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Deep and hidden pain: Martí's testicular cancer

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569320902819760

1469-9575

Juan Carlos González Espítia,

Spanish Culture and Identity

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 On the Dark Side of the Archive: Turn of the Century, Nation, and Literature in Spanish America (forthcoming, Bucknell University Press). 2 Edurne Portela introduced me to the work of Jo Labanyi Labanyi, Jo, ed. 2002. "Introduction. Engaging with Ghosts; or, Theorizing Culture in Modern Spain". In Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice, 1–14. Oxford: Oxford UP. [Google Scholar] in Spain, in which Labanyi linked haunting and memory. I find Labanyi's reading very inspiring and share her views on Derrida's Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Intro. Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar] Specters of Marx, Benjamin's view on history, and Greil Marcus's Marcus, Greil. 1995. The Dustbin of History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. [Google Scholar] The Dustbin of History. Although I will be quoting these authors directly, I am indebted to Labanyi's approach. I would like to thank Edurne Portela, Nancy LaGreca and Stewart Bankhead for their detailed reading and suggestions in the preparation of this article. 3 For a more fully developed exploration of this aspect of the novel, see my forthcoming chapter on Martí in On the Dark Side of the Archive. 4 Notwithstanding, the original meaning of the word 'speculation', as explained in the Oxford English Dictionary, is 'The faculty or power of seeing; sight, vision, esp. intelligent or comprehending vision. Now arch' ('Speculation'). 5 On 28 August 1870, Martí sent his mother this photograph wearing prisoner clothes. Under the image he wrote the brigade to which he was assigned, as well as his prisoner number: '1 BRIGADA – 113'. On the reverse side of the photograph he wrote a dedicatory stanza: 'Mírame, madre, y por tu amor no llores:/Si esclavo de mi edad y mis doctrinas, /Tu mártir corazón llené de espinas, /Piensa que nacen entre espinas flores' (Obras 17: 29). 6 Although I had begun my research on Martí's testicular disease after reading Fermín Valdés-Domínguez's Valdés-Domínguez, Fermín. 1972. Diario de soldado, Vol. 1, Havana: Universidad de La Habana, Centro de Información Científica y Técnica. [Google Scholar] Diario de soldado, I must present my gratitude to the well-researched Enfermedades de José Martí by Ricardo Hodelín Tablada Hodelín Tablada, Ricardo. 2007. Enfermedades de Martí, Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente. [Google Scholar], whose work appeared in Cuba a few months before the writing of this essay. In order to develop interpretative criticism of Martí's poetry, I will summarize herein the comprehensive information offered by Hodelín Tablada and add data from my own research regarding the surgical procedures and medical treatment that Martí underwent. 7 I want to express my gratitude to Daniel L. Smith, Special Collections Librarian at the Health Sciences Library at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Thanks to him I have been able to gather documents on sarcocele and to study in detail the treatment methods of the period. 8 Lacking modern screening procedures such as biopsies, it was very difficult for doctors at that time to differentiate between a schirrous testicle and a hydrocele. A hydrocele is a swelling of the scrotum due to the accumulation of fluid around the testicle. It was treated either by allowing slow, natural reabsorption, or by making an incision in the testicle to purge the fluid. A sarcocele, a hard tumour in the testicle, which is what Martí suffered from, may be accompanied by fluid around the testicle, just as in the case of a hydrocele. In this instance the disease is called a hydro-sarcocele, the more precise term for Martí's condition. 9 '[Después de 63 días de curación le] ha quedado el teste afectado tan flexible, como el otro, y de menos volumen, el escroto natural, y según su confesión, más chico que antes de estar enfermo, ágil y sin la menor incomodidad' (33). 10 'Il ne restait donc plus de ressource que dans la castration, mais je répugnais singulièrement à en venir à une opération dont le succès est si rare, que l'expérience a prouvé que la majeure partie des personnes qui y sont soumises, succombent á la suite d'accidents consécutifs' (13). 11 'J'évitai dès cette époque de pratiquer la ponction avec le trocar pour ne point piquer le testicule que la pointe de l'instrument aurait pu atteindre; je fis alors, et dans la suite la ponction avec un bistouri moyen duquel j'ouvrais le scrotum et la tunique vaginale sans aucun risque de blesser le testicule' (20). The Oxford English Dictionary defines a trocar as 'A surgical instrument consisting of a perforator or stylet enclosed in a metal tube or cannula, used for withdrawing fluid from a cavity, as in dropsy, etc'. ('trocar'). 12 Two representative studies of the time in the British and American medical environment are those of Thomas Blizard Curling or Astley Cooper Cooper, Astley. 1845. Observations on the structure and diseases of the testis, Edited by: Cooper, Bransby B. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. [Google Scholar]. Although these studies agree in general with Sanz and Maunier, I do not cite them extensively because Anglo-Saxon medical practice had only a slow and incidental influence on the practice of medicine in Spain. Curling's Curling, Thomas Blizard. 1856. A practical treatise on the diseases of the testis, and of the spermatic cord and scrotum, Philadelphia: Blanchard. [Google Scholar] description, the same as Bell's, makes clear that puncturing and draining the tumour seldom cures the disease completely: 'The palliative operation is exceedingly simple, of easy performance, and, if proper care be taken, free from danger; but the relief it affords is only temporary. It consists in puncturing the tumor so as to allow of the escape of the fluid contained in the tunica vaginalis: the operation may be performed with a lancet or a trocar […]. Simple as the case may appear, the surgeon should omit none of the customary precautions, for more mishaps have occurred in the puncture of hydroceles than in any other operation in surgery'. (122) 13 Ilan Stavans's Stavans, Ilan. 1995. The Latin Phallus. Transition, 65: 48–68. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] 'The Latin Phallus' continues to be a provocative text with regard to the symbolic pre-eminence of the phallus in Latin American culture. 14 Commentary of Martí's testicular problem is consistently veiled, if not erased, by his apologists. In his Mujeres de Martí Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda Quesada y Miranda, Gonzalo de. 1943. Mujeres de Martí, Havana: Ediciones de la Revista ÍNDICE. [Google Scholar], for example, gives a passing hint of the consequences of the testicular trauma in Martí's relationship with women, but the hint remains only that: Añadamos, y es fundamentalmente necesario saberlo, que el Presidio Político había de influir decisivamente en la vida amorosa de Martí. La pesada cadena de presidiario, lastimándole durante las largas marchas desde el Presidio Político a las Canteras de San Lázaro, le causó una dolorosa herida inguinal que debió contribuir a los primeros albores de su pubertad a lo que después, ya por temperamento, y aumentado por su delicado estado físico, caracterizó su timidez amorosa. (20) 15 I will later examine Martí's 'El presidio político en Cuba', which was published in 1871; although an earlier text, 'El presidio' shows, though not so clearly, the connection between Martí's intimate pain and the role of America in its healing. And one must remember that the orchidectomy had not taken place by 1871. 16 I would like to clarify that I am using the medical distinction between symptom and sign. Symptoms are felt by the patient but are not necessarily evident to the doctor or nurse. A sign is objectively manifested to the observer. So I am emphasizing the difference between the subjective, or concealed, ailment (symptom) and its objective, or exposed, manifestation (sign). 17 While Monick's theoretical stance is based on symbolic examples, her ideas remain useful for the study of Martí. In his case, castration can be read as both figurative and literal: figurative in the sense that he was impotent in the face of oppression, and literal since he lost one of his testicles to sarcocele. While the other testicle remained intact, and his was not a castration in the strict sense because he retained the possibility of reproduction, the psychological effects in relation to wholeness remain the same. 18 On the physical level, Martí's painful loss, and the need to fill the void, can be related to the notion of a 'phantom limb', which regularly occurs in the case of amputees and can be defined as the perception of sensations, especially those of pain, in the missing member. The neurological term has already expanded to acquire metaphorical meaning, especially because this particular experience of pain is related to something being severed from an entity that is generally considered as a whole. Any pain felt is related to an inexistent part of the entirety. In the phantom limb, pain is the only thing palpable; even though this pain can be felt, it cannot be localized. It becomes phantasmal, present through its absence, absent in its presence. The idea of the phantom limb, considered on the metaphorical level, is inviting, but it is somehow problematic in Martí's case because the phantom limb is too 'physical', too closely related to the somatosensory cortex and to a tangible lacking. In this sense, the category of trauma continues to serve my analysis because trauma contains a haunting component that has direct consequences on the emotions. In other words, the phantom limb, although attractive as an interpretative tool, does not relate to a specific lived and relived experience. Still, being a constant reminder of the physical absence, every time the haunting experience of the phantom limb returns, it sparks anew the trauma of the individual. In other words, even if trauma is generally viewed as eminently psychological, it also bridges the physical element, in a similar way as the phantom limb does. The most notable study on the phantom limb from a neurological perspective is Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's Ramachandran, V. S. and Blakeslee, Sandra. 1998. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, New York: William Morrow. [Google Scholar] Phantoms in the Brain (1998). For case descriptions of genital phantom limbs see, for example, C. Miller Fisher Fisher, C. Miller. 1999. Phantom Erection after Amputation of Penis: Case Description and Review of the Relevant Literature on Phantoms. The Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 26: 53–6. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] or Alan Landecker's articles. 19 Even when the referent here is the feet, Martí writes about 'aquellos miembros estrujados', a choice of words that is resonant of the most likely cause of the testicular trauma. 20 Interestingly, the choice of the word 'cegar' allows multiple interpretations. It means to blind, to take light away; but its homophone 'segar' clearly means to cut violently, as with a scythe. 21 Martí uses the botanical term 'retoño', 'sprout', which in Spanish is also used to denote one's child.