Although Don Alejo, as “creator” of Estación El Olivo, is a benign god figure, he is
ambiguous by reason of being politically and morally corrupt (he also plots the destruc-
tion of the town, since he has decided to convert the whole area to vineyards). His wager, the precipitating factor that brings Manuela’s family into being, is a parodic perversion of the concept of Christian marriage, and his association with the powers of evil is symbol-79
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ized by four vicious black dogs that accompany him (similar dogs appear in The Obscene Bird of Night). The ambiguity of Manuela is primarily sexual, for he desires ardently to be a woman; some similar ambiguity appears in Pancho, who is muscular and seemingly vir-ile but in reality is cowardly and in the closet. The ambiguity of Japonesita, virgin madam of the bordello, is underlined by her lack of sexual maturity, her exaggerated thrift, and illusions that hinge on her buying a phonograph—a pathetically unrealistic hope, given the reality of her economic situation.
The catalyst in Hell Has No Limits is Pancho, who decides after a meeting with Don Alejo that he will enjoy one last spree at the brothel. He makes sexual advances toward
Japonesita, but having aroused her (all the while thinking of his truck—both a Freudian
sexual symbol and an instrument of suicidal escape), he sadistically rejects her for
Manuela, whose dance provokes him, not so much to sexual desire as to murderous fanta-
sies of disemboweling and leaving her lifeless.
The novel’s brutal climax resolves Manuela’s existential identity crisis (brought on by
age and the depressing material situation). Leaving the brothel with Pancho and his
brother-in-law, Octavio, after the flamenco performance, Manuela makes the mistake of
kissing Pancho, who fears exposure of his homosexuality; this unleashes a nightmarish
flight-and-pursuit sequence in which Manuela is beaten and attempts to seek refuge in the home of Don Alejo. Caught and beaten again, Manuela is sodomized by Pancho and
Octavio and left nearly dead by the river. Whether this episode is fatal is also ambiguous; the novel ends on a note of pessimism as Japonesita extinguishes the brothel light and retires to the howling of Don Alejo’s dogs and the sobs of a prostitute’s child, traditional motifs of doom that combine with the blackness of night to underscore the impression of impending death and oblivion. Because of his psychological complexity, existential revolt, and commitment to ideals of art and beauty, Manuela is one of Donoso’s most memorable
characters.
The Obscene Bird of Night
The Obscene Bird of Night, considered by critics an antinovel because of Donoso’s abandonment of traditional plot, character, and thematic development in favor of a more
spontaneous depiction of reality and a virtuosic display of stylistic artistry, is the author’s most complex work. Filled with grotesque fantasies, characters with multiple and fluctuating identities or protean, disintegrating personalities, the novel does away with conventions of logic and of mimetic literature, discarding any portrayal of objective reality to present the dilemma of humanity before the existential void.
Humberto Peñaloza, narrator and protagonist, begins as an incipient or would-be
writer whose poverty obliges him to accept the job of secretary to Don Jerónimo Azcoitía, a wealthy aristocrat and influential politician. Jerónimo’s wife, Inés, inspires Humberto’s erotic fantasies, although her witchlike old servant, Peta Ponce, intrudes upon many of
them, preventing the consummation—even in his mind—of Humberto’s desire. When
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Jerónimo and Inés fail to have a son to carry on the family’s distinguished name, Peta
Ponce supposedly arranges for Humberto to have intercourse with Inés, who conceives
and gives birth to Boy, a repugnant little monster, deformed to such an extreme that
Jerónimo has him reared on an isolated, distant estate that is placed under the direction of Humberto. Whether Humberto fathers Boy is highly questionable; it may be only another
fantasy, as are many other incidents in the novel (the ultimate reality of Boy is also
questionable).
The distant estate, La Rinconada, peopled by monsters—gathered by Jerónimo so that
Boy will not believe himself abnormal—is a grotesque, absurd mirror image of the
Azcoitía estate and a possible expressionist allegory of Chilean society. Years later, after surgery for an ulcer, Humberto becomes obsessed with the notion that his physician, Dr.
Azula, has removed eighty percent of his organs; Humberto abandons La Rinconada to
take refuge in La Casa—a former convent that has become a domicile for retired female
servants—where he retreats into silence and is called Mudito (mute).
Inés, now aging and frustrated in her aspirations to maternity, fails in a mission to the Vatican in which she seeks symbolic perpetuity, via the quest for beatification of a homonymic forebear, and also takes refuge in La Casa, where she spends her time despoiling
the grotesque old inmates of their few miserable belongings in a dog-racing game that she always wins. Or does she? The visionary and phantasmagoric world of the protagonist-narrator is so fluctuating, so surrealistic and ambiguous, that the reader assumes the narrative consciousness to be schizophrenic or psychotic and mistrusts his representation of
events. Humberto’s schizophrenic symptoms include withdrawal from reality, hallucina-
tions, living in a world of fantasy, systems of false selves, masks or personas, fear or terror of engulfment by others or the world, a feeling of imprisonment, and the imagining of
himself as an infant. Donoso’s uncanny capturing of the schizophrenic’s perceptions un-
doubtedly owes something to his own experience of mental illness, with transient schizo-
phrenia and paranoia induced by his inability to tolerate the painkillers given him after his operation. It is possible—and even plausible—that most of the novel’s characters are
phantoms generated by Humberto’s deteriorating mind, and that the two worlds of the
Azcoitía estate and the isolation of La Rinconada respectively represent the rational world of visible reality and the dangers of the invisible world of the unconscious.
A House in the Country
Although the labyrinthine, dilapidated casa has been seen as an archetypal Jungian
symbol of terror, it may also be related to Donoso’s use of the decaying mansion throughout his fiction as a symbol of Chilean society with its archaic social structures and decadence. Yet another such house, a seemingly limitless labyrinth with miles of underground passages, secret rooms, false or hollow walls, and hidden doors, appears in A House in the Country, seen by some as an allegory of Chilean politics and referring concretely to the military coup of 1973, following in the wake of other novels about Latin American dicta-81
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tors, such as Alejo Carpentier’s El recurso del método (1974; Reasons of State, 1976), Augusto Roa Bastos’s Yo el Supremo (1974), and Gabriel García Márquez’s El otoño del patriarca (1975; The Autumn of the Patriarch, 1975). If this is true, Donoso’s novel does not present the biography of a dictator so much as the ideological configurations of a historical event, alluding to the opponents, victims and villains, the personal concentration of power and attendant aspiration to perpetuity, physical and intellectual repression, official rhetoric, and external intervention, with the house or mansion and its surrounding outbuildings constituting a metaphor for the totalitarian state, especially for the political prison, concentration camp, or detention center.
Beyond allusions to specific concepts or historically recognizable persons, A House in the Country is significant for its
portrayal of a general problem in Latin America, a vast complex transcending geographical and political boundaries and involving the unholy alliance between oligarchies and foreign interests, militarism and dictatorships, the exploitation of the lower class and the lack of freedom of speech and of the press. It is an abstract political allegory of the abuse of power based on bureaucratic structures, the novel of a family dynasty whose fortune is based on mining in a remote rural area of lush vegetation and unreal, stylized geography, with significant subthemes such as adolescent rebellion, the conflict between idealism and materialism, the generation gap, psychosexual repression, conformism and hypocrisy, inauthentic values and lifestyles, and radical solitude
and the inability to communicate.
Set in an imaginary country whose flora and fauna appear to be drawn from all of
South America, A House in the Country employs a vague chronology, as befits its mythic and ahistorical nature. As something of a dystopia with strong existentialist undercurrents, it portrays a Kafkaesque world where utopia has gone awry via the symbolic narra-
tion of a “revolution”: Children who take advantage of their elders’ absence on an ex-
tended and unexplained trip take over the estate and set up their own regime, instituting some reforms among the natives but eventually quarreling among themselves and finally
being discovered and chastised after a parental display of force involving the use of troops.
A House in the Country is thus no more a realistic portrayal of recognizable reality than is The Obscene Bird of Night, although powerful realities of another order are captured and conveyed with forceful impact.
Donoso’s later novels also display vanguardist tendencies, employing variants of the
metanovel and self-conscious fiction, the purpose of which is to erase the boundaries between the real and fictitious worlds, with the author being simultaneously creator and novelistic character, the novel both that which the reader peruses and another work whose
genesis is subject or problem of the text at hand. The problem of the relationships among author, text, and reader is a leitmotif in The Obscene Bird of Night, A House in the Country, and El jardín de al lado, where it assumes preponderant proportions. In an encounter between the novelist and one of the Ventura dynasty in A House in the Country, the character criticizes many details of the narrative, a situation elaborated in El jardín de al lado; in 82
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both works, Donoso presents his literary theories or comments upon them, burlesques the
expectations of the reader of conventional novels, parodies literary convention, and re-
peatedly destroys the mimetic illusion in favor of an investigation into the problems of the novel as genre, thereby further separating his last five novels from those of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Without ceasing to write of Chile, he became more cosmopolitan in his choice of
settings and characters; without abandoning social concerns, he incorporated broader
themes and more universal literary preoccupations.
Janet Pérez
Other major works
short fiction: Veraneo, y otros cuentos, 1955; Dos cuentos, 1956; El Charlestón, 1960 (abridged as Cuentos, 1971; Charleston, and Other Stories, 1977); Los mejores cuentos de José Donoso, 1965; Cuentos, 1971; Seis cuentos para ganar, 1985.
plays: Sueños de mala muerte, pb. 1985; Este domingo: Versión teatral de la novela homónima, pb. 1990.
poetry: Poemas de un novelista, 1981.
nonfiction: Historia personal del “boom,” 1972 ( The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History, 1977).
Bibliography
Callan, Richard J. Jung, Alchemy, and José Donoso’s Novel “El obsceno pájaro de la
noche.” Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. Examines The Obscene Bird of Night from the perspective of Carl Jung’s analytical psychology. Callan explains how Donoso created his own literary version of Jungian psychology to focus on themes of
imprisonment and disguise.
Carbajal, Brent J. The Veracity of Disguise in Selected Works of José Donoso: Illusory Deception. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. Carbajal discusses the use of masks, both literal and metaphorical, in four of Donoso’s novels. One chapter focuses
on the role of the double in his lesser-known novel Donde van a morir los elefantes.
Finnegan, Pamela May. The Tension of Paradox: José Donoso’s “The Obscene Bird of
Night” as Spiritual Exercises. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. Finnegan examines the novel as an expression of humanity’s estrangement from the world. A difficult
but rewarding study for advanced students. Includes a bibliography.
Friedman, Mary Lusky. The Self in the Narratives of José Donoso: Chile, 1924-1996.
Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. A detailed examination of a major theme
in Donoso’s writing: the perils of establishing a self. Friedman focuses on his later
works, including the novels The Garden Next Door, Curfew, and Donde van a morir los elefantes, to describe how Donoso’s works expressed his conception of selfhood.
González Mandri, Flora. José Donoso’s House of Fiction: A Dramatic Construction of
Time and Place. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1995. A study of
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Donoso’s incorporation of masks and houses in his fiction, the latter implicating allu-
sions to Henry James. González Mandri focuses on his novels and the novella Taratuta (1990). Includes detailed notes, an extensive bibliography, and an index.
King, Sarah E. The Magical and the Monstrous: Two Faces of the Child-Figure in the Fiction of Julio Cortázar and José Donoso. New York: Garland, 1992. Informative, although the short citations in Spanish are not translated into English. Nevertheless, this comparative study of two figures of the Spanish American boom in literature is
valuable.
McMurray, George R. Authorizing Fictions: José Donoso’s “Casa de Campo.” London: Tamesis Books, 1992. Chapters on Donoso’s handling of voice and time, his narrative
strategies (re-presenting characters), and his use of interior duplication and distortion.
Includes a bibliography.
_______. José Donoso. Boston: Twayne, 1979. An excellent introductory study, with chapters on Donoso’s biography, his short stories, The Obscene Bird of Night, and Sacred Families. Includes a chronology, detailed notes, and an annotated bibliography.
Magnarelli, Sharon. Understanding José Donoso. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1993. Thoroughgoing study of Donoso’s works. The first chapter,
“How to Read José Donoso,” offers an introduction to his work. Separate chapters ana-
lyze his novels Coronation, This Sunday, Hell Has No Limits, The Obscene Bird of Night, A House in the Country, and Curfew.
84
ANATOLE FRANCE
Born: Paris, France; April 16, 1844
Died: La Béchellerie, near Tours, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, France; October 12, 1924
Also known as: Jacques-Anatole-François Thibault
Principal long fiction
Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881 ( The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1890) Les Désirs de Jean Servien, 1882 ( The Aspirations of Jean Servien, 1912) Thaïs, 1890 (English translation, 1891)
La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque, 1893 ( At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque, 1912)
Le Lys rouge, 1894 ( The Red Lily, 1898)
L’Histoire contemporaine, 1897-1901 (collective title for the first 4 novels that follow; Contemporary History)
L’Orme du mail, 1897 ( The Elm Tree on the Mall, 1910)
Le Mannequin d’osier, 1897 ( The Wicker Work Woman, 1910)
L’Anneau d’améthyste, 1899 ( The Amethyst Ring, 1919)
Monsieur
Bergeret à Paris, 1901 ( Monsieur Bergeret in Paris, 1922)
Histoire comique, 1903 ( A Mummer’s Tale, 1921)
L’Île des pingouins, 1908 ( Penguin Island,
1914)
Les Dieux ont soif, 1912 ( The Gods Are Athirst, 1913)
La Révolte des anges, 1914 ( The Revolt of the Angels, 1914)
Other literary forms
Of the twenty-five volumes that make up the standard French edition of the complete
works of Anatole France (frahns), more than fifteen are given over to one form or another of prose fiction: ten novels (thirteen if one counts the tetralogy Contemporary History as four separate novels), ten collections of short stories, and four volumes of fictionalized autobiography. The remainder of the twenty-five-volume set exhibits a startling variety of literary forms: poetry, theater, biography, history, literary criticism, philosophy, journalism, and polemical writings.
France’s first publication was a book-length critical study of the French Romantic poet
Alfred de Vigny (1868), after which he published two volumes of his own poetry, one con-
taining lyric poems, the other a play in verse, and several long narrative poems. In the 1880’s and 1890’s, he wrote a regular weekly column, mostly about books and the literary world, for a prominent Paris newspaper, Le Temps. The best of those columns were republished in five volumes under the title La Vie littéraire (1888-1892; On Life and Letters, 1911-1914). His major venture into the writing of history was La Vie de Jeanne d’Arc 85
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Anatole France
(Library of Congress)
(1908; The Life of Joan of Arc, 1908), published after a quarter of a century of research.
That same year, he published his one original prose work for the theater, La Comédie de celui qui épousa une femme muette (1903; The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, 1915), a farce based on a well-known medieval fabliau.
France’s major speeches and occasional writings, on such issues of the times as the
Dreyfus affair, socialism, and pacifism, were collected and published in several volumes under the title Vers les temps meilleurs (1906, 1949). Philosophical meditations on human nature and civilization can be found in a volume titled Le Jardin d’Épicure (1894; The Garden of Epicurus, 1908), consisting of pieces on general subjects originally written for his weekly newspaper column and not included in the volumes of On Life and Letters.
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