Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Literature as Survival: Allende's "The House of the Spirits"

Author(s): Peter G. Earle and Allende
Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 28, No. 4, After the Boom: Recent Latin American
Fiction (Winter, 1987), pp. 543-554
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208317
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LITERATURE AS SURVIVAL: ALLENDE'S
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS

Peter G. Earle

The story began urgently, if unpretentiously, after a long-distance tele-

phone call from Santiago de Chile to Caracas. Isabel Allende's grand-
father, in his ninety-ninth year, was about to die. More precisely, he'd
decided his time had come. Despite opposing ideologies, their family
relationship had been close; and now, although from the remote region
he was about to enter she couldn't expect a reply, she sat down to
write him a long letter. Her purpose was to keep him living, in con-
formity with his own idea of immortality. "My grandfather theorized
that death didn't really exist. Oblivion is what exists, and if one can
rememberthose who die - rememberthem well - they'll always be with
him and in some way will live on, at least in spirit."'
"Living on" was a persistent tradition in Isabel Allende's family
on her mother's side, and her late grandmother -the main model for
Clara del Valle, "Clara la clarividente," in The House of the Spirits-
had been practicing since premature death what Grandfather had
always preached in life, with her periodic messages and visitations.
The letter to Grandfather got longer, and longer. A year later (1982)
it had grown to five-hundred pages. It was a diary in retrospect, a
family chronicle, an autobiography, a political testimony, a group por-
trait and contemporary history, a series of experiments with magic.
In other words, a novel. Allende was a journalist in search of a com-
plementary medium. Aesthetically, she would now participate in the
basic ritual of Latin American literature:a celebration of reality. Ethi-
cally, she wanted to bear witness to social injustice, political violence,
and repression- having been motivated by the betrayal and murder

I"Entrevistacon Isabel Allende," with Michael Moody, Hispania 69 (March 1986):

150-51; my translation.

Contemporary Literature XXVIII, 4 0010-7484/87/0004-0543 $1.50/0

?1987 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

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by right-wing conspirators of an uncle on her father's side, President
Salvador Allende.
The Latin American celebration of reality in all literary forms
encompasses a wide range of motifs. In addition to many overt and
covert forms of aggression, one finds oases of lyricism, intense
paternal,maternal,filial, marital,and extramaritalrelationships,bizarre
ironies (in Miguel Angel Asturias's best-known novel, El senior
Presidente [Mr. President], the Sefior Presidente dutifully vomits into
a chamberpot that has a seal of the Republic encrustedon the bottom),
festivals of the senses, authoritarianand religious constrictions, super-
natural events (inherited and shared as well as invented), and ghostly
apparitions. Garcia Marquez's huge success with One Hundred Years
of Solitude was mainly due to his skill in incorporatingall these motifs
in a fictional yet very real space. When he came to Mexico in 1938,
Andre Breton is reported to have remarkedthat Mexican life was sur-
realistic; he was referring to its colors, forms, sounds, and energies,
not to some abstracted construction or deconstruction of his own.
Garcia Marquezhas testified more than once that virtually all his magi-
cal elements are drawn from everyday Colombian or Latin American
reality, from characters and happenings that were always verisimilar
enough for someone not only to have believed but to have talked about
and elaborated on beforehand. Isabel Allende herself recently said that
"reality is always richer than anything one can dream."2
Richer, and just as turbulent. It invites storytelling and sharpens
historical awareness, for history is something that needs constantly
to be decipheredthrough literature- probably its best instrument. The
Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has written:

Why is it that in Peruiand other Latin Americancountrieswritershave to

be basicallypoliticians,agitators,reformers,socialcommentators,moralists,
insteadof creatorsand artists?The fundamentalreasonis not to be found
so muchin the socialconditionof our countriesor in the problemsthey face,
as in the fact that literature,for betteror worse, has for centuriesbeen the
only effective means of exposingthese problems.3
The problems Vargas Llosa refers to are reflected, literarily, in many
ways - most strikingly perhaps through the figure of the antihero that
dominates some of the sprightliestLatin American novels of the twen-
tieth century: Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, Alejo

2"Entrevista"150.
3"Lautopia arcaica," WorkingPaper No. 33, Center of Latin American Studies,
University of Cambridge, 1978, 5; my translation.

544 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

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Carpentier's Reasons of State (El recurso del metodo), Augusto Roa
Bastos's Yo el Supremo (I, the Supreme), Carlos Fuentes's The Death
of Artemio Cruz, Demetrio Aguilera Malta's Babelandia (El secuestro
del general), in which military or dictatorial characters determine the
atmosphere and course of action. Although Vargas Llosa overempha-
sizes in his statement the extraliterary at the expense of the literary
(a literary work is always more than a social, moral, or political
vehicle), books have undeniably been a steadier and more reliable
source of disclosure in Latin America than radio, television, or the
press. Isabel Allende has reminded us, not without irony, of the
tyrannical Pinochet regime's uncharacteristic leniency toward litera-
ture over the last two or three years:
A poet friend of mine says that since the militarydoesn't read, it hasn't
realizedthat books can be dangerous.So, in Chile, while they censorpress
noticesof the fall of MarcosandBabyDoc, theystillsellin bookstoresworks
likeMissingor Labyrinth,or the booksof Antonio ArielDorfman,
and manyotherswho have writtenon the tragedySk.rmeta,
of Chilein recentyears.4

But of course books are dangerous. Even if, in Chile's current

economy, one like The House of the Spirits sells for the equivalent
of a month's salary at the minimum wage,5 they do get read. They
circulate on loan and in photocopies or mimeograph; they're discussed
in informal seminars; they help stimulate clandestine opposition and
preserve the historical memory.
In what circumstanceswas the novel under consideration written?
In the 1986 lecture quoted above, Allende stressed the importance of
the "moment of history the writer is born into," especially in Latin
America, a world of great "strugglesand defeats, brutalityand magic."
Increasingly aware of the New World's five-hundred-yeartradition of
violence, she matured intellectually with her uncle's socialist move-
ment and became a novelist at her reactionary grandfather's death.
Thus, her book is the celebration of a momentous social struggle in
which those two figures were principals. Only fictitious names are used
in the story, for places as well as for people, but the implications are
obvious: this was to be a composite testimony of many voices (like
One Hundred Yearsof Solitude, with which superficial comparisons
have often been made), written with a recent exile's sense of urgency,
and a family member'sintimacy. The political dispersion of the family

4Isabel Allende, "Writing in Latin America," lecture at the University of the

District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., 26 April 1986.
5Allende, "Writing in Latin America."

AL LENDE 545

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 she tells about is microcosmic, for contemporary Chilean history is
also one of dispersion, beginning the day after Salvador Allende's elec-
tion in 1970 with a complex opposition program that included tech-
nical and financial assistance from our Central Intelligence Agency
and State Department and acceleratingafter September 11, 1973, when
military forces led by General Pinochet carried out their coup d'itat.
Soon after Allende's election, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
declared at a National Security Council meeting, "I don't see why we
have to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irre-
sponsibility of its own people." In The House of the Spirits President
Allende's niece has her principalmale charactersay of the impoverished
tenant farmers at Tres Marias, his country estate, "They'relike chil-
dren, they can't handle responsibility."6A closer and more impetuous
father-figure than the always distant Kissinger, Esteban Trueba was
also unwilling to stand by and watch. In his paternalized utopia no
one would go hungry, everyone would do his assigned work, and all
would learn readingand writing and simple arithmetic-that is, enough
to follow simple instructions and read signs, to write brief messages,
and to count, y nada mds, "for fear they would fill their minds with
ideas unsuited to their station and condition."'7When, near the begin-
ning of the century, Esteban took over the administration of Tres
Marias - it had been in the family for generations - it was "a lawless
heap of rocks, a no-man's-land" (43). He quickly put things in order
and regimented his tenant farmers; within a year the "heap of rocks"
was a lucrative agricultural enterprise.
But behind this organizational rigor was an unbridled tempera-
ment, and deep sentimental frustrations. His fiancee, Rosa del Valle
of memorable beauty, dies in the first chapter, which is narrated-
like several other sections of the story-in first person singular by
Esteban Trueba himself. Rosa's death is caused by brandy laced with
rat poison from a decanter sent as an anonymous "gift"to her father,
a prominent member of the Liberal Party. The extraordinary Rosa
had bright green hair and the aura of "a distracted angel." Ensconced
in the white satin of her coffin, she impressed her grieving fiance as
having been "subtlytransformed into the mermaidshe had always been
6Both Esteban Trueba and Henry Kissinger reflected a view that was already
prevalent-predominant, more exactly-in the United States toward the end of the
nineteenth century: that of constitutive Latin American irresponsibility. See John
J. Johnson, Latin America in Caricature (Austin: U of Texas P, 1980), especially,
chapters 4 ("The Republics as Children") and 5 ("The Republics as Blacks").
7The House of the Spirits, trans. Magda Bogin (New York: Knopf, 1985) 57.
Subsequent references to this edition are included in the text.

546 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

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in secret"(30). Her autopsyand preparationfor viewingare secretly
witnessedby her little sisterClarain a semitraumaticstate, immedi-
ately afterwhichClaraentersa nine-yearperiodof unbrokensilence.
Her first wordswill be to announce,in one of the manypsychicpre-
dictions over her lifetime, that she'll soon be married.
In chapter2 we are told that not only did Clara,la clarividente,
foreseehermarriagebut also the identityof herhusband-to-be:Rosa's
fiance, whom she hadn'tseen since her sister'sfuneraland who was
fifteen yearsher senior. Two monthslater, to be sure, Estebanvisits
the del Valleresidenceand immediatelyformalizestheirengagement.
The familywasto growin its strangediversitythroughthreegen-
erations, but Clara and Esteban would always constitute its vital,
antitheticalnucleus.The latterembodiesprivilegedpower;the former,
humanitarianresistance.History, for Trueba,was paternityand-
wheneverthe situationcalledfor it - aggression.One of his firstrituals
in organizingTresMariasas a communitywas to startpopulatingit,
rangingthroughthe wheatfieldson horsebackin pursuitof the peasant
girls, rapingand impregnatingmorethan a few. Schopenhauerwould
have found in him a strikingcase of "the passage of will into visi-
bility,"s will - that is - unenlightened by knowledge; impelled, rather,
by an atavisticurge for self-assertion.Historywas procreation,and
the father'ssubsequentattemptsto deal with the resultsof procrea-
tion. The most troublesomeoutcome of his sexual escapadesin the
environsof TresMariaswasEstebanGarcia,his naturalgrandsonborn
of an offspring of Pancha Garcia,his first wheatfieldvictim. After
a childhoodof deprivationand growingresentment,the grandsonhas
nothingbutthe grandfather's firstnamefor an inheritance.Sincechild-
hood he had wanted to become a policeman.And he became one.
Duringthe ugly reprisalstakenby the militarygovernmentin the
aftermathof the President'sdeath (in a seriesof obvious allusionsto
the Pinochetregime'srepressionsstartingin September,1973),Garcia
reappears,havingrisento the rankof lieutenantcolonel in the politi-
cal police. It is he who presidesover the interrogation,confinement,
and prolongedtortureof his privilegedcousinAlba, a universitystu-
dent who has been active in the socialist undergroundand Esteban
Trueba'sonly recognizedgrandchild.Albaundergoeshertorturepartly
in trauma,partlyin an unconsciousstate. In the processshe'sraped
an undisclosednumberof times, and in the Epiloguewe'retold that
one of the culpritsis Colonel Garcia. Third in a lineage of strong-

8The Worldas Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (Garden City,
NJ: Doubleday, 1961) 144.

ALLENDE | 547

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willedwomen,Alba is the humaninstrumentthroughwhichEsteban
Truebais madeto paypsychologically for a lifetimeof large-andsmall-
scaletransgressions.9 Thatis, insteadof retaliatingin a direct,physical
way againstthe aged patriarch,Trueba'sbastardgrandsonchooses
to punishhim throughhis "legitimate"counterpart:revengeagainst
the privilegedby the underprivileged,againstthe upper-classchild of
affluence by the peasant-childof want.
Theprincipalantecedentto thisreprisalcomesin chapter6. Trueba
is then informedby Jeande Satigny,his daughterBlanca'seffete and
dandifiedsuitor, that Blanca is having nighttimetrysts. The secret
lover, it turns out, is her childhoodplaymateat TresMarias,Pedro
TerceroGarcia,who has grownup withrevolutionaryideasand com-
posesrevolutionary songsfor the guitar(includingone basedon a fable
told to him years before by the first Pedro Garcia:once there was
a chickencoop invadednightlyby a fox who stole eggs and ate baby
chicks;eventuallythe hens organized,and one nightthey surrounded
the fox andpeckedhimhalfto death).AboutthreeweekslaterEsteban
Garcia- then a boy of twelve - presents himself and offers to lead his
grandfatherto Pedro Tercero'shidingplace in the woods. Agreeing
to pay a reward,Truebasets out with a pistol. Surprisedin bed, the
intendedvictimis still able to leap out, to dodgethe only shot Trueba
gets to fire and, a second later, to disarmhis assailantby hurlinga
pieceof firewoodat him. WhereuponTruebaseizesan ax andswings-
and Pedro Tercero,in a reflex-attemptat self-defense, loses three
fingersfrom his right hand. Shock and loss of blood notwithstand-
ing, he rushesfrom the cabinand escapesin the dark. Addingliteral
insultto literalinjury,Truebathenrefusesto paythe boy his promised
reward, slaps him, and snarls, "There'sno reward for [double-
crossers]!" (177)10
No rewardthen. But ultimatelyEstebanGarciawasto obtainone
of sorts. Yearslater, at the verymomentSenatorTruebaof the Con-
servativePartywascelebratingwithchampagnethe Socialistpresident's

9In a symposium at Haverford College on February 28, 1987, Gabriela Mora

presented "A Political Reading of Isabel Allende's Novels." It was Professor Mora's
contention that in allowing Trueba to die peacefully in his granddaughter's arms,
Allende had weakened the moral foundation of her book. In my view the old man
still pays a heavy personal price for his myopia and his crimes. But more importantly,
the average reader gains from his crude performance throughout the story a better
perception of how the authoritarian mentality accommodates criminal methods in
its procedures.
I?MagdaBogin translates traidoresas "traitors,"which is its most frequent mean-
ing. But "double-crossers" seems more accurate in Trueba's intended context.

548 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

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overthrow, "his son Jaime's testicles were being burned with an
imported cigarette" (315). After refusing to accept his captors' offer
of freedom in return for saying on television that the late president
in a drunken state had committed suicide, Jaime is beaten a second
time, left with hands and feed bound with barbed wire for two days
and nights, then shot together with several other prisoners in a vacant
lot. In the interests of good government and domestic tranquillity,
the lot and the cadavers are dynamited immediately after the execu-
tion. Two weeks later the Senator is told the circumstances of his son's
death, but he refuses to believe the eyewitness account. Only when
Jaime appears months later as a ghost, "coveredwith dried blood and
rags, dragging streamers of barbed wire across the waxed parquet
floors" (320), does he realize that he had heard the truth. It is in this
penultimate chapter (13, "The Terror")that he concludes he had been
wrong and that, after all, "the best way to overthrow Marxism" (320)
had not been found.
Systematic oblivion (it never happened; there's no proof), censor-
ship ("for reasons of internal order"),1"disinformation (the President,
it has been reported, committed suicide in a drunken state), and the
infinite ways of "disappearing"people (such as dynamiting political
prisoners' corpses) are some of the methods by which authoritarian
regimes maintain themselves in power. The Brazilian critic Antonio
Callado remarked in 1974 that contemporary Latin America was "full
of new ruins" (e.g., democracy in Uruguay and Chile, the Revolution
in Mexico), that Latin Americans have displayed a peculiar resistance
to "becominghistorical," because they're "alwaystrying to start again"
amidst a detritus of infringed constitutions and derelict or disabled
governments.12 The attempted starting-again, we could add, is more
often ultraconservative or reactionary than revolutionary, and more
motivated by frustration than by hope.
"IIn Chile, Decree Law No. 1281, published in the Official Gazette of 11 Sept.
1975 (one of many prohibitions written since 11 Sept. 1973), conferred on each
"Military Chief of the Area" the power: "To suspend the printing, distribution and
sale, for up to six editions of newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and printed matter
in general, and the transmissions for up to six days of radio broadcasting stations,
television channels and any other similar medium that broadcasts opinions, news or
communications aimed at creating alarm or discontent in the population, that dis-
tort the true extent of the facts, or are manifestly false or contravene the instructions
given them for reasons of internal order." (Quoted in Report on the Situation of
Human Rights in Chile [Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States, 27 Sept.
1985] 198-99.)
'2"Censorshipand Other Problems of Latin American Writers," WorkingPaper
No. 14, Center of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, 1974, 18-19.

AL LENDE 549

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 But against this antihistorical resistance, of which the can-
tankerous Esteban Trueba is a representative figure, another, more
imaginative, more perceptive resistance arrays itself. In The House
of the Spirits Clara, Blanca, and Alba are its persistentmainstays over
three generations. Light is freedom and hope, and the luminous names
of the three women are clearly symbolic. The dramatic nucleus of the
book is the struggle between Trueba and the forces he generates, on
the one hand, and the female members of his family, on the other.
He is the blind force of history, its collective unconscious, its somato-
tonic (i.e., aggressive, vigorous, physical) manifestation. They embody
historicalawarenessand intuitiveunderstanding.Truebais a semicomic
version of the "world historical personalities" conceived of by Hegel;
never happy, "they attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was
labor and trouble; their whole nature was nothing but their master
passion."" But unlike the three illustrious examples offered by
Hegel - Alexander the Great died young, Julius Caesar was murdered,
Napoleon Bonaparteended up in humbling exile - Esteban Truebalives
through the problems and outrages he helps create. Possessed by a
terribletemperament, violent and arbitraryin his treatment of peasant
girls, his sharecroppingtenants, his wife and daughter, and his political
enemies, and subject to furniture-smashing tantrums, he is not
permitted to recognize - or forced to acknowledge - the consequences
of his acts until he's close to death. His author, it seems, decided to
put off his death until he could be made to witness the full historical
effect of his own retrogressive ideas and actions, and of his
collaboration and conspiracy with like-minded people. Until that time
of punitive recognition he is subjected, as are two similarly Dionysian
protagonists- Garcia Mirquez's Patriarch and Rulfo's Pedro Pairamo
-to recurrentexperiences of loneliness and frustration. His estrange-
ment from his family (although he ends his isolation at Tres Marias
and joins them in "the big house on the corner") leads him, halfway
through the novel, to venture into politics as a Conservative Party
candidate for the Senate, "since no one better personified the honest,
uncontaminated politician, as he himself declared" (191).
Symbolically in that same chapter (7), having won election as
Senator, he becomes convinced that his body and brain are shrinking
and travels to the United States for diagnosis. Symbolically in that
chapter ("The Brothers")his two sons manifest themselves as ideologi-
cally incompatible with him and with each other: Jaime is socially and

'3G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Hegel, trans. J. Sebree (New York: Dover,
1956) 31.

550 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

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socialistically committed; Nicolas, the childlike seducer, equates the
highest good with pleasure and later will found an Institute for Union
with Nothingness and be arrested for singing Asiatic psalms naked
before the gates of Congress. And, symbolically, in that chapter Alba
is born (feet first, we're later told), harbinger of a new era.
Clara "la clarividente" died when Esteban was seventy, with
twenty-nine years still to go, and when Alba was seven. Did the seven
and its multiple of ten portend survival and good fortune for the old
man and his granddaughter? Clara, Blanca, and Alba, I've already
observed, embody historical awareness and intuitive understanding.
Their role throughout the novel is the preservationof moral and social
conscience and civic responsibility. Clara departs this life at a rela-
tively young age, but she'll often return as a spirit to the halls and
bedrooms of "the big house on the corner," and in chapter 14 ("The
Hour of Truth"),to Alba's tomblike prison cell. The latter apparition
occurs at the crucial moment when Alba, having undergone the worst
of the tortures directed by Esteban Garcia, has decided to stop eating,
drinking, and even breathing, in hopes of a quicker death. Clara
succeeds in convincing her granddaughter that "the point was not to
die, . . . but to survive" (351). Further, she strengthens Alba's will to
live by urging her to write-"in her mind, without paper or pencil"
(351)-not only to forestall madness by keeping her mind occupied,
but to preservea testimony that sooner or later and one way or another
must be revealed to the outside world. Her reason is that, given the
ways in which the inside world works (through torture, deceit, abuse,
betrayal, and cowardly concealment), no one has a right to ignorance
or forgetfulness, and the true heart of literature is neither pleasure
nor knowledge, but survival. The paragraphin which Allende describes
how Alba tries to reconstruct what has happened to her could easily
be adapted to an essay or textbook on the function of memory within
the creative process:
Alba triedto obey her grandmother,but as soon as she beganto take
notes with her mind, the doghouse [i.e., her undersized,dark prison cell]
filled with all the charactersof her story, who rushedin, shovedeach other
out of the way to wrapher in theiranecdotes,theirvices, and theirvirtues,
trampledon her intentionto compose a documentary,and threwher testi-
mony to the floor, pressing,insisting,and egging her on. She took down
theirwordsat breakneckpace,despairingbecausewhileshewas fillinga page,
the one before it was erased.This activitykept her fully occupied.At first,
she constantlylost her train of thoughtand forgot new facts as fast as she
rememberedthem.The slightestdistractionor additionalfearor paincaused
her story to snarllike a ball of yarn. But she inventeda code for recalling

ALLENDE 551

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thingsin order,and then she was able to buryherselfso deeplyin her story
that she stoppedeating, scratchingherself,smellingherself, and complain-
ing, and overcameall her variedagonies. (352)
Of course, after Alba is set free - and it is through the interven-
tion of Trinsito Soto, a prostitute friend of Esteban Trueba's from
many years back who owes him a favor, that her release is made pos-
sible - she tells us in the first-person singular Epilogue that her grand-
father was the one "who had the idea that we should write this story"
(366). He also helped write it, with a memory that was intact "down
to the last second of his ninety years." More basic still is the contribu-
tion of Grandmother Clara, who had superior psychic powers but a
poor memory; but even before becoming deliberately mute at the age
of ten she had begun to write copiously in her notebooks about every-
thing that happened in her eccentric family. It is only after finishing
the book and then returningto the first page that we can identify with
certainty the "I"in the phrase, "never suspecting that fifty years later
I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors
of my own" (3). Clara's notebooks - arrangednot chronologically but
according to the importance of events - are mentioned on the last page
in the same context as they were on the first. "Clara wrote them so
they would help me now to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of
my own" (368).
Clara the Clairvoyant was, then, the creative spirit who at the
same time that she bore witness to history was able on occasion to
alter it and even to perceive its predetermined elements (for the same
reason she frequently foresaw what was going to happen). If obser-
vation of what occurs, changing the course of what occurs, and under-
standing what must occur are the three most important attributes of
the narrative writer, then Clara fully and dynamically symbolizes the
narrativewriter. Although she kept forgetting things- menial everyday
details - she forced her memory to work through writing (the Note-
books). Although Esteban Trueba pampered her and regaled her with
luxuries including a canopy bed with gauze curtains "that looked like
a sailboat on a sea of silken blue water" (84), she had a keen social
conscience and on her first stay at Tres Marias immediately sensed
the workers'"resentment,fear and distrust"upon which Colonel Garcia
as a boy was nurtured. Although with distracted sweetness she "lived
in a universe of her own invention" (72), she simultaneously endured
the abuses of society and her husband - who knocked out four of her
front teeth when he discovered that their daughter Blanca was Pedro
Tercero Garcia's secret lover.

552 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

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 Clara became immune to surprise(her nursemaid tried for several
years to frighten her into speaking during the nine-year silence).
Clara interpreted dreams.
Clara predicted with demonstrated accuracy deaths, earthquakes,
and evil actions.
Clara was able to move objects without touching them.
Clara could invoke ghosts.
Clara played Chopin on the piano without raising the lid over
the keyboard. And so forth.
Only a writer endowed with a comparably wide range of secret
powers is likely to exercise effectively the art of survival in the twen-
tieth century. By the art or literature of survival I mean the ultimate
power of testimony through the creative use of memory. That is, crea-
tive memory enables testimony to transcend obstacles, ignorance, and
repression. It has often been suggested that The House of the Spirits
coincides too much with the genealogical, magical, and procreative
motifs of One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as with the latter
work's uses of memory and oblivion. But a succinct commentary by
Roger Shattuck on Garcia Mirquez's novel can help us see the differ-
ence between it and Allende's work: "the metaphysical picaresque"has
become a genre as well as an attitude:

They'reall saying the same thing. It goes on and on. Having assimi-
lated Borges and Robbe-Grilletand God knows who else, GabrielGarcia
M~arquez createdthe masterpiecein the genre.In OneHundredYearsof Soli-
tudeeverythingbeginsin realityandendsin fantasy.Youcanwatchit happen.
The naturalgives birthto the supernatural,the surreal- with no detectable
shift in style or tone. Believeor disbelievethe events at your own risk. It's
like an unstoppablerollercoaster- but we'renot supposedto get dizzy! ...
Eachone of theseworksof the metaphysicalpicaresquedevisesits own
particularenactmentof Don Quixote- but withone majordifference:Sancho
Panza has been eliminated- gaggedor kidnappedor killedoutright.With-
out his voice of sanity and reality, all modes of existencecan claim equal
status. And they do- without distinction. We seem to want that. One
Hundred Yearsof Solitudepleases everyonejust by the way it keep over-
flowing the pot and outdistancingreality.The more a work makesus lose
our orientation,our sense of constraints,the more we praiseit. The meta-
physicalpicaresque.14
"The unstoppable roller coaster," the hurricane, geography that
fades into mirage, irretrievabledispersion. In The House of the Spirits

14Roger Shattuck, The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts (New
York: Farrar, 1984) 334.

ALLENDE 553

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magic and the flights of fancy are the instrumentalprivilege of a select
few: the "extraordinarywomen" to whom Isabel Allende dedicates her
novel. Amidst the abuse and the madness that surround them, orien-
tation is not lost. When Alba is finally releasedone night on a garbage-
strewn vacant lot, she is granted provisional freedom, a possibility
of putting things together again if only in writing. She doesn't know
whetherthe child in her womb was engenderedby a rapistor by Miguel,
for whom she'll wait. She considers what has happened to her as
"another link to the chain of events that had to complete itself" (367).
Yet she is determined "to break that terrible chain" that hatred has
so relentlessly fashioned. She finds her basic hope in Grandmother
Clara's insightful Notebooks, and in the pages she herself is engaged
in writing.

University of Pennsylvania

554 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

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