WRITERS AND WRITING THE NEW LEADER LITERARY SECTION The Impossible Bridge LITERATURE UNDER FRANCO By RAMON J. SENDER T is encouraging to be able to confirm in reality, though at our expense, the center and object of his ire is "Valle I Ramon Sender was born in Aragon, vigor of one of those old principles on which the continuity of our culture rests. Inclán's narcistic vanity," when this exquisite poet did not write a single Spain, in 1902. After the Civil War, When we observe that creations of the spirit have been unable to prosper in in which he became a comandante Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Stalin's Russia or Franco's Spain, we under- line about himself during his entire stand once again that in autocracies sensibility becomes dull, intelligence deformed life. For him to be attacked for his (major) in the Republican army. he vanities by a man who in his four came to America as a political ref- and imagination sterilized by terror or consumed in secret protest. Faced with this volumes of autobiography has col- uge. Among his most recent books panorama, some writers have not found are "Counteraftack in Spain," "The it difficult to accept the idea that death lected even the most pointless praise plained. Both of them left a sonorous is not the worst evil, and that must devoted to his books, is ridiculously King and Queen." "A Man's Place," void in our letters. have been the last reflection of many incongruous. The best that we can "Dark Wedding" and "Chronicle of Lesser stars, like Palacio Valdés, the of those who have fallen victims of think is that, because of age, the sense Dawn," Quintero brothers, Arniches, have died Franco, among them Antonio Machado, of dignity and moral values has been also in discreet silence. Three old Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez. extinguished in him. men survive the shame of their own novels and "edifying" propaganda have The others are wandering through As for Eugenio D'Ors, he is the only betrayal: Jacinto Benavente, octoge- taken the posts left by the emigres. the world digesting as they can the one who in his youth showed some narian; Pio Baroja, who has passed In Spain there is a glorious tradition humiliation of exile, almost always in original talent, but later lost in a seventy, and Eugenio D'Ors, also about of religious poetry and prose. The best a noble and decorous silence. But there formalistic neo-classicism, he had ended the same age. None of the three nor poets of the 16th and 17th centuries his career as master of ceremonies in are also those who have put an end the three of them together are enough cultivated mystieism and apologetics; to their lives voluntarily. The two the Falangist Academy of the Lan- to gild the Fascist dictatorship, giving but to find one worthy successor of most recent cases, full of a mute and guage. To comprehend what decadence San Juan de la Cruz today, one must it a civilized appearance. in a limping soul is, one has only to serene eloquence, are those of Ramon look in the circles of the liberal emi- Benavente and Eugenio D'Ors burn read some of his academic discourses. Iglesias, a young historiographer who gration: Jorge Guillén for instance. their incense at the feet of the execu- The critical sense of D'Ors, once bril- All that Franco's church is cultivat- was working as a professor in an tioner. As for Baroja, he is guilty of liant and acute, appears to us in all American university, and Fabián Vidal, ing in Spain is low superstition and that promiscuity sometimes worse than its paltriness in his last book on Pablo a well-known writer in Spain, former hypocrisy, with which it maintains partisan attitudes, which consists in Picasso. director of Madrid's most popular justification of the concordat and "con- conditioned loyalty, in conditioned daily, La Voz. The news of Vidal's grua" (that "competent sustenance" denial, in being "almost" Fascist and death reached us barely a week ago. STILL OTHERS remain. Some, hav- guaranteed by the Spanish state to "almost" anti-Semitic, "almost" repub- ing left Spain in 1936, have returned one who is to be ordained a priest). Although on principle we reject sui- lican and "almost" Socialist, but eat- cide, we can do no less than have the and are today in Madrid. They are only The people are vegetating in a ing the bread of shame while he trusts greatest respect for the fatal decision three in number and none with cre- physical, moral and spiritual poverty -or "almost" trusts-that he will find of these colleagues. They did not die ative talent, but rather analytical and tolerating, or better, suffering because some form of impunity in the future. of the terror that noxious atmospmere because of material or moral difficul- erudite. Two are really worthy of con- Impunity before his own conscience, sideration: Ramon Menéndez Pidal and -and the writers, separated from the ties in their private lives. (In that of course, because in the Spanish de- event, their death would only have the José Ortega y Gasset. The third is a people and with their backs to them, mocracy of tomorrow no one is going minor writer: Benjamin Jarnés, who survive the crookedness, now praising value of an accident in this obstacle to call him to account. Of that he is race which is political emigration.) has shown certain good taste, facilely the bishop, again the general, neither "almost" certain. In 1939 he said to They died because their hope was ex- brilliant in lyrical narrative. The first of whom regards culture as necessary me in Paris: "I know that in repub- two were in Madrid when the war or has great spiritual wants. If among hausted. The professional optimists, lican Spain I would have been left began; they left Spain and remained those writers there is one who needs even if they do not sell coca-cola or alone and that in Franco's Spain some films, know very well in Washington in Spanish-speaking America for some to serve truth, he may, perhaps, ap- danger will always be threatening me, time. The truth is that both of them proach those figures that still radiate and London, as in Paris and Moscow, but even so. The only danger was have a liberal make-up and that neither some intellectual interest and some what that hope was. to enter the Falangist Academy, and he of them has attacked the republic (if freedom of spirit: Menéndez Pidal and entered with daring enough. for no other reason, perhaps, than in- Ortega y Gasset, but on the one hand AT THE END of the civil war, some tellectual decorousness). It is yet to be with the fear of being disillusioned, writers remained in Spain. They were, JACINTO BENAVENTE was in Ma- made clear whether or not the presence or on the other with the worry of as may be supposed, few and the worst. drid when the civil war began. He of these two distinguished professors forcing them into dangerous attitudes Others had died shortly before the war wrote in favor of the republicans with- in Franco's Madrid implies adherence or of themselves appearing in the light began. The most notable of these was out being obliged to do so, but when to the regime. I believe so and that of suspicion. Valle Inclán. He was fortunate in he left Spain-which no one thought it is difficult to excuse, but my respect leaving without knowing that bloody of making impossible either for him for their work, especially for Menéndez AN INTERESTING group is that chaos which a civil war always is. or for any other writer who wished Pidal's, makes me expect some form represented by the review Insula, Given the magical personality of Valle to leave-he was suddenly fired with of compensation in the future. Per- which recently dedicated a number to Inclán, it is not too arbitrary to say Fascist enthusiasm and went over to haps I could say something here to Jorge Guillén, author of Cantico and that there was something "deliberate" the side of Franco, to whose propa- corroborate that hope, but it would be professor of Spanish at Wellesley Col- in his death. He who had invoked it ganda he added the baroque echoes of gratuitous and, in spite of everything, lege. Observing facts like the escape so many times in his verses seemed to his senility. Benavente is a playwright it could do them harm. of Espina, the return of Jarnés, the have summoned it secretly. In 1935, of the school of Oscar Wilde in his As for Jarnés, in Mexico he felt homage to Guillén, and the occasional shortly before he left for Galicia-his works as well as in his private life. alone, poor, old and ill. Any one of praise on the radio or in the news- native countryside-I told him that I He has recently published a kind of these circumstances may be easily en- papers of some writers who are in hoped he would return to Madrid the delirious proclamation or manifesto dured by itself, but all together, and exile, we do not fail to find those who following autumn, but he shook his proving himself to be a partisan of exile besides, are too much for a weak speak of the existence of a bridge or head. "No, I shall never return." When "the continuation of hatred and ex- spirit. I shall never return to Spain at least of an indefinite zone whereby he spoke those words there was noth- termination," which will surprise none except under morally satisfactory con- some kind of intellectual contact can ing in his outer appearance to indicate who remember into what sentimental ditions, but I try to understand the be maintained. That zone exists, but that he was going to die two months disorders those bizarre characters can state of those who can no longer re- not as some imagine it. What does not later fall. His theatrical work is rhetorical sist. Contrary to the return of Jarnés, exist is the "bridge." Not a few Spanish At that time Valle Inclán was the and affected and makes use of para- we have the example of several writers writers, muzzled, are silent and wait, only one among us who clearly saw doxes and tricks that pious old ladies who have succeeded in escaping from thinking of us. And they concur with what was coming. Two years earlier, find delightfully diabolical. Franco's Spain and who have come to us in the secret of their anguish every when Franco was hiding his traitor's Pio Baroja has recently published share our exile. The latest and one of time they think of the martyrs who intentions in a provincial command, four volumes of Memorias (Biblioteca the most significant is that of Antonio have fallen and of the martyrs and Valle Inclán was already talking about Nueva, Madrid). One thousand pages Espina, poet, novelist and essayist, who heroes who fall each day. They and we the danger of that vulgar, ambitious which will not eclipse Rousseau's con- belonged to the "Revista de Occidente" meet in our devotion to the hero better than in intellectual structures. They and unscrupulous little general. Many fessions or Amiel's diary, in which he group, formerly directed by Ortega y republican political chiefs accused reveals himself to us as a petty bour- Gasset. know very well that the bridge does Valle Inclán of being fantastic and an geois who has vainly tried throughout not exist and that it will not exist even alarmist and have paid with their his entire life to play a brilliant role AS FOR the writers who in the last though the fascists try to create it, lives for the imprudence of not listen- in society. We do not know what that ten years have fed the presses of praising at times those writers who feel ing to the man of the prophecies, to the role is, and he apparently still has not Franco's Spain, the panorama is deso- most acutely the emigration and, vate-poet-held sacred by the imagi- discovered it either. In his memoirs, lating and they themselves confess it among them, the ones who have been nation of primitive man. As for Una- he attacks some colleagues now dead velis nolis. There is no one. The authors consistently abused by the Stalinist muno, he died some time later in (of the living, none, which is quite who before the civil war were con- group. Those Spanish companions who Salamanca in circumstances still unex- eloquent), and it is curious that the fined to the mediocrity of the "rose" (Continued on Page Fourteen) THE NEW LEADER 10