Ellen Mayock
Cultural Studies Colloquium
April 8, 2003
Constructing Nationalist Identity:
Bilingual Friends and Foes in Catalan Narrative
*See as well the handout labeled “Quotable quotes.”
Cataluña and Spain
Cataluña is one of Spain’s 17 regional “autonomies.” Each of the autonomies has geography, traditions, folklore, and artistic production that distinguish the region from other parts of Spain, a context that A. Smith and Henry and Kate Miller see as characteristic of a “lateral ethnic state.”In particular, Galicia, the Basque Country, and Cataluña have developed micronationalist identities that hinge on longstanding independent histories, cultural traditions, and, especially, language.Galicia’s rural landscape and generally conservative politics have kept the region mostly in line with the central government in Madrid.Many in the Basque Country lament that the use of the Basque language has diminished significantly and that the most visible cultural identification of the region depends on violence.Cataluña’s self-identity and relationship with central Castile are defined by its long history of struggles for independence, folkloric traditions, successful economy and labor market, rich cultural production, and the Catalan language.Most Catalans, whether they be of strongly micronationalist tendencies or not, recognize the importance of their language as a galvanizing force behind the development and maintenance of a distinct Catalan culture on the Iberian peninsula.
In The Basques, the Catalans, and Spain, Daniele Conversi emphasizes the role of violence as cultural force in the Basque Country and the role of language as predominant cultural force in Cataluña.Henry and Kate Miller’s sociolinguistic evaluation of Cataluña and language points to three elements of linguistic development in the region:demographics, social status, and institutional support.Today’s discussion focuses the politics of the Catalan literary realm and then examines the manifestation of these three sociolinguistic elements in Barcelona-born Juan Marsé’s 1990 novel El amante bilingüe.
Many sociolinguists examine whether Cataluña exists as a bilingual or a diglossic region.In other words, do Catalan and Castilian Spanish exist wholly and equally (bilingualism), or does one predominate over the other in “high” and “low” fashions (diglossia)?This debate and the politics it implies penetrate every area of oral and written production of language in Cataluña:literature and literary criticism, theater, film, television, street art, etc. Writers born in Cataluña must decide whether to create in their native language of Catalan or to appeal to a broader market in Castilian Spanish.Many who began to produce during Franco’s dictatorship were forced either to publish in exile or to write in Castilian Spanish.The choice is now largely dictated by marketing and sales.No Catalan writer escapes the polemical debates about micronationalism, language, and production.
Cataluña
John Hooper (The New Spaniards, Penguin, 1995, 406-07) uses two pairs of Catalan words to describe the contradictory nature of Catalan people:seny (common sense) and arrauxment (ecstasy of violence, more or less);sorrut (antisocial) and trempat (likeable, warm, spontaneous).Catalans seem to live with and thrive on contradiction.Robert Hughes concludes his work Barcelona (Knopf, 1992) by evoking the image of Barcelona’s infamous unfinished cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, which Hughes states, “stands for the immense, often irrational ambitions of the city; its way, regularly displayed since Gothic times, of making leaps of civic and architectural faith against all the odds, and winning.It will always be a divisive building, but for most of its life Barcelona has been a divided city” (541).For over half a century home to hundreds of thousands of “immigrants” (in Catalan, xarnegos) from other parts of Spain, Barcelona is both quintessentially Catalan and fundamentally Spanish.Juan Marsé purposefully concludes El amante bilingüe with the dual protagonist occupying a position directly in front of Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia.Division and contradiction—that overwhelming sense of “otherness”—are enduring elements of Catalan culture.
Juan Marsé and El amante bilingüe
Juan Marsé was born in Cataluña in 1933 to Catalan-speaking parents.Nevertheless, he grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods populated by immigrants from the south of Spain who communicated more spontaneously in Castilian Spanish.Marsé grew up transferring constantly between Catalan and Castilian Spanish, a phenomenon that posits itself as the axis around which the narration of El amante bilingüe revolves.As a member of the literary group named “Foro Babel,” Juan Marsé believes that Cataluña is a bilingual state and that each bilingual writer from the region may make the choice as to whether to produce in Catalan or Castilian.Many more ardently nationalist Catalan writers believe, especially after 36 years of Francoist prohibitions on the informal or formal use of the Catalan language, that the Catalan literati have the moral and political responsibility to reestablish Catalan linguistic primacy.Authors find themselves on one or the other side of this debate, as do most literary critics who consider themselves Catalan.
Juan Marsé has enjoyed much success since the 1966 publication of Ultimas tardes con Teresa, a novel set in Barcelona that forces the reader’s awareness about the complex socioeconomic rift between the Catalan upper middle class and the immigrant working class.Several of Marsé’s novels have been made into films.These include Ultimas tardes con Teresa and El amante bilingüe, directed by Vicente Aranda and produced in 1993.Aranda’s constant vision of “the two Spains” appears in “El amante bilingüe,” especially in the astoundingly smooth movement in the film between Castilian Spanish and Catalan.
In El amante bilingüe Marsé directly and ironically points to his own life, as the protagonist,Juan Marés (called Joan by his Catalan family) speaks fluent Catalan and participates in the lively arts scene of Barcelona but feels more comfortable in “xarnego” skin.Marés’ tendency towards split identification becomes sharper when he finds his beloved Catalan wife, Norma (dubbed thus to mock the 1983 Catalan Language Normalization Act), in bed with an “immigrant” (from the south of Spain) shoeshine man.Norma leaves Juan/Joan, who despairs and eventually finds himself recreated as ½ Marés and ½ Faneca, his non-Catalan best friend from childhood.The novel recounts sporadically the childhood of young Joan, while emphasizing all the while the physical, emotional, and linguistic transformation of Joan/Juan into Faneca.The author Marsé very clearly forces the reader to shift from foot to foot as Juan and Faneca play at tag-team identity transfer, a transfer which includes movement between Catalan and xarnego neighborhoods, between Catalan and Castilian Spanish (marked with and further distinguished by an Andalusian accent), and between Catalan and Castilian Spanish cultural traditions.
The novel’s structure foregrounds the duality of protagonist, language, and geographical space.There are two parts to the novel, each containing 20 chapters, and the novel itself has a total of 220 pages.The final page represents a dialogue transformed into monologue that shifts back and forth between Catalan and Castilian Spanish.Marsé is making the point that life in Cataluña is necessarily double, or as his narrator states about the city of Barcelona “schizophrenic” (84).The use of mirrors and series of mirrors throughout the narrration again points to the themes of identity, duality, and alterity.
Discussion
On Tuesday, I will use the information provided above as a departure point for a discussion about how Miller and Miller’s three elements of linguistic development—demographics, social status, and institutional support—are treated in Marsé’s El amante bilingüe.