Collins, Orfeo and the Cratyline Conspiracy in Niebla

BSS, LXXIX (2002)

285

Orfeo and the Cratyline Conspiracyin Unamunos Niebla

MARSHA S. COLLINS

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A naturally significative expression is one that represents the same thingto everyone, like groans of the sick or dogs barking, asserts Peter of Spainin his influential work on dialectic, Tractatus (1230s?), the equivalent of abestseller in Renaissance Europe.1 Apparently, both Cervantes andUnamuno took exception to the philosophers ironically phrased affirmationof Aristotelian nominalism, for in El casamiento engaoso y El coloquio delos perros (1613) and Niebla (1914) readers find that the highly articulategroans of the sick and barking of dogs frame a sophisticated dialogue onlanguage and the nature of humankind. In the case of Niebla, however,persistent critical focus on the metafictional chapter 31 of the novel, inwhich the protagonist confronts an overbearing, fictionalized version of theauthor, has somewhat obscured the fact that the book does not end untilthe mortally ill Augusto Prez dies, the dog Orfeo delivers a funeral orationfor his master in the form of an interior monologue, and then the dogexpires, too. Shortly before Orfeos climactic speech, a ghostly Augustoreturns to remind his creator that even if in Calderonian terms life is a

1 Peter of Spain, Language in Dispute: The Summulae Logicales, trans. Francis P.Dinneen, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 39 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins,1990), 2. Peter of Spain, Tractatus, called afterwards Summule Logicales, ed. L. M. deRijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972): Vox significativa naturaliter est illa que apud omnes idemrepresentat, ut gemitus infirmorum, latratus canum (2). For more information on Peter ofSpain (Pope John XXI), see Rijk, ixc; Dinneen, xviixxxix; and Jos Luis Abelln,Metodologa e introduccin histrica, in Historia crtica del pensamiento espaol, 5 vols(Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1979), I, 23336. Abelln (23435), notes the large number ofeditions and wide dissemination of the Tractatus in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,and points out the revival of critical interest in Peter of Spain and his works in the secondhalf of the nineteenth century. Rijk (lviilxi), argues that Peter of Spain composed theTractatus in Len, and considers the possibility, which he ultimately deems unlikelyalthough not impossible, that the philosopher taught logic and composed the work inquestion at the University of Salamanca. E. J. Ashworth, Traditional Logic, in TheCambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge:Cambridge U. P., 1988), 14372, cites Peter of Spain with regard to the persistence of theAristotelian doctrine that spoken language is conventional (15556).

286 BSS, LXXIX (2002) MARSHA S. COLLINS

dream, no se suea dos veces el mismo sueo.2 Keeping in mind theheros wise counsel, in the pages that follow I seek not to resuscitateNieblas hero or his canine counterpart, but rather to revive criticalinterest in the crucial roles Orfeo plays in the novel as Augustoscomplement and as the figure who voices the final, poignant and eloquentmonologue cum epilogue in which the works major themes of language andhuman mortality converge.

Orfeo clearly belongs in the gallery of doubles who inhabit Unamunosfiction, but not among the symbolic, fragmented individuals locked in self-destructive rivalry who rule Abel Snchez (1917), Dos madres (1920) andEl otro (1926). Complementary alter egos predominate in Niebla, asillustrated by Unamuno (the man and character) and Vctor Goti, thenumerous couples who constitute a mise-en-abyme marriage cycle withinthe work, offering a variety of marital paradigms for consideration byAugusto and readers, and even by the germination of the text as a whole,which provides a creatively rewritten, intertextual double of Galds Elamigo Manso (1882) and the authors own Amor y pedagoga (1902).3 Orfeohas secured a place in a series of analogous pairings of creator withcreated, in which God is to Unamuno (the man), as Unamuno (the man andfictionalized author) is to Augusto, as Augusto is to Orfeo. The protagonisthimself suggests the dogs position in this hierarchy of analogousrelationships when he tells his pet: Yo he sido ms que tu amo, tu padre,tu dios! (657). But the talking dog also displays kinship with Blasillo, theheros double in San Manuel Bueno, mrtir (1930), the simple-mindedshadow figure who echoes only the words that express the protagonistshidden, innermost suffering, and yet whose fundamental innocenceprevents public recognition of Don Manuels private agony of doubt,parrotted unselfconsciously in Blasillos refranes. Similarly, the innocentOrfeo, Augustos confidant and witness to his internal existential struggle,synthesizes and articulates the process of his masters growth andacquisition of a painful inner life at the end of Niebla.4

2 Niebla, in Obras completas, ed. Manuel Garca Blanco, 9 vols (Madrid: Escelicer,1966), II, Novelas, 541682 (p. 678). All references to Niebla are to this edition.

3 Gayana Jurkevich offers a Jungian approach to Unamunos doubles in The ElusiveSelf: Archetypal Approaches to the Novels of Miguel de Unamuno (Columbia: Missouri U. P.,1991), 10933. Frances Wyers also analyses Unamunos doubles in Miguel de Unamuno:The Contrary Self (London: Tamesis, 1976), 8291. On El amigo Manso and Niebla, consultH. L. Boudreau, Rewriting Unamuno Rewriting Galds, Bucknell Review, XXXIX (1996),2341; on Amor y pedagoga and Niebla, consult Geoffrey Ribbans, La evolucin de lanovelstica unamuniana: Amor y pedagoga y Niebla, in his Niebla y soledad: aspectos deUnamuno y Machado (Madrid: Gredos, 1971), 83107.

4 Gayana Jurkevich discusses Orfeos ancestry in two earlier Unamuno poems, Elidiota y su perro (1900) and Elega en la muerte de un perro (190506), in UnamunosGestational Fallacy: Niebla and Escribir a lo que salga , ALEC, XV (1990), 6581 (pp. 6871). By far the most perceptive analysis of Orfeos role in Niebla is that of Alexander A.

ORFEO AND THE CRATYLINE CONSPIRACY IN UNAMUNOS NIEBLA 287

Unlike Blasillo, however, who emerges all of a piece in the fictionalworld, Orfeo undergoes an ontological growth process that mirrors theexistential journey of Augusto and robs him of his initial state of completeinnocence. Geoffrey Ribbans describes three phases in Augustosontological development: (1) the initial awakening, which corresponds tothe protagonists sighting of Eugenia and his decision to pursue her; (2) thegrowth period, marked by Augustos study and experience of love and theOther, which leads to his decision to engage actively in life throughmarriage; and (3) the final, painful reawakening, in which the hero fightsontological negation in the face of Eugenias betrayal and Unamunos deathsentence.5 Orfeos sentimental education parallels this outlined trajectory.Consider, for example, the respective births of the protagonist and his dog.When the protagonist walks out onto the stage of life in chapter 1, he islittle more than a disembodied soul floating aimlessly above the sentientworld in the realm of Platonic ideas, in which umbrellas are valued asbeautiful aesthetic objects rather than as useful instruments. So adrift isAugusto in the mist of non-being that he even believes a meandering dogwould suffice to give him the sense of purpose and will that he lacks. Theauthor gifts him with Eugenia instead of a pooch, of course, and the goodbirth promised by her name comes about, for her eyes anchor his floatingsoul to a mans body and the lower realm of human existence. Augustomaterializes in the wake of the magnetic pull of the womans eyes: Paspor la calle no un perro, sino una garrida moza, y tras de sus ojos se fu,como imantado y sin darse de ello cuenta, Augusto (557). Chronologically,the protagonist is an adult, but philosophically, he does not yet possess amature, superior awareness of being.

When Orfeo is born at the end of chapter 5, the dog appears abruptlyout of the mist, directly after Augustos reverie in which he reminiscesabout life with his mother, recalls the pain of losing her, and longs torecover that intimate human bond. As before, Unamuno fulfills his wish,but in a skewed, permuted way. The hero wanted a stray dog; he receiveda young woman. Here Augusto wishes to relive the role of cherished son,loved and protected by his mother. Instead, he must assume the role ofparent to his own adopted child Orfeo, an orphan like his master. Andwhile Augustos disembodied spirit descends from the higher realm of pureIdeas into a tangible, mature body, Orfeos innocent, infant body ascendsfrom the lower realm of pure physiological being into a world of human

Parker, On the Interpretation of Niebla, in Unamuno: Creator and Creation, ed. Jos RubiaBarcia and M. A. Zeitlin (Berkeley: California U. P., 1967), 11638. I find Parkers analysisof Orfeo on the whole excellent and thought-provoking, but the extremely moralistic cast ofhis discussion of the contrast between Orfeos innocent love and Augustos awakening toerotic passion is perhaps a bit more Calderonian than Unamunian and downplays theparodic aspects of the novel.

5 Estructura y significado de Niebla, in his Niebla y soledad, 10842.


beings who think and attempt to communicate with one another throughwords. Unamuno juxtaposes Augustos pedantically rational, philosophicalramblings in the human medium of language with Orfeos inarticulate,irrational cries and whimpers as he seeks to satisfy the strictly corporealneed for nourishment. A glimpse of Eugenia begins the herostransformation into sentient human, and Augusto, in turn, immediatelystarts to anthropomorphize the canine child, projecting his own quest forbeing onto the dog, noting that Orfeo pareca buscar camino en tierra(573). Even the way in which he mollifies the pups hunger takes on ananthropomorphic cast, as Augusto first feeds Orfeo milk from a sponge andthen from a baby bottle.

Like his master, Orfeo experiences a learning phase of apprenticeshipto life. Shortly after he brings the dog home, the protagonist reminds hisadopted son that he is an existential blank slate: T eres joven todava yno tienes experiencia de la vida. Y adems eres perro (578). Orfeos caninenature seems the least important fact to Augusto with regard to ontologicalawareness. As the hero informs his confidant, love has provided thecatalyst for his own development of consciousness of being: Amo, ergo sum!Este amor, Orfeo, es como lluvia bienhechora en que se deshace y concretala niebla de la existencia. Gracias al amor siento el alma de bulto, la toco... Y el alma misma, qu es sino amor, sino dolor encarnado? (578). YetOrfeo does learn about life vicariously from listening to Augustosmonodilogos and witnessing his ups and downs, master and dog-alter egocommunicating on a mysterious, supralinguistic level: Mirndole a los ojos[de Augusto] mientras hablaba adivinaba su sentir (579). In Platonicfashion, the expression of genuine emotion travels straight from the soulthrough the eyes and into the nascent soul of the pampered pooch. Orfeoabsorbs so much from these exchanges that by the time Augusto shares thenews that the dog cannot live with him after he marries Eugenia, thequasi-human pet displays distinct signs of suffering: Pero por qu memiras as, Orfeo? Si parece que lloras sin lgrimas! ... Es que me quieresdecir algo? Te veo sufrir por no tener palabra. [...] Y el perro, que pareca,en efecto, llorar, le lama la barba (657). If crying confirms the existence ofthe soul, as Augusto asserts earlier in Niebla, then Orfeos silent anguishmarks his passage from pure physiological animal into the liminal zone ofhuman existence, in which the spiritual and the physiological mix.

This particular threshold proves rather porous over the course of thenovel, a point Unamuno makes clear through constant comparisonsbetween human and dog. When the befuddled protagonist asks the wiseLiduvina how a man knows when he is really in love, she replies that he isno longer a man, but rather una cosa, un animalito (589). Both Augustoand Mauricio display canine characteristics in their dogged pursuit of thepiano teacher. An irritated Eugenia complains to Mauricio: No quiero ver


los ojos suplicantes del seorito don Augusto como los de un perrohambriento (585). Vctor repeats virtually the same words in telling thestory of the death of his beloved dog-surrogate child, another of Orfeosdoubles: [Al] ver aquellos ojos hmedos que parecan suplicarnos vida, nosentr una pena y un horror tal que no quisimos ms perros ni cosa viva(602). The verbal echo serves not only to identify Augusto with Orfeo, butalso to link the search for ontological affirmation through reciprocated loveby the Other with the quest for immortality. Ironically, the same Eugeniawho insists on evicting Orfeo, whom she regards as a lowly animal,becomes the instrument who proves his moral superiority. When sheboasts of her willingness to support Mauricio, and thus ensure he is hers,Ermelinda responds, S, tuyo ... Pero como puede serlo un perro. Y eso sellama comprar un hombre (608). While Augusto and Orfeo incarnate abond of genuine love, bolstered by the canines loyalty and selfless devotion,Eugenia purchases the affection of Mauricio, who more closely resembles aself-serving, readily bribed cur. Augusto defends his pet by quoting thepopular adage that [el perro] sera el mejor amigo del hombre si tuviesedinero, but Eugenia corrects him: Porque no lo tiene es su amigo (654).Speaking from the limited perspective of her own selfish motivation, shecan only explain the dogs devotion by projecting her own self-interest ontohim. Although she misses the mark with Orfeo, in Mauricios case, hercynical comment is right on the money. She tells Augusto that the bestway to divest themselves of this annoying, begging mongrel is to throwsome crumbs to him in the shape of a job far away. Eugenia assures hershort-lived fianc that el pobre Mauricio no muerde, ladra, but in reality,this human jackal steals Augustos money, love, and life, leaving him withOrfeo, whose love and fidelity remain untainted by greed and materialinterest (654).

This act of betrayal precipitates the third and final stage of ontologicaldevelopment, in which master and pet address the mystery of mortality.Thomas Mermall has called the chiasmus Unamunos master trope, whichhere assumes a criss-cross structural pattern in the plot itself, predicatedon recognition of Orfeo as the protagonists double.6 Augusto dies nude inbed, symbolically stripped of the elaborate rhetorical raiment he uses tofend off death in his dialogue-debate with the fictionalized author. In fact,his last line of defense against mortality consists of a tragicomic attempt tosustain pure physiological existence by gorging himself with food in aliteralized rendition of metaphorical hambre vital. Augusto loses his

6 See The Chiasmus: Unamunos Master Trope, PMLA, CV (1990), 24555: Thechiasmus is therefore both a micro- and a macrostructure; its local use may be extended toencompass the rhetorical design of entire works. [...] The trope subverts or destabilizes acoherent notion of personality and a fixed idea of reality, engenders a dialectic that requiresa yielding of the external and inherent opposites of consciousness in a continuous process ofself-realization and inverts cause-and-effect relations (248).


exaggeratedly rational linguistic gifts in the deathbed scene, stuttering andstammering his way to the end of life. The hero must come to terms withthe animal part of his nature, although the ensuing argument over thecause of his demise does nothing to resolve the ambiguity surrounding hisdeath established in the dueling prologues of Vctor Goti and Unamuno.Yet while death robs the protagonist of human discourse and reminds himof his biological limits, his masters death endows Orfeo with the power ofspeech, which elevates him above mere animal existence and enables himto express complex thoughts linguistically. Predictably perhaps, exposureto mortality forms an integral part of the dogs education from infancy.Augusto holds up the ashes of his fathers last cigar for the pups perusal asan illustrative memento mori: Mira Orfeo, mira la ceniza que dej mi padreen aquel cenicero ... Esta es la revelacin de la eternidad, Orfeo, de laterrible eternidad (578). Like his master, Orfeo later receives a deathsentence from his god, albeit in a more roundabout manner. After Eugeniaabandons him, Augusto finds some comfort in Orfeos unwavering devotion: [...] Ya no nos separarn al uno del otro! Viviremos juntos en la vida y enla muerte (660).7 The statement proves prophetic, but not before Orfeoexperiences what Vctor Goti and Unamuno call a second birth, nacer porel dolor a la conciencia de la muerte incesante, de que estamos siempremuriendo (662). For the loyal canine, this awakening to a higher level ofontological awareness begins just before he gains the power of rationalthought and expression, when Orfeo rubs his nose in the smell of death, notthe death of just anyone, but when he sniffs the decaying flesh of hisadoptive father. The shock brings about a questioning of faith similar toUnamunos famous 1911 crisis, which inspired Del sentimiento trgico de lavida (1912). Just before Orfeo launches into Nieblas climactic internalmonologue, the narrator permits readers to enter the dogs mind: Y alsentirle ahora muerto sinti que se desmoronaban en su espritu losfundamentos todos de su fe en la vida y en el mundo, y una inmensadesolacin llen su pecho (679). Anguish before the death of his belovedmaster provides Unamunos perro sabio with the impetus and the voice toarticulate the most elusive existential quandary of humankind in a funeraloration defined by dialectics and saturated with antinomian paradoxes,hallmarks of the authors style.

And who better to speak of the mystery of mortality than thequintessential poet-prophet-musician Orpheus? Unamuno resurrects inNiebla the Orpheus myths three principal constituents of love, death and

7 It is interesting to note that Blasillo, San Manuel Buenos double, dies along withhis master, too. For more on the multiple layers of signification of Augustos death bysupposed overeating and the chiastic pattern of master (language loss) and dog (languageacquisition) consult Roberta Johnson, Crossfire: Philosophy and the Novel in Spain, 19001934 (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1993), 94102.


art, reenacting the original narrative patterns of ascent and descent; birth,death and rebirth; and loss and recovery. In some versions of the ancienttale, Orpheus loses Eurydice on the ascent from Hades and the poetssubsequent death and return to Hades reunite them. Unamunos Orfeoalso bounds out of a foggy netherworld, loses his loved one to death, andthen regains Augusto after surcease of his own life. The Orpheus mythdramatizes as well the power of art in general, and language in particular,for the poets singing ensorcells shades, gods, people, and even rocks andtrees. Certain variations of the story relate that after the Maenadsdismember Orpheus, his head magically transcends death and continuessinging for all eternity, contrasting human mortality with artsimmortality. Unamuno likewise immortalizes the mortal Augusto andOrfeo, and himself, in his nivola, although the dog seems to make anindependent, self-possessed bid for eternal life through the funeral oration,in which he dematerializes, metamorphosing into a disembodied voice, thelatter-day equivalent of a divinely inspired Orphic talking head. AsCharles Segal has stated, however, the Orpheus myth actually dwells onthe ambiguities of art, specifically languages limitless power over thetangible world and its limited ability to escape the subjective consciousnessthat wields it:

Above all, it is the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in languageitself that generate the ambiguities and conflicts in the various versionsof the myth: the capacity of poetic language to encompass the unsayableand its futility in the face of ineffable joy, beauty, or suffering; itsability to clarify or to distort; its power of self-transcendence and also ofself-deception.8

Given Unamunos lifelong fascination with language, the stylistic andthematic logocentrism of Niebla, and given that the novel climaxes with adog delivering a moving, sophisticated oration, the author leaves littledoubt regarding his understanding and deployment of the nuancedcomplexities of the Orpheus myth or regarding the care he has exercised inbaptizing the dog Orfeo. In fact, discussion of the symbolic nature of suchnames in Niebla has become commonplace in Unamuno criticism, but therelationship between this feature of the text and the novels engagementwith language remains largely unexplored. The author introduces thetheme in the central narratives opening sentence: Al aparecer Augusto ala puerta de su casa extendi el brazo derecho, con la mano palma abajo yabierta, y dirigiendo los ojos al cielo quedse un momento parado en esta

8 Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1989), 35. Formore on the love, death, art triangle, and the evolution of the Orpheus myth over time, readSegal, 135, 15598, and Walter A. Strauss, Descent and Return: The Orphic Theme inModern Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1971), 119, 21872.


actitud estatuaria y augusta (557). The narrator suggests that an inherentrelationship exists between the protagonists name, Augusto, and hisnature, his august demeanor. But the ironic, parodic context in which theobservation appears subverts this conclusion. After all, the heros poseresembles that of a bumbling, bourgeois Adam tentatively accepting asomewhat soggy spark of life from Michelangelos conspicuously absentGod. Moreover, the unexceptional surname Prez that he bears mockinglyundercuts the lofty Augusto. At this juncture, the protagonist merits theadjectives estatuario and augusto only in so far as he suffers fromexistential paralysis born of lack of will, and thus remains immobile, a life-like, but lifeless statue. Thus, a sentence that superficially proposes anessential connection between res and verba, on analysis seems to support adifferent assertion altogether, i.e. that an arbitrary tie binds names to thethings they represent.

By the end of the novel, however, the author reverses this position aswell. Few readers would want to question that through his fight againstdeath and his contentious interview with his maker Unamuno, theprotagonist acquires a certain tragic, majestic grandeur.9 Even Augustosgod, who issues the death sentence, finds himself compelled to shed a tearof compassion for his dying creation. In short, the hero earns the rubricAugusto in the course of awakening to the inevitability of death andwaging Everymans, Prezs, war against mortality. At the same time,Unamuno restores an almost magical power to the protagonists name asAugusto actualizes the existential potential contained by the label he hasworn since his birth in the text. The same enigmatic forces at work inUnamunos fictional world also inspire Augusto to name his dog Orfeo,que as le bautiz, no se sabe ni saba l tampoco por qu (573). Thismoniker seems incongruous in the extreme, since the puppy can do littlemore than whimper at first, but the magnificent rhetorical skills hedisplays in the concluding elegy dispel any lingering doubts the readermight have about the appropriateness of the title. The casual use of theverb bautiz in retrospect takes on an added, sacral meaning, for hisspeech sets him apart as an animal cursed and blessed with visionarypowers. Yet the parodic inevitably remains a part of this scene in thatAugusto appears as a sort of mock Adam naming the animals (Genesis 2:1920) and in that Unamuno playfully reminds the reading public that the

9 Nicholas G. Round characterizes the tragic sense of Niebla: The tragic sense isand remains a religious outlook. But it is not a surrogate metaphysic, designed to restoreplausibility to comforting theological and ontological formulae. Rather it is a humanism,concerned with the discovery of values in human livesa discovery whose manner becomesfully clear only when it is manifested, as in Niebla, in a world of lived or imagined humanreality (The Tragic Sense of Niebla, in Hispanic Studies in Honour of Geoffrey Ribbans, ed.Ann L. Mackenzie and Dorothy S. Severin [BHS Special Homage Volume] [Liverpool:Liverpool U. P., 1992], 17183 [p. 180]).


protagonist does not know why he names his pet Orfeo because up untilthis point in the novel, the author-God pulls the strings of the humanfacsimile Augusto, who has no will of his own and no knowledge of his ownfictionality.

Nevertheless, the concept of naming something or someone remains forUnamuno, in typically Unamunian fashion, an extremely complex one withimportant implications: La verdadera materia del arte literario, de lapoesa, es el lenguaje que contiene en s el tesoro todo de nuestrasintuiciones. Expresar es nombrar. Se perciben los elementos materiales deuna cosa, pero no se la conoce hasta que no se la nombra uno en s.10Literary or artistic language would seem to reserve for itself a certainsacred, expressive power of naming, inextricably tied to the cognitiveprimacy of intuitive knowledge and very much akin to Augustos, andAdams, divinely inspired baptismal rites. Literature would also claimthrough language the divine magic of world-making.

Nieblas emphasis on names and the act of naming is not the onlyaspect of the text that invites reader engagement with the more universaltheme of language. The pages of the novel provide a fictional forum inwhich characters discuss and debate the nature of names and language,offering models for the extratextual public to contemplate. Augustoinitiates the dialogue on language early in the novel, articulating the namegame as a form of play and interplay with serious ramifications, followingin the tradition of serio ludere:

Y por qu te llamas Domingo?Porque as me llaman.Bien, muy biense dijo Augusto; nos llamamos como nos

llaman. En los tiempos homricos tenan las personas y las cosas dosnombres, el que le daban los hombres y el que le daban los dioses.Cmo me llamar Dios? Y por qu no he de llamarme yo de otro modoque como los dems me llaman? Por qu no he de dar a Eugenia otronombre distinto del que le dan los dems, del que le da Margarita, laportera? Cmo la llamar? (561)

Nelson Orringer has reminded critics that Unamuno, professor of GreekLanguage and Literature and devotee of Hellenism, emphasizes theinfluence of the Socratic dialogue on Western philosophy and on his ownwriting, which accounts for the fact that dialogue and dialectics occupypride of place among the principal characteristics of the nivola.11 The

10 Prlogo a la versin castellana (primera edicin) de la Esttica de Benedetto Croce,in Obras completas, ed. Manuel Garca Blanco, VIII, Autobiografa y recuerdos personales,9871000 (p. 995). Subsequent references to the Esttica (EST) are to this edition.

11 See Nelson R. Orringer, Unamuno and Plato: A Study of Marginalia and Influence,Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispnicos, XI (Winter 1987), 33153. Unamuno observes:Nuestra filosofa occidental entr en madurez, lleg a conciencia de s, en Atenas, con


quotation above echoes the words of Socrates near the beginning of PlatosCratylus, the Dialogue that focuses on the appropriateness of names, whichas in Niebla, leads to a wider discussion on the nature of language:

SOCRATES We already see one thing we did not know before, thatnames do possess a certain natural correctness, andthat not every man knows how to give a name well toanything whatsoever. Is not that true?

HERMOGENES Certainly.

SOCRATES Then our next task is to try to find out, if you care toknow about it, what kind of correctness that is whichbelongs to names. [...]

HERMOGENES How shall I investigate? [...]

SOCRATES [...] You ought to learn from Homer and the otherpoets.

HERMOGENES Why, Socrates, what does Homer say about names,and where?

SOCRATES In many passages: but chiefly and most admirably inthose in which he distinguishes between the names bywhich gods and men call the same things. Do you notthink he gives in those passages great and wonderfulinformation about the correctness of names? Forclearly the gods call things by the names that arenaturally right. Do you not think so?12

The Cratylus plays off against each other two diametrically opposed viewson the link between res and verba, the natural language perspective

Scrates, y lleg a esta conciencia mediante el dilogo, la conversacin social. Y eshondamente significativo que la doctrina de las ideas innatas, del valor objetivo y normativode las ideas, de lo que luego, en la Escolstica, se llam realismo, se formulase en dilogos(Del sentimiento trgico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, in Obras completas, ed.Manuel Garca Blanco, VII, Meditaciones y ensayos espirituales, 107302 [p. 291]).Subsequent references to Del sentimiento trgico de la vida (DSTV) are to this edition.

Mario J. Valds examines Unamunos theory of language in the context of the earlytwentieth-century study of language and linguistics in Phenomenological Hermeneutics andthe Study of Literature (Toronto: Toronto U. P., 1987), 1121, noting similarities betweenthe authors concept of language and that of his contemporary Edward Sapir, citing theirshared interest in Vives, Vico, Goethe and Humboldt, and Unamunos admiration for Croce(16).

12 Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. Lesser Hippias, trans. Harold N. Fowler,Loeb Library CLXVII (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1939 [rpt. 1996]), 1191 [pp. 3235]).All subsequent references to Cratylus (CRA) are to this edition.

I wish to express my appreciation to Nicholas Round and Nelson Orringer for their veryhelpful advice regarding this section of my article.


proposed by Cratylus, which endows language with the magical power tocapture and evoke the essence of ideas and things, and the nominalistperspective proposed by Hermogenes, which regards language as a mediumof communication that relies on adherence to custom and convention forefficacy, and thus posits an arbitrary tie between words and thingssustained only by force of collective habit. While for much of the DialogueSocrates appears to advance a theory of natural language, in actuality hedismantles that viewpoint in a display of etymological wisdom that dazzlesreaders with its absurd, ingenious ironies even as it impresses the ratheringenuous Cratylus. To prove that the names of gods, virtues and vices,evince the essence of their being, Socrates alters, adds and eliminatesletters, assigns letters subjective qualities, and in general, chops, slices,splices and dices the words as he sees fit, indulging in humorousequivocation in order to arrive at foregone conclusions regarding theirorigins. At the end of the Cratylus, he demonstrates the spuriousness ofthis argument by presenting a counter-etymology for the word knowledgeto indicate the ambiguity of the name, which could signify either makingthe soul stand still at things, linking knowledge to stillness, or carryingthe soul around with things, linking knowledge to motion, dependingentirely on what one wants to prove and how one wants to prove it (CRA,17879). He summarizes: And so names which we believe have the veryworst meanings appear to be very like those which have the best (CRA,18081). By the end of the Dialogue even Cratylus must concede thatconvention and custom must contribute something towards the indicationof our meaning when we speak (CRA, 17273). Ultimately, however, thedebate remains unresolved and neither the nominalist nor the naturallysignificant, Cratyline view of language garners the title of winner.Although convention has an important role in languages communicativefunction, Socrates notes that personally he would prefer the theory thatnames are, so far as is possible, like the things named, but the evidence,such as it is, does not support that theory (CRA, 17475). He believes thatthe gods are superior name-givers, as are certain humans, such as artists,but observes that humans cannot know how the gods assigned or originallyconcocted names, and concedes that even artists sometimes make badchoices in creating names.

Historically, both Cervantes Coloquio and Unamunos Niebla emerge inan atmosphere of intense intellectual ferment about the nature of languageand in epochs that witness the birth of international quests for a universaltongue. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, the rediscovery ofthe Cratylus and other classical works, in part gave rise to nostalgia for anAdamitic, natural language identified with the biblical episode of Adamnaming the animals, and hence to a prelapsarian and pre-Babelic statewhen only one language existed and res and verba were inseparable. This


belief in an original, natural lingua humana that provided access to divinetruths ran counter to the predominant, conventionalist notion of languagethat considered words malleable, deceptive vehicles of human corruption,the progeny of Babels destructive legacy. As Alban K. Forcione has shown,El coloquio de los perros dramatizes a complex, paradoxical, and pluralisticengagement with the theme of language that echoes the aforementionedextremes, as well as nuanced positions in between, but ultimately theColloquy begins and ends with a celebration of language and rationality asdivine gifts which distinguish man from the beast and lift him out of thedark silence of animality.13 The yearning for a natural language in turninspired the search for a new, artificial and universal language in theseventeenth century, a cause inspired to a certain extent by fascinationwith Chinese ideographic writing and championed by theologians such asHerman Hugo and John Amos Comenius. Interest in a constructed,universal language returned with a vengeance towards the end of thenineteenth century in Europe, close to Nieblas date of composition.Between 1880 and 1900 roughly forty artificial languages debuted on theintellectual stage of the European cultural lite, among them Zamenhofsesperanto, based on the Romance Languages and featuring totalgrammatical regularity. From the beginning, esperanto embodied anideological agenda. Zamenhof intended his fabricated universal languageto provide a unifying foundation for the ethnic groups of his native Poland,groups distinguished by languages and locked in strife. But as esperantoexpanded internationally, the language acquired a broader ideologicalaffiliation with leftist politics, accrued from association with socialism,global pacifism and international workers movements. Add this renewedconcern with a universal linguistic construct related to the seventeenth-century quest for a natural language, to the pioneering, early twentieth-century studies in language and linguistics by Croce, Sapir and Saussure,and a clearer picture emerges of the debate on language that forms thebackground for the creation of Unamunos novel.14

13 Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness: A Study of El casamiento engaoso y Elcoloquio de los perros (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1984), 221. Chapter 6, Language: Divineor Diabolical Gift?, 187236, offers an excellent analysis of Cervantes sophisticatedengagement with this important issue in Renaissance thought and letters. Ashworthcomments on the interest in naturally signifying spoken language that arose in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries: It was due in part to the rediscovery of PlatosCratylus and other classical sources, in part to the strong Renaissance interest in magic andthe cabala, with the concomitant hope that a knowledge of natural language would enableone to exercise some control over the objects signified, and in part to renewed biblicalstudies (Traditional Logic, 156).

14 On the Renaissance notion of natural language and the seventeenth-century questfor a universal language, consult Paul Cornelius, Languages in Seventeenth- and EarlyEighteenth-Century Imaginary Voyages (Geneva: Droz, 1965), 538; Claude-Gilbert Dubois,Mythe et langage au seizime sicle (Bordeaux: Ducros, 1970), 1792; and James Knowlson,


Given this context, the fact that Augusto and Orfeo lie at the heart of avast, Cratyline conspiracy perpetrated on readers of Niebla by themastermind Unamuno seems less surprising. In Cervantine fashion, theauthors restaging and revitalization of the Cratylus in his novel forces theaudience little by little to question and rethink their most basicassumptions about language. For example, despite initial uncertainty andvacillation, the res/verba link Unamuno establishes in the case of Augustoand Orfeo lends credence to Socrates statement that the name-maker is ofall the artisans among men the rarest in his ability to select a rubric thatencapsulates the essential nature of the thing or being (CRA, 2425).Nevertheless, in the same novel thoughts of un perro conjure una garridamoza and memories of Mama summon a pooch from the mist. Suchcomical, deflected associations between words and tangible realityunderscore the imperfection of language as a conduit of communication aswell as highlight the inadequacy of aspiring wordsmiths who have little tono knowledge of the sentient world. To emphasize the point, the authorskewers the pedantic Antoln S. Paparrigpulos, a caricature of theintellectual who lives among the pages of the printed word, completelyremoved from corporeal, lived experience. No matter how presumptuouslyerudite his research may be, his studies (basically nonexistent, since theyremain unpublished) are totally ineffectual in terms of practicablesolutions to existential dilemmas. When Augusto consults Paparrigpulosregarding his amorous problems, the researcher dehumanizes thesituation, turning life into an abstract geometrical proof, launching into afit of logorrhea symptomatic more of insanity than insight in that res andverba, the reality signified and the signifying word(s), occupy totallydiscrete universes.

Like the advocate of natural language Cratylus, Augusto resistsacceptance of the fact that to communicate effectively as a social animal ina social context, people must conform to a degree to conventions dictates.From the heros perspective, language should follow what he regards asthe laws of logic, which he would like to think rule his own subjectiveconsciousness. For example, Augusto believes that Eugenias surnameought to bear a feminine inflection: Domingo? No me acostumbro a eso deque se llame Domingo ... No; he de hacerle cambiar el apellido y que sellame Dominga (559). Of course, Eugenias opinion does not figure in hisruminations, and indeed, at this point he knows nothing about her andcannot even describe her beyond a vague memory of her eyes. Such

Universal Language Schemes in England and France 16001800 (Toronto: Toronto U. P.,1975), 743. For information on esperanto and the search for a universal language at theturn of the twentieth century, see Pierre Burney, Les Langues Internationales (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, [2nd ed.] 1966), 1723, 8796 and Peter G. Forster, TheEsperanto Movement (The Hague: Mouton, 1982), 4173, 188211.


insignificant details, however, do not keep Augusto from pursuing hisabstract laws to what he perceives as a logical conclusion, that namingtheir male offspring will pose a problem since Dominga just does not suitas a boys surname. A rather literal-minded Augusto finds equallyincomprehensible the use of the diminutive as a sign of affection: Por quel diminutivo es seal de cario? ... Es acaso que el amor achica la cosaamada? (566). Yet the hero has very little in the way of familiarity withsocial customs to draw on as a basis for communication. He is mostcomfortable with philosophical abstraction and rational patterns, andUnamuno goes to great lengths throughout Niebla to show that languagedefies such rigid, conceptual grids, functioning almost as a living entitythat possesses human idiosyncrasies and reflects the illogical logic of socialchange. As the author asserts in his prologue to the Spanish edition ofCroces Aesthetics, la verdadera obra de arte es el lenguaje hablado y vivo.Una poesa bella, es decir, una poesa, es la que habla como un hombre;slo los pedantes hablan como un libro ... (EST, 995). This opinion alsohelps explain Unamunos predilection for dialogue and the spoken word inhis fiction. Augusto meets an extreme version of the bookish part ofhimself in Eugenias eccentric uncle, who speaks in an eminently logical,but completely artificial language contrived away from the milieu of dailylife and without the benefit of a collective cultural historyesperanto.When Fermn greets the aspiring suitor, who has just rescued Ermelindascanary from a nasty fall, he addresses Augusto in a sentence in esperantothat means, Y usted no cree conmigo que la paz universal llegar prontomerced al esperanto? (574). The narrator informs readers that Augustopens en la huda, pero el amor a Eugenia le contuvo (574). Thegentleman persists in speaking the so-called universal language such thateven the hero, someone more favourably disposed to grand ideas thanmaterial substance, must confess: No le entiendo a usted una palabra,caballero (574).15 Dissent from societys linguistic norms leads toconfusion and miscommunication in conversation and in the business ofdaily living.

Fermns wife Ermelinda occupies the other extreme of the linguisticspectrum, that of the pragmatic nationalist, and she shows little patiencefor her husbands enthusiastic embrace of a fabricated language that noone speaks: Conque no nos entendemos en las nuestras, y vas a traerotras? (576). Ermelinda regards this language without a country as aninterfering, intrusive medium that will make the already difficult processof communication even more so. Yet whereas in the Cratylus Socratesaffirms that each country has its own name-givers and that each languagerepresents similar concepts with different words, with no language

15 Although Romance Languages form the basis for esperanto, apparently thisartificial language never enjoyed much popularity in Spain.


esteemed above the others (CRA, 2829), Eugenias aunt remains ascommitted to and as constrained by her own perspective of language as theidealistic universalist Fermn. When Augusto asks if she does not thinkthat having just one language might have some merit, Ermelinda responds:S, seor ... ; una sola lengua: el castellano, y a lo sumo el bable, parahablar con las criadas que no son racionales (576). She selects thelanguage she already has mastered and through which she has experiencedand categorized the world as the best candidate for a universal tongue,comically adding the element of class distinction into the mix when sheputs Asturian into second place. Equally stubborn and subjective in theirrespective approaches to language, Fermn and Ermelinda cling to a biasedview of the spoken word. She cannot see the global forest for a few Iberiantrees, while he sees only the cosmic forest, but not the Castilian oaks in hisfront yard.

If intrinsic verbal limits and human bias in the use of words underminelanguages communicative function, they wreak havoc on languagescognitive function as well. Socrates acknowledgment of the innateduplicity of words resonates throughout Niebla:

Speech makes all things known and always makes them circulate andmove about, and is twofold, true and false. [...] Well, the true part issmooth and divine and dwells aloft among the gods, but falsehooddwells below among common men, is rough and like the tragic goat; fortales and falsehoods are most at home there, in the tragic life.

(CRA, 8687)

Unamunos exploration of languages twofold nature in the novel assumesboth comic and tragic dimensions. At the humorous end of the scale, verbalambiguity provides the basis for the myriad puns that punctuate andenliven the text. Augusto tells Margarita that to follow the grammaticalrules of gender agreement Eugenia really must change her surname toDominga: Y si no, dnde est la concordancia?. To which the doorkeeperresponds: No la conozco, seor (558). As Ermelinda indicates, even withinthe confines of the same national language confusion arises. In the case ofthese two people, ostensibly they share the same language and medium foranalysing information, but the parameters that constitute the foundationfor cognitive processing differ radically. While Augusto perceives andcategorizes the world through a prism of laws, ideas and theories,Margarita understands only what she has experienced directly andinherited as societys collective legacy, which indicates that laConcordancia must be a womans name. Much later in the novel,additional incongruous wordplay underscores the epistemological gulf thatseparates Augusto and Eugenia. When the music teacher searches for theperfect word to describe the verses the protagonist has composed in her


honour, Augusto assumes the mantle of name-giver:

Vamos s, muy nivolesco.Qu es eso?Nada, un timo que nos traemos entre Vctor y yo.Pues mira, Augusto, yo no quiero timos en mi casa luego que noscasemos, sabes? Ni timos ni perros. (653)

Augusto brandishes a neologism that forms part of an ideolect he sharesonly with Vctor (discounting Unamuno and the reading public),understood only by the two who worked their way through the fanciful,associative etymology of nivola (navilo ..., nebulo ..., nivola) and exercised acertain Adamistic, evocative magic. But Eugenia, like Margarita, lacks allinterest in or understanding of cerebral, logocentric, idiosyncraticinvention. The immediate world of custom and contingency, of pets,salaries and mortgages, and the language that captures that circumscribedreality, mark the limits of her knowledge and her potential for acquiringknowledge.

As these absurd, fractured conversations illustrate, unintentionalambiguity in speech relativizes and destabilizes languages function as acognitive tool, making analysis and comprehension highly subjectiveundertakings with a wide margin of error. But destabilization takes adecidedly more tragic turn when speech becomes a tissue of lies employedto deceive, as Augusto discovers from his dealings with Eugenia. He findseven more alarming, however, the fact that humans subconsciouslymanipulate language to lie to themselves and remake reality in the form ofmore palatable falsehoods. If languages malleability enables people todupe themselves, then the truth must reside somewhere outside the scopeof human consciousness and the linguistic realm, and beyond the forum ofsocial discourse:

El hombre en cuanto habla miente, y en cuanto se habla a s mismo, esdecir, en cuanto piensa sabiendo que piensa, se miente. No hay msverdad que la vida fisiolgica. La palabra, este producto social, se hahecho para mentir. Le he odo a nuestro filsofo que la verdad es, comola palabra, un producto social, lo que creen todos, y creyndolo seentienden. Lo que es producto social es la mentira. (619)

Augustos trenchant denunciation of language, however, does not representthe final word on the subject in Niebla. For from Unamunos perspective,despite the compromised status of the medium as a cognitive tool,linguistic articulation remains an essential part of the thought process aswell as the business of living, and speech does exert a certain incantatory,conjuring power over the sentient world. As Socrates tells Cratylus, howcan there be knowledge, and how can anyone know anything withoutlinguistic mediation: How can we assert that they [the original name-


makers] gave names or were lawgivers with knowledge, before any namewhatsoever had been given, and before they knew any names, if thingscannot be learned except through their names? (CRA, 18283). Realityitself becomes an illusory linguistic construct, the fictional world of wordsAugusto describes on his deathbed: Cosas de libros ..., cosas de libros ... Yqu no es cosa de libros, Domingo? Es que antes de haber libros en una uotra forma antes de haber relatos, de haber palabra, de haber pensamiento,haba algo? (675). Illusory and uncertain a cosmos built on words may be,but when all is said and done, that is all humans have as the basis forthought, action and living. Vctor advances this philosophical position indefending the nivolas substitution of dialogue for the conventional novelsfocus on plot and action: Hablan demasiado!, dicen otras veces. Como si elhablar no fuese hacer. En el principio fu la Palabra y por la Palabra sehizo todo (663). Such comments support what Mario J. Valds has termedUnamunos radical nominalism, that language serves as a mediating forcethat enables human existence, first, by helping the knower organize realityand formulate his identity, and second, by permitting the knower totranscend the self and communicate with other humans.16 The authorlends credence to this viewpoint in Del sentimiento trgico de la vida, inwhich he states: El lenguaje es el que nos da la realidad, y no como unmero vehculo de ella, sino como su verdadera carne, de que todo lo otro, larepresentacin muda o inarticulada, no es sino esqueleto (DSTV, 291).Unamuno further asserts, along with his alter ego Vctor Goti: Todo lohecho se hizo por la palabra y la palabra fue en un principio (DSTV, 292).

The grave epistemological problem still remains, though, of how todiscern truth from falsehood, how to confirm that humans know what theyknow, if language, the foundation for all knowledge, is by its very natureunreliable. When Socrates reaches this philosophical impasse in theCratylus, he confesses to his interlocutor that how realities are to belearned or discovered is perhaps too great a question for you or me todetermine and admonishes him that no man of sense can put himself andhis soul under the control of names, and trust in names and their makersto the point of affirming that he knows anything (CRA, 18889; 19091).

Although Unamuno would doubtless agree with Socrates opinions to anextent, in the fictional context of Orfeos funeral oration he moves beyond

16 Shadows in the Cave: A Phenomenological Approach to Literary Criticism Based onHispanic Texts (Toronto: Toronto U. P., 1982), 79. Valds observes that Unamuno is not aproponent of some aspect of classical nominalism which would deny the material reality ofthe world. Unamuno insists on a radical nominalism; he holds that the world is knowableonly because it has been organized by the knower through his use of the acquired language(9). Paul Ilie, in Language and Cognition in Unamuno, Revista Canadiense de EstudiosHispnicos, XI (Winter 1987), 289314 (pp. 28995), focuses on what he terms the space ofknowledge between the unexpressed (Valds organizing power of language) and theexpressed (Valds transcendent power of linguistic communication).


the posed linguistic and epistemological impasse to offer readers a glimmerof an ideal language that would transcend such conundrums. Criticalstudies have explored the impeccable philosophical and literary lineage theinterior monologue manifests. Nelson Orringer observes that Orfeoswords pay tribute to ancient Greek civilization coming to terms withhuman mortality, made apparent in numerous references to PlatosPhaedo, specifically to the process of purification, which after deathenables the fortunate soul to move into the finer, upper region of theearththe Platonic equivalent of heaven. These allusions secureUnamunos status as a wise, gifted name-maker who appropriately dubsthe transfigured canine prodigy Orpheus.17 Carlos Blanco Aguinagastresses the pervasive Cervantine influence in Niebla, particularly of Elcoloquio de los perros in this passage. Like Cervantes, Unamuno developsthe creative potential inherent in the Greek root kyon or dog, thenickname of the bitingly honest Diogenes and source of the label for hisschool of philosophy, the Cynics. Both authors offer readers talking dogphilosophers who alternately bless, condemn, and fashion a critique oflanguage.18 Review of the dogs discourse on speech and other subjectsreveals that Orfeo, Cipin and Berganza also share an extremely moralperspective of life, find humans rather perplexing creatures in that regard,and display concern for the facility with which language becomes a vehicleof hypocrisy and equivocation.

With the latter intertextual relationship in mind, Alexander Parker,the critic who has analysed Orfeo in greatest depth, emphasizes this moralaspect of Augustos dog, characterizing him as an embodiment of naturalinnocence whose pure, loyal, redemptive love serves as a counterpoint tothe selfish, cynical love represented elsewhere in the text. In addition,Parker rightly notes that Orfeos oration functions as an epiloguecompleting the frame for the central narrative set up by the two prologues.Orfeo, like Vctor and Unamuno, is one of the characters who figures in themain body of the text as well as the frame, and who thus enjoys greaterproximity to the reader. The prologues and epilogue posit and summarizethe major themes explored in the main narrative, but in such a way thatthey counterbalance one another in tone and perspective. While VctorGoti raises the issue of the connection between philosophy, eroticism, andcorruption in his introduction, the speculative, articulate Orfeo revisits the

17 See Orringer, Unamuno and Plato, especially 34041, on the allusions to thePhaedo in Niebla, and Parker, On the Interpretation of Niebla, 13637 on theappropriateness of Platonic reflection at the end of the novel.

18 For more on the Cervantine and Calderonian aspects of Niebla, consult CarlosBlanco Aguinaga, Unamunos Niebla: Existence and the Game of Fiction, MLN, LXXIX(1964), 188205 (pp. 199205). Forcione (Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness, 18081,201), notes the identification of dog and Cynic philosopher in regards to the Coloquio. In asimilar vein, see also E. C. Riley, Cervantes and the Cynics, BHS, LIII (1976), 18999.


issue in an internalized speech with a focus on longing for an idealbrotherhood of humankind governed by pure, unadulterated love of thetype shared by master and pet.19 In a sense, through the prism of Orfeoseyes of innocence readers share a vision of a prelapsarian, Edenic state,recalling the Renaissance nostalgia for Adamitic, natural language soprominent in Cervantes time.

Yet Orfeo addresses these issues with a voice both wise and pure,fueled by compassion, which Unamuno labels la esencia del amorespiritual humano (DSTV, 190), and born of the pain of the tragicawareness of human mortality, la conciencia de la propia limitacin(DSTV, 192). The first words of his oration reveal this higher level ofawareness even as they express suffering and compassion, co[n]-padecimiento: Pobre amo mo!, pobre amo mo! Se ha muerto, se me hamuerto! Se muere todo, todo, todo; todo se me muere! (679). The wordscombine emotional power with rational analysis and suggest a level ofidentification that eliminates all barriers between the two souls, porquelos hombres slo se aman con amor espiritual cuando han sufrido juntos unmismo dolor ... (DSTV, 189). But Orfeo, who thus speaks from a highervantage point in terms of spiritual love and consciousness, also speaks in adramatically different form of language.

In his groundbreaking article Language and Cognition in Unamunomentioned above, Paul Ilie examines the authors long-standing concernwith the subjects act of cognition and the problem of communicating fullythat experience of knowing to another subject. Unamuno maintains thatthe innermost type of knowledge subsumes an intuitive, supralinguisticelement that inhibits or blocks successful transmission of the substance ofthat knowledge through words. As a result, one cannot accurately conveythrough speech the thoughts that arise in the inner world of consciousness,that is, break through the barrier between inner and outer worlds, thoughtand expression. Yet Unamuno proposes the existence in theory of what Ilieterms plenary cognition, a level of full communication that eliminatessuch a discontinuity even as it combines a nonverbal component tied to willand emotions with verbal expression. The resultant discourse stretchesoutward from the subjective consciousness, through the barrier betweenthought and expression, and into the space of the other. Such plenarycommunication in all likelihood will forever remain within the province ofthe artist, who wields nominalistic powers denied the average person.20

19 Parker (On the Interpretation of Niebla) concentrates on the oration as part ofNieblas frame on pp. 12021, and on Orfeos innocence and innocent love on pp. 12728,137.

20 Ilie states that according to Unamuno imagination and feeling are joined by thewill both to understand and to communicate (Language and Cognition in Unamuno, 312),and that poets are the ones privileged by the rare nominalist power to make thoughts andthings one and the same (ibid., 313).


This notion forges another link with the debate on language during theepoch of Cervantes, in which the doctrine of an inner mental language withnatural signification formed part of the critical discourse on the capacity ofutterances to represent or make known, that is, serve a cognitivefunction.21 The tie perhaps appears most clearly in Unamunos prologue toCroces Esttica, in which intuition, language and conceptualizationconstitute parts of the same cognitive process: Pensamos con intuiciones;el concepto se apoya en la intuicin; la ciencia, en el arte (EST, 995).

Unamuno has elected to actualize plenary cognition in the fictionalspace of Orfeos oration, engendering language that transcends the innatelimitations of ordinary interpersonal communication. The canine delivers aformal discourse, an elaborate speech, through the human medium oflanguage, but paradoxically the speech assumes the shape of private,internal thought, in a sort of latter-day version of the ancient doctrine ofnaturally signifying, inner mental language, as indicated by the wordspens as that introduce the monologue (679). Orfeos words thus conjoininner and outer worlds, subjective ideas and public communication. Thedog makes impressive use of his rational faculties to condemn humanhypocrisy, falsely labeled cynicism from the canine perspective. Hetargets three aspects of human conduct for mordant criticism: language,clothing and burial of the dead. Orfeo regards words as instruments forlying: En cuanto [el hombre] le ha puesto un nombre a algo, ya no ve estealgo; no hace sino or el nombre que le puso, o verle escrito. La lengua lesirve para mentir, inventar lo que no hay y confundirse (680). Clothingallows people to disguise or hide their genuine physical attributes, andburial rituals permit the illusion of negating the decaying effects of death.In each instance, humans obfuscate physical reality and abrogate biologicallaw, denying their essential animal nature by dwelling in an intangiblerealm of ideas unsubstantiated by sentient experience, hiding the corporealevidence of animal instinct and sexuality, and ignoring the inevitability ofdeath. But even as Orfeo flexes his rhetorical and logical muscle tocriticize his masters species, he employs language replete with empatheticaffect for humans, transmitted through countless exclamations that displaycompassion: Almacenan sus muertos! Un animal que habla, que se vistey que almacena sus muertos! Pobre hombre! (681). He offers a portrait ofwhat should constitute truthful speech, plenary communication, in hisrecollection of the monodilogos he sustained with Augusto:

Cunto le ense con mis silencios, con mis lametones, mientras l mehablaba, me hablaba, me hablaba! ... Y s, yo le entenda, le entenda,

21 Ashworth, Traditional Logic, 15762. He traces the doctrine to St Augustine andBoethius.


mientras l me hablaba hablndose, y hablaba, hablaba, hablaba. l, alhablarme as hablndose, hablaba al perro que haba en l. (681)

Master and dog complement each other, achieving total communicationthrough a language of spoken words and supralinguistic silences, reasonand emotion, ideas and doggy caresses. The onomatopoetic impact of therepeated variations of hablar in the quotation underscores thecompleteness of the exchange in that the words are recognizable as discretelinguistic units, and yet at the same time, run together when read aloud tosound vaguely like a barking dog, thus reuniting verbal articulation withnonverbal, animal voicing of instinct and intuition. And for all of his moralreservations about language, Orfeo understands that the absence of speechin a social context or within subjective consciousness signifies death alongwith rupture of the flow of this perfect act of cognition established betweentwo subjects of being, one of whom is a shadow figure of the other: Y ahoraaqu, ... sin habla ni por fuera ni por dentro. Ya nada tienes que decir a tuOrfeo. Tampoco tiene ya nada que decirte Orfeo con su silencio (681).

Significantly, Orfeos death coincides with the acquisition of a naturallanguage of plenary cognition that conjoins the intellectual andphysiological aspects of being.22 He dies not as an animal, but rather as aperson who has used the uniquely human expressive vehicle of language,albeit of an exceptional type, to voice his awakening to consciousness ofmortality. Orfeos internal discourse restores a magical power to languagein that his words convey rational thought and formal rhetoric even as theydisclose the emotions of suffering and compassion behind them, which inturn, summons the canines death and reunion with his master or god.Delivering the funeral oration, Orfeo retains the moral superiority ofnatural innocence, but he attains an even higher level of being by gainingsuperhuman knowledge and communicative skills, much like those of hismythic ancestor Orpheus. Small wonder, then, that Unamuno bestowsspecial visionary powers on the oracular pooch, who as he undergoes a finalapotheosis shares a glimpse of the great beyond with Nieblas readers: All

22 My view differs from that of Paul R. Olson, who sees the verbal and thephysiological as separated by an unbridgeable chasm in Niebla (Niebla, Critical Guides toSpanish Texts 40 [London: Grant & Cutler, 1984], 9093). Richard L. Predmore writes ofUnamunos imagery joining the spiritual and physical in Flesh and Spirit in the Works ofUnamuno, PMLA, LXX (1955), 587605. On Orfeos critique of humankinds unwisedevaluation of sentient experience see also Round, The Tragic Sense of Niebla, 176, andJohnson, Crossfire: Philosophy and the Novel in Spain, 19001934, 100. On the uncertaintywith which Unamuno regards language as an instrument sufficient to capture lifeexperience, and the complicated role of gender in linguistic communication in the novel,consult Alison Sinclair, Definition as the Enemy of Self-Definition: A Commentary on theRole of Language in Unamunos Niebla, in Words of Power: Essays in Honour of AlisonFairlie, ed. Dorothy Gabe Coleman and Gillian Jondorf (Glasgow: Univ. of GlasgowPublications in Foreign Languages and Literatures, 1987), 187225.


en el mundo puro platnico, en el de las ideas encarnadas, est el perropuro, el perro de veras cnico. Y all est mi amo! (681). With theemphasis on awakening to consciousness of mortality as a definingontological and epistemological moment, the same funeral oration thatechoes Cervantes canines and Renaissance theories of natural languageclearly anticipates later existential thought on the role of death in humanexistence. As Martin Heidegger, one of Unamunos kindred existentialspirits would later state: To die means to be capable of death as death.Only man dies. The animal perishes.23

In regard to the written word, Heidegger has also asserted that poetryis the founding of truth, a projection that thrusts up the unfamiliar andextraordinary and at the same time thrusts down the ordinary and whatwe believe to be such.24 Unamuno grounds the truth of consciousness ofhuman mortality in a funeral oration laden with absurdly comicalparadoxesan internalized, public speech presented by a prophetic dog, akyon who denounces human cynicism with language employed to subvertlanguage, an intellectual, talking dog who scoffs at perros sabios, and acanine whose description of heavens landscape includes both Platonicether and precious stones as well as the Christian saints San Huberto,Santo Domingo and San Roque accompanied by their loyal dogs. As theauthor observes in Del sentimiento trgico de la vida, el ms alto herosmo[...] es [...] saber ponerse en ridculo y no acobardarse en l (DSTV, 29394). And so Unamuno confronts the most tragic truth of human existencein a fictional world defined by humorismo confusionista, his creativespeciality. Vctor Goti categorizes laughter in the face of the ultimatetragedy, the stripping away of the illusion of immortality, as a brave,human form of cosmic vengeance born of existential despair:

Si ha habido quien se ha burlado de Dios, por qu no hemos deburlarnos de la Razn, de la Ciencia y hasta de la Verdad? Y si nos hanarrebatado nuestra ms cara y ms ntima esperanza vital, por qu nohemos de confundirlo todo para matar el tiempo y la eternidad y paravengarnos? (54647)

With the tale of Augusto and his precocious pet, Unamuno has doneprecisely that, entrusting the final words, laughter, and tears about thebittersweet human condition to the wise and witty Orfeo, in whoseclimactic monologue readers discover lo bufo ... y lo trgico ... fundidos yconfundidos en uno, merged in the mist of Niebla (545).25

23 The Thing, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York:Harper & Row, 1975), 16382 (p. 178).

24 The Origin of the Work of Art, in ibid., 1587 (p. 75).25 An earlier version of this article was presented at a symposium on Modernism and

Modernity held in honour of Geoffrey W. Ribbans at Brown University in September, 1998.

Documents

Collins, Orfeo and the Cratyline Conspiracy in Niebla