SOURCE: Englekirk, John E. “The ‘Discovery’ of Los de Abajo.” Hispania 18, no. 1 (February 1935): 53-62.

[In the following essay, Englekirk recounts the literary developments leading up to the publication of Azuela's Los de Abajo, calling it a formidable contribution to Spanish-American literature.]

The novel plays a relatively unimportant rôle in the development of Spanish-American letters of the nineteenth century. Patriotic verse and combative prose were the inevitable products of the long struggle for independence, first from Spain and later from local tyranny. Oppression, revolt, and exile—such was the normal stream of life in those turbulent, chaotic days, and few were the literati who found the place and the peace to commune serenely with the muse. With the possible exceptions of Isaac's María and Mera's Cumandá, both of which borrowed heavily from their European predecessors of over a generation before, the more laudable prose works of the century had been inspired by a passionate zeal to expose and to condemn existing political and social conditions. One need but recall such works as Lizardi's El Periquillo Sarniento, Sarmiento's Facundo, Blest Gana's Martín Rivas, and Marmol's Amalia to realize that artistic perfection was the least of the aims of any one of these writers. Patriots, political exiles, essayists, pamphleteers, rather than novelists. With the turn of the century, however, there appeared on the literary horizon young men who were to cultivate and to exalt the novel to the position it now holds in Spanish-American literature. Argentina gave us La Maestra Normal of Manuel Gálvez, Los Caranchos de “La Florida” of Benito Lynch, and the classic of the Pampa, Don Segundo Sombra of Güiraldes. Colombia may well rest content with La vorágine—the sole novel of her ill-starred son, José Eustasio Rivera. Venezuela points with righteous pride to Doña Bárbara of Gallegos. And Mexico added to this formidable list of truly representative novels, redolent of the Spanish New World spirit and graphically descriptive of the manners and customs of America Hispana, its most powerful story of the Revolution, Azuela's Los de abajo.

The spectacular success of Los de abajo focused world attention on its author, and great was the general surprise to learn that Mariano Azuela was by profession a modest doctor practicing in one of the humbler quarters of the Mexican Capital and writing but in his leisure moments, and that he had already published a goodly number of prose works. New editions of his earlier publications were soon in demand; he was discovered to have written several excellent novels of revolution-torn Mexico. His Mala Yerba, published in Guadalajara years before, was preferred by many to his more popular Los de abajo, and in 1932 was translated into English by Anita Brenner under the title of Marcela and shortly after into French by Mathilde Pomés as Mauvaise graine. Bewildered, and yet naïvely pleased with the belated glory that has lightened the gathering years, the reticent author is now besieged from every quarter of the globe for further translation rights, for new editions, and for critical information on his life and works.

As one examines the bibliography of Los de abajo,¹ he finds that the novel had been published ten years before it commanded sufficient attention to warrant new editions. It is true that there were two printings before this, those of 1917 and 1920, but these were very limited editions and failed to attract any widespread interest. Then suddenly—and wonder of wonders!—El Universal Ilustrado, in January of 1925, offers the novel in five installments, which publication was followed by no less than six more in the Spanish-speaking world and by translations in English, French, German, Japanese, and Serbian and by others, soon to appear, in Russian, Yiddish, and Italian. How can one explain the sudden success of a novel that in ten years had been read by but a handful of people and whose author was practically unknown in his own country? What induced the sales-seeking El Universal Ilustrado to publish Los de abajo in its popular La Novela Semanal? Who was responsible, and under what circumstances, for the discovery of Mexico's outstanding novelist of the Revolution? To whom is due, in no small degree, the fame that is crowning Mariano Azuela's later years of writing?

Carleton Beals, in the preface to the English translation by E. Munguía, Jr. (New York, 1929), does not attempt to explain why Los de abajo “suddenly attracted the attention of the entire Spanish-speaking world, ten years after it was first published”; but he adds that when it did, “the Mexican literati looked around in surprise.” If Mr. Beals may be pardoned the freedom with which he indulges in mathematical calculations in making the statement “ten years after it was first published,” his assertion that Mexico's men of letters were entirely ignorant of Azuela and of his novel should not be passed up unchallenged. Mexican literati were not surprised when Azuela's novel took its rightful place among the great prose works of Spanish America. Approximately three years before the date given by Beals, Azuela was recognized overnight as one of Mexico's foremost novelists, and Los de abajo was hailed as “la gran sensación literaria del momento.” To the following interesting occurrence may be attributed largely the reputation that Azuela now enjoys.

Toward the close of the year 1924, literary men began to ask themselves what they had accomplished in the realm of poetry, the drama, and the novel that might stand the acid test of time. One of the more prominent issues of the day was thus set forth in the title of an article by José Corral Rigán,²“La influencia de la revolución en nuestra literatura.”³ Obviously the writer knew little of Azuela and much less of his works. He makes the following statement: “Los escritores de la revolución no son los que estuvieron con la revolución.” And then to substantiate his point, he adds:

La revolución tiene un gran pintor: Diego Rivera. Un gran poeta: Maples Arce. Un futuro gran novelista: Mariano Azuela, cuando escriba la novela de la revolución.⁴

This but two months before Los de abajo was to be proclaimed the outstanding literary achievement of the Revolution!

It was not until one month later, however, that the real challenge was issued to the younger generation of writers, and by none other than one of the most promising of that very group. Julio Jiménez Rueda did not mince words in the article he submitted to El Universal for December 20, 1924, entitled “El afeminamiento en la literatura mexicana.” After pointing out what everyone knows, “que nuestra vida intelectual ha sido siempre artificial y vana,” he adds that those writers who came before, however, and who were successively Parnassians, Symbolists, Naturalists, had at least

chispazos de genio, pasiones turbulentas, aciertos indudables y frecuentes y ponían en la obra un no sé qué: gracia, comprensión de la naturaleza circundante, amor, elegancia, pensamiento original que la distinguía del modelo que imitaba … Pero hoy … hasta el tipo del hombre que piensa ha degenerado. Ya no somos gallardos, altivos, toscos … Es que ahora suele encontrarse el éxito, más que en los puntos de la pluma, en las complicadas artes del tocador.

He regrets that in the years to come those who study contemporary Mexican literature will have the feeling that they are face to face with “un simpático bordado rococo.” And, he laments, “eso en tiempos en que la tragedia ha soplado tan de cerca!” Why does the new Mexico not find expression in the literature of the day? Why do Mexican literati continue to write from their towers of ivory? Why have not they, like the writers of revolutionary Russia, created “una obra de combate” in which Mexico may appear “agitada, revuelta, en plena locura creadora, en acción constante, pueblo de perfiles netos, colorido, brillante y trágico, masculino en toda la acepción de la palabra.” How strange that in fourteen years of revolutionary strife

no haya aparecido la obra poética, narrativa o trágica que sea compendio y cifra de las agitaciones del pueblo en todo ese período de cruenta guerra civil, apasionada pugna de intereses. … El pueblo ha arrastrado su miseria ante nosotros sin merecer tan siquiera un breve instante de contemplación.

It was not to be expected that so stinging an attack and such a pessimistic, disconsolate picture of contemporary literature and writers was to be passed by unheeded. In spite of a very apparent leaning toward the literary past of Spain and of Mexico, Julio Jiménez Rueda could not possibly have entertained such a gloomy outlook of the literature of a decade ago. In all probability he painted the canvas in such drab tones so that it might serve to goad and to stimulate a healthy reaction among the literati themselves and create a lively interest in the general public. If such was his secret wish, then it was realized beyond his fondest hope, for it supplied the tinder for a literary feud that lasted for several months and not the least of whose fruits was the discovery of Azuela and his best-known novel. The spark was administered by a young colleague of Jiménez Rueda, who, patiently biding his time in the hopes that someone would answer the challenge, could finally refrain no longer from stoutly affirming “ante el público de México y de la América de habla española que existe en la actualidad una literatura mexicana viril que sólo necesita, para ser conocida por todos, de una difusión efectiva.”⁵

Francisco Monterde G. I. was in accord with Jiménez Rueda “en que faltan literatos de renombre”; but, he contended, “eso se debe, principalmente, a la falta paralela de críticos,” a statement that drew caustic comments from the pen of Victoriano Salado Alvarez, who wittily interpreted the remark—“la falta de literatos se debe a la falta de críticos.”⁶ Monterde ably proved his point, however, by citing the case of Mariano Azuela:

Podría señalar entre los novelistas apenas conocidos—y que merecen serlo—a Mariano Azuela. Quien busque el reflejo fiel de la hoguera de nuestras últimas revoluciones tiene que acudir a sus páginas. Por Los de abajo y otras novelas, puede figurar a la cabeza de esos escritores mal conocidos, por deficiencias editoriales—él mismo edita sus obras en imprentas económicas, para obsequiarlas—, que serían populares y renombrados si sus obras se hallaran, bien impresas, en ediciones modernas, en todas las librerías, y convenientemente administradas por agentes, en los Estados. ¿Quién conoce a Mariano Azuela, fuera de unos cuantos literatos amigos suyos? Y sin embargo es el novelista mexicano de la revolución, el que echa de menos Jiménez Rueda, en la primera parte de su artículo.

Thus was the novel Los de abajo and the name of Mariano Azuela brought, for the first time, to the attention of an interested Mexican reading public. And the literary quarrel, that soon attracted combatants from every quarter, served admirably in keeping all eyes focused on “the Mexican novelist of the Revolution.”

Victoriano Salado Alvarez now entered the lists for Excelsior and came to the defense of Jiménez Rueda, asserting that “no hay literatura nueva y que la que hay no es mexicana … y a veces ni siquiera literatura.”⁷ Far more important, however, is his very definite contribution toward keeping the public interested in Los de abajo by declaring that although he has read several of Azuela's short stories he has never read the novel cited by Monterde, which, he adds, “según parece, es una curiosidad bibliográfica.” He heaps fuel on the mounting flames by taunting his adversary with the following gibe:

Sostener que no hay literatos porque no hay críticos, sería lo mismo que atribuir el que los niños nazcan sin pies a que no hay zapateros como Herman que calcen con todo primor a los infantes.

To which Monterde replies that when he spoke of the paucity of good critics and the need of vital criticism it was with reference to “los literatos de renombre—los escritores cuya fama—de existir entre nosotros una crítica positiva y eficiente—sería continental y tal vez mundial,”⁸ adding that it was due to this very fact—“críticos en receso, críticos apartados de una actividad constante”—that a well-written novel like Los de abajo, representative of an epoch and of a social movement, should pass “inadvertida aun para personas tan ilustradas como don Victoriano Salado Alvarez.” In another article and in a less pessimistic vein regarding contemporary literature, Julio Jiménez Rueda confesses that he now knows that Azuela “ha escrito una novela representativa de este lapso de agitación política y que solamente conocen sus familiares y amigos.”⁹

El Universal Ilustrado, in its own words “el único Semanario Nacional capaz de preocuparse periodísticamente por las más altas cuestiones del momento,” is quick to capitalize on this interesting polémica sustained in the morning papers by three of the Capital's outstanding literary men. In the January 22 and 29 issues it runs, as its leading article, a poll on the question “¿Existe una literatura mexicana moderna?” featuring the replies of such well-known figures as Federico Gamboa, Salvador Novo, Enrique González Martínez, José Vasconcelos, and others. And, of course, it expressly contacts the newly discovered novelist for his views on the subject. Azuela's reply could not have been more appropriate, either for the immediate point under discussion or as a comeback to those who had so long overlooked his work. He merely limited his remarks to an article he had published eight or nine years before in answer to a question raised by the Secretary of Education concerning the future of the Mexican novel. He then wrote in part:

Por lo que se refiere al porvenir de la novela mexicana, poco hay que esperar de los literatos de profesión. ¿Qué saben ellos de esas enormes palpitaciones del alma nacional que están sacudiendo en estos mismos instantes a nuestra raza? ¿Acaso no es en los momentos de suprema angustia, cuando el alma del pueblo está empapada en lágrimas y chorreando sangre todavía, cuando nuestras lumbreras literarias escriben libros que se llaman Senderos ocultos, La hora del Ticiano, El libro del loco amor?

Such was the very pointed charge brought against the old school of writers by one who belongs both to the old and to the new. Then, in equally convincing terms—and this was written almost a decade before!—he indirectly invited them to examine his own novels of the Revolution:

En la estepa de la Rusia se irguió al paria de gesto airado y voz de trueno que dijera todas las angustias y todos los dolores de su patria. De la gleba mexicana se alzará, así lo esperamos, así lo deseamos, el que venga a desgarrar nuestros oídos, con su grito henchido de todas las angustias, de todos los anhelos, de todas las alegrías de nuestra raza. Y entonces, hasta entonces tendremos el libro ansiosamente esperado, el que nos arrebatemos de las manos para sentir el golpe de maza que anonade, el bisturí que abra sin piedad las carnes, el cauterio que las carbonice; el libro que llegue hasta los más recónditos lugares de nuestro suelo como las novelas de Emilio Zola en Francia y las de León Tolstoi en Rusia. Y será nuestro libro: sangre de nuestra sangre y carne de nuestra carne.¹⁰

Not a week had passed after Monterde's memorable article of December 25, 1924, in which he asked how many had ever read Azuela's work, before others were beginning to discover that a truly powerful novel had been gathering dust in oblivion. As a single instance of this growing recognition of Azuela, there is the case of Rafael López, who, in discussing the novel for 1925, comments:

Recuerdo un esfuerzo serio, bien apuntado, pero reducido a doscientos ejemplares para los amigos, por la pobreza de nuestro medio: el de Mariano Azuela en Los de abajo, lo más interesante de diez años a la fecha.

So immediate and so widespread was the popular demand for Los de abajo that El Universal Ilustrado lost no time in availing itself of the golden opportunity for another journalistic coup d'état by publishing the novel in its weekly series. Without previous announcement there suddenly appeared in the January 22 number of the magazine a full-page advertisement proclaiming the publication of Los de abajo—“La gran sensación literaria del momento”—in its next issue. The following day El Universal takes up the cry on almost every page of its January 23 number. Four days later the announcement reads:

Los de abajo—Una Creación Palpitante de Nuestra Vida—El Universal Ilustrado ofrece la Unica Novela de la Revolución.

and is illustrated by a sketch that was to be the jacket design for La Novela Semanal. The editorial column—“La Flecha en el Blanco”—of El Universal Ilustrado was dedicated to a short review and criticism of Los de abajo the day it appeared in the literary supplement. The weekly did not fail to give due credit to its young collaborator, Francisco Monterde, for having defended “la personalidad del ignorado médico de provincia, verdadero novelista,” nor hesitate in pointing out that, in answer to the overnight curiosity aroused by the polémica,

entre el público selecto de México por conocer la obra, … El Universal Ilustrado, que vigila atentamente el desenvolvimiento artístico del país, fué quien se propuso, contra viento y marea, mostrar a la nación la figura interesante del Doctor Azuela.

Thus, in brief, did Los de abajo come into national and, soon after, continental and international prominence. And from night till morning all Mexico wanted to know who this penetrating, forceful novelist was whose name and works were relatively unknown. Interviews were eagerly sought by the press. Ortega was there first to maintain the lead for El Universal Ilustrado, and he submitted his article, “Azuela dijo …,” with a photograph of the novelist, for the January 29 issue—the day Los de abajo was offered to the public, Monterde's challenge to the “críticos en receso” brings forth the first serious critical approach to the novel from the pen of Eduardo Colín, considered by the former “uno de los mejores críticos de la actual generación.” Three days later the same daily publishes “Los de arriba y ‘Los de abajo’” by Monterde, an article in which he modestly disclaims sole credit for the discovery of a work which he felt would of its own merit and positive literary value have been recognized sooner or later anyway. He aptly sums up the fruits of the literary quarrel and holds Victoriano Salado Alvarez to account for calling Los de abajo “una curiosidad bibliográfica.”¹¹ Then, strange to relate, Salado Alvarez himself interviews Mariano Azuela—whom he had heretofore known “mediante cartas”—and publishes in the February 4 issue of Excelsior an article on “Las obras del Doctor Azuela.” It is a curious admixture of reserved praise, as if in atonement for not having proclaimed Azuela's “dotes indudables de novelista,” and of petty censure, as when, after admitting that the novelist's scenes of ranch life at Cañón and his descriptions of Mayahua and of Juchipila “están chorreando realidad y vida,” he writes,

Sus obras no están bien escritas; no sólo tinen concordancias gallegas, inútiles repeticiones, faltas garrafales de estilo; sino que carecen hasta de ortografía, de la ortografía elemental que se aprende en tercer año de primaria.

Azuela was quickly defended by the editor of El Universal Ilustrado, Carlos Noriega Hope, who attacked this “crítica del Punto y Coma” of the “dómine pedante,” comparing Azuela, “toute proportion gardée,” with “el vasco doctor de las ‘Inquietudes de Shanti Andia’.”¹²

And so Azuela and his novel continue to be either the focal point of the polémica begun late in December, 1924, or are constantly referred to in the many articles on the subject of “¿Existe una literatura mexicana moderna?” that keep on appearing in the Capital press until April, 1925.¹³ His opinion is now sought as well on any subject deemed worthy of publication. The up-to-the-minute El Universal Ilustrado sends Jorge Loyo to interview him as to how and with what he writes;¹⁴ in July he is approached by Aldebaran of the same weekly on the question “¿Existen autores teatrales en México?”¹⁵ and several months later upon the now all-important subject of the day—bobbed hair!¹⁶

Much more significant in this matter of the belated recognition and popularity that fell to Azuela's lot in the fifty-third year of his life are the reviews and critical appreciation of his works other than Los de abajo that appear in these initial months of his triumph. Mala Yerba is highly commented upon in the February 26 issue of El Universal Ilustrado, and El Desquite appears in La Novela Semanal of the same weekly for July 2, 1925. Several well-chosen excerpts from his La Malhora are selected as “Las mejores páginas de los buenos libros” for El Universal Ilustrado of October 8, 1925. The encouraging guidance of Francisco Monterde is apparent in these tributes to Azuela's ability as a novelist.

The rest of the story is well known. A glance at the bibliography of Los de abajo does not reveal just what took place in that banner year of 1925, but it does lead one to ask what did happen to awaken such a justifiable interest in the works of Mexico's Pirandello.¹⁷ If, as a rule, literary feuds are largely negative in the results obtained, such was certainly not the case as regards the interesting and very fruitful one sustained by the colorful trio, Julio Jiménez Rueda and Victoriano Salado Alvarez, the complainants, and Francisco Monterde G. I., the defendant. The very versatile descendant of a family illustrious in the annals of Mexican literature won the day, and not the least of his rewards is the recurring smile of satisfaction that sweeps over him as he sits at his desk in the Secretaría de Educación Pública and watches with feelings of unmingled joy the mounting successes of the now world-famous novel of his friend Mariano Azuela.

Notes

1. Los de abajo, El Paso, Texas, in El Paso del Norte, 1916; Los de abajo, Tampico, in El Mundo, 1917; Los de abajo, México, in Razaster, 1920; Los de abajo, México, in El Universal Ilustrado, 1925; Los de abajo, Jalapa, in Ediciones del Gobierno de Vera Cruz, 1927; Los de abajo, Madrid, in Biblos, 1927; Los de abajo, Madrid, in Biblos—Colección Imágen, 1927; Los de abajo, Buenos Aires, in Vanguardia, 1928; Los de abajo, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1930; Los de abajo, Santiago de Chile, in Zig-Zag, 1930. Translations: L'Ouragan, by J. and J. Maurin, Paris, in Monde, 1928; The Under Dogs, by E. Munguía, Jr., with preface by Carleton Beals, New York, Brentano's, 1929; The Under Dogs, by E. Munguía, Jr., with preface by Carleton Beals, London, Jonathan Cape, 1930; Ceux d'en bas, by J. and J. Maurin, with preface by Valery Larbaud, Paris, J. O. Fourcade, 1930; Die Rotte, Giessen, Kind & Bucher Verlag, 1930; Oni Sa Dna, by Dr. Zoran Ninie, Zagreb, Czechoslovakia, Obzor, 1933; (Los de abajo), Japanese version by Tamiji Kitagawa, for Mexico Shimpo, n.d.

2. Francisco Monterde G. I. informs me that José Corral Rigán was a pseudonym used interchangeably by three newspapermen of that period—Ortega, Carlos Noriega Hope, and Arqueles Vela.

3. El Universal Ilustrado, November 20, 1924.

4. The italics are mine.

5. Francisco Monterde G. I., “¿Existe una literatura mexicana viril?” El Universal, December 25, 1924.

6. “¿Existe una literatura mexicana moderna?” Excelsior, January 12, 1925.

7. Ibid.

8. “Críticos en receso y escritores ‘Desesperanzados’,” El Universal, January 13, 1925.

9. “El decaimiento de la literatura mexicana,” El Universal, January 17, 1925.

10. “¿Existe una literatura mexicana moderna?” El Universal Ilustrado, January 22, 1925.

11. Monterde disproves this charge by citing his own deep interest in Azuela's “Cuadros y Escenas de la Revolución Mexicana” from his first reading of them early in 1920, and his untiring efforts to bring Los de abajo and Azuela's other novels to the attention of the critics. He was, at the time of his personal discovery of the novel, on the staff of Biblos, a weekly bulletin of bibliographical data published by the Biblioteca Nacional. In the February 28, 1920, issue of Biblos appears Monterde's first review and criticism of Los de abajo, and in the ensuing months he submits a complete list of Azuela's publications. Later, as editor of Antena, he asks for and publishes in October of 1924 a short article by the novelist, entitled “Y ultimadamente.”

12. “Los de abajo—El Doctor Mariano Azuela y la Crítica del Punto y Coma,” El Universal, February 10, 1925.

13. Cf. Manuel Mártinez Veládez, “¿Existe una literatura mexicana moderna?” El Universal Ilustrado, April 2, 1925.

14. “¿Con qué escriben nuestros escritores?” ibid., June 11, 1925.

15. Ibid., July 2, 1925.

16. “Nuevos conceptos sobre el Ultrapelonismo,” ibid., October 8, 1925.

17. Pirandello was “discovered” only after many years of nonrecognition, and when he already had to his credit a fine repertoire of “new” plays.