Fabricio and I believe that our class discussion last Thursday went relatively well. We believe that we came up with significant and thought- and discussion-provoking questions for the class.

Our questions were inspired by our personal interests in the novel and perhaps we directed our questions too much, that is, that we asked questions expecting certain answers when these answers may not have occurred to the classmates.

In future class-discussions of this type, we might focus more on making more open questions that are easier to answer in a general way. It is challenging to ask general questions that at the same time provoke discussion. Perhaps a focus on the more literary elements, such as setting, characters, plot, genre, etc. would be a more productive approach.

Los girasoles ciegos crea, tal vez, un mundo al revés. Desde el primer cuento, vemos a un personaje que desafía las leyes de la lógica al rendirse al enemigo en el momento de su derrota. El Capitán Alegrías (una persona decididamente sin alegría) es un muerto que vive, que nace con la muerte, un vencedor que se deja vencer pero que a la vez sigue luchando para sobrevivir. Es un personaje lleno de contradicciones: ¿por qué, después de cometer el acto suicida de rendirse a los republicanos y aceptar su destino de terminar fusilado por su propio ejército, sigue con las ganas de vivir? En otras palabras, ¿por qué se desentierra? ¿Por qué no simplemente se deja morir?

Estas contradicciones siguen en el segundo cuento: el narrador es un padre que se vuelve madre (es decir, acepta el papel de la madre de su hijo), “un poeta sin versos”  y sólo le da nombre a su hijo después de la muerte. El tercero también: Juan Senra es un condenado a muerte que sigue en vida, sus mentiras crean un personaje glorioso de un personaje innoble. Sin embargo, todos estos relatos parecen terminar con una vuelta al mundo ‘al derecho’: Alegrías se suicida, el poeta sin versos escribe un verso final tras no poder cumplir el rol maternal de nutrir a su hijo y Senra abandona sus mentiras y acepta su ejecución.

El cuarto cuento del libro —para mí el mejor de todos— sigue con estas contradicciones y de alguna manera las revela. Aquí tenemos a un ser vivo que parece un fantasma, un hombre que ocupa el espacio pero al mismo tiempo pasa desapercibido, una mujer que cuida de su esposo (en vez de él cuidar de ella), un religioso que deja de serlo y busca la confesión y una familia que para huir tiene que quedarse encerrado. Las referencias en el texto a Alicia en el país de las maravillas de Lewis Carroll —una historia sobre un mundo absurdo—refuerzan y apuntan hacia este mundo al revés en el que viven los personajes. Estas referencias cobran más importancia aun al considerar la continuación de esta obra, A través del espejo y lo que Alicia encontró allí  (Through the Looking-Glass) que presenta un mundo imaginario al revés, y el hecho que Ricardo Mazo se esconde (y termina viviendo) detrás de un espejo. No obstante, otra vez vemos que el mundo, hasta cierto punto, vuelve ‘al derecho’, igual que Alicia tiene que volver a la realidad: Ricardo vuelve a ser el esposo protector, se deja descubrir y vuelve a la vida, deja de ser un fantasma. Pero precisamente en eso vemos otra contradicción, pues cuando vuelve a la vida, en seguida se la quita al suicidarse y, en ese acto, el ‘vencedor’ de esta historia, el padre Salvador, queda vencido según sus propias palabras:

Se suicidó, Padre, para cargar sobre mi conciencia la perdición eterna de su alma, para arrebatarme la gloria de haber hecho justicia.

Con esto creo que tengo que estar con Jon que lo que vemos aquí es una manera de ganar la guerra perdiendo, o perder la guerra ganando. Tal vez, en realidad, ese mundo al revés nunca vuelve a estabilizarse del todo. ¿Será que Alberto Méndez trata de devolverle  la vista a sus ‘girasoles ciegos’ en estos relatos?

After yesterday’s classroom discussion, I have become more and more convinced of the important role that land, terrain, and the natural world play in the novel. As we noted, the first passages of the novel address this aspect, and the ways that the characters interact with the environment comes up time and time again as the plot advances.

While, as Jon mentioned, the book is concerned with how the human characters work with or against the terrain and the natural world, I find that the protagonists, Robert Jordan and the members of Pablo’s band, almost always work with nature rather than against it. The main exception to this trend is the snowstorm that upsets the plans of the guerrilleros. Indeed, were it not for this storm, the plot would be much different: Sordo’s nocturnal horse raiding mission would not have been detected and their band would likely not have been wiped out by the fascist calvary. We can even speculate that were it not for the snow, Pablo, assured of the support of Sordo’s band, may not have betrayed Jordan by stealing the exploder.

Examples of the ways that the guerrilleros work with nature are many. In fact, the entire action of the plot is set off by an attempt by the Republican army to make use of the terrain to their advantage: by destroying the bridge, the river becomes impassible and reverts to being a natural boundary that divides the Nationalist troops from their supply in Segovia. The guerrilleros’ use of natural shelters in the form of caves is another example of this working with nature.

Perhaps the most interesting collaboration with the natural world comes in the violence following Sordo’s horse-raid. In an attempt to defend the cave from a possible calvary attack, Robert Jordan organizes the men and sets up a defensive position above the cave that he camouflages with pine boughs. This act of disguising the machine gun with natural elements constitutes in itself a nature-human collaboration. However, more interesting is his dependence on a pair of crows near the machine gun that act as sentinels for the guerrilleros; Jordan actively watches the crows knowing that they will caw or fly away as soon as the calvary approaches. The crows do just that and the band manages to avoid a potentially disastrous conflict. Sordo’s band also actively makes use of the terrain in their last stand against the fascist calvary— their position at the top of a nearby hill is difficult for the calvary to take, until their adversaries resort to modern technology, war planes, to bomb Sordo’s position. The place of technology in this novel is definitely not as important as in others in this course; nonetheless, here it makes a small appearance.

These elements of the novel seem to address the specificities of guerrilla warfare and suggest that cooperation with the natural world is necessary for success. It would be interesting to read other accounts of guerrilla warfare in this light.

Lastly, I would like to reflect on the role of pine needles in this book, which we reflected on yesterday. In class we mentioned that the pine needles seem to ground Jordan, they ‘bring him back to earth’ and at the same time provide comfort in times of danger and distress. However, in the following quotation, the pine needles seem to have a more specific function:

He smelled the odor of the pine boughs under him, the piney smell of the crushed needles and the sharper odor of the resinous sap from the cut limbs. Pilar, he thought. Pilar and the smell of death. This is the smell I love. This and fresh-cut clover, the crushed sage as you ride after cattle, wood-smoke and the burning leaves of autumn. That must be the odor of nostalgia, the smell of the smoke from the piles of raked leaves burning in the streets in the fall in Missoula. Which would you rather smell? Sweet grass the Indians used in their baskets? Smoked leather? The odor of the ground in the spring after rain? The smell of the sea as you walk through the gorse on a headland in Galicia? Or the wind from the land as you come in toward Cuba in the dark? That was the odor of the cactus flowers, mimosa and the sea-grape shrubs. Or would you rather smell frying bacon in the morning when you are hungry? Or coffee in the morning? Or a Jonathan apple as you bit into it? Or a cider mill in the grinding, or bread fresh from the oven? (280, Chapter 20)

Here we see that for Jordan the pine needles are in opposition to the smell of death that Pilar takes such pains to describe. As such, we might associate these pine needles with life in general, but more specifically with a certain kind of life: both life well-lived  —as we see with the ‘adventurous’ nature smells associated with cattle herding, and trips to Cuba and Spain — and with the simple comforts of everyday life. Interesting here is the mention of “the odor of nostalgia”, that is, the smells of home, familiar smells. Can we see here an intersection between sensory perception and affect?

While reading Homage to Catalonia, I thought about the hypotheses that Jon mentioned in class at the beginning of the course, particularly the hypothesis that the Spanish Civil War was not really civil, nor was it a war. In the previous novels, we have seen that the war tends to be portrayed as a revolution, which is maintained here. Orwell talks often about the revolutionary spirit of the war that was intentionally sabotaged by the Communist Party.

However, it seemed to me that a secondary characterization was also present: rather than a war, especially in the earlier chapters, the conflict is depicted as a sort of camp-out or survival exercise. This can be seen in the many descriptions of looking for firewood, having to make due with little water and food, and having to put up with the discomforts caused by the weather. Indeed, the most important military objective is firewood, and the men even risk their lives going under fire to collect this valuable resource. For Orwell, this becomes a way of coming in contact with and learning about the plants around the posting:

“We classified according to their burning qualities every plant that grew on the mountain-side; the various heaths and grasses that were good to start a fire with but burnt out in a few minutes, the wild rosemary and the tiny whin bushes that would burn when the fire was well alight, the stunted oak tree, smaller than a gooseberry bush, that was practically unburnable” (30).

It seems like he is getting to know intimitely the land and its plants, and this is probably true, but he is motivated, mostly at least, by a desire to simply exploit it (by taking away the firewood). 

The war is portrayed as if it were almost an annoying afterthought. The real enemies were the lice that infested their clothing or the weather conditions; he notes at one point that “two Englishmen were laid low by sunstroke” (105 in my version). This trend comes full circle near the end of the book when human violence is likened to phenomena from the natural world. For Orwell, “a sudden clash of rifle-fire” is “like a June cloud-burst” (142) and, as in Cela, the violence is presented as “some kind of natural calamity, like a hurricane or an earthquake” (142). The idea seems is that this war is somehow uncontrollable, but in other ways ‘natural’. I wonder how widespread this use of ‘natural’ metaphors is in other war novels of this period, especially about the first and second world wars.

On the other hand, there are many passages that talk about the beauty of the landscape surrounding the battlefields, despite the poor conditions and the suffering that they bring him. At one point, he mentions both sides of the coin (i.e. the suffering and the beauty) in the same breath:

“seas of carmine cloud stretching away into inconceivable distances, were worth watching even when you had been up all night, when your legs were numb from the knees down, and you were sullenly reflecting that there was no hope of food for another three hours” (40).

Even though he ends the sentence with a complaint about the cold, still he says that it was “worth watching”. In some passages, it seems that the landscape —and the reproductive, cyclical aspect of the natural world— is evoked to contrast with the death and destruction of the conflict. Life will go on, despite the war.

Later, this contemplation of the landscape turns into a contemplation of the ‘human’ or ‘cultural’ landscape of the place, with accounts of the different customs of the Spaniards near the front, their dwellings, and their ways of making a living. These passages are particularly interesting given the end of the book that portrays the cultural and natural landscape of southern England. There seems to be a connection between ‘Englishness’ or ‘Spanishness’ and these landscapes that are presented in both cultural and ‘natural’ terms. This last passage is very interesting to me, especially because of the opposition that Orwell establishes between the “industrial towns” and “the England I had known in my childhood” (237). There is a desire to somehow preserve this landscape, both from war and  (as we are led to believe from the opposition industry-old England) from industrial development. 

This is a very rich book and I am excited for our discussion tomorrow evening.

I have the feeling that Days of Hope is the war novel that we’ve all been waiting for (or at least I have). With characters that rise to the challenge of their difficult situations, scenes of combat and tragic deaths (much more explicitly so than in either Réquiem or San Camilo), war-time camaraderie and bravery, a few humorous anecdotes (the soap factory incident, for example) and, of course, evocative and heart-wrenching descriptions of magnificent explosions and destruction, the novel responds to our expectations of what a war story should be (to go back to our discussion of what to look for in a novel from yesterday’s class). Doubtlessly, these expectations are due in large part to Hollywood war films and, in my case at least, Canadian war novels that I read as a teenager. This nature of the novel perhaps contributes to Jon’s suggestion yesterday in class that the novel resembles or approaches a work of propaganda. The quick publication and translation of the novel that Raya pointed out also supports this idea.

The novel does, however, include several elements that I don’t expect from a war novel. First, is the depiction of the bombardment of Madrid. We discussed in class the mechanized side of the conflict portrayed in the book, but during the aerial attack on Madrid, it’s as if the characters forget about the fascists and their advanced machines circling like ghosts above them (present, but not tangible) and the attack is likened to an earthquake, a force of nature, “it was not so much fear of the fascists that gripped the crowd as the sort of terror a cataclysm inspires.” But interestingly, the fact that the machines can’t be easily seen and that they exert such ‘earth-shaking’ damage is seen as an opportunity for resistance: “‘giving in’ never entered their heads —one doesn’t talk of giving in to an earthquake” (365). They may be living in a cataclysm, but it seems to be a cataclysm they can deal with, at least at first or temporarily.

This dehumanization of the violence of the bombardment, in which it is made into a natural force rather than one unleashed by human beings, is interesting taking into account what Jon says in his blog post about the blurred border between what is inert and what is alive, with fires described as “a myriad of writhing tentacles, like a fantastic octopus” (399) and the startled-looking tanks. Maybe to add to this list would be the flock of sheep that flow river-like through the streets of Madrid in the pitch black and carry away Scali and Garcia, “half-suffocat[ing]” Garcia (391). At first, the flock is described as simple pressure, then later a pack of dogs, but they are tipped off by “that dusty smell of country fields” and a bleat (391-392). This confusion brings to light the confusion of the inert and the animate, but it also is an example of the importance of the sensory perceptions, and not just visual ones, in this novel, which I believe was mentioned last class. Aside from helping the reader to identify with the characters and situations taking place, what role does this focus on non-visual senses —the smells, the textures, the sounds of the conflict— play? This sheep incident also suggests a certain invasion of the city of the countryside, or a fusion of the two. The incident is also similar to the formation of packs of dogs in Madrid, giving the city (or reinforcing?) a certain wild character. Is this part of the inert-animate confusion that Jon mentions, or is it something else?

This question brings me to another: Why does Manuel always carry around a piece of a plant or tree? In Toledo, Manuel is described as carrying around a sprig of fennel and later a fairly straight branch (239). In the Guadarrama, he carries a pine branch (354). Is this for giving orders (a sprig of fennel does not seem to be very effective for this) or a sort of talisman? Did anyone else have this question?

Cuando empecé a leer esta novela no me gustó mucho. Creo que esta fue la experiencia de muchos. El estilo de la novela, el cual comentamos ayer en clase, es difícil de leer y de seguir. Sin embargo, al poco tiempo me acostumbré más a la forma particular de la novela y se hizo más fácil leerla y comprenderla.

Estoy de acuerdo con Jon que la novela intenta recrear la experiencia de la vida en los días del inicio de la guerra civil. Estaba pensando anoche en el bus a la casa que el uso de la segunda persona contribuye a este efecto. El ‘narrador’ le habla al lector como si fuera simplemente otro personaje de la novela y de esta manera hace que la vivamos más de cerca, la narración nos resulta más real.

Como ya comentamos en clase, varios elementos de la narración imitan la vida diaria de los habitantes de Madrid: la radio, las conversaciones entrecruzadas, las sensaciones (en especial los olores), las publicidades que interrumpen y distraen a las personas. Estos aspectos me hacen pensar, primero, en varios poemas vanguardistas de principios del siglo XX como Urbe de Manuel Maples Arce, algunos poemas de Carlos Pellicer y los Veinte poemas para ser leídos en un tranvía de Oliverio Girondo. Son poemas que leí hace unos años y hablan sobre todo de la vida en la ciudad moderna, de cómo en aquella época la vida se ha acelerado con tranvías y buses y con la omnipresencia de las multitudes en la calle.

Hablamos la semana pasada del movimiento (o por lo menos un intento) hacia la modernidad que se representa en Réquiem, pero desde una perspectiva rural. En San Camilo, en cambio, se vería esta transición en el ámbito urbano: los personajes de la novela viven una vida ajetreada corriendo de un lado para otro, fuman, beben y se acuestan con prostitutas, y los medios de comunicación masiva —la radio, las publicidades, los periódicos— invaden sus vidas.  Al mismo tiempo, vemos referencias a varios personajes que acaban de migrar a Madrid desde el campo; la prostituta santandereana es un buen ejemplo, o bien un personaje femenino que “preñaron” en su pueblo y que tuvo que venir a Madrid para abortar.  Evidentemente, estas transiciones no se presentan de una manera positiva; se trata más bien de un proceso doloroso, deshumanizador e inmoral.

Me gustaría terminar esta reflexión con una mención de una sección que me pareció muy interesante y efectiva, las páginas 209-216, las últimas páginas de la segunda parte de la novela. Aquí, toda puntuación desaparece del texto (¡incluso las comas!) y se nos presenta simplemente un chorro de palabras del narrador. El final del texto se corta incluso, como si el narrador se hubiera dormido en medio de pronunciar la última palabra: “es muy amargo el destino de las herramientas de las herramientas de las herram”. Cela ni siquiera pone un punto final. Leer esta parte del texto me angustió, me hizo pensar en un estado febril o en un cansancio muy pesado. ¿Qué pensaron los demás de esta parte del texto? ¿Cómo fue su reacción?

Creo que podemos estar de acuerdo que Réquiem por un campesino español tiene una estructura bastante alegórica, con los diferentes grupos sociales del pueblo representando los diferentes grupos de España como un todo. Mosén Millán representa la iglesia, los señores del pueblo representan los ricos, los pobres representa el pueblo oprimido, etc. Evidentemente, la alegoría es más compleja que eso: vemos, por ejemplo, que uno de los ricos, el señor Cástula, se presenta como ni amigo ni enemigo de Paco, sugiriendo una posible simpatía a nivel alegórico de algunos sectores pudientes con la causa republicana. Vemos también que el grupo de los pobres también es heterogéneo: hay los más pobres —los de las cuevas— y los menos pobres, como la familia de Paco. Aunque esto puede resultar demasiado evidente, es importante reconocer estas matices en la novela y el impacto que tienen en la historia de la guerra civil que nosotros los lectores construimos a través de la lectura,  como comentó Jon.

A mí manera de ver, la novela presenta muy favorablemente a Paco y a los demás pobres, y a Mosén Millán negativamente, por lo que yo veo como su hipocresía (aunque tal vez esta no es la mejor palabra). Sin embargo, creo que incluso en la representación de los pobres hay matices. Me impactó mucho cuando hablan de la muerte del zapatero, al cual supuestamente los “señoritos” de la ciudad habían matado por ser “agente de Rusia”. Los habitantes del pueblo, ignorantes de la geografía europea, piensan que hablan de una yegua que se llamaba así. Evidentemente, se enfatiza la ignorancia de los pobres, pero ¿qué efecto tiene en el lector? Personalmente, cuando lo leí, sólo pude pensar que era una  gran debilidad de los pobres: ¿cómo pretende la República seguir en poder cuando la mayoría de su pueblo ni siquiera sabe de la existencia de su aliado más importante? Sé que estoy saliendo de la novela aquí: la intervención rusa no se menciona en el texto, pero esta era mi reacción como lector (pues yo ya sé que Rusia intervino). También se puede leer de otra manera. Por ejemplo, esta ignorancia también enfatiza el abandono por parte del gobierno español de la educación de su pueblo durante muchos años. Vemos que hay múltiples ambigüedades en la novela, y no sólo en el personaje de Mosén Millán (aunque seguramente es el personaje más desarrollado y, a la vez, ambiguo).

Algo muy logrado de la novela para mí fue la sensación de alejamiento que sentimos en el pueblo, o tal vez sólo en el cura. Quiero decir que todo parece pasar en otra parte, al inicio por lo menos. Mosén Millán  aprende de la salida del rey sólo por el chisme del zapatero. Incluso cuando la violencia llega al pueblo, todo parece confusión y chisme. Se menciona de paso, sin darle mayor importancia, al hecho que los señoritos habían hecho alcalde a Don Valeriano (p. 41 en mi versión). Nadie sabe por qué los señoritos vinieron o por qué mataron a sus víctimas. Hay que acordarnos que, aunque todo pasa en tercera persona, vemos la perspectiva de Mosén Millán aquí, y tal vez deberíamos leer esto como la desconexión del cura de los asuntos terrenales del pueblo. Sin embargo, se enfatiza muchísimo el chisme en el pueblo. ¿Qué importancia tendrá ese chisme, sobre todo de mujeres,  para la novela?

I am a Masters student in Hispanic studies and am looking forward to the intense experience of this course. Reading so many books in such a short time will be a challenge, but I’m sure it will be a rewarding one.

I came to UBC after living about two years in Colombia where I worked as an English teacher and a translator. Before that, I did my BA in Romance Languages at the University of Alberta. Though I spent most of my childhood in a small town in southern Alberta, I have lived most of my adult life in Edmonton.

In this course I am particularly interested in seeing the different ways that the Spanish Civil War is represented, especially as it is a conflict in which international, national, and regional concerns or forces seem to intersect. Although this may be difficult in this course, I am also interested in seeing how the works on this conflict are similar to or different from those talking about other internal conflicts in Latin America.

I look forward to meeting you all tomorrow and to seeing where this course takes us!