Tiempo de Silencio (1962) - Luís Martín-Santos

Sobre el autor y la obra

-          Martín-Santos

o   Spain, 1924-1964

o   Considered one of the greatest Spanish novelists of the 20^th century

-          This work was censored initially; an uncensored version wasn’t published until 1981

Comps ideas to consider

-          La novela experimental: la ruptura con el realismo: Luis Martín-Santos

Secondary Source – Cambridge Companion to Spanish Novel, Chap. 11: Gonzalo Sobejano

-          Critical or dialectical realism (180)

-          Collective protagonist – whole country of Spain, represented through Madrid (181)

Notes from article: Voz narrativa y protagonista

-          Pedro-narrador señala al lector y a sí mismo que "un hombre encuentra en su ciudad no sólo su determinación como persona y su razón de ser, sino también los impedimentos múltiples y los obstáculos invencibles que le impiden llegar a ser." 

-          Pedro demuestra tener una gran agudeza crítica al hacer tales comentarios como las descripciones de Madrid, la disertación sobre el cuadro de Goya, y las interpretaciones de la literatura española. 

Characters

-          Pedro – protagonist, recently graduated doctor

-          Amador – Pedro’s assistant

-          Muecas – guy who provides rats for Institute’s experiments

-          Florita – Muecas’s oldest daughter

-          Dora – daughter of the guy who Pedro rents his pension from

-          Dorita – Dora’s illegitimate daughter

-          Cartucho – Florita’s boyfriend

Summary (from Wikipeda)

** This summary is based on the film, not the novel, but seems pretty in line with the book.

The story is set in Madrid in the late 1940s early 1950s during the first years of Franco’s regime. Pedro Martín, a young and ambitious doctor, is studying the effect of cancerous cells on mice, but he has run out of mice in his laboratory, since they do not breed there, and he has no funds to purchase more of these expensive laboratory animals from the United States. Nevertheless, his assistant, Amador, informs him that he gave some of the mice to an old trapper, nicknamed “el Muecas”, who lives in precarious conditions in a shanty town outside Madrid, and that this poor man has successfully bred them with the help of the natural heat of his daughters. The incredulous scientist goes to the shanty town to obtain the mice. There, Pedro meets Muecas, Muecas's wife Ricarda and their two daughters Florita and Conchi. With the warmth of the women’s breasts, as the flirtatious Florita shows Pedro, the mice are able to reproduce.

Pedro himself lives in a modest boarding house run by a military widow and her daughter Dora, who also has a vivacious daughter, Dorita. The owner of the boarding house tries to encourage the doctor to fall in love with his granddaughter, Dorita, so that his medical career may release them all from a life of squalor and penury. During her birthday reunion, Dorita clearly shows Pedro that she is interested in him. Pedro and his rich friend Matias discuss literature and painting in a café and later they go out for a night of heavy partying in a house of prostitution in which Matias gets involves with a prostitute that closely resembles his own mother. Returning to his boarding house, Pedro goes to Dorita’s bed. He excuses himself for being drunk, but she welcomes his advanced and they make love, starting a relationship.

Pedro is awakened at dawn by Muecas who needs his help as a doctor and begs him to save the life of his daughter, Florita, who is severely hemorrhaging after a botched abortion. Pedro tries to do what he can to save the girl’s life, but she dies in spite of his efforts. With the horrific death of her sister, Conchi reveals that Muecas was the father of the dead child in an incestuous relationship with his own daughter. Cartucho, a low life tough guy, boyfriend of the butchered Florita, is jealous of the doctor and after talking to Amador, extracts a false confession. Amador makes him wrongly belief that Pedro is guilty of having aborted the child and killed the mother. Later that day, Pedro is sought by the local police. Dorita warns him and Pedro hides in the local brothel run by Doña Luisa. Meanwhile, Matias begs Amador to tell the police the truth of Pedro's innocence, but Amador refuses to cooperate.

The police finally apprehend Pedro, who surprisingly, confesses rather than admit the truth because of the absurdity of the situation. Ricarda, Florita's mother, follows the remains of her deceased daughter to the place where the autopsy is performed. She can not calm down and is arrested for interrupting the medical examiners. Meanwhile Pedro's girlfriend, Dorita and Matias try to help him using Matias's influences in order to set Pedro free, but they do not succeed. However, in the commissary, Ricarda, realizing that the doctor has wrongly accused of her daughter death, tells what have happened. Her testimony saves the doctor from prison. To celebrate his freedom, Pedro and Dorita go to a fair. They have been followed by Cartucho, who jealously watches Pedro dance with Dorita. Still believing that Pedro is guilty of Florita's death, Cartucho takes advantage of a moment in which Pedro is away buying some sweets and stabs Dorita. When Pedro returns just a moment later, Dorita is already dead.

Themes/ideas

-          Writing style

o   Third person narration, sometimes omniscient and sometimes limited

o   Long, run-on sentences

o   Some use of local dialect

o   Random asides with more philosophical thought

-          Realism

o   Stark description of reality

-          Novela posguerra

o   You can see the lasting effects of the war on society/town (poverty, lack of resources for scientific experiment)

o   Negative perception of Spanish identity

-          Various social perspectives/classes

o   Upper class (Matías and his mother)

o   Intellectuals/scientists (Pedro, Matías, the philosopher)

o   The state (the police)

o   The lower class, almost poor people (Dora, Dorita, Amador)

o   Poor people (Muecas’s family, Cartucho)

-          Costumbrismo

-          Gender/women

o   Some description of women’s condition after the war

o   Florita – botched abortion

-          Absurdity

General plot notes

-          The novel begins...
In the war, they ate rats (and cats). "Proteínas para el pueblo desnutrido."
Cancer research with specially selected mice who are dying faster than they're reproducing. Muecas has some extra mice. Mice were stolen from a lab. 

-          Describes poorly planned and poor towns...long sentences!
"un hombre es la imagen de una ciudad y una ciudad las vísceras puestas al revés de un hombre." Cities, in short, are not the most wonderful, beautiful places they can appear to be. 

-          (These run-on sentences are going to kill me...)

-          "Así que mi hija prefirió un mediohombre que ella podía tener en un puño o doblar en pedazos cuando se le hubiera puesto en la idea hacerlo y que así y todo, fue suficiente a quitarla la doncellez ya algo apolillada..." Had his grandchild when she was 19.

-          Guy still describing his daughter "Así es como descubrí el encanto de la juerga flamenca, pues maldito para lo que servía mi chaperonamiento." (starts to drink rum...owns a pensión/guest house) 

-          "Comenzó entonces a venirme otra clase de clientela" that required them to dress like widows, act with more discretion. 

-          Don Pedro, in chabolas, "hacía caso omiso de estas actividades marginales de su secuaz"- just excited to get his mice. Pedro has a very scientific viewpoint of things (e.g. rotting calamares)

-          Fimosis, sífilis, venéreo, consultorio económico... Pedro, ante estas muestra de la ciencia a cuya edificación él mismo colaboraba, no se sentía molesto sin que noblemente consideraba esta proyección sobre el bajo pueblo y la masa indocta de tan sublimes principios.

-          (worries a little that the girls on the farm could catch mice's disease)

-          "La segunda generación estaba gravemente oscurecida por la madre prepotente y por la consciencia de su historia anterior." Some talk about the 1st/2nd/3rd generations, how people change

-          RE: The War- "Desgraciadamente-sonreía Pedro-yo soy pacífico. No me interesan más luchas que las de los virus con los anticuerpos." 

-          ¿Por qué ir a estudiar las costumbres humanas hasta la antipódica isla de Tasmania? Como si aquí (en las chabolas) no viéramos con mayor originalidad resolver los eternos problemas a hombres de nuestra misma habla....Como si no se supiera que la edad media de pérdida de la virginidad es más baja en estas lonjas que en las tribus de África central dotadas de tan complicados y grotescos ritos de iniciación (Interesting social judgements/commentaries....)

-          Local dialect....

-          Cartucho is angry at Florita...¡Que puede parecerse un crío a su padre! Es igual que yo. Pero no hay pruebas. Ella ahora lo deja a su hermana la fea y a hacer la carrera con la nariz rota...." 

-          Pedro talks to Amador/Florita about the mice. Goes to their chabola to pick them up. He wants to know how they're keeping them alive, but Amador is resistant to show him. 

-          The mice are kept in rusty old cages and Muecas and his daughters all share one mattress (for warmth and to know the girls aren't "out" at night). Mice slept in plastic bags on top of the women. (WEIRD!)

-          Muecas' prejudices:
Una certidumbre despreciativa permitía encontrar en los rostros de los coreanos la marca de la inominia y de la raza inferior. (Muecas thinks he's a big deal for doing business with a Dr.)

-          Pedro in streets of Madrid. Observing night scenes-coffee shops/taxis. 

-          "Lo que Cervantes está gritando a voces es que su loco no estaba realmente loco, sino que hacía lo que hacía para poder reírse del cura y del barbero, ya que si se hubiera reído de ellos sin haberse mostrado loco, no se lo habrían tolerado..."

-          Pedro and rich friend Matías discuss painting/go out partying/see prostitutes. (from Wiki)

-          "El número de desnudos que pinta indica el nivel alcanzado por la represión de un pueblo-opinó confusamente Pedro pensando en sus propias represiones." German guy is showing them his paintings. (Mentions of WWII, gas chambers, ghettos)
Now, they start drinking (as mentioned above). Matías, in the whorehouse waiting room, launches into a ridiculous speech to the "vírgenes de Jerusalén".
Pedro ends up at home, with Dorita. "Te quiero-siente Pedro que va su boca pronunciando, prometiendo, desliando..."

-          Florita is getting an abortion. Losing a lot of blood. (Her dad sits on her-squeezes out contents of her bowels…awful!)  She seems dead before the procedure starts…

-          Muecas smacks la hermanilla who accuses him of causing her death/performing the abortion.

-          Meet Cartucho, who’s chabola is AWFUL, unclean, a disaster. Cartucho threatens Amador, who says Muecas is responsible. Amador then says “Fue el medico”

-          Seeiming random, long aside….philospphical and (indecipherable, to me)

-          Flash to a medical lconference where Pedro attended. (This book is very hard to read because of the long sentences.

-          

-          Costumbrismo: Dorita’s mom ordering horchata when it’s too cold, orders Mahou beer instead (beer of Madrid) with black olives.

-          Talks about bars where men enter, with free alcohol, with a cover charge. And women enter free (sin derecho a consumición) –not feminist at all!

-          “El buen pueblo, con su permiso para divertirse se apretaba a la otra parte del pueblo  que le había caído en suere y procuraba , con ese pedacito de cosa, consolarse de los trabajos y los días que arrastradamente cen sin remedio sobre él y sacaba fuerza de flaqueza para hacer como si divirtiera (like the Enlightenment/ Espectáculo-Feijoo)

-          Cartucho shows up, tells Dorita “Vamos a bailar, guapa.” , stabs her, “la venganza había sido ejecutada.”

Notes from a random article "Novela española contemporánea":

-          Censure could be a good thing for literature of the posguerra because it forces things to be said indirectly. 

-          Cela: descripción satírica de costumbres y paisajes contemporáneos

-          la novela adquiere dimensiones más profundas y evidentes.

-          Ana María Matute: cree un mundo fantasía infantil poético y fantasmagórico a la vez. La gran contribución suya es plantear un problema ético y moral en cuanto a todas las guerras mediante un uso de metáforas claves dentro de un sistema formal que se va desarrollando en la obra.  "ellos" y "nosotros". Matute enlaza la quemazón de judíos en Mallorca en el siglo XV-con la crueldad de todos en la isla, y su división en dos bandos--con la matanza entre españoles por las fechas en que su novela tiene lugar. Vista así la obra Doble plano de recuerdo de infancia, proceso de hacerse mujer Matia, y de búsqueda de raíces ante la auto-destrucción de una nación

-          vamos de hechos particulares a generalizaciones humanas

-          Cinco horas con Mario

o   profundo estudio psicológico de la mentalidad de una mujer de clase media española.

o   -van resumiendo la vida que han llevado juntos, y retratan la sociedad vacía de valores en que se mueven.

o   sintáxis de flujo de consciencia.

-          Tiempo de silencio-

o   El lenguaje, o búsqueda de un nuevo lenguaje expresivo, es lo que la da una cualidad especial.

o   Martín Santos deja a su héroe (?) en una encrucijada existencial, consciente de sus fracasos anteriores, a punto de empezar otro rumbo en su vida, y ante un inexorable signo de interrogación irónico.

o   -singular modo de narrar mediante el cual el narrador y Pedro se funden algunas veces, mientras que otras se establece una distancia que permite al narrador más su voz de auto omnisciente.

o   Pedro-pertenece a la pequeña burguesía. Penetra las clases altas por su amistad con Matías y las chabolas con Muevas.

o   quedan claros el atraso científico y espiritual de España a través de los tiempos, o-en un contexto más general, el papel del hombre razonante en una sociedad industrial.

o   Características del lenguaje:

§  1. amontonamiento (“aunque no gratuito ni barroco”)

§  2. entretejido del habla coloquial con términos científicos o filosóficos

§  3. suprema ironía del narrador, que nos recuerda a Cervantes, Quevedo, Larra, y Valle-Inclán

-          Ciudad: importancia metafísica

-          -estilo coloquial directo sirve para efectuar la simbiosis entre hombre de pueblo y hombre de ciudad.

-          -limits on the freedom of the individual in a city.

-          -es, a la vez, costumbrista-realista-y-alegórico/filosófica.

-           

-          -Hay “un absurdo” que afecta la obra (Pedro, llevado por circunstancias fatídicas, a intervenir en un aborto que ya había empezado el padre de la chica.

-          -Pierde su empleo en el laboratorio por el mal nombre que eso le da.

-          -Then, Pedro’s girlfriend is stabbed by the chulo, el amante de la joven del aborto.

-          -Al terminar la obra, Pedro está camino de un pueblo en la sierra par servir de medico local.

-          -could be considered bildungsroman. could also discuss themes of fatalidad.

-          -Maybe the end can be interpreted as Pedro’s acceptance of the fact that maybe being a town medic is just as important as winning nobel prize for research (again, highlighting the retraso científico in Spain).

-          Martín-Santos “deja al lector en el aire, entre la posibilidad de rendención del hombre por un proceso de liberación y responsabilidad, y la ironía final que roba al individuo su libertad, y lo somete a una fuerza externa  que lo domina y aplasta.”

-          In general in Spain at this time: Censure…BUT, beginning to crack and open to the outside world because of influx of tourists and emigration of Spaniards to work in other countries.