[In the following essay, Pao examines the role of physical gratification and excess in Larra's essay “La Nochebuena de 1836” and the influence of that work on two twentieth-century avant-garde texts.]

For writers in Madrid after 1915 and through the 1920s, the place to be on Saturday nights where one could be assured of witty exchanges and general merriment was the tertulia at Ramón Gómez de la Serna's “Sagrada Cripta de Pombo.” The list of attendees included entrenched members of the cultural establishment as well as initiates; Ortega y Gasset, Azorin and Valle-Inclán were known to appear, along with Lorca, Buñuel and the painter Maruja Mallo. From time to time “banquetes literarios” were held in honor of admired figures such as the aforementioned Ortega, the writer and critic Enrique Díez-Canedo and, once, the estimable “Don Nadie.” According to Ramón, the prototype—“el que crea el género”—for these homages could be traced to a banquet which took place on March 24, 1909 at the Cafe Fornos (293-94). This was the dinner dedicated to “Fígaro” or Mariano José de Larra, the nineteenth-century satirist. More than 100 participants were present at the event reviewed in the magazine Prometeo. A place setting was reserved for “Fígaro” at the head of the table; Ramón sat to the left of the guest of honor and was careful to pass dishes around him.

That the venue for remembering Larra was a banquet is both ironic and appropriate for an essayist who often wrote about the dining customs in his country, mostly lamenting the lack of etiquette he observed around him.¹ One “artículo,” however, that has not been read primarily as a commentary on food and its ingestion is “La Nochebuena de 1836.” The text, written not even two months before its author's suicide, was published in El Redactor General on December 26, 1836. In “Nochebuena,” the narrator—a writer and most probably Larra himself—goes out on Christmas Eve, views the preparations for the celebration and notes with disdain that on occasions such as these, spiritual reflection is sacrificed for the satisfaction of bodily appetites. Finding his servant drunk upon his return home, Larra encourages him to speak his mind, as was the custom during Roman Saturnalias² when the roles between masters and slaves were reversed and the latter were allowed to express themselves freely. The servant proceeds to lambaste his master, charging him with ridiculously lofty ideals and, even worse, the hypocrisy endemic to a social class comprised of idle gamblers, rumor-mongerers, and seducers of women. By the end of the text, Larra, disabused of his superiority and idealism, suffers insomnia. He passes a fitful night of anguished confusion while his servant snores soundly.

As critics have pointed out, “Nochebuena” is a bitter tract depicting the narrator's self-imposed isolation and solipsism (Kirkpatrick 32, 34), his unsuccessful attempt to stay rational in the face of base emotion (Perry 1982, 93) and his final descent into delirium (Rosenberg 385). Larra's alienation is the consequence of the explicit opposition that he himself establishes between himself and “el pueblo.” This separation is set out in the article's subtitle, “Yo y mi criado. Delirio filosófico” and the cheeky explanation that “Francamente, creo que valgo más que mi criado; si así no fuese le serviría yo a él” (326). The chiasmus “yo-filosofía” v. “mi criadodelirio” supposes not only a clear delineation of values but also a bald inequality, with privilege given, as Leonard T. Perry has seen, to reason, rationality, and other precepts of the Enlightenment ostensibly embodied by the speaker (1982, 87).

In contrast, the servant, an “asturiano” from one of Spain's bleakest regions, is a study in base materiality; a creature exclusively given over to satiating the needs of the body, particularly those of consumption. Larra's disgust for his “criado” is plain: “Una risa estúpida se dibujó en la fisonomía de aquel ser que los naturalistas han tenido la bondad de llamar racional sólo porque lo han visto hombre. Mi criado se rió. Era aquella risa el demonio de la gula que reconocía su cuerpo” (328).³ This overt gluttony—“gula”—particularly offends Larra because, as he observed earlier in the day at the Christmas Eve preparations, the obsession with food and material gratification signals a lack of rational thought and reflection. Larra goes on to describe his servant's “ausencia completa de aquello con que se piensa” (329). As such, the Asturian might as well be an animal; possessing appetite without reason, he is pure gut—stomach, digestive tract and bowels—without a brain.

Nevertheless, by the end of “Nochebuena,” the roles of master and servant are transformed and it is the “criado” who “habló y raciocinó” (330), while Larra finds himself unable to sleep, his initial “filosofía” replaced “con delirio,” as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day. This inversion of the hierarchy⁴ between the privileged members of society and the masses and between reason and disorder results directly from sensual excess. Bakhtin has noted the significance of popular feasting in defiance of official banquets during carnival time which “celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions” (10). Along with the commentary on Saturnalias, their decadence and debauchery,⁵ Larra described the almost obscene amount of food being prepared for the holiday—“Montones de comestibles acumulados … sobras por todas partes” (328)—and called the ensuing banquets “orgías,” a “bacanal que estremece los pisos y las vidrieras” (329).

But despite his disapproval, he recognizes that it is only when his servant has drunk to excess that the Asturian is released from his condition as a brute animal and even surpasses that of an ordinary human being: “ya no es hombre; es todo verdad” (329). The inversion between Larra and the servant then takes place. If before the hierarchy stood as “Yo y mi criado,” now it is given as “la verdad y Fígaro” (330), proving the axiom “La verdad es como el agua filtrada, que no llega a los labios sino al través del cieno.” Cynical though this perspective may be, it allows a role for muck, emblematic here of sensual surfeit and particularly “gula.”

It is with this aspect of gluttony and, more generally, of physical gratification in mind that I would like to read two avant-garde texts that, in my view, are clearly based—one implicitly and the other explicitly—on “Nochebuena.” These are “Patio, sucio” from Yo, inspector de alcantarillas (1928) by Ernesto Giménez Caballero and “La Nochebuena de Fígaro,” published first independently and then in Crimen (1934), by Augustín Espinosa. The two authors appear on Ramón's list of Pombo attendees,⁶ but this is the least of their similarities. Both were figures of the Spanish avant-garde: Giménez Caballero founded the important journal La Gaceta Literaria and established Spain's first Cine-Club in Madrid; while in the Canary Islands, Espinosa contributed to Gaceta de Arte and was the president of the Ateneo de Santa Cruz when French surrealist André Breton visited Tenerife in 1935.

More striking, each author experimented with daring, innovative writing before assuming conservative stances. Giménez Caballero is regarded generally as one of the first champions of fascism in Spain, and Espinosa began producing articles for Falangist magazines like ¡Arriba España! shortly after the publication of Crimen. The two were acquainted—Espinosa particularly admired his counterpart on the Peninsula⁷—and, being men of letters, they were both aware of their nation's literary tradition and the place of Larra within it. In his article “Junto a la tumba de Larra,” the Madrilenian credits the essayist with inspiring a new generation of writers, “La nuestra. La de 1927. La que se agrupó inicialmente en La Gaceta Literaria” (3) and nearly fifty years later, writing his autobiography, he would still include Larra in his “panteón isidrense” (1979, 308-309). Meanwhile, Espinosa, a literature professor, urged his students to read not only the latest publications in bookstores, but also their Spanish predecessors (Pérez Corrales 1986, 734) and in 1935 he would describe the debt of Antonio Machado and Valle-Inclán to “Fígaro.”⁸

Nevertheless, despite their mutual admiration for Larra and the same “artículo” that perhaps inspired them, Giménez Caballero and Espinosa have written two very different texts based on “Nochebuena.” While the original version may prove as accurate the maxim that truth is like water filtered through filth, Larra's coming to grips with the revelation that his life is just as disordered as that of his servant, if not more so,⁹ certainly does not result in epiphany, but rather in debasement, anguish and a “dissolution of authentic self” (Rosenberg 387) hinting of suicide.¹⁰ When the Asturian as representative of material excess introduces the element of disorder into the narrator's life, the hierarchy between classes and ethical positions is dismantled and the truth is revealed to be as sordid as the muck through which it flows. The only escape from the resulting delirium for Larra is death.

Neither of his twentieth-century successors, however, takes this approach when confronted with the apparent baseness of human existence, although both maintain the Christmas Eve time frame and its focus on food and bodily satisfaction. Giménez Caballero's text, despite brief passages of revolting imagery, is perhaps even more traditional than Larra's, ending, as I shall argue, with a restoration of order appropriate to Christmas morning. In contrast, Espinosa's “La Nochebuena de Fígaro” dispenses entirely with all semblance of propriety, social norms and taboos to complete a picture of the ultimate subversion. The remainder of this essay will attempt to demonstrate how each avantgarde text takes Larra's original version of “Nochebuena” as a point of departure towards radically different destinations. In each case, though, the muck through which “truth” is distilled consists of base material as represented by food and sensual gratification.

“Patio, sucio” is the ninth “relato”¹¹ in Giménez Caballero's Yo, inspector de alcantarillas, a book containing short narratives heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis followed by a section of “Fichas textuales” in prose poetry and another of “Composición,” a series of brief texts based on word association.¹² In it the protagonist, a young boy, tells of being sick on Christmas Eve, hearing his family dining in the next room and the severe fever that overcomes him that night.¹³ The text replicates many aspects of “Nochebuena,” including its first person narrator, its occurrence on Christmas Eve, food imagery, the interaction between the protagonist and servants, a dichotomy between the narrator's internal and external self and, finally, a position that John R. Rosenberg defines as “Between Delirium and Luminosity.” In addition, both “Patio” and “Nochebuena” begin with the idea of a continuing pattern: in Larra's version the speaker's first utterances are “El número 24 me es fatal … Doce veces al año amanece … no puede haber para mí un día 24 bueno” (326), while Giménez Caballero's narrator reports, “Era Nochebuena. Llevaba yo cuatro Nochebuenas consecutivas caído con calentura” (119). “Nochebuena” ends when the fatalism of its narrator culminates in despair, faithful to Larra's bleak prediction. “Patio,” on the other hand and as we shall see, suggests a break from the customary. But this narrative's finale is not the only aspect that departs from its model in the earlier “artículo.”

For example, we have already observed the image of food as emblematic of sensual excess in Larra's work. All around the writer festive preparations involving meals and “montones de víveres” (326) are occurring, but he wants no part of them. In fact, he specifically cites eating as the activity which separates the intellectuals from the masses. When his servant calls him to an early supper, Larra imagines himself saying, like Don Quijote to his underling, “‘Come, Sancho hijo, come, tú que no eres caballero andante y que naciste para comer’; porque al fin los filósofos … podemos no comer, pero ¡los criados de los filósofos!” (327). While there is certainly something facetious about these remarks, it is also striking that not only does Larra never depict himself eating in “Nochebuena,” his invective against the lower classes consists almost exclusively of criticizing its gluttony: “[L]as orgías llaman a los ciudadanos. Ciérranse las puertas, ábrense las cocinas” (329). Food here, no longer taken in modest amounts but in “montones,” demonstrates hedonistic abandon, the satisfaction of the body over the life of the mind.

In contrast, the boy in “Patio” calls the Christmas Eve preparations underway in his house “los signos extraordinarios de la fiesta única” (119). The culinary efforts comprise not a bacchanalian feast, but rather a “comida burguesa modesta.” Far from disgusting him, they make him feel melancholy, not simply because he is missing the dinner, but because the meal diverts the attention that his relatives were previously bestowing on the sick child. It may be argued that the difference between “Nochebuena” and “Patio” with regard to food is the amounts involved; that is, the huge mounds depicted in the former as opposed to the sensible portions in the latter. I would suggest, however, that it is not the amounts, but the food itself and the narrator's attitude towards it that is telling. While in Larra's text the speaker keeps himself from consuming anything in order to maintain his distance from “el pueblo,” in the present narrative the boy wants to be involved, wants to be present at the meal and to participate in the festivities.

If the delineations of “Nochebuena”—abstention v. consumption and “filósofo” v. “criado”—continue to obtain in “Patio,” the fact that the narrator desires to eat might suggest that his dealings with servants do not replicate the social hierarchy that existed between Larra and the Asturian in the earlier text. This is in fact the case. Not only does the boy balk at being segregated from the rest of the household and its meals, the reader learns that through the only window in his bedroom, he is able to observe a small courtyard a—“patio de vecindad … un patinillio” (120)—shared by neighbors in adjacent buildings as well as by the tavern on the corner. While the others only use the area for hanging laundry, the latter establishment takes advantage of the space as a sort of backroom for storing old barrels and boxes. When the boy is healthy, he plays in the courtyard, and when he is not, he gazes at it through the bars on his window. The area provides him with “una diversión de pajarito doméstico, de infancia abarrotada, enjaulada” (123) and holds the wonder of “lo prohibido.”

The back door of the corner tavern opens onto the courtyard and this is where the chambermaids take breaks. These working-class women fascinate the young narrator with their liveliness; “[s]us cantares mientras sacudían la ropa lavada, mientras la jabonaban; sus conversaciones con las otras criadas de los pisos, en tanto sacudían las alfombras.” Further, it is significant that occasionally they sneak him—one who has been used to pills, drops and tablets—bits of forbidden food: “alguna raja de chorizo, un pajarito frito y hasta (una vez) un trago de vino moscatel” (124). Once more, comestibles—particularly of the rustic variety—are a primary channel through which social interaction is realized and the sheltered son of a bourgeois family can mix with the lower classes. Unlike the narrator in “Nochebuena,” who promptly leaves the house when his servant announces a meal, in “Patio” the boy accepts the food offered him. Moreover, rather than taking pains to avoid contact with the masses, he welcomes it and especially relishes summer nights when the tavern door is left open: “[S]e oía cuanto pasaba en ella. Broncas, guitarras, manotazos de brisca, coplas de carreteros, y el gramófono.” In contrast, Larra recoiled from popular entertainment, noting of the theater, “¡Las cinco! Hora del teatro; el telón se levanta a la vista de un pueblo palpitante y bullicioso” (329). With regard to food imagery and the social contact it foments, then, “Patio” may be seen as radically different from the text that may have inspired it. Let us continue with another point of comparison between the two narratives that is related to the above and that may be described as the dichotomy between internal and external selves.

In his “artículo” Larra drew attention to a certain inconsistency with respect to the exterior of a person and the interior. Contemplating the windows in his house, he sees that the outside cold has formed condensation on the insides of the panes, causing them to drip and look as if they are weeping. He views this as a metaphor for the human condition: “[A]sí se empaña la vida … así el frío exterior del mundo condensa las penas en el interior del hombre, así caen gota a gota las lágrimas sobre el corazón. Los que ven de fuera los cristales los ven tersos y brillantes; los que ven sólo los rostros los ven alegres y serenos” (327). However, Larra attributes this complication of human nature—a calm and clear exterior that hides an anguished interior—only to his class of intellectuals. As observed earlier, he considers his servant to be an object that is exclusively surface—a “mueble cómodo … que indica la ausencia completa de aquello con que se piensa” (329)—and hermetically sealed because there is absolutely nothing within. His ears, Larra writes, serve purely decorative purposes, like trompe l‘oeil balconies through which no communication takes place. And if the Asturian and the “pueblo” he represents are filled with anything, it is only with food and drink. “El vientre es el encargado de cumplir con las grandes solemnidades” (328) and when he drinks, the servant is like a cask—insentient material full of more material. While the inner sanctuaries of Larra may contain noble feelings of anguish and painful ideals—anything but food, his servant who is pure façade suffers no such ambivalence. He is solid material, akin to a barrel of wine—matter without and matter within.

It is significant that C. Grant Maccurdy describes Larra's psychic house in “Nochebuena” as consisting of a living room persona protecting a shadowy authentic self hidden in a backroom (146) as “Patio” also presents edifices or other architectural spaces as macrocosms of the self. In Giménez Caballero's text, the walled courtyard is an “agujero cuadrangular, un pulmón cuadrílatero, estrechado y alto, por el que respiraban los ventanuchos de dos casas de vecinos” (120-121). The narrator explains the symbiosis between himself and the “patio”: “A este pulmón comunal daban los de mi alcoba, daban los míos” (121). The courtyard is a lung, a space where air external to the body combines with internal breath and in which transference occurs. It is also a hole, an opening for both fresh and stale air, both nourishment and waste.

But if Larra's internal self was filled with lofty intangibles, the “patio” here holds only the most material aspects of daily living. One indication of the baseness of the items contained in the area is the position of the boy as he gazes through the window. We may return to “Nochebuena” to find that ethical superiority and inferiority are demonstrated by an upper to lower directional scale.¹⁴ A sign of the servant's backwardness is revealed when Larra mentions that “las manos se confundirían con los pies, si no fuera por los zapatos” (329) so that normally elevated appendages behave like inferior ones. Furthermore, Perry observes that the servant's lingering at the foot of the bed while “Fígaro” looks for a match around the headboard, is indicative of the social and moral hierarchy separating the characters (1982, 91).

It happens that in “Patio” the boy's bed is placed such that his head is resting to the inside of the house, while his feet point towards the window. In this way, when he looks into the courtyard from a reclined position, he is looking over his feet. The superimposition on the scene of these literally base appendages to my mind underscores the materiality of what the “patio” represents.¹⁵ Indeed, the space contains the least transcendent aspects of human life—useless discards, underwear and greasy kitchen rags hung out to air—and the boisterous overflow of the tavern engaged in physical gratification of varying kinds, but primarily eating and drinking. To some degree, more than a lung, the courtyard may be seen as a gigantic stomach dedicated to material assimilation.

But when it rains, the “patio” floods with the water pouring off the roofs. Then it becomes a disgusting “cloaca aguanosa y purulenta” where “[t]odos los desperdicios de la casa de comidas se volvían locos a oler mal” (125). With the symbiosis between the space and the boy already established, it is not surprising that he is overwhelmed by “el olor de las fritadas y de los condumios, el humazo que se me entraba en la alcoba, el humazo denso del aceite más ácido y carrasposo … El olor … El olor …” Earlier, the narrator had reported that on this particular Christmas Eve, he was running a high fever and suddenly felt an overwhelming thirst: “Beber … beber … agua … agua … ¡Qué delicias y estragos mis ensueños de sed! Yo he sido un loco de sed!” (120). Then he observes that his obsession with water is not so much a medical reaction as a psychic one and the connection between the boy and the flooded courtyard is made explicit:

Mi estómago, mi lengua, mi vientre no eran mi vientre, no eran mi lengua y mi estómago, sino el patio aquel lleno de cascajos fermentados, de mondas, de duelas húmedas, de barrillo seboso, de espesor de aceite … Todo el patio de la taberna, sucio, pestífero, salobre, brumoso, sin sol, aguachado, deslavazado, saburroso, repulsivo, lo tenía yo dentro, era mi mismo interior gástrico …

Pasé toda la noche devolviendo. […] ¡Puaf! Como un resorte, en el acto, mi estómago se distendía, se empinaba, se descargaba, deshaciéndose, arrojando el patio.

(125-126).

In this way, then, both “Nochebuena” and “Patio” appropriate architecture as macrocosms of their narrators—Larra's psychic house and the child's physical stomach—in order to demonstrate discrepancy or harmony with regard to these characters' public and private personas. For example, the house metaphor in the “artículo” was apt precisely because it underscored the difference between social facade and authentic self. In Giménez Caballero's narrative, however, there seems to be no incompatibility with regard to the narrator's external and internal selves. Indeed, if Larra's internal self was his introspective spirit—that part of him that distinguished him from the masses—the boy's internal self is, in contrast, purely physical. Like the servant in “Nochebuena,” he is all stomach, so much so that the external version of material indulgence—the courtyard behind the tavern—becomes internalized.¹⁶ Unlike Larra, who rejected sensual excess in all its forms, including the popular theater with its lower class burlesques and over-wrought scenes, the young narrator of “Patio” eagerly anticipates the stimulation of his senses. He savors the cheap wine smuggled to him by the tavern maids, he hears their laughter and the music emitted from their place of work, he watches them with delight as one would gaze upon “un espectáculo absorbente” (123) and other “escenas … lúcidas, fuertes” (124). In nearly every detail heretofore in “Patio,” the material aspects of daily living and the diversions of “el pueblo” are privileged over spiritual or intellectual concerns.

Nevertheless, despite its graphic depictions of vomiting and apparent celebration of the physical, Giménez Caballero's narrative, written during the avant-garde years, may be seen as actually more traditional than Larra's original text. In fact, I would argue that it cleaves closely to Enlightenment ideals—ideals that fail in “Nochebuena”—and the restoration of order that these imply. If the realization of the axiom, “La verdad es como el agua filtrada, que no llega a los labios sino al través del cieno,” only sinks Larra into anguish, in “Patio” the maxim is borne out optimally so that the resulting water is clean and clear. Let us look at how the two texts diverge by examining how each treats its protagonist's position between luminosity—that is, rationality and order¹⁷—and delirium.

We have seen that in “Nochebuena” Larra descends through the “cieno” of sensual excess from a position of superiority and light to one of inferiority and darkness. The introduction of the bacchanalian element, triggered by the servant's drunkenness, results in inverted social roles. However this dismantling of hierarchy does not lead to enlightenment but rather to an “ethical nightmare” (Rosenberg 379). When the limits separating classes, the distinctions between reason (mind) and emotion or instinct (gut), and the definitions of honorable and churlish behavior become obfuscated, the result is a confusion of principles. The Christmas Eve time frame, then, as Martha Heard and Alfred Rodríguez observe, is clearly ironic and pessimistic (129). Rather than heralding the luminous birth of a Redeemer, the day seems to signal the dark condemnation of humanity to its basest instincts; the “Nochebuena” has become a “Nochemala.”

“Patio,” meanwhile, presents an opposite movement. The narrative begins with delirium and an excess of feeling. “[C]aído de calentura,” the child exclaims, “¡Qué desesperación! Desesperación desmesurada de niño” (119). And when his fever increases during the night, he experiences a “manía de la sed” and a “terror de mis enfermedades” (120). He craves water like “un loco de la sed.” However, these uncontrolled feverish urges only last until he vomits up the contents of his stomach prefigured in the tavern's courtyard. Rather than food, drink and other material aspects being catalysts for confusion as was the case in “Nochebuena,” here physical indulgence and the absence of social boundaries depicted in the “patio” are the “cieno” from which the water of truth emerges clean. With the rains,¹⁸ all the waste and cooking fumes in the courtyard are mixed promiscuously together¹⁹ and form an evil-smelling broth like that of a sewer. But what remained a delirium in Larra's text washes away—down the “sumidero central del patinillo” (124-125)—or spews up and out—“casi sin parar … Imagen de patio, expulsión de patio” (126). Either way, base material, the evidence of sensual excess, is ejected from the space behind the tavern as well as from the body.

This glutting and purging results in a restoration of light, sobriety and order. The next morning—Christmas Day—the boy awakes and “sentí como un prenuncio aliviador, delicioso, de que ya no tenía patio … de que me lo había limpiado” (126). If earlier the courtyard was a flooded mess, “sucio, pestífero, salobre, brumoso, sin sol,” now “[h]acía un sol delicado y claro, en un cielo puro” and when the door to his room is opened for air, “entró una atmósfera helada y transparente, como de agua de manantial” (126-127, all emphases mine). Not only is the redemptive value of Christmas reestablished, but the rational principles of the Enlightenment as well: the child is aware of “el equilibrio incomparable de haber yo limpiado dentro y fuera de mí aquel patio” (127, my emphasis). Far from the mental chaos at the end of “Nochebuena,” then, the muck in the present text has done its work. From material excess to surfeit to rejection, balance has been restored and with it, the ethical hierarchy predicated on a truth that is like filtered water, pure and bright, fitting for the birth of a Savior.²⁰ The now healthy boy is filled with euphoria—not giddy happiness, but “la estupenda agilidad de la euforia” where his wits and composure are maintained. Overcoming his feverish delirium, he has recovered his senses, senses that have nothing to do with the body and everything to do with reason. And significantly, even when the smell of cooking permeates the house, it is no longer a rank odor of old grease but the fragrance of “verdura sobriamente cocida” (my emphasis).

Giménez Caballero's text is, in many respects, the rational fulfillment of Larra's “La verdad es como el agua filtrada” axiom. In the end, material excess as represented by food and sensory pleasure is separated and rejected in favor of Enlightenment (and Christian) ideals. But if “Patio” may be seen as even more traditional than “Nochebuena.” Espinosa's “La Nochebuena de Fígaro” surpasses both in terms of upsetting the hierarchy of moderation and excess, order and disorder. In fact, in “Fígaro” there is no distinction whatsoever between the base and the exalted, and since this is the case, the entire text takes place in a state of what might otherwise be called degradation.²¹

The narrative, originally titled “La Nochebuena de Larra,” first appeared in La Gaceta Literaria on July 15, 1930 along with two other texts which would also be included in Crimen²² four years later. In a never published preface to the book, Espinosa, in the guise of the textual author explaining the genesis of his work, writes that “Fígaro” was penned on Christmas Eve 1932 and that “Su título responde únicamente a una circunstancia de estado espiritual que se me asemejaba … muy próxima a la que informa el conocido artículo de Mariano José de Larra” (qtd in Pérez Corrales 1980). Nevertheless, it will soon be evident that the “estado espiritual” to which the writer refers is only a point of departure towards a conclusion that Larra himself might have chosen if, after the disillusion suffered on the night in question, he had literally come to his senses—that is, if he had chosen sensory and material indulgence over failed reason and suicidal despair.

Espinosa's short work—it is barely two pages long—at first glance does not seem to resemble its predecessor in the slightest except, perhaps, for its first-person narrator. The protagonist begins with a confession: “Sentía una ternura que me llevaba a acariciar todas las cosas” (37). Already the verb “sentir” as opposed to Larra's “reflexionar” (328), in conjunction with the emotion “ternura” and the stroking of things, would suggest a material sensibility very different from the essayist's concentration on ideas and ideals. Further, to emphasize the point, the objects of the narrator's fixation comprise an assorted myriad with apparently nothing in common—the edges of knives, cat snouts, public hair, prisms of ice, moldy cockroaches and crystal balls.

He also likes to caress the backs of books; he does not mention reading them, only fondling them. Here is another clear departure from Larra, who specifically complained that the sole value his articles might have for those of his servant's class is a literally material one; that is, the writings are sold, converted into cash which is then used to buy food and drink for bodily consumption (328). The protagonist of “Fígaro” responds to this model in a rather extreme fashion, since he is only interested in the physical aspect of the books—their “lomos.” We might note, in addition, that “lomos,” while referring here to the spines of books, is also the word for loins. As parts of a human body they might receive the attentions of a lover, including “ternura” and “caricias;” as parts of an animal—pork loin, for example—, they might be eaten.

Certainly, the unnamed protagonist—is he “Fígaro?”—behaves like someone enamored. But unlike Larra, preoccupied with the state of the “espíritu,” “el alma” and “aquello con que se piensa,” he is obsessed exclusively with intranscendent objects. Further, while the essayist strived to maintain categories and hierarchies—the nourishment of the mind over the satisfaction of the body, the truth separate from the muck—the present narrator bestows his caresses without discrimination now on sable furs, then dogs' tongues, then wormholes. He indulges his desire for things, wantonly treating them with neither privilege nor prejudice. At this point, the debt of “Fígaro” to “Nochebuena” seems dubious.

However, when the narrator describes what he is touching at the present moment, points of contact begin to emerge. The current object of his attention is the cadaver of an approximately fifty year-old man wearing a woman's coat. The corpse's incongruous attire suggests the antics of the popular theater in Larra's text where, we may recall, male and female roles with their costumes were reversed, producing the chaos and transgression of burlesque comedy. But let us look more closely at the description of the cadaver:

Mis manos estaban tocando algo frío y repugnante. Primero las orejas, luego la nariz, después las cejas del cadaver … Tenía aquel hombre un ojo medio cerrado, y el otro, vidrioso, desmesuradamente abierto … No llevaba puesto zapatos, sino unos calcetines negros … rotos por el talón y sobre los dedos. Tenía la cabeza recién afeitada …

(37).

I would argue that this portrait of the dead man is strikingly similar to the depiction of Larra's servant in “Nochebuena.” For example, in both cases attention is focused on the head and the feet. Espinosa's text mentions the ears, nose, eyebrows, eyes and bald head of the body, while the earlier “artículo” observed that the Asturian “tiene orejas que están a uno y otro lado de la cabeza … ; también tiene dos ojos en la cara; él cree ver con ellos” (329, all emphases mine). Just as Larra is doubtful that his “criado” can truly see through his eyes, the cadaver in “Fígaro” has one eye closed while the other is wide open, but glassy; and, needless to say, his deceased state negates the possibility of sight.

Further, both works comment on the men's feet, with Larra's making a significant observation relevant to Espinosa's. The narrator in “Nochebuena” remarks with respect to his servant, “[L]as manos se confundirían con los pies, si no fuera por los zapatos y porque anda casualmente sobre los últimos.”²³ The dead man in the present text is, as noted above, not wearing shoes on his feet. He is not walking on these appendages either, given his horizontal position, not to mention his lifelessness. In other words, even less of a human specimen than the Asturian, the corpse's feet might as well be its hands. The upper to lower bodily hierarchy has been leveled and the superiority of the former over the latter discontinued.

Finally, the terms used to describe the cadaver's posture are oddly specific. It is “escorzado horizontalmente en un gran primer plano de gran ‘film’, que fuera a la vez un gran cuadro.” If we return to “Nochebuena,” though, we may discover precedents for these references to aesthetic representation—“escorzado” or “foreshortened,” “primer plano” or “close-up,” “film” and “cuadro”—all of which describe painting or cinematography. The “artículo” first mentions that the servant “tiene de mesa lo cuadrado,” then adds, “A pesar de esta pintura, todavía sería dificil reconocerle entre la multitud, porque al fin no es sino un ejemplar de la grande edición hecha por la Providencia de la humanidad” (329). The shape of the Asturian, his solid squareness, leads Larra to use, rather than, say, “imagen,” the word “pintura”—a canvas in a square or rectangular frame—to depict the man's physical appearance. The writer then relates the painting to another object that is “cuadrado”—a book. Nearly a hundred years later, “Fígaro” echoes its predecessor's “grande edición” with “gran primer plano,” “gran ‘film’” and “gran cuadro”—this last, of course, a synonym for “pintura.” It is not difficult to see that if Larra used the metaphors of books and painting to describe the human exterior, Espinosa, living in the modern age of cinema, might appropriate those of painting and film.

After depicting the dead man in terms that recall the fleshy mass of Larra's servant, the narrator finally reports the location of the corpse:

Todo esto entre dos hileras de cubiertos, sobre el mantel blanco de una mesa de comedor preparada para una gran cena de Nochebuena. Los mal vestidos pies, rozando la blancura de unos pasteles de coco y la ligera arquitectura de un castillo de hojaldre; una de las manos, de uñas curvas y oscuras, medio sumergida en una fuente de “chantilly”.

(37-38)

This first glimpse of a Christmas Eve dinner table is compelling for the contrasts it presents in one brief paragraph. The initial sentence, showing precise rows of silverware and an immaculate tablecloth, reflects the order and etiquette of the official banquet, an exercise in establishment values and tradition which Bakhtin, as we have seen, distinguished from raucous popular feasting. However, there is something overdone about the numerous cakes, castles of puff pastry and cream overflowing the table that recalls Larra's disapproval of the “[m]ontones de comestibles acumulados” and his version of the typical response to celebration: “¿Hay misterio que celebrar? ‘Pues comamos,’ dice el hombre” (328). Needless to say, the disparity between the neat banquet table and the excessive amounts of food is underscored by the fact that the just described cadaver is lying amid the sweets. This powerful image is, to my mind, a direct consequence of “Nochebuena.” In that text, the servant was portrayed as solely corporeal matter absent of spirit; he ate to surfeit and when he drank he was a wine-filled cask. It is not surprising, then, that Espinosa takes this metaphor to its logical and literal conclusion: human beings in their exclusive indulgence of carnal appetites are simply flesh—flesh that eats and flesh that is eaten.²⁴ Once again, the corpse's shoeless feet and hands are mentioned as they mingle obscenely with the food, brushing against cakes and draped in the cream. These appendages continue to be, like those of Larra's “criado,” indistinguishable and only serve to demonstrate that the dead man is pure flesh, no longer even recognizable as human.

The implication here, then, gained from “Nochebuena,” is that there is no qualitative difference between human beings alive (the Asturian) or dead (the cadaver), as they are without a transcendent spirit in either case. Only in the present text, the example is more egregious, the corpse joining other comestibles waiting to be consumed. And if the point is missed, the narrator adds that on a nearby table can be found bottles of champagne and a pig's head, “de colmillos muy largos, que se parecían demasiado a los del difunto” (38). In this way, the metaphor for gluttony is literalized; humanity is seen as so voracious that it consumes itself and as so piggish that it is the actual animal served up at the feast. We may recall, moreover, that this particular result of excessive appetite was not lost on Larra when he explicitly likened his servant to a beast: “[L]os fabulistas hacen hablar a los animales, ¿por qué no he de hacer yo hablar a mi criado?” (330).

But if in “Nochebuena” Larra aligned himself with “fabulistas” and “filósofos” as the bearer of rational order and an Enlightened spirit, in “Fígaro” it is the narrator himself who introduces the element of disorder and debasement into the “complicada retórica del banquete” (38). He is the one whose obsession with material objects led him to caress all manner of things at the beginning of the text and who now reports his macabre contribution to the dining table: “No sin grandes esfuerzos lo [referring to the cadaver] había podido traer hasta allí. Y colocarlo sobre la mesa.” As suggested earlier, here is the writer who has been disabused of his illusions, if he had them at all. Rather than sink into depression as does Larra, he revels in the exclusively physical aspects of human existence. He seeks no transcendence and simply takes to the extreme the sensual excess already present in society at all levels, blowing up the truth and reflecting it grotesquely as in a funhouse mirror.

The activity that currently engages the narrator of the present text is also telling: he is using a knife to separate the head of the corpse from its trunk. While in “Nochebuena” the human head ideally represented a rational spirit, here it is not privileged above any other appendage. In fact, it is unmistakably linked to the “flamante cabeza de cerdo” and pure gluttony. As if to further demonstrate that his severing of this particular part serves no transcendent aim, the narrator resumes his catalogue of the material items that obsess him: “picaportes, barandas de escaleras, frutas podridas, relojes de oro, excrementos de enfermo, bombillas eléctricas, sostenes sudorosos, rabos de caballo, axilas peludas y camisitas sangrientas, pezones, copas de cristal, escarabajos y azucenas naturalmente húmedas” (38). Once again, unremarkable objects—door knockers and stair railings—are listed with luxury items—gold watches and crystal goblets—and aspects of earthy eroticism—sweaty brassieres, hairy armpits and nipples. The dead man's head would make a nice addition especially since, unlike the previous enumeration, this collection includes as evidence of the strictly physical, elements of decay—rotted fruit and excrement.²⁵ As before, however, the narrator's sensual promiscuity does not discriminate between the mundane, the beautiful or the disgusting.

At this point the speaker finally reveals that the motivation to kill the man “unas horas antes en su misma habitación, para sustituir su cabeza por una cabeza más clásica” was the request of a lover; it was the “capricho último, de noche de Navidad, de una mujer de pelo rojo y caderas ampulosas” (38). The act of replacing the corpse's head with that of a pig, then, was again the result of intranscendent desires. It was simply the whim—a passing fancy—of a sensual woman with fiery hair and ample hips who “esperaba … voluptuosamente, mi retorno imperioso a su casa, portador de la cena mágica.” Of course this magic feast is no pig's head but that of the dead man, which amounts in this text to much the same thing.

I would argue that the earlier description of “una cabeza más clásica” has reverberations here when we learn that the cadaver left on the banquet table has had its head replaced with that of a pig and that the gift brought to the caprichous woman is the head of a man. The first may reflect classical mythology—possibly an acknowledgment of antiquity evoked by the Roman Saturnalias in “Nochebuena”—and its half-man, half-beast creatures such as centaurs and the Minotaur.²⁶ To some degree also, the combined motifs of gluttony, men like pigs and a sensually bewitching woman recall Ulysses's adventure with the enchantress Circe who turned his crew into pigs as an apt consequence of its ravaging ways. And finally, the reference to Salome and the beheading of John the Baptist is self-evident. It is significant, furthermore, that Salome's dance was often used by late nineteenth-century proponents of the “Art for art's sake” idea to describe the purely aesthetic instance, that is, beauty without regard to moral significance.²⁷ Clearly, this notion of artistic pleasure and the sensory gratification it implies, in which ethical values are irrelevant, is consonant with the satisfaction of physical appetite and material desire graphically demonstrated in “Fígaro.”²⁸

Last, we might note that unlike Larra in “Nochebuena,” the narrator of Espinosa's text does not succumb to suicidal despair when confronted with the truth of intranscendent reality. Rather, he returns home to his lover, triumphant as “a la vez, ‘maitre’, matarife y comensal enamorado” (38) and perfectly content with his role as provider and consumer of meals. His self-description as a “comensal enamorado,” moreover, joins the elevated state of being in love to the prosaic one of dining. In this way the physical satisfaction of eating is extended to that of lovemaking, both ways of gratifying carnal appetites.²⁹ Finally, there remains the disturbing possibility that the loving dinner companions—the narrator and the redheaded woman—may somehow be dining literally on each other. Certainly the precedent for human meals has been established in “Fígaro” as well as in the Circe episode of the Odyssey in the narrowly escaped fate of Ulysses' men-turned-swine. The ambiguity of “comensal enamorado” in the present text, then, is as tantalizing as it is disquieting.

It is this moral ambivalence that distinguishes “Fígaro,” an avant-garde text, from the “grotesque realism” of Bakhtin's carnivalesque. In the latter, popular feasting represented the joyful feeding and fertilizing of the universal body “contained not in the biological individual … but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed” (19). Aspects of this celebration may even be seen in Larra's descriptions of the marketplaces and plazas full of food, despite his personal disgust at the “orgías.”³⁰ But in the twentieth-century version by Espinosa, physical gratification does not reach beyond the whims of one man and one woman.

Further, for the Russian theorist, the concentration on base materiality indicates a state of degradation leading not only to the body's destruction but to its regeneration as well: “To degrade … means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs” (21). In “Fígaro,” however, the material is not transcended even by the promise of regeneration since the procreative act of “enamorados” bears the hint of cannibalism by “comensales.”³¹ Here, instead, the corporeal instant constitutes the sole measure of existence. So that rather than to Bakhtin's interpretation of base materiality, “Fígaro” responds to Bataille's. In 1930 the Frenchman working on the margins of the surrealist group described matter's “incongruity and … overwhelming lack of respect”: “Base matter is external and foreign to ideal human aspirations, and it refuses to allow itself to be reduced to the great ontological machines resulting from these aspirations” (51). In Espinosa's text, as we have seen, the spirit is absent, the head of reason simply more flesh to be consumed, and art offers no value beyond the immediately sensual. Further, religious contemplation receives no mention at all on this Christmas Eve as material excess and physical gratification rise up to demonstrate “the helplessness of superior principles.”

To conclude, like “Patio,” “Fígaro” addresses Larra's maxim that truth is distilled from the muck. But while Giménez Caballero's version adhered to this belief perhaps even more firmly than “Nochebuena” by presenting redemptive transcendence as possible only after one is purged of matter, in Espinosa's text the writer is the person that Larra might have been, had he been persuaded that his servant was correct in living an exclusively material existence. In “Fígaro” the narrator literally recovers his senses—not rational judgment, but bodily indulgence—and shows that the truth filtered through the refuse is not lucid water but, in fact, more muck.

Notes

1. See for example the “artículos” “Correspondencia del duende,” “El castellano viejo” and “La fonda nueva.” Both Simerka and Perry (1981) have examined one or all of these works with respect to Larra's commentary on food and social protocol.

2. It is not coincidental that this event occurs to Larra since Maccurdy observes that the day following Christmas Eve, December 25, corresponds to the tenth and final day of the traditional Saturnalia period (146).

3. Perry notes that the servant's demonic laughter is in stark contrast to the tranquil, reasonable smiles on the faces of portrait subjects of the sixteenth-century (1982, 89) while Bakhtin explains the deeply subversive nature of laughter and its role in freeing the material from the spiritual. Laughter “liberates from the fear that developed in man during thousands of years: fear of the sacred, of prohibitions, of the past, of power. It unveils the material bodily principle in its true meaning” (94, my emphasis).

4. Inversion or role-switching was foreshadowed on Larra's walk earlier in the text. He stops in at the theater where the first production is a comedy involving women dressed as men and men dressed as women. Larra glumly reflects, “He aquí nuestra época y nuestras costumbres. Los hombres ya no saben sino hablar como las mujeres, en congresos y en corrillos. Y las mujeres son hombres, ellas son las únicas que conquistan” (329).

5. Bakhtin writes that the Saturnalias most clearly expressed the disorder of human freedom and “escape from the usual official way of life” (8).

6. Their names are mentioned, in fact, in close proximity—an incredible coincidence given the hundreds of people listed in no apparent order.

7. In an article that appeared in La Tarde on September 24, 1929, Espinosa demonstrated his support for “Gecé” who was starting to draw criticism for his increasingly reactionary position, a position that would soon result in his Gaceta staff quitting in disgust and force him to produce the last issues of the journal—now called El Robinsón Literario—alone. The Canarian mentions that while they only met in person on two occasions—first in 1923 and then in 1926—“Ideológicamente, hemos coincidido—entonces, antes y después—muchas veces” (1980, 37). Espinosa then expresses his sympathy for Giménez Cabellero's ostracism and compares his “hora de soledad” with that of Larra and other literary figures.

8. This analysis appears in Espinosa's article “Sangre de España” (1990, 153-62).

9. The “criado” explains the “rationality” of his life while pointing out the absurdity of Larra's: “Cuando yo necesito de mujeres echo mano de mi salario y las encuentro, fieles por más de un cuarto de hora; tú echas mano de tu corazón, y vas y lo arrojas a los pies de la primera que pasa, y no quieres que lo pise y lo lastime, y le entregas ese depósito sin conocerla” (332). He then adds, “Tú me mandas, pero no te mandas a ti mismo. […] ¡Yo estoy ebrio de vino, es verdad; pero tú lo estás de deseos y de impotencia” (332).

10. The “caja amarilla” that Larra gazes at through his delirium at the end of “Nochebuena”—a bitterly ironic title—proved, after his death, to be an autobiographical detail. Searchers combing through his things found on his nightstand the yellow box in which lay the pistol that he used to shoot himself on February 13, 1837.

11. This is the author's own term; he calls Yo, inspector de alcantarillas a “libro de relatos superrealistas” (qtd in Dennis 83).

12. Yo, inspector may be characterized as generally exhibiting avant-garde tendencies like dependence on the image, enumeration, humor, a concentration on modern life and daring subject matter such as masturbation. But though it was frequently cited as an example of surrealism in Spain, Nigel Dennis debunks this attribution in his article “Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Surrealism: A Reading of Yo, inspector de alcantarillas (1928).” Even those who earlier defended “Gecé”'s modeling of the French movement in his work have had to qualify it as “el peculiar superrealismo de Giménez Caballero” (Hernando 144) or caution that the work may be considered surrealist only “dando a este término un sentido amplio, que tendría poco que ver con la escuela francesa encabezada por André Breton” (Selva Roca de Togores 331).

13. M. A. Hernando notes that this “relato” is probably autobiographical as Giménez Caballero himself often fell ill as a child, causing him to be marginalized from family activities during these periods (156).

14. Again, Bakhtin may be consulted for the meanings of “upward” and “downward” in both their cosmic and bodily aspects—the celestial, spiritual and abstract as contrasted with the earthly, corporeal and concrete (19); and the face and head as opposed to the belly and genitals (21). About the same time that Bakhtin was formulating his ideas on Rabelais and the carnivalesque, Georges Batailles noted in “The Language of Flowers” (1930) that “what is evil is necessarily represented, among movements, by a movement from high to low” (13).

15. Related to the baseness of feet, Bataille wrote a 1929 essay extolling the big toe as emblematic of the material over the transcendent. The dissident surrealist argued that the foot had been unjustly maligned in all cultures as a result of humanity's desire for elevation despite the fact that it is this very extremity which allows humans their upright posture: “But whatever the role played in the erection by his foot, man, who has a light head, in other words a head raised to the heavens and heavenly things, sees it as spit, on the pretext that he has this foot in the mud” (20).

16. This interpenetration of self and surrounding space may be compared to what Bakhtin calls “the logic of the grotesque” wherein “[t]he limits between the body and the world are erased, leading to the fusion of the one with the other and with surrounding objects” (310).

17. The narrator of “Nochebuena” refers to an “idea más luminosa” (327), clearly identifying brightness with Enlightenment principles.

18. Strikingly, when Larra on December 23 awaits his day of dread, he calls it “esperando el aguacero” (326).

19. A text by the young Luis Buñuel titled “Diluvio” (1925) describes a similar confusion and loss of boundaries triggered by drenching rains.

20. To some degree, this trajectory from the intranscendent to the transcendent was suggested earlier when the narrator of “Patio” noted that he liked to collect shiny paint chips from his bedroom wall for “aquella suavidad pulida, esmaltada, fresca, infinita” (123, my emphasis).

21. For Bakhtin, degradation or debasement means capitulation to the “material bodily principle” (21-22).

22. This work has often been mentioned as one of the few authentically surrealist texts produced in Spain.

23. This comment recalls the peasant expression “her [or his] hands are as dirty as feet” (qtd in Bataille 21).

24. Barbara Simerka notes that the factors differentiating “civilized” nations from so-called barbarian ones were dining protocol and the food consumed. In short, the crucial division was between those who ate human flesh and those who did not. Obviously in “Fígaro,” then, an inversion is taking place that is more radical than the reversing of hierarchy practiced at Roman Saturnalias.

25. It is significant that Bataille located the consummation of the material in the festering physical quality of decay and death. See “The Language of Flowers” (10-14) where he sees these blossoms not as emblems of love and beauty, but as hairy reproductive organs hidden by petals that last only a short time before withering and rotting indecently in the sun. The subversion of the high by the low is complete upon considering the roots of the flower, “swarming under the surface of the soil, nauseating and naked like vermin” (13).

26. In addition, the divinities of Gnostic and Egyptian sects frequently had the heads of animals such as asses, dogs or falcons. One such example is Anubis, the jackal-headed god who lead the dead to judgment.

27. See Helen Grace Zagona's The Legend of Salome and the Principle of Art for Art's Sake (Geneva: Droz, 1960).

28. We only need recall how the narrator's fixation with objects led him to caress the bindings of books and disregard their didactic or inspirational content. His aesthetic pleasure was derived purely from the books' external materiality.

29. Again, the “lomos de libros” mentioned earlier for the emphasis of their material aspect over content, continue to function implicitly throughout the text as simply “lomos,” the intersection of carnality as meat—“lomo de cerdo,” obviously related to the “cabeza de cerdo”—and as an object of erotic attention—the loins of a lover.

30. Bakhtin writes, “The carnivalesque crowd in the marketplace or in the streets is not merely a crowd. It is the people as a whole, but organized in their own way, the way of the people” (255).

31. Even when Bakhtin presents a scene in Rabelais in which animal intestines are consumed and pass through human bowels so that “the limits between the devouring and the devoured body are erased” (223), it is always clear that it is animals—and not humans—that are the eaten.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.

Bataille, Georges. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Ed. and intro. Allan Stoekl. Trans. Allan Stoekl. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.

Dennis, Nigel. “Ernesto Giménez Caballero and Surrealism: A Reading of Yo, inspector de alcantarillas (1928).” The Surrealist Adventure in Spain. Ed. C. B. Morris. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1990. 80-100.

Espinosa, Agustín. Crimen y otros textos. Intro. Manuel Almeida. Islas Canarias: Viceconsejería de Cultura y Deportes, 1990.

———. Textos (1927-1936). Ed. Alfonso Armas Ayala and Miguel Pérez Corrales. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Aula de Cultura, 1980.

Giménez Caballero, Ernesto. Memorias de un dictador. Barcelona: Planeta, 1979.

———. “Junto a la tumba de Larra.” La Gaceta Literaria 5.119 (1931): 3-4. [El Robinsón Literario de España 4 (1931)].

———. Yo, inspector de alcantarillas. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1928.

Gómez de la Serna, Ramón. Pombo. Obras completas. Vol. 2. Barcelona: Editorial AHR, 1957. 31-492.

Heard, Martha and Alfred Rodríguez. “La desesperanza de la Nochebuena: Larra y Galdós.” Anales Galdosianos 17 (1982): 129-30.

Hernando, Miguel A. “Primigenia plasmación del superrealismo castellano: Yo, inspector de alcantarillas (1928).” Papeles de Son Armadans 236-237 (1975): 137-59.

Kirkpatrick, Susan. “Larra and the Spanish ‘Mal du Siècle.’” Rosenberg, ed. 21-34.

Larra, Mariano José de. “La Nochebuena de 1836.” Las palabras: Artículos y ensayos. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1982.

Maccurdy, C. Grant. “Romantic Expressionism and the Last Days of Larra.” Rosenberg, ed. 141-52.

Pérez Corrales, Miguel. Agustín Espinosa: Entre el mito y el sueño. Vols. 1-2. Las Palmas: Ediciones del Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, 1986.

———. “Agustín Espinosa y el Triálogo del muerto.” Jornada Literaria (Nov. 8, 1980): 11.

Perry, Leonard T. “Ambivalencia en ‘La Nochebuena de 1836,’ de Larra.” Arbor: Ciencia, Pensamiento y Cultura 437 (1982): 87-97.

———. “La mesa española en el Madrid de Larra.” Mester 10 (1981): 58-65.

Rosenberg, John R. “Between Delirium and Luminosity: Larra's Ethical Nightmare.” Hispanic Review 61 (1993): 379-89.

———, ed. Resonancias románticas: Evocaciones del romanticismo hispánico. Madrid: Porrua Turanzas, 1988.

Selva Roca de Togores, Enrique. “Giménez Caballero en el vórtice de la vanguardia hispana.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 18.2 (1994): 328-37.

Simerka, Barbara. “You Are What You Eat: Dining Customs and Social Satire in ‘El castellano viejo.’” Romance Languages Annual 6 (1994): 586-89.