JANET W. DÍAZ

La Sombra del ciprés es alargada (Long Is the Cypress' Shadow) and Aún es de día (Still It Is Day) may be treated together not only because of their proximity in time (the first was published in 1948 and the second in 1949), but also because of many stylistic similarities. Rhetorically, both are ponderous and at times ornate, with long sentences, much introspection, and lengthy paragraphs with limited dialogue in comparison with most later works…. They are opposites in terms of the dominant psychology of the respective protagonists: Pedro, in the former, is characterized by enduring pessimism, and Sebastián, in the latter, often exemplifies an optimism quite out of keeping with his circumstances…. [Both] novels share a common religious solution to, or sublimation of, problems raised therein, and are largely philosophical and moralistic, even if one agrees that the philosophies are in some respects opposed. This basic polarity is reflected by the imagery of the titles, one emphasizing darkness and the other, light. (p. 38)

Delibes' first novel [Long Is the Cypress' Shadow,] like many novelists' first efforts, has a considerable autobiographic content, although it is definitely not an autobiography. The protagonist resembles his creator in the preoccupation with death, fear of losing those he loves, and in his pessimism. However, while Delibes' pessimism is not the result of conditioning events in his childhood, there are many determining factors in the protagonist's (Pedro's) youth which combine to convince him of the rightness of a pessimistic outlook and the necessity of his philosophy of nonengagement, or noninvolvement with others, in order to minimize personal suffering. (p. 39)

The cypress of the novel's title is a tree found primarily in cemeteries in Spain, so it automatically evokes funereal associations, and in the novel its shadow represents both the eternal darkness, and the obsession of death for the protagonist. He visits a cemetery on two occasions in the first part, upon the death of a young classmate, and for the burial of Alfredo. Alfredo felt a particular horror of the cypress, and asked to be buried beneath a pine, which thereby acquires a life symbolism. For the purposes of the book, the pine's shadow is considered to be spherical, round, and emblematic of plenitude, while the shadow of the cypress is elongated, needlelike, and inseparably linked with pessimism, melancholy, withdrawal, and nothingness. A parallel symbolism attributes similar qualities to the shadows of men: those of optimists are round, and those of pessimists, like that of the cypress. (p. 42)

[While] still young but approaching middle age, [Pedro] meets an Irish-American girl, Jane, with whom he falls in love despite himself, and deserting his creed of nonengagement, marries her…. [The death of his wife and the] abrupt loss of family and future stuns him; time becomes meaningless. He resumes his existence on the former basis, believing that it was a mistake to have forsaken his philosophy, but treasuring his grief and loneliness, which become his reason for living.

Perhaps the novel should have ended here; it might have been less satisfactory for the author, but would have carried more psychological conviction. In the final pages, however, Pedro experiences a sudden and rather poorly motivated but overwhelming desire to return to Avila [where he spent his youth], which he finds covered with snow, as was Jane's body when last he saw her. He begins to identify her with Avila, and afterward, en route to the cemetery, links her with Alfredo, whose tomb he visits and into which he casts her wedding ring, an act from which he derives a mystic comfort. Then, although he has not remembered them in years, he leaves the cemetery thinking fondly of his tutor and Don Mateo's family, which fills him with surprising plenitude. "And besides, there was God," the closing words, are likewise somewhat unconvincing, as this religious sublimation or "conversion" is somehow more of a surprise for the reader than Pedro's renunciation of his solitude which had apparently become too much of a burden to be borne alone. While the intervening motivation is insufficient, it would seem that the novelist did not mean the final change of attitude to be a complete surprise, for in a sense Pedro completes a cycle or circle as he comes back to the cemetery and Alfredo's grave, where he first embraced the philosophy of noninvolvement, to reject it. Psychologically, Pedro has somehow returned to the moment of Alfredo's death, which he originally rebelled against, finally accepting it as God's will, and the pending reunion with the tutor's family also symbolizes a return to the beginnings. (pp. 42-3)

Delibes was far from advocating [Pedro's] policy of noninvolvement, despite the convincing exposition of his protagonist's initial adoption thereof. Even though the novel's close is insufficiently motivated, it is evident that the author intended that Pedro should ultimately realize that his philosophy was in effect a death-in-life, as is clear when he returns to Alfredo's tomb and embraces the pine, symbolizing life, with their two names carved upon it, and then goes forth from the cemetery like one risen from the dead. (p. 44)

The protagonist [of Still It Is Day], Sebastián, a poor, deformed, and dwarfish hunchback in his early twenties, is the incarnation of almost incurable optimism. He lives in sordid surroundings, with an alcoholic mother (the vulgar former servant of his deceased father), and thirteen-year-old Orencia, his mother's daughter, born eleven months after his father's death…. A marriage is arranged for him by his mother, as Aurora, the ugly daughter of a rather wealthy black marketeer, is pregnant and needs a husband. When faced with betrayal, the discovery of the falseness of his mother and fiancée, he retreats into religion, and while at the conclusion he accepts a measure of reality, he does so with spiritual armor between himself and his surroundings. (p. 45)

The entire action of the novel, exclusive of flashbacks and retrospective material, occupies some five months. While there is considerable external, and even extraneous action, the most important action is internal, the analysis of Sebastián's inferiority complex, his suffering at the cruel jokes of comrades, and the almost complete lack of others' understanding. Also very significant are his feelings of having been exploited emotionally, and deceived by his mother and Aurora. All of this leads or contributes to a religious experience of sorts, the climax of Sebastián's struggle. (p. 49)

[There] are scenes in the novel which can be classified as naturalistic in their detailing of repugnant details and events, but Delibes' emphasis is on Sebastián's spiritual evolution, and this alone excludes deterministic intent. True, most of the action takes place in an environment that is physically and sometimes morally depressing, somber, and occasionally disgusting…. Nevertheless, Sebastián continues for the most part his optimistic outlook, despite a momentary crisis when, having broken with Aurora, he feels the passing attraction of suicide, not because he loved her enough to justify this, but because he is humiliated, disillusioned, and tired of struggling.

The situation at the close of the novel suggests that some progress is possible, that in Sebastián's situation one can make strides toward rehabilitating an alcoholic mother or bringing light into the sister's joyless life. In other words, he can give his own life the value he chooses to impart by the ethical principles he follows. The pessimism some observers have attributed to Still It Is Day is very relative: it consists in admitting that some people live in extremely difficult circumstances, not all of which can be voluntarily remedied, or which lie beyond the means of one person to change. At the same time, Delibes makes it quite clear that even under the worst conditions, one has a broad range of alternative attitudes among which to choose. (pp. 49-50)

Delibes' third novel, El camino (The Path), shows an intensification of the refining and simplifying process begun in Still It Is Day. It is much shorter, perhaps half the length of its predecessors, and while flashback material covers several years, the action as such takes place in one night, as the eleven-year-old protagonist and central consciousness, Daniel, sleeplessly awaits the morning when for the first time he will leave his native mountain village for school in the "city" (presumably a nearby provincial capital). During this last night at home, memories crowd his mind, and through his eyes the reader becomes acquainted with a gallery of picturesque characters, most if not all the village's inhabitants, with their histories, and major events in Daniel's life. Little more can be said of the plot or structure, for plan and action have been subordinated to interest in character presentation, and to the portrayal of a special environment. Upon this slender thread of plot are hung a large number of anecdotes, some verging on the tragic, others comic, some lyric, and others grotesque. (p. 51)

[In] The Path, Nature looms very large, really coming to the fore for the first time, and the contact with death is one of young Daniel's most decisive experiences. Related to both Nature and death, the figure of the hunter also makes its initial appearance.

The first extensive use by Delibes of the "tag line," thenceforth something of a trademark of his style, is likewise found in The Path. Each character has a nickname, or a reference to his appearance, profession, or peculiarities, repeated with nearly every mention of his name…. While this has been seen as an idiosyncrasy of Delibes and even considered a stylistic abuse, it is also an aspect of realism…. Use of the first name or nickname is characteristic … of children and adolescents, and logical in a work whose principal characters are of this age. First-name usage is frequent in the face-to-face relationships of rural areas and small towns, as well. Whether or not Delibes abuses repetition of tag-lines and nicknames is a question of individual taste; however, it should be remembered that part of his purpose is humor, and part recreation of the village atmosphere, both of which ends are served by this repetition.

Another technique employed extensively by Delibes for the first time in The Path is caricaturization. Many characters are presented only in certain rather narrow dimensions, usually with two or three outstanding traits or quirks, often exaggerated, mentioned whenever the character appears. This has the limitation of not allowing psychological profundity, but is a useful device for differentiating characters, especially when many are treated in a relatively short space. (pp. 54-5)

The use of caricature in the novel may be a defense against sentimentalizing; in any case, with Delibes it is not cruel or sarcastic, but a gentle, smiling irony. Nor is life in the countryside idealized, for even if it is a refuge from mechanization and the negative side of civilization, it is also remote from the positive content of progress, which the novelist quite clearly realizes. The Path, perhaps in part because of its setting, differs from many twentieth-century novels of adolescence in the more positive and innocent portrayal of the protagonist, and in that the discovery of life's mysteries does not provoke a psychological crisis, premature debauchment, or disillusionment…. In any case, Delibes' work implies that it is still possible to enter adolescence without serious trauma, at least in the remote and rather pastoral environment selected. (p. 58)

In [Diario de un cazador (Diary of a Hunter)], as in The Path, formal plot has been all but totally suppressed in favor of the development of a character, central consciousness, or perspective, thus revealing to the reader a series of anecdotes, without a clear beginning or definitive end, simply a "slice of life" in a given time. (p. 87)

The novel is a prime example of naturalness and simplicity, well composed in spite of a surprising limitation of material and resources. This causes a deceptive impression of facility. The hunter-narrator is in no way an exceptional personality; there is nothing outstanding or singular about Lorenzo, his life, or even his hunting prowess. Nor does anything unusual or startling happen; the events are part of everyday life in any class or country. In fact, Lorenzo is the type who normally makes little or no impression upon others, yet despite a certain psychological ordinariness and commonplaceness, he amuses, captivates, and overflows with vitality. His life is humble, his preoccupations simple, his problems elementary, his aspirations prosaic, and his love life ingenuous, with all these things told in the unpretentious and popular speech of the man in the street, the conversational style of the nearly illiterate. (pp. 88-9)

[The Diary is] difficult reading, for many of the expressions used by Lorenzo are unfamiliar even to the native speaker of Spanish. His lexicon includes many localisms, sayings peculiar to the country people with whom he talks during hunting trips, slang and colloquialisms, a few vulgar and occasionally profane terms, popular proverbs and folk sayings, and of course the language peculiar to the hunt itself. (p. 90)

[Delibes' use of anecdotes gives] the sensation of the ebb and flow of life from day to day, with enough repetition or interlocking of entries to allow the reader to feel that he knows what has happened in the day not covered. There is thus an impression of continuity, though the presentation is discontinuous. Delibes has achieved a strong integration of personality and atmosphere which conveys unity to the other material. (p. 92)

For the person with time to read only one work of Delibes, the one which would unquestionably give the most typical and authentic picture of the novelist and his preoccupations is [Viejas historias de Castilla la Vieja (Old Tales of Old Castile), a] brief portrait of backgrounds and surroundings without which no work of Delibes can be fully understood.

The first-person narrative is told from the perspective of a former inhabitant of a village…. The old man has returned after forty-eight years to find everything exactly as he left it, with the dust from the last threshing still on the adobe walls. While the prose expressing his recognition is lyric, this is a statement of the fact that time, in the meaningful sense, does not pass in Castile's forgotten villages; they have somehow been left at the margin of history, and to enter them is to step from the twentieth century into the Middle Ages. And this may be picturesque for the person who does not have to live there, who is unaware of what it means in terms of suffering and the loss of human potential, but Delibes is aware—perhaps more so than the villagers themselves, brutalized by conditions and ignorant that anything better exists. At the same time, he is able to perceive the peace offered by this type of life, in contrast to the hustle and bustle of modern, mechanized civilizations, and to appreciate the stolid virtues of the villagers. He understands the enormous attraction of the soil, the locale of their ancestors, which the spot of origin exercises for those born in the villages, and this imparts an occasional lyricism to descriptions of the poverty and decay.

Under the guise of the memoirs or recollections of the narrator-central consciousness, Delibes presents many typical characteristics of the villages. (pp. 121-22)

While the returning native son may rejoice to find that time has left so little mark, it should not be concluded that this is Delibes' attitude…. [Confusion] may result from a certain ambivalence in Delibes himself. He does not condemn the conditions described in the villages, although not from blind optimism or because of being a pro-government propagandist…. (pp. 125-26)

Delibes recognizes the positive aspects of rural existence, the relative peace of mind, the preservation of old-time virtues, traditional values, and simple pleasures. Nevertheless, he does not feel that these should be purchased at the price of an empty stomach, privation, and suffering, conditions which only progress can eradicate. (p. 126)

The "discovery" of Castile as a literary theme is usually considered the achievement of the Generation of '98, with perhaps the most significant discoverers being Azorín, Unamuno, and Antonio Machado—none of them Castilians….

There are numerous differences in Delibes' vision of Castile and that of his predecessors, an obvious but important one being the nature and depth of individual acquaintance with the subject. None of the previous writers most eloquent in descriptions and interpretations of Castile was born there, and they saw Spain's heartland with eyes quite different from the native son's. (p. 127)

Castile was not viewed [by Delibes' predecessors] in terms of the here and now, realistically, but somewhat platonically, as an abstract, spiritual concept, intuited more than observed.

Delibes, despite occasional idealization of aspects of the simple country life, sees Castile with the utmost realism, neither as the link with a once-glorious past, nor as distilled essence of Spain. His Castile is a concrete, geographic, socio-economic complex, problematic in many ways, very much within the here and now. The Castilian landscape is not a literary motif for him, nor an aesthetic perspective, but a lived reality, inseparable from the men who inhabit it, and whose destinies it controls. (p. 128)

The first impression caused by reading Cinco horas con Mario (Five Hours with Mario) is that of a radical change in direction, a "new" Delibes. This is due to several factors. Technically speaking, the novel is almost entirely one long interior monologue: the thoughts of Mario's widow, Carmen, during the night before burial, as she sits beside his body. (p. 140)

Thematically, too, it might appear that Delibes has done an about-face, for while previous works seemed uniformly to uphold the institution of the family, this novel definitely implies an attack upon the sacrosanct Spanish wife and mother. The realistic, objective world, city-country, nature, popular types, and nearly all physical detail have been submerged in the subjective, replaced by the psychological exposé of Carmen from within. No previous novel by Delibes has been devoted entirely to psychological probing, and this is the first time that a female receives his primary attention. With the exception of Desi in The Red Leaf, the women created by Delibes have played unimportant, secondary roles, and are frequently caricatures or stereotypes.

Formal plot structure began to disappear from his works with The Path, but subsequent writings did follow a loose, anecdotal plan. In Five Hours with Mario, even anecdotes have been suppressed or so fragmented that often the reader must reconstruct them from pieces gleaned throughout the novel, putting together Carmen's disjointed thoughts and near-ravings. This is essentially a novel without action, but some sensation of movement is conveyed by the rapid time shifts in Carmen's mind from present to multiple pasts. It might be said that further movement occurs as her mind jumps from one association to another within different periods, but this "action" is essentially the same as the first, mental, emotional, and internal. Thus there is ample reason for believing that Five Hours with Mario represents a new artistic orientation, or at least an experiment with hitherto untried techniques. (pp. 140-41)

There is some question as to what degree it may have been Delibes' purpose to attack the commonly-held stereotype of the idealized Spanish wife and mother. While Carmen comes off badly—she is a hypocritical social climber with a martyr complex; a frivolous, empty-headed, domineering egotist; a vain flirt possibly unfaithful to her husband—it may be that her sex is of strictly secondary importance. Delibes could also be attacking the mentality she personifies, a mentality that contemporary Spanish intellectuals seem generally to consider typical of the bourgeoisie, a conservative or reactionary fixation on status symbols, class distinctions, and privileges, almost total unreflectiveness, lack of insight and foresight, selfishness, materialism, hypocrisy, false or purely negative virtues, intolerance, insincerity, and self-deception. (p. 142)

The novel achieves other ends which could also justify its composition. It is a study of marriage and marital misunderstanding, of a near-total diversity of interests, and incompatibility of personalities. This is what eventually destroys Mario, regardless of the official cause of his death. (pp. 142-43)

Concern with the problematic nature of the individual's relationship to society is present in one form or another in Delibes' novels from the first to the most recent, sometimes only implicit, but often as a major theme. The novelist's general attitude seems to have changed from an initial relative optimism to progressively greater pessimism or fear. In The Cypress, Pedro represents an affirmation of individual principles and rights, even to extremes of isolationism, an exaggerated egotism which the narrator does not support, but seemingly understands. Sebastián in Still It Is Day struggles with the conflict between his own rights and needs and the necessities of others, arriving at some sort of synthesis whereby he satisfies himself through service to those around him. In The Path, Daniel suffers from the divergence between his own desires and the demands and expectations of society (education, material success) as represented by his father. Cecilio Rubes [Mi idolatrado hijo, Sisí] (My Adored Son Sisí), another extreme egotist, is utterly lacking in civic conscience or sense of responsibility to community and nation. (p. 149)

The emphasis is shifted in [La hoja roja] The Red Leaf from the individual's relationship to society to underscoring society's responsibility to individuals, specifically the aged and underprivileged. [Las ratas] The Rats presents a clash between primitive individualism and a more modern, although backward and defective society. The individual is destroyed, not by society alone but by the forces of nature, and the character of tío Ratero himself, all contributing to his downfall. In Five Hours with Mario, one principal cause for dispute between Carmen and her husband was the issue of social responsibility. Carmen is incapable of real altruism, and her interest in others is conditioned exclusively by their reflections upon herself: What will society (the upper class) think of her? Mario in some respects may be an alter ego of Delibes, a strong social conscience, relatively impervious to public opinion, who devotes a good deal of time and energy to bettering the lot of the proletariat, at least in the measure of one man's capacity.

[Parábola del náufrago (Parable of the Drowning Man)] represents the total crushing of the individual by the collectivity, dehumanization and the loss of liberty as a result of the progressive encroachment by the state upon areas of the personal conscience and beliefs. Two symbolically dehumanized individuals undergo physical metamorphoses (representing spiritual degradation) as a result of punishment received for daring to question the omniscience of an all-powerful bureaucratic organization. This first appears to be economic in nature, but later proves more complex, probably representing the totalitarian state. (pp. 149-50)

[Genaro's] history is revealed in fragments, by means of Jacinto's thoughts, mostly interior monologue, occasionally a sort of dialogue with himself…. During the course of the novel, Gen's fate increasingly obsesses Jacinto, combining with the menace to his own personality and subtly foreshadowing Jacinto's eventual downfall. The final metamorphosis of the protagonist into a sheep is handled in slow, indirect fashion, emphasizing his vague sensations of the physical changes undergone, so that only when the transformation is complete is its nature clear. (pp. 150-51)

The principle of metamorphosis, the nightmarish and delirious atmosphere, a mixture of reality and the possible fantastic, as well as the nature of the mysterious bureaucracy and the utter solitude of the protagonist, all suggest Kafka. (p. 151)

Much of the novel is written as a stream of consciousness, with extensive interior monologue. Delibes has pursued the direction of the technical innovations developed in Five Hours with Mario, advancing even farther in modifications of syntax, in stylistic change particularly suited to psychological probing and dissection, or exposition. Parable is frequently characterized by extremely long and complicated sentences, a confusing agglutination of cumulative phrases. The punctuation is deliberately arbitrary and capricious, at times almost nonexistent and at others excessive, so abundant as to interfere with the readers comprehension. The protagonist, desperately attempting to salvage some shreds of personality, has invented an artificial language (actually characteristic of certain severe neuroses and psychoses). Part of this novel … utilizes his language, one of whose characteristics is the foreshortening of words, perhaps reflecting the influence of abbreviations, common in today's nomenclature and advertising, or of telegraphy or shorthand, since the protagonist is obviously menaced, among other things, by those forms of progress which restrict or minimize individuality. (p. 152)

Delibes' purpose is of course to enable readers to experience the confused and disoriented sensations of Jacinto, something of the "feel" of a personality in disintegration. The same devices underscore the artificiality of the setting and the thoroughly conventionalized, regimented existence, bereft of all naturalness and spontaneity. By such means, and especially in the language invented by Jacinto, Delibes achieves another purpose: the satire of certain modern literary theories involving the breakdown or destruction of the language. (p. 153)

During his most intense fear and panic, Jacinto imagines the plight of a sailor, trapped in a sunken ship slowly filling with water. Knowing that he is doomed, he nevertheless clings desperately to life, continuing to swim as water fills the cabin, holding his face above the rising water, avidly swallowing the last gulps of air. This "parable" of the fight for survival, the instinct of self-preservation functioning in even the most hopeless situation, clearly applies to Jacinto, whose physical survival is purchased at the cost of his human condition…. Some aspects of the novel might be seen as a more generalized attack on contemporary civilization, but this is of secondary importance. Like Ortega in The Revolt of the Masses, Delibes is concerned not merely with the physical survival or comfort of the individual, but with the mass psychology and the quality of life in our times. His Parable is a lesson, a warning, and perhaps a cry for help, help in saving that which is most human in humanity. (p. 158)

From conservative beginnings within the realistic movement, Delibes has evolved as a narrator, incorporating in his literary repertoire many of this century's important technical and structural innovations. His style, initially florid and overly ample, was progressively pruned and polished, becoming more direct, conversational, and precise. (p. 159)

The most characteristic notes of Delibes' mature writing are his use of nicknames and tag lines, repetition, caricature, and portrayal through manias and quirks. Particularly striking is his frequent use of the abnormal or subnormal mentality, the primitive or elemental character, and the hunter. He frequently utilizes the technique of perspective or point of view, situating the reader within the consciousness or perceptions of the primitive (or otherwise abnormal) mentality. Also characteristic of most of the works composed after The Path is a peculiar, personal brand of humor, a mixture of understatement and exaggeration, ranging in intensity from light, almost imperceptible irony, to sarcasm, exacerbation, and the grotesque.

Themes preferably treated by Delibes include those concerning childhood and adolescence, old age, death, nature and the hunt, social inequities and economic problems, the plight of rural Castile, the city-country dichotomy, the problem of emigration, internal and external, the individual in his relation to others, the menace of mechanization and of other aspects of contemporary civilization, the dangers inherent in the society of masses, the difficulties of communication, the need for (and lack of) human warmth, the isolation and solitude of man in the twentieth century. (p. 160)

Delibes has produced at least half a dozen novels worthy to be counted among the best of this century, several of them with excellent chances of outlasting the present era and enduring among the classics of the language. (p. 162)

Janet W. Díaz, in her Miguel Delibes (copyright © 1971 by Twayne Publishers, Inc.; reprinted with the permission of Twayne Publishers, a Division of G. K. Hall & Co., Boston), Twayne, 1971, 183 p.