reaction to the various instances of unresolved evil in the play is perhaps suggestive of the idea that evil can eventually be overcome by good.

TRAGIC IRONY

In Portillo's work, the suffering of the protagonist is closely associated with tragic irony. The collective psyche of the barrio people has created a legend around the person of Josefa. She appears at her best, but her world is rapidly crumbling. She believes, in spite of her inability to achieve emotional fulfillment, that everything will be all right. In the middle of her turmoil, she tries to put Alysea's fears and her own to rest. “The tragic things in my life have taught me one thing … calm.” (p. 158) However, there is a chain of circumstances, whose gravity she does not comprehend until it is too late. But the events are linked in such a way that the reader (audience) is able to foresee misfortune. Her uncle Tomás threatens to reveal her secret life. Alysea falls in love with Eduardo. Clara, who owes her many favors, loses her mental equilibrium and is sent to a sanatorium. Finally, she becomes completely vulnerable after she confesses everything to Father Prado; and there is nothing left, but her tragic end.

CONCLUSION

There are two metaphors which illustrate the significance of Josefa's life in Lago de San Lorenzo and her death. Unlike barrio people who have a superficial desert mentality, Josefa is identified with the lake, which suggests the idea of depth and mystery. When Father Prado observes: “all things and all people here are too mindful of the desert except you,” Josefa answers: “My magicians, father.” (p. 185)

The other metaphor relates to her downfall. In the words of the author, “the lake becomes a temple.” (p. 151) Thus, Josefa's death becomes the sacrificial offering as an atonement for her guilt and for the evils of society. This explains the paradox of why, when she is on the verge of disaster, she experiences a sort of mystical insanity, a liberation that she had never known before.

In conclusion, The Day of the Swallows not only takes on the form of a modern tragedy, but it is also a relevant work for our times in the sense that it treats themes such as women's liberation, suicide and homosexuality, which have become controversial issues in our society today. Likewise, whether the downfall of Josefa, the character of the play in whom these themes are reflected, will evoke compassion or approval, is ultimately a question of values. Nevertheless, if the essential function of a drama with a vision of the tragic is to make one think and feel more deeply, then Estella Portillo's work has fulfilled that function well.

Notes

1. Marjorie Boulton, The Anatomy of Drama (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1960), p. 148

2. David D. Raphael, A Paradox of Tragedy (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1959), p. 25.

3. Ibid.

4. Karl Jaspers, “The Tragic: Awareness; Basic Characteristics; Fundamental Interpretations,” Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, eds., Laurence Michel and Richard B. Sewall (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963), p. 19.

5. Estella Portillo, “The Day of the Swallows,” The Mirror: Selected Chicano Literature, eds., Ignacio Romano and Herminio Rios C. (Berkeley: Quinto Sol Publications Inc., 1972), p. 188. All further references to this book will be incorporated in the body of this review.

6. Max Scheler, “On the Tragic,” Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, p. 34.

7. Richard B. Sewall, “The Tragic Form,” Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, p. 125.

8. David D. Raphael, A Paradox of Tragedy, p. 40.

9. Richard B. Sewall, “The Tragic Form,” Tragedy: Modern Essays in Criticism, p. 123.