Assess The Claim That Javier Marías`s `el Siglo` Is "en Escorzo, La Historia De Un País".

In a survey published in 1985 by Ínsula magazine, participants were asked to name the three most striking novels of the early post-Franco years. Along with Juan Benet's Herrumbrosas lanzas, El siglo earned itself the title of work most often cited, much to Javier Marías's surprise . This unexpected accolade emerged after an initial period of silence and indifference towards the book, following which its author was forced to conclude that this was not, in fact, 'la mejor de cuantas había escrito' (Marías 2007: 225). Yet it is not wholly astonishing that a fiction summed up as 'the history of a country' would have been met with some reluctance in a 1980s Spain. As the rise of the novísimos indicates , many were bored by the stodgy social realist writings of the "Me duele España" mould; they were hungry for a new kind of novel - one exempt from depicting the trials and tribulations of contemporary Spanish history.

'Yo no quería hablar de España' (1993a: 55) Marías has explained in response to criticism of his first novel, Los dominios del lobo, for its refusal to address issues of his homeland. His evasion of 'literatura militante' (Marías 1993a: 59) has persisted ever since. So why did he allow emphasis on 'historia' and 'país' in the crucial first synopsis of El siglo?

Ambiguity is what renders this claim acceptable as a précis of 'Marías's most complex novel to date' (Wood 2007: 592). It does not state that this is a work about Spain, nor does it specify the interpretation of 'historia'. The choice of how we read El siglo is ours.

A history of Spain or the story of a country? Over the course of this study, I consider the various ways in which this claim, and thus the novel itself, might be understood. Because while some would deem messages only good for answering machines , Marías proves that it is possible to tell a tale and make history at the same time. Despite its anonymity, the identity of El siglo's principal setting is no secret: 'cualquier lector de esa novela sabrá identificar el país y los fragmentos de historia que se relatan en ella' (Marías 1993a: 66). Indeed, for someone uninterested in representing the real, Marías offers us a significant number of allusions to a post-Franco Spain. Corruption , forced exile and an all-encompassing climate of fear all feature amidst the descri ptions of the civil war which ensues in that country just east of Lisbon. Nevertheless, that Marías's own milieu should creep into his work to a certain degree was, as the author himself admitted, inevitable, in spite of his disdain for the social realist canon - 'este tipo de mezclas entre lo vivido o conocido y lo imaginado o inventado no tiene nada de particular; es más, seguramente es la base misma de la mayoría de las novelas que en el mundo son y han sido' (Marías 1993b: 99). In which case we might ask why Marías did not just go ahead and name the 'país grotesco' of his protagonist's birth.

Marías is, of course, not wholly opposed to writing with political or social ends, as his continued work for El País attests. Yet since Marías the "citizen" has proven himself more than capable of penning biting critiques of 'una socieda tan autocomplaciente y autoindulgente como la española actual' (Marías 1999), he maintains that he has no intention of doing the same in his novels. Why make explicit that our setting is a Spain undergoing a difficult period of transition, when autobiographical subtexts are of no real importance to the novel reading experience as conceived by Marías and his cohorts? When discussing his ongoing novel Tu rostro mañana which, like El siglo, treats the thorny subject of denunciation , Marías explained:

[I]t doesn't really matter if the story of the narrator's father is my own father's story or not. It only matters because I am alive and because my father was well-known in Spain, but in Hungary they won't know that. They will read it as a novel, and they are going to make the effort to believe what has been invented.'

Certainly, it would be hard for Marías to set about writing a piece of historical realism when, as far as the madrileño is concerned, the past itself is a myth - an elaborate piece of storytelling. 'La historia', he announced in an interview for El País, 'no existe. La historia no es más que lo que el Estado quisiera que existiera, y hace lo posible por que exista' . Brought up during Franco's continued attempts at a national indoctrination of Spanishness, Marías was enlightened early on to the fact that history is only ever related 'de manera sesgada' [...] fragmentaria' and 'huidiza' (Marías 1993b: 99).

A detached view of history as a distortion or fabrication is particularly notable in El siglo when Casaldáliga reads - 'con la mano temblorosa' (Marías 2007: 168) - about the atrocities of war. From the shelter of 'la tranquilidad impasible de la ciudad de Lisboa' (Marías 2007: 168), our haughty protagonist can only appreciate accounts of life in his homeland as 'extractos inconexos de una novela a medio escribir' (Marías 2007: 168). The uncharacteristic terseness of the seven word long sentence ('Dudaba de la veracidad de las cartas' - Marías 2007: 168) immediately following the meandering third person descri ption of his consideration of events, neatly brings home his total separation from the harsh reality of a nation in turmoil.

Such an intrinsic link between historia - story, and historia - history is further exemplified in 'la historia irreal, multiforme y magmática' (Marías 2007: 68) of the commune surrounding Casaldáliga's home. Here, via the tortuous streams of consciousness of our first person narrator, we are told that 'esta historia [...] casi en su totalidad inventada [....] no sólo se desarrolla y crece hacia adelante [.] sino también hacia atrás' (Marías 2007: 68), and that in such a society, fictitious events and characters end up endowed with as much veracity by the inhabitants as those that actually did exist. Hence, Herzberger's assertion that Marías's writing is interested in the ability of stories not only to define past and future, but also to become 'part of the very substance of that past and future' (Herzberger 2011: 75).

The malleability of memory is a subject that continues to haunt Spanish society today; with episodes such as the recent conflicts in Poyales del Hoyo manifesting that many would still rather the truth remain buried. 'Las cosas no son como ocurren, sino como se zanjan, se juzgan, se archivan y se sepultan' (Marías 2007: 118), professes Casaldáliga in the lengthy first paragraph of the chapter entitled 'La deuda', and Marías has him unabashedly acknowledge that any 'momentos que me fueron ingratos o adversos' would either be manipulated to his benefit, or else 'desterrado de mi memoria' (Marías 2007: 117). Although, in this passage, Marías sustains the loose literary style favoured in El siglo , the content serves very much as a precursor to his curt, 2006 journalistic piece in which he abhors his compatriots' capacity to distort or repress unhappy events. 'Ni la derecha ni la izquierda tienen el menor interés en que sepa la verdad', he writes, 'y ambas están aún dedicadas a maquillarla a su favor, cuando no a tergiversarla con desfachatez' (2006).

In his 1984 lecture, 'Desde una novela no necesariamente castiza', Marías refers to a task set him by a 'crítico insigne' (Marías 1993a: 54) following the latter's review of Los dominios del lobo. According to this renowned critic, the challenge that lay ahead for the young novelist was 'la búsqueda de la propia carne' (Marías 1993a: 55). It would not be until some twelve years later, however, that Marías would attribute 'corporiedad' (Marías 1993a: 65) to one of his works; claiming it was upon completion of El siglo that he had finally managed to flesh out his characters' voices. Because as well as the 'jirones de historia de un siglo de mi país' (Marías 1993a: 69), Marías confirms that this novel portrays 'la vida posible de un hombre ápatico y paralizado' (Marías 1993a: 69) and attempts to analyse 'de qué modo personas valiosas o meritorias, de las que en principio era difícil esperar vilezas, podían llegar a cometer la mayor de todas sin verse aparentemente conminadas ni forzadas a ello' . Thus characterisation - as Gareth Wood corroborates in his study on literary allusion in El siglo - ought not to be subordinated to any stylistic or contextual concerns but rather, as I shall go on to explain, works to consolidate the two.

History, as has already been suggested, is made not by dates and facts themselves, but by the people who transmit them. As the narrative of El siglo unfolds, therefore, Marías provides us with a 'psychologically coherent portrait' (Wood 2007: 594) of a strikingly complex individual. The intricacies of Casaldáliga's character are engendered by the disparity between his different demeanours - farcical trickster vs. baroque sentimentalist - as well as the alternation between the two narrative voices. Information provided by one is constantly undercut by the other , resulting in an increasing impression of ambiguity and aversion towards this 'persona egregia' (Marías 2007: 123). The more we gauge about this delator, the more we are urged to consider what has made him so vile. Starved of affection as a child, we can trace the roots of his overwhelming egoism and total empathetic deficiency back to a stunted emotional development. Nevertheless, his acute isolation, impellent covetousness, and obsession with legacy allude to more than just a difficult personal history.

By using his 'monumental herencia' (Marías 2007: 73) to puppeteer those around him , and given the selectivity of his memory ('una memoria que se hace más selectiva' (Marías 2007: 147)), Casaldáliga becomes an embodiment of 20th Century Spain or, at the very least, a hybrid monster of its shortcomings. 'Cerrado, impasible' and 'armónico' (Marías 2007: 85) - adjectives used to describe the circle in which Casaldáliga moves, could just as easily be applied to the man himself; a man who is as much a reflection as he is a product of his society's flaws and injustices. He grants himself the authority to condemn and judge his peers, yet is never off his high-horse long enough to recognise his own contribution to the country's demise. When making his aphoristic assertions on avarice ('todos veneran el oro, vencida ya la piedad. La lealtad ha sido por el oro ahuyentada; por oro la justicia se vende, al oro sigue la ley' (Marías 2007: 77)), his tone is one of lament. Yet this lofty grievance - so illustrative of his sense of separation and superiority - is riddled with irony, since he has just admitted to nurturing the seeds of greed in his (god)son 'desde que era niño' (Marías 2007: 75).

Clearly, if something is rotten in the state of 'un país', it is the citizens who must make moves towards remedy. History is, after all, defined by an aggregation of individual actions, perceptions, and choices - the siglo of the people . In his 1999 piece, 'El artículo más iluso', Marías refutes the notion that many were forced to sell their souls in order to survive during the Spanish Civil War, emphasising that there were those who were better - who opted for conscience over comfort. It is 'la legendaria e irreversible apatía de sus habitantes' (Marías 2007: 67) we are told - not climactic hardships, nor even abandonment by the State - that is the prime cause of poverty in Casaldáliga's home region. We might, therefore, recall one of those 'latigazos de pensamiento' (Marías 1992) that Marías so admired in Juan Benet's Volverás a Región: "No existe el destino, es el carácter quien decide" (Benet cit. Marías 1992).

In his summary of the core elements of El siglo, Marías has insinuated the nuclear significance of one particular passage ; but it is a passage which, he implies, taken alone could appear gratuitous or vacuous. For this reason I choose to focus, instead, on the body of text which encases it, and not only blends the 17th Century paraphrase into the whole , but also - and as a result - certifies our understanding of El siglo as 'la historia de un país':

Nada escapa a las leyes tornadizas, contradictorias y complementarias del olvido y de la memoria, y de igual manera que las aguas de un lago permanecerán prisioneras hasta que no tanto una fuerza misteriosa y superior cuanto un simple accidente que no precise de ninguna fuerza les haga cambiar de carácter y condición, también los hombres están sometidos a la inercia descabezada y voluble de siglos acumulados. (Marías 2007: 105-106)

In these lines which precede the English doctor's paraphrased commentary, Marías blends universal, patrimonial and personal nuances with novelistic, stylistic prowess. The tone is one of baroque virtuosity, and there is a sense of that unpremeditated thought so extolled by Montaigne and his successors; but its form must not be valued alone. Rather, style and content harmoniously coalesce: a lack of punctuation follows 'las aguas de un lago', allowing them to flow on smoothly, steered by a series of sibilance until, suddenly, there is enjambment, and the narrative changes course. This is, after all, principally a novel, and we must not ignore Marías's dedication to the 'ornamento' (Marías 1993a: 59) of his work. Nevertheless, far from superseding semantics, the style both emulates the nature of man's history, and endorses the very essence of the novelistic genre. Juan Benet has claimed that the 'específica misión' of the novel is to 'dar testimonio de la poca fortuna y mucha desgracia que el hombre puede esperar lo mismo en 1980 que en 1680' (Benet 1981: 29-30). Given its subject matter's universal significance, together with its anachronistic stylistic exuberance, this passage could just as easily have been written three hundred years ago as in 1983. And yet these words would be of special relevance to the post-Franco, Spanish reader. 'Quisquillosos bastaba una pequeña insidia para sembrar la duda y recoger condenas' (Marías 2007: 132), Casaldáliga later informs us, and here we are told it is the small things that cause a sea change to be suffered. Of course, for the son of Julian Marías, there was one 'simple accidente' which would never be forgotten. Furthermore, we are reminded of two other post-Franco leitmotifs; noting that, in their position at the end of the clause, a marked impact is awarded to 'memoria' and 'olvido'.

To bring our discussion back almost full circle, we should now consider the sentences that follow the Browne-inspired excerpt: Y hay fragmentos del espíritu y esferas de la tierra que llevan siglos dormidos o aletargados, y que todavía esperan el beso del príncipe para reanudar la vida, incipiente, mediada o casi prescrita, que hubieron de interrumpir y dejar suspensa: la misma: quizá tan idéntica a la ya recorrida antes del encantamiento que podría pensarse si no fue todo olvidado y borrado durante los siglos de sueño para volver a empezar. (Marías 2007: 106) The initial conjunction 'Y' sets up the winding syntax, which complements the depiction of the years running on, while past, present and conditional tenses mix to reflect the circularity of time and the repetitive makeup of history. Moreover, through his allusion to the fairytale - in the 'encantamiento' and 'beso de un príncipe' - Marías once again fuses storytelling, memory, and commentary, and reminds us that he is rewriting history himself.

`La irrealidad'. This is, according to Javier Marías, what the true novelist should aim to reflect in his works. 'No lo inverosímil ni lo fantástico sino simplemente lo que pudo darse y no se dio' (164, Lit y fantasma). Indeed, El siglo offers no facts and few names; in short, not the kind of story that was spun out in the history books. Rather, through the exhaustive characterisation of one, sole citizen, he is able to embody that "quien yo pude ser pero no fui" (Marías 1993b: 91) that he later would go onto deplore in 'El artículo más iluso' and 'El padre', and denounce events that Spanish society as a whole had endeavoured to keep hushed up.

The point is that this could be any country, at any time in history, but it is not. It is Spain. And while Marías was militantly anti the so-called 'useful' literature of his predecessors , I would argue that this novel demonstrates that it is possible to write literature engagée, without recourse to the social realist canon. As Herzberger puts it, Marías 'shapes texts that configure our perception of the world rather than duplicate what the world in its current configuration may be able to offer' (2011: 11). In sum, El siglo reveals a side of history whose story needed to be told.