“El cuarto de atrás” by Carmen Martín Gaite

“El cuarto de atrás”, published in 1978, is a book written by Carmen Martín Gaite. Francisco Franco Bahamonde, the Spanish dictator, was already dead when that happened, and the country was in the transition to the present democracy. Though Franquism was over, its consequences were still presents in the Spanish intellectual community during the transition, and this novel is an example of that.

“El cuarto de atrás” reminds a little to “Reivinidcación del conde don Julián” (1970), because both books, far from realism, go deep into the subconscious. This one is written in first person and uses the present tense to narrate the plot. It tells a story about a woman called Carmen who can be identified as the author. She went to bed and unsuccessfully tried to sleep, and then several unusual things happened. A man in black visited her, and they started a conversation that helped her to remember the most basic things about her past.  When the book gets to an end, it is hard to say if everything that happened was a dream or something real.

Obviously the memory problems are related to a traumatic experience, such the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship. But this personal experience goes further to become a metaphor of the entire country, which will start to remember, during the transition, a part of the Spanish History that Franco tried to erase. The article entitled “Re-inhabiting private space: Carmen Martín Gaite's El Cuarto de atrás”, by Carmiña Palerm, points out that “the protagonist can be seen as the transmitter of an oral discourse, a discourse that had been confined to the private space of the household up until the death of Franco” (119). In several occasions, the book talks about using the fantasy to scape away from reality, and that is what the main character did when she was a child, imagining two fantastic places in order to ignore reality: Cúnigan y Bergai.

It is a very nice book to understand some psychological aspects of the Spanish Transition, like the struggles to remember the past, and the confusion of a society that is finally free to look back and share their experiences without fear.

“Reinvindicación del Conde don Julián” by Juan Goytisolo

  “Reinvindicación del Conde don Julián” (1970) is a very hard book to read. The narrator in this novel uses, most of the time, a second person perspective. One could say that there is an “I” that mirrors a “you”. This book plays with language punctuation (avoiding periods and capitalization at the beginning of sentences) and spelling. This experimentation in writing reminds us of the literature done before the Spanish Civil War. It would be unfair not to point out that this experimentation had started many years before. As stated before in previous posts, books written right after the war avoided formal experimentation, and went back to a very traditional literature akin to the Regime. However, in the 40’s, some novels looked for strategies to innovate and, at the same time, survive censorship (e.g. “La Familia de Pascual Duarte” (1942) or “Nada” (1944)). Little by little, experimentation was more and more obvious, like seen in “La Colmena” (1946), “El Jarama” (1955), “Tiempo de Silencio” (1962) or “Reivindicación del Conde don Julián” (1970). But because of the Regime’s control in literature, some of them had to be published in other countries, like this novel by Juan Goytisolo.  A big difference with other previous novels is that “Reivindicación del Conde don Julián” breaks with realism, just like other books by Goytisolo. This break with realism can be observed in other authors and novels, like in Carmen’s “El cuarto de atrás” (1978). Although Goytisolo’s writing has been influenced by French literature; I prefer to see it as a progression inside the post war Spanish literature.

This book recovers the Moorish invasion of Spain with the intention of its destruction. Full of violence and sex, rapes and treason, it pretends to destroy a Spain that has been built under the Castilian perspective.

Summarizing this book would be very complicated, since it is a journey to the character’s subconscious and there is no clear plot. The novel is divided into 4 chapters, taking the reader deeper, and deeper into the fantasy of the obliteration of the Spanish myth, a Spain that has been built on the imposition of the Castilian culture. The book starts with the character waking up, who then walks the city of Tangier while the narration mixes reality and thoughts. Reality slowly loses space, and the subconscious takes control.

"Cinco horas con Mario", by Miguel Delibes

Going back to the postwar literature, today I would like to talk about “Cinco horas con Mario” (1966), by Miguel Delibes. This is a very easy book to read, which combines perfectly the main character’s private life with social and political issues. Carmen’s husband, Mario, just died, and after his wake she spent five hours alone beside his corpse. During this time she talked to him non-stop about their life together.

The novel has 29 chapters; an omniscient narrator narrates the first and last one, and Carmen narrates the other 27 chapters in the middle. I agree with Alfonso Rey, who points out in a paper entitled “Forma y sentido de ‘Cinco Horas con Mario’” inserted in “Historia y crítica de la literature española” (1980), that Carmen does not talk in a monologue, but more like in a dialogue. Alfonso Rey’ reasoning for this is that Carmen was talking to a dead-Mario as if he was alive and listening. She is having a discussion with her husband, in which she tries to make several political, social and religious statements that make her a not impartial narrator. 

Through Carmen’s words the reader is able to access the conservative Regimen’s ideology, which makes a huge contrast with her husband’s life. The ideological differences between both of them are significant. Carmen criticized, even despised, her husband’s ideology. Thinking of herself as a victim, Carmen became a selfish person that did not love nor understood Mario.