The Critic as Philosopher and Poet: A Polemic against Secondary Literature

There are no Facts, only interpretations —and that is an interpretation.
F. Nietzsche

Literary Criticism has often times been seen as a minor or subordinate endeavor. This is evinced by the inadvertently depressing term that academic lingo uses to describe it: secondary literature. The designation almost seems to hint towards a slightly modified version of that old adage hated by teachers everywhere: those who can’t write, criticize. At best, the critic is seen as an illuminator: someone who sheds light on an obscure text, a “pointer out” of interesting details. At worst, he or she is seen as a vampire: someone who lives off the works of others, sucking on the genius-blood of great men and women —a pathetic surfer on the grand waves of Art, Beauty, and Truth. It is my contention, however, that this vision of criticism is unnecessarily narrow, and must be reevaluated. The critic’s business is interpretation —and interpretation should be more than mere elucidation. The critic must go beyond the studied text. His role, I believe, should be closer to that of the philosopher than to the one of the commentator.

This is especially important today, when academic philosophy —especially in the English-speaking world— has become a technical discipline with little relation to life. The critic, if he is to fulfill the immense potential of his profession, must make the interpretation of life through texts his declared mission. He must search for answers to ethical, political, religious, epistemological, metaphysical, and ontological questions in literature, film, and art. The critic must transcend the meaningless distinctions of university disciplines and enlist the help of history, philology, and even the social sciences in his inquiry. If the understanding of philosophy as the examination of life is not to perish under the vain disputations of the new schoolmen, the critic must become the new philosopher

It should not suprise us that in our day and age philosophy should begin with interpretation: our cultural inheritance is so vast and intertwined that it would be foolish —impossible, even— to begin from scratch. The critic interrogates past writers —past artists, past humans— because art and writing have become the stuff of life. To say that the world is a text has become commonplace, but that detracts nothing from the fact that art shapes the way we live and think in unfathomable ways. The critic begins with tradition —and then proceeds to question it, champion it, tear it apart, defend it, discard it, or expand it. In a word: make it new. If this implies lifting a text from its context and killing the author, so be it. If this implies historicizing a text and carefully exploring the biographical and psychological circumstances of the author, so be it. The point, after all, is to extract all the possible meanings from a text: to liberate words, not pin them down.

There is nothing too insignificant to escape the gaze of the critic. TV advertisements, Internet forum firestorms, misspelled blogs, madmen’s pamphlets, graffiti, technical manuals and scientific databases —everything is subject to interpretation, everything contains meaning just waiting to be revealed. The critic must have sharp eyes: he is an observer, a watcher, an endless note-taker. The critic notices what others do not notice, and he makes sense of what appears to be senseless.

The critic, moreover, must also be a poet. To the critic, form is as important as content. Each interpretation becomes itself a text subject to interpretation, and as such is to be held to the same standards as the texts it interprets. Critical language must be beautiful: Immanuel Kant’s greatest failing and ultimate downfall is his style. A critic must take his reader for a dance, constructing his text with the elegance and artistry of a great architect. A critic must avoid academic conventionalities —those murderers of good writing— like the plague. He is entitled to an individual voice: his texts can be everything but the ascetic, aseptic, unthreatening pieces that academic factories mass-produces every day. The critic must rescue the first person singular —that mark of true authorship, the unashamed “I”— from the timid, frigid, vague “one” or the falsely modest “we.” Whether explicitly or implicitly, every work of art is an interpretation of its predecessors —and so it is only fitting that writing that acknowledges this interpretative function explicitly should recognize itself as art and hold itself to the appropriate standards.

What I am putting forth is not new or revolutionary: today, the words “critic” and “philosopher” are often used interchangeably, if sometimes mediated by that vague third term that seeks to create a false separation between philosophy and interpretative writing: "Theory". Literary critics already do the most exiting philosophical work of our time, and the most important writers of our generation are informed by and in conversation with the work of these critics. After all, it is only fitting that Criticism should be the essential thought-mode of an age of crisis. My only request is that we do away with that idiotic term: secondary literature. The critic is the interpreter of the human condition. What the hell is secondary about that?

Sinceramente,

NMMP

The Scary Thing about the End of Rationality

"On the other side of Kantian metaphysics there is nothing but absurdity or insanity."
P. North

So yeah, folks, either a frigid German dude who died a virgin figured it all out, or we are all in a Beckett play, or that stuff about I being the walrus is true.

FML.

Sinceramente,

NMMP

Interiors

1. Introduction

1.1 Politics and Ethics, Art and Attempt —If politics is the attempt to live with others, then ethics is the art of living with oneself. Perhaps it was not always like this —before, when there was faith, ethics was the art of attempting to live with God. Now that God has died, however, each has become his own judge. Although it might be that despite all that faith God never existed —in which case the art of living with God has always been the attempt at living with oneself, and the deity nothing but the name that we gave to that part of ourselves that we erected as judge.

1.2 The Insidiousness of Politics —And yet the others insist in introducing themselves into our inner life, promoting themselves to corporals and generals in our secret army of private judges. Parents, friends, and lovers —all of them populate our interior solitude, looking, looking, approving and reproving, contradicting each other, fighting. And despite the death of God, the necessity to please, the desire not to hurt, the need to receive approval from the judge remains in us —burning desire and unending source of anguish. This is our curse —or my curse, at least: formally, we are convinced immoralists, but the shadow of Buddha (c.f Gay Science) —the shadow of a multitude of Buddhas with familiar faces— remains in our inner caves, projecting itself imposing and frightful.

1.3 Lutzscher, Niether —Perhaps this was the shadow from which Luther was trying to liberate himself with The Freedom of a Christian. The pure interiority of the Lutherans, sola fides, sola scriptura —what is it but a theological getaway car from the weight of political judgment, the judgment of the others? The Christian alone before his God is nothing else than the Christian alone before himself. In this sense, Nietzsche is a direct descendent of Luther, and his solipsistic will-to-will the logical conclusion of that radical interiorism that seems to constitute the bottom line of the modern German rebellion against the tyranny of the others.

1.4 Inner Dissatisfaction — Were my constitution different, this total interiority could perhaps provide me with absolute solace. However there is in me an uncontrollable desire for the others, for the exterior. This is why Bataille and his ethics of risk, gamble and laceration are so attractive. It is not trivial that Bataille was so concerned with the bodily and the sexual: in the interior/exterior dichotomy the body belongs to the exterior. This might be the origin of Lutzscher’s complicated relationship to sex —marrying a nun and dying with guilt, getting syphilis from going to a prostitute “on doctor’s orders,” etc. Pure interiority, it turns out, also implies a totalizing spiritualization. It is an aspiration to be pure soul, to get rid of the body. Nietzsche, of course, would deny this —Luther was more honest— but a quick read of Ecce Homo will suffice to show the profound disembodiment of that insincere adorer of Dionysus: never mind the wine-and-nymphs, he cannot tolerate coffee.

1.5 The Dilemma of Interiority —This is, then, the kernel of the matter: how to live with oneself without renouncing the others, how to live-in-the-world without succumbing to guilt, to pain, to the infelicity inherited from centuries of cultural disease —Catholicism, etc? Happiness, one of Fellini’s characters says wisely, consists in being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone. This is easy if one has achieved pure interiority does not care at all about the others —hurting them becomes irrelevant. But the others matter, enormously, for good or ill. I and the others, interiority and exteriority —these are the two poles of the problem of the Good Life, and the question raised here is how to navigate these dangerous waters without falling apart.

Sinceramente,

NMMP

Messiah

The Messiah —Do not wait for him. It does not matter if the Messiah is the return of a lost lover, or the Proletarian Revolution, or Tenure, or Death, or even the Second Coming of Christ: do not wait for him, for he will only come when you don't expect him. And when he does come, he won't be what you were hoping for. And, invariably, he will come too late. Do not wait for the Messiah —and who knows? Perhaps when you don't expect him anymore, when you don't need him anymore—he might just come.

Sinceramente,
NMMP

The Passionate Teachings of John Cassavettes and their Perversion by False Prophets

“An immense thrust of passion coupled with formidable will-power, such was the man.”

“In Spite of his admiration for the ardent Phenomena of life, never can Eugene Delacroix be confused with that mob of vulgar artists and writers whose myopic intelligence shelters behind that vague and obscure Word realism”

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

When John Cassavettes chose to shoot Faces in 16 mm film and using a hand-held camera, he was not thinking of an aesthetic proposal. Rather, what he had in mind was a different dynamic in the praxis of filmmaking; one that held acting as its priority —it was raw emotion that had to be found. Lighting was to be done in a way that left the most space for the free movement of the actors. This search for unencumbered feeling could not be done in an expensive production, both because Cassavettes did not have enough capital and because of the professional and legal obstacles that money imposes over cinema. The aesthetic trend that surged from these very mundane impediments was purely an accident.

The film’s impact on the aesthetic of current cinema can be seen everywhere. In works as diverse as The Bourne Identity, the latest installment in the Harry Potter series, and Iñarritú’s 21grams, the signature of Casssavettes appears in one form or another — dirty photography, use of a constantly moving hand-held camera, intense and emotional actoral performances and grainy images. What were originally practical limitations in the genesis of the work have become ends consciously sought after.

Today more than ever, film seems to pursue an ideal of realism. The expressive use of light is limited to the representation of the space or situation of the scene as realistically as possible. Fiction films are oftentimes constructed to look like documentaries. Before video cameras were accessible for families to record birthdays and vacations, the practical limitations of films like Faces had discovered the aesthetic of video “realism”. One could even define Faces as a fictional documentary of private life.

Perhaps these notions of filmic realism began with Cassavettes. In his films, many of the formal signs of classical cinema —transparent framing, composition, camera movement— only found their meaning and strength after the moment of execution. Cassavettes was known for shooting ridiculous amount of film for scenes that could end up being very brief afterwards—something that the high cost of 35 mm film would have made impossible. Cassavettes is different from all his predecessors because his expressive priorities are inverted: “I never adjust the camera to the scenes, but the scenes to the camera”. Cassavettes is different from his present imitators because he had the privilege of accident.

Despite the film’s outer appearance of realism, a close viewing of Faces will inevitably reveal many errors in continuity, unjustified uses of light, rapid changes in mood of the characters and a frequent descent towards abstraction. Objective reality does not exist in cinema. If the films of Cassavettes tell us much about his overflowing emotions and pain it is because he shows us the world through the filter of his subjective glance. The fact that we experience intense emotion from a believable source does not necessarily mean that we are being exposed to an objective portrait of human experience. The emotional impact of Cassavettes films stems not from the accuracy of their portrayal of reality —rather, it is the result of extreme sensibility and skill working together. This combination of acute perception and technical talent is nothing less than the true nature of artistic genius.

¿What is it then that makes the films of this man seem so much like life? John Cassavettes was a passionate man. The shooting of Faces began in 1963, but the film was not premiered until 1968. More than a creative adventure, the moviemaking process was a battle. Two of the actresses, including his wife, were pregnant. Financial difficulties forced the director to mortgage his home, do side jobs as an actor in films he despised, and relentlessly beg for money everywhere. He was forced to have the editor of the film move into his garage. Chronically unsatisfied, Cassavettes did many versions of the film, even inviting random people on the street to watch a scene and give their opinion. Cassavettes needed to be able to change everything from one moment to the next. All of these factors, among many others, contributed to make the production and post-production of Faces a creative process of five years. The emotions of Faces are fueled with the passion of a group of men and women who put blood, sweat, and tears throughout seemingly endless years to get the film made. The result of their hard work is tangible proof that, if cinema is to be different, the process by which it is made must also be different.

The realism of the films of today is nothing more than a trend. With each day that passes, the art of cinema moves closer and closer to the unneutered entertainment of television. Personality and originality are disdained. In their stead, a cheap illusion of realism is fed to mindless audiences, who usually have a steep archive of cinematic references and will take nothing other than what they have learnt to expect.

If film continues down this homogenizing road, if filmmakers continue to be feeble imitators of a non-existent concept, creativity will either disappear completely or be vanished to the realm of extreme intellectuality. If things continue as they are, the general audience will become progressively more intolerant to new ways, leaving the greatest invention of modernity —cinema, that beautiful mechanical art, filled with as many glorious flaws as the broken men and women who fathered it— dim and forgotten, or worse, transformed into mere moving images.


Sincerely,
SEMV

Nostalgia

Vino una tarde a cenar conmigo,
vestida de azul, con los ojos cansados
de tanto escribir.

Le pregunte sobre su trabajo,
y por respuesta me habló
de los poetas hebreos de la España musulmana.

“Se morían de nostalgia,” me dijo,
“algunos por el cuerpo de sus amantes,
otros por el polvo de levante,
y otros más
por una cierta unidad con el cosmos
perdida al momento de ser hombres.”

Con el café nos dijimos
que lo atroz de la nostalgia
es que el objecto añorado no se conoce
—que se trata más bien de una construcción
de nuestras mentes insatisfechas;
un deseo por un pasado que se proyecta
hacia el futuro, destruyendo a su paso el presente
y dejándonos fríos, con los ojos cansados
de tanto mirar a lo lejos.

Al abrazarla al despedirnos
y sentir, por un instante,
su cuerpo contra al mío a través de la ropa,
no pude evitar sentir
una profunda nostalgia
por aquellos labios finos
que, sin duda, me pertenecieron una vez,
hace mucho, una noche perfumada de Granada.

Sinceramente,
NMMP

Martirio y Herejía: La Guerra Civil Española

Introducción Nietzscheana

“Where is God?” he cried, “I’ll tell you! We have killed him! […] Is there still an up and a down?

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

En 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche publicaba La Gaya Ciencia, primera obra de su etapa madura. Aquí, el filósofo alemán haría su más famosa proclamación: Dios ha muerto, nosotros lo hemos matado. Esta idea de la “Muerte de Dios” debe entenderse en varios niveles. Se trata, a la vez, de una afirmación metafísica, ética e histórico/sociológica. En el nivel histórico/sociológico, la “Muerte de Dios” debe entenderse como una metáfora del progresivo desgaste de las certezas absolutas que la cultura occidental ha sufrido a partir del fin de la Edad Media. Estas certezas que se desvanecen incluyen, por supuesto, todo tipo de convicciones religiosas, pero también abarcan certidumbres políticas, sociales y culturales. Así, a partir del Renacimiento —y especialmente después de la Reforma protestante— el Catolicismo fue perdiendo su posición de autoridad absoluta en temas de religión; el poder político —antes concentrado en las manos de poderosos monarcas— se fue fragmentando hasta culminar en las democracias modernas; y las clases sociales —que alguna vez fueron estructuras rígidas e inamovibles— se convirtieron en un medio fluido: los burgueses destronaron a la aristocracia. Todo lo que se daba por sentado ha resultado ser frágil y fluido.

Muchas de las consecuencias de la Muerte de Dios son positivas —al fin y al cabo, la modernidad ha traído consigo niveles de libertad y bienestar nunca antes vistos. Sin embargo, junto con este “progreso” ha desaparecido toda certeza ética. Sin Dios para juzgarnos, ¿cómo podremos distinguir entre el bien y el mal? Nietzsche iría aún más lejos: sin Dios para juzgarnos, las nociones de “bien” y “mal” pierden todo significado. Tras la Muerte de Dios, todo juicio de valor se vuelve humano, y por lo tanto se relativiza. Lo terrible del asunto es que los seres humanos no sabemos vivir sin Dios: “God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow.” El hombre moderno se ha dedicado a construir nuevos ídolos, nuevos criterios que le permitan juzgar y comprender el mundo en términos absolutos: la Muerte de Dios es también el nacimiento de la Ideología. Al encontrarse perdidos y sin dirección —“is there still any up or down?”— los hombres fundaron nuevos cultos. Capital, Nación, Proletariado —los nombres de los nuevos dioses son bien conocidos.

Cincuenta y cuatro años después de la publicación de La Gaya Ciencia, el estallido de la Guerra Civil Española serviría para demostrar lo certero de las predicciones de Nietzsche. La Guerra Civil puede considerarse un “estudio de caso” de esta tragedia moderna: en cuestión de décadas, tradiciones de siglos se vieron progresivamente erosionada hasta que las tensiones entres quienes veían esta erosión como una perdida y aquellos que la consideraban un triunfo estallaron en una espiral de violencia casi sin precedentes. El caos moral de la Guerra Civil y las atrocidades resultantes son conocidas por todos. Sin embargo, el discurso maniqueo de ambos bandos —que trataba a fuerza de radicalización y escándalo convencerse a sí mismos y a los otros de que su nuevo ídolo podía proveer un paradigma absoluto— ha obscurecido la ambigüedad moral subyacente en todas las acciones violentas de la guerra. Este ensayo pretende traer a la superficie dicha ambigüedad a partir de una exploración de las dudas y la culpa que se esconden detrás de estas acciones, mostrando las contradicciones y los huecos en las ideologías de ambos bandos. Partiendo de la descripción que Noël Valis ha hecho de la “Política del Martirio,” este ensayo analizará un episodio literario —el linchamiento de los Nacionalistas del pueblo de Pilar en For Whom the Bell Tolls— y un hecho histórico —la exhumación de cadáveres de religiosas en la Barcelona de 1936— a la luz de la ambigüedad de la dicotomía Mártir/Hereje. Sin Dios para juzgar, esta dicotomía se descompone —y de allí que tanto Mosén Millán como los personajes de Hemingway y los civiles catalanes que presenciaron los hechos de la llamada “Furia Anticlerical,” pese a sus constantes manifestaciones de fe ciega en las causas que defienden, den muestras de culpa.

—Ø—

Martirio y Herejía

The atmosphere of terrorism is not what you think. At first it is like some gigantic misunderstanding, mixing everything up, inextricably entangling good and evil, innocent and guilty, enthusiasm and cruelty.

Georges Bernanos

En “The Politics of Martyrdom,” el último capitulo de Sacred Realism, Noël Valis ha demostrado las similitudes subyacentes de las prácticas violentas de Nacionalistas y Republicanos. A partir de un análisis de la obras de Sender y Carretero, ha llegado a la conclusión que, pese al anticlericarismo del bando republicano, el martirio y sus narrativas tradicionales constituyen una de las principales estructuras imaginativas con la que ambos bandos explican la violencia y miran a sus muertos. Así, pese a que “the tradition of martyrdom is associated with the Nationalist side, which depicted its struggle as a holy war and crusade," los Republicanos, “sharing the same Catholic culture . . . also used the image of martyrdom.” Tanto los sacerdotes torturados durante la “Furia Anticlerical” como Paco, protagonista de Réquiem por un Campesino Español y sus equivalentes históricos —“fictional deaths like Paco’s were historical realities during the civil war”son considerados mártires por sus respectivos bandos, traicionando así el profundo impacto que la “sombra de Dios” aún ejerce sobre la mentalidad española.

Quizás sea posible aplicar este mismo razonamiento a la inversa. En la teología Católica tradicional, el opuesto del mártir es el hereje. Las muertes violentas de ambos tipos son, en muchos sentidos, equivalentes: tanto mártires como herejes sufren tormentos letales a causa de sus creencias. La única diferencia es el juicio de la Iglesia: el mártir muere en la hoguera por haber defendido la fe verdadera y por lo tanto va al cielo; el hereje es quemado por haber defendido una fe errónea y por lo tanto está condenado al infierno. De este modo, Paco es ejecutado por los Nacionalistas por haber cometido el crimen del heresaica: la enseñanza y promoción de una doctrina errónea. Así, para los Republicanos, Paco es un mártir; para los Nacionalistas, un hereje. Esta equivalencia no ha escapado al análisis de Valis:

There was a patrimony of culture, values, and persecutory and purging needs, shared by that Church —which was, after all, the Church of the Inquisition, the Church most infamous for its persecutions of heretics— and its enemies. During the war Nationalists used a language of purification in identifying and killing Republicans as sources of pollution perceived as threatening to the community. Similarly, the church burnings in May 1931, shortly after the Second Republic was proclaimed, and in 1936 represented a peculiar form of auto de fe, purging of religious symbols and habitations, purification by fire: “que el fuego todo lo purifica.

Sin embargo, tras la Muerte de Dios —que, como se ha visto, no debe entenderse como el fin de la fe religiosa sino como la erosión de los valores absolutos— la autoridad de la Iglesia y la de sus sustitutos ideológicos izquierdistas para determinar a cuál de estas categorías pertenece cada uno de los muertos se ha visto profundamente debilitada. Así, a nadie le queda claro si Paco y el resto de las victimas, tanto Nacionalistas como Republicanas, son mártires o herejes. Por supuesto, el discurso maniqueo de ambos bandos constituye un intento de legitimar la clasificación que hacen de sus muertos y de los del enemigo, pero la virulencia y radicalización de estos discursos de legitimación solo se explica si existe un subtexto de duda. Es por esto que, aunque es cierto que “in civil war each side is convinced of the rightness, the moral significance, of its cause,” debajo de esta apariencia de certeza yace una profunda inseguridad. Del mismo modo que los movimientos de restauración religiosa solo surgen en momentos en los que la fe se encuentra amenazada, las ideologías absolutistas —sean de izquierdas o de derechas— aparecen únicamente cuando la gente siente la necesidad de convencerse de la justicia de sus acciones. “Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire,” escribe Marx en el Manifiesto. Lo mismo puede decirse de la dicotomía Mártir/Hereje, que pierde por completo su carácter absoluto.

—Ø—

El Caso de las Monjas de Barcelona

Do we not hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? —Gods, too, decompose!

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

En The Spanish Civil War as Religious Tragedy, José M. Sánchez ofrece un pormenorizado relato de un hecho ocurrido en Barcelona en 1936:

Shortly after the uprising and the iconoclastic fury of church burnings, the cloistered conventos were invaded . . . The mob desecrated the nun’s tombs. They disinterred the long-dead bodies . . . and carried the decomposing remains to the front of the churches and chapels and put them on public display. For days, lines of people formed to view the corpses of generations of nuns . . . People stuck cigarettes in the corpses’ mouths and mocked the mummies. Some even performed impromptu dances with the withered corpses.

El incidente constituye un excelente ejemplo de la ambivalencia subyacente en los actos violentos de la Guerra Civil. Para exponer esta ambivalencia, es importante recordar que otra característica común de mártires y herejes es la importancia simbólica que se le otorga a sus restos mortales. Los cuerpos de los mártires se convierten en reliquias —“the rhetoric of martyrdom converts bodies into sacred relics, into the bearers of symbolic significance”—, mientras que, a través de la tortura, los cuerpos de los herejes se convierten en representaciones encarnadas de su error espiritual. En ambos casos, los restos son exhibidos en público: las reliquias en catedrales, los cuerpos de los herejes en las plazas de ejecución.

Así pues, ¿cuál es el significado simbólico de los cadáveres de estas monjas, por qué ameritan ser exhibidas en público? ¿Se trata de mártires o herejes? La respuesta obvia —que se trata de herejes que han pecado contra el dogma republicano— se ve problematizada por las respuestas de los espectadores. Sánchez reporta que “while the anticlericals appear jaunty in the photographs taken of these scenes, the faces of common people looking at the corpses appear haunted and betray a fear that suggests that such things are better kept out of sight and out of mind.” Más aún, la historia oral que reporta espectadores que “reacted with amusement”parece indicar un cierto nerviosismo —al fin y al cabo, la risa puede ser interpretada como una reacción ante algo amenazante, un intento de restarle importancia a algo terrible.

La intención transgresiva de estos actos implica la existencia de reglas subyacentes que aún conservan su poder de interdicción. Al fin y al cabo, la blasfemia y el sacrilegio no tienen significado alguno si no existe algo sagrado que desacrar . Al respecto, Valis escribe:

The unearthing of dead religious, ostensibly meant to reveal the dirty secrets and scandals of the Church, also uncovers another layer of the sacred: the residue of power that same faith still exerted over the unbelievers. Had the Church been of little importance in the social fabric of Spanish life, none of these acts would have occurred.

Así, el acto mismo de exponer a las monjas traiciona la importancia que se les otorga y su estatus como símbolos de un poder superior. Las connotaciones rituales y religiosas de este episodio tampoco pueden ser ignoradas. De nuevo, Valis:

The killing of priests, the mutilations of sacred objects, the burlesque parodies of Church rites and practices, all these things were performed within a counter-ritualistic framework to destroy the power of the Church as an institution, as a class enemy, and as the bearer of community values.

En su intento de destruir el poder de la religión, los anticlericales Republicanos terminan reproduciendo muchas de sus formas: Dios parece estar a la vez presente y ausente, la simple inversión de los ritos no altera su significado. Nietzsche habló de “el cadáver de Dios” y de su descomposición —pero también de la “sombra” o el “fantasma” de Dios, y de como este fantasma se rehúsa a desaparecer por completo. Al exponer a las monjas, los anticlericales parecen estar repitiendo la proclamación del Loco de La Gaya Ciencia: Dios ha muerto, nosotros lo hemos matado —mirad, he aquí su cadáver. Sin embargo, el miedo y el nerviosismo —¿la culpa, tal vez?— que los anticlericales demuestran ante su propio sacrilegio parece indicar la presencia del fantasma divino. Más aún, si Dios ha muerto y no existen criterios absolutos para determinar la moralidad de los actos, ¿cómo pueden los anticlericales estar seguros de que están exponiendo los restos de herejes, y no las reliquias de mártires? Ambas prácticas son tan similares en cuanto a forma que resulta difícil diferenciarlas.

—Ø—

El Caso de Pablo y Pilar

Destruction without mitigation and ruin as such assumed the dignity of supreme values.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

En For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernst Hemingway presenta otro ejemplo de la ambigüedad moral de la guerra. Se trata del episodio, narrado por Pilar, en el que los habitantes Republicanos de un pueblo anónimo linchan a sus vecinos Nacionalistas. En este episodio la culpa y la duda de la validez de las acciones violentas están en la superficie. Pilar salpica su relato de expresiones de arrepentimiento: “Much [happened]. And all of it ugly. Even that which was glorious.” Interjecciones de ese tipo —“it was a very ugly thing,” “this is shameful”— aparecen una y otra vez, como si la guerrillera sazonada sintiera la necesidad de justificarse continuamente, admitiendo que ha participado en un acto terrible. Más aún, páginas antes Pablo expresa un súbito arrebato de fe religiosa que solo puede interpretarse como producto de la duda existencial que ha sido descrita:

The he said, “May God aid thee, Pilar.”

“What are you talking of God for?” I said to him. “What way is that to speak?”

“Yes, “ he said, “God and the Virgen.”

“Qué va, God and the Virgen,” I said to him, “Is that any way to talk?”

“I am afraid to die, Pilar,” he said. “Tengo miedo de morir. Dost thou understand?”

Pablo tiene miedo de morir, en efecto —pero su miedo va más allá del simple terror ante la muerte. ¿Es que acaso el guerrillero Republicano tiene miedo de morir inconfeso? Esto explicaría su llamado a Dios y a la Virgen. De nuevo, el fantasma de Dios embruja los sueños de quienes han cometido atrocidades.

La disolución de la dicotomía hereje/mártir también recibe un tratamiento explicito en el relato de Pilar. A lo largo del pasaje, las víctimas de la turba Republicana son representadas de rodillas:

“Kneel down against the wall with your heads against the wall,” Pablo told them. The civiles looked at one another. “Kneel, I say,” Pablo said. “Get down and kneel.”

The priest was standing, and those who were left were kneeling in half a circle around him and they were all praying.

Esta imagen tiene la intención obvia de mostrar a las víctimas como indefensas, así como de representar el poder total que Pablo y compañía ejercen sobre ellos. Sin embargo, parece también haber en ellas un subtexto religioso. Los santos son a menudo representados de rodillas, en actitud de alabanza a Dios; los mártires mueren arrodillados.

Por otro lado, el relato también contiene imágenes que asimilan a los linchados con el tipo del hereje. En primer lugar está el método de ejecución elegido por Paco, que recuerda a ciertas tradiciones católicas de violencia ritual: “Pablo had them beaten to death with flails and thrown from the top of the cliff into the river.” El uso de “heavy herdsman’s clubs, ox-goads . . . and wooden pitchforks” remite a una escena de Réquiem por un Campesino Español en la que Sender describe un ritual antisemita celebrado en Semana Santa:

El Sábado de Gloria, por la mañana, los chicos iban a la iglesia llevando pequeños mazos de madera que tenían guardados todo el año para aquel fin. Iban —quién iba a suponerlo— a matar judíos. Para evitar que rompieran los bancos, Mosén Millán hacía poner el día anterior tres largos maderos derribados cerca del atrio. Se suponía que los judíos estaban dentro, lo que no era para las imaginaciones infantiles demasiado suponer. Los chicos se sentaban detrás y esperaban. Al decir el cura en los oficios la palabra resurrexit, comenzaban a golpear produciendo un fragor escandaloso.

Los judíos representaban el arquetipo del hereje en la España inquisitorial. En la matanza relatada por Pilar, los Nacionalistas toman el lugar de los judíos —y, por extensión, de los herejes. Esta no es la única conexión simbólica establecida entre los Nacionalistas linchados y la herejía. En otro momento del relato, Pilar describe los intentos farsicos de un anarquista borracho de prenderle fuego al enorme cadáver de Don Anastacio:

The drunkard got up and went over to Don Anastasio, and leaned over and poured out of the bottle onto the head of Don Anastasio and onto his clothes, and then he took a matchbox out of his pocket and lit several matches, trying to make a fire with Don Anastasio.

La profunda conexión simbólica entre la hoguera y el castigo de la herejía no puede ser ignorada. Al intentar quemar el cuerpo derrotado de uno de los Nacionalistas, el anarquista de Hemingway está recreando —si bien en tono de burla— el auto de fe, uno de los rituales religiosos más poderosos del catolicismo inquisitorial.

Así pues, las victimas de la turba Republicana son representadas a un tiempo con imágenes que sugieren que son mártires y que son herejes. Esta ambigüedad se traslada al plano de lo moral, en el que los personajes expresan fuertes dudas acerca de la validez de sus acciones. La carencia de Dios juega un papel muy importante en estas dudas, como una conversación entre Robert Jordan y otro de los guerrilleros pone muy en claro:

“Yet you have killed.”

“Yes. And I will kill again. But if I live later, I will try to live in such a way, doing no harm to any one, that it will be forgiven.”

“By whom?”

“Who knows? Since we do not have God here any more, neither His Son, or the Holy Ghost, who forgives? I do not know.”

“You have not God any more?”

“No. Man. Certainly not. If there were God, never would He have permitted what I have seen with my eyes. […] Clearly I miss him, having been brought up with religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.”

“The it is thyself who will forgive thee for thy killing.”

“I believe so,” said Anselmo.

Sin Dios para juzgarlos, los personajes Republicanos de For Whom the Bell Tolls solo se tienen a si mismos para buscar el perdón de sus acciones. La pregunta es, ¿pueden perdonarse a si mismos?

—Ø—

Conclusión

God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? […] What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

En su discusión de Réquiem por un Campesino Español, Valis ha identificado dos intenciones textuales: la narrativa martiriológica y la confesión de culpa de Mosén Millán. La autora describe “the complex narrative turn, in which an account of the martyrdom (Paco’s) is at the same time a botched confession (Mosén Millán’s).” Sin embargo, Valis también ha identificado la incapacidad del personaje del sacerdote de presentar una confesión completa: “as a confession, [Réquiem] is . . . an incomplete plot of revelation. […] Mosén Millán’s anguish . . . is filled with guilt. […] The horrible confusion [he] feels is above all a moral fog.” Esta “niebla moral” puede muy bien verse como la metáfora perfecta para los efectos contradictorios de la Muerte de Dios y la permanencia de su sombra. Mosén Millán está atrapado entre las dos versiones de Paco: la figura cristológica que ha sufrido el martirio a manos de las fuerzas del mal, y el heresaica que ha pecado al intentar esparcir una doctrina ponzoñosa entre los miembros de la comunidad. Pese a su fe en Dios, el cura es incapaz de declarar abiertamente su repudio de Paco. Al mismo tiempo, Mosén Millán no puede tampoco pronunciarse en contra de la ejecución. Por lo menos una parte de esta confusión puede ser atribuida a la indecidibilidad de la figura del titular Campesino Español: Paco es a un tiempo Cristo reencarnado y agitador social peligroso —¿merece ser premiado o castigado? Ante la imposibilidad de responder, Mosén Millán se ve reducido al silencio:

If there is something unsayable in Réquiem, if betrayal and guilt lie barely repressed beneath the narrative surface, it is because there is something unspeakable about the Spanish Civil War itself.

¿Hay algo de este silencio, de esta “indecidibilidad indecible,” en el llamado “Pacto del Olvido” posterior al fin de la guerra? Es muy probable que sí. Hasta la fecha, los españoles han sido incapaces de decidir si los actos violentos cometidos durante la Guerra Civil —que muy bien pueden ser interpretados como los “festivals of atonement” que Nietzsche considera necesarios tras el asesinato de Dios— fueron ejecuciones de herejes o martirios de santos. Quizás la ambigüedad de esta dicotomía es equivalente a la que Javier Cercas explora en Soldados de Salamina: los protagonistas de la guerra, ¿son héroes o criminales? Como en los episodios que hemos analizado, la vergüenza, la culpa, y la duda moral llenan la memoria de la Guerra Civil. Al final, solo queda el silencio.

Las atrocidades de la Guerra Civil muestran lo penetrante del análisis de Nietzsche, quien comprendió —a diferencia del triunfalismo de Voltaire y otros pensadores de la ilustración clásica— que la muerte de Dios es fundamentalmente una tragedia: un hecho doloroso cuyas consecuencias devastadoras resultan difíciles de comprender. La violencia de la Guerra Civil puede entonces entenderse al mismo tiempo como consecuencia y causa de la muerte de Dios, quien murió una y otra y otra vez a lo largo del conflicto. En Réquiem, Cristo muere a manos de los Nacionalistas; en la Cataluña de 1936, los “incontrolables” Republicanos crucifican sacerdotes. Parecería que los combatientes de ambos bandos necesitaban convencerse de que la deidad estaba verdaderamente muerta, y que nunca iba a volver —o que en realidad Dios no había muerto, y que nunca se había marchado. Dios ha muerto, proclama Nietzsche, y sin embargo su fantasma embruja a los españoles hasta la fecha. Tal vez está sea la última ambigüedad de la modernidad: Dios ha muerto, y sin embargo, su sombra permanece entre nosotros.

Sinceramente,
NMMP