Antonio Buero Vallejo

Acknowledgments

The central ideas of this book were developed through conversations and academic collaborations with many invaluable friends and colleagues. My own analyses would be much poorer without the benefit of their vast knowledge. I must particularly recognize John Heil’s insights into Aristotle’s Poetics, which were the foundation for my interest in tragedy. Isabel Gómez Sobrino’s study of cantautores, Spain’s singer-songwriters, opened my eyes to the connections between Buero’s tragedies and Spain’s movement to recuperate historical memory of the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship. Stephen Fritz deserves special recognition for his willingness to share his expertise in twentieth-century European history and to explore with me the ways in which memory studies are impacting Spanish historiography. A series of conversations with Matthew Fehskens’ helped formulate the thesis of this volume. I am particularly grateful for David Korfhagen’s keen eye to detail, which helped me ensure that the thoughts developed in this book would not be hindered by careless errors and confusing statements. I must also express my gratitude for the feedback of all those in attendance at the conference sessions where several core arguments of this book were presented: the XXVII Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispánicos in 2021, the 74th Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in 2021, the 71st Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference in 2021 and the 72nd Mountain Interstate Foreign Language Conference in 2022. Finally, I am indebted to the Office of Research and Creative Activity in the College of Arts and Sciences at East Tennessee State University for their financial support of this publication.

CHAPTER 1
Buero’s Tragic Sense of Life: Historical and Existential Authenticity

Buero’s path from painter to tragedian begins with the philosophy of Miguel de Unamuno, who not only influences the Buerian concept of a tragedy of hope, but whose thinking provides the philosophical underpinnings of the central themes of Buero’s tragedies. As one of the earliest authors to challenge the Francoist government and its propagandistic version of Civil War history—albeit indirectly under government censors—Buero employed familiar Spanish and European philosophies of the era to build his case for historical authenticity as well as to cloak his critique of the government in more abstract considerations. The religious existentialism developed in Unamuno’s highly influential Del sentimiento trágico de la vida [The Tragic Sense of Life] (1912) was dominant in Spanish literature and among intellectuals before the Civil War. It is therefore unsurprising that his tragic sense of life, as well as European existentialism generally following the Second World War, would influence the ways in which the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath would be interpreted in the early decades that followed. In nearly all his plays, Buero views Spanish society and history through the lens of Unamunian existential authenticity. In the same manner that Unamuno embraces personal authenticity regarding questions of faith, Buero’s tragic sense of life advocates for historical authenticity no matter how horrific the past may be. It refuses to give in to the temptation to accept a comfortable falsehood in the name of “moving on.” Thus, through Unamuno, Buero develops the same arguments as those motivating historical memory activism in Spain today.

I argue that Buero’s experiences immediately following the Civil War cemented the dominance that an Unamunian view of the world would have in Buero’s life and works. In this chapter, I will make the case that this framework not only influenced Buero’s personal philosophy, but that it was foundational in his choice of tragedy as the genre through which he would express this worldview, and this is precisely because tragedy prompts an honest confrontation with traumatic experience. Furthermore, Buero views the brutal honesty required by existential authenticity as fundamental for healing and learning from the pain of the past, which society must do before it can truly move on. As Louis Joinet writes in his 1997 Report to the UN High Commission for Human Rights on the “Question of the Impunity of Perpetrators of Human Rights Violations (Civil and Political)”: “Before turning over a new leaf one must have read the old one” (qtd. in Tremlett 338).

Ricardo Doménech argues: “El unamuniano ‘sentimiento trágico de la vida’ late en todas las creaciones dramáticas de Buero, desde su primer estreno hasta los más recientes. No hablo de coincidencias externas […] sino de una compartida visión trágica del mundo” [The Unamunian “tragic sense of life” pulsates through all of Buero’s dramatic creations, from his first premiere on the stage to the most recent. I don’t speak of external coincidences […] but rather a shared tragic view of the world] (“Buero Vallejo” 116). Many Buerian scholars such as Doménech, Ida Molina, and Pedro Laín Entralgo have noted Unamuno’s influence.¹ Buero himself recognizes the great influence that Unamuno had on his life and works, describing Unamuno as “uno de los más grandes maestros que he tenido” [one of the greatest teachers I have had] (qtd. in Johnston 340). However, the breadth and depth of Unamuno’s influence on Buero’s theory of tragedy have not been sufficiently explored. In particular, Unamuno’s influence regarding the moral imperative of authenticity and the possibility for hope arising from catastrophe have never been considered as a foundation for Buero’s position as an early historical memory writer. As we shall see, Unamuno’s brand of stubborn existentialism, which doggedly clings to the very thing that reason tells us we should abandon, serves as the perfect foundation for Buero’s persistence in decrying autocracy amid the ruins of the Spanish Republic.

In his 1958 essay on the genre, “La tragedia,” Buero states, “A través de los tiempos y de las más dispares concepciones de la vida, los hombres han convenido en llamar ‘tragedias’ a determinadas obras escritas para la escena. La permanencia del concepto responde, […] a una necesidad del ser humano” [Through all times and the most disparate conceptions of life, men have agreed upon calling certain works written for the stage tragedies. The permanence of the concept responds, […] to a fundamental human need] (63). Buero’s predilection for an Unamunian style of existentialism, presented within the framework of classical tragedy, reveals the author’s commitment to the search for coherence and meaning after calamity, which is the centerpiece of healing in his tragedies. Buero tells us quite plainly that the principal effect of tragedy is to

llevarnos a creer que la catástrofe está justificada y tiene un sentido, aunque no podamos conocer su justificación ni entender ese sentido. El absurdo del mundo tiene muy poco que ver con la tragedia como último contenido a deducir, aunque tenga mucha que ver con ella como apariencia a investigar. [lead us to believe that the catastrophe is justified and has meaning, even if we cannot know its justification nor understand its meaning. The absurdity of the world has very little to do with tragedy as a final conclusion to reach, even if it has everything to do with tragedy as an appearance to investigate.] (“La tragedia” 71)