Heroism in Defeat: Alberti’s Cantata de los héroes y la fraternidad de los pueblos and Cercas’s Soldados de Salamina DEREK GAGEN University of Swansea
Abstract Rafael Alberti’s Cantata de los héroes y la fraternidad de los pueblos was devised as one of several homages to the departing International Brigades as they left a Republican Spain facing certain defeat in November 1938. As critics have recently noted, this Cantata, blending Alberti’s text with ‘musical illustrations’, has generally been neglected by commentators on Alberti’s theatre. In a blend of at times unsubtle political commitment and the highly traditional use of allegory and symbolic characters, with Spain represented as divided, the piece both celebrates the heroism of those (Spaniards and foreigners) fighting for España, and in the face of heroic defeat utters a surprisingly traditional patriotic plea for the union of the two Spains. The article goes on to reflect how, decades after the Nationalist victory, the defeated republicans are now celebrated but in ways that evince a less black-and-white picture of the Civil War. Cercas’s novel Soldados de Salamina offers a less ‘total’ and more personalized view of heroism yet can also be seen as a more problematized vision of the ‘Fraternidad’ celebrated in Alberti’s Cantata. Resumen Cantata de los héroes y la fraternidad de los pueblos de Rafael Alberti fue creada como unos de los numerosos homenajes ofrecidos a las Brigadas Internacionales que partían de una España Republicana que hacía frente a la seguridad de su derrota en noviembre de 1938. Como se ha observado recientemente, esta Cantata, mezcla de texto poético e ‘ilustraciones musicales’, no ha recibido de estudiosos del teatro albertiano la atención que merece. Uniendo el — a veces burdo — compromiso político con el empleo altamente tradicional de personajes alegóricos, con España representada como dividida, el texto no sólo celebra el heroísmo de aquellos, españoles e ‘internacionales’, que luchaban por España sino que también, frente a la certeza de una heroica derrota, constituye un llamamiento, de un patriotismo sorprendentemente tradicional, a la unión de las dos Españas. El artículo procede a considerar cómo decenios tras la victoria de los Nacionales, ahora se celebra la España Leal de una manera que ofrece una visión menos simplista de la realidad. Soldados de Salamina de Javier Cercas representa una perspectiva menos total y más
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personal del heroísmo que la que encontramos en Alberti, aun cuando también es una meditación más problematizada sobre la fraternidad o solidaridad celebradas en la Cantata de Alberti.
There has been since, at least, the medieval epic, a tradition of celebrating heroes who suffer death or defeat. Roland treacherously slain at Roncesvaux, or the heroic mass suicide of the Numantians in the face of the Roman siege of the Iberian city by Scipio’s army are the (rather differing) examples that spring immediately to mind. Within the ideologically fractured and fratricidal history of Spain in the early twentieth century the celebration of heroism in what was — at least in the short term — defeat is a recurrent feature, most notably in the Spanish Civil War that lasted from July 1936 to March–April 1939. On the Loyalist side, dead heroes such as García Lorca inspired celebrated verse elegies, while military figures such as Modesto or Hans Beimler were the subject of praise from poets such as Emilio Prados and Rafael Alberti (Lechner 1968: 157–58). The Nationalist Antología poética del Alzamiento 1936–1939 included sections dedicated to ‘Cantos de los héroes y mártires’ and the ‘Corona de sonetos dedicados a José Antonio Primo de Rivera’ (Lechner 1968: 209, 216). As Jorge Villena noted in his introduction to the Antología poética del Alzamiento, ‘La Cruzada está siendo fecunda en héroes y poetas’ (Lechner 1968: 275). In contrast to the emotional eulogies to individuals on the Nationalist side, the Republican Loyalists often celebrated collective rather than individual heroes, and for this the stage, rather than verse, offered an ideal medium. From his earliest verse the poet Rafael Alberti had been wont to celebrate heroes, who range from the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, in ‘Con él’ from Marinero en tierra (Alberti 1988: 126), to bullfighters in ‘Joselito en su gloria’ from El alba del alhelí (1988: 272–73) and the elegy to Ignacio Sánchez Mejías Verte y no verte (1988: 591–604), and even the goalkeeper of the Barcelona football team in ‘Platko’ from Cal y canto (1988: 365–67). However, in the 1930s as he became a Communist and established a second reputation as a radical playwright, Alberti and his wife María Teresa León were faced with the problem of saluting the heroes — generally fellow Communists or proletarian combatants — who fought alongside them in the Spanish Civil War. In verse such tributes were dedicated to exemplary individuals but Alberti was also responsible for a virtually unique collective tribute for the stage, his Cantata de los héroes y la fraternidad de los pueblos (Alberti 1978: 787–819). Directed by María Teresa León at the Teatro Auditórium, attached to the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, on 20 November 1938, it was one of several homages and ceremonial farewells offered to the departing members of the International Brigades as they left a Republican Spain facing defeat and now to be bereft of all such foreign support in the last winter of the Civil War. As Jim McCarthy has recently noted, this Cantata, blending Alberti’s text with musical illustrations, has largely been neglected by commentators on his theatre.1 Yet 1 ‘The Cantata has been neglected in terms of critical discussion’ (McCarthy 1999: 232, note
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in a mix of at times unsubtle political commitment and the highly traditional discourse of allegory and symbolism — with Spain represented as divided: ‘Aquí tenéis en dos mi cuerpo dividido:/un lado preso; el otro, libre al honor y al aire’ (Alberti 1978: 796) — the piece both celebrated democratic Spain’s dramatic, and even sacramental, heritage and the collective heroism of Spanish women and soldiers as well as the fraternal heroism of the foreign volunteers who had been fighting to save the Republic from the Nationalist insurgents. It is timely now to reconsider Alberti’s depiction of such collective heroism since, decades after the victory of the Nacionales, the Republican Loyalists are being recalled and celebrated in ways that problematize the black-and-white vision of the Civil War that has dominated historical memory since the collapse of the Franco dictatorship. Recently the best-selling novel of Javier Cercas, Soldados de Salamina, whose cover has a photograph of a participant in the great Barcelona ceremony of farewell to the Brigades that took place three weeks before the first performance of Alberti’s Cantata, has offered, as we shall see, a more nuanced and individualized — rather than collective — view of heroism in defeat. The International Brigades as such play no major role in Cercas’s novel but they do form part of the essential context for a struggle that bore a significance that was partially international and ideological rather than purely Spanish, leading Romero Salvadó to term it a ‘European Civil War’ (1999: 95). The conflict had very rapidly become internationalized after the military rebellion in mid-July 1936. Hitler sent transport aircraft on 26 July, nine days after the coup; by the end of July both Italian and German aid was being supplied; and by the end of the year Italian and German forces were fighting alongside the rebels.2 In September 1936 Stalin, although initially reluctant to act, had resolved to despatch International Brigades to Spain, organized by the Komintern, despite the efforts of the Non-Intervention Committee and the League of Nations to contain the conflict (Vidal 1998: 48–52). What is clear is that just as the attempted coup by the rebels in mid-July led in much of Spain to a spontaneous rising, fuelled by the Government’s largely reluctant decision to distribute arms to the people, so throughout the industrial working-class areas of Europe and the United States there were demonstrations of support and solidarity towards the beleaguered Republic. That support was in many cases to lead to volunteers joining the International Brigades. Clearly fronted by the Communist International, the Brigades were to play a significant role from November 1936 and throughout the war, and were still prominent as late as 25 July 1938 in the Battle of the Ebro, the last major Loyalist offensive. Spain’s fate was, however, being resolved beyond its borders. The Loyalist Government made persistent attempts during the War to persuade the 23). Prior to McCarthy’s study the only serious or extended analysis was due to Hermans (1989: 188–94) who emphasizes rather disingenuously that Alberti was, for once, defending the established authority, the Republic, rather than those engaging in defiance of that authority; and Torres Nebrera (1982: 173–78) who considers the Cantata as an example of ‘teatro épico’. 2 I follow the chronology of the Civil War from Vidal (1998: 543–57).
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League of Nations to abandon its policy of non-intervention but, at the urging above all of the British and the French, Republican Spain’s pleas for support for the legitimate government were ignored. Despite the initial success of the Republican counterattack on the Ebro front — Franco retired to his headquarters ill and depressed at one stage (Vidal 1998: 310–11) — it was the Munich Pact that decided the final collapse of the Republic as well as the German annexation of the Sudetenland. On 21 September 1938 Dr Negrín, the Republican Premier, announced the withdrawal of the Brigades and stated that, in any future war between the Western democracies and Germany, Spain would be their ally. Downcast and confused in his Aragón barracks, Franco now played his trump card, announcing that in any such war Nationalist Spain would remain neutral (Romero Salvadó 1999: 122). Appeasement won the day and the Munich Pact was signed in late September. Stalin now appears to have lost interest in supporting the Republic: within a year he too had moved to a policy of appeasement of Hitler’s Germany. How do you celebrate the departing heroes in such circumstances? As Hywel Francis writes with respect to the Welsh miners who fought for the Brigades: Personal commitment was still strong right up to the withdrawal from Spain. There were enough men (perhaps all of them) in the Battalion, Communists and NonCommunists, who would have seen it as their duty to remain behind to form a last rearguard action with the Republicans. For all the pride and speeches of praise in the final march past in Barcelona on 29 October 1938, there was a ‘tinge of shame’ that the Spanish people, who had already endured so much, were being abandoned to an inevitable, appalling fate. (Francis 1984: 239)
Alberti’s response to this situation was to devise his Cantata with its apparently hopeless vision of a Pauline conversion that would return the rebellious nacionales to the warm embrace of Mother Spain. However, it seems likely that he found some difficulty in finalizing his ideological stance and/or dramatic technique since the performance, originally announced for 3 November 1938, did not take place until the twentieth of that month (Marrast 1978: 98–99). The announcement of the piece had been made in a broadcast on Unión Radio on 30 October 1938 and the text of that broadcast always precedes the Cantata in El poeta en la calle, the collection of the politically committed works of the author. Alberti explained that the Cantata, ‘escrita en honor de nuestros héroes y la fraternidad, o solidaridad, de los pueblos hacia España’ (1978: 789) was inspired by the ancient musical composition of that name. Similar to the oratorio, Alberti observed, the classical form of the Cantata used symbolic characters such as Thought, Will, Hatred, the Soul, though it later developed profane forms. In its concert form, a character narrates the action while the arias and choruses are performed by the characters and the choir, accompanied by the orchestra. But, he went on to state, his Cantata, despite its musical structure and the orchestral accompaniment, is close to theatre. It is scenic, a staged performance. Two narrators (recitantes), rather than the traditional one, establish the atmosphere, preparing the action. The orchestra underpins the action of each
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scene. It retains from the primitive Cantata the intervention of symbolic characters who here, rather than ‘la fidelidad, el alma, etc.’ would be ‘España, la Solidaridad y otros’ (1978: 790). He clarified that the musical passages had been arranged by the composer and conductor Jesús García Leoz, an influential figure in his mid thirties who had often worked with the Albertis’ Guerrilla Theatre Company and had composed the score that accompanied Alberti’s adaptation of Cervantes’ tragedy El cerco de Numancia. The Guerrilla del Teatro del Ejército del Centro would perform the Cantata on 3 November 1938. Alberti had, as can be seen, worked out the general principles of his Cantata three weeks before the first performance. However, he had as yet not announced the ideological message, namely the brutal and patriotic lesson that Spain’s future depended on the coming together of the opposing sides, by virtue of the return to Mother Spain of its rebel soldiers buoyed up by the solidarity, but no longer the active aid, of well-wishers abroad. Yet the Albertis were experienced in writing and performing ideologically committed drama: on their visits to the Soviet Union, the most recent in the Spring of 1937, they had studied and worked with theatre professionals and imbibed the message of socialist realism (Salvat 2003: 238). At the same time they were also committed to radical re-readings of theatre classics. As early as 1933–34, when Rafael Alberti was editing the journal Octubre, he had written the Dos farsas revolucionarias that brought together on the one hand the lessons of their first visits to Germany and the Soviet Union and on the other Alberti’s consistent aim to update Spanish theatrical tradition (Gagen 1984a). His avant-garde staging of a traditional (and deeply Hispanic) genre had already been evident in his debut as a commercially staged dramatist with El hombre deshabitado (1931), notable for its negation of any Christian reading of the Calderonian auto sacramental.3 A suggestive further example, this time during the harshest days of the Civil War, was the adaptation in 1937 of Cervantes’ tragedy on the siege of Numancia, El cerco de Numancia, with the Roman invaders of ancient Iberia under Scipio, in Cervantes’ text, being replaced by the Italian troops of Mussolini, when the latter were in reality encamped in the enemy front lines two kilometres from the theatre in which the play was being performed. Alberti’s radical commitment was always prone to be expressed in just such a blend of traditional and contemporary staging. Even so, the fact that the Cantata de los héroes was to be performed by the Guerrilla del Teatro may have led some in the audience not to have expected a carefully crafted piece based on a traditional model but an example of Teatro de urgencia. This Spanish version of agitprop has only recently received detailed scholarly attention, notably by McCarthy. The term largely refers to the at times crude sketch-type drama which none the less does, as McCarthy demonstrates (1999: xii), respond to pleas for a collectivist art, lacking self-indulgent Modernist 3 Gagen (1984b) contextualizes the blend of traditional and avant-garde staging techniques in Alberti’s first professionally staged work El hombre deshabitado of 1931. Mateos Miera has more recently and very convincingly characterized Alberti’s theatrical activity prior to 1931as a pioneering avant-garde recreation of traditional forms (2002: 15–45).
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complexity, on the part of those commentators such as Ramón Sender in the 1930s who were often reflecting the views of the great Writers’ Congress held in Moscow in 1934 and which the Albertis attended. Alberti was himself responsible for the standard definition of teatro de urgencia, first delivered at a performance of Bleiberg’s Sombras de héroes in December 1937. Alberti argued for the effectiveness of these ‘urgent’ plays, which he promoted as ‘obritas rápidas, intensas — dramáticas, satíricas, didácticas — que se adapten técnicamente a la composición específica de los grupos teatrales’ (Alberti 1970: 156) As McCarthy points out (1999: xiv), Alberti’s definition granted emphasis to the formal characteristics of these playlets and the need to avoid complex staging and large casts. Furthermore, it is only late in the war that Alberti’s definition emerges, and it does so just one month after his rather formal and ‘non-urgent’ adaptation of El cerco de Numancia. In the preface to the collection of Teatro de urgencia published in Madrid in 1938, Alberti, as editor, emphasized that these plays would be performed on improvised stages in villages, in the front line, and that they should be part of a repertoire, complemented by ‘teatro clásico — pasos y entremeses, sainetes, etc. — de cantos y bailes populares’. The most important element was ‘hacerlo con fe, con seguridad en la razón y justicia de nuestra causa’ (Alberti 1970: 158–59). The Republican Government took a significant step to encourage the development of this type of agitational theatre when the Communist Minister of Health and Public Education, Jesús Hernández, created the Guerrillas de Teatro in that same month of December 1937. The Guerrilla of the Centre-Southern Zone of the Republican Army was to be directed by María Teresa León with García Leoz as musical director. Despite their quite specific mission — Alberti’s preface is an early example of the ‘Mission Statement’ — it was this official army theatre company which presented Alberti’s celebration of Republican heroism with its determined sense of ‘seguridad en la razón y justicia de nuestra causa’. That was itself a sensitive issue at the time. Alberti’s Numancia had been seen by some as defeatist and his wife was moved to write in Alberti’s defence, in the Boletín de Orientación Teatral, that critics failed to comprehend ‘the greatness of the heroic sacrifice’ of the ancient Iberians defending Numancia: Para todos aquellos que opinaron con motivo de la representación de Numancia que esta obra era una manifestación derrotista, sin comprender la grandeza de su sacrificio heroico, para todos aquellos que no pueden mirar la verdad cara a cara ni comprender por lo tanto ‘que más vale morir de pie que vivir de rodillas’, damos noticia de que la Italia fascista ha hecho una película de propaganda — Escipión el Africano — donde el mito imperial resurge. En él está la invasión de España por los romanos (Marrast 2003: 249).
Of necessity, with so many bloody battles and so many Republican martyrs, praise of heroism in defeat was a constant theme and a no less constant challenge, above all when the full significance of the withdrawal of the Brigades was grasped. One of the great artistic successes of 1938 was the homage to García Lorca, performed in September of that year, where León’s acting and her directing
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were singled out for praise, not least by Felipe Lluch, her protegé and future Director of the Teatro Español in the post-war period. Lluch’s description of the sets, together with the reports on León’s innovative staging of Vishnévsky’s Optimistic Tragedy (making use of film projected on to the cyclorama and other techniques that she had absorbed in Moscow) all point to the significant role of María Teresa León in achieving the effectiveness of the Cantata de los héroes (Aguilera Sastre 2003: 33–34). It was certainly not the sort of ‘obrita rápida’ with which the Guerrilla theatre company was associated but an attempt to use highly formal staging, music, a large cast and, as McCarthy has shown (1998: 56–58 and 1999: 91, 195–96), religious and other iconic imagery, to persuade the audience of the need for a new radical nationalism and the brotherhood of the proletariat. Alberti had already in his adaptation of El cerco de Numancia emphasized the fierce nationalism of the Cervantes text. It may be added that the neo-religious or ritualistic tone must have been enhanced by the fact that, as the veteran actor Salvador Arias has recalled, the first performance took place ‘en la Residencia de Estudiantes (hoy Ramiro de Maeztu), en su magnífico auditorio (hoy Iglesia del Espíritu Santo)’ (Arias 2003: 376). The curtains open to a simple but geometrically formal set of steps flanked by columns crowned with laurels. To the chords of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, two narrators, one a woman, the other a male soldier, process down the staircase making their way to two lecterns on which they each place the book they are carrying. The music fades for a while as the narrators silently read their books. The orchestra now completes the overture and as the music dies away, the female narrator conjures up a vision of an idyllic land that ‘once upon a time’ had been rich in harvests, seas and skies, home of a people whose hands were clean of crime, a people of unsullied intent. After a fragment of the Eroica Symphony of Beethoven, the narrator now changes the mood, describing how this pastoral idyll has become tainted by dark infamy, curses and cyclones, a hurricane of flames: ¡Qué torva y oscura infamia! ¡Qué maldición! ¡Qué ciclones! 4 ¡Qué vil huracán de llamas! (Alberti 1978: 794)
Delivered in the eight-syllable romance form that is standard for narrative verse, this very statically staged opening offers the familiar contrast between an established idyllic rural order and present disorder. The added political dimension derives from the patently Soviet symbolism as the sickles sing while the scythe, the instrument of death, blindly flails: Donde cantaron las hoces sólo silba una guadaña. Las cabezas, como el trigo, rebotan ciegas, sin alma. (794) 4 Subsequent references to the text of the Cantata (Alberti 1978: 791–819) will be given in the form of page references following quotations.
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The female narrator adds to this picture of death a vision of the free land of Spain, which has now been invaded by Portuguese, Germans and Italians. This establishes the mood of highly traditional patriotism, not usually adopted by the radical left, as the dramatist employs the semantically loaded term ‘Patria’: Gentes de apuesta y negocio, de puñalada en la espalda, forzaron las cerraduras a las puertas de la patria. Portugueses, alemanes, italianos, engañada, triste y hambrienta morisma la pisotean, la manchan. (795)
At this point, after the orchestra has played one of Leoz’s pieces from his incidental music to Numancia, España herself now enters, played by María Teresa León. Dressed in green, in peasant style, she none the less wears a cloak of mourning. The narrators urge Mother Spain to be manly, proud but displaying a look of ‘ira y amor’. Speaking in highly formal four-line stanzas of Alexandrines, the late medieval line revived by the Modernists, España now laments that her body is divided and that the sun has set and left Spain wearing the dark cloak of mourning: Yo soy España. Sobre mi verde traje de trigo y sol han puesto largo crespón injusto de horrores y de sangre. Aquí tenéis en dos mi cuerpo dividido: un lado preso; el otro, libre al honor y al aire. Palpitantes, partidas, rotas en dos y a hierro, mis profundas entrañas de domadora y madre ; separadas a tajo las cuencas de mis ojos; a tajo, el predominio de mis dos grandes mares. (796–97)
This divided self is exemplified by the entry of two soldiers, one loyal to the beleaguered Republic, who offers his weapon to Spain, the other a rebel. The Loyalist presents to Spain his rifle and his rustic heart. It is significant that natural, rural (or maritime) values are associated with the Republic, just as in the Franco period they were to be employed as positive symbols by the spokesman for that regime. By contrast the rebel soldier, torn from his village against his will, also offers up his rifle but Mother Spain, while at first taking each rifle, further characterizes the gulf between the Loyalists and the facciosos before disdainfully returning the weapon to the rebel: Un fusil me derrumba. Otro ensancha mi cielo. Tú en mi garganta pones un llorar de cadenas. Tú me llevas a cumbres. Pero tú, al desconsuelo. Tú, al honor. Tú, al escarnio. Tú, a la luz. Tú, a las penas. (Devuelve el fusil al Soldado 2) (798)
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This Manichean vision of the good and the bad, Spain and anti-Spain, which Alberti was to deploy more personally in his play De un momento a otro (Gagen 1983: 20–21), is now developed in a further lengthy intervention by España. While dismissing the protests of the rebel, she at least welcomes his plaintive protest that he too is Spanish: ‘Soy también español’ (800). España, in a Dantesque vision (McCarthy 1999: 91) of fever-laden swamps and pestiferous stagnant pools, urges that the invading troops of the enemy, of the non-Spaniards, be greeted by knives and instruments of violent defence, that their dead remain unburied, that they be cursed and leave no memorial. Todo púas, aristas, dientes, filos, panoramas de rabia, sed y alambre. España arisca de feroces uñas, agria de piel y lomo intransitable. No los entierre nadie. Quedad aquí, productos de hombre y hombre, híbridas bestias, sin entrañas madres, Lejos de vuestro suelo, triste Italia, del suelo vuestro, fríos alemanes. 5 No los recuerde nadie. (801)
Here Rafael Alberti is deploying the language of vituperation that had characterized much of his protest verse of the 1930s, not only the violent imagery of knives, nails and hedgehog quills, but the savage indictment of soldiers seemingly the product of male and male rather than the progeny of male and female. We note that his vision of a conflict that divides the body of Mother Spain, and which was to be reflected in more personal terms in his play De un momento a otro, is now to be focussed on the invading foreigner. While not defeatist, the implicit message is that Franco’s victory was due to some far from fraternal foreign — even unnatural — aid rather than to betrayal by Spaniards. At this point the second narrator, the soldier, alludes to the International Brigades which are being honoured. These are a different cast of men, who do help to defend Spain’s honour: Otros hombres del mundo nos ayudan. La flor del mundo por tu honor combate. Aunque en distintas lenguas te saluden, un mismo sentimiento va en su sangre. (802)
After this possibly ironic reference to the failure of most Brigaders to learn Spanish, Mother Spain returns the rifle to the Loyalist and welcomes the International Soldiers, who march on stage to the strains of the Internationale. She urges the audience to stand as the elements of nature, a vital component in the 5 The entire speech by España reproduces the poem ‘Odio a muerte’ from the cycle ‘Capital de la gloria’ (Jiménez Millán 1984: 166). In all versions of the Cantata prior to 1978 the final stanza begins ‘Morid aquí’ rather than ‘Quedad aquí’ (Hermans 1989: 191).
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discourse of España throughout the Cantata, are called upon to rise up in their honour:6 ¡De pie, de pie! ¡Que salten mis arroyos, que mis montañas y mis toros salten, que exaltados mis ríos arremetan contra la mar y que la mar levanten! (802)
Yet it is Spain that is being honoured, not the Brigades, who significantly bear not arms but flags or banners, as though emasculated now that they are leaving. While clearly related to a long tradition of democratic nationalism in Spain, Alberti’s stance here clearly echoes the strong centralism of the Spanish Communist Party, something liable to lead to conflict most notably in the països catalans. This radical centralist patriotism is now exemplified in a lengthy intervention, delivered in formal Alexandrine stanzas, by the International Soldier who describes Spain as his true love, declaring that the Brigaders wish to deserve to call her their Patria and then — in a curious gender mix — as their mother. Finally the Loyalist soldier follows Mother Spain in embracing the International Brigader, and declares the fraternal nature of their relationship: Aunque mi sangre grite en español, mi sangre, como la vuestra, arrastra un solo sentimiento. Nada pedís, hermanos: que fraternales sean en la vida y la muerte los corazones nuestros. (805)
The reference to death signals a lengthy celebration and naming of those heroes who had perished, at the conclusion of which a group of Spanish mothers enters, to the strains of funeral music, to salute the Brigades. By this point the stage is full and the rebel Nationalist soldier seems isolated as all look towards the Madonna-like figure of Spain, María Teresa’s blonde hair and charismatic presence no doubt dominating the stage. The International Soldier declares that they will always recall the mothers of Spain and, in a symbolic act, the Brigaders lay their flags at the feet of Mother Spain and march off to the beat of drums as a ‘rain of flowers’ descends upon them (809).7 This is the first of the ceremonial apotheoses as they leave the stage, with Mother Spain telling Madrid to raise its song (810). (It is not known whether this was included in the Valencia performance.) Significantly the representative mother greets their departure with the Republican ‘Salud’ and the enthusiasm spurs the Loyalist soldier to promise certain victory — which of course by 20 November 1938 lay beyond all possibility, given both the Komintern’s new policy of saving socialism in one country and the collapse of the Republic’s Ebro counterattack. How would 6 In her memoir Memoria de la melancolía León later recalled how in the Madrid performance of the Cantata, she had broken down and the audience had stood as she uttered the words ‘Yo soy España’ that open her first speech (León 1970: 45). 7 Hermans (1999: 192) indicates that this is the only scene in the Cantata where we have a detailed pictorial record of Santiago Ontañón’s set, in the form of a pair of coloured prints, published in Comisario, 4 December 1938. Hermans emphasizes ‘la rigidez (neo)clásica del escenario’.
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Alberti round off his Cantata given this bleak prospect? Significantly, the resolution is achieved by the arrival, to the sound of the radical National Anthem, the Himno de Riego, of a troop of Spanish Loyalist soldiers, commanded by an officer. The Communists were identified with the effort to bring order and a chain of command to Republican forces that had been disrupted by anarchist and Trotskyite attacks on military discipline. The officer, in the tradition of Laudes Hispaniae, now also praises Mother Spain who, in turn, urges the women to hand their flags to the Spanish troops. This symbolic passing to them of the international banners, rather than emphasizing the Republic’s isolation, in a rather obvious coup de théâtre, leads to the Rebel Soldier recognizing that he had fought for the wrong Spain and, kneeling before Mother Spain, he tears off his military insignia and joins the Loyalists. In other words Alberti’s Cantata climaxes with the union of the Two Spains under a democratic flag, not in the ‘Espana una y grande’ of the Nacionales. This union of the two warring bands leads the two narrators, discerning herein a ‘bronca alegría’, to deploy a lengthy series of natural images of sea, stars, bright sunlit landscapes, and to urge Spain to cast aside her cloak of mourning, as the orchestra plays a patriotic Soviet March. The audience is now to be persuaded that mourning her losses is inappropriate, for España is not really alone but rather is buoyed up by the ‘la Fraternidad del mundo’. The symbolic figure of Fraternity or Brotherhood now appears and, again in highly formal Alexandrines, identifies the Soviet Union, Mexico and Cuba as Spain’s fraternal support, which leads España to utter the greeting ‘Camarada’. Flowers and doves are released over the stage, the players in the orchestra utter cries of ‘enthusiasm and triumph’ and the flags form a path for Spain and Fraternity as the two narrators close their books on the lecterns, like secular priests at the end of a service, and, to a slow curtain, leave the stage. The heroes have been identified — a list of Brigader dead has been read out — but Spain’s future lies in her own hands with the brotherly support, but without the fighting men, of other peoples. Contemporary accounts make clear that the Cantata was enthusiastically received, was staged in Valencia in December, in the Roman Theatre in Sagunto, in the Pardo Palace, and finally at the Teatro Español in Madrid on 11 February 1939, after a performance of Calderón’s El alcalde de Zalamea. Subsequent commentators have largely disregarded the strategic context in which Alberti was working. It was left to Alberti himself in an interview in 1977 to read the message of the Cantata more dispassionately. ‘La escribí para la despedida de las Brigadas Internacionales, pero se hablaba de la unión de los dos pueblos, el que estaba en el lado de Franco y el que estaba en la parte de acá.’ Two years after the death of Franco he saw his Cantata as a plea for the two Spains to come together. In this he was following a long-established Communist Party line. The well documented schism in the Party in the early nineteen sixties had led to a call for all Spaniards to unite. Already in 1963, in the pages of the newspaper España published in Tangiers, Alberti had wondered aloud: ‘Yo no me explico por qué no
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nos damos ya un abrazo todos … y que se acaben las querellas’ (Gagen 1983: 14). In that declaration, a quarter of a century after his Cantata, he was recognizing that a surrender by the Franco regime was not a possibility. When, in very changed circumstances, he returned from exile in the Spring of 1977, eighteen months after the death of the Dictator, Alberti declared that he was returning in peace to quench all the traces of the dramas of the past. His claim that the Cantata was a call for union was made in the context of the Transition to democracy shortly after the unbanning of the Communist party. Two years after the death of Franco and as Spain prepared for democratic elections, which he saw as bringing the two warring sides together once more, Alberti seems, unconsciously perhaps, to see these events as the final fulfilment of the apparently hopeless aspiration set forth in 1938 at the end of his Cantata. Published nearly a quarter of a century after Alberti’s return from exile, Soldados de Salamina took as its point of departure a fraternal action on the part of a Republican soldier, facing certain defeat, that saved the life of one of the leading anti-Republican rebels. Early in 1939, some twelve days before the final performance of Alberti’s Cantata, in a clearing in a forest in the hills of Catalonia, there occurred the escape from execution of the Falangist intellectual Rafael Sánchez Mazas, the mystery of whose flight from the firing squad is the point of departure of Soldados de Salamina. The narrator, who bears the same name as the author Javier Cercas, learns in the early nineteen nineties of the circumstances of that escape and recounts the story in a newspaper article as related to him by Sánchez Mazas’s son, the novelist Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio: Atrapado en el Madrid republicano por la sublevación militar, Sánchez Mazas se refugió en la embajada de Chile. Allí pasó gran parte de la guerra; hacia el final trató de escapar camuflado en un camión, pero le detuvieron en Barcelona. Y, cuando las tropas de Franco llegaban a la ciudad, se lo llevaron camino de la frontera. No lejos de ésta se produjo el fusilamiento; las balas, sin embargo, sólo lo rozaron, y él aprovechó la confusión y corrió a esconderse en el bosque. Desde allí oía las voces de los milicianos, acosándole. Uno de ellos lo descubrió por fin. Le miró a los ojos. Luego gritó a sus compañeros: ‘¡Por aquí no hay nadie!’. Dio media vuelta y se fue. ‘De todas las historias de la Historia’, escribió Jaime Gil, ‘sin duda la más triste es la de España,/ porque termina mal.’ ¿Termina mal? (Cercas 2001: 25–26)
Saved by the unknown miliciano and helped by three Republican deserters whom he encountered in the forest, Sánchez Mazas survived to become for a short period a far from assiduous member of Franco’s Cabinet before devoting himself to journalism and a career as a minor novelist — one of that band who, in the words of Andrés Trapiello quoted more than once in the novel, ‘ganó la Guerra y perdió la historia de la literatura’ (Cercas 2001: 140).8 The narrator asserts that 8 Trapiello’s comment, first quoted towards the start of the novel, was in fact made not with reference to Sánchez Mazas but about Agustín de Foxá: ‘Uno de los que ganó la guerra y perdió los manuales de literatura’ (Trapiello 1994: 358). His characterization of Sánchez Mazas is as follows: ‘El olvido en que se sumó tras su muerte sólo es comparable al poder y renombre de que gozó en vida’(Trapiello 1994: 388). Gómez López-Quinones (2003: 96) notes that the success of Soldados de Salamina has led to new editions of novels by Sánchez
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Sánchez Mazas had himself intended to recount his forest escape as Soldados de Salamina and proceeds to describe his search, sixty years later, for the three forest friends who had helped the fleeing Falangist.9 In the final and most compelling section of the work (which is probably the truly fictional part) he identifies Antoni Miralles, now a cantankerous resident in an Old People’s Home in Dijon, as the militiaman who had looked Sánchez Mazas in the eye and assured his companions that there was nobody there. The narrator of Soldados de Salamina confesses early in the novel that only after the interview with Sánchez Ferlosio did he begin to evince some interest in the Civil War: tras la entrevista con Ferlosio empecé a sentir curiosidad por Sánchez Mazas; también por la guerra civil, de la que hasta aquel momento no sabía mucho más que de la batalla de Salamina. (Cercas 2001: 21)
In point of fact the novel is characteristic of a revival of interest in pro-régime writers of the nineteen-forties, something that is also commented upon by the narrator in the opening pages, albeit noting that the motives that lay behind such interest may have been far from simple: esa moda surgió, en los mejores casos (de los peores no merece la pena hablar), de la natural necesidad que todo escritor tiene de inventarse una tradición propia, de un cierto afán de provocación, de la certidumbre problemática de que una cosa es la literatura y otra la vida y de que por tanto se puede ser un buen escritor siendo una pésima persona (o una persona que apoya y fomenta causas pésimas), de la convicción de que se estaba siendo literariamente injusto con ciertos escritores falangistas, quienes, por decirlo con la fórmula acuñada por Andrés Trapiello, habían ganado la guerra, pero habían perdido la historia de la literatura. (Cercas 2001: 22)
None the less, however, the principal interest of Soldados de Salamina lies in its meditation on the nature of heroism and its role in the outcome of Spain’s recent past, the answer to the question ‘¿Termina mal?’ posed by Gil de Biedma. The view of Spanish history that had been set forth by Alberti as the Republic tottered towards collapse in late 1938, namely that a legitimate government was being defeated by a military rebellion and foreign intervention, is accepted straightforwardly by a vast majority of Spaniards by 2001, the year of publication of Soldados de Salamina. All the more compelling, then, is the novel’s account of the rescue of a hated Falangist since it seems to suggest a coming together of the two sides, albeit in a far different way from that proposed by Alberti in the Cantata. Cercas’s novel depicts a defeated Republican sparing the life of a defenceless member of the victorious side, whereas Alberti had, somewhat unconvincingly, shown the victorious soldier ‘heroically’ reneguing on his commitment Mazas such as Rosa Kruger, now being displayed with a publicity wrapper bearing the words ‘Rafael Sánchez Mazas, autor de esta eterna historia de amor y protagonista de Soldados de Salamina de Javier Cercas’. 9 Ironically Cercas has revealed that Sánchez Mazas had chosen the title ‘Los amigos del bosque’ for his own intended account (Cercas and Trueba 2003: 145). This becomes the title of the first part of Cercas’s novel.
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to the Nationalist rebels. In a recent study of Soldados de Salamina Alícia Satorras Pons has justifiably seen heroism as ‘uno de los ejes esenciales de la novela’, although there is surely less justification in her view of the ‘heroísmo involuntario’ displayed in the novel (2003: 239). So what is the nature of the heroism shown by the, at first nameless, Republican who spares the life of a myopic and cowering Sánchez Mazas? A significant stage in unravelling the identity of Sánchez Mazas’s rescuer and the nature of heroism comes in an interview with the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño. In response to a question about the coup that had toppled the democratic government of Chile, Bolaño declares that he had previously misjudged the heroism of Salvador Allende, the President facing overwhelming odds as Pinochet’s coup took hold: Sopló un poco el té, bebió un sorbo y volvió a dejar la taza sobre el plato. — Mira, te voy a decir la verdad. Durante años me cagué cada vez que pude en Allende, pensaba que la culpa de todo era suya, por no entregarnos las armas. Ahora me cago en mí por haber dicho eso de Allende. Joder, el cabrón pensaba en nosotros como si fuéramos sus hijos, ¿entiendes? No quería que nos mataran. Y si llega a entregarnos las armas hubiéramos muerto como chinches. En fin — concluyó, tomando otra vez la taza —, supongo que Allende fue un héroe. (Cercas 2001: 147– 48)
Cercas and Bolaño discuss examples of heroism at length and this has two effects. First, it reminds the Spanish reader that in July 1936 the Republican Government did distribute arms to the people; and, second, it provides the context for the narrator’s discussion in the closing chapters with Antoni Miralles. That discussion is informed by the awareness that the Civil War was by the late 1990s a historical event. As Cercas states in his ‘dialogue’ with David Trueba, director of the film based on the novel: [...] la novela no habla, fundamentalmente, de la Guerra Civil, aunque sea uno de los temas y constituya un marco esencial. La novela, básicamente, habla de los héroes, de la posibilidad del heroísmo; habla de los muertos, y del hecho de que los muertos no están muertos del todo mientras haya alguien que los recuerde… (Cercas and Trueba 2003: 21)
When he is first contacted by telephone, Miralles makes every effort to deter the narrator from further investigation. He would regard talk of heroism as inappropriate, even embarrassing perhaps. He sees no point in seeking to understand the Civil War. He fought and received no thanks: ‘esas historias ya no le interesan a nadie, ni siquiera a los que las vivimos’ (Cercas 2001: 177). Such a view becomes more poignant when we learn that, after escaping from Catalonia in 1939, Miralles had fought for the Free French in North Africa and had been in the Normandy landings, and that in Dijon, where he spent the rest of his life, his courage was as unknown and as unrecognized as in the Spain that was now a democracy. When the narrator travels to Dijon for what the elderly Republican terms his ‘interrogation’ (Cercas 2001: 197), Cercas repeats the tale of the escape of
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Sánchez Mazas, which Miralles dismisses as sounding like fiction. (There is a certain amount of Borgesian play on fictiveness in the latter part of the novel.) The curmudgeonly Miralles accuses the young writer of ‘looking for a hero’ but there are no real heroes unless you accept figures such as Gandhi and then only if they are assassinated: Así que lo que andaba buscando era un héroe. Y ese héroe soy yo, ¿no? ¡Hay que joderse! ¿Pero no habíamos quedado en que era usted pacifista? ¿Pues sabe una cosa? En la paz no hay héroes, salvo quizás aquel indio bajito que siempre andaba por ahí medio en pelotas…Y ni siquiera él era un héroe, o sólo lo fue cuando le mataron. Los héroes sólo son héroes cuando se mueren o los matan. (Cercas 2001: 199)
Rather than ‘understand’, Miralles each day remembers the contemporaries who died, as he should have done. (Rather as Alberti always felt that he, rather than Lorca, should have perished in the conflict.) Later in the day the narrator wonders aloud what the soldier would have been thinking when he spared the Falangist’s life. ‘Porque si alguien mereció que lo fusilaran ése fue Sánchez Mazas’ (Cercas 2001: 202). But the elderly miliciano’s reply is the single word ‘Nada’, as negative as his denial that he had been that soldier. As the narrator dines in the restaurant car of the train from Dijon back home to Spain he declares that after years of writer’s block: allí vi de golpe mi libro, el libro que desde hacía años venía persiguiendo, lo vi entero, acabado, desde el principio hasta el final, desde la primera hasta la última línea, allí supe que, aunque en ningún lugar de ninguna ciudad de ninguna mierda de país fuera a haber nunca una calle que llevara el nombre de Miralles, mientras yo contase su historia Miralles seguiría de algún modo viviendo. (Cercas 2001: 208)
And, the narrator adds, the dead comrades of Miralles would live on as well. Although separated in time and genre, Alberti’s Cantata de los héroes y la fraternidad de los pueblos and Cercas’s Soldados de Salamina both speak of brotherhood in their different ways. Cercas reports that Miquel Aguirre, who appears as a significant ‘real-life’ figure in the early part of the novel, sees it as a book that speaks of brotherhood, but for him this is a brotherhood of real and named people, rather, say, than the anonymous collective of Alberti’s heroic Brigaders: [Miquel Aguirre] dice una cosa curiosa, y es que éste es un libro que habla de la fraternidad, de una panda de huérfanos desarraigados (un periodista depresivo — Cercas —, una pitonisa medio lumpen — Conchi —, un latinoamericano perdido en Europa — Bolaño — y un español perdido en Francia — Miralles) que no tienen con quién juntarse y acaban juntándose entre ellos. Lo que no dice es que él, que es un hijo de vascos a los que la Guerra Civil mandó de un patadón a Bañolas, también forma parte de esa panda de desnortados sin un lugar en el mundo. (Cercas and Trueba 2003: 48)
The abstract personifications of Republican heroes and fiercely traditional patriotism of Alberti’s Cantata have given way to the search for a representative indi-
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vidual soldier. That soldier is a strongly characterized veteran who has shown mercy to the enemy, even if it seemed likely that he would sympathize with the ‘una gran mierda para la Transición’ of the old Republican who writes to the narrator at the start of the novel (Cercas 2001: 27). Such an attack on the Transition would have deeply shocked Alberti.10 The veteran Communist poet and playwright, welcomed back to Spain shortly after the death of Franco — and whose own funeral in 1999 was to be attended by the Conservative Premier Aznar — played his part in that Transition as a (short-lived) Communist Deputy for Cadiz. Miralles represents those who felt that the true heroes and true Solidarity were betrayed or forgotten in Spain as in France. To some extent a novel such as Soldados de Salamina would serve to remind readers, a quarter of a century after the liquidation of the Dictatorship, of who had been the true heroes, perhaps staunch Republicans who still saw the need for the Two Spains to come together. Commentators tend to the view that Alberti’s Cantata now has a merely archaeological interest. Speaking in 1977 he observed: ‘Las cosas cuando se expresan en su momento tienen su eficacia’ (Monleón 1990: 471). In other words, its message is now no longer relevant. Speaking to the director of the cinema adaptation of the Soldados de Salamis, Cercas (that is, the author not the implied narrator) seems to reject a metafictional reading of the text, the suggestion that the main event of the book is the writing of the novel by the character called Cercas. He clarifies that: [...] al principio Cercas piensa, como la mayoría de la gente de nuestra generación, que la Guerra Civil es una cosa del pasado, algo tan remoto y ajeno como — digamos — la batalla de Salamina, algo que ya no nos afecta: por eso se sorprende muchísimo al saber que algunos de los protagonistas de la peripecia de Sánchez Mazas están todavía vivos [...] Pero al final de la novela acaba descubriendo que la Guerra Civil es el presente, que es el principio del presente, algo que le afecta directamente y está vivo, algo que, se quiera o no, ha condicionado la vida de casi todo el mundo en este país, incluida la suya. (Cercas and Trueba 2003: 27)
The Civil War is not an event dead and buried in the pages of school textbooks like the great defeat of the Persians by the Greek fleet at Salamis. Gómez LópezQuinones sees Cercas’s novel in the context of a failure on the part of democratic Spain to project its own model of recent history: El Franquismo supo edificar una historia, una tradición y unos modelos a su exacta medida. La democracia española no ha podido o no ha sabido hacerlo. Soldados de Salamina pretende, precisamente, revisitar la guerra civil para encontrar en ella un caldo de cultivo del que extraer una tradición y una historia con las que la democracia y sus habitantes puedan entroncar con satisfacción ideológica. (2003: 98)
10 Gómez López-Quinones notes that, as much as for the Falangists, there was at first no great welcome in the new democracy for ‘los brigadistas, soldados republicanos y políticos de izquierdas cuya memoria resultaba incómoda para un proceso político como la Transición Española, basado en un pacto de olvido y silencio’ (2003: 99).
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The approach of the present essay is to confront Cercas’s exploration not with the Franquista vision of history but rather with the sense, present on the Republican side in the closing months of the Civil War in a work such as Alberti’s Cantata with its praise of Republican heroes both Spanish and foreign, that one day the rebellious Nationalist Spaniards would inevitably come together with their democratic fellow countrymen. It may be that Spaniards believe that the Civil War is simply a past event, that things have changed, that, to quote Cercas, ‘somos posmodernos, somos la España de Almodóvar, somos la hostia: ya no somos el país de cabreros que fuimos’ (Cercas and Trueba 2003: 129). But he insists that what concerns him is the fog, the oblivion that affects everyone like the other Cercas, the narrator of the novel. In a curious way, Soldados de Salamina could be read — alongside the questioning of the Transition that Gómez López-Quinones and others find it to be — as a prose updating of the Cantata de los héroes y la fraternidad de los pueblos but one that argues that at times mercy to the enemy is another form of heroic solidarity and also — unlike Rafael Alberti seeing his Cantata as an interesting historical artefact which captured a moment now long past — one that shows the fratricidal past and the liberating heroism as remaining relevant to the Spain of today . Works Cited Aguilera Sastre, Juan, 2003. ‘María Teresa León (Logroño 1903–Madrid 1988)’, ADE Teatro, 97: 25–38. Alberti, Rafael, 1970. Prosas encontradas 1924–1942, ed. Robert Marrast (Madrid: Ayuso). ––––, 1975. Numancia, Tragedia (Madrid: Turner). ––––, 1978. El poeta en la calle (Madrid: Aguilar). ––––, 1988. Obras completas. I. Poesía 1920–1938 (Madrid:Aguilar). Arias, Salvador, 2003. ‘María Teresa León’ in Gonzalo Santonja, ed., Homenaje a María Teresa León en su centenario, pp. 369–79. Cercas, Javier, 2001. Soldados de Salamina (Barcelona: Tusquets). Cercas, Javier and David Trueba, 2003. Diálogos de Salamina. Un paseo por el cine y la literatura (Barcelona: Tusquets). Francis, Hywel, 1984. Miners Against Fascism. Wales and the Spanish Civil War (London: Lawrence and Wishart). Gagen, Derek, 1983. ‘“Necessary Murder”? The Inevitability of Violence in Alberti’s De un momento a otro’, Romance Studies, 3: 14–30. ––––, 1984a. ‘Puppets and Politics. Rafael Alberti’s Dos farsas revolucionarias’, Quinquereme, 7: 54–73. ––––, 1984b. ‘Traditional Imagery and Avant-Garde Staging. Rafael Alberti’s El hombre deshabitado’ in Staging in the Spanish Theatre, ed. Margaret Rees (Leeds: Trinity and All Saints College), pp. 51–86. García Posada, Miguel, 2002. ‘De un momento a otro. ¿Un drama revolucionario?’ in Rafael Alberti, un poeta en escena, pp. 53–62. Gómez López-Quinones, Antonio, 2003. ‘Representando la Guerra Civil española: Soldados de rd Salamina de Javier Cercas’, in Proceedings of the 23 Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures, ed. Alejandro Cortázar and Christian Fernández (Baton Rouge: Dept of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Louisiana State U), pp. 95–108. Hermans, Hub, 1989. El teatro político de Rafael Alberti (Salamanca: Universidad). Jiménez Millán, Antonio, 1984. La poesía de Rafael Alberti (1930–1939) (Cádiz: Diputación Provincial de Cádiz).
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Lechner, J., 1968. El compromiso en la poesía espanola del siglo XX, Parte primera. De la generación de 1898 a 1939 (Leiden: Universitaire Pers). León, María Teresa, 1970. Memoria de la melancolía (Barcelona: Laia). Marrast, Robert, 1978. El teatre durant la Guerra Civil Espanyola. Assaig d’història i documents (Barcelona: Institut del Teatre). ––––, 2003. ‘María Teresa León y el teatro en Madrid durante la Guerra Civil’, in Gonzalo Santonja, ed., Homenaje a María Teresa León en su centenario, pp. 245–51. Mateos Miera, Eladio, 2002. ‘Rompiendo límites. (El primer teatro de Rafael Alberti. 1926– 1931)’, in Rafael Alberti, un poeta en escena, pp. 15–45. McCarthy, Jim, 1998. ‘Drama, Religion and Republicanism: Theatrical Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 7. 2: 47–59. ––––, 1999. Political Theatre during the Spanish Civil War (Cardiff: U of Wales P). Monleón, José, 1990. Tiempo y teatro de Rafael Alberti (Madrid: Primer Acto). Rafael Alberti, un poeta en escena. Estudios y cronología teatral., ed. Salomon Sanz (Madrid: Centro de Documentación Teatral). Romero Salvadó, Francisco J., 1999. Twentieth-Century Spain. Politics and Society in Spain 1898–1998 (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Salvat, Ricard, 2003. ‘Conferencia sin título’, in Gonzalo Santonja, ed., Homenaje a María Teresa León en su centenario, pp. 229–44. Sampelayo, Carlos, 1963. ‘Los españoles en América. El abrazo de Rafael Alberti’, España (Tangiers), 27 June: 3–4. Santonja, Gonzalo, 2003, ed. Homenaje a María Teresa León en su centenario (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales). Satorras Pons, Alícia, 2003. ‘Soldados de Salamina de Javier Cercas, reflexiones sobre los héroes’, Revista Hispánica Moderna, 56: 227–45. Torres Nebrera, Gonzalo, 1982. El teatro de Rafael Alberti (Madrid: SGEL). Trapiello, Andrés, 1994. Las armas y las letras. Literatura y Guerra Civil 1936–1939 (Barcelona: Planeta). Vidal, Andrés, 1998. Las Brigadas Internacionales (Madrid: Espasa).
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