SOURCE: Fulk, Randal C. “Form and Style in the Short Stories of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera.” Hispanic Journal 10, no. 1 (fall 1988): 127-32.

[In the following essay, Fulk discusses Nájera's short stories as an expression of the refined style and universal themes associated with early Spanish American modernism.]

The refined style the Mexican writer Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (1859-1895) displays in his collections of short stories Cuentos frágiles (1883) and Cuentos color de humo (1890-1894) gives Nájera the distinction, shared with the Cuban José Martí, of being an initiator of modernism in Spanish American literature. As Ivan A. Schulman notes: “El Duque Job [one of Nájera's several pseudonyms] prefería un estilo afrancesado, de giros y vocablos franceses, de ambientes parisienses, y de temas frívolos aprendidos de Mendès, Coppée, Musset, Paul de Saint Victor y Gautier.”¹

As a newspaperman, Gutiérrez Nájera published many stories and articles, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Revista azul, mouthpiece of the young modernists of whom Seymour Menton says, “La base del estilo modernista era la sinestesia o la correspondencia de los sentidos. La prosa dejó de ser sólo un instrumento para narrar un suceso. Tenía que ser bella: su paleta de suaves matices tenía que agradar al ojo; su aliteración, su asonancia, sus afectos onomatopéyicos y su ritmo constituían una sinfonía que deleitaba al oído; sus mármoles y telas exóticos daban ganas de extender la mano; mientras los perfumes aromáticos, los vinos y manjares deliciosos excitaban los sentidos del olfato y del gusto. Para lograr estos efectos, los modernistas se vieron obligados a echar mano al neologismo, inventando palabras de raiz castellana y apropiándose de palabras extranjeras, y a probar similes y metáforas nuevas.”²

As a modernist, Gutiérrez Nájera was a cosmopolitan; he sought and used universal themes. In such stories as “La mañana de San Juan” and “Después de las carreras” can be discerned a striving for images of purist artistic beauty and the parading forth of visual, auditory, tactil, and gustatory metaphors synesthetized for full sensual effect. Nevertheless, Gutiérrez Nájera does not achieve the cold, objective interest of the later modernists such as Rubén Dario in the beauty of a word or image for its own sake. It might be said that Gutiérrez Nájera is a modernist in form but not in spirit. His is the world of personal conflicts and human emotions. In pointing out this gulf between form and content, Schulman says that “En Nájera (seis años menor que Martí) predominan, todavía por estas calendas, las formulaciones y contextos románticos; ambos sin embargo, emplean embrionarias construcciones impresionistas o simbólicas que más tarde constituirán innovadores aspectos de su estilística.”³

In short, as Alexander Kosloff points out, “Los temas de Gutiérrez Nájera llaman al corázon, al sentimiento y no a la razón. Nunca figura en ellos una idea intelectual, sino las pasiones humanas, con predominio del ambiente de fracaso.”⁴ The short stories of Nájera have a lyric, poetic quality which reinforces the subjective emotional outbursts with which the author injects himself into the narration. The Diccionario de escritores mexicanos notes that: “En sus cuentos predomina la descripción de la realidad, del derroche de fantasía, la agilidad y sutileza el humorista y la abundancia de imágenes. Los personajes son principalmente mujeres y niños.”⁵

What then are some of the themes which inspire Nájera? Kosloff says that they are “Los de motivos trágicos: el amor fracasado, las ilusiones perididas, las injusticias humanas, el triunfo del mal, con un desenlace fatal de la muerte prematura, o un aniquilamiento espiritual de los protagonistas.”⁶ Again Kosloff notes that in approximately half of the stories we study the protagonist dies: “Alicia en ‘La venganza de Mylord,’ la niña Rosalia en ‘La pasión de Pasionaria,’ el joven en ‘Los suicidios,’ el tercer músico en ‘El músico de la murga,’ El personaje principal de ‘Rip-Rip,’ el protagonista de ‘Juan el organista,’ Rosa-The en ‘Dame de coeur,’ la familia de la mexicanita en ‘Un 14 de julio,’ Blanca en ‘El cuento triste,’ Gabriel y Carlos en ‘La mañana de San Juan,’ el bebe de ‘La balada de año nuevo.’”⁷

In the story “Después de las carreras” neither Berta nor Manón die, but as Kosloff explains, “La bella Manón en ‘Después de las carreras,’ que fue rica, queda anulada por su presente estado de sirvienta y padece del quebranto en sus ilusiones juveniles, añorando con triunfos, fiestas y galanes.”⁸ John A. Crow says that “The tearing away of illusion, faith, hope is characteristic not only of Nájera's language, but also of his attitude toward life. Innocence exists in childhood, especially in virginal girlhood, but maturity takes it away.”⁹

“Después de las carreras” is a simple story of the comparison of the impressions of two young girls who have gone that afternoon to the races. The thoughts of the poor sickly seamstress Manón are contrasted to those of Berta, her young mistress. In so far as the anecdote of the story is practically nonexistent, Nájera displays the art of the more contemporary story teller. The unimportance of plot is seen also in “La mañana de San Juan,” in which the two young brothers Gabriel and Carlos sneak off to the pond to sail their boat. One falls in and drowns, but the interest of the story lies not in the denouement of a story, rather in the linguistic nuances used by Nájera to give the feeling of tragedy on a bright pleasant day. Again Kosloff notes that, “En Gutiérrez Nájera la anécdota tiene una importancia secundaria y es, a veces, floja.”¹⁰

In both stories the author's interest is the delicate and sentimental portrayal of innocent children. Nájera is concerned with the empathetic or emotive level of understanding. His task is to make us feel; he does not seek to provide an intellectual objection to the suffering of children as in the chapter on “Rebellion” in The Brothers Karamazov, in which Ivan heaps up scene after scene of instances of children suffering. The tender sentimentality of Nájera is evident, perhaps too much so. Of “Después de las carreras” Menton says, “Lo que da vida a este cuadro es la compasión que el autor siente y expresa por Manón.”¹¹ Menton finds that, “El contraste entre la señorita rica y la costurera pobre también pertenece más bien al romanticismo que al modernismo.”¹² If the theme and motivation of the story are romantic, the literary techniques and style are definitely modernist. The intervention of the author into the story reminds one of Horacio Quiroga, but the use of the duende to enter the girls' bedrooms is similar to the employment of elves and gnomes in Rubén Darío's “El rubí.”

There is generally a unity of time in Nájera's short stories in that very little time transpires within the story. Kosloff notes that, “Los episodios dramáticos que Gutiérrez Nájera considera dignos de narración se verifican en la mayoría de los casos dentro de cortos períodos de tiempo.”¹³ Not only does the author enter the bedrooms, he enters the girls' minds. Kosloff relates that, “Su giro favorito, y que emplea ventajosamente es penetrar en la mente del personaje y presentar su sensibilidad espiritual, suspendiendo la acción con este propósito.”¹⁴ Menton, for his part, finds a unity of imagery between the two scenes in which the author first enters the bedroom of Berta and then of Manón: “Mientras los naturalistas deshumanizaban a sus personajes convirtiéndolos en animales, los modernistas los deshumanizaban transformándolos en objetos de arte. La madre de Berta cuida a su hija ‘como si fuese de porcelana quebradiza’; Manón tiene ‘orejas diminutas de porcelana transparente’; Berta tiene trenzas ‘de rubio veneciano’ y ‘Manón es bella, como un lirio enfermo’.”¹⁵

It is the beauty of such delicate (frágil) images which makes the title Cuentos frágiles appropriate. John Crow remarks that, “Gutiérrez Nájera scatters images like jewels throughout his prose. Indeed it is for this reason mainly that his prose style has an elegance and music which make it real poetry.”¹⁶ It is just such phrases as “lirio enfermo” which make his prose stand out as the image of “una tez eucarística” makes the Sonata de otoño of Valle-Inclán memorable. There is a parallel structure of three movements in Berta's and Manón's bedrooms which gives unity to the story: (1) the description of the bedrooms, (2) the thoughts of each girl in turn, and (3) their dreams.¹⁷

In “Después de las carreras” there are various cases of synesthesia—the blending together of different sense impressions; there is an overwhelming abundance of images which assault and overpower our senses as John Crow points out: “It is important to note how any writer uses the five senses, for through them we are made to feel the visible world around us. Nájera and other modernists are extremely fond of the sense of sight which perceives all created things in terms of color. Many of their compositions are color symphonies, and among them Nájera is the first to demonstrate this strong devotion to colors.”¹⁸

Note the colors in “Después de las carreras”: Horquillos de plata, pendientes de rubíes, reloj de bronce, rosas, trenzas de rubio, madera color de rosa, blancas colchas, camelias blancas, barniz luciente, cielo azul, almas de cristal, ámbar flúido … all these in the first paragraph.¹⁹ It has been suggested that writers can be characterized by a certain predominant color. Crow says, “However, it is not ‘blue’ which seems most characteristic of Nájera, but ‘white’. In ‘La mañana de San Juan’ he begins by saying there are few mornings ‘tan azules’ as this, but immediately he plunges for that evocative white, and in his next sentence the sky is limpio, as if the angels had washed it. … Nájera thinks rather in terms of immaculate whiteness. … As the years pass Nájera grows slowly away from the pristine white and more and more into the longing and eternal blue.”²⁰

Mauricio Magdaleno records the increasing predilection of Nájera for blue: “En estas últimas, por cierto, vuelve a insistir en la problemática del azul: ¿No puedo—escribe—comparar la sensación que en mi produce el recuerdo del lago, sino con la que me causa la poesía de Lamartine: es una sensación azul. Por qué no atribuir color a las sensaciones, si el color es lo que pinta, lo que habla en voz más alta a los ojos, y por los ojos al espíritu?”’²¹

Regardless of what color predominates in Nájera's stories, one can be sure that there is an abundance. In Berta's thoughts there is “arriba, un cielo azul, de raso nuevo.” (166) In Manón's reverie there are blue skies and a blue lake, but she is reminded that “Bajo la azul superficie de ese lago hay mucho lodo.” (169) Behind the almost sensual delight in the colors is found a personal quality in Nájera's prose which moves us. John Crow in echoing Justo Sierra says, “Gracia that is humor, poetry, compassion, sympathy, and affection, oftentimes all in one, this is the magic touch of Nájera's pen, the keynote of his rendition.”²² Something in his prose keeps it from being esthetically cold—the beauty-for-beauty's-sake of the later modernists. As Menton notes, “Sin embargo, esta sinestesia, que en manos de la mayoría de los parnasianos franceses y modernistas hispanoamericanos resulta demasiada fría, en la prosa de Gutiérrez Nájera reluce gracia. Hay casos de aliteración y de diminutivos, pero lo que más crea sensación de gracia son los imágenes donde el objeto inánime se humaniza delicadamente.”²³

John Crow also finds this humanization process to be a clue to the interior feelings of the writer: “Authors have different ways of making clear this evocation and recreation of essence. Azorín does it by a process of antiquating, giving age and charm, finding only the fragrance after the flower is gone. Nájera does this by a process of personification.”²⁴

We have not begun to catalog the other sensual images found in “Después de las carreras.” The “frío impudor del mármol” (168) and the “catre de fierro” (168) contrast with the softness of the carpet or the sheets which smell of violet. (166) There are many other tactile images: “La seda acaricía como la mano de un amante, y ella tenía un deseo infinito de volver a sentir ese contacto.” (169) We can almost hear the “crujiente seda” (168) or the notes of the birds “subiendo, como almas de cristal, por el ámbar flúido de la atmósfera.” (166) “Después de las carreras” is perhaps Nájera's most stylistically perfect short story. In none of his other stories is he able to pile up so many delicate images, but that is of small matter. What really shines through all of this crystalline brilliancy is the painful tenderness and haunting warmth of a man of whom John Crow says, “He is never reconciled to the passing of the virginal state, the age of innocence, the period of grace. … All of this he pours forth in his catharsis, which may also become the catharsis of his readers.”²⁵

Nájera ends his stories with a characteristic signature such as the one in “Después de las carreras” in which he appeals to the entities he has humanized:

No entres—¡oh fría luz!—no entres a la alcoba en donde Manón sueña con el amor y la riqueza. ¡Deja que duerma, con su brazo blanco pendiente fuera del colchón, como una virgen que se ha embriagado con el agua de las rosas. Deja que las estrellas bajen del cielo azul, y que se prenden en sus orejas diminutas de porcelana transparente!

(170)

And the bitter-sweet story “La mañana de San Juan” ends with the same type of apostrophe:

¡Oh mañanita de San Juan!
¡Tu blanco traje de novia
tiene también manchas de sangre!

(145)

There is an element of pathos in much of Nájera's work which sets him apart from the other modernists and we can feel the exquisite agony of that bright day when the “manecitas blancas” of the two young boys weaken and Carlos slips into the pond (remember how Manón is reminded in her reverie that there is “mucho lodo” at the bottom of the most azure pond). And the tragic death of the young girl Blanca in “Cuento triste” who is left by her husband places Nájera beyond the bounds of most of the fin de siècle cynicism. Perhaps there is too much sentimentality for the modern taste in Nájera' treatment of women, but only the most hard-hearted could deny him the compassion he felt for the poor defenseless children such as Manón.

Notes

1. Ivan A. Schulman, “José Martí y Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera: iniciadores del Modernismo,” Revista iberoamericana, 30, No. 57 (enero-junio 1964), 10.

2. Seymour Menton, El cuento hispanoamericano (México: Fondo de cultura económica, 1965), p. 166.

3. Schulman, p. 33.

4. Alexander Kosloff, “Técnica de los cuentos de Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera,” Revista iberoamericana, 19, No. 38 (septiembre 1954), 338.

5. Aurora M. Campo and Ernesto Prado Velázquez, Diccionario de escritorios mexicanos (México: Centro de estudios literarios, 1967), p. 163.

6. Kosloff, p. 338.

7. Kosloff, p. 338.

8. See also Kosloff, p. 339.

9. John A. Crow, “Some Aspects of Style,” Hispania, 38:4 (December 1955), 395.

10. Kosloff, p. 340.

11. Menton, p. 174.

12. Also Menton, p. 174.

13. Kosloff, p. 344.

14. See also Kosloff, p. 348.

15. Menton, p. 175.

16. Crow, p. 397.

17. Menton, p. 175.

18. Crow, p. 395.

19. Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Cuentos completos, (México: Fondo de cultura económica, 1958), p. 166. All references are to this edition.

20. Crow, p. 395.

21. Mauricio Magdaleno, “Gutiérrez Nájera en el alma de su prosa,” Cuadernos americanos, 107, No. 6 (1959), 185-86.

22. Crow, p. 402.

23. Seymour Menton, p. 177.

24. Crow, p. 396.

25. See also Crow, p. 402-3.