JANET WINECOFF DÍAZ

Unnoticed heretofore is the considerable philosophical substratum of Arrabal's work, wherein much importance is given to epistemology, the inquiry into the nature of knowledge, wrestling with the unknown, the absurd, the limits of human understanding, and a special emphasis on memory. There is, as in the theater of the absurd in general, a predominance of existentialist themes, while other preoccupations of Arrabal are particularly suggestive of Bergson, either directly or through his Spanish disciple, Antonio Machado. Intuition, the problem of time, duration in relation to human consciousness, the issue of mechanism versus life (automatic behavior, clichés, convention), the distrust of reason—all occur insistently in these three writers, while the symbolic use of labyrinths and mirrors, related to philosophical and epistemological implications is frequent in both Machado and Arrabal. The threat posed to the individual by the technological state is a persistent theme which Arrabal shares with Machado and Ortega (The Revolt of the Masses). At the risk of misleading the reader, however, it should be noted that the philosophical in its overt manifestations is often overshadowed in Arrabal's work by other considerations, and tends to appear more in his narratives than in his theatrical works. (pp. 144-45)

Certain aspects of Arrabal's life help to clarify his works. His having grown up under a military dictatorship, witnessing the abrogation of individual liberties, Church repression, police terrorism, corruption in high places, boredom, monotony, poverty and the "farce" of the Generalísimo, all constitute possible sources for the Kafkaesque atmosphere of "Los dos verdugos," "El laberinto," "La bicicleta del condenado," and several episodes in the narrative volume, Arrabal celebrando la ceremonia de la confusión [Arrabal Celebrating the Ceremony of Confusion]. Baal Babylon, his first novel (with a typically high autobiographic content), shows the boy as half crushed beneath family and social prohibitions, bigotry, inhibition, restriction, and repressed hates, over-protected and simultaneously exploited by his protectors. This cluster of emotions goes a long way to explaining Arrabal's obsession with the hyper-possessive, domineering, pseudo-martyr, self-justifying mother figure, as well as the ambivalence of many of his characters toward their mothers—a combination of explosive, contained hate with latent or active incest, often coupled with the absence of the father. Deviation is also an obsession with Arrabal, who has treated a wide range of its forms, including sadism, masochism, whipping, chaining, various tortures, lesbianism, male homosexuality, necrophilia, sex murders, and other various and assorted psychic and sexual abnormalities. Critical invocations of Sade are obviously amply justified.

This author's works have been seen as a reaction against crushing family and social restriction, a self-defense with laughter as the weapon. (p. 146)

In order of publication, Arrabal's books observe a strict alternation between theatrical and narrative…. This is probably no accident, since Arrabal also uses an alternating pattern in El entierro de la sardina [The Burial of the Sardine], telling one narrative (present tense) in odd-numbered chapters, and another, separate but related (past tense), in the even-numbered. Likewise, there is a mathematical basis to the constructive of his next narrative collection, Arrabal celebrando la ceremonia de la confusión. The first two chapters each have nine "laberintos," followed by an intermission third chapter; then there follow two more chapters subdivided in nine, with the sixth corresponding to the third.

The theatrical works, too, show careful and deliberate construction, not so obviously mathematical, but with frequent repetitions, either identical or with slight variations, and at least one case of a work which ends exactly with the situation with which it began. The cyclical pattern, with slight modification, is used with increasing frequency in Arrabal's more recent works. The attention to "architecture" may clarify Arrabal's assertion that Benavente was one of his masters, for the latter was an expert in structure and composition. The use of characters also reflects the mathematical or "theme and variations" principles of construction: there are frequent uses of pairs, opposites, role reversal, metamorphosis, and even an incident in which one character becomes the other, not only assuming his behavioral and physical characteristics, but devouring and thereby incorporating the body of the other. (p. 147)

In "Oración," a man and woman appear seated on a coffin, later revealed to contain the body of their child, whom they have killed, not from hate or malice but as a result of a childlike delight in torture, curiosity and boredom. The work is one of considerable moral ambivalence, for these characters at the same time express a sincere, ingenuous desire to be conventionally good, to go through the motions expected of them, even while anticipating that this, too, will be boring. They discuss moral and religious themes, unaware of what is good and evil, repeating things they have heard but not assimilated, uncomprehending and utterly spontaneous. As with most Arrabal characters, their language and mentality are infantile, their ages indefinite, their ideas over-simplified.

"Los dos verdugos" incorporates the typical Kafka atmosphere of trial and condemnation for a mysterious, unknown, possibly non-existent offense, with subsequent torture, suffering and death. The author presents a travesty of justice, showing authority as inherently cruel, insensitive, inhuman, sadistic and nearly blind—capable only of seeing that which condemns, never the evidence to the contrary. As occurs in the work of Kafka (and later in "El laberinto"), the very innocence of the accused or those defending him—their righteous indignation and protest—contributes to condemn…. The title has a double application, to the literal executioners who take the father's life, and figuratively to the mother and elder son, who kill the integrity, innocence and youth of the younger boy. Strong Freudian elements in addition to the mother syndrome include repression and aggression.

Elements typical of the theater of the absurd are more numerous in "Fando y Lis," which recalls particularly "Waiting for Godot." Its situation is absurd in that it cannot be resolved—all characters are on the road to Tar, an impossible goal, or at least, one which no one yet has managed to reach. As in "El laberinto," no matter how far the characters travel, they always arrive at the same point. (pp. 148-49)

As usual in Arrabal, psychology and speech are childlike, and the protagonists display an unrealistic, ingenuous optimism. Their relationship is a complex mixture of love and cruelty, with possessiveness carried to the extreme of chaining and torturing the beloved, which contrasts with an almost simultaneous generosity, kindness and willingness to "share"—to the extent that Fando invites strangers to admire Lis, to touch and embrace her, and forces her to spend the night naked on the road so that others may enjoy her beauty. The work is thoroughly existentialist in its expression of the need for the Other, the absurdity of life and human activity, and the radical solitude and incommunication of the individual. (p. 149)

The conclusion of "Fando y Lis" mentions plot material from other Arrabal works, and the "story-telling" motif is used also in "Guernica" or "Ciugrena," in which one character offers to amuse another by telling a story wherein the central situation is identical to their own. Arrabal's characters are never aware that the supposedly fictitious situation has any relation to their own existence. There is a related use by Arrabal of the situations from other of his works, in which occasionally a "story" is told which is recognizable as the germ of a previous or future Arrabal writing. However, he does not seem to be creating his own interrelated literary world as did Balzac or Galdós, nor are his characters aware as with Cervantes or Unamuno, of their existence as "entes de ficción."

One of the most complex of Arrabal's early works is "El cementerio de automóviles." Its original situation, with various characters living in an automobile graveyard as though in a luxury hotel, is absurd, but could conceivably be seen as an ironic commentary on the critical housing shortage existing in Spain when it was written. As in most of Arrabal's works, attitudes toward sex are unconventional, and related ironically to morality in general. The female lead is defined as good because she will let anybody sleep with her. In other works, characters may be murderers who have broken nearly every rule, but these tend to be puritanically virginal and intolerant of those who are not, because "eso es malo."

A particularly important aspect of "El cementerio de automóviles" is its evident parody of the Crucifixion in modern times—a crucifixion perhaps by society, or more concretely, by the mechanisms of authority, represented by the police, or perhaps by machines—the theme of loss of individuality in the technological state…. The context of crucifixion is inevitably suggested by elements such as the name of Manu, his sense of mission, his relation to his "disciples," and the "Magdalena"; even his ultimate betrayal by one of his followers.

"Pic-nic en campaña" deals with the absurdity of war; "enemies" distinguish each other only by the color of their uniforms. Individual soldiers have no idea of the reasons underlying the conflict, bear each other individually no animosity, and want only to return home. Bored, between bombings, one makes paper flowers in the trenches, while his enemy knits (symbolic of the innately gentle, constructive nature of both). Emphasis is placed on their similarities; even their names are nearly identical…. In this powerful, pacifistic miniature, Arrabal implies that wars are forced on peace-loving men by their governments. (pp. 150-51)

In "El laberinto" guilt is … the central motif, recalling Kafka even in the quotation at the beginning, as well as in the underlying sentiment of a pursuing, persecuting "justice" which inevitably condemns and kills. There is a pervading feeling of the incomprehensibility, inescapability, absurdity and mystery of bureaucratic mechanisms…. The labyrinth is a trap—all its exits are false. There may be religious symbolism in the myth of the "father" who has constructed this private world, who disposes all, knows all, judges and punishes.

"Ciugrena" seems to suggest the absurdity of all touched by war, not merely caricaturing the aggressors, or those who profit by the conflict (represented by the journalist who expects fame from "immortalizing" the heroic inhabitants of the massacred village), but also the victims themselves. (pp. 151-52)

Guilt once more forms the central motif in "La bicicleta del condenado." As in "El cementerio de automóviles," the use of the bicycle is related to torture and death. Again, the victim is something of a musician, possibly recalling the Orpheus myth. Even the construction suggests a musical composition, with repetition of themes and a counterpoint technique. Pantomime acquires a new prominence, a tendency accelerated in Arrabal's more recent works. The atmosphere of "La bicicleta …" is Kafkaesque, inquisitorial—the protagonist is an unwilling participant in a mysterious game of life and death. In contrast to the awareness of his counterpart in "El laberinto," however, Viloro is unaware that he is the one condemned and being taken to execution. Again, Arrabal uses two executioners. As in "Laberinto," he employs the child's train (or playing train), a motif which seems to associate the inquisitorial or judicial process with children's games. This would also seem to be the implication of the happy infantile laughter heard at the end of "La bicicleta …" when Viloro is taken off to execution. Children do, in fact, play at death and execution, and—as with Arrabal characters—their actions may also be unconsciously, innocently erotic. This use of the childlike personality is also closely associated with moral ambivalence, and the general incomprehension of all forms of authority characteristic of Arrabal works, but it never seems to add up to constructive implications or suggestions. (pp. 152-53)

Arrabal appears to believe that human existence is absurd because we are born without asking to be born, and die without seeking death, we live between birth and death trapped within our bodies and the limits of our reason, in a complex of self-defeating paradoxes, a check and balance of power and impotence, knowledge and ignorance, attunement and alienation. Like modern absurdists, also, Arrabal resists the traditional separation of farce and tragedy, and in his teatro pánico goes beyond this to reject the most fundamental traditional concepts of the theater…. Many absurdists have discarded psychology as a control of action; Arrabal perhaps has not discarded it, but it is largely abnormal or irrational psychology which interests him. (p. 153)

Arrabal plays often appear to be utterly illogical until one realizes that the logic is not directly expressed, but symbolically embodied in the action. The use of symbolism and allegory is more frequent in the theater of the absurd than perhaps at any time since the Baroque era, and Arrabal is no exception to this. The absurdist playwright in general tends to distrust language, which is linked to the existentialist distrust of reason and negation of communication. Their concern with the gulf of misunderstanding existing, for example, between our expression of self and its apprehension by others, is a frequent absurdist theme, which some express by forcing language to nonsense, of which there are examples in Arrabal. A prime concern with the theater of the absurd is the depiction of monotony, a symbolic representation of absurdity, an assessment of the value of all action as transitory, illusory, imperfect, absurd. This implies a monotony of value, or moral ambivalence—frequent in Arrabal—and monotony is conveyed by the repetition of speeches, scenes, personalities, names, and even plots.

The underlying message of the absurdist is negative or nihilistic, insofar as in most cases it is limited to a statement of the existence of absurdity, with perhaps some sadistic pleasure in portraying man's agonizing struggle. Seldom do they portray man's coming to grips with the problem of absurdity, or his successful existential action with respect to it. Arrabal's later narratives suggest that he is searching for some way out of this personal labyrinth. (pp. 153-54)