The Painting of the Banquet Scene in Abel Sanchez
2004; University of Pennsylvania Press; Volume: 72; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1553-0639
Autores Tópico(s)Spanish Literature and Culture Studies
ResumoAbel Sanchez is a highly intertextual and metafictional novel containing a dense collection of direct references and allusions to the Bible, Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, Byron's Cain, and a large number of works by Nietzsche (Franz, Traces 37-38). Chapters xi-xiv-in which Abel plans and then produces a painting of the murder of the biblical Cain by his brother Abel and in which Joaquin Monegro organizes a banquet in homage to the painting and the artistic successes of Abel-are particularly rich in such references. In and around these intertexts, in both these and other parts of the novel, Unamuno has self-consciously encapsulated his narrative into a formalistically arranged but mysteriously intertwined series of texts: the narrative proper, Joaquin's Confesion (ostensibly written to his daughter but in fact concocted for future generations of readers), his possibly unreproduced novel Memorm.s de un medico viejo, and the observations of the manuscript's shadowy presenter. There has been an endless number of critical commentaries on both the pre-banquet chapters and the concluding banquet scene but only a finite number of significant perspectives offered in these commentaries. The latter include (1) the Nietzschean textual basis of Joaquin's flattery of Abel in his eulogy of the latter's painting (Franz, Nietzsche); (2) the degree to which much of the chapters' discourse proceeds from the words of Satan in Byron's Cain (Thompson; Franz, Parallel); (3) the inclusion of dialectical elements inspired by Kierkegaard (Roberts); (4) the extent to which the intertextuality is complicated by the intertexts unending similarities (Orringer); and, finally, the two most important: (5) the way in which Unamuno ultimately manages to exalt the superiority of painting over language despite the provisional victory of literature inherent in Joaquin's discourse (LaRubia); and (6) the degree to which the eulogy itself constitutes an envious work of prose (Jimenez Fajardo). Despite these latter exaltations of art and painting in the banquet scene and elsewhere, no one has yet explored the possibility that the novelized banquet itself may constitute the most important of the many paintings discussed in the novel.Although Unamuno was deaf to music, he reveled in discussing painting and graphic art. During and following the Bilbao years dedicated to his baehillerato, he studied drawing and oil painting with the painter Antonio Maria Lecuona (Scott 60; Toscano 90; Diccionario 4283). In the following decades, he produced copious portraits of his wife, children, and other family members. He also sketched many scenes of Salamanca. He additionally drew countless pictures of frogs to amuse children, both fabricated paper birds and made drawings of his fabrications for friends and for the novel Amor y pedagogia (1902), and imitated frames from the Felix the Cat comic strip for one of his grandchildren. His early novel, Paz en la guerra (1897), his final narrative, San Manuel Bueno, martir (1931), and especially his many articles and collections of travel accounts all have a painting-like quality. He was a friend of the Valencian painter Joaquin Sorolla and a great admirer of the Basque artist Ignacio de Zuloaga, often testily complaining that the former was too superficial and overly dedicated to color and folklore, while the latter used his superior draftsmanship to create allegories of great spirituality (Scott 62; Toscano 91-92). He especially admired the classic painters of the Spanish Post-Renaissance-El Greco, Velazquez, Ribera, Zurbaran-because, like Zuloaga, they were focused on a spiritual dimension and were consummate masters of chiaroscuro. So much did he admire the display of these masters in the Prado Museum that he often said that they were his only worthwhile memory of student life in Madrid.When Unamuno was coming into his maturity, the genre of the painted and photographic banquet, studio, and tertulia scene was growing up alongside him. …
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