José Triana's «Revolico en el Campo de Marte»: Farce and Cuba's Revolutionary History
Priscilla Meléndez
| Lope de Vega, El lacayo fingido | ||
At this point a mania set in. The rest of 1920 was passed, day by day, in a dream-like atmosphere more reminiscent of a film comedy than real life. Up, up, up, went the prices. On 2 March, sugar sold at 10 cents; on 18 March, at 11 cents... The «dance of the millions» continued. |
| Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom | ||
To see or not to see the Emperor's new clothes is a key metaphor in the examination, from a farcical point of view, of Revolico en el Campo de Marte (1972) by the Cuban dramatist José Triana (1931)1. The possibility of recognizing what is implicit and what is explicit, what is literal and what is metaphorical, what is direct and what is indirect, but, more importantly, what is revolutionary and what is a mere revolico (that is, something of a pseudopolitical chaotic act) in this Cuban play written in the early 1970s, reveals farce's complex mechanisms of communication, in particular its persistent dialogue with other marginal discourses. The multifaceted character of farce has been acknowledged by critics and is evidenced in the tensions between form and formlessness, control and chaos, gaiety and gravity, appearance and reality, and between symbol and object, among other polarized structures (Williams 65, Bentley 241-42). This tug-of-war between opposite forces, which has become characteristic of farce, has also entered an overtly political sphere that, in the case of Revolico en el Campo de Marte, underlines the grotesque parallelism between past and present events in Cuban history, of which the Revolution of 1959 represents a watershed. However, what needs to be emphasized in the context of Spanish American theatre is that farce's serious but also iconoclastic dialogue with other discourses, mainly political and social ones, emerges from its relationship with marginality, not from an attempt to occupy center stage or to search for legitimacy.
The particularity of farce as constant violator of its rules and as an antagonistic force against oppressive discourses derives in the context of Triana's Revolico from its interaction with other similarly evasive, marginal, fragmented, and grotesque artistic and cultural expressions and (semi)humorous forms such as the absurd, the esperpento, the buffo, and the Cuban choteo. To some extent, farce's dialogue with these already iconoclastic forms will comment succinctly on these discourses' internal ambiguities and disparities, their responses to political issues, and their lack of a fixed and homogeneous voice inside Triana's play. That is, this dialogue stresses the play's mechanisms of communication from a decentralized viewpoint, where, beyond the obvious historical and formal differences between farce and the aforementioned expressions, the connecting thread among them is their struggle against unchangeable linguistic, artistic, and political codes and against oppressive artistic and sociopolitical tendencies. More importantly, the presence in Triana's play of these popular and nontraditional discourses creates a unique brand of farce that shows its awareness of the artistic past, calls attention to basic denominators of humor and entertainment, and simultaneously reveals oppressive social and political structures.
The aim of this chapter is, then, to unmask in Revolico en el Campo de Marte both the revolutionary character of farce in its relation to other (pseudo)humorous artistic forms while also unmasking the farcical character of the ambiguously perceived and far-less-humorous Cuban revolutions of the twentieth century: one that led to Cuba's independence in 1902, and the other the widely known Cuban Revolution of 1959. This chapter attempts to prove how the explosive interaction between farce and the absurd, the esperpento, the buffo and the choteo becomes a metaphor for the scattered and violent social actions and volatile characters (evocative of revolutionary acts) in Triana's Revolico, which in turn reveals farce's capacity to integrate and transform the artistic and the political, past and present. Triana's play reveals farce's capacity to redefine and show both the interdependence and the conflict between a revolution and a revolico.
Regarding the political dimensions of Revolico en el Campo de Marte, some could argue that in contrast with other plays by Triana, such as La noche de los asesinos (1965) and Ceremonial de guerra (1987), where the idea of revolution has serious repercussions in artistic and political terms, in Revolico certain aspects of the revolutionary act are not only questioned but are represented in a frivolous light. It will be demonstrated that the identity of farce in Triana's play surfaces in the process of unmasking the tension between the supposedly serious notion of revolution and the frivolous world created by a revolico. That is, this study concerns the play's tension between a «sudden, forceful, and violent overturn of a previously relatively stable society and the substitution of other institutions for those discredited»
(Burns 196), and a messy, confusing, chaotic, senseless, and indecipherable event. As used by Triana in his title, revolico refers to a grotesque and buffoonish deformation, to a frivolous overturn of a society without the possibility or intention of any substitution, but always in a tense relation to the «real» act, to the «authentic» sociopolitical and economic upheaval. Nevertheless, this so-called «real act», as Taylor reminds us, has become in the case of Cuba another repressive institution: «Revolution/repression, self-determination/colonization, progress/repetition, triumph/extinction -the dream of differentiation collapses into a nightmare of monstrous sameness»
(Theatre of Crisis 51).
The idea of a revolutionary reality is stripped of its transcendental character, and the counterpoint between a revolution and a revolico is portrayed through two means. First, through the fusion and confusion of farce with other artistic and cultural expressions that traditionally have either been linked to lack of meaning, to senseless humor, or defined as marginal and grotesque (the aforementioned theatre of the absurd, the esperpento, the Cuban buffo and its relationship to choteo), all of which represent diverse moments in history. Secondly, the tension between a revolutionary act and a revolico is also portrayed through the juxtaposition between Cuba's «successful» achievement of political independence from Spain several years after the Spanish American War in 1898, and the frivolous and constantly changing amorous relationships that prevail among the characters, their greed, their immoral behavior, and their desire to deceive others precisely in the postrevolutionary republican Cuba of 1917. Regarding this political level one wonders what is implied by this contrast between a struggle for independence and dignity apparently achieved in 1902 and the characters' struggle for money, sex, and power in a Cuba enjoying the so-called «dance of the millions» two decades after becoming a republic. Is the implication that serious sociopolitical acts charged with moral overtones and goals will end up having messy, irreverent, and antisocial consequences? Is the play suggesting that this transformation of the revolutionary process for independence in Cuba into a mere revolico is nothing but a mirror image of the eventual transformation of the Revolution of 1959 into another materialistic, corrupted and frivolous era? Only in the desacralized context of a revolico can the spectator accept that violent acts (reminiscent of the political struggles of the end of the nineteenth century) are capable of turning into caricaturesque ones. This transformation is evident when one of the characters of Triana's play, Enrique, shoots his gun in the middle of a scene of jealousy, what comes out is not a bullet but «chorros de tinta roja»
(III, i: 125) [a spurt of red ink]. The fact that violence is the product of jealousy and not caused by political struggle reveals a radical change of focus, but what makes this ridiculous act seem even more meaningful is the transformation in meaning from violent to funny, from dangerous to harmless, from the threat of death to the joy of play. Ultimately, the irony consists not in the substitution of the concept of revolution for that of revolico, but in the interaction and dependency between these two images that represent artistic, social, and political change.
What surfaces, on the one hand, is that farce's blatant use of liminality as it plays with antagonistic realities-humorous, artistic, political, philosophical-transgresses in Revolico en el Campo de Marte its own generic rules and establishes a tense dialogue with other semihumorous and sociopolitical discourses. The tension in this dialogue arises not only from these discourses's questioning of their identity but also from their questioning of the others' through parallel discrediting and desacralizing means. On the other hand, while Triana's play exposes its fragmented nature and the disjointed links among its parts, it also uncovers political history as a series of apparently systematic though grotesque repetitions. It is significant that a play written in 1972 (a period of economic growth in the postrevolutionary Cuba) recreates events placed by Triana in the first two decades of the twentieth century. That the Cuban author stresses ambiguity regarding the specific historical time of the action -«Época: Principios de 1900 o 1917» (140) [Time: Beginning of 1900 or 1917]- suggests that Revolico is playing with important moments in the political and economic history of Cuba. In both cases -the Cuba of 1900 or of 1917- Triana underscores how political revolutionary events such as the Cuban War of Independence of 1898 and the 1902 establishment of the Republic of Cuba became degraded and lost their revolutionary implications through the establishment of a US protectorate in the first case, and through rampant corruption in the second case. It should be recalled that the years around 1917 have been considered an explosive economic moment in Cuban history: the so-called «dance of the millions» was characterized by an increase in the price of sugar mostly due to the collapse of European markets during the First World War, by strong foreign economic intervention, and by an environment of corruption and immorality in Cuban government and society (see Thomas 536-43, 544-56)2. In Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, Hugh Thomas describes the years of the Young Republic, from 1909 to 1932, and focusing on the first year of this period (1909), he stresses the economic and social progress of the next decade:
The Cuba which Magoon handed over to José Miguel Gómez was by no means the ruined country which limped out of the war of independence with US help. All provinces had increased their population... Economic recovery from the war and improved medicine and health were partly responsible, but immigration from Spain was almost as important... There were about five theatres in Havana, where every winter outstanding international actors and singers would appear. |
| (497-98) | ||
But in conjunction with this economic and social boom, Thomas also describes the increased corruption directly linked to President Gómez (nicknamed Tiburón): «Pardons, sewerage, telephone concessions, bridge building, barracks, all yielded lavish profits to those who surrounded the president... Under José Miguel Gómez there began an advanced system of political corruption whereby all newspapers were recipients of government subsidies and so could never be regarded as arguing their own point of view»
(504-05).
It should be clear that the frivolous attitudes of the characters in Revolico en el Campo de Marte, their disorderly life, their lack of dignity and sense of loyalty throughout are linked to the economic boom and to the corruption of the first decades of the twentieth century. Ultimately, this link between the social, the economic, and the political brings to the surface the parallel reality between this Cuba and the postrevolutionary one of the early 1970s when Revolico was written, a period characterized by a forced attempt to create an economic boom accompanied by the same deceit and corruption traditionally denounced by revolutionary governments and societies. As Taylor asks rhetorically about La noche de los asesinos: «Is revolution the awaited radical upheaval or yet another repetitive cycle, one more substitution?»
(82).
What is of interest to us of the early 1970's is that in the midst of an economic downturn -«The harvest of 1969 was described by Castro as "the country's agony"» (Thomas 1437)- Castro, nevertheless, strives for an economic boom by launching the so-called "year of Decisive Endeavor" (1969-79) which is a project «especially geared to the production of ten million tons of sugar»
(Thomas 1436). The mix of this «bizarre undertaking»
(Thomas 1437) with the official attempts to disguise its failure makes this period particularly significant when compared to the Cuba of the first two decades of the twentieth century, which was characterized by its economic development and corrupt environment: «In the middle of May 1970 Castro bitterly admitted that this target could not after all be achieved and that nine million would be the maximum possible... It is also unfortunately conceivable that the figures were falsified and, providing Russia assists in the deception..., there is no means of checking the truth of the announcement»
(Thomas 1437). The notions of failure, deceit, disorder, greed, economic power, and falsification seem to be recycled and «revalued» precisely after revolutionary movements have created new realities and expectations3.
In sum, through the emphasis on a cyclical historical structure the play indirectly evokes two parallel instances and attitudes in the history of twentieth-century Cuba: the emergence after the establishment of the republic in 1902 of a bourgeois environment that became stronger in 1917 with the «dance of the millions», and the emergence of a new, highly bureaucratized, petit-bourgeois (the Cuban equivalent to the Russian «nomenklatura»), created during the early years of the 1970s. Regarding this period, Carmelo Mesa-Lago states in his Cuba in the 1970s: Pragmatism and Institutionalization:
My contention is that the Revolution has come of age and, learning from its mistakes and under Soviet influence, has become increasingly pragmatic and institutionalized. The former personalistic-charismatic regime is being transformed by delegation of power from the «maximum leader» to technocrats... The romanticism of the 1960s has apparently come to an end, resulting in disillusion for permanent revolutionaries and devoted idealists... The appealing, quixotic attempt to skip the transitional phase of socialism and rapidly create a «New Man» in an egalitarian communistic society through the development of consciousness, the use of moral incentives, and labor mobilization has been quietly halted. |
| (ix-x) | ||
Revolutions are meant to create radical social and political changes, but when they turn into revolicos many of their most fundamental beliefs disappear. Therefore, Revolico en el Campo de Marte's portrayal of a farcical and dysfunctional social and moral reality within a politicized moment in the life of the twentieth century Cuba, and the integration within this farcical discourse of other artistic and cultural expressions are the play's most important mechanisms to deal with the issue of freedom and authority in Cuba's past and present history. These issues of freedom and authority are expressed in Revolico through questions of legitimacy, level of commitment to radical change, social struggles (for example, gender interaction), the syncretism of cultural and religious beliefs, and literary traditions, among other vehicles. Therefore, what is being suggested is not only that Revolico en el Campo de Marte criticizes the trivialization of revolutionary acts but that the author chooses to dramatize this process by displacing the supposedly serious, collective, and transcendental goals that incite a revolutionary act with the particularities and intrigues of socially and morally dysfunctional characters of postrevolutionary societies.
Revolico en el Campo de Marte is a play written in verse and divided into three acts, each internally divided into cuadros and scenes. The first act takes place mainly in a private space, that is, Luis's house, while the second act alternates between private and public space, between the fair taking place at the Campo de Marte and events at Luis's house. The final act occurs in its entirety in the carnavalesque environment of a fair in the Campo de Marte, and it is in this act that the notion of a revolico -an action that portrays images of chaos, violence, moral disorder, abuse- achieves its highest point.
Set in the Havana of either 1900 or 1917 (see note 2), the play dramatizes the story of a series of dysfunctional and greedy characters (husbands and wives, friends, siblings, lovers, members of a gang), revealing the incongruities and disharmony of social and economic relations. For example, one notices that the most prevalent element that connects one character to another is money. Luis, who is married to Alicia, lusts after Anita the maid, but he ends up falling in love with Magdalena, with whom Enrique is infatuated, but Luis has also looked at Marieta with desire, who, even though married to Enrique, is attracted to Renato. Benjamín, Luis's brother, initially seems to be drawn to Alicia, but before he ends up in the arms of Magdalena and finally stays with Marieta, he flirts with Anita, with whom Felo the servant is madly in love.
The chaotic nature of this play, filled with distrust and jealousy, furtive encounters, masquerade and ambushes, hypersexuality and obvious trickery, is exacerbated by the presence of Rosa, the santera, who at the request of Magdalena prepares a magic spell that will awaken Luis's desire for her:
|
| (I, iii: 145)4 | ||
[ROSA.- Follow point by point the spell of basil, honey, and hail from the waters of the Lethe. Notice that it is important not to forget the bitterbrush or the parsley or the adarga with the wide and shiny eye. Oh!... I forgot something else: put two nails, just in case, in the middle of the ceiling while you snore like a barn owl.] |
This spell will incite all the characters to the war of sex, where, not surprisingly, physical attraction is disguised as love. The sudden and unexpected infatuations will unmask both the frivolity of relationships among characters and the superficiality of their commitments5.
Most important, it is in the unique figure of Rosa that the fusion occurs between the traditional characterization of the Celestina type and the Afro-Cuban religious elements. In Rosa, the social and formal structures of the Golden Age comedies are linked to one of the most significant aspects of Cuba's cultural and religious syncretism, that is, santería. Cuban santería is based on the coexistence of forms and formulas of the African religious heritage and the rituals of Spanish Catholicism. One of santería's most significant manifestations is the masking of Afro-Cuban deities behind Christian saints6. Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the characters rely on the powers of the supernatural, nor is it unusual to hear in Marieta's speech how she, indistinctly and simultaneously, conjures deities from diverse religious traditions:
|
| (I, iii: 145)7 | ||
[Swear nothing! (Gazing at RENATO in hypnotic frenzy.) Such a perfect body, my God! The goosebumps on my skin make me conjure Shangó and Yemayá.] |
To some extent, this persistent syncretism of religious beliefs reveals the characters' iconoclastic attitude toward authority and tradition, their willingness to express a freedom that is unorthodox and chaotic.
At another level, but also related to this coexistence of traditions and to the rampant chaos in the amorous arena, it is important to examine what incites Alicia to disguise herself as a man and Felo as a woman, or what incites Alicia to tell Anita to dress up with her clothes, that is, as a woman from a higher social class. In their eyes, disguising themselves as someone of the opposite sex or of another social class to reach amorous acceptance will turn their wishes and desires into reality. In Revolico the trick of the woman disguised as a man, and vice-versa, not only evokes Golden Age comedies such as Don Gil de las calzas verdes (1615) and La villana de Vallecas (1620), both by Tirso de Molina, but above all, it singles out the interplay of identities as a persistent preoccupation of Cuban society, culture, and literature. This emphasis on the act of disguising not only surfaces at all levels of the play -sexual, political, cultural- but poses questions about truthfulness, accuracy, identity, and integrity that are important when dealing with the counterpoint between a revolutionary act and a revolico. To some extent, then, the coexistence of religious and secular traditions, the particularity of Cuba's religious syncretism, the «exchange of attire» allusive to Golden Age comedies but also to the disguise of Afro-Cuban deities, establish a relationship between the deceitful notion of sexual and religious identity, and political deceit, where instances of corruption and greed recur throughout Cuba's history and where a revolution ironically becomes a revolico. Triana's Revolico en el Campo de Marte produces a specific literary and cultural syncretism that, within the parameters of farce, becomes a succulent ajiaco wherein heterogeneous and apparently antagonistic structures, epochs, and dramatic forms share a common space8.
Revolico en el Campo de Marte's hyperaction does not diminish as it arrives at its closing moments. Towards the end of the play, there is a sudden and unexpected exchange of partners, and the magic spells -real or fictitious- seem to have acquired a life of their own by following their unique courses and whims. Luis, who lusted after Magdalena, suddenly falls in love with Marieta, and Magdalena, who cast a spell on Luis to attract him, stays with Benjamín, Luis's brother. Enrique, who was seeking revenge for his unfaithful wife, Marieta, finally stays with Anita the maid; and Felo, who was initially after Anita, ends up admiring and consoling Alicia, Luis's wife, who asks herself at the end:
|
| (III, xx: 204) | ||
[What's going on? Are we dreaming a madman's dream? Or did the magic spells change and twist our caprices? Or maybe our ruses were masks of other faces that we never imagined would turn into ghosts?] |
Nevertheless, at the end of Revolico there is still another surprise which can be easily linked to the world of dreams: Triana winks to the (double) audience of the play as the characters themselves reveal that, all along, the action has been a theatrical game, a comedy performed by actors and witnessed by an audience that has been interacting in a carnivalesque and greedy environment:
|
| (III, xxi: 204) | ||
[TAILOR.- (While drinking from a bottle.) Hey, hey! Just a minute, kind sirs. Now comes my turn, and I must say two things, or maybe three.... (Shouts, chatters, in the background, among the actors of the comedy.) But no..., although yes..., maybe.... Everything happens on stage; things visible and invisible, since theatre is a surprise, it is exorcism and magic. (The actors begin to kick and whistle in unison.) All right! Take it easy! As you wish! (To the audience, in secret.) Bunch of hooligans!] |
The indecipherable, hilarious, and absurd reality of the play leads to the constant rediscovery of amorous relationships among the characters. In consequence, this particular «reality» is determined by various traits that underline the contradictory and iconoclastic view of society in general and of those relationships in particular: the apparent absence of meaning; the outrageous and crazy behavior of the characters; the possibility that the supposed reality is only a bad dream, or simply a play; the result of the magic spells; the trivialization of the «real» meaning of love; the overexcitement caused by desire; the carnivalesque environment; and the prevalent role played by the characters' literal and metaphorical masks and disguises. Significantly, Triana includes as one of the three epigraphs to his play a quotation from the Cuban novelist and poet José Lezama Lima that underscores the use of disguises as a paradoxical means of recovering one's identity: «Con el disfraz del peluquero podemos bailar las propias danzas» [With the hairdresser's disguise we can dance our own dances]
(140).
But this complex, humorous plot also disguises other aspects which establish an antagonistic relationship with the messy love affairs and the continuous exchange of partners that characterize the play. This supposedly hidden level is based on a contradictory process in which both the hidden and the overtly dramatized levels of the play are transgressed on stage. That is, the incorporation in Revolico en el Campo de Marte of specific social, cultural, artistic, and political codes, texts, and structures that define the play is counterbalanced by the transgression on stage of these same codes, texts, and structures. One can recognize in this farce-with its clear integration of elements of the absurd, esperpento, buffo, and choteo -not only the formulas and conventions of traditional comedy with its grotesque characteristics, but the parodic and deconstructive dialogue of a work that displays a profound awareness of its own theatrical, cultural, and sociopolitical history.
To see or not to see a plurality of dramatic levels in Revolico, such as the intricacies of love, infidelity, sexual desire, witchcraft, violence, deceit, or greed -along with other quandaries involving where, when, and under what circumstances these levels can be seen or recognized- depends not only on the spectators' power of interpretation and familiarity with the underlying artistic and sociopolitical texts and contexts of the play but also on language's conscious (re)creation and transgression of meaning. In Revolico en el Campo de Marte, the apparent meaninglessness of language and action, with its idiosyncratic use of verse, its frivolous characters and relationships, and its constant mixing and matching of identities, can be interpreted as a meaningful, multifaceted response to artistic and political oppression and censorship and, ultimately, as an effective instrument of communication. Patrice Pavis's statements about farce's emphasis on movement also shed light on farce's communicative force:
Such rapidity and force give farce a subversive nature-subversion against moral or political authorities, sexual taboos, rationalism and the rules of tragedy. Through farce the spectators have their revenge on the constraints of reality and reason; liberating laughter and drives win over tragic inhibition and anxiety, in the guise of buffoonery and «poetic license». |
| (148) | ||
It is not surprising that throughout the play Triana incorporates other artistic and cultural discourses which are related to linguistic games and nuances, to communicative means associated with the tension between what is meaningful and what is meaningless, what is metaphorical and what is literal, implicit and explicit, tragic and comic. In the case of the theatre of the absurd, as is well known, the action centers on problems of communication -«the fabula of absurd plays is often circular, guided not by dramatic action but by wordplay and a search for words»
(Pavis 1)- while the esperpento centers, among other things, on the deformation of reality through language. In buffo theatre the popular and caricaturesque language takes center stage, and is linked to the choteo's humorous and vulgar language and double entendres. Throughout Revolico Triana uses an array of words that reveal a great deal of linguistic fluidity and pomposity on the speakers's part but that carry a desacralizing tone and the appearance of lack of meaning. While «trápala» is a person who speaks a lot but without substance (María Moliner 2: 1367), «parlanchín» is one who speaks in excess and indiscreetly says what should be left unsaid (María Moliner 2: 644). «Pamemas», which is the crossing of «pamplina» and «memo», refers to a meaningless and simplistic phrase, to something unimportant even when someone attempts to make it a significant statement or issue (María Moliner 2: 618). Meanwhile, «monserga» refers to language that is confusing and misleading (María Moliner II: 448). In other words, «trápala», «parlanchina», «pamemas», and «monserga» are just some of the words displaying the humorous, affected, and superficial qualities of language and of communication that Triana persistently dramatizes in Revolico en el Campo de Marte, while at the same time they shed light on a world that has moved from the depths of political transformation (the Cuba of 1902) to the shallow waters of sexual innuendoes and disputes.
As part of this caricaturization of the communicative medium, one recognizes how the pseudopoetic and consequently parodic character of the play is dramatized by the use of octosyllabic verses sporadically interrupted by hendecasyllabic sonnets, both of questionable literary value9. In addition to the indirect link between Triana's play and Valle-Inclán's and Lorca's farces, the popular, humorous, farcical, and even anachronistic use of verse reminds the spectator of the Golden Age comedies. As Charles Aubrun has stated in discussing the preferential treatment of verse in the Spanish comedy of the seventeenth century:
There is nothing surprising in such a total rejection of prose as a vehicle of dramatic expression. First, Spanish theatre is both tragedy and comedy: between the traditional verse of the former and the possible, but not obligatory, prose of the latter, the balance favors the more elevated and pathetic mode. Second, ... [comedy] is addressed to a mainly illiterate, but cultivated, audience. For them, verse is easier to remember... Finally, the use of verse accentuates the distancing effects between reality and fiction, between theatre and stage, between life and the transference... to dramatic adventure. |
| (31-32) | ||
Versification in Revolico en el Campo de Marte, in addition to invoking the tone of the cloak-and-dagger plays and the comedies of intrigues, creates a popular and farcical atmosphere that parodies the most important structures of Cuban literature, culture, and society. The musicality of the octosyllabic verse (which the Cuban buffo mixes with prose) characterizes the rhythmic and desacralizing tone evident in Triana's play10. The active interaction and exchange of identities among the characters in Revolico reproduces a particular environment where the musical aspects of the dramatic work and the pantomimic movements become the emblems of (linguistic) communication and action. It is possible, then, to recognize the dual role of verse: on the one hand, it evokes and theatricalizes important literary systems from both the Hispanic tradition and the Afro-Cuban and popular one; on the other hand, it parodies those systems as it recontextualizes them within an absurd plot and within contemporary Cuban theatre and society.
As Valle-Inclán had done before in his cycle of farces in verse, Triana fuses the sentimental with the grotesque, which in the literary production of these two playwrights turn out to complement and contradict each other by overtly dramatizing the way language is used (see Ruiz Ramón 111). Ruiz Ramón, reflecting on the use of language in Valle-Inclán's farces, states: «The coarse and vulgar language responds to a stylistic norm that is, naturally, not only a reflection of a degraded world which the author presents on stage, but also the most effective instrument of alienation between the author and his dramatic world»
(114). Ultimately, the distancing effect between reality and fiction created by the use of verse places the attention on theatre as theme. That is, it focuses on the characters' disguises, on their masks, on their pseudopoetic and farcical language, on the interplay of movements, and on the caricaturization of violence as a way to question the social and political system, which, ironically, supports and controls the artistic one. The sudden disclosure at the end of the play that the characters are actually actors of a comedy takes the distancing effect even further, since it leads to a reinterpretation of the frivolous action, the bizarre relationships among the characters, their use of disguise, and the issue of communication (meaning or lack of it). But even after this revelation there is yet another transgression: the Sastre announces the end of the comedy as determined by the author: «Y en llegando a este punto/ se termina la comedia,/ dice el autor y se mete/ en el cáliz de una adelfa»
(III, xxi: 204) [Having reached this point there ends the play, says the author, as he hides himself in the chalice of an oleander]. But the Tailor also announces his intention to add his own ending, his own view of the coexistence between reality and the world of dreams: «Y tomando este pretexto/ yo decido cornamenta/ de un discurso que he soñado/ soñando que alguien me entrena»
(III, xxi: 205) [Taking this as a pretext, I'll decide how to crown a discourse I have dreamt while dreaming that somebody's training me»].
Farce is then is contradictory and transgressive in nature and constantly rejects possible conclusions. Through language, gestures, and caricaturization, farce is capable not only of characterizing a world lacking ulterior meaning, but also of launching a mordant criticism of that same meaningless world. The fragmentation or distortion through farce of social rituals that are more or less familiar to all, are represented in Revolico through the parody of traditional love, «amorous» relationships, and social hierarchies. As Bermel reminds us:
Farce does at least two things with, and to, [familiar social ritual]. It borrows or recreates it from life, rigidifying it, making it look exaggeratedly schematic, and therefore ludicrous... Farce will then often subvert the ritual, giving it an unforeseen, disorderly ending. Art is said to pluck order out of chaos. Possibly so, but in farce the orderly ritual has a way of degenerating into chaos. |
| (8) | ||
The emphasis on the interplay between the absence and the proliferation of meanings and angles proposed by the farcical nature of Revolico can be linked to the same interplay that characterizes the theatre of the absurd. Pavis underlines the historical relationship between the absurd and farce in his definition of the former: «Among the theatrical precursors to the contemporary theatre of the absurd are farce, parades, grotesque interludes in Shakespeare and Romantic drame, playwrights who defy categorization such as Apollinaire, Jarry, Feydeau and Gombrowicz»
(2). In Triana's play the tug-of-war between what is meaningful and what is meaningless appears as a collage of palimpsests, which tend to dismantle the more literal dimension of the action frequently identified with the clumsiness and stage tricks of farce. But at the same time, it is the questioning of the superficial plane that gives a deeper meaning to the use of farcical elements in Revolico. Significantly, the fact that, as Pavis indicates in his definition of the absurd, «Man is a timeless abstraction incapable of finding a foothold in his frantic search for a meaning that constantly eludes him. His actions have neither meaning nor direction»
(1) demonstrates that it is only when searching for a meaning that it becomes clear that it cannot be found.
In an attempt to establish a parallelism between the parodic and farcical character of Triana's play and the plurality of levels of communication and meanings that characterizes the absurd (including the lack of meaning), the structural and philosophical aspects of the play coexist with the sociopolitical in an implicit realm. More importantly, Revolico's reflections on its complex identity as farce establishes a dialogue with the absurd, which, in the case of the Spanish American tradition, has struggled in a parallel way with its plural meanings and its political commitment. The complex interaction between Revolico's farcical tone and the strong tradition of the theatre of the absurd in Cuba since the late 1940s -notwithstanding its eventual rejection during the postrevolutionary period- underscore the common elements of these two discourses and their particular artistic and ideological distinctions11. It is clear that Revolico distances itself from the so-called pure aesthetic of the absurd in vogue before the Cuban revolutionary period and during the first years of the Revolution (Montes Huidobro, Teatro puertorriqueño 455)12. But this distancing does not occur simply by changing from the implicit antidoctrinal use of absurdist features to their explicit functional and referential use, that is, from the aesthetic to the ideological13. Rather, this distancing that emerges from both extremes becomes the raison d'être of the work. As suggested, the success of Triana's play consists in the counterpoint between revolico and revolution, between carnivalesque upheaval and a radical sociopolitical change.
It is precisely as part of the tension between the subtle presence of ideology and its more overt stand within the absurdist expression of theatre that this study will briefly compare Revolico en el Campo de Marte's absurdist features with those of the play Carnaval afuera, carnaval adentro (1960) by Puerto Rican dramatist René Marqués. Although these two plays fluctuate between the discourse of farce and that of the absurd, the interaction of these two discourses varies in degree, intensity and, above all, perspective.
In Persona: Vida y máscara en el teatro puertorriqueño (1986), Montes Huidobro focuses on Carnaval afuera's particular codes and their relationship to the theatre of the absurd. More significantly, he compares them with those of Cuban absurdism: «The tragic paradox of the absurd is that it begins as an antibourgeois reaction, but since it has a plurality of meanings, it never responds to strict political norms. Marqués's play distances itself considerably from the implicit connotations of language to become in many cases explicit and functional: therefore, it also distances itself from the antidoctrinal norms of the Cuban absurdism»
(456, my emphasis). For Montes Huidobro, Carnaval afuera and the Cuban theatre of the absurd differ in the explicit didactic and ideological development of Marqués's play in contrast to the implicit levels of political commitment of the Cuban expression.
More specifically, Carnaval afuera, carnaval adentro allegorizes the destructive subordination of Puerto Rican values to the powerful and oppressive economic, political, and social forces of the United States. Regarding the allegorical nature of many Spanish American plays, Tamara Holzapfel observes: «This tendency to allegorize national as well as universal reality seems to me to be the distinctive mark of absurd drama in Spanish America. A strong critical sense toward an unjust social order has traditionally permeated Spanish American literature, and given the present-day socioeconomic situation and political conditions, it is not surprising to encounter the "denuncia en el aquí y el ahora" even in form-conscious literature such as the new novel and the theatre of the absurd»
(40). Through the use of festive and farcical elements, such as the presence of vejigantes or carnivalesque figures, drum music, linguistic absurdities, change of roles or identities, pantomime, and others, René Marqués creates a codified artistic world that mirrors and parodies the values of a society that subjects itself to appraisers and is willing to sell itself to the highest bidder14.
The brief comparison of this Puerto Rican play with the Cuban absurdist expression suggests that Caranaval is overtly concerned with sociopolitical themes and linked to ideological rigidity, while the Cuban form of the absurd reflects -at least until the first years of the Revolution- a stronger commitment to its traditional aesthetics. Cuban absurdism is characterized by its exploration of language and human communication, its antidoctrinal tendencies, its nonrevolutionary thematic development, and its nonrealist stylistic construction (Montes Huidobro, Teatro puertorriqueño 455-56; Palls 26)15. In comparison with this aesthetically oriented view, Montes Huidobro argues that although the aesthetic code was more important in the Cuban absurdist theatre than the revolutionary one, «the multiple meanings of the key elements of the absurd clash with the strict doctrinal systems: therefore, many of these approximations are conditioned by the political reality of the historical processes»
(Teatro puertorriqueño 455-56).
The pertinence of these comments regarding Carnaval afuera's relationship with the theatre of the absurd in general and with Revolico in particular is that Carnaval's emphasis on the doctrinal and on the politically explicit distances it from the plurality of meanings traditionally expected in absurdist expression. Critics have frequently noted that the absurd theatre in Spanish American does not limit itself to social criticism and to portraying the existential anguish of human beings in modern societies but is actively engaged in political issues16. What Montes Huidobro argues is that Carnaval removes itself even further from the implicit and antidoctrinal stands of the European-like theatre of the absurd, and in the examination of the play he stresses the ideological dogmatism and the serious limitations imposed on the literary analysis by the reinforcement of basic (political) clichés (Teatro puertorriqueño 465). If, as Montes Huidobro suggests, «the absurd is a stage clue that functions in opposition to logic»
(Teatro puertorriqueño 455), then everything that is predictable and deliberate (with the exception of the «anticonventional logic itself») will reflect the mimetic, explicit form of representation that the Cuban theatre of the absurd has frequently avoided.
This discussion regarding a Puerto Rican play with absurdist touches and its counterpart the Cuban theatre of the absurd, underlines both the plural character of this theatrical expression and the multiplicity of meanings in Triana's Revolico en el Campo de Marte. If we follow closely the aforementioned development of absurd theatre in Cuba, Triana's play should at least in theory have distanced itself from the antidoctrinal and implicit Cuban theatre of the absurd prior to the Revolution, and it should have revealed explicitly its political stand. But ironically, part of the revolutionary aspect of the play is its reconsideration of this earlier notion of the theatre of the absurd as implicit and antidogmatic though not politically neutral. In other words, Revolico's antagonistic view of the Cuban Revolution revalues the codified prerevolutionary understanding of absurd theatre, particularly its notion of a plurality of meanings that coexist within the text and in opposition to an explicit commitment to the political and ideological17. Triana's significant contribution is that his play breaks with prescribed patterns: on the one hand, it distances itself from the theatre of the absurd's connection with aggressive artistic transgressions and disdain for politics. On the other, Revolico breaks with the Cuban postrevolutionary theatre's rejection of the artistic and linguistic experiments of the theatre of the absurd. This also implies a rejection of Cuban postrevolutionary theatre's emphasis on the political «reality» that surrounds the action. By distancing itself from both extremes, Revolico en el Campo de Marte creates a dialectical relationship between past and present in artistic and political terms, in which the implicitness of the artistic past coexists with the explicit ideological commitment of the artistic present.
As part of the relationship between farce and the absurd, it is possible to recognize certain parallelisms between these two dramatic expressions and the discourse of the esperpento, especially as we focus on the personal and collective deformation of the characters' reality and actions, and on -the sociopolitical implications of this deformative process: «¡Oh torcida suerte!,/ de un gigante o más bien zorro/ soñábame sostenida/ existencia y desemboco/ en ridículo esperpento»
(III, xix: 202) [Oh twisted fate! I dreamed I was a giant or better yet a fox, and I end up as a ridiculous esperpento]. It is not mere coincidence that Francisco Ruiz Ramón stresses both the artistic and the social dimensions that gave birth to the esperpento and its intrinsic relationship with the absurd: «The deformation and disjointment that are instrumental in the esperpento would be the only way to show a specific reality critically, provoking a direct awareness of the absurd character of that reality»
(126).
We turn here to the discourse of the esperpento as a way to underscore Revolico's emphasis on grotesque and caricaturesque actions and relationships. This emphasis, in turn, unmasks the play's reflection on the similarities between the social and political chaos of the Cuba of the first decades of the twentieth century and the chaos and hypocrisy of the revolutionary Cuba of the seventies. The play's emphasis on showing the deforming and degrading side of the characters' personal and collective reality (their materialistic, selfish, and corrupted behavior) reflects the carnavilesque nature of a world that seems oblivious to the struggles for freedom and dignity of its revolutionary history and gives preference to deception, to fraud, to swindling:
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| (III, xv: 198) | ||
[TAILOR.- This is blackmail, pure and simple, and also an inconsistency. |
ROSA.- Get ready! (She again repeats her inspection, now in another fashion, until she manages to take his money.) [...] (Stashing the money in her bags, proudly and boastfully.) You well know that I'm a witch; and in case you don't know, just ask those ladies on the Hill and the upper levels... and wait... (Shouting.) I'm going, aiee!, I'll go in my faithful broom and puffing on my pipe... |
TAILOR.- (Shouting.) Wait! |
ROSA.- I'm being pushed by the dead man of Mama Inés! (She flies off on a broom. The TAILOR runs after her. The music at times overshadows the thunder of occasional lightning.) |
Critics have identified the esperpento with terms such as «distancing», «theatre of the absurd», «antitragic theatre», «degrading vision», «theatre of protest», «defamiliarization» (see Ruiz Ramón 118). Therefore, what is interesting about this artistic manifestation in the context of Revolico en el Campo de Marte is the perception of a world where the marginal prevails, where characters and actions are constantly displaced, decentralized, questioning in this way the artistic and cultural structures of the past, as well as the social and political structures of the postrevolutionary present. It is even more important to recognize that the characters' inclination to simulation and disguise is an explicit sign of the play's attempt to communicate at various levels. On the one hand, Revolico's messy and caricaturesque portrayal of the characters' relationships and social reality emphasizes trickery, language games, making a fool of the other and laughing on the other's behalf. On the other hand, this emphasis on simulation and disguise forces us to question Revolico's playful and comical environment. It forces the spectator to look for what is behind the mask, behind the disguise, even behind the historical façade. In Rosa's double-edged conversation with the Tailor the struggle between the appearance of honesty and the reality of hypocrisy is more than evident:
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| (II, v: 168-69) | ||
[TAILOR.- (Stammering.) You! |
ROSA.- How dare you! (In another tone of voice.) I've hooked him now! |
TAILOR.- If you desire... |
ROSA.- Me, desire? You've misunderstood me! I'm only asking you for the service of your friendship, and in truth... But if your honesty doesn't allow it... You still owe me a thousand favors, Caricato... [...] If this fails me, I don't know what I'll do. I'll pass myself off as a deaf-mute. By Christ's bloody sweat!] |
From this study's perspective, the interaction between farce and the esperpento in Revolico not only underscores its intertextual dialogue with other theatrical forms that are transgressive, iconoclastic, plural, and marginal in nature, but also questions the truthfulness of the actions and intentions of the characters and of their world. Are these characters merely caricatures who live in a senseless and trivial world? Or should the spectator interpret the deceitful nature of their actions as a way to question the play's apparent frivolity? This level of contradiction and uncertainty about the communicative levels of the play can be linked to the identity of the esperpento. For example, even after offering a synthesis of the theories of the esperpento, Ruiz Ramón asks himself: «is the esperpento tragic or antitragic?»
(126), a quandary which reveals the plural interpretive approaches to this artistic form. In the case of Revolico this plurality and uncertainty of meanings is expressed in the dichotomy between the rational and the irrational, the ser and the estar as the tailor questions what is real and what is not:
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| (III, i: 128, my emphasis) | ||
[TAILOR.- And reality is like a river, and in your dreams its realism of reason and unreason conjures up festive castles. The mask gives meaning to your proverbial strangeness of being and seeming, because time is the mask that dreams of and dresses your bones in their variable stridency, and to be and to seem is the same as time, which uncovers everything.] |
The interaction between farce and the esperpento in Revolico en el Campo de Marte stresses the attempt to address the contradictory identity of these two discourses as vehicles of artistic and sociopolitical revolutions and as parodies of themselves and of others. And in more concrete terms, the fact that Triana's farce establishes this dialogue with the esperpento suggests the play's awareness of its covert political overtones, while at the same time showing its desire to confront and carnivalize its ambiguous connection to ideology and political revolution. One could say, then, that in Triana's play the end product is a hybrid, where revolution as instrument of artistic and social change and revolico as the carnivalesque and chaotic transgression of these changes all coexist in a single space questioning each other's intentions and identities.
It is in an environment of disorder, lack of values, excessive histrionics, racial and social conflicts, political corruption, and amorous intrigues that Revolico en el Campo de Marte directs the attention to one of the most important theatrical manifestations in Cuba's dramatic development: the buffo. The abundance of intertexts in Triana's play, the already established relationship between farce, the theatre of the absurd, and the esperpento, and the implicit and explicit allusions to artistic forms of the past, all open the door to the phenomenon of the Cuban buffo (with its racial and class implications). Significantly, Cuban buffo had its initial impulse at the end of the 1860s, when a colonial Cuba was experiencing economic and political crises: «1867-8 was a year of revolutionary formation»
(Thomas 242)18. It is clear, then, that
Revolico has not only explored the farcical and parodic elements of the action by creating a dialogue with various literary and cultural discourses from various traditions, but it has also established a link with multiple historical realities in Cuba's political trajectory such as the years after the founding of the Republic of Cuba in 1902 and the 1959 Revolution. Not surprisingly, as we reflect on the Cuban buffo in Triana's Revolico we are forced to reflect on the revolutionary movement with which it coincided. Cuba's struggle against Spanish colonial power at the end of the 1860s and the annexationism of some who wished to join Cuba to the United States underscores the island's cultural and political turmoil, which would have its repercussions in the two Cuban revolutionary movements of the twentieth century. Therefore, it is evident that Revolico en el Campo de Marte shares parallel structures and themes with the theatrical form of the Cuban buffo while at the same time is linked to a period of political instability. Rine Leal defines Cuban buffo in the following terms:
It is a genre that includes music and dance. It is parodic and popular. It desacralizes the major themes of the past. Caricaturesque, it lacks any moralizing intention. It is a reflection of daily life, the history of a people without history. It is a scene based on circumstances, satire and choteo. It lacks literary anxiety and the desire of immortality. It is more representational than textual, it is intention more than literature. |
| (23, my emphasis) | ||
José A. Escarpenter and José A. Madrigal underscore in their characterization of the Cuban buffo the focus of this popular expression on the theatrical rather than on the literary, on the comical rather than on the serious (19). For the buffos the spectacle was not only more important than the text, but their purpose was to entertain with plays which would make fun of the popular customs of the day (Escarpenter and Madrigal 19). Undeniably, some of the elements characteristic of the Cuban buffo are present in the farcical, parodic and caricaturesque nature of Triana's play. The popular dimension of its language («tremendo vacilón», «ninfa pitoflera», «vieja pelleja», «cabeza de pirulí», «pan de piquito») and the ridicule of social relations and amorous feelings coincide with some fundamental themes of the Cuban buffo, which throughout its history also experienced important transformations.
Another dimension of buffo theatre alluded to by Rine Leal is the presence of the choteo, which in the case of Revolico can be connected to its carnivalesque environment, to the abundance of sexual innuendoes, to a disorderly world, to a lack of dignity, and to the rejection of authority (see Mañach, Indagación del choteo)19. In the second act Triana offers the following stage direction as he describes a scene between the scoundrels Felo, Rufo, Pito, and Curro: «Divertido, mientras Felo se desnuda. La escena toma por momentos, un aire de franco choteo»
(II, 5: 173) [Amused, while Felo undresses. The scene takes on, at certain moments, an openly mocking tone]. It is evident that Revolico's action is primarily motivated by the characters' sexual drives and caricaturesque desires (Benjamín experiences an amorous trance, and Anita wants to appease his desire with water, I, xi: 156), and it is also evident that most of the dialogues are permeated by humorous and vulgar double entendres:
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| (II, v:171) | ||
[OLEGARIO.- Where do I place...? |
CANDELARIO.- Your weewee? (Intense laughter, uproar.) |
OLEGARIO.- Eggs, beast! |
CANDELARIO.- Small eggs! (More laughs. The confusion increases among the six men.) |
For Mañach, «choteo is a desire for independence that is externalized in a mockery of every non-imperative form of authority»
(41)20. But the incompleteness of this definition from Pérez Firmat's viewpoint leads to his own addendum: «Choteo is a tropical tropism that unmasks the culo behind every cara, that bares the other cheek; it is this anatomical downturn that Mañach's essay attempts, but does not quite manage, to arrest»
(74). To some extent, the unmasking to which Pérez Firmat alludes to also takes place in Triana's Revolico in terms of the play's questioning of its farcical and buffoonesque identity and its reminder that at the same time the Cuban buffo is established, a significant segment of Cuba's population is striving for independence and for the abolition of slavery through revolutionary action. In other words, through the direct characterization of Cuban buffo, Triana again brings to the surface the issue of an apparently disparaged and theatrical expression which lacks serious expectations and motivations. But what is proposed is that this anti-intellectual stand and the statement that buffo theatre «lacks moralizing intention» is going to be questioned. Triana continues to emphasize marginal discourses as a mechanism to expose social and political criticism.
It is pertinent to mention Anthony Caputi's historical outline of buffo as the genius of vulgar comedy, particularly as he discusses its antecedents and folkloric backgrounds, its transformation, and its persistent characterization within the European theatrical context. Just as Leal identifies Cuban buffo's lack of a moralizing intention, Caputi states that this expression «points to the comic and the laughable, but to the comic and laughable as they exist apart from such sophisticated issues as irony, satire, wit, parody, and burlesque. It designates an instinctive, uncritical, frenetic species of fun...»
(20)21. It is significant that Caputi's attempt to characterize the buffo forces him to establish the difference between vulgar comedy and farce. In his own words:
«Farce» is the term usually used for the village square comedies of the Middle Ages and for such recent work as Charley's Aunt, yet not all critics would accept it as a description of the Dorian mime or certain examples of English pantomime. Moreover, as a critical term it is usually applied to dramatic wholes, while I shall sometimes be concerned with bits and pieces of plays. |
| (16) | ||
But beyond either the subtle or explicit differences between farce and buffo, what is of interest in Revolico en el Campo de Marte is the play's eagerness to explore multiple theatrical expressions of the comic as it simultaneously subverts the standard expectations of both farce and the buffo, particularly their so-called instinctive and uncritical nature22.
The indirect allusion to buffo theatre in Triana's play is an attempt to signal and question its supposed lack of a «moralizing intention». That is, at a primary level the presence of buffo elements in Revolico not only represents a significant recognition of Cuba's theatrical past but also undermines the implicit seriousness of the play's «messages». Ironically, this lack of seriousness, as Leal suggests, is the buffo comedian's principal virtue, «since they worked in a country that did not seem to take life seriously»
(17). In an absurd and grotesque way, the revolution becomes a revolico -violence takes place in the fair, in the park of Campo de Marte- where, in addition to collectively celebrating an event, «common people launch their criticism and parodies of the powerful»
(Leal 20). Inevitably, this carnivalesque upheaval still carries within its linguistic and artistic connotations the consequences of radical and extreme political violence. Therefore, in contrast with Caputi's definition of the buffo, where the comic and laughable exist «apart from such sophisticated issues as irony, satire, wit, parody, and burlesque», and where «it designates an instinctive, uncritical, frenetic species of fun»
(20), the double irony in Triana's play is revealed when buffo elements do stress central issues of social, historical, and political importance. Although, as already stated, Cuban buffo portrays its lack of a «moralizing intention» and of a «desire for morality»
(Leal 23), Leal himself states: «When the buffo comedians define themselves with a different morality from that of the colonialists, when they disdain and parody the melodramatic scheme, when they satirize and transform a popular sensibility and reverse their values, they are creating a different morality that negates the social hypocrisy behind which the colony hid a class structure and an imperial objective»
(18). It is clear then that
Revolico actively plays with its contradictory artistic and social identities, attitudes, and discourses, problematizing its different levels of interpretation. That is, while it overtly displays its supposed meaninglessness and lack of moralizing intention, it plays with its meanings and morality, which in the case of Revolico are linked to the incongruities between a frivolous and humorous world and a violent and revolutionary one. For example, when Alicia discovers Luis's infidelity and decides to pay him back with the same coin, Anita wonders what the Church would say about this act of revenge and what the Catholic ladies would say. Alicia responds:
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| (II, ii: 164) | ||
[Let's clear our heads! I detest old fashioned things, corrupted scribbles, and that prudish preaching of charity and piety that twists and masks thoughts and feelings, describing in a confused manner scenes of good and evil.] |
Within these dichotomies, the satiric tone of Revolico and the frequent incorporation of insignificant characters (Leal's «history of a people without history»
) reveal the play's concern with popular structures, both literary and social: the use of the octosyllabic verse, the antididactic tone, the recycling of popular figures from the literary tradition, the caricaturization of the racial and socioeconomic profiles of characters, and the iconoclastic stand towards the major themes of the past. From a social and racial perspective one identifies the presence of a group of scoundrels, among them a curro, who underline the buffoonery and violent atmosphere of the play. In Revolico the spectator can see how Enrique, the district's sergeant, is about to gather his friends to take revenge for the infidelity of his wife Marieta, who has left with Renato. Among Enrique's friends there is Curro, who is immediately identified with the negro pendenciero, or quarrelsome black, a real and literary character of nineteenth-century Cuba. Not surprisingly, an excellent definition of the curro appears in Cirilo Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés, one of the most influential texts of Cuban nineteenth century literature and culture (many of this novel's violent acts take place in the park called Campo de Marte.) The narrator of Villaverde's text defines the curro as follows:
We have here sketched with a coarse brush the living image of a gallant of el manglar [curro de Manglar] in the outskirts of rural Havana, memorable during the period of our history. The dandy in Andalusian dress is not original with us. He is nothing more or less than some young Negro or mulatto living in this quarter or two or three other similar ones, a devil-may-care bully, living on neither work nor charity, quarrelsome by nature and by habit, by occupation a thief, brought up in the streets, living on the proceeds of thievery, and who seems from birth to be cut out only for the whip, the ball and chain or a violent death. |
| (Cecilia Valdés or Angel's Hill 454)23 | ||
In Revolico, when Benjamín is captured by the scoundrels, Curro gives instructions to his men as he copiously drinks and shows his bad blood and violent temperament by whipping Benjamín without mercy (III, i: 114). But more significant is to link the curro with a particular space where violent deeds prevail. The third act of Revolico takes place entirely in the Campo de Marte during a fair, and it is here where physical encounters and intrigues among antagonistic characters reach their highest expression. Although most of the characters of Revolico are not curros, they somehow share the aforementioned characteristics of this social outcast: greed, arrogance, and desire to deceive.
It is possible, then, to establish a causal relationship between the violent acts that permeate Triana's play, the presence of the curro, and the type of action or revolico that develops in the Campo de Marte as reflection of a problematic racial, social, and political atmosphere. In Revolico's farcical and grotesque scheme of things, everyone's agenda is both similar to and opposite from the other person's goals: everyone attempts to conquer an individual of the opposite sex who, in turn, aspires to conquer someone else. Control, authoritarianism, power, trickery, deceit, corruption are forces that prevail in the (im)moral and (hyper)sexual worlds of the characters of Revolico, but these same forces are also prevalent in the political atmosphere of the time and space in which these characters live. The fact that the Cuba of 1917 is experiencing an economic boom (1917 is one of the two possible dates in which Triana sets his play) is reflected in the attitudes and priorities of the characters as they center on their own well-being, pleasures, and desires, and are oblivious to any sense of the collective. What began as a revolutionary search for freedom and independence in different moments of Cuban history has become a revolico.
This environment reproduces a space where the alteration of order -the revolt, the revolution, or, better, the revolico- becomes both an artistic symbol and the representation of specific moral and sociopolitical issues. The rebellious act is again twofold: at one level, Triana's farce represents a daring attempt to transgress the stiffness and rigidity of dramatic creation, wishing to provoke an artistic revolution. At another level, it violently reverses the results of transcendental political actions, such as the establishment of the Republic of Cuba in the early part of the twentieth century, while it also parodies the (moral) results of the Cuban revolution of 1959. It is possible to argue that in the midst of the artistic control and repression prevalent in the Cuba of the late 1960s and the 1970s (the play was written in 1972), the most precious concept -that of revolution- is redefined in Triana's play and given contradictory meanings24. Significantly, the Campo de Marte hosts both a fair with music, dance, and costumes and a «boxing ring» (which ironically resembles a theatre stage) where amorous offenses are argued and violently approached. Revolico's multiple revolutions, among them the use of farce and its significant dialogue with the absurd, the esperpento, and the buffo, represent an opportunity for artistic renewal whose radicalization consists of rejecting fixed and conventional viewpoints. But from the perspective of a political revolution, Triana's play portrays its corrupted side, the evils of conventionalizing and institutionalizing it, since revolutions traditionally represent antibureaucratic and antiestablishment perspectives.
If one takes into account this particular characterization of the concepts of revolico and revolution, it is no coincidence that in Cecilia Valdés most of the action among the characters of lower classes (mulattos and blacks) is linked to the Campo de Marte, to the presence of curros, and to their respective acts of violence25. But above all, both in Revolico and Cecilia Valdés the violent disputes that are frequently provoked by the attraction to a woman, by uncontrollable sexual desires, and by jealousy are also linked to sociopolitical issues of their respective times. For instance, when Curro asks Pito in Revolico if he has seen anything particular at the fair, Tabo responds: «Ratas, gatos/ y algunos perros que celan/ a sus perras de otros perros»
(III, viii:189) [Rats, cats, and some male dogs who guard their females from other dogs]. Ultimately, the desacralizing tone in Revolico is the result of the esperpento-like, grotesque, and absurd coexistence of literary, cultural, and social structures that not only evoke the farcical and produce signs of rupture but also evoke referentiality (past and present).
Throughout this book, the economic marginalization of Spanish America, the conflictive position occupied by its literature, the general indifference to its theatrical production for economic and artistic reasons, and farce's lack of prestige within the larger appraisal of politically committed theatre have been (and will be) considered in the light of oppressive, hierarchical conditions attempting to silence the other. We have so far, and will continue to insist in examining Spanish American farcical plays within the discourse on marginalization and underlining their deliberate attempt to use and affirm this position to their artistic and political advantage. But as Diana Taylor suggests, if there is something that allows Latin America to position itself and many of its political and artistic voices at center stage, it is revolution: «The revolutionary movement promised to cast Latin America in a leading role on the world's political and cultural stages. The 1960s provided a new theatrical infrastructure for the marginalized, the oppressed, and the repressed»
(Theatre of Crisis 47).
Revolution has been clearly an important theme in Triana's dramatic production, and in the article «Framing the Revolution: Triana's La noche de los asesinos and Ceremonial de guerra», Taylor offers a renewed, more complex vision of the theatricality of revolution, of the potential for a theatrical revolution, and of theatre about revolution in the works of the Cuban playwright: «[These two plays] are particularly interesting in that they are among the first works to raise the most urgent questions about the nature and meaning of revolution from within the frame of the revolutionary movement itself»
(83)26. The increased urgency of Triana's questions regarding revolution in both La noche de los asesinos (1965) and Ceremonial de guerra (1968-73) reflects the disruption of revolutionary ideals and the dismantling of political myths. According to Taylor, «Contradictory images, formulated in some of the major plays of 1965-70, reflect the beginning of an ideological crisis... As early as 1965 Triana's Assassins was already suggesting a disenchantment with revolution in general and with the Cuban revolution in particular, insinuating that "revolution" did not necessarily mean "liberation"»
(Theatre of Crisis 50). Taylor finally describes the disillusionment of some with the Cuban Revolution and the perception that this important sociopolitical and economic movement has been betrayed: «Dreams of liberation and self-determination gradually gave way to a new authoritarian order, but one which (like the Mexican Revolution) integrated the revolutionary vocabulary and images -new images that also proved re-creations of the old... For many writers who believed that revolution could free the oppressed, the Cuban revolution became another repressive institution»
(Theatre of Crisis 51). It is clear that this recreation of the old -the repetition of ingrained bad habits- becomes in Revolico a source of parody and is what transforms the revolution into a revolico. Not surprisingly, in the instances that the play overtly speaks about politics and of the political, it refers to them almost exclusively as a means of amassing wealth. When Luis is wondering how he is going to sustain his house economically, he recognizes his boss's wisdom by quoting him:
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| (I, v: 148) | ||
[We have to get into politics! Words that are proof of an invincible truth... Because if not... working without profit like an ant will crush you.] |
To a great extent, an ironic form of role reversal takes place in Revolico when there is an exchange of codes between the traditional disparagement of farce and the seriousness of a political revolutionary act. One might conclude that the goal of this apparent deflation is to redefine revolution within multiple antagonistic discourses at chronological, ideological, and artistic levels. Revolico not only fluctuates between the absurd, the farcical, and the sociopolitical approach, but it also fluctuates, in chronological terms, between several periods of Cuban history: the indirect allusion to the 1868 attempt at independence against Spain; the portrayal of the Cuba of the early twentieth century with the establishment of the Republic of Cuba in 1902 and later the so-called period of the «dance of the millions»; the Cuba of the 1959 Revolution; and finally, the Cuba of the early 1970s, when some of the most questionable attitudes that prevailed half a century before were repeated. These attitudes included the rise of a new bourgeois-like element in society, political and economic corruption, moral degradation, and, above all, the disillusionment with the high expectations aroused at the end of the nineteenth century by Cuban independence and the ideas of José Martí, and after 1959 by the Castro revolution.
In other words, the unorthodox relationship that Triana establishes between revolution and farce in Revolico en el Campo de Marte becomes both antagonistic and complementary. On the one hand, radical and fundamental changes in the political and socioeconomic situation of a country or region are usually devoid of humor and always have serious consequences regarding the life and death of their participants. On the other, Triana recognizes the potential of a revolutionary act to become a circus, a pandemonium, an unstable situation where it is almost impossible to identify the performers and their respective ideological stances. That is, it seems difficult to distinguish the «true» revolutionaries from the defenders of the status quo, and to know which one leads to the emergence and existence of the other. The suggestion is that, after the triumph of the revolutionary ideology -which came into being in reaction to the clownish, chaotic, historical immediate past- the now-powerful revolutionary rulers will become as reactionary as the former leaders and will not only suppress and silence all attempts at change, but will become as corrupt as the ones they replaced. The linkage between farce and revolution in Revolico is then based on notions of instability, polarization, contradiction, chaos, and, above all, role reversal, wherein, ironically, farce reveals more overtly its rebellious and profound nature, while revolution unmasks its caricaturesque dimensions and its capacity to mislead. Ironically, Diana Taylor's fear of simply «reducing the revolution to a spectacle»
(Theatre of Crisis 47) is accomplished in Revolico en el Campo de Marte in literal and metaphorical terms, when ridiculed and senseless repetitions characterize the revolutionary act. The play ends with the words of the tailor (maker and «un-maker» of garments and perhaps also of identities), with his reflection on the interaction between past and present, between the new expectations and the probable failures that mirror previous ones:
|
| (III: 205) | ||
[TAILOR.- You are time and nothing else. A time that mixes with the threads of other worlds, and in the present it is a spur that creates fragmented visions of plenitude and madness -the possibility of an impossibility, which turns your existence into a dream]. |
«Can revolution ever break out of the repetitive cycle? Rather than profound social upheaval, does revolution signal circular repetition, as in the revolutions of the earth around the sun? Or does it denote substitution, the process by which one power figure merely replaces another?»
(Theatre of Crisis 89-90). It is particularly significant that these unanswered questions posed by Taylor in relation to Triana's La noche de los asesinos not only shed light on Revolico's farcical characterization of revolution but also parody the impossibility to answer them. The rhetorical character of these quandaries as they relate to La noche de los asesinos reflects the grotesque substitution of the problematics of revolution dramatized in this play for the problematics of revolico in Triana's later piece. Nevertheless, the capacity to recognize in Revolico en el Campo de Marte the circular nature of history (the revolutionary governments are as corrupt as their predecessors) is dismantled by parodying any possible pattern that portrays a systematic, repetitive structure. The chaotic aspect of the action acknowledges the rampantly incoherent upheaval that destroys communication, meaning, social structures, family relations, sexual and economic arrangements, and even the supernatural dimensions portrayed through the presence of the santera and her spells. Farce's struggle against fixation seems to play tricks even on the notion of reversing the transcendental role of revolution in the lives of its participants, turning it into a comedy of intrigue and errors. The tension between portraying and dismantling revolution in artistic and political terms leaves the spectator with the idea of anachronistic, incoherent, and apparently meaningless transgressive action.
What we have seen through the dichotomy of revolution and revolico is that Revolico en el Campo de Marte scrutinizes traditional linguistic and artistic codes, which are represented in the persistent characterization of duality through opposing pairs: love/money, man/woman, revolution/revolico (carnivalesque upheaval), good/evil, married couples (Alicia/Luis, Enrique/Marieta), servants (Anita/Felo), siblings (Luis/Benjamín, Magdalena/Renato), and a variety of daring combinations. But in Triana's play, the evident dichotomies aim less at underlining the extremes than at stressing the emptiness of that intermediary space between existence and language. For example, the hyperbolic, false conception of love presented in Revolico establishes a paradoxical link with the valorization of money. That is, the notion of purity, faithfulness, and idealism connected with the Platonic idea of love is disparaged and becomes directly linked to greed and economic ambition and power. Ironically, these two essentially antagonistic elements -love and money- can represent, at different levels, similar structures of power that are capable of revealing their multiple and false masks. In Revolico, love and money can fuse their conflictive realities and also confuse the traditional role that each of them plays in the lives of the characters. For instance, Luis's marriage to Alicia is evidently the product of economic interest, and he recognizes it: «Mal pensé que el amor era/ acomodo y otra fruta/ desmadejada...»
(II, viii: 179-80) [I wrongly thought that love was comfort but it turned out to be an enervating fruit]. Meanwhile, Alicia also acknowledges that if Luis had been someone with prestige and power, she would have kept up appearances and would not have been concerned with his infidelities: «¿Luis?... Si él fuera el Presidente/ o un tipo de importancia/ bien le guardara la forma»
(II, ii: 164) [Luis?... If he were President or someone of importance, I would treat him politely]. As a result, the standard meanings of love and money are parodied and substituted with notions of excessive sexuality, arbitrary exchange of partners and resources, sexual harassment, exploitation, and the use of both violence and magic spells to achieve control over the desired person or, better, object. Consequently, what is initially characterized as love is in fact lust, physical attraction, sex; and what is understood as a basic instrument of commercial transactions becomes a source of greed. In the final scene, the tailor states as a sort of moral: «Y si el dinero entorpece,/ más envilece la guerra/ del sexo que se disfraza/ del amor en su contienda»
(III, xxi: 205) [If money damages, the war of sex, masked as love, degrades even more]. In other words, one recognizes that, beyond the purer, more abstract meanings of love, what ultimately prevails is the battle of the sexes -expressed through the disturbing nature of physical desire- and the possibility of fulfilling these desires through monetary means. This transgression of the ideal notion of love suggests the extent to which another ideal notion such as political freedom can become subjugated to the power of money and corruption.
It Revolico en el Campo de Marte the relationship between money and sex (not only between money and love) is one of the focal points of the play, since throughout the action, the first pair develops closer and comfortable links between its elements. Frequently, the characters' wishes -or, rather, sexual caprices- can be fulfilled only through the economic remuneration of an intermediary, who will intercede with tricks and subterfuges to unite the pairs, while the notions of love and freedom are left too weak to confront greed, sexual desire, and exploitation. In the initial scenes of the play, Luis's conversation with Rosa, the santera, is dominated by two images: one visual and one auditory. The visual one is portrayed by Luis's persistent action of counting money, putting his wallet into his pocket and pulling it out. The auditory one is represented by Rosa's constant shaking of a bag of money while she discusses with Luis his amorous afflictions. Rosa's implicit suggestion is that by trusting her with his money his now-unfortunate love life can drastically change (I, i: 141-42). Nevertheless, even the immense power of money seems to have its limits and its own devastating consequences:
|
| (II, iii: 165) | ||
|
| (II, iv: 166) | ||
[ENRIQUE.- Is money the cause of this grotesque give-and-take, or does it function as colophon, or is it the varnish of a pause? If this is the case, why do I feel such persistent suspicions? [...] |
LUIS.- Could it be that money hinders and deforms and prostitutes in a hateful and disgusting dance?] |
Throughout Triana's Revolico en el Campo de Marte the artistic aspects of the play and the Cuban sociopolitical environments that are evoked (the Cuba of the first two decades of the twenthieth century -1900 or 1917- and the Cuba of 1970) become mirrors capable of reflecting a broad spectrum of angles from which to observe -but above all, judge- the multiple, ambiguous, contradictory realities of revolutionary acts recreated and parodied by this dramatic work. The farcical dimension of Triana's play attempts to reveal its chameleonic role. It pretends to be everything that it is not, and ends up becoming a conglomerate of appearances and evasions of what it could actually be: maybe a theatrical game, or the reflection of the pseudocircular and ironic nature of history, or a mordant criticism of the Cuban revolutionary present, or a parodic imitation of the literary past, among many others. The unmasking act characteristic of Revolico en el Campo de Marte, which lays bare artistic experiments, the mixing of dramatic genres, the inconsistencies of the Cuban revolution, and its similarities to the island's corrupted historical past, does not necessarily imply the removal of one «reality» for another in which the supposed new face becomes permanent (see Ruiz Ramón 126). Instead, the unmasking will allow us to recognize the underlying cultural and sociopolitical structures of the play that demand to be interpreted, while recognizing that these structures will also be displaced (although not necessarily substituted).
In conclusion, Revolico's in-depth knowledge of its cultural and theatrical traditions and of its sociopolitical origins (the Cuban war for Independence in 1898, the formation of a Republic in 1902, the Revolution of 1959, and the circumstances of the early 1970s) is evidenced by the presence of themes and techniques that will simultaneously recreate the past as well as quarrel with it. These themes and techniques are, as noted earlier, the overt allusion to the comedy of errors and to the cloak-and-dagger Golden Age play (with its use of verse); the implicit allusion to the antislavery literature of the nineteenth century (Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés); the allusion to the Cuban buffo theatre of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with its particular characterization of language and society; the influence of African religions in Cuban culture and literature; the incorporation of absurdist elements and those of the esperpento with its social and philosophical overtones; and the significant role played by monetary issues that contrast with parodied traditional amorous codes27.
The theatricalization of these formulaic conventional themes requires not only the spectator's general familiarity with the dramatized events but also his/her recognition that these artistic and sociopolitical codes will be subject to a thorough scrutiny and parodization. That is, the insertion into a modern frame of theatrical forms and themes, of structures, languages, moods, characters, and plots from various times and traditions, emphasize the simultaneous harmony and tension that will create the farcical tone of the play and will problematize the dialogue between past and present in Cuba's artistic and political history. The possible suggestion that both art and history in Revolico have a circular, repetitive nature is not only appealing but concrete, but it is nevertheless transgressed in the play when one recognizes that this recycling of artistic forms and this repetition of historical events are caricatured and hyperbolized. Therefore, Revolico seems to choose both the act of creating and recreating artistic forms and political acts of the past and the present, while also transgressing through parody their dramatic construction as a strategy to reveal the many disguises of the characters and of a society dishonest with their/its own commitments and beliefs.
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