Clarín's Animals: Reading Leopoldo Alas' Short Fiction through the Darwinian Revolution

CLARÍN’S ANIMALS: READING LEOPOLDO ALAS’ SHORT FICTION THROUGH THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION by Sara J. Brenneis Amherst College ARGUABLY the most well-known of Leopoldo Alas’ (“Clarín’s”) Spanish predecessors in the art of the animal-centered narrative is Cervantes. In the novela ejemplar “El coloquio de los perros,” Cipión and Berganza are dogs who one night find themselves endowed with the capacity for speech and complex thought. In the opening dialogue, they reflect on these newfound abilities: CIPIÓN. – . . . viene a ser mayor este milagro en que no solamente hablamos, sino en que hablamos con discurso, como si fuéramos capaces de razón, estando tan sin ella que la diferencia que hay del animal bruto al hombre es ser el hombre animal racional, y el bruto, irracional. BERGANZA. – Todo lo que dices, Cipión, entiendo, y el decirlo tú y entenderlo yo me causa nueva admiración y nueva maravilla. Bien es verdad que en el discurso de mi vida diversas y muchas veces he oído decir grandes prerrogativas nuestras; tanto, que parece que algunos han querido sentir que tenemos un natural distinto, tan vivo y tan agudo en muchas cosas, que da indicios y señales de faltar poco para mostrar que tenemos un no sé qué de entendimiento capaz de discurso. (159-60) Cipión defines the generally held distinction between humans and animals: the former are rational while the latter are not. That Cervantes bestows the capability of reason on his two animal interlocutors shocks not only the dogs them37 selves but the reader as well: it contradicts established laws of nature. The two dogs utilize their newfound intelligence and capacity for speech to make empirical observations about human nature and reflect on its larger consequences in their surroundings. His animal protagonists thus allow Cervantes an additional latitude for irony, criticism and moralizing from an animal perspective positioned to capture the nuances of human behavior, but, in the context of the tale, without interference from humans themselves. Almost three centuries later, Clarín presents his own version of the rational, analytical animal in a number of short stories published during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Parting from Cervantes’ tradition, Clarín endows his animalprotagonists with the capability for reason and emotion, and reveals their thoughts to the reader. By inverting normal conceptions of animals as irrational brutes to the type of rational citizens embodied by Cipión and Berganza, Clarín carefully leads the human reader toward the same question Cervantes poses: If animals can think, what do they think about us? While in “El coloquio,” Cervantes centers on the self-aware analyses of rational canine thought processes, Clarín’s thinking animals envision themselves in terms of their relationship to and definition by their human counterparts . This juxtaposition of animal and human – pet or possession and master – in turn forces a confrontation between the traditional values held by Clarín’s animals and the competing values associated with the emerging modernity and industrialization of late nineteenth-century Spain, symbolized and practiced by their masters. The animal-protagonists face the overwhelming changes brought about by both intellectual and market-driven modernization at the turn of the century, ultimately demonstrating that the workings of progress leave little room for the traditional, ‘outdated’ values of an agrarian society. Written at a time when the hard and social sciences were reacting to Charles Darwin’s notions that the evolution and survival of animal species are determined by the utility of certain traits, Clarín’s animal-centered narratives read through a Darwinian lens provide an historically-contextualized interpretation of the author’s intention. In their reflections on human nature, their ruminations on inter-species relationships and their untimely demises, Clarín’s animals demonstrate that the abstract values of love, reason/rationality, intelligence and loyalty are antagonistic to the cutthroat industrial age where competition, exchange and exploitation dominate. In a natural world characterized by the “survival of the fittest,” the animals that embody these traditional values are summarily eliminated. “¡Adiós, ‘Cordera’!” (1893), “El Quin” (1896), “La mosca sabia” (1881) and “El gallo de Sócrates” (1901) demonstrate the exceptional abilities of...