Neohelicon DOI 10.1007/s11059-012-0159-4
From devotion to disillusionment: the changing face of Penelope from Homer to Buero to Miras Maria R. Rippon
Akade´miai Kiado´, Budapest, Hungary 2013
Abstract This paper examines the adaptation of the classical figure of Penelope in two twentieth-century Spanish dramas: Antonio Buero Vallejo’s La tejedora de sueños (1952) and Domingo Miras’ Penélope (1971). Unlike Homer’s epic, the Penelope of these modern tragedies regrets the return of her husband, who at this point in time lost his heroic status. Buero’s and Miras’ works are not unique in their treatment of this theme, but they are among the first, at least in Spain, to consider the drama from Penelope’s perspective, while remaining faithful to the essential plot and setting of Homer’s Odyssey. Miras goes further than Buero in reducing his heroine to a (literally) vegetative state at the conclusion of the drama while Buero’s Penelope will be lauded for her constancy, though, paradoxically, she dreams of her love for Anfino, not for her husband, Ulysses. Homer’s Penelope tirelessly awaits the return of her husband over the course of a twenty-year period; yet, such devotion is absent from all modern interpretations of this myth. Modern critics of these works justify such an altered characterization of Penelope as a function of the brutish nature of the bellicose Ulysses, whereas Homer’s Penelope relishes his bloody (and by extent, combative) appearance. Moreover, Odysseus is classified as a new hero, distinct from Achilles and Ajax, for example, both earlier warriors. He is strategically armed, and such tactical know-how, in addition to the advocacy of, and counsel from, Athena, ensure his survival. The modern incarnations of Penelope, however diverse, share several notable constants: sustained dreams of romantic and filial love; diminished devotion to gods and spouses; and manifest disillusionment with both marriage and with the glory borne of warfare. Keywords Odyssey Penelope Ulysses Buero Miras Adaptation Myth La tejedora de suen˜os Pene´lope Homer
M. R. Rippon (&) Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Furman University, 3300 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, SC 29613, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
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When one finds a worthy wife, her value is far beyond pearls. Her husband, entrusting his heart to her, has an unfailing prize. Proverbs 31:10–11 ‘Blessed son of Laertes, Odysseus of many wiles, Truly you have won a wife of great excellence. How good was the mind of blameless Penelope, Daughter of Icarios, who remembered Odysseus well, Her wedded husband! And so the fame of her excellence Shall never die. The immortals shall make for men on the earth A delightful song about constant Penelope.’ (Agamemnon, Odyssey XXIV. 192–198) When Homer sang of the exploits of Odysseus during what we now call the Greek Renaissance, he sang to an ‘‘androcentric’’1 society in the style of what twentieth-century critics characterize as ‘‘mythico-historical epic.’’2 Twentiethcentury Spain, particularly during the Franco regime, when Antonio Buero Vallejo and Domingo Miras were writing their adaptations of the Homeric poem, was no less androcentric than Mycenaean Greece, and yet La tejedora de sueños (written between 1949 and 1950 and first performed in 1952) and Penélope (written in 1971, though never performed or published until 1995) invert the Homeric archetype of Penelope ‘‘as the perfect wife, the model woman, a paragon of patience, or a saint of faithfulness’’3 by questioning the heroic nature of Odysseus and the fidelity of Penelope.4 They were not alone among their peers of the twentieth century in finding refuge from the government censors in classical Greek mythology; however, they are among the first to reposition the myth of Penelope from a feminist viewpoint—ironically, they are both males.5 Miras’ Penelope, in particular, dreams 1
Zeitlin (1996, p. 7).
2
Miller (2000, p. 31). As Miller explains, the heroes are ‘‘formulaically related to the gods’’ but the ‘‘working out’’ of their destiny (whether god-given or not) ‘‘is set in a human space and dimension’’ (p. 33).
3
Heitman (2005, p. 2).
4
The post-Homeric Epic Cycle first raised the specter of Penelope’s infidelity variously with Hermes, with some or all of the suitors (Pan was purportedly the progeny of Penelope and her relations with all the suitors), and with one of the children of Odysseus and Circe, and Aeschylus wrote a trilogy about Odysseus’ homecoming to Ithaca, only fragments of which remain, but in which Penelope ‘‘no salía muy bien parada’’ [‘‘did not come off well’’] Gallardo Lo´pez (1991, p. 248); however, this tradition was largely ignored from Ovid’s Heroides to the 20th century.
5
Although El retorno de Ulises (1946) by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester was being published as Buero completed writing La tejedora de sueños, a fact that delayed the publication of the latter until 1952, it does not offer a feminist retelling of the myth. Ulysses is humanized, but the point of view of Penelope is not foregrounded as it is in La tejedora de sueños, nor is a feminist approach offered as Penelope leaves Ithaca in order to live in obscurity at the side of the insecure Ulysses. Miras composed Penélope in 1971, though it was never performed or published until 1995. It was not until after La tejedora de sueños (1952) and the composition of Penélope (1971) that Penelope became central to the retelling of the myth. Some of the later dramas that foreground Penelope include: Antonio Gala’s >Por qué corres, Ulysses? (1975), Carmen Resino’s Ulises no vuelve (1983), Javier Tomeo’s Los bosques de Nyx (1995), and Itziar Pascual’s Las voces de Penélope (1997). The Penelopeia (2003) by Jane Rawlings, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005), and Jo Ann Rosenfeld’s Penelope’s Story: The Shroud Weaver’s Tale (2007) are among recent retellings in English of Penelope’s story—in varied genres. This, of course, does not take
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of a restoration of a utopian matriarchy that was obliterated by the Achaeans—the very feminist reading of the Odyssey that is mocked in Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad (2005) over 30 years later,6 though accepted as historical fact by Miras and the English writer and scholar Robert Graves (1972).7 While traditional commentaries limit Penelope’s significance to the moral value of sexual chastity,8 her figure is undoubtedly more complex. The adaptations in question here spring from the ashes of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), sandwiched as it was between two disastrous world wars and ending in a totalitarian regime. Literature after the war reflected a concern for the defeated and marginalized and a preoccupation with ethical responsibility and moral agency in a seemingly deterministic setting. The subsequent remythification of Penelope continues in the vein of disillusionment established by Buero and Miras in La tejedora de sueños and Penélope: her character is that of a dreamer disillusioned with her husband, war and patriarchy. In these twentieth-century versions, she becomes the heroine of a story that, according to Aristotle, was about Odysseus’ homecoming. Her very presence in the poem has been judged so negligible by some that passages referring to her are excised in their translations of the epic.9 Both Buero and Miras explore with their works the ethical ramifications of the actions of their protagonists and the ideologies of the powerful against which the marginalized can, at times, only dream. Homer’s Odyssey establishes the archetype of feminine devotion and fidelity and never questions the faithfulness of the husbands in fighting the Trojan War since their oaths took precedence over any other obligations. Remarkably, the Spanish adaptations do not stray far from their source: neither Buero’s adaptation, which includes a Penelope who feels abandoned by her husband, falls in love with another man, Anfino, and wishes Ulysses would never return; nor Miras’, which portrays a Penelope relishing the return of the matriarchy. The adaptations of Buero and Miras Footnote 5 continued into account the even more numerous retellings of the Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus. The Penelope episode that ends Joyce’s Ulysses (1918–1920) with the voice of Molly Bloom does give us Penelope’s point of view, and she is unfaithful, crass, and physical rather than ethereal and wise; however, Joyce dwells more on Bloom’s wanderings (the new Odysseus) than he does on Molly’s thoughts, which are only one of nineteen episodes in this modernist epic. Her viewpoint nevertheless does afford an early example of the later feminist retellings of the myth, including a reference to an ideal matriarchy. For a list of the treatment of the character of Ulysses in 20th-century Spanish drama, consult Fernando Garcı´a Romero’s ‘‘El mito de Ulises en el teatro espan˜ol del siglo xx.’’ 6
The maids deduce in a flippant chapter entitled ‘‘The Chorus Line: An Anthropology Lecture,’’ ‘‘Thus possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of a matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians’’ (p. 165).
7
Robert Graves writes in the Foreword to The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth the following: ‘‘My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse…. The language was tampered with in late Minoan times when invaders from Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to justify the social changes’’ (pp. 9–10).
8
Heitman (2005, p. 106).
9
Heitman (2005) claims that Stanley Lombardo, in his The Essential Homer (2000), discarded ‘‘almost all passages that did not feature Odysseus’’ (p. 5).
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conform to the plot of Homer’s original (with some omissions and additions), but they focalize their dramas with Penelope and try to imagine her thoughts as she wove and unwove the death shroud and her intentions in arranging the competition in which the suitors will use her husband’s bow: Did she expect there to be a winner? Did she reveal her plan to Odysseus through recounting her dream to him, knowing who he was? Or did she, in fact, plan to remarry? Whom? Why would she not think of remarrying when, according to her, Odysseus told her she should do so once Telemachus was of age? As authority and traditional power relations were questioned after World War II, patriarchal stories and archetypes were reevaluated, and heroes and heroines were humanized; in choosing to retell Homer’s epic in tragic form, Buero and Miras problematize Odysseus’ heroic nature before they even begin to paint his character in thought, speech, and deed. As Dean A. Miller notes, the very nature of tragedies show the hero as a problem and not a model.10 The figure of Ulysses is certainly problematized in tragic, historical, and romantic adaptations of Homer’s epic through the ages, but so, too, are Buero’s and Miras’ Penelopes. While sympathetic as marginalized female protagonists facing the tyrannical military hero embodied in Odysseus and emblematic of the Franco regime, these characters abandon fidelity and chastity and even, it could be argued, their astuteness. What is only hinted at in Homer—Penelope’s lack of fidelity in her heart and mind—through her dream of the eagle and the geese, her flirting for the suitors’ gifts, and her wish for a swift death unequivocally comes to pass in Buero.11 After Anfino kisses Pene´lope’s hands in the first act, ‘‘PENÉLOPE cierra los ojos y pasa el dorso de sus manos lentamente por la cara, con un gesto que es mitad emoción y mitad de dulce sueño’’ [‘‘PENE´LOPE closes her eyes and passes the backs of her hands slowly along her face, with a gesture that is part emotion and part a sweet dream’’] (p. 139). And when Euriclea questions why she cries and laughs as she weaves, Pene´lope replies with her head lowered but with mounting excitement in her voice, ‘‘Ulises tarda…. ¡Tarda, tarda mucho, tardará ya siempre!’’ [‘‘Ulysses delays…. He delays, delays a long time, he will delay now forever!’’] (p. 140). When Pene´lope began the shroud, she was waiting for Ulysses and she enjoyed having the suitors squabble over her since it made her feel like Helen of Troy; however, with time, as her love for Anfino grew, she continued to weave and unweave the sudario to try to weary the other suitors since Anfino had no army of followers with which to defend himself and so win Pene´lope. Thus, in Buero Pene´lope deceives the suitors to protect Anfino and not Odysseus’ household in the hopes that once Ithaca were in ruins, the other suitors would leave her and Anfino and return to their lands. In Homer and Buero the foils of Penelope are Clytemnestra and Helen of Troy. Both are guilty of infidelity, the former of collusion to murder her husband as well, but it is Helen of Troy who occupies the mind of Buero’s Pene´lope, more than 10
Miller (2000, p. 8).
11
Given that Penelope maintains the household until Telemachus’ coming of age, indicated by the completion of his journey in search of his father, aspersions of infidelity are debatable. After fulfilling her obligation to the preservation of the household, would it have been wrong of her to re-marry if, 10 years after the Trojan War, she presumed her husband dead?
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Clytemnestra. Unlike the character in the Homeric epic, Buero’s Pene´lope does not even learn of the murder of Agamemnon until the Extranjero (Ulysses) tells her of it. Buero’s Pene´lope admires Helen of Troy for her beauty even as she despises her for her infidelity and for being the cause of so much suffering due to the Trojan War she catalyzed. In Homer Penelope expresses compassion for Helen’s mistake, a compassion born of the knowledge that not all dreams or mortals are to be trusted and that freedom is not absolute. In an enigmatic passage that seems uncharacteristic in the mouth of the faithful wife, Penelope seems to excuse Helen’s adultery by saying that if Helen had known of the consequences of her act, then she would not have done it, implying that if her leaving with Paris had not led to the sacking of Troy, then it would have been morally acceptable.12 Her own ignorance of Odysseus’ being alive had she remarried exculpates far more easily than Helen’s ignorance over the effects of her departure with Paris—unless she were taken against her will, which is not at all what Homer’s Penelope suggests, or the gods made her do it, which she does.13 Buero sidesteps the issue entirely as such a forgiving attitude toward the madness of Helen cannot be found in the discourse of his Pene´lope. Buero’s Pene´lope cannot forgive Helen for drawing all the ablebodied Achaeans from their wives; nevertheless, she cannot help but envy her for her beauty and desirability to men. She wishes she could be Helen to Anfino; thus, when Ulises tells her that Helen is old and ugly after he has killed her love Anfino, Pene´lope admits with resignation, ‘‘Ya no me queda ni eso’’ [‘‘I no longer have even that’’—i.e., the illusion of Helen’s captivating beauty] (p. 197). She does, however, continue to dream of a peaceful utopia and believes she will remain eternally beautiful in Anfino’s immortal dreams. Helen occupies Buero’s Pene´lope much more than Homer’s, for she is both the object of her derision (‘‘esa mujerzuela’’ [‘‘that whore’’] (p. 141)) and a source of pride (that Pene´lope can feel as coveted as Helen with all the leaders of the different poleis fighting over her when the suitors seek to win her hand). In keeping with his modern brutish form, Ulysses dismisses Helen as ‘‘una hembra mala y peligrosa’’ [‘‘a bad and dangerous female’’] (p. 123). Nevertheless, as dangerous as she is, she is no Clytemnestra, who kills Agamemnon when he returns from Troy. It is just such an event that Ulysses hopes to forestall in returning in secrecy to his kingdom, and it is just such prudence that is taken as cowardice by Buero’s Pene´lope, who relishes 12 Nancy, Felson-Rubin encapsulates the indeterminacy upon which feminist approaches are based when she questions the ‘‘univalent’’ interpretation of Penelope and points to her enjoying the suitors’ attention, her mourning the geese in her dream, her prayer for sudden death, and perhaps most damning, her apologia for Helen to demonstrate just how close Penelope comes to following in Helen’s footsteps and as proof of alternate readings: ‘‘Penelope’s attitude toward Helen is unusually empathetic. Her remark that Helen would not have lain with a foreigner had she known that the sons of the Achaeans would bring her home again, suggests that it is not the betrayal itself, but ignorance about the future that is ruinous folly. […] Thus, by exonerating Helen she hopes to exonerate herself for not immediately embracing her husband and for nearly causing a Trojan War!’’ (1996, pp. 170–171). 13 ‘‘‘Yes, a god stirred her up to do a sorry deed./She did not lay up in her heart beforehand that woeful/ Madness’’’ (XXIII. 222–224). Such impetuousness is incomprehensible to Homer’s Penelope and can only be explained by the gods; even still, though the gods may have stirred Helen to do it, Penelope’s assertion that Helen would not have done it had she known the consequences suggests that Helen still had agency in leaving with Paris.
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Clytemnestra’s act as one that avenges all the wives whose husbands left them to fight a war over a whore: ‘‘Ella nos vengó a todas!’’ [‘‘She [Clytemnestra] avenged us all’’]. Clytemnestra has avenged all the wives whose husbands left them behind because ‘‘Hace veinte años que se le ocurrió sonreír a otro que no era su esposo’’ [‘‘twenty years ago it occurred to her [Helen] to smile at someone who was not her husband’’] (p. 141). For Buero’s Pene´lope, the Achaeans have been the unfaithful ones in abandoning their wives to fight a war over the infidelity of una mujerzuela. La tejedora de sueños lacks the justification that Odysseus gives Penelope in Homer’s epic, namely that he and the other Achaeans were forced to go to war by Agamemnon, which, without some acknowledgement of the power of oaths in ancient Greece, only seems to bolster his portrayal in Buero as a coward since it seems as though the epic hero were too timid to confront the schoolyard bully. In point of fact, though Odysseus refers to ‘‘promises’’ that were made to support Agamemnon until he had ‘‘sacked strong-walled Ilion’’,14 just 50 lines later these promises are elevated to oaths by Nestor who asks, ‘‘‘Where then shall our covenants go, and the oaths we have taken?’’’15 Breaking an oath meant cursing oneself, inviting Horkos, the Eurinyes, or some other god who was called upon to witness the declaration and guarantee its truth, to punish one’s perjury and bring one to the underworld and visit all kinds of horrors upon him and his descendants. As Alan Sommerstein writes in his introduction to the collection of essays on the oath in Greek society Horkos, ‘‘The importance of oaths to ancient Greek culture can hardly be overstated….’’,16 but such an appreciation for the binding nature of oaths is largely absent in modern society and certainly lost on Buero’s Pene´lope. As a woman and a dream weaver, Pene´lope suffers great disillusionment from Ulysses’ return. There is notably no recognition scene that revolves around the fixture of their matrimonial bed, ‘‘a symbol…of marriage and its permanence.’’17 Despite his gray hairs and wrinkles, Pene´lope recognizes her husband, but unlike Homer’s Penelope, she lacks undying devotion to her husband and is reeling from the slaughter of the suitors, particularly from the assassination of Anfino. The modern Odysseus, or Ulises as he is in Spanish following the Latinization of his name, assumes the tyrannical nature of the gods and the Fates since both are absent in modern drama: ‘‘El drama moderno manumite al hombre de cualquier servidumbre a la tiranía de cualquier imaginario poder divino. La eliminación del destino y la reducción de los dioses a un plano humano e inofensivo son notas nietzscheanas del moderno drama mitológico’’ [‘‘Modern drama frees man from any servitude to the tyranny of any imaginary divine power. The elimination of destiny and the reduction of the gods to a human and inoffensive level are Nietzschean touches to the modern mythological drama’’].18 How great is the irony, thus, that the
14
Iliad 2.284–288. All references to the Iliad are taken from Richmond Lattimore’s (1951) translation.
15
Iliad 2.339.
16
Sommerstein and Fletcher (2007, p. 2).
17
Silk (2006, p. 38).
18
Lasso de la Vega (1967, p. 277).
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Penelopes of the twentieth century have less freedom than did Homer’s!19 Additionally, what once brought honor to a family’s name—courage, bravery and glorious feats on the battlefield—is now the source of disillusionment and disgust for the wives. While modern drama may have gained its liberty from ‘‘the tyranny’’ of any and all imaginary gods, the corresponding loss of devotion has not wrought the quixotic matriarchy so desired by Miras’ Pene´lope nor even the peace and love dreamed of by Buero’s, for man proves to be more tyrannical than the gods, and war serves not as the conduit to glory and nation-building, as it did when the epics were first recounted, but rather to vulgarity and abuse of authority. Our modern demythification of the character of Ulysses is, in large part, a result of our modern distaste for war and our distrust of absolute power and authority, and yet his pugilistic nature in Buero and Miras omits a richer characterization found in Homer, where he is not the cowardly dream-crusher of La tejedora de sueños or the callous patriarch of Penélope but rather the astute, steadfast, polite and noble prototype of an epic hero.20 Fernando Garcı´a Romero (1997) notes in ‘‘Sobre Penélope de Domingo Miras’’ that ‘‘[E]l héroe de la Odisea es ya representante de un nuevo mundo que empieza a buscar cualidades distintas del valor guerrero’’ [‘‘The hero of the Odyssey is already representative of a new world that is beginning to search for qualities different from that of the valiant warrior’’].21 Similarly, Heitman describes a shift in Homer from ‘‘the poem of force,’’ which is the Iliad to one ‘‘of the mind,’’ which is the Odyssey22; thus, while ‘‘[o]pen, frank, brutal, faceto-face assaults that rely on force are the Iliadic standard. […,] [i]n the Odyssey, nearly every battle is won by outsmarting the enemy.’’23 Both Penelope and 19
Carolyn (1988) writes in ‘‘La desmitificacio´n de Pene´lope en La tejedora de sueños, >Por qué corres, Ulysses? y Ulysses no vuelve’’: ‘‘Es significante que en las obras contemporáneas estudiadas aquí, la Penélope desmitificada se encuentre con más limitaciones impuestas por su sexo y con menos libertad de actuación que el personaje femenino de Homero’’ [‘‘It is significant that in the contemporary works studied here, the demythified Penelope is found with more limitations imposed by her sex and with less liberty to act than the feminine character of Homer’’] (p. 87).
20
As with Penelope, the post-Homeric tradition could be unkind to Ulysses. While undeniably a heroic ideal, as is his counterpart Penelope in Homer, the lyric poet Pindar and the tragedians Sophocles with Philoctetes and Euripedes vilified him as an unscrupulous trickster who would stop at nothing to achieve his aims. This ‘‘villano sin escrúpulos para el que todo vale con tal de conseguir sus objetivos…será también el Ulises de Virgilio, del ciclo troyano tardío y, a partir de ahí, del ciclo troyano medieval [‘‘unscrupulous villain for whom anything goes provided he could achieve his objectives…will also be the Ulysses of Virgil, of the late Troyan Cycle and, from there, of the Medieval Troyan Cycle’’] (Garcı´a Romero 1999, p. 282). Racine, like Sophocles, was of two minds regarding Ulysses: in his Remarques sur l’Odyssée d’Homère (1662) Ulysses is honorable, noble and prudent, but in Iphigénie (1674) he is the once again the unscrupulous trickster of Sophocles’ Philotectes (Stanford). In Shakespeare, he is ‘‘un noble hombre de estado’’ [‘‘a noble head of state’’] (Garcı´a Romero 1999, p. 282), and in Caldero´n’s El mayor encanto amor (1635), a romantic drama constructed out of the Circe episode, Ulysses is a soldier, a gentleman and a lover. In twentieth-century Spanish drama, he is both demythified and remythified, only heroic in the Homeric sense in Joan Maragall’s Nausica (1919) (See Stanford’s monograph (1964) The Ulysses Theme and Fernando Garcı´a Romero’s article, ‘‘El mito de Ulises en el teatro espan˜ol del siglo xx.’’. 21
ibid, p. 62.
22
Heitman (2005, p. 104). It is Simone Weil who first suggests that the Iliad is a poem of force in The ‘Iliad’ or the Poem of Force (2003).
23
ibid, p. 105.
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Odysseus are certainly very adept at outsmarting their enemies; however, their ‘‘like-mindedness’’ (homophrosyne¯) that is so often discussed in analyzing the pair goes beyond their mental capacities. They are, as Heitman notes, both committed to the household (oikos): ‘‘Odysseus’ central purpose is to reach home, and Penelope’s is to ensure that the House of Odysseus reaches the next generation.’’24 And while it may be true that Ulysses will stop at nothing to return to his household and his spouse, Buero’s Pene´lope questions why he ever left to fight another man’s war over a loose woman’s infidelity. The Ulysses of Buero’s La tejedora de sueños retains his astuteness, but Buero transforms his prudence into cowardice.25 Eurı´maco, a chief suitor and antagonist of Pene´lope, says to the stranger, ‘‘¡Buen zorro estás hecho!’’ [‘‘What a good fox you are!’’] (p. 144),26 but the hamartia (tragic flaw or error) of Ulysses in Buero, that he disguises himself and does not trust Pene´lope to love him with all his grey hair and wrinkles, is precisely the prudence advised by both Agamemnon and Athena in Homer. In La tejedora de sueños, Pene´lope says to him: ‘‘¡Te disfrazaste porque te sabías viejo; porque desconfiabas de poder agradarme con tus canas y tus arrugas!’’ [‘‘You disguised yourself because you knew yourself to be old, because you doubted your ability to please me with your grey hair and your wrinkles!’’] (p. 202). Without Athena to rejuvenate him, Buero’s Pene´lope finds Ulysses to be ‘‘un viejo ruin’’ [‘‘a despicable old man’’] (p. 202). Although she did dream of him in the beginning, she now considers him ‘‘[un] astuto patán, hipócrita y temeroso’’ [‘‘a shrewd lout, hypocritical and fearful’’] (p. 202). Ulysses’ cowardice ‘‘lo ha perdido todo’’ [‘‘has lost everything’’] (p. 202): ‘‘[S]i tú me hubieses ofrecido con sencillez y valor tus canas ennoblecidas por la guerra y los azares, ¡tal vez! yo habría reaccionado a tiempo. Hubieras sido, a pesar de todo, el hombre de corazón con quien toda mujer sueña… El Ulysses con quien yo soñé, ahí, los primeros años…’’ [‘‘If you had offered me with sincerity and courage your grey hair ennobled by war and chance, perhaps, I would have reacted in time. You would have been, in spite of everything, a man with a heart about whom every woman dreams…the Ulysses about whom I dreamed those first years…’’] (p. 202). Of course, Homer’s epic along with these adaptations would be far less suspenseful and entertaining without the plot machinations of disguise, trial and competition. Buero utilizes the scene of the slaughter of the suitors as yet further proof of Ulysses’ cowardice in La tejedora de sueños. In Homer the suitors have javelins and draw spears out of the dead; in Buero they are completely unarmed. Antı´noo even tells him, ‘‘¡Baja aquí, a luchar como un hombre!’’ [‘‘Come down here, and fight like a man’’] (p. 191). In both Buero and Miras, Ulysses is merciless, as he is with Leiodes in the Odyssey; however, Homer confers a measure of compassion on Odysseus as he includes two reprieves that are not in the modern dramas (Odysseus spares the bard and the herald since they were forced into the service of the suitors); moreover, the violence of the slaughter of the suitors is justified in Homer due to 24
ibid, p. 105.
25
Feijoo (2005, p. 201).
26
All references to La tejedora de sueños are taken from Feijoo’s edition of La tejedora de sueños/ Llegada de los dioses and are indicated by a page number in parenthesis.
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their atasthaliai (‘‘blind folly’’), which is the same word used by Zeus at the very start of the poem and that used to describe the ‘‘shameful end’’ of Odysseus’ shipmates.27 In Homer, Odysseus is an avenging angel of the gods; in Buero and in Miras he is like a repressive general of the Franco regime, extracting his vengeance on the republican soldiers, who, as political prisoners, were forced to rebuild the infrastructure of the country, bury their comrades in common graves, and even construct a monument to the dictator—something echoed in the maids’ cleaning the hall and stacking the bodies of the dead suitors before being executed themselves. While vengeance may have been relished as a restoration of justice in ancient times, it is certainly unwelcome for these two Spanish dramatists, one of whom fought in the Spanish Civil War on the republican side and spent time in prison following its conclusion and the second who continually reflects on power relations and defends the most marginalized. Though the gods are absent in the modern dramas, the question of their agency remains. Ulysses tries to lay the blame on the gods in the end, saying ‘‘Así quieren los dioses labrar nuestra desgracia’’ [‘‘Thus do the gods wish to fashion our disgrace’’]—to which Pene´lope replies, ‘‘No culpes a los dioses. Somos nosotros quienes la labramos’’ [‘‘Don’t blame the gods. We are the ones who fashion it’’] (p. 203). Ulysses raises the question at the heart of Athenian tragedies, which probe ‘‘how mere human powers, heroic or not, can ever perdure when divine powers implacably intervene,’’28 while Pene´lope’s response echoes Zeus’ speech in the opening of the Odyssey: ‘‘‘Well now, how indeed mortal men do blame the gods!/ They say it is from us evils come, yet they themselves/By their own recklessness [atasthaliai] have pains beyond their lot’’’ (I. 32–34). Hugh Lloyd-Jones goes so far as to label Zeus’ remarks here as a ‘‘programme,’’ which is borne out in the course of the poem.29 Zeus and Athena provide important justification in the Odyssey for what seems to the modern Penelopes as a barbaric slaughter of the innocents. Homer’s Odysseus is an avenging agent of Zeus, like a god in appearance, in superior knowledge and in the ‘‘punishment that he exacts, which, like many actions of the gods, is both just and terrible.’’30 ‘‘Homer has not altered the fact that behind Odysseus is the whole apparatus of divine justice, which demands the suitors’ death, and he has shown clearly that Odysseus’ role is in a sense that of a god.’’31 ‘‘Their [the suitors’] folly, which is sufficient justification for their wholesale destruction (XVII. 360–364, XVII. 155–156), is to disregard the facts of the human condition and to forget the simple wisdom of the world: do not go too far, do not trust in easy money, do not swell beyond your proper sphere: lightning strikes the highest trees,
27
Silk (2006, pp. 33, 37).
28
Miller (2000, p. 8).
29
Lloyd-Jones (1971, p. 29). See Lloyd-Jones for a discussion of the contrast in morality and theology between the Iliad, where the gods actually inspire men with ‘‘evil ideas’’ and the Odyssey, where the gods not only do not plant such evil thoughts in men’s minds but rather try to warn them against the evil ideas that occur to them (pp. 28–32). 30
Rutherford (1986, p. 159).
31
Kearns (1982, p. 8).
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the gods are jealous, human vitality is slight and feeble.’’32 In Homer, thus, Odysseus acts with justice, with righteousness, and even with some measure of compassion (in sparing two lives). Nor is he lacking in romantic passion either, leading some to consider the Odyssey as a romantic epic.33 Odysseus and Penelope form an ideal match in Homer—noble, shrewd and ‘‘godly,’’ both dedicated to the household, yet in Buero Ulysses is an activo while Pene´lope is a contemplativo.34 ‘‘Yo no sueño,’’ Ulysses tells Pene´lope [‘‘I don’t dream’’] (p. 199); he is a man of action and ‘‘un razonador’’—‘‘a reasoner.’’ Euriclea describes her mistress as ‘‘fuerte y astuta, como [su] esposo Ulysses’’ [‘‘strong and astute like [her] husband Ulysses’’] (p. 116); however, Pene´lope, herself, claims an inability to reason. She says to Anfino, ‘‘Las mujeres no sabemos razonar, pero soñamos’’ [‘‘Women do not know how to reason, but we dream’’] (p. 157), while men, in their great wisdom, ‘‘razonaron que había que verter sangre, en una guerra de diez años, para vengar el honor de un pobre idiota llamado Menelao’’ [‘‘reasoned that they had to shed blood in a 10-year war in order to avenge the honor of a poor idiot named Menelaus’’] (emphasis added, p. 157). When Ulysses accuses her of being calculating in not punishing Dione, she exclaims, ‘‘Pero yo no sé de esas cosas. Yo soñaba entonces; ¡sentía! Lo que tú, mezquino razonador, nunca has sabido hacer’’ [‘‘But I do not know about those things. I dreamed then. I felt! That which you, you miserable reasoner, have never known how to do!’’] (p. 202). And yet Pene´lope most certainly did calculate the effects of her punishing Dione and admits as much to Euriclea in Act I: ‘‘Mi hijo se apiadaría y la querría más’’ [‘‘My son would take pity on her and would love her more’’]; moreover, she proceeds to explain that her sending Telemachus away was to distance him from Dione, not only to save him from an ambush on the part of the suitors and certainly not to find his father since Ulysses could find his own way home (pp. 114–115). Her distinction between women as dreamers and men as reasoners proves inaccurate not only for La tejedora de sueños, wherein we have the example of the dreamer Anfino, but for all Buero’s theatre, as evidenced by Ignacio in En la ardiente oscuridad, Fernando in Historia de una escalera, Vela´zquez in Las meninas, and Goya in El sueño de la razón—to cite some of the more prominent examples. Just as Pene´lope’s character paradoxically combines both astuteness and dreaming, so, too, do the men embody both reasoning and rashness, but the paradoxes do nothing to create homophrosyne¯ in Buero. Pene´lope, in the end, during the alternating fugue of voices of the Coro and of herself and Ulysses, suggests the utopian matriarchy envisioned by Miras’ Pene´lope. Her waiting now is not for the return of Ulysses as it is in Homer’s mythicohistorical epic, but for a world where men are like Anfino and not Ulysses, where men ‘‘tengan corazón para nosotras y bondad para todos: que no guerreen ni nos 32
Clark (2004, p. 89).
33
See Fe´lix J. Oinas (1972) ‘‘Folk-Epic,’’ p. 103, Northrop Frye’s chapter on ‘‘Heroes and Heroines of Romance’’ in his The Secular Scripture, and consider the aforementioned observations of Heitman that Odysseus gives up immortality and visits the underworld in order to get home and contemplates suicide when he thinks that he will not make it (1976, p. 106).
34 See Ricardo Domenech’s (1973) El teatro de Buero Vallejo for more on dreamers and contemplatives in Buero.
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abandonen’’ [‘‘would have hearts and goodness for all: where they would neither fight nor abandon us’’], but such a world cannot exist until all the Ulysses and Helens are no more: ‘‘Pero para eso hace falta una palabra universal de amor que sólo las mujeres soñamos…a veces’’ [‘‘But for that to happen there must be a universal word of love about which only women dream…sometimes’’] (p. 206). Pene´lope suggests that because women are visionaries, because they can dream, while the men (with the exception of Anfino, naturally) do not, the women are those who will dream this utopia into existence; however, such a gender classification of activos and contemplativos must not be interpreted as characteristic of Buerian drama, for an ample number of male protagonists in Buero are dreamers, as well—a sampling of which appears above. Moreover, her viewpoint cannot be equated with Buero’s since the playwright does not typically side with either his contemplativos or his activos, finding fault with both extremes as he exposes the human condition throughout the corpus of his works and raises questions of individual and collective ethical responsibility in the exercise of free will that leads to tragedy. Domingo Miras’ Penélope, which is dedicated to Antonio Buero Vallejo, the playwright Miras calls the ‘‘father of all ethical theatre,’’35 both adheres more faithfully to details in the Odyssey while imagining a more radical departure from the fidelity of the prudent Penelope. He includes many more suitors than does Buero in his cast (there are over 100 in Homer, only 13 of which are slain in Book 24), Melantio, the goat herder, Iro, the beggar, and Melanto, the sister of the goat herder, who has been raised by Penelope and serves as the basis for Dione’s character in Buero. Miras establishes the rather overt dichotomy of bellicose patriarchy versus peaceful matriarchy in the opening stage directions describing the tapestries of human figures ‘‘al estilo minoico’’ [‘‘in the Minoan36 style’’] that are hidden by ‘‘panoplias cargadas de armas que cuelgan en todas las paredes… Esta ostentación guerrera ofrece un lastimoso contraste con la delicadeza y la gracia de los frescos…’’ [‘‘a wide array of armor and weapons that hang on all the walls… This warlike ostentation offers a pitiful contrast with the gentleness and grace of the frescos’’] (p. 113).37 The absence of devotion to the gods is also established in the opening, for the ritualistic censer that sits between the four pillars is empty. As we learn later, Pene´lope would like to replace the image of Zeus, ‘‘insolente y soberbio que se complace en herir a su madre con el rayo’’ [‘‘insolent and arrogant, who takes pleasure in hurting his mother with the lightning bolt’’] with what once was there: ‘‘la efigie de la divina Tierra, desnudo el fecundo seno y con serpiente en las manos’’ [‘‘the effigy of the divine Earth, with a bare, fertile breast and a serpent in her hands’’] (p. 137)—a marked contrast to the figure of the Virgin Mary, an
35
Miras’ (2001, p. 22) interview with Virtudes Serrano.
36
The Minoans were a civilization of the Bronze Age on the island of Crete (2700–1450 B.C.). The Mycenaeans replaced them in dominance, lending their name to this period of Greek History, which includes the era of the Trojan War and the events of these plays (1600–1100 B.C.). 37 All references to Miras’ (1995) Penélope are taken from Teatro mitológico and are indicated by a page number in parenthesis.
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embodiment of the patriarchal feminine ideal, crushing the serpent under her feet. The servants do bring coals and light the censers by their torches in the middle of the first scene of the second act, but this is only after Ulysses has returned, more emblematic of the return of the patriarchy than evidence of Pene´lope’s devotion to the Olympian gods. Relations in Miras’ drama are dictated by power, which is, in turn, dictated by gender. Telemachus is closer to the suitors (they are all male, after all) and chafes at the authority of his mother. The rule by the males, something which Homer’s Penelope accepts unquestioningly, even when orders are given by her son, reduces Miras’ Pene´lope to a vegetative state. Miras’ Pene´lope explains it to her son thus: ‘‘No son buenos esposos los aqueos: reducen a la mujer a un papel para el que yo no he nacido’’ [‘‘They aren’t good husbands, the Achaeans: they reduce the woman to a role for which I was not born’’] (p. 121). She describes a time before the Achaeans came when there existed a cult to the ‘‘fecunda Tierra’’ [‘‘fertile Earth’’] where ‘‘todo era de todos…. [N]o había robos, ni crímenes, ni esclavitud, ni guerras, ni siquiera armas…’’ [‘‘all belonged to all…. There weren’t any theft, crimes, slavery, wars, or even weapons’’] (p. 122). No record remained of this idyllic time because the Achaeans destroyed all evidence of it. What we do have are the myths retold by men, like the story of the Danaı¨des. Pene´lope remythifies (or recovers, perhaps) the stories of Ocnus and his ass and the daughters of Danau¨s as regenerative stories of how life feeds itself. As men have told them, they appear as cautionary tales (the girls have to fill up buckets without a bottom as punishment for having ‘‘killed’’ their husbands; Ocnus weaves rope out of straw while his donkey eats the other end), but Pene´lope claims that the Achaeans have ‘‘deformed’’ the story of the Danaı¨des in particular, and that before the Achaeans came, women used to govern ‘‘con dulzura y sabiduría y los hombres, que eran más pacíficos, se dejaban de buena gana aconsejar y dirigir. A eso lo llaman los aqueos… « matar a sus maridos » y se han arreglado la historia de las hijas de Dánao, confundiendo un símbolo de renacer de la vida con una mentira urdida para tapar una antigua verdad’’ [‘‘with sweetness and knowledge, and men, who were more peaceful, let themselves be guided and directed willingly. That is what the Achaeans call ‘killing their husbands’ and they have adjusted the story of the Danaı¨des, confusing a symbol of rebirth with a lie meant to cover an ancient truth’’] (p. 142). Miras’ Pene´lope purportedly recovers the true import of these myths for her audience, insisting that there was an idyllic matriarchy before there was a bellicose patriarchy. Virtudes Serrano in her El teatro de Domingo Miras notes that ‘‘A diferencia de la Penélope de Buero, la de Miras no queda sorprendida por la crueldad de su esposo’’ [‘‘In contrast to the Pene´lope of Buero, Miras’ is not suprised by the cruelty of her husband’’].38 Miras’ Pene´lope cannot be disillusioned by the return of her husband since she has never held any illusions regarding him, but she is disillusioned that her dream of matriarchy with all the suitors as her children and spouses and her own son as her spouse, too, cannot be realized. Waiting is at the center of Miras’ Penélope, as it is in all the stories of Penelope and Ulysses, but here she is not waiting for her husband to return but for the suitors to change, forget their 38
Serrano (1991), El teatro, pp. 80–81.
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patriarchal ways, and become united by their love for her. She imagines herself as the trunk of a tree and the suitors her many branches—all united in their love for her (p. 136). Ironically, in the end, she is a plant, but she is a bush rather than the strong trunk of ‘‘un árbol frondoso’’ [‘‘a leafy tree’’] (p. 136), and if, indeed, a laurel, then an object of male adornment.39 As Buero does with En la ardiente oscuridad, Miras employs a claroscuro technique to represent opposing ideologies, but in contrast with Buero, the light here is associated, not with truth, but rather with men and death while the moon gives freshness and life. Euriclea, who is not blind here, though she is in Buero, tries to ‘‘illumine’’ her mistress’ world. As she brings light to the scene literally, she tells Pene´lope how she prefers the sun because ‘‘calienta mis huesos…. es más alegre, y da la vida’’ [‘‘it warms my bones, is happier, and gives life’’] (p. 135), but Pene´lope replies, ‘‘No, ama. El sol no da la vida. El sol la agosta y la seca, con sus rayos de fuego. La frescura y la humedad de la luna es lo que hace que la tierra se esponje, y saque de su vientre la vida de sus hijos’’ [‘‘No, Nurse. The sun does not give life. The sun roasts it and dries it with its rays of fire. The freshness and humidity of the moon is what makes the earth swell and take from its womb the life of its children’’] (p. 135). Nevertheless, Euriclea continues to light the torches and professes to be tired of the darkness, and the metaphor becomes explicit: ‘‘El sol es la claridad, y ver las cosas como son’’ [‘‘The sun is the clarity to see things as they are’’], says Euriclea to Pene´lope before they are interrupted by the other slaves (p. 138). This is the light in Buero’s En la ardiente oscuridad and in countless other literary works, but the light of reason of an androcentric society, Pene´lope believes, propels men into competition, destruction, and death. She continues to prefer the shadows left by the moon, her ‘‘matrilineal moon-cult’’ that has been usurped by a group of ‘‘patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians.’’40 In addition to the sun and the moon in Pene´lope’s and Euriclea’s aforementioned dialogue and the stage’s darkness or semi-darkness, Miras also employs a ‘‘reddish’’ light during Ulysses’ slaughter of the suitors, which gradually decreases as he speaks to the women directly following, and waxes and wanes as the black boat of bodies moves across the back of the stage in the final scene. At first it is ‘‘un relámpago rojo’’ [‘‘a red flash of lightning’’] that illumines the window to the great hall, which then flashes as Euriclea continues to watch and tell the women what is happening below. As she watches, the stage directions read, ‘‘El relámpago rojo es ya casi continuo’’ [‘‘The red lightning is now almost continual’’] (p. 172), and it will remain thus until Ulysses speaks with the women when ‘‘[p]aulatinamente se va desvaneciendo la luz roja, volviendo la semioscuridad’’ [‘‘[s]lowly it will be disappearing, returning the stage to semidarkness’’] (p. 178). After the red light has
39 Although Ulysses tells Penelope to ‘‘Be a tree or be a stone’’ (p. 179), the stage directions at the conclusion of the play tell us that Penelope has transformed into ‘‘un tembloroso arbusto de hojas plateadas’’ [‘‘a trembling bush with silvery leaves’’] (p. 180). The laurel is both a tree and a bush in the Mediterranean region and would seem an appropriate choice here given the references to Daphne in Miras’ drama and its association with male victory. 40
See note 6 referring to Atwood’s mockery of feminist rhetoric in The Penelopiad (2005).
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reappeared only to disappear as does the boat ferried by Charon, it is a white light— like the moonlight—that shines on the bush with silvery leaves (like the laurel in the myth of Apollo and Daphne) into which Pene´lope transforms. The addition of Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology, as Serrano notes, ‘‘es un efecto de gran teatralidad que…enlaza el texto con la tradición clásica, en la que lo maravilloso está siempre participando en la vida de los mortales’’ [‘‘is an effect of great theatrality that links the text with the Classical tradition, that in which the marvelous is always participating in the life of the mortals’’].41 Although Miras does maintain this link with classical mythology, the gods do not, in fact, intervene in Penélope, and without a deus ex machina, an idyllic end to the conflict of modern drama remains illusory. In Homer, Athena, with Zeus’ permission, ends the battle between Odysseus and the slain suitors’ families at Odysseus’ father’s house and extracts oaths from both sides to ‘‘love one another’’ and to let there be ‘‘abundant wealth and peace’’ (XXIV. 484–486, 547). This is precisely the kind of utopia that Buero’s Pene´lope seeks, yet without the intervention of the gods it remains a distant dream, and proceeding as it does from Zeus, would not please Miras’ Pene´lope, nor would an oath in the twentieth century mean the same as an oath in the Mycenaean Period. Without the gods (or a god) or correlative sacred objects, no one and no thing can guarantee an oath and prevents the speaker from lying; thus, oaths are taken lightly and lying is commonplace.42 Buero’s tragedies, like the classic Greek tragedies of the fifth-century B.C., avoid determinism: the catastrophe is never inevitable; human actions, freely chosen, lead to the fall. His denouements are similarly open: things appear bleak and yet there remains a ray of hope that the next generation will be different. Miras, on the other hand, seems to close the book on Pene´lope by having her transform into a bush— emblematic of his belief that Power always thwarts the attempts of the marginalized towards self-actualization43—yet an important question remains: is Pene´lope an agent in her metamorphosis or a victim of it? Does the return of the patriarchy, the return of Ulysses, with all its dehumanizing enslavement of women, literally convert Pene´lope into a bush, thus symbolizing the passivity of the woman in such an androcentric society, or does she retreat into the form of a bush to forestall and lessen the victory of the male? After Ulysses has dismissed Telemachus and Euriclea and asks Pene´lope to interrogate him, so that she can prove his identity, she refuses and remains immobile in her chair. Thus, when Ulysses says to her before leaving, ‘‘[S]e´ árbol o sé piedra,’’ [‘‘Be a tree or be a stone’’], he is describing what he already sees, what she has already become in ‘‘esa actitud pasiva’’ [‘‘that passive 41
Serrano (1991), El teatro, p. 81.
42
The Iran Contra Scandal, President Clinton’s Hermes-like definition of ‘‘is’’ during the Monica Lewinsky Scandal, and the numerous athletes who claim under oath that they have not taken steroids or performance-enhancing drugs, figure among the many examples from the end of the 20th century. 43 Miras discusses in his aforementioned interview with Virtudes Serrano (2001) his intent with his theatre to show ‘‘Cómo el poder aplasta a los marginados, cómo estos intentan escapar a esa presión, cómo intentan realizar sus vidas y cómo esa realización fracasa siempre. Cómo el Poder es invencible para ellos’’ [‘‘How power crushes the marginalized, how the marginalized attempt to escape this pressure, how they attempt to realize their lives and how that realization always fails. How Power is invincible for them.’’] (p. 14).
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attitude’’] in which she has taken refuge (p. 179). After he leaves the stage, Pene´lope ‘‘permanence rigurosamente inmóvil’’ [‘‘remains rigorously immobile’’] in almost complete darkness (p. 179). After the bodies in the boat pass with Charon and the red light dissipates, the darkness and silence are even denser until there is complete darkness, followed by the white light focused on the bush that once was Pene´lope. Nevertheless, all is not lost: both Buero and Miras manage to transform seeming defeat into victory. In La tejedora de sueños Anfino thanks Pene´lope for her dreams and accepts his death, ‘‘nuestro gran sueño’’ [‘‘our great dream’’], because ‘‘[m]orir en vida es peor’’ [‘‘[d]ying in life is worse’’], which is precisely what is left to Ulysses. Pe´nelope can still dream of Anfino, and Anfino can live on in Pene´lope as she carries the torch of his ideals while the activos are truly left with nothing. In Miras’ Penélope, Pene´lope is reduced to a vegetative state, but hers is a victory of evasion. Miras’ Pene´lope suggests an interpretation of the play’s ending in recalling the myth of Apollo and Daphne: as Pene´lope explains, in the race of life the woman led, but when the male caught up to her, ‘‘perdió hasta su condición de ser humano. Reducida al estado de cosa, su vida es desde entonces como la vida de las plantas, un puro vegetar sin conciencia siquiera de sí misma’’ [‘‘she lost even her condition of being human. Reduced to the state of a thing, her life since then is like the life of the plants, pure vegetation without even consciousness of herself’’] (p. 144). Pene´lope is not the tree she longed to be (perhaps for staging reasons) and while she is bathed in something like moonlight (since it turns her leaves silvery), she is far from ruling the household, from even having consciousness of herself as a human being, which would seem to signify a victory for the patriarchy. Men love as they fight, by destroying the competition and reducing their loved ones to mere slaves— or worse yet, vegetative matter, but though Pene´lope does not describe this in her retelling of the myth of Apollo and Daphne, Apollo’s aims are not met. Daphne is less anthropomorphous, but her evasion also costs the male his victory. Miras’ Ulysses claims he likes Pene´lope thus, that her passivity, silence and reclusiveness all suit him since that is the demeanor of ‘‘una esposa honrada’’ [‘‘an honorable wife’’] (179), and yet it is a far cry from the ‘‘pleasure of delightful love’’ in which Homer’s Penelope and Odysseus partake after he has proved his identity to her (XXIII. 300) and which Apollo hopes to enjoy with Daphne. Just as Daphne (whose name in Greek means ‘‘laurel’’) will forever be associated with Apollo and victory, Penelope will forever be associated with Ulysses, but in Miras’ remythification, her shiny leaves are a symbol of victory through evasion and of female agency. In contrast to the telling of the myth in Ovid, in which Daphne’s father, the river god Peneus, changes her into a laurel tree, Pene´lope, herself, chooses to thwart Ulysses with her non-responsiveness. Miras explains his predilection for classical myths and Greek heroines thus: the stories were ready-made as they were well-known to him since his youth and he had only to add his giro personal’’ while the Greek heroines offered the ‘‘resistencia pasiva de mujer frente a una imposición masculina, que venía propiciada por una cultura distinta que había invadido a Grecia…inferior estética y técnicamente a la cultura previa dominante...’’ [passive resistance of a woman in the face of masculine imposition, which was brought about through the distinct culture that had
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invaded Greece…inferior aesthetically and technically to the previously dominant one].44 Thus, Penelope and Phaedra (source of a subsequent Miras play written the year after his Penélope) allowed Miras to explore ‘‘el problema de los marginados en relación con el poder’’ [‘‘the problem of the marginalized in relation to power’’]45 during ancient times and the time of the Franco dictatorship, which imposed a culture on the Spanish that was ‘‘aesthetically and technically inferior’’ to that of the Second Republic. For Miras, it is precisely during times of social conflict and upheaval that theatrical production flourishes: El teatro es un arte, al que le va el conflicto social, porque es su carne y su sustancia. Cuando los grandes tra´gicos griegos escribieron aquellas obras inmortales, >co´mo estaba Grecia entonces? Metie´ndose en la Guerra del Peloponeso, el desastre para Atenas. […] Cuando hemos hecho un buen teatro en los an˜os 70, >co´mo estaba Espan˜a?, pues con una dictadura, que estaba dando unos coletazos terribles.46 [The theatre is an art that goes along with social conflict because this is its flesh and blood. When the great Greek tragedians wrote their immortal works, what was the state of Greece at that time? Getting into the Peloponnesian War, the disaster for Athens. […] When we made good theatre in the 70 s, what was the state of Spain? Well, with a dictatorship that was experiencing some terrible death throes.] The conflict between the self-proclaimed ‘‘nacionales’’ and the republicanos of the Spanish Civil War continued to fester throughout the Franco regime, until the 1960s when social protest once again found its voice and Franco lost the support of the Vatican after the Second Vatican Council. Miras’ Penélope certainly conveys the social protest of his milieu—the dehumanizing effects of an imposed patriarchy deficient in cultural value—yet it also demonstrates a certain pessimism that a defeated culture could ever prevail against the dominant one—a conclusion that holds true for the marginalized in all societies, whether democratic or authoritarian. Homer’s ‘‘poem of the mind’’ establishes the virtue of the faithful, patient, ‘‘godly’’ homemaker, whose arete¯ is to be found in wisdom and prudence. Such virtues would have been indispensible to an androcentric society at war, where the men depended upon their wives to maintain a stable household. Consider the oftquoted praise of Penelope issued by Agamemnon from the underworld (an epigraph to this article); now consider that these words are uttered by a shade in Hades who has been murdered by his spouse upon returning from Troy, a man used to commanding others in battle, a hero of the Iliad, of the poem of force. ‘‘This is the great misogynist Agamemnon praising a woman; this is the leader of warriors attributing the victory at Ithaca to someone who does not hold a weapon. This is also Homer implicitly comparing Penelope to Achilles. At play here is a reevaluation of the idea of arete¯….’’47 While this may be true, modern drama focuses on ‘‘la vida 44
ibid, Interview, 8.
45
ibid, Interview, 14.
46
ibid, Interview, 29.
47
Heitman (2005, p. 111).
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From devotion to disillusionment
humana en su dimensión metafísica de autenticidad. No se trata de una heroicidad hacia fuera, de hazañas brillantes y extraordinarias, sino de una heroicidad consigo mismo, en lo más recóndito del ser humano’’ [‘‘human life in its metaphysical dimension of authenticity. It is not dealing with a heroism from without, through brilliant and extraordinary feats, but rather a personal heroism in the deepest part of one’s being’’].48 Penenlope’s excellence of mind is nevertheless oriented externally; Dı´ez del Corral is describing a heroism that derives from resolution, from an existential faithfulness to oneself and not to an oath, a spouse, a child or a civil government—a natural and necessary movement from without to within when external authorities no longer retain one’s allegiance or even respect. Thus, the patriarchal archetype of the pious, prudent, faithful homemaker no longer suits modern society. Why should we hold Penelope to an external standard of fidelity— one that Odysseus violates with Circe and for seven years with Calypso—if it is incompatible with her authentic self? Buero’s and Miras’ adaptations of the story of Penelope counteract the image of ángeles del hogar that the Sección Femenina created during the Franco regime and that was not unlike the characterization of Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey but whose ideals of self-sacrifice and religious zeal threatened the very existence of those already on the margin of self-abnegation during Franco’s religious crusade. Female self-immolation has been replaced by self-actualization, war with peace, the gods with man, and patriarchy with equality. These protagonists are heroines for their fidelity to the values they hold in the remotest parts of their being, for their refusal to compromise to external standards or outdated mores. What, then, of the preservation of the household and the raising of good citizens for society? Homer may yet have much to teach society about the preservation of all civilizations even as he teaches us about the birth of Western civilization. One final question remains, and that is why modern writers even feel compelled to retell ancient myths that no longer speak to modern values. One of the title pages to Atwood’s Penelopiad, part of the Canongate series The Myths, affords one possible answer: ‘‘Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives—they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.’’ Fundamentally, marriage, the household, virtue, and wisdom—all central to Homer’s Odyssey—remain persistent qualities of the human condition that beg to be redefined and perhaps, I would argue, restored. Loss of devotion, of piety, both in terms of fidelity to one’s spouse and to oaths and religious obligations, have led to disillusionment with war, marriage, and children. Deception and the manipulation of reality through rhetorical speech continue to plague the human condition. Penelope, once considered a peripheral figure in the adventures of Odysseus’ homecoming, has become the central character through whose eyes we now interpret Homer’s myth and through whose example of passive resistance we can refute Power and seek authenticity and utopia; however, true to the tragic form of these dramas, her character is not without its flaws, and the family and thereby the state may suffer from her transformation.
48
Dı´ez del Corral (1974, p. 233).
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