Great Chiasmus: Word and Flesh in the Novels of Unamuno

Chapter One. History as Presence: Paz en la guerra

19 Chapter One History as Presence Paz en la guerra As the Tolstoyan echo in its title indicates,1 Unamuno regarded his first novel, based on the Carlist War of 1872–76, as having been created within the great tradition of nineteenth-century historical fiction, and in the prologue to its second edition he would characterize it as “tanto como una novela histórica una historia anovelada” (2: 91). A decade later he would again describe it, not only as a historical novel, but as a work written “conforme a los preceptos académicos del género. A lo que se llama realismo” (2: 552).2 Yet he can scarcely have meant to identify it with conventional nineteenth-century realism, since elsewhere he had already made clear his distaste for realism in that sense, calling it a “cosa puramente externa, aparencial, cortical y anecdótica” (2: 972), qualities he regarded as characteristic of mere “literature,” but not of poetry or artistic creativity.3 The vehemence with which he rejected such realism, contrasted with the equanimity with which he accepted the term to describe Paz en la guerra, suggests he believed his first novel to have already succeeded in going beyond superficial and anecdotal description to express poetically the inner reality to which he aspired in his later work. I. History and the Novel The sense in which his first novel may be described as following the precepts of realism is to be understood chiefly with reference to the documentary precision of the historical research that Unamuno had devoted to it, and to the presence within it of so much of his personal experience as a child. The critic José Agustín Balseiro once complained of what he believed to be its excess of documentary detail, on the grounds that it 20 Chapter One exemplified the very flaws Unamuno criticized in the lines quoted above. According to Balseiro: Conocemos en esta obra cuántas personas fueron muertas en Bilbao el día de San José; cuántos pasos dejaron de adelantar los liberales el día de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores; cuántas pulgadas de nieve cubrieron las montañas el diez de marzo.… Y este es el error fundamental de Unamuno en Paz en la guerra; colocar los hechos históricos sobre el ambiente histórico. (38–39) It is curious that, in complaining about the excess of factual details, this critic should have confused a number of them. Unamuno does tell us that on March 10 it snowed on the mountaintops, but it is for the sake of describing the effect of the snowfall on the spirits of a woman who lies dying in the besieged city, with no mention made of its depth. On St. Joseph’s Day the bombardment was suspended, so there were no casualties at all. Balseiro’s comments are nevertheless signi ficant in pointing out something quite true—that Unamuno does, indeed, create an effect of chronological precision and factual detail. He tells us, for example, that the newspapers reported no less than 30 public dances held between January 1 and February 22 in order to keep up the citizens’ morale, and that in one hour alone during the bombardment of February 25 precisely 83 bombs fell on the city. In such cases, the facts are presented not for their own sake but in relation to the subjective reaction of individual characters or the people as a whole. The sense of a concrete hic et nunc within which the events occur makes the effect of subjective impressions all the more vivid. Indeed, the best readers of the novel have long emphasized that its impressionistic character is vastly more significant than the elements of descriptive realism it contains. Julián Marías observes that in describing the arrival of Pedro Antonio’s friends at his shop, “a Unamuno no se le ocurre, ni siquiera en esta novela, describirnos la chocolatería como cosa, con sus detalles externos…; lo que le interesa es la referencia existencial de Pedro Antonio a su mundo” (89–90). And Blanco Aguinaga declares that “no es Paz en la guerra novela histórica ni realista, sino una novela impresionista en la cual la historia real es sólo el pretexto para la expresión de una visión personal y lírica de la realidad” (Contemplativo 99). 21 History as Presence There is...