The Function of Myth in the Plays of Xavier Villaurrutia
As a dramatist, Xavier Villaurrutia has been classified universalista and afrancesado but rarely mexicano, despite the fact that his efforts were directed toward the creation of a Mexican theatrical tradition.1 It is true that in the plays of his first period—one-acters all given as part of the experimental theater movements of the thirties—he made no attempt to represent scenes from contemporary or historical Mexico. These plays did not allude to historical or literary figures or typical Mexican characters with whom the audience could identify. Instead, Villaurrutia was involved in making general statements on the themes of love, truth, illusion and reality, and in practicing the techniques he had learned from the dramatists of the avant-garde movements outside Mexico.2
The Villaurrutia of this first period was not a popular playwright; his works were not attuned to the preferences of the commercial theater.3 Also, there were those who criticized his plays for their "anti-nationalist" flavor. In his second period—the plays of the forties which were three-act works—Villaurrutia appeared to have answered some of this criticism. All these plays specify a temporal and physical setting of contemporary Mexico and are peopled with middle-class Mexicans with family or amorous problems.
In commenting on this change, Antonio Moreno has said of Villaurrutia: "To him the welfare of the Mexican theater was of prime importance, and if it meant changing his style to one treating the real issues of the people in order to help create a larger theater-going public, then that's exactly what he would do."4 While it is true that in these three-act plays Villaurrutia appears to have forsaken the avant-garde techniques and the attempts at universality, it will be seen that he has not forgotten the lessons learned in association with the experimental theater. In five of the six plays of this period Villaurrutia uses literary or Greek mythological references. An examination of these plays will reveal that Villaurrutia has transcended a national environment by introducing these allusions to classical theater. His desire to create a Mexican theatrical tradition was not forgotten in this second period despite the more realistic and commercial nature of these plays.
The use of ancient myths and legends among twentieth century dramatists has been a widespread device and one that has gained critical attention. Yet, in Mexico, Villaurrutia alone of the young men involved in the avant-garde movement, seems to have successfully applied the use of classical myth to his dramaturgy.5 In the four plays under discussion here, the characters are products of contemporary Mexico at the same time they recall figures from the classical theater.6 This pattern is a conscious and deliberate esthetic decision whose function is the purpose of this inquiry.
Critics have been quick to point out the allusions, for they are not obscure. In the first play, Invitación a la muerte, the characterization of Alberto and his family circumstances recalls the situation of Orestes. La hiedra is based on the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth. The female protagonists of both La mujer legítima and El yerro candente have been called Electra figures. These plays, however, are not thinly disguised parallels of the myths in which these classical figures appear, in the manner of O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra or even Cocteau's Orphée. Rather, descriptions of the plays reveal that Villaurrutia adapted certain features of characterization or situation to form the nucleus of his own individual works.
In Invitación a la muerte, Villaurrutia creates a variation of what is to become a recurrent family situation in his plays. Because one parent is absent, a conflict exists among a child, the remaining parent, and an intruder who attempts to replace the missing parent, a conflict with marked similarities to the legend of Orestes and Electra. In this first play, Villaurrutia focuses on the absence of the father and the son's reaction to this loss, thereby equating Alberto with Orestes. It should be noted also that Frank Dauster has already considered the many similarities between Alberto and Hamlet and the two plays in which these characters appear.7 In this present discussion of classical references, I have taken this comparison one step further, to the Orestes figure, following Gilbert Murray who identified Hamlet with Orestes in his essay "Hamlet and Orestes," in The Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927), pp. 205-40. Alberto, however, is not a prince of noble blood as Orestes (or Hamlet), but the son of a businessman. Villaurrutia has thus made his hero a middle-class "prince"—the heir to a funeral home founded by his father. Alberto's father has not been murdered like Agamemnon (or Hamlet the King), but instead has mysteriously disappeared. In the ten-year absence of her husband, Alberto's mother, like Clytemnestra, has maintained a liaison with her lover, a man Alberto hates. Alberto, however, cannot definitely blame his mother and her lover for provoking his father's disappearance. Alberto's motivation throughout the play is not to seek revenge for his father's death, but to try to understand his father's disappearance and, in turn, to understand himself. The blow to his psyche caused by his father's inexplicable absence is as devastating as the discovery by Orestes (or Hamlet) of the unjust and evil circumstances of his father's death.
The adolescent years of Alberto are disturbed, like those of Orestes, because of his father's absence. Alberto is characterized as a solitary, unsociable figure, who indulges freely in soliloquies. He is also on the verge of madness. He becomes unbalanced after seeing, or believing to see, the return of his father. While Orestes' father returns as a vision or in dreams (and Hamlet sees his father's ghost), Alberto at the end of act one appears to have also seen a vision of his father. While Orestes becomes mad as a result of the murders he has to commit (and Hamlet feigns madness), Alberto immediately undergoes a severe physical and mental crisis. He acts like a man possessed: "por un momento la razón parecía huir para siempre de Alberto."8
In addition to being under the shadow of madness, Alberto is characterized as suffering from another fault. If we were to consider the hamartia of Alberto's character, we would see that he is subject to paralyzing doubts and hesitations. His doctor describes him as "un joven complicado, moderno, comido por preocupaciones y por interrogaciones" (p. 371). This aspect of his character is dramatized fully in the scene where Alberto finally meets his father, not as a vision, but in the flesh. Alberto hesitates to reach out and recognize the man as his father. Their scene together, the penultimate in the play, is the climax of their ten-year search. Alberto had been longing all that time to reunite with his father, just as his father had never been able to forget the thought of the son he had left behind. This scene of constrained passion, of ignored anagnorisis, is the climax of the play. It reveals Alberto's inability to act positively as he retreats back into the shadows of non-action. Although he is finally convinced, with the help of his friend Horacio, that he should recognize his father, he acts too late to find him. This scene recalls Euripides' Electra, where Orestes hesitates before he is convinced by Electra to murder his mother. Orestes finally kills his mother. Alberto emotionally cripples both his father and himself by not finding his father in time. Alberto, left in isolation in the funeral home, is surrounded by elements of death. Although no one has been physically killed in the play, Alberto has forfeited a role in life and answered instead the invitation to death: "estoy aquí en este ambiente, dentro de estas paredes, rodeado por estos muebles y por estos objetos que son la imagen o la compañía de la muerte, porque la muerte es mi elemento, como el agua al pez . . ." (p. 402).
In the second play the title both alludes to the mythic source and conditions the audience to this frame of reference. La hiedra, is also the image used to characterize the Phaedra figure, Teresa. In addition, her step-son is called Hipólito, his girl friend, Alicia.9 Dauster has commented that Villaurrutia probably changed the name of his Phaedra to Teresa because Phaedra is not a common Spanish name.10 While this may be true about the name, that reason did not inhibit another Spanish interpreter of this myth. Miguel de Unamuno called his play Fedra, retaining only the names of Fedra and Hipólito from the traditional persons associated with the story.11 Perhaps it was because of Unamuno's work that Villaurrutia did not wish to use the name Fedra and call to mind this Spanish play at a time when he was attempting to dissociate the Mexican theater from the Spanish tradition. There is, however, an additional reason to justify why Villaurrutia called his chief protagonist Teresa. The literary reason for the name, to be explained in the course of this discussion, is as meaningful as his choice of title. Dauster has explained the importance of the title: "Lo importante aquí es que la obra se llama La hiedra, que aconsonanta con Fedra. Y nada de juegos vacíos. La hiedra encuentra tanto apoyo como nutrición en otras plantas: es, pues, símbolo del personaje central. A la vez, la hiedra es flor de la fidelidad eterna. Asi, el autor quiso señalar, en el título de la obra, el tema, y el carácter de la protagonista mientras añade un comentario irónico."12
The next allusion to the myth is presented in the first scene. The housekeeper and a female servant, performing as a Greek chorus in their expository function, are discussing the expected return of Hipólito, now a young man of twenty-five. Hipólito has been away from his home since he was twelve, and has returned now as a result of his father's death. The conversation between the two women revealsthat Teresa is not Hipólito's mother, but his step-mother. Teresa, unlike the Phaedra of Euripides or Racine, is sterile, without hopes of having a child of her own.13 Therefore, it appears that to Teresa, at least, Hipólito is a fulfillment of her own desire for a child. The young maid says, for example, "La señora habla como si el niño Hipólito fuera su hijo" (p. 256). Villaurrutia, then, while causing his audience to remember the mythic tradition of Hippolytus and Phaedra, creates his own relationships among the characters.
The major problem for Teresa does not involve a conflict between her love for Hipólito contrasted with her responsibility towards her husband; Teresa's husband is dead, and not just missing as in Racine's Phaedra. Rather, the conflict within her involves her changing attitude towards Hipólito. She had always wanted his love, as a mother wants the love of her child. Hipólito, however, had always considered her an intruder in the family. Ironically he does begin to love her now, not as a mother, but as a woman he wants to marry. When Alicia, who wants to marry Hipólito, refers to Teresa as his mother, he emphatically declares, "Teresa no es mi madre. . . . No puedo pensar en ella de ese modo" (p. 282).
Hipólito is caught in a triangle of his own making. He previously inferred that he would marry Alicia before realizing his love for Teresa. Teresa does momentarily reach out to accept the love he offers her. It is in her nature, like the hiedra, to search for someone to cling to. The conflict between the two loves—the maternal and the sexual—reaches its culmination when Teresa discovers that Alicia is expecting a child fathered by Hipólito. With the help of Ernesto, who has been said to fulfill the function of the chorus,14 Teresa realizes her true responsibilities. She cannot leave her dead husband's house, for she is rooted to all that it represents. Instead of escaping with Hipólito, she tells him to leave without her: "Tu vida está fuera de aquí. No la mía. No puedo pensarme siquiera fuera de aquí, de estos muros, de estos objetos, de estas alfombras donde he echado raíces, ya para siempre. Para ti, aún es tiempo. ¡Vete!" (p. 313). There is the implication that if Hipólito were to remain with her, he would be creating an Oedipus situation.15
It is interesting to note, too, that Teresa, like Racine's Theseus, has been betrayed by Hipólito in his relationship with Alicia. Racine's Hippolytus tells Theseus that his true offense is his love for Aricia, the sister of Theseus' worst enemy. For Villaurrutia, Phaedra also takes on the role of Theseus in this relation to Hippolytus. Alicia, like Aricia to Theseus, has been one of Teresa's enemies, plotting with her mother to alienate Hipólito from Teresa. Hipólito's interest in Alicia, then, is a betrayal of his love for Teresa. Fathering Alicia's illegitimate child is perhaps his greatest betrayal for he has given to Alicia a child that he is denying to Teresa by refusing to accept the latter's maternal love. It is in order to imply this dual role, as both a Phaedra and a Theseus, which may explain why Villaurrutia has chosen to call his protagonist Teresa.
The ironic handling of the triangle of Alicia-Hipólito-Teresa reveals Villaurrutia at his most original in reworking the myth. It is his Hipólito, and not Teresa-Phaedra who is guilty of a sin of passion. The chaste Hippolytus of the mythic tradition has become in Villaurrutia's treatment a representative of sexual love. Villaurrutia has evoked the myth only to reject its basic plot and characterizations. Instead, he has presented an ironic interpretation, remodeling the values and motives of the characters. Unlike the tragedies of Euripides, Racine, and Unamuno, no one has committed suicide or died a violent death. Yet Teresa, like Phaedra, has been deprived of the love she sought. And Hipólito is once again an exile from his father's house.
In the next two plays, Villaurrutia's references to the myths are not as sustained as in the earlier plays. In La mujer legítima there is not the ironic interpretation of La hiedra nor the parallel characterization of the protagonist of Invitación a la muerte. The family situation of the play, however, can be interpreted as an echo of the relationships between Electra and the members of her family. It is not the father who is the missing parent, but the mother who has died. Again, as in the other plays, her death is not the result of murder, but is caused by her mental and physical breakdown. The play begins when Rafael, a widower, wants to bring his former mistress Sara into the house as his legitimate wife now that his first wife has died. His daughter Marta, the Electra figure, considers this proposed marriage an unforgivable reproach to her own mother. Her paramount obsession is to avenge the memory of her mother by ousting the mistress from the house. To prevent Sara from ever becoming the "mujer legítima" she misuses other people to achieve her end. Like Euripides' Electra, she is also deranged by her sorrow and feels that any means is justified to achieve the justice she seeks. In her monomania, she goes so far as to write a compromising letter to her own fiancé allegedly coming from Sara. The letter comes to the attention of Rafael with the unwitting help of Cristina (Chrysotemis?). Angel, Marta's brother, is at first conditioned to believe that Sara has had an adulterous relationship with Marta's fiancé Luis. Unlike Orestes, however, Ángel does not follow all Marta's plans. Ángel succeeds in discovering Marta's role in slandering Sara. Marta's plan, nevertheless, does achieve its aim when Sara leaves the house without taking the place of the mother. Marta has dedicated all her efforts, like an insane Electra, to avenge the wrong she believes was committed against her parent. Ángel remains with Marta, like Orestes with Electra, to face the consequences of their interference in their parent's life.
Another variation of the Electra figure has been found in Antonia of El yerro candente. Magaña Esquivel has directed attention to this mythic reference: "aquí, en esta pieza, es el conflicto filial y la conciencia de su destrucción como lazo de amor, que acerca a Antonia, su personaje femenino, al ejemplo de Electra."16 Antonia, like Electra, expresses devoted attachment to her father, Eduardo. Villaurrutia, however, has once again added an ironic cast to the classical story. Antonia learns through the course of action that Eduardo is not her real father. The antagonist, Román, fathered her in a brief affair he had with her mother. Antonia, nevertheless, rejects Román when she is given the choice between him and Eduardo. With the exception of Antonia's faithfulness to her chosen father and her antagonism toward her mother and lover, there are no other elements in the play which convey an impression of Electra or her situation.
El yerro candente, then, is more than a play with an Electra figure. The interest for the audience is not in seeing how cleverly Villaurrutia has manipulated the classical theme. Even in the earlier plays where the mythic references are more sustained, the modification of the myth is not in itself the interest of the play, as it has been in other uses of myth by contemporary playwrights. One recalls Sartre's Les Mouches in which "it is Orestes' refusal of guilt, Sartre's modification of the legend, which is the main interest."17 Just as Villaurrutia's recourse to myth does not function in this Sartrean fashion, neither can it be said to compare with the presence of myth in Cocteau's Orphée or Anouilh's Eurydice. Although both plays, like Villaurrutia's works, have been created with contemporary scenes and characters, the French plays would be "almost unintelligible without knowledge of the myth."18 But Teresa or Alberto, Martha or Antonia, the plays themselves, can be dissociated from the myths and still retain significance as dramatic creations.
In La hiedra, for example, the distinctive feature of Teresa's characterization does not rest on the comparison of her differences from Phaedra. Teresa surpasses the confines of her association with Phaedra and represents as well a particular thematic preoccupation of Villaurrutia's. In an article which does not consider mythic allusions, Donald Shaw has explained the meaning of Teresa's conflicts in relation to the whole of Villaurrutia's work: "Sobre todo en el personaje de Teresa .. . el tema de la soledad contrapuesto al del amor muestra cómo confluyen en la obra dramática de Villaurrutia estas dos tendencias de su sensibilidad: goce de pasión por una parte, y por otra, mediata pero ineluctable visión del aislamiento individual."19 Alberto also personifies this same thwarted search for passion in life. Although he is presented with opportunities to express his love for Aurelia and his filial affection for his father, his incapacity to act results in his final state of isolation. The funeral home as his ambiance is a salient element in the play, not because its name, "Agencia de Inhumaciones Dinamarca," is an allusion to the prince of Denmark, but because it is a fitting symbol of Alberto's psychological reality. Thus at the same time he was incorporating in each play a reference to classical theater, Villaurrutia wascreating characters true to his own artistic vision.
What led Villaurrutia to express his dramatic needs on two levels, one within the play and the second, evoking the broader mythic tradition? Why has Villaurrutia purposely included these allusions to a tradition he has contradicted, as in La hiedra, or suggested in passing, as in El yerro candente? He has successfully created an ironic mood with his counterpoint in La hiedra, but it would also seem that irony is not his only justification. It is also evident that by placing his own characters, Mexicans all, in situations which echo the examples of the mythic figures, Villaurrutia has attributed a universality to the Mexican situation. The allusion to myth in order to cast the light of universality upon a particular moment is not a new nor even unusual use of myth. There is, however, still another function to be performed by Villaurrutia's deliberate references to the myths.
I refer now to his preoccupation with creating a theatrical tradition in Mexico. By recalling the mythic pattern as an undercurrent in his contemporary plays, Villaurrutia in a sense has linked his work to a broader theatrical tradition. He has attached his theater to its origins in ancient Greece and recalled along the way the works of Shakespeare and Racine. We can appreciate Villaurrutia's efforts to connect the Mexican theatrical experience with the classical tradition by remembering the historical context in which these plays were written.
At the time Villaurrutia first became associated with the Mexican theater, the state of theatrical productions had deteriorated to such a level that to Villaurrutia and his friends it was an embarrassment: "sucios locales, viejos actores, anacrónicas decoraciones e imposibles repertorios .. . he aquí los síntomas de la enfermedad que no es lo bastante fuerte para acabar con el teatro, pero sí lo bastante aguda para hacerlo arrastrar una existencia abierta de llagas . . ." These words were written in an article in which Villaurrutia explains his criticisms of the theater in Mexico and the way to bring the sick one back to health.20 "Si tiene alguno, el remedio del teatro en México está en crearle un ambiente nuevo, hacerlo respirar un aire puro, desatarlo de una falsa tradición, hacerlo correr un camino de orden clásico, renovar su material humano, sus útiles materiales, y crearle amistades jóvenes, vivientes que formen su nuevo público." The remedy proposed by Villaurrutia involved throwing out what was on the boards and starting anew. Up to this point the theater had been dominated artistically and economically by Spaniards—Spanish companies, Spanish actors, the peninsular accent and gesture were norms.21 In order to replace this false tradition, Villaurrutia and Salvador Novo, his co-editor in the literary journal Ulises, began the Teatro de Ulises in 1928. This first modern experimental theater was followed by Grupo de Orientación in 1932 and other small theater groups in the thirties and forties, all attempts to create a valid and authentic Mexican theatrical tradition.
The experimental movements were criticized because their repertoires were not Mexican but instead consisted of the classical masterpieces and controversial plays by new and exciting foreign authors: from Sophocles to Shakespeare, Molière, Synge, O'Neill, Romains, Cocteau.22 Villaurrutia answered such anti-nationalistic criticism with a straightforward statement emphasizing the emptiness of the current Mexican theatrical climate and intimating the need for foreign influences: "Exótico fue el Teatro de Ulises, porque sus aciertos venían de fuera: obras nuevas, sentido nuevo de la interpretación y ensayos de nueva decoración, no podían venir de donde no los hay. Curioso temor éste de las influencias extranjeras. Miedo a perder una personalidad que no se tiene" (p. 738). Villaurrutia himself did not hesitate to accept the examples presented by the foreign playwrights.23 Villaurrutia implies that the Mexicans had no recourse but to look beyond their borders as a means to establish their own tradition. His commentary on the efforts of a contemporary avant garde dramatist is enlightening in regard to his own preoccupations with achieving this connection with universal theater. In discussing the importance of Celestino Gorostiza's Ser o no ser and La escuela de amor, Villaurrutia says, "Ambas parten de una tradición dramática que el autor no pudo obtener regalada, como la obtienen los autores europeos, pero a la que Celestino Gorostiza ha logrado ligarse por medios más intelectuales pero no por ellos menos sino más precisos. Porque no es una hipérbole afirmar quecon estas obras, como con muy pocas más, el teatro mexicano contemporáneo logra, de pronto, colocarse en un plano de universalidad sin perder por ello el contenido que la personalidad de su autor, mexicano selecto, ha sabido vaciar en un continente que tiene validez en cualquier latitud espiritual" (p. 738). These words of praise are even more appropriate when applied to Villaurrutia's plays. For Villaurrutia expressed a conscious effort in his plays to present both a Mexican and a universal theater. The surface level of his plays reveals contemporary Mexico, with references to current events for those who want to see their familiar world reflected in the play.24 But below the surface, Villaurrutia has incorporated the elements intended to associate his theater with the broader tradition he wished to see flourish in Mexico. Myths have been defined as a means to testify to the living reality of communal inheritance,25 and through mythic references, Villaurrutia has linked his theater to the universal theatrical tradition.
NOTES
1 Carlos Solórzano labels Villaurrutia universalista while he classifies the works of other writers of this period of innovation—Agustín Lazo, Celestino Gorostiza and Rodolfo Usigli—in the category of teatro nacionalista. See his Teatro latinoamericano del siglo XX (Buenos Aires, 1961). For a discussion of these labels as they apply to Villaurrutia's poetry, see Frank Dauster, Ensayos sobre poesía Mexicana (Mexico: Ediciones de Andrea, 1963) pp. 27-28.
2 For further discussion of this topic see my paper "The Influence of the French Theatre in the Plays of Xavier Villaurrutia," Latin American Theatre Review, 3, No. 1 (1969), 9-15.
3 See Vera Beck, "Xavier Villaurrutia, dramaturgo moderno," Revista Iberoamericana, 18, 35 (1952), 27.
4 "Xavier Villaurrutia: The Development of His Theater," Hispania 43 (1960), 512.
5 Although the trend toward the use of mythological allusions was not in evidence in Mexico until the late forties, Alfonso Reyes did produce one play which was a reinterpretation of the myth of Iphigenia in Tauris. His Ifigenia cruel, written in 1923, opened in 1934 in the same season as Villaurrutia's ¿En que piensas?
6 My discussion concerns four plays because the fifth work is not based on classical mythology but deals instead with the figure of a Blue Beard—El pobre Barba Azul (1947). For complete bibliographic information concerning the dates of publication and production for Villaurrutia's plays, see his Obras, 2a edicion aumentada (México, 1966), xxxi-xxxii.
7 For a more detailed discussion of the similarities between Invitación a la muerte and Hamlet, see "El teatro de Xavier Villaurrutia," Estaciones 1 (num. 4, invierno de 1956), 484.
8 "Invitación a la muerte," Obras, 2a edicion, aumentada (Mexico, 1966), p. 369. Further quotations from Villaurrutia's plays are from this edition.
9 By including Alicia, Villaurrutia has followed the myth as it has been interpreted by Racine. See Dauster, p. 485.
10 Dauster, p. 485.
11Fedra was written in 1911 and produced in 1918. For details on the play's composition, see Miguel de Unamuno, Obras completas, XII (Madrid, 1958), 86-103.
12 Dauster, p. 485.
13 It is interesting to note that Unamuno's Fedra is also sterile.
14 Antonio Magaña Esquivel, Sueño y realidad del teatro (México, 1949), p. 134.
15 References to the semi-incestuous nature of their romance are found in Dauster, p. 483 and in an anonymous article, "Xavier Villaurrutia y el teatro clásico," Romance, año 11 num. 22 (15 marzo 1941), 18.
16 Magaña Esquivel, p. 137.
17 Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (London, 1952), p. 200.
18 Although Gilbert Highet said this in reference to Anouilh's work alone, the opinion also applies to Cocteau's Orphée. See his article, "The Reinterpretation of the Myths," The Virginia Quarterly Review, 25 (Winter 1949), 200.
19 "Pasión y verdad en el teatro de Villaurrutia," Revista iberoamericana, 28, 54 (julio-diciembre 1962), 344.
20 "El teatro es así," Imagen, núm. 4 (21 julio 1933). Reprinted in Obras, pp. 737-38.
21 See Salvador Novo, "Chaos and Horizons of Mexican Drama," Theatre Arts, 25, no. 5 (May 1941); Celestino Gorostiza, "Apuntes para una historia del teatro experimental," México en el arte, num. 10-11 (1950), 24.
22 The repertoires of the experimental movements can be found in Antonio Magaña Esquivel Imagen del teatro (México, 1940), pp. 96-101.
23 See note 2 above.
24 Villaurrutia is always explicit in his stage directions concerning the scenery, specifying that the furnishings reflect a typical Mexican home of the middle-class. In addition he refers to current events, such as the construction of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Invitación a la muerte (p. 389). See also El yerro candente, pp. 415, 430.
25 Harry Slochower, "Andre Gide's Theseus and the French Myth," Yale French Studies 2, no. 2, 34.
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