SOURCE: Trippett, Anthony M. “Introduction.” In Adjusting to Reality: Philosophical and Psychological Ideas in the Post-Civil War Novels of Ramón J. Sender, pp. 13-21. London, United Kingdom: Tamesis, 1986.

[In the following introduction to his full-length book on Sender's fiction after the Spanish Civil War, Trippett explains his study as an overview of past scholarship and a look at the themes of selected works.]

Sender studies present a number of intriguing difficulties. The author was uncooperative with biographers¹ and sometimes rather unreliable when talking about himself. He was reluctant to polish his work once it was written² and yet often moved later either to repudiate³ it or re-use the material for different ends⁴. Then there is the sheer volume of it all—more than a hundred full-length books and uncollected articles by the thousand⁵—with a range and variety to match. Furthermore, the issues and passions of the Spanish Civil War—central to large parts of his life and works—still live on in Spain and elsewhere and this can distort judgments⁶ on him.

A few years ago⁷ such difficulties might have deterred a potential student of Sender, now it is to be hoped they will only serve to whet his appetite. He can certainly count on a number of useful critical tools and studies to help him⁸ and a clear, measured consensus view⁹ that the author is one of the greatest Spanish novelists of the twentieth century with an assured and permanent international reputation.

Collard and Nonoyama¹⁰ have gone a long way towards mapping the ideological basis of Sender's pre-Civil War work—fictional and non-fictional—and their research has provided an excellent base from which investigation into his later work and therefore his evolution can be pursued. It is this evolution that underlies the intriguing difficulties I referred to.

My study, going on from there, is an attempt to elucidate the major themes in the post-Civil War works and to place these within the context of Sender's whole life and work. It aims to substantiate my three basic contentions concerning Sender, viz that the Civil War experience was crucial to him and fundamentally changed his view of reality, that the major interest of his subsequent work tends to be philosophical and psychological, and that the later books have a distinctive ambiguity and structural complexity. Given this complexity I have opted to base my study on the detailed analysis of a small number of works. The inevitable limitations of such a selection were felt to be more than justified by the value of detailed analysis and in so far as the works chosen are representative¹¹ of many more in Sender's post-Civil War canon.

La esfera¹²—that most overtly philosophical of Sender's works—would have figured prominently among my choice of novels had it not already been the subject of a number of fine studies¹³ to which I shall refer in due course. The same reason dissuaded me from choosing the splendid novels, El lugar del hombre¹⁴ and El rey y la reina.¹⁵Antología crítica contains a number of noteworthy articles¹⁶ on them.

The particular attraction of El verdugo—my first choice—arose from its re-use of materials from three pre-Civil War works. It could provide insight into Sender's ideas over some twenty years together with clues as to his techniques of composition. To avoid any duplication of Peñuelas's study¹⁷ which—in any case—did not investigate these literary debts, I decided to concentrate on the quite distinctive English version¹⁸ which for many years Sender had regarded as definitive and is in many respects more interesting.

Las criaturas saturnianas¹⁹ was also chosen, to show that Sender's historical novels were not so different from others within the post-Civil War period. An added interest was the opportunity of demonstrating the strength or otherwise²⁰ of Sender's powers in his late sixties. Since parts of Las criaturas derived from Emen hetan²¹, it seemed appropriate to look at that too, even though it is of lesser merit. Carrasquer's refutation²² of earlier assertions²³ of the atypicality of Emen hetan clearly had not convinced all critics²⁴ so further arguments as to its significance for Las criaturas seemed desirable. I was keen too to suggest important qualifications to Carrasquer's presentation of the main character in Las criaturas and what I saw as his neglect of crucial psychological dimensions in Sender.

Crónica del alba,²⁵ the most extensive and well-known²⁶ of Sender's works, was an inevitable and important choice for analysis. Surprisingly, though it won an important literary prize²⁷ it had not been the subject of serious, critical attention in its full version. Furthermore, though written over the major period of Sender's life in exile, 1942-1966, it bears on his life before and during the Civil War. It could therefore be expected to yield a lot of material of interest to my purpose. There was too the invitation of Sender's own assessment of it as “lo más atrevido y lo más difícil que he hecho”.²⁸

As my studies progressed it rapidly became apparent to me that in his post-Civil War works Sender addressed himself repeatedly and insistently to two major questions: the nature of reality and the problems of adjustment to it. Since these broad questions subsume almost all others, however important, without in any way suggesting that his interests were limited, say, to his native country or to the twentieth century, they naturally suggested the title of this study. A further argument in favour of the title chosen was its implication that there is a fundamental difference between Sender's approach to the questions of the nature of reality and man's adjustment to it in the post-Civil War novels from those written before the Civil War.

Given my emphasis on Sender's evolution and on the importance of the Civil War experience, it is clearly necessary for my readers to be acquainted with some details of his life, which I will provide them with at the opportune moment in the body of my main chapters.²⁹ At this stage I will confine myself to advising the reader against reductionism on the subject of the very complex relationship between the details of Sender's life and what appears in his novels. It is a very serious mistake to deduce Sender's life from his novels, as Josefa Rivas³⁰ did, and almost as serious an error—perhaps prompted by the need to expose Rivas' shortcomings—to argue, as Peter Turton³¹ does, that Sender sought through his works to disguise the details of his life and present flattering versions of himself to the world.

I conclude this introduction with brief, general indications as to Sender's works up to 1938.

All but one³² of the some twenty works by Sender published before he went into exile have a bearing on the events and realities of Spain in the 1920s and 1930s, and often they draw on his personal experiences.³³ He lived the aftermath of the Annual disaster during his military service in Morocco, and used his experiences as well as the accounts of Annual survivors in Imán.³⁴ His visit as a newspaper correspondent to Casas Viejas within a week of the repression there formed the basis of Viaje a la aldea del crimen,³⁵ and his three months in goal for alleged political offences under Primo de Rivera underlies O.P. [Orden público]. It was as an³⁶ active member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo that he wrote his penetrating analysis of anarchist psychology, Siete domingos, with the object of influencing³⁷ anarchosyndicalists know to him. When Sender addressed himself to the relations between religion, sex and love,³⁸ he was addressing himself to what were or had been his own problems.³⁹ I would suggest that the relations between Church and State in Spain underlie El problema religioso en Méjico⁴⁰ and Sender's analysis of the communistic social organisation of the Indians in América antes de Colón,⁴¹ looks as much to the Spain of the 1930s and its possible future social structures as to the imperial past. Similar observations may be made on Míster Witt en el Cantón⁴² and Madrid-Moscú.⁴³

Sender's preoccupation with the Spain of his time arises out of a radical disquiet with her social, economic and religious values which he suggests are part of a corrupt, unjust and decadent system. In Imán, the failures of that system are shown to have led to military defeat and to indefensible injustices perpetrated against members of the urban and rural proletariat, represented by Viance. In O.P. the victims are goaled political prisoners. The outrages to which they have been subject cry out for drastic, revolutionary action and the sense of an impending revolutionary holocaust is very strong. The holocaust is imaginatively visualised in Noche in the form of a whirlwind. This brings about the end of bourgeois society in Spain as heads of representative members of that society are whirled to a cemetery on the outskirts of Madrid where they pathetically mumble their last characteristic thoughts. What is particularly interesting here is the concluding sketch of a radically new society based on collective values where men work anonymously without thought of personal advantage or reward. In the earlier Siete domingos, a similar—if slightly less sharp—contrast was made between the values of the working-class revolutionaries and those of Samar's bourgeois fiancée. Viaje⁴⁴ shows the bourgeois state's potential for violence.

It is thus quite apparent that though the ideas Sender expresses through these novels are based on personal experiences and are conveyed through concrete examples and situations, certain implicit philosophical and psychological statements are made, viz that there is an evil in men and in society, and that evil can be destroyed. Moreover, in the circumstances of the 1930s it seemed to him that the evil would be destroyed. Understandably, it was difficult for Sender to be anything but vague about how the destruction would occur. But if the whirlwind of Noche fudges that question, as an irrepressible force of nature it conveys quite clearly Sender's sense of the inevitability of revolution.

The practical question of how to forward the cause of revolution and bring into being a new society began to concern Sender deeply. He became progressively less happy with anarchist inefficiency. This is already quite apparent in Siete domingos (1932) which not only denounces what is wrong, as the earlier novels do, but also introduces a critical note in respect of the anarchists who might previously have been expected to be key figures in transforming society. The danger of the neglect of practical questions is implicit too in the last of the pre-Civil War novels, Míster Witt, which was undoubtedly intended to remind Sender's corevolutionaries that not all revolutions are successful. However, the moral superiority, generosity and natural vigour of the Cantonalists, as presented in that book, so outweigh the tired, contradictory and base values of the old world-order represented by the eponymous Mr Witt that there can be no doubt as to which will ultimately prevail. In other words there is the same implicit confidence as in Noche.

Quite how to categorise Sender's philosophy—political or otherwise—in these novels is difficult. There are clearly broadly communistic elements in the relative evaluation of the individual and the collectivity, but there are also highly heterodox elements, such as a very pronounced vitalism⁴⁵ which at times identifies the collective cause with Nature⁴⁶, instinct and the unconscious⁴⁷, and a quasi-religious⁴⁸ concern with the conquest of death and the achievement of immortality. Here, as much later, Sender shows himself to be a complex and highly individual thinker.

There are strong grounds for relegating some of the non-fictional, journalistic and occasional literature of this period, which has dated badly and does not show Sender at his best. Presumably its composition would be particularly subject to pressures of time or the need to make an immediate, unequivocal impact. Certainly it is difficult to know whether haste, wishful-thinking or ignorance of the Russian language was responsible for the lack of a critical edge⁴⁹ in Madrid-Moscú. Here, as in a vigorous defence of Stalin made when reviewing⁵⁰ an antagonistic biography of the Soviet leader, Sender appears to have succumbed to the temptation of confusing what was with what ought to be, achievement with intentions—a notable weakness in many who are inspired by unrealised, theoretical models. (Contraataque⁵¹ may be a special case. Though written for propaganda,⁵² it would appear that the work was subject to some communist control and interference.⁵³) In the naïve and uncritical admiration for the USSR and communism, evident in these minor works, Sender was at one with the intellectual and political climate of a generation and not only individuals but also nations were involved.⁵⁴ It would be uncharitable and historically unfair to judge him summarily for it, particularly in view of his fairly open subsequent admissions.⁵⁵ One thing he seems to have been unable to acknowledge, perhaps as much to himself as others, is that his utter contempt and hatred for Stalin is of a later date. I can find no evidence of it dating back to 1933.⁵⁶

The Civil War and the Nationalist victory were extremely crucial and painful experiences for Sender. They were to mean the death of his wife, brother and many friends and a break with Spain that was to last thirty-five years. In terms of his thought and work, they were to signify his removal from the scene of his early experiences and from the material out of which he had forged all his works. They were to constitute a major disillusionment—unpopular,⁵⁷ illiberal, undemocratic reaction had triumphed and what had been trusted friends became, in his view, a cause of deep concern and fear.⁵⁸ Almost all Sender's assumptions—philosophical, psychological or political—were challenged. Clearly, he would never again be able to express the relative optimism in respect of the destructibility of evil that had characterised his pre-Civil War works. Clearly, if he were ever to write again it would be with temporal and geographical distance. Clearly, he would henceforth be sceptical about the possibilities of realising social or political utopias, or even perhaps of the feasibility of there being any objective remedy to man's alienation.

The inevitable change in Sender's thought and work—the central concern of this study—may be summarised in the author's own words to Peñuelas:⁵⁹

Dejé de escribir una literatura de combate inmediato para escribir una literatura, por decirlo de un modo un poco absurdo, de iluminación.

Notes

1. See Charles L. King, Ramón J. Sender (New York, 1974)—henceforth Sender—, p. 13.

2. See Marcelino C. Peñuelas, Conversaciones con Ramón Sender (Madrid, 1970)—henceforth Conversaciones—, p. 252.

3. This he did with O. P. (Orden público) (Madrid, 1931), El Verbo se hizo sexo (Madrid, 1931)—hereafter El Verbo—, Siete domingos rojos (Barcelona, 1932)—hereafter Siete domingos—and La noche de las cien cabezas (Madrid, 1934)—hereafter Noche. See Charles L. King, Ramón J. Sender: An Annotated Bibliography, 1928-1974 (Metuchen, N. J., 1976)—henceforth Bibliography—, and his “A Partial Addendum (1975-82) to Ramón Sender: Bibliography, 1928-74” in Hispania, 66 (May 1983), pp. 209-16—henceforth “Addendum”—.

4. For example, O. P. and Noche were incorporated into El verdugo afable (Santiago de Chile, 1952)—henceforth El verdugo (1), there is a later, modified version of this (México, 1970), henceforth El verdugo (2)—, Siete domingos became Las tres sorores (Barcelona, 1974) and El Verbo was incorporated into Tres novelas teresianas (Barcelona, 1967).

5. See King, Bibliography, an extraordinarily valuable piece of work.

6. There is an exaggerated concern with Sender's early politics, which are relatively unimportant in the overall picture of his life and work. To a degree this is understandable in Spain which is still struggling to free itself from the polarisations of the Civil War and the Franco period.

7. During the period 1939-65 nothing of Sender's was available in Spain, only one of the pre-Civil War works was republished outside Spain, and a host of publishing houses throughout Central, South and North America were used for his new works written in exile.

8. To those mentioned should be added Peñuelas, La obra narrativa de Ramón Sender (Madrid, 1971)—henceforth, La obra—, Francisco Carrasquer, “Imán” y la novela histórica de Sender (London, 1971)—henceforth “Imán”—, Michiko Nonoyama, El anarquismo en las obras de R. J. Sender (Madrid, 1979)—henceforth El anarquismo—, Patrick Collard, Ramón Sender en los años 1930-36 (Gent, 1980—henceforth Sender 1930-36—, and Ramón J. Sender in memoriam. Antología crítica, ed. José-Carlos Mainer (Zaragoza, 1983)—henceforth Antología crítica. “Imán” is reviewed by G. G. Brown in Modern Language Review, 68 (1973), pp. 680-82. El anarquismo and Sender 1930-36 are reviewed by me, in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, respectively 57 (1981), pp. 150-51 and 59 (1982), p. 159.

9. This emerges from the Antología crítica and in particular from Mainer's introductory ‘Resituación de Ramón J. Sender’, pp. 7-23.

10. In Sender 1930-36 and El anarquismo respectively.

11. The extensive range of American works is not represented. For a useful general appreciation of them see Manuel Andújar's “Ramón J. Sender y el nuevo mundo”, in Antología crítica, pp. 189-240.

12. Buenos Aires, 1947. All my references will be to the later, slightly modified version, Madrid, 1969. The very first version was entitled Proverbio de la muerte (México, 1939).

13. Particularly interesting are those by Shermann Eoff—in The Modern Spanish Novel (London, 1962), pp. 213-54—, King, in Sender, pp. 81-106, and Manuel Béjar's, “Las adiciones a Proverbio de la muerte de Sender”, in Antología crítica, pp. 385-97.

14. México, 1939. My references are to the later edition, Barcelona, 1968.

15. Buenos Aires, 1949.

16. For example, Charles King, “El papel de Sabino en El lugar de un hombre de Sender”, pp. 351-55, and Maryse Bertrand de Muñoz, “Los símbolos en El rey y la reina de Ramón J. Sender”, pp. 375-84.

17. La obra, pp. 195-214.

18. The Affable Hangman (London, 1954) and (London, 1963). My references are to the latter.

19. Barcelona, 1968—henceforth Las criaturas.

20. Both Mainer and Eduardo Godoy Gallardo, in Antología crítica, pp. 7-23, and pp. 425-35, respectively “Resituación de Ramón J. Sender” and “Problemática y sentido de Réquiem por un campesino español—suggest there are altibajos in Sender, and the latter critic mentions Las criaturas specifically in that context.

21. México, 1958.

22. In “Imán”.

23. See Charles F. Olstad, “The novels of Ramón Sender: Moral concepts in development” (unpublished Ph. D., University of Wisconsin, 1960) in the chapter entitled “Random Probings”, and Josefa Rivas, El escritor y su senda (México, 1967), p. 173.

24. See Jean Pierre Ressot, “Más allá del bien y del mal: Las criaturas saturnianas, de Ramón J. Sender”, in Antología crítica, pp. 465-72.

25. (Barcelona, 1965-66)—hereafter Crónica. All my references are to the later three-volume edition, Madrid, 1971.

26. It has been made into two films, Valentina and 1919, Crónica del alba, directed by Antonio Betancor.

27. Premio de Literatura Española de la Ciudad de Barcelona, 1966.

28. See Peñuelas, Conversaciones, p. 158

29. The best and most reliable source of biographical information is King, Sender. Peñuelas' Conversaciones is a useful supplement but should be used critically.

30. In El escritor y su senda.

31. In “Los cinco libros de Ariadna: La puntilla al minotauro comunista”, in Antología crítica, pp. 460-61, and in his unpublished doctoral thesis, “La trayectoria ideológica de Ramón J. Sender entre 1928 y 1961” (Quebec, Université Laval, 1970).

32. El Verbo, and this is much less of an exception than might appear. In it, Sender puts forward a new, radical synthesis of body and spirit, with a broadly materialist basis. See below.

33. He declared to Peñuelas, Conversaciones, pp. 199-200, that his revolutionary disposition was formed when he was seven years old and visited a man who was dying in a cave in the most appalling state of deprivation. This became a crucial incident in Réquiem por un campesino español (New York, 1960), which first appeared under the title Mosén Millán (México, 1953).

34. Madrid, 1930.

35. Madrid, 1934—hereafter Viaje. This originally appeared as a series of articles in La Libertad. Later it became Casas Viejas (Madrid, 1933) and finally Viaje.

36. See Peñuelas, Conversaciones, p. 94.

37. See Collard, Sender 1930-36, p. 163.

38. In Carta de Moscú sobre el amor (a una muchacha española) (Madrid, 1934)—hereforth Carta—and “Reflexiones sobre el amor”, in Libro de las jornadas eugénicas españolas, ed. Enrique Noguera and Luis Huerta, vol. I (Madrid, 1934), pp. 92-106.

39. In Tres ejemplos de amor y una teoría (Madrid, 1969)—hereafter Tres ejemplos—which contains a shortened version of Carta, Sender explains the circumstances of Carta's composition. A bachelor still, he was torn between two relationships, one physical, the other with a girl who was only interested in marriage. Carta was addressed to the second girl. The coincidence of dates would suggest that the first girl was Amparo Barayón, who became his wife on January 7 1934.

40. Madrid, 1928. According to Sender, Valle-Inclán agreed to the introduction but did not write it.

41. Valencia, 1930.

42. Madrid, 1936—henceforth Míster Witt. (My references are to the later edition, Madrid, 1979.) A jury which included Antonio Machado and Baroja awarded this novel the National Prize for Literature in 1935, though Pedro Salinas was not particularly impressed by it. See “Tres novelas nuevas”, in Antología crítica, pp. 57-61.

43. Madrid, 1934. This first appeared as a series of articles in La Libertad.

44. In Sender 1930-36, p. 172, Collard explains how the author sought to blur the traditional distinction between fiction and non-fiction, in respect of this book.

45. Particularly in Carta. Not so many years had elapsed since Ortega y Gasset—in El tema de nuestro tiempo (1923) and elsewhere—had both observed and promoted a kind of vitalism to supplement the rationalism of a previous age.

46. In Míster Witt, p. 74 and p. 78, the physical exuberance of Milagros in Spring is associated with the revolution. Manuel Béjar sees the key to Noche in a conflict between those who follow the dictates of nature and those opposed to them. See “Estructura y temática de La noche de las cien cabezas”, in Antología crítica, pp. 299-322 (p. 314).

47. The most explicit text is “El novelista y las masas”, in Leviatán, núm. 24 (mayo de 1936), pp. 31-41, in which Sender elaborates his important notion of the ganglia:

    La percepción ganglionar—inteligencia de la abeja, del niño, del poeta—nos permite unirnos a las masas. Las masas nacen de esa confianza tumultuosa entre los desconocidos. Si el hombre habla con la razón, las masas hablan con los instintos. La inteligencia de las masas no es de cerebro, sino de ganglios. Lo que habla la razón lo entendemos por reflexión, pero lo que hablan los ganglios lo percibimos también ganglionarmente.

    (p. 40)

48. Particularly in the latter part of Noche. The dolmen, moreover, has a distinct Biblical ring to it. See Joshua, 4, 6.

49. Nonoyama, El anarquismo, pp. 81-91, sensitively compares Sender's impressions of the U.S.S.R. with those of anarchists and socialists.

50. The review first appeared in La Libertad, and was later republished in a collection of Sender's articles, Proclamación de la sonrisa (Madrid, 1934), pp. 151 and ff.

51. Madrid-Barcelona, 1938. Sender agreed to its being reissued, Salamanca, 1978. My references are to this edition.

52. It was first published in English, The War in Spain (London, 1937) and Counter-Attack in Spain (Boston, 1937) and in French, as Contre-attaque en Espagne (Paris, 1937).

53. See Sender's Introducción to the second edition.

54. See J. P. Nettl, The Soviet Achievement (London, 1967), pp. 153-55. In 1933 the U.S.S.R. was recognised by the U.S.A. and joined the League of Nations.

55. In Conversaciones, pp. 94-96, and Los cinco libros de Ariadna (New York, 1957), p. vii—henceforth Los cinco libros. There are some obscure points with regard to Sender's war involvement. Compare Sender's assertions—Los cinco libros, p. xii—with those of the communist Major Enrique Líster in Nuestra guerra: Aportaciones para una historia de la guerra nacional revolucionaria del pueblo español (Paris, 1966), p. 75 and pp. 82-83.

56. See Peñuelas, Conversaciones, p. 124.

57. See Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (Princeton, 1967), pp. 428-29.

58. In the early part of the Civil War Sender broke with communism and was later to attack it with considerable passion. His anti-communism has been the subject of some criticism—by Mainer and Turton in Antología crítica—and there has been an associated failure to appreciate important aspects of Los cinco libros, the principal focus of which is not political—though there is much anti-communist and anti-Franco satire—but psychological and, in the broadest sense, ideological. As an opponent of all authority. Sender was fascinated and deeply disturbed by the way authority figures, such as Stalin, could affect the psychology of those under them. (See below, my chapter on Crónica and p. 53.) On the broader ideological front, Sender was critical of the way political ideology and theory may prevent a due openness to reality and its true nature—Sender's own failing in the 1930s. This worthy concern underlies the presentation of the Russian tanks and the American dog in Los cinco libros, as it does Sender's strictures on, say, Rousseau, in Las criaturas.

59. Conversaciones, p. 91.