Antonio Buero Vallejo by Martha T. Halsey (review)

Book Reviews ANTONIO BUERO VALLEJO, by Martha T. Halsey. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1973. 178 pp. $5.50. Twayne's World Author Series presents critical-analytical studies of outstanding writers along with the biographical and historical introduction necessary to the understanding and appreciation of their work. Martha Halsey, who has dedicated the major portion ofher professional energies (beginning with her dissertation at the Ohio State University in 1964) to studying the contemporary Spanish dramatist Antonio Buero Vallejo (1916- ) was· certainly the logical choice to write this Twayne Volume 260. She is, without question, the most knowledgeable scholar on his work in the United States today. While Dr. Halsey has written a book that serves beautifully to introduce the author to the person who knows nothing about Spanish or the Spanish theater, her analyses have the depth and detail to serve many of the interests of the academic specialist or the theater professional. Within the rather stringent limits set by Twayne, she has managed to produce a concise and valuable appraisal of the author's major preoccupations as seen through his eighteen plays published by 1970. She does not include commentary on The Arrival ofthe Gods published in 1971 and already included in the study of Buero's complete theater (through 1973) published by Robert Nichols (Estudios de Hispano.fila, University of North Carolina) in 1972. Professor Halsey errs, therefore, when she suggests in the prologue that hers is the first book published on Buero's entire theater to date. Not only was Nichols' book published a year earlier, her book is incomplete in 1973. After a short chronology of the author's life and a brief first chapter on Buero and his times (dealing more with production and publications data than with the man or his times), Professor Halsey initiates her critical appraisal of Buero's theater with an analysis of his theories on tragedy, the form this author uses exclusively to probe the mysteries of human existence. Rather than attempt to purge the spectator's emotions, Buero seeks to awaken him, confront him with human limitations and sorrow and ennoble him by planting a seed for future eth97 98 BOOK REVIEWS ical action. Believing in some free will balanced by a measure ofcosmic order, he suggests that catastrophe results in part from man's errors, principally from his selfishness and his refusal to face the long-term rather than immediate effects of his choices. Buero's tragic theater tends to be tentative and exploratory, and the tragic protagonists consistently operate somewhere between the poles ,of C'omplete freedom and absolute necessity. To underscore man's ignorance or conversely his painful gropings toward perception, Buero frequently uses varying degrees of stage shadow and light and sightless or sighted characters, at times ironically and at times symbolically. Buero's ideas on tragedy naturally lead into the discussion of his drama as introduced in chapter three, "The Quest for the Impossible Dream." A major obstacle to solving human dilemmas, Buero repeatedly asserts dramatically, is man's refusal to face the reality of his condition because of the pain involved. The vital anguish that Buero prescribes is in direct opposition to the philosophy espoused by the materialistic writers for the commercial Spanish stage who hold rose-colored glasses before reality and proclaim that Spain, politically, socially and economically, continues to be the best ofall possible worlds. In this commercial and doctrinaire theater, there are no problems or unanswered questions. The most handsome actor always wins the prettiest girl and they live happily ever after. Although Buero's theater is somber and poses questions rather than solutions , it is never devoid of hope. The only answer provided, Dr. Halsey suggests, is the validity offurther questioning. Like Unamuno, a writer with whom Buero shares many ideological similarities , Buero believes that it is man's responsibility to search for life's meaning on the personal as well as on the cosmic level despite the anguish involved and despite the overwhelming odds against his ever accomplishing this difficult task. Although progress toward ultimate truths is slow in human terms, Buero shows himselfto be basically optimistic, for each cry in the wilderness (i.e., tragedy) signals beliefin...