Matters of Difference: Plácido, Heredia, and Avellaneda in Menéndez y Pelayo

Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo’s claim of impartiality and sole use of aesthetics as the basis for analyzing the works of three nineteenth-century Cuban poets: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José María de Heredia, and Gabriel Concepción de Valdés (Plácido), falls apart under careful scrutiny. Through a close reading of Menéndez y Pelayo’s analysis of the aforementioned Cuban poets, the critic’s literary concerns are shown to be governed by his subject position within the colonial discourse of imperial Spain and the constmcted identity of the other. As a metropolitan agent of a disintegrating empire, Menéndez y Pelayo measures each poet according to his conception of a Spanish ideal that entails the nonliterary considerations of gender, ideology, and race. Difference is perceived as heterogeneous, obeying a scale that sets race as an irrevocable determinant of otherness. In this respect, Menéndez y Pelayo conflates the historical figure with his or her body of work. For the Spanish critic, the more a Latin American writer fits the mold of the (masculine) Spanish ideal, the greater his or her belongingness to Spain, and thus the better his or her work. By logical extension, the greater the differences, the less esteemed the literary body of work.