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Shaw - The Structure of Facundo
Shaw - The Structure of Facundo
Author(s): D. L. Shaw
Source: Ibero-amerikanisches Archiv , 1980, Neue Folge, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1980), pp. 239-250
Published by: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert
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D. L. Shaw
Sarmiento's deprecatory
disappointment at its initial lack of success (1949: 53 - 54) and
writes shortly afterwards: "Insisto una vez más en que la mentada
improvisación del libro no fue sino el rapto genial que plasma en
término breve la obra madura en la conciencia y en la subconciencia.
Insisto en que el propósito literario existió" (1949: 61). Paul Verde-
voye (1963: 385) refers to Facundo'' s "harmonie de structure". Dar-
do Cuneo in Sarmiento y Unamuno (1963: 70) shows that Unamuno
was also of this opinion. Ernesto Sàbato in El escritor y sus fantas-
mas does not hesitate to describe the book as an "obra sociológica e
históricamente equivocada, pero novelísticamente genial" (1963:
42). Finally, Ana María Barrenechea goes furthest of all, declaring,
"Lo importante no es que Sarmiento haya redactado su libro con una
armazón consciente y calculada ... Importa más que Sarmiento no se
haya contentado con proceder así y que haya recalcado también que
procedía así y por qué procedía así (1978: 46-47). What is notice-
able on both sides of the case is the abundance of simple affirmations
and the virtual absence of convincing arguments. In what follows I
should like to put the case for Facundo as a literary work character-
ized not only by the qualities of style and descriptive effectiveness
which critics have consented to praise, but also by genuine structural
unity and skill of composition. We cannot, of course, ignore the
haste and stress which attended the actual writing of the book. But
these circumstances in themselves do not rule out the possibility of
considering it from a general literary viewpoint. There are too many
similar cases; most notably, perhaps, that of Azuela's Los de abajo, in
relation to which critical responses have diverged on the same issue
of structural unity and artistic merit. We should do well to remember
in connection with these and similar works that Unamuno's San
Manuel Bueno, mártir, one of his most subtly complex novels, w
written in less than three weeks and that Stendhal's La Chartreuse de
Parme was poured out in fifty-two days. Speed of production is not a
reliable criterion when one is dealing with a writer who possesses an
innate sense of shape.
The fundamental reason why critics have denied this last and other
artistic gifts to Sarmiento in the composition of Facundo is to be
found in their instinctive reaction to the hybrid nature of the book.
To understand this in turn we must glance at the distinction between
myth and history. This is not necessarily a difference of function.
Both myth and historical biography, for example, can be used to
convey, through the depiction of an individual figure, a message to
the reader. The difference is one of approach. In biography the facts
are, or should be, in control of the writer; in the creation of myth it
is the creator, the artist, who chooses, controls and invents. To put it
se ha formado la últim
llena la medida" (F: 5 b
necessarily be incompl
actuality. Hence the se
Here is the beginning
work: the criterion is
Rosas is dictated by an
not writing a mere pam
the medium of art to e
process which is about
one of mythification. Th
is that Facundo is artis
the doctrine is the cre
instrumentalized by Sa
tion. Hence the strange
introduction: " ¡Somb
que ... te levantes a explicarnos la vida secreta ... de un noble
pueblo! " (F: 1 a). Inevitably this mingled sociological-mythical con-
ception of Facundo imposes significant modifications on his
characterization.
Part I
Part II
Only now is the time ripe for Facundo to make his actual appear-
ance. He is not, however, the centre of the book. Facundo is ideo-
logically centred, and the presentation of Facundo Quiroga is modi-
fied to fit the ideology. Genuine biographies of the caudillo exist,
and in them he is rather different from his portrait here. But no-one
cares. The myth has conquered the man; art has displaced reality.
Essentially, then, Facundo is to be shown as a product of his environ-
ment and as exemplifying its barbarity to a memorable degree. What-
ever is not material to this end is eliminated.
A primary feature of the character-presentation is the highly
dramatic opening, the encounter with the jaguar, which immediately
arouses the reader's interest. After this, selected physical and factual
details follow rapidly in order to reach the basic element, the moral
character. Sarmiento purposely invests Facundo with the outstanding
qualities of strength of will and natural dominion over others which
he believed distinguished such men as Napoleon and Mehemet Ali;
but he does so in order to emphasise that in the context of the
society already depicted, thes qualities are necessarily turned in the
wrong direction and find their outlet in irresponsible violence. True
to the earlier analysis, Facundo emerges at once as a gaucho malo of
the kind described in chapter two. The environment has begun its
work. The next stage is equally representative. Recruited into San
Martin's glorious army of liberation, he deserts to join the opposite:
Ramirez's montonera. Finally in 1818 comes the turning point: the
massacre which establishes his fame and prestige. Noteworthy here is
the replacement of a conventional biographical approach by an
accretive effect, produced not by an orderly succession of facts and
circumstances, but by significant anecdotes, which gradually build up
a coherent character illustrative of "la barbarie primitiva" (F : 5 1 a).
Part II chapter two brings to an end the first, or environmental,
phase of the construction of Facundo. It acts as a link between this
and the second, or historical, phase, which fills the rest of Part II. In
it Facundo is made to emerge as a caudillo, that is to say, he is
granted the required status for the beginning of the next stage of the
narrative. Facundo the private figure gives way to Facundo the
public historical personality. In this tidy, simplified development we
can see the myth taking shape as real biography progressively
disappears.
Part III
Part III constitutes the epilogue. But let us not be deceived by the
use of this word; this is no appendage, structural or otherwise. With-
out it, not only the basic ideological message of the work (the thesis
that Rosas is merely the heir to Facundo, systematically working out
" ¿Qué habría hecho Rosas sin él en una sociedad como era antes la de
Buenos Aires? " (F: 105 b)
To have ended the book with the death of Facundo, without doc-
umenting the triuph of the system he incarnated would have left the
work truncated, as Sarmiento himself makes clear:
Into this general plan fit, not perfectly, but well, its several parts and
secondary technique of repeated emphasis on barbarism in action.
Over and above the book's hybrid nature, there are digressions and
there is some ideological over-kill. But Facundo as a whole is logical-
ly articulated and follows a deliberate Une of evolution which runs
from environmental and historical causes to the gaucho malo, thence
to Facundo as the archetypal gaucho malo and finally to Rosas and
his régime as the culmination of an entire, inevitable cycle of causes
and effects. From the interplay of aim and subject matter the con-
struction of the work emerges with extreme clarity. It falls into two
carefully related phases of development, one superimposed on the
other, rising to a splendid climax in the death of Facundo. It con-
cludes with a third section bringing the theme of the work into
relation with contemporary and future trends as Sarmiento saw
them. The pattern is coherent not only in its broad outlines but also
in most of its subordinate aspects. When analysed, it can be seen to
function effectively as a genuine literary mechanism.
RESUMEN
REFERENCES
Cuneo, Dardo
1963 Sarmiento y Unamuno. Buenos Aires.
Jones, Cyril
1974 Facundo: A Criticai Guide. London
Sàbato, Ernesto
1 963 El escritor y sus fantasmas. Buenos Aires.
Salomon, Noel
1968 "A propos des éléments 'costumbristas' dans le Facundo de D. F. Sar-
miento." In Bulletin Hispanique , 70: 342 - 412, Bordeaux.
Verdevoye, Paul
1963 Domingo Faustino Sarmiento , éducateur et publicisté. Paris.