[In the following essay, Jimenez-Fajardo provides an extended close reading of Unamuno's Abel Sanchez to examine the manifestations of envy, arguing that in Abel Sanchez, it is Joaquin's envy, and the resulting obsession, that makes his art triumph over Abel's.]

Two men are friends from childhood. Abel is an artist, the other, Joaquín, a doctor. Always, it seems, Abel triumphs in life with ease and grace. Joaquín hates him for it. Abel takes from Joaquín the woman he loves. Joaquín saves Abel's life. He praises his friend's work while his envy grows unabated. Abel has a son, Abelín. Joaquín marries and has a daughter, Joaquina. Abelín and Joaquina marry; they have a son, Joaquinito. The child prefers his grand-father Abel. Joaquín, once more robbed of a loved one's affection, attacks Abel. The latter's weak heart cannot stand the strain and he dies. On his own deathbed Joaquín openly admits his lifelong hatred and takes responsibility for Abel's death.¹

This classic drama of envy, once more replayed, appears at first to have but the barest contours of a novel. A narrative that emphasizes its character as a recurrence, with insistent literary references to its earlier avatars, the apparent refusal to change the pattern, to innovate in the least, manifesting itself in the decision to repeat even the names of the characters. Abel and Joaquín have Abel and Cain as biblical ancestors, Byron's Abel and Cain as literary ancestors, and have as children Abelín and Joaquina, whose own son is Joaquinito.

One final irony must have pleased Unamuno. What he had planned as an indictment of envy becomes an indictment of those who elicit envy, and just as Byron's sympathies were openly with Cain, so were Unamuno's finally with Joaquín. He tells us that he came to prefer Joaquín: “Y ahora, al releer, por primera vez, mi Abel Sánchez para corregir las pruebas de esta su segunda—y espero que no última—edición, he sentido la grandeza de la pasión de mi Joaquín Monegro y cuan superior es, moralmente, a todos los Abeles. No es Caín lo malo; lo malo son los cainitas. Y los abelitas” (p. 13).²

It was Augusto Pérez, who in Niebla, sat down with his creator and demanded his freedom. But, he was only a character after all. Joaquín Monegro, however, reached Unamuno outside of his book, Unamuno-as-man as well as Unamuno-as-writer. The repeated literary drama elicits a repetition in reality. Byron's preference for Cain is reflected in Unamuno's later preference for Joaquín. Literature creates lived circumstance.

Only a novel that is also a powerfully orchestrated study of the ability of language to invent the real can reach out beyond its own fictionality to create for itself antecedents and even a descent. In fact, the self-generated impact of the narrative extends across accustomed limits to alter the writer's view of his own work in the very direction indicated by the work's subjacent structure. We shall examine in this paper the creative relationship between Joaquín's Confesión and the surrounding text, parallel to that between writing and painting as antagonistic artistic expressions of Joaquín and Abel's respective views on life.

The first installment of Joaquín's Confesión already contains elements suggestive of the form the nívola as a whole is to take. Recalling his early childhood Joaquín ponders the arbitrariness of a fate that had favored his friend Abel with natural grace and equanimity, while his own passionate self-assertion seemed merely willful or boorish: “Ya desde entonces era él simpático, no sabía por qué, y antipático yo, sin que se me alcanzara mejor la causa de ello, y me dejaban solo. Desde niño me aislaron mis amigos” (p. 16). This statement reveals first, in Joaquín's view, an innate, fundamental condition of things, whereby Abel was “simpático” and he was “antipático.” Both traits preclude logic. What we see as yet as peripheral aspects of the personalities of the two friends are, for Joaquín, accurate expressions of central moral differences. Also for him, in terms of God's Creation, moral sickness cannot be rationalized any more than evil and death; to say that Cain introduced the second stage of evil into the world with the murder of Abel is to evade the question, since God's preference for Abel's sacrifice and his indifference to Cain's remains unexplained.

In the space of five lines, Joaquín twice underscores his incomprehension and twice, almost as a consequence, his rejection. While we are invited to see these statements of the confession as a commentary on the early events of Chapter I (Joaquín in his stubbornness forces his friends to choose Abel's company), it seems evident that the reverse is in fact true, and that the episode was selected as their echo. Everything in the novel appears a repercussion of the increasing intensity of an envy whose origins have the arbitrariness of a first cause. It is therefore not because of this incident, or others like it, that Joaquín is envious of Abel; the incidents take place and will continue to do so, as a result of the envy he recreates in his past.

The grounds for Joaquín's growing obsession are then established from the start as a radical condition. The rest of Chapter I proceeds to introduce two important areas in which it will have occasion to exercise itself: the relative merits of art and medicine, and the role of Helena, Joaquín's cousin, with whom he is in love. In both instances it is Joaquín who injects the conflict, in situations parallel to the childhood incident. He wants to do research in medicine, the aspect of that science which he considers closest to art. Abel, for his part, admits that he wants to paint because he likes it but also to make money. Joaquín, of course, will have none of it; it is essential that Abel's motives be those he imputes to him, in this case a thirst for fame. As the talk turns to Helena, Joaquín decides to introduce her to his friend, although Abel does not seem to be particularly interested. Joaquín regrets his rashness almost immediately, forseeing the likely results of this act; naturally, he cannot break his promise.

Abel and Helena will soon fall in love to confirm Joaquín's suspicions. Throughout the nívola the same pattern will develop with respect to Joaquín's relationships: people must act for the reasons that he ascribes to them; they exist exclusively in terms of his obsession. Joaquín feels cheated by nature at both the personal and social levels. At the personal level he believes Abel to be innately gifted in his avocation, and to be able to attain glory without much effort. The field of art seems to him to be particularly well suited to this. At the social level Helena has come to be for him the very symbol of possible social redemption. She herself is a totally social being.

From the self-created hell inhabited by Joaquín, the world around him is but a reflection of his passion; the events that mark its duration are transformed by envy into moments of its own intensification; indeed, they arise from envy's never-ending ability to transform spontaneity into calculation. Unamuno is not interested in offering us an objective account of how this particular anguish overwhelms Joaquín. He wants to show its transforming and constantly increasing power throughout his hero's life, and the perfectly valid, though negative, existential assertion it affords him. The narrative may then be seen as an effort by language to manifest the power of this central obsession. Seeing his life from the vantage point of his later years, Joaquín's envy becomes a filter through which his past appears to him in variously intense shades of the same color. The retrospective development of his hate represents for him the work of art he was unable to produce, his answer to Abel's skill, his own bid for immortality. Like the latter's painting, it captures what he sees as the essence of the people around him and their actions, altering them, preserving them in its own perspective. He is, in fact, more of a complete artist than is Abel. When Joaquín introduces Helena to Abel, his friend sees her first as a perceptive man would: “La verdad es que tu prima y futura novia, acaso esposa, Helena, me parece una pava real …” (p. 25). Her superficial beauty and her vanity are the veneer of a central coldness. Abel, who is himself basically cold, recognizes her immediately. For the artist, however, she is a perfect study. (“Hay algo, en el mejor sentido, de pantera en ella. Y todo ello fríamente” p. 26.) Abel is capable of separating his objective from his artistic viewpoint, Joaquín is not. His entire soul is consumed by his passion. It is this passion that dooms him to fall in love with an essentially cold woman and to hate a similarly cold man.

Not only was it Joaquín who instigated the meeting between Abel and Helena, his very words precipitate the avowal of their mutual attraction. When Abel tells her Joaquín's belief that she must be in love with someone else, Helena blushes and allows Abel to guess who the other man is: “Helena se mordió los labios, se ruborizó y calló un momento.

—Sí, eso me ha dicho—repitió Abel, descansando la diestra sobre el tiento que apoyaba en el lienzo, y mirando fijamente a Helena, como queriendo adivinar el sentido de algún rasgo de su cara.
—Pues si se empeña …
—¿Qué?
—Que acabará por conseguir que me enamore de algún otro …
Aquella tarde no pintó ya más Abel. Y salieron novios

(p. 31)

This incident depends on Joaquín for two reasons: first, and most obviously, because his absence allows it. This absence is never explained; we are merely told that one day he could not go to Helena's sittings for her portrait (which he requested of Abel). Considering what Joaquín is probably suspecting, one must wonder whether he did not stay away on purpose, as a way of testing Helena and Abel. The text strongly suggests this possibility: “A los dos días tuteábanse ya Abel y Helena; lo había querido así Joaquín. Quien al tercer día faltó a una sesión” (p. 28). Between the first and the last sentence stands Joaquín's will. He had wanted them to become friends, he wanted not to be there the third day. Secondly, because this absence hovers as a shadow over the meeting, its repercussions transmitted through language: there are six references made to Joaquín's statements (“él dice,” “él te ha dicho,” “no te ha dicho,” and so on). Once more, as we saw with regard to the first Confesión, incident is created by words and the relativism of their meaning with respect to personal circumstances.

This avowal of love, or rather Helena's avowal of love for Abel, since at no time do we have any information about Abel's feelings for her, is one of the greatest blows Joaquín is to suffer. It will remain with him, underlined or modified in several ways, throughout the nívola. Significantly, it lies on a foundation of words, and reaches its climax at a conjunction of two forms of art, language and painting. Abel, as he repeats for the last time “Sí, eso me ha dicho,” looks at Helena “descansando la diestra sobre el tiento que apoyaba en el lienzo.” The linguistic underpinnings of the incident dominate its denouement, clearly highlighted by the veiled reference to the Divine Comedy. “Aquella tarde no pintó más Abel”—the last line of Francesca's story in Canto V of the Inferno “quel giorno piú non vi leggemo avante,” relates to the book she and Paolo had been reading on Lancelot and Guinevere's love as the foundation for their sin, that is to say, it clearly accuses literature with having led them astray. Similarly, Abel and Helena are literally thrown together by Joaquín, and the repeated references to what he said are the verbal foundation of this particular incident. Language is at the source of action, as before, and the crucial importance of this event finds its correlative in that given to words, the text requesting the contribution of another, past verbal structure, that of Dante. Helena as a woman practically disappears under the impetus acquired by the union of art forms; Abel is clearly seeing her as an artist, while she herself almost admits to the power of Joaquín's words over her decision: “Que acabará por conseguir que me enamore de algún otro …”

This episode also fully introduces the idea of interior duplication which had likewise been suggested in the relationship between the first confession and its accompanying incidents. The concept of the mirror image appears as soon as Abel and Helena are alone, when the latter decides to look at her portrait. Trying to elicit her impression of the painting, Abel asks her: “¿Qué? ¿No tienes espejo? ¿No te has mirado a él?” (p. 29) and then repeats “¿No te encuentras bastante guapa en este espejo?” (p. 29). Joaquín's opinion is referred to at this point, the moment when the “construction en abyme”³ begins. The duplications involve Helena as she sees herself, as she is seen by Joaquín, as she is seen by Abel, and as he paints her. It expands then into a replay of the Paolo and Francesca episode, which refers in its turn to the earlier romance of Lancelot and Guinevere.

The game of mirrors is in fact pursued throughout the novel and established in the notice that precedes it. We are told therein that Joaquín's Confesión was found among his papers, and that fragments of it are included in quotations throughout the text. This epigraph contains both the Confesión and the rest of the text, and represents the first most external framework of the tale, that presented by Unamuno-as-writer. The second level appears as soon as we begin reading and encounter the first confession. We realize then that in his comments Joaquín is replaying his entire life for us. At another level the confession acts as a mirror image of the text and vice versa. Further, at the turning points of the narrative, other duplications are introduced that open its action onto vast vistas of literature, including them in an endless cycle of replayed tragedies as with the Lancelot-Guinevere, Paolo-Francesca, Helena-Abel series.

The interior duplication grows out of language and functions through it. The same may be said of the relationship between the “action” proper and Joaquín's confession, where thoughts and expressions flow from the latter to the former in such a way, that, as pointed out earlier, the confession might well be seen as the source of the action. In fact, the future perspective from which the tale is seen almost imposes such a conclusion.

Upon Abel's admission to him of his relationship with Helena, Joaquín is crushed and, not without justification, accuses his friend of treachery. He has attributed Helena's recently renewed disdain to her newly famous portrait and to Abel's own words about him to Helena: “Además, me ha dicho cosas de donde he sacado que le has contado lo de que la creo enamorada de otro …” (p. 34). Abel's revelation follows. Once more we see a confluence of painting and language, here at a moment when Joaquín is about to realize fully his loss. By referring to the previous series of reported statements by Abel to Helena, Joaquín also reintroduces the entire earlier development while originating the present one. In the accompanying confession he situates the birth of his hatred at this point: “… empecé a odiar a Abel con toda mi alma …” (p. 39). Such hatred becomes for him now a living thing, his creation, the counterpart of Abel's own artistic work. His living hell began with Abel's avowal. As Joaquín rails against him, Abel repeats “No te sulfures …” (p. 36) to which Joaquín answers: “Pues no he de sulfurarme …” (p. 36). Together with its straightforward meaning of “don't get angry,” the colloquialism also contains a coldly humorous reference to the brimstone of Joaquín's hell: “Aquella noche nací al infierno de mi vida” (p. 40). His torture is the anger and hatred of jealous envy.

The third confesión penetrates wholly into the action, as we see Abel and Helena's wedding exclusively through its prism of hatred. It is in this instance also that the language reaches its poetic apex. In his effort to describe the almost unfathomable intensity of his passion, Joaquín reaches into typically baroque imagery, dominated by the concept of hatred as ice. After having plunged in this bath of cold hatred and metaphorically died, (“me sentí como si no existiera, como si no fuese nada más que un pedazo de hielo, y esto para siempre,” p. 49), Joaquín emerges inured, his hatred hardened into the contours of a diamond,⁴ seeing study and the personal glory he may gain as his only possible revenge. This confession represents Joaquín's most extreme, conscious effort to give his passion an artistic form. From now on its basic design will remain unaltered. At the same time, the control his vision exercises over the past is manifested by the inclusion within the confession of the crucial moment when he loses Helena definitively. Joaquín's obsession has become a multifaceted mirror at the heart of the narrative wherein is reflected its drama in endless duplication. Hatred becomes ice, and then crystal, an instrument of vision: “—sentí como si el alma toda se me helase. Y el hielo me apretaba el corazón. Eran como llamas de hielo. Me costaba respirar. El odio a Helena, y sobre todo, a Abel, porque era odio, odio frío cuyas raíces me llenaban el ánimo, se me había empedernido. No era una mala planta, era un témpano que se me había clavado en el alma; era, más bien, mi alma toda congelada en aquel odio. Y un hielo tan cristalino, que lo veía todo a su través con una claridad perfecta” (pp. 46-47).

After this moment of creative intensity, Joaquín's survival depends on the thriving of a controlled envy. During Abel's illness it will be necessary for him to keep his friend alive in order to save his own sanity: “Comprendí que me agitaba bajo las garras de la locura; …” (p. 53). Were he to let him die, he could lose the object of his envy and the support of his being. Fearful of what he might do, he marries Antonia, as a bulwark against the excesses of bitterness.

The next culminating moment of hatred's activity as a mechanism for interior duplication occurs on the occasion of Abel's magnum opus on Cain and Abel, and Joaquín's speech at its “vernissage.” Two previous incidents prepare this event by reintroducing the motif of creativity. Chapter VIII begins with general considerations on Abel's growing renown and Joaquín's reaction to it. The imagery of ice that defined his envy in the third Confesión has permeated his soul and it is through it that he now sees Abel's fame: “Y esa fama creciente era como una granizada desoladora en el alma de Joaquín” (p. 63). While he praises his friend for his great “technical ability” and his “scientific” approach to painting, Joaquín believes himself to be “un verdadero poeta en su profesión” (p. 63). He still dreams of dedicating his life to investigation but: “… el exceso de [su] despecho y [su] odio [le] quitaban serenidad de espíritu” (p. 64). In fact, the cultivation of his affliction claims all of his imaginative powers. It is not as a doctor, though he is a good one, that he is more likely to earn immortality. This becomes manifest to him in the case of a patient that he allows to die, while a portrait by Abel maintains her in full vigor. Joaquín receives another blow when Abel and Helena have a son. In his confession he cannot help but admire the child: “el niño era una hermosura, una obra maestra de salud y de vigor, …” (p. 79).

In both instances the creative standard has become the standard of essential worth and in both instances Joaquín feels again defeated. For although he tells himself that Abelín is a triumph for Abel as a man, not an artist, the language he uses in describing the child reflects more accurately his deeper reaction. These two blows by bringing forth again Joaquín's reaction to Abel's artistic success, prepare us for the episode centering around Abel's biblical painting, a crossroads of all the main structural paths of the novel. Here we see Joaquín's triumph, the triumph of language, in that the painting itself almost disappears under the weight of various linguistic constructions that accompany it in the guise of commentaries, preambles, and so forth. Early in Chapter XI the theme of the following pages is sounded by Joaquín. Abel is consulting the Bible to lay the foundations of his treatment of Cain and Abel. Joaquín warns: “¡Cuida de no hacer con el pincel literatura!” (p. 81). It is not Abel who will “make” literature with his brush, but rather Joaquín who will transform his friend's painting into a piece of literature. Abel also mentions Byron's Cain as another work he is consulting and then reads the passage from Genesis describing Abel's murder by his brother. From the depth of his own creation, the confessions, Joaquín questions God's justice, and inverts it, suggesting that the Biblical Abel would have killed Cain, had he not been killed first; also, by referring to the “joke” played on children who answer Abel when asked who killed Cain, we are reminded of Joaquín's own spiritual death and his birth to “his life's hell.” Joaquín asks Abel whether Helena suggests anything to him for the painting while he points out that there is a woman in every tragedy, linking thereby those past occasions with this one.

Here also in the clash between literature and painting, an interior duplication plunges us vertiginously into the remotest past to the myth's first instance and returns us to the present having transformed both that representation and this one. All the elements of the transformation originate within Joaquín's confession, his recreation of the past.

The confession following this meeting with Abel is the longest in the nívola and comprises the whole of Chapter XII. From the beginning the idea of “literature” is underlined, together with that of repetition: “Sentí la necesidad de desahogarme y tomé unas notas que aun conservo y las tengo ahora aquí, presentes” (p. 89). This statement submits the central mechanism of the narrative by joining Joaquín's desire to express himself with words, to the idea of a multiple, cyclical iteration. The following sentence further indicates that the notes were kept to be incorporated in some work of genius. Thus, we are specifically directed to the Confesión, what we are now reading, as another instance of the eternally performed play. As for the pattern of repetition, it begins with a general consideration of our life as a spectacle: “Y al fin y al cabo no es más que espectáculo la vida” (p. 90); next is considered the alternative of suicide left to Cain, and Adam and Eve, a possibility that is rejected since God would simply have “recreated” another Abel, another Eve, and set the stage once more: “Acaso la tragedia tiene otras representaciones, sin que baste el estreno de la tierra. ¿Pero fue estreno?” (p. 91). With these words Joaquín returns to an examination of his own fate, and wonders whether he is also immortal, as Cain was told he was by Lucifer, that is to say, whether his affliction and his tragedy will go on forever. He then relates his own and his friend's activities to those of Cain and Abel. Comparisons between Byron's Cain and the present are now established, as Joaquín wonders whether he married in order to transmit his hatred. Such accumulation of “evidence” imposes upon him concerns previously ignored: “Hasta que leí y releí el Caín byroniano, yo, que tantos hombres había visto agonizar y morir, no pensé en la muerte …” (p. 92); his vision is now clear again, as it was when his envy hardened within him, and the confession once more becomes a true mirror. At this point he returns to the initial purpose of what he is writing and addresses his daughter, asking her forgiveness.

Apart from these instances of self-reflecting literary activity, other aspects of the passage reinforce the idea of creative language. The chapter begins with: “Leyó Joaquín el Caín de lord Byron. Y en su Confesión escribía más tarde” (p. 89). “Leer” is used in its various forms ten times, “poema,” “relato,” “poeta,” etc., also appear several times, as does “escribir” and synonyms. We have here the clearest intimation yet of the narrative as one instance in an endlessly repeated literary archetype, whereby Abel Sánchez as a nívola communicates with all its past occasions, with all its future ones, and forces upon the reader the realization of his own participation in this endless cycle.

Chapter XIII contains a fragment of confession almost at the outset; in it Joaquín comments on the role of this unveiling of his soul to his daughter, hoping that it may communicate to her after his death what she could not understand while he was alive. The implication is that the written word has allowed him to understand his suffering more because he has had time to give it form. This statement also maintains in the background the importance of the Confesión as touchstone of the reconstruction, a particularly significant circumstance in light of the ongoing Cain and Abel episode, where the crucial struggle between language and painting takes place. Joaquín's fear of having been portrayed as Cain is not merely that of seeing his soul bared for anyone to see. Had it been so, it would constitute a radical undermining of his entire enterprise because for the audience it would turn the gratuitous act of praising the painting into a selfish one; also, it would not allow for the antagonism of both forms of art, painting and language, to continue clearly drawn; thirdly, it would imprison Joaquín forever in an unchanging mold, and would not admit, or at least would render more difficult, the evolution which words allow him. Actually the prison that his verbal representation has erected for him is almost as severe as would be that of painting, but this is something Joaquín will realize only at his death. From another point of view, it would also present a challenge of uncertain outcome to his own undertaking, his self-revelation.

Joaquín's speech in honor of his friend's painting is his moment of triumph. It allows him to feel generous by repressing the more cutting and destructive tone he was known to possess from his other speeches at the “Facultad de Medicina,” a tone which in fact might have been more appropriate. By overpraising the work and managing to appear sincere in his emotional interpretation of it, he accomplishes more successfully what he would have wished to do in his customary oratory manner, overshadowing it until it becomes an adjunct to the speech. At the same time, through some of the connotations of the talk and several of its remarks, he integrates it totally in the conflict's literary sequence of representation. When he says: “… nosotros mismos no vemos en nuestras entrañas sino el fango de que hemos sido hechos” (p. 105), he restores the painting to its verbal, Biblical origin. By stating that it has become his own, under the guise of praising its human appeal, he tells us what he in fact is doing now, repainting it with language, making of it an element of the verbal structure that his envy secretes as a cocoon. Later on, he offers as praise what is in fact a further subjection of Abel's art to the mastery of language: “Nuestro Abel Sánchez admira a Caín como Milton admiraba a Satán” (p. 106). A few lines later he refers once more to “la leyenda bíblica” (p. 106) again reinstating the painting within literary tradition. Not once, in the short excerpts we read of the speech, does Joaquín mention anything remotely connected with the painter's artistry; all the qualities of the work are literary. Even Abel admits, “Tú y no yo has hecho mi cuadro, tú!” (p. 107). The general consensus of his audience echoes this feeling. In the words of one auditor: “Es que este discurso de Joaquín vale por todos los cuadros del otro. El discurso ha hecho el cuadro. Habrá que llamarle el cuadro del discurso” (p. 108).

The last fragment of Confesión appears in Chapter XXXI. It now becomes clear to Joaquín what his writing is, that it represents his own creative endeavor, the undertaking that will allow him to eclipse Abel. In this chapter there occurs a final accumulation of literary references thrown into the fray against Abel's own stable, artistic glory. Abelín, now married to Joaquina and his father-in-law's assistant, is compiling a book from the old doctor's notes. It is at this point that Joaquín himself undertook to write the Confesión for his daughter, to be read after his death; we learn here, too, what has been tacitly assumed from the start: “acariciaba la esperanza de que un día su hija o sus nietos la dieran al mundo, …” (p. 200). He is also contemplating the composition of his Memoirs “por si esta [la Confesión] marrase,” (p. 202) in which he would write about others, Abel Sánchez in particular, and “le habría de inmortalizar a éste más que todos sus propios cuadros” (p. 203).

And so the Confesión assumes its true function, a literary testament, more important than the Memoirs, more important than Abelín's compilation, and the source and vessel of both of them. Its final segment echoes and amplifies the thoughts of the very first one, seemingly closing the circle on a note of alienation: “Por qué preferían al lijero, al inconstante, al egoísta? … La baja mezquindad, la vil ramplonería de los que me rodeaban, me perdió” (pp. 201-202). Inserted amid mentions of literary work and of painting this fragment is at the heart of the entire artistic struggle. It concerns itself exclusively with aspects of Joaquín's passion and the role it may play as a means of redemption in his daughter's eyes. That is to say, it is aimed at the future. By reiterating the initial situation of the nívola and projecting it beyond his death, towards the lives of others, he can, on the strength of his own peculiar situation alone, without the need of historical or literary reference, reaffirm the great tragic cycle of Cain. It is fitting that the last portion of the Confesión should deal exclusively with its three main concerns from the beginning: interior duplication (literary), envy (as a literary creation) and immortality (literary). But the drama cannot end here, since the ultimate crime has not yet been committed. The final confrontation between the two men expresses in human terms an inevitable conclusion to the conflict between the two art forms, which we have seen growing from the beginning, with, instead of Helena, the grandson, Joaquinito, as the prize: “Y el niño crecía a la par que la Confesión y las Memorias de su abuelo de madre y que la fama de pintor de su abuelo de padre” (p. 221). The little one, to Joaquín's dismay, seems to prefer Abel's drawings to his own company. Abel tries to plead Joaquín's case, in a replay of that long past situation with Helena:

—El abuelito Joaquín es muy bueno, te quiere mucho, te compra juguetes. …

—También tú me los compras. …

—Te cuenta cuentos. …

—Me gustan más los dibujos que tú me haces.

(p. 229)

Cheated again of what he most cherishes, Joaquín in an argument lunges at Abel, and although he merely holds him by the neck for an instant, it is too much for Abel's weak heart. In front of the child, Joaquín professes himself Cain: “Y le he matado yo, yo, ha matado a Abel Caín, tu abuelo Caín” (p. 235).

The drama is now completed; it contains and reiterates the original version while, through the Confesión it looks to future replays, and is in fact performed in front of the later generations represented by the child. In order for Joaquín's obsession, his art to triumph finally over Abel's own, the last gesture was necessary. But, in any case, painting, in the person of Abel, was already moribund while Joaquín's masterpiece of passion was in full vigor. In fact, Joaquín only took back what he had given, life and glory. We realize that in the novel the metaphorical structure, when superimposed upon the course of events, reveals the latter to have been the reflection of the former, rather than the opposite. Abel owes everything to Joaquín: Helena, his life (which Joaquín had once saved), and his fame as a painter (it began with Helena's portrait and grew with the Cain and Abel painting). The impetus of the narrative in general, but more particularly of its detailed incident, flows from Joaquín's obsessed soul. It does so both in terms of a general pattern in which circumstance is born of the language of the Confesión, and in terms of its inclusion in the great literary cycle of Cain. It arises too out of the conflict between language and painting, also originating within Joaquín's hatred. It remains finally an unabashed artifact of words, self-conscious and self-originating, where no concessions are made to any “realistic” tenets in the traditional, Galdosian sense. Unamuno, more than anyone of his generation, with the possible exception of Valle-Inclán, knew the generative power of language, knew that words invent while they represent, or rather that they invent and happen to represent.

There is no final irony in the novel, as critics have suggested,⁵ in the fact that Unamuno himself appears to be taken with Abel, and so titled Abel Sánchez, the story of Joaquín's passion. Rather, it is so because as a nívola, as a verbal structure, it contains Abel Sánchez, the painter. The title holds him firm, in broad printed letters that are his entire being. For Abel Sánchez has no life of his own, even within the fiction, except that given him by Joaquín through the effects of his passion and its verbal expression. From Unamuno's and our standpoints he is doubly an invention of language and it is only fitting that the nívola should bear his name.

Notes

1. For “Envy” in Abel Sánchez see, among others, Carlos Clavería, “Sobre el tema de Caín en la obra de Unamuno” (Madrid, 1950), individually published by Ínsula; Arthur Wills, España y Unamuno (New York, 1938), Chapter V, pp. 181-203; Paul Ilie, “Moral psychology in Unamuno” in Unamuno, Creator and Creation, ed. J. Rubia Barcia and M. A. Zeitlin (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1967), pp. 72-91; R. Gullón, Autobiografías de Unamuno (Madrid, 1964), pp. 117-151.

2. Miguel de Unamuno, Abel Sánchez, 2d ed. (Madrid, 1928), p. 13. All future references are to this edition.

3. Andre Gide took this term from heraldry and applied it to the idea of the mirror image in literature. The suggestion of an abyss (abyme) suits particularly well the funnel-like effect of receding references.

4. The ordeal of ice was in fact one of the principal forms of primitive initiation.

5. See E. de Nora, La novela española contemporánea (Gredos: Madrid, 1969), Tomo I, p. 33; Quentin Chavous and Alfred Rodríguez “Una nota a Abel Sánchez” in Papers on Language and Literature (Winter, 1973), pp. 88-90; R. Gullón, Autobiografías de Unamuno (Madrid, 1964), pp. 120-124. Balseiro in El vigía, II (Madrid, 1925), pp. 86-88, was puzzled by Unamuno's title and implied as its source the negative effect of Joaquín's character.