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REMAPPING

THE INDIAN

POSTCOLONIAL

CANON
Remap, Reimagine and Retranslate

NIRMALA MENON
Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon
 Nirmala Menon

Remapping the Indian

Postcolonial Canon
Remap, Reimagine and Retranslate
Nirmala Menon
Indian Institute of Technology Indore
Indore, India

ISBN 978-1-137-53797-3    ISBN 978-1-137-53798-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53798-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958532

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
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Cover illustration: © Kimberly Kersey-Asbury

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
 To
Ajith and Swathi
 Acknowledgements

This book has been a culmination of extensive research that has been intel-
lectually challenging and fulfilling in many ways; it has also set me on
my second phase of research in the exciting area of Digital Humanities-­
working projects that are a direct outcome of my findings here. But of
course a project of this length and magnitude could not be possible with-
out the support, encouragement, engagement and love from so many
people along the way. It would be impossible for me to name every one of
them so a sincere thank-you to all those friends and family who were a part
of this. I will mention just a few names whose support was always present
in my work in visible ways.
My mentor Professor Judith Plotz, Professor Emeritus of The George
Washington University will always be an inspiration in more ways than
one. Even though we were on different continents as I revised my dis-
sertation research to a monograph, the rigor she has instilled and always
expected was a responsibility I always remembered. Similarly Kavita Daiya
and Jonathan Gil Harris, advisors from my doctoral days, always remind
me of the myriad ways of being intellectually engaged and finding con-
nections between academic work and the world around us. I will always
be thankful that I had the opportunity to work with and learn from the
example they set and continue to be awed by their enormous and continu-
ing contributions to research and pedagogy.
I am fortunate to have known and interacted with so many wonder-
ful scholars around the world. Rita Kothari and her work on translations
from Indian languages to English got me thinking in many ways about
the need for a theoretical vocabulary of translations that is productive

vii
viii Acknowledgements

in a ­postcolonial set up. I have learnt from and drawn on the works of
scholars such as Harish Trivedi, Susan Bassnett, Prasenjit Gupta and oth-
ers who authored some of the first works on Indian postcolonial transla-
tions. Dorota Kolodziejczyk a Professor and Director of the Institute of
Postcolonial studies at the University of Wroclow, Poland is a friend who
widened my horizons of thinking about multiple postcolonialisms with
Polish and other Eastern European examples. A shout out to more recent
academic friends from the Digital Humanities scholarly community from
India and elsewhere; their wonderful work helps me to once again “trans-
late” my research to my current digital projects while theorizing its new
digital locations- Alex Gil, Rahul Gairola, Radhika Gajjala, Dibyadyuti Roy,
Padmini Ray-Murray, Sumandro Chattopadhyaya, Isabel Galina, Christina
Sandru, Ashok Thorat and many many more. I look forward to being a part
of a robust and vibrant global DH conversation in India. A special mention
of Paul Arthur of Western Sydney University- I am inspired by his work as a
Digital Humanist in Australia; I deeply value and thank him for his support
and friendship. These invaluable intellectual intersections across borders
allow for dialogues and collaborative projects that push the boundaries of
research and initiate thinking in new and exciting ways.
I am also grateful to my students at IIT Indore who are intelligent and
inquisitive and who inform my research outcomes in expected and unex-
pected ways. It is a joy to interact with and learn from my PhD graduate
students-Reema Sukhija, Wati Longkumer, Ashna Jacob, Shanmugapriya
T and Shaifali Arora- and I thank them for inspiring me in many ways. I
would specially like to thank Shanmugapriya T for helping me with some
of the data mining and visualization graphs for the first chapter.
There are of course friends and family, too numerous to name but I will
try. My parents of course are always there with their unconditional sup-
port and love for anything that I undertake. They also make sure that my
daughter Swathi is always cared for and spoilt and loved like only grand-
parents can and beyond. The carefree comfort that allowed me to write
and lecture and travel to conferences and be engaged cannot be expressed.
There is none like my dad for always believing that there is nothing I
could not achieve. Through this period, my mom was diagnosed with
a degenerative condition that is debilitating and yet I can see her always
looking out for me. I know that for all her frailties, my smallest success
or achievement will always make her smile. I also remember my uncle,
Prof K Gopalakrishnan a scholar of Malayalam literature who is no more,
but whose life and work has always been inspiring. My sister Pritha is an
 Acknowledgements  ix

uncritical supporter of my work and always assures me it is brilliant! (And

yes, we all have moments of self-doubt when that is so crucial!)
And finally friends! To friends in India and in the US, whose friend-
ship has been valuable through good times and bad. My colleagues at
Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, US where I worked for four
years before moving to India-many of who have become friends for life.
Kimberley Kersey Asbury the professor of arts who has designed both my
book covers; Sara Smits Keeney, Ahida Pilarski, Ann Norton Holbrooke,
Meg Cronin, Gary Bouchard, Bindu Malieckal and many more. Friends
from graduate school who can always call your bluff- Joe Fisher, Matt
Fullerty, Niles Tomlinson, Aliya Weise, Abigail Constantine, Almila Ozdek
and others; I am glad we are still in touch. A special mention for Jia Jiang,
Director of International Studies at American University, Washington DC
who was my first friend in the US many years ago and continues to be a
close one. And then the friends who go back a long way, too many to be
named, I will mention just two- Hema Ganapathy a close friend for more
than two decades and Lakshmy Menon, a childhood friend now a pedia-
trician who knows all the ugly sides of me (and also has threatened me
with dire consequences if she is missing from here!). I owe them all a deep
gratitude for being in my life.
To my husband, Ajith, who makes my life and work meaningful in more
ways that I can possibly express. And finally, to our ever-precious daughter
Swathi—everything is for you.
 Contents

1 Introduction: The Rationale for Re-mapping

the Postcolonial Canon: Why Re-map?   1

2 Representing the Postcolonial Subaltern:

A Comparative Reading of Three Subaltern
Narratives by O.V. Vijayan, Arundhati Roy
and Mahashweta Devi  35

3 The Hullabaloo About Hybridity: Kiran Desai’s

The Inheritance of Loss, Girish Karnad’s
Yayati and Heaps of Broken Images and Lalithambika
Antherjanam’s Cast Me Out If You Will  71

4 Re-Imagining Postcolonial Translation Theory 111

5 Re-Map, Re-Imagine, Re-translate 149

Appendix A 153

Appendix B 173

xi
xii Contents

Works Consulted 187

Index 197
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Survey of MLA bibliography indicating scholarly

articles published about these authors during
the years 1980–2006 9
Fig. 1.2 Representation of selected writers from 2007–2015 in MLA
bibliography11
Fig. 1.3 Figure shows the distribution of English and
other language authors and their works for the said periods 13
Fig. 1.4 Graph showing literary production in five Indian
languages during the period 1986–2006 16
Fig. 1.5 Representation of selected writers from 2007–2015 in MLA
bibliography17
Fig. 1.6 Liberty production and representation in postcolonial theory 17
Fig. 1.7 This figure is a comparative analysis of the
previous three graphs 18
Fig. 1.8 Representation of selected Indian writers form
JSTOR database 2007–2015 19
Fig. 1.9 Representation of scholary articles and criticism
in JSTOR database 2007–2015 19
Fig. 4.1 Dhvani-Bhava-Rasa theory 139

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Rationale for Re-mapping

the Postcolonial Canon: Why Re-map?

This means, above all, seeing the imperial and capitalist metropolises as a spe-
cific historical form, at different stages: Paris, London, and Berlin, New York.
It involves looking, from time to time, from outside the metropolis: from the
deprived hinterlands, where different forces are moving, and from the poor
world, which has always been peripheral to the metropolitan systems. This need
involve no reduction of the importance of the major artistic and literary works,
which were shaped within metropolitan perceptions. But one level has cer-
tainly to be challenged: the metropolitan interpretation of its own processes
as universals.
—Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism

In a book chapter in the wonderful edited collection Re-routing the

Postcolonial, I made an argument for “re-routing” the postcolonial
through the language mazes of the postcolonial geography of India. In
trying to make an argument for a multilingual postcolonial canon, I did
a survey of major databases for literature and the representation of world
literature as a disproportionately monolingual one (Menon, 2010). So, as
I begin to examine that argument in much more detail through the course
of these pages, I have to once again consider the question: What does
the current map look like? My study then looked at the possible maps of
representation through roughly the early 1990s when postcolonial studies
began to be acknowledged as an emerging area of research, until 2007.
My findings were very clear—the putative postcolonial canon includes
texts from India, Africa and the Caribbean, with new entrants from Latin
America adding to the diversity. When it came to the Indian subcontinent,

© The Author(s) 2016 1

N. Menon, Remapping the Indian Postcolonial Canon,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53798-0_1
2 N. MENON

study of works of writers such as Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Vikram

Chandra, and Shyam Selvadurai far outnumber study of works by writers
in languages other than English. It was true that while the emerging canon
did represent many postcolonial geographies, they did not reflect the lin-
guistic diversity of those geographies. Quite the contrary. Almost all of the
representative works in scholarship were exclusively written in English. I
retain the discipline’s skepticism of “canons” per se but argue that, when
the same texts and writers are anthologized and critiqued to the exclusion
of others, it is equivalent to creating a canon. I begin with the assumption
that engaging with the rich literatures in diverse languages coming from
different postcolonial spaces will simultaneously underscore the plurality
of the discipline and open new avenues for postcolonial enquiries. As Neil
Lazarus charges:

To read across postcolonial literary studies is to find, to an extraordinary

degree, the same questions asked, the same methods, techniques, and con-
ventions used, the same concepts mobilized, the same conclusions drawn—
about the work of a remarkably small number of writers (who are actually
more varied, even so, than one would ever discover from the existing critical
discussion). (422)

My project argues that, while postcolonial scholarship has successfully

challenged Eurocentrism, the stagnation in the theory that Lazarus talks
about can be confronted if we look to the wide base of literatures available
in multiple postcolonial languages. In short, it is now time to extend the
dimensions of the discipline into a multilingual field.
I define multilingual as moving beyond Anglophone and Francophone
literatures to varied literatures in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Tagalog and Swahili,
to name just a few. I attempt to initiate such a discourse by analyzing litera-
tures from three regional languages in India, both in translation and in the
original, and aim to direct a linguistic re-mapping of postcolonial literary
criticism and demonstrate the ways in which such a re-­mapping can open
theoretical concepts to new complexities. I engage with two critical con-
cepts that have defined postcolonial theory—hybridity and subalternity—
and describe the current discourse about these two concepts, showing new
ways of reconfiguring them and expanding them by using texts from differ-
ent languages. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s
The Inheritance of Loss are juxtaposed with texts from other languages, such
as O.V. Vijayan’s Legends of Khasak (Malayalam) and Girish Karnad’s Heap
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 3

of Broken Images (Kannada). I argue that these texts can be used to reform,
redefine and revise our understanding of the concepts hybridity and subal-
ternity. My project seeks to enable a ­conversation that will expand the liter-
ary archive of postcolonial literature and allow a self-reflexive criticism of
its theoretical premises. Such a conversation can also inspire new concepts
in the postcolonial critical vocabulary. In my final chapter on postcolo-
nial translations, I identify such a new approach and develop a new critical
translation model that addresses the discipline’s unique challenges.
Recent studies have identified some of the issues with postcolonial schol-
arship. Some of the most critical writings of the discipline have come from
materialist critics who allege, among other things, that attempting to find
complex nuances of interactions between the colonizer and the colonized
has resulted in a rejection of dualism in all forms. Consequently, the criti-
cism alleges, postcolonial theory has delegitimized even complex models
of struggle-based politics. Lazarus lists in schematic fashion these materi-
alist criticisms of postcolonial theory: “[a] constitutive anti-­Marxism; an
undifferentiated disavowal of all forms of nationalism and a corresponding
exaltation of migrancy, liminality, hybridity, and multiculturality; an aver-
sion to dialectics; and a refusal of antagonistic or struggle-based model
of politics” (423). None of the above components appear unreasonable
or problematic by themselves; however, the discomfort arises from the
way these categories have been consecrated to the exclusion of exploring
others and the narrow ways that postcolonial studies has defined these
concepts. According to Lazarus and some of the other materialist critics,
literary scholars working in postcolonial studies have tended to write with
a woefully restricted and attenuated corpus of works because of the nar-
rowness of the theoretical assumptions. In this Introduction and in the
book, I will argue that, while it may be true in the case of works already
in the orbit of postcolonial criticism that works need to be looked at from
beyond existing critical perspectives, the argument can also be turned
around. In other words, I contend, the very narrowness of the range of
works invoked for the field is by itself restrictive and limits the theoreti-
cal assumptions. I examine the literature of a single postcolonial state,
India, to support the argument that for postcolonial studies to be more
representative and varied, the diverse works in multiple regional languages
must be examined. In the interests of both representations and aesthetics,
postcolonial studies needs to look beyond literature written in just one
language—English. Lazarus examines the book Interviews with Writers
of the Postcolonial World and queries: “What thematic concerns, h ­ istorical
4 N. MENON

conditions, or existential predicaments can plausibly be said to license the

inclusion of such authors as Ngugi, Ghose, and Ihimaera under any shared
rubric, let alone that of postcoloniality?” (425). Lazarus asks this rhetori-
cal question to underscore the wide differences between the writers them-
selves and unacknowledged disparities in their respective postcolonialities.
To answer Lazarus, all the writers are representative of geographies that
are, for varying and different reasons, postcolonial. They also form an
emerging canon of postcolonial literature representative of these places.
Last, but not least, they all write in English.
Such a consecration of postcolonial works from metropolitan centers
and select metropolitan writers has dominated the discourse of postcolonial
criticism, thereby centralizing a select genre and universalizing it as repre-
sentative of postcolonialism per se. Thus, Raymond Williams’ critique of the
politics of modernism may be read as analogous to postcolonial criticism.
The key criticism is the similar tendency of “metropolitan interpretation of
its own processes as universals.” (Introduction). The stagnation in some
of the categories of postcolonial criticism has not gone unnoticed among
many scholars in the field, and in the last few years, there have been many
articles and essays challenging some of the field’s current preoccupations vis-
à-vis its foundational assumptions. Susie Tharu (roundtable by Yeager), for
example, discusses the transformation of Edward Said’s groundbreaking text
Orientalism as it traveled in postcolonial theory. Said’s original thesis empha-
sizes that Orientalism has little to do with the Orient. In fact, one of Said’s
foci is the Euro-American academy and the power-knowledge axis of that
institution. Initial research in postcolonial studies, including some of Spivak’s
less cited essays, built on Said’s formulation of Orientalism. The beginning of
Spivak’s seminal “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is a scathing critique of Western
intellectual complicity in Western capitalist production, but it is a section
that is usually ignored by subsequent critics. Instead, postcolonial studies
has developed a purportedly anti-binary approach that seeks to dismantle
East/West or North/South dualisms. This shift in perspective appears to
be headed toward a more complex analysis of fast-changing global realities;
however, Tharu has this to say about the trajectory of the discipline:

Abandoning the responsibility of engaging western power/knowledge in

its entirety, the new postcolonial studies, with anthropology in the lead,
has concerned itself with a problematic designed to unearth residual or
continuing colonialism in the ex-colonies. This is the untold story that
accompanies and in fact precedes the widely circulated account of postco-
lonial studies as coinciding with the arrival of third world critics in the First
World academy. (Yeager 643)
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 5

Tharu calls for a return to postcolonial studies’ embrace of “Saidian

history.” I interpret Tharu’s call not as a return to colonial/anti-colonial
binaries, but rather as a call for a more self-reflexive critique of the inclu-
sions and exclusions of the field and a call to adjust our critical lens to
account for political and academic realities. Such an exercise is perhaps
necessary for many of the discipline’s subfields of literature, economics or
history. Postcolonial history has perhaps inaugurated such a line of criti-
cism with the subaltern studies group’s provocative questioning of its own
disciplinary practices. In this book, I intend to take a self-reflexive look at
the field of literature and the forming of the postcolonial canon.
At the Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA) conference in North­
ampton in 2008, I presented a paper arguing for a linguistic expansion
of the postcolonial canon. Bill Ashcroft, one of the keynote speakers at
the conference, attended our panel presentation. During the question-­
answer session, he asked me why I needed to use the word canon: Could
I not make the same argument about including more works from differ-
ent languages without making it the postcolonial canon? His argument
was that, as an interventionist discipline, postcolonial studies is invested
in dismantling canons (starting with the European canon) and that we
do not need to replace it with a postcolonial one. It is a difficult question
because “The Postcolonial Canon” is a difficult term. It is also similar
to the notion of nation in postmodernism. The post nation is a luxury
that stateless refugees or those fighting for their territorial space cannot
comprehend or sympathize with. Similarly, a canon does not cease to exist
because we refer to an exclusive selection of works or writers by different
names or pretend they do not exist. Deconstructing the European canon
does not mean that it no longer exists or is not perceived as exceptional.
The development of the canon is, in itself, interesting. Whether we agree
on the existence or irrelevance of canons, whether postcolonial canon is a
self-contradictory term or not, I want to argue that, as the field is formu-
lated as of now, select writers and literary works dominate the discourse to
the exclusion of other writers, works and languages. The exclusive selec-
tion of texts, writers and themes, I contend, becomes the foundation for
critical analyses and conclusions about postcolonialism. Such a circular
movement between texts, writers and themes results in: (1) an emerging
postcolonial “canon” whether we acknowledge it or not and (2) theoreti-
cal conclusions based on that n ­ arrow selection of literatures that are then
extrapolated to the larger field. The domination of a few select literary
texts and writers defines the field, and they are often uncritically referred
to and unselfconsciously understood as the postcolonial perspective. My
6 N. MENON

argument is that a linguistic re-­mapping is the key to expanding the post-

colonial canon. Before we take a critical look at the postcolonial canon,
a look at the development, formation and history of canons and canon-
building is instructive.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term canon as “a body of
literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant and
worthy of study (italics mine), those works esp. western literature consid-
ered to be established as being of the highest quality and most endur-
ing value; such a body of literature in a particular language, or from a
particular culture, period, genre, etc.” (OED). The introduction of the
word canon in the English language remains obscure, and according to
Ingrid Johnston, the Oxford English Dictionary published between 1884
and 1928 does “not contain in its twenty-five listings any word approxi-
mating the modern meaning of an approved catalog of books” (42). In
the earlier meanings, the closest “canon” is defined as a “collection or
list of books of the Bible accepted by the Christian Church as genuine
and inspired” (42). According to Johnston, it was not until 1972 when
the above meaning was supplemented to bestow the exclusive—and thus
exalted—status of “secular authentic authors.” The definition of canon
moved from the exclusively biblical to the selectively secular in the late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, unsurprisingly coinciding with the rise
of the British Empire and global power gravitating toward the European
capitals of London and Paris.
Jusdanis states that a study of canonicity is equivalent to a study of
power; the role of interest and the dynamics of struggle are all intricate to
its formation. Certainly, the deployment of Shakespeare in the colonies is a
fine example of the nineteenth-century version of what globalization cheer-
leaders today call “soft power.” Economic might and cultural supremacy
are equally treasured by imperial powers, and certainly for British colonial-
ism, British literature was one of the tools deployed as evidence of civiliza-
tion. Homi Bhabha’s essay about the subversive potential of reading and
receiving the Bible in a native language is an insightful interpretation of
the complex processes. However, the premise of imperialism and empires
is that they control the narrative and the discourse, which is what led
Macaulay to claim “that all the great literatures of India and Persia could
not hold a single shelf of books” (124). Canonicity, therefore, is not so
much about texts as it is about power, status symbols and the dominant
discourse according to which not only individual authors but entire move-
ments and discourses find themselves in or out as the “flavor of the era.”
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 7

Furthermore, Toni Morrison has unequivocally compared canon-­

building to empire-building. The process itself is a curious double bind.
Texts deemed “worthy of study” are transmitted, translated, critiqued and
anthologized, all of which processes ensure that they are embedded in lit-
erary memories. And those that are transmitted, translated and passed on
are, in turn, considered “worthy of study.” Obviously, texts that stand the
test of time also, in many ways, endure the test of power. As Gerald Bruns
(qtd. in Landow) says:

A text, after all, is canonical, not by virtue of being final and correct and
part of an official library, but because it becomes binding upon a group of
people. The whole point of canonization is to underwrite the authority of
a text, not merely with respect to its origin … but with respect to the pres-
ent and future in which it will reign and govern as a binding text … from a
hermeneutic standpoint … the theme of canonization is power. (149)

The OED also records the changes and expansion of the meaning of
the canon brought about by the intellectual debates, specifically those of
feminist and postmodernist disciplines. Thus, a 1992 supplement to the
meaning of canon now adds: “A body of works considered to be estab-
lished as the most important or significant in a particular field.” All this
brings us to the original discussion about the validity of a “postcolonial
canon.” As we can see, the OED has not declared the word or its meaning
obsolete, and it still means a select or exemplary collection of works in any
field. So, for my purposes here, with all the necessary skepticism, I will rely
on the expanded meaning of the term canon and continue to use the term
“postcolonial canon.”
Edward Said has been one of the most stringent critics of canons. Said,
along with Foucault and Derrida, has supported a new kind of canon that
operates from “nomadic centers” (Introduction), provisional structures
that are never permanent and that offer new forms of continuity, vision
and revision. Said’s vision values the potential over the institutional and
is open-ended. His proposed literary shelf resembles what Jan Gorak has
termed “a kind of mental bazaar: a place of many tongues, a variety of
goods, and an endless circulation of people and goods” (215). Said’s
“nomadic centers” are indicative of the way postcolonial theory and
­literature compelled a re-examination of assumed centers and proposed
alternative centers of thought. The idea of “nomadic centers” is compel-
ling even though it reiterates the inevitability of “centers,” poststructur-
alism notwithstanding. One of the ways that Said’s “nomadic centers”
8 N. MENON

can be interventionist is through a periodic appraisal of such centers and

their dismantling so that no particular center can claim permanence. In
terms of the postcolonial literary shelf, I think that time is now.
Postcolonial literature has now established itself as a discipline “worthy
of study.” And the conscious and unconscious formation of a postcolo-
nial canon has been an inevitable part of the process of developing the
theoretical structure of postcolonialism. The development of the body of
literature that is now called postcolonial literatures is an interesting one.
It is worthwhile at this point to remember a relic called “commonwealth
literature,” literature in English written by writers from the former colo-
nies of Britain. Salman Rushdie, in a scathing critique of the nomencla-
ture, noted:

“Commonwealth literature,” it appears, is that body of writing created, I

think, in the English language, by persons who are not themselves white
Britons, or Irish or citizens of the United States of America… [B]y now
“commonwealth literature” was sounding very unlikeable indeed. Not only
was it a ghetto, but also it was actually an exclusive ghetto. And the effect of
creating such a ghetto was, is, to change the meaning of the far broader term
“English Literature”—which I’d always taken to mean simply the literature
of the English language—into something far narrower, something topo-
graphical, nationalistic, and possibly even racially segregationist. (62–63)

John McLeod has commented that commonwealth literature was

“really a subset of canonical English literature.” Though scholars have dis-
puted the use of terms like “commonwealth literature” and “third world
Literature,” substitute postcolonial literature for the above description
and it is evident that all that has changed is the nomenclature. Rushdie’s
critique would still be valid. Postcolonial literature, as it is currently for-
mulated, is a “body of writing, in the English language, by persons who
are not themselves white Britons or white citizens of the United States.”
(The Irish are part of the postcolonial.) Thus, the selection is still an
exclusive ghetto under a different name. The irony is the two-­way exclu-
siveness—Rushdie’s simple formulation of “English Literature,” which in
my opinion is a right one, is still non-existent; on the other hand, these
writers have been re-territorialized into an exclusive group of postco-
lonial literature, where writers from the same postcolonial geographies
writing in languages other than English are not included. Postcolonial
literature, much like its predecessor, Commonwealth literature, exists as
an island that brings in a lot of goods (and stories) of postcolonialism
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 9

while the metropolitan center surveys the marketplace and takes what it
needs from the island.
So, Said’s notion of provisional and non-permanent canons can be a
useful self-reflexive critical tool with which to examine the postcolonial
canon. The emerging canon has been received with unbridled enthusiasm,
bitter criticism and everything in between. Is the narrow literary base of
postcolonial theory justified? What is the range and number of works that
are published for a given time period, and is that diversity reflected in
theoretical representation? Can we channel such criticism to advance valu-
able research in the field? What is the distribution of writers, languages
and works in postcolonialism?
These are all elaborate and complex questions that will necessarily have
different answers for different postcolonial spaces. For my purposes here,
I am analyzing only the literary production in one postcolonial space—
India1—and examining its representativeness in theory. My findings are
based on an analytic study of three different scholarly journals/web-
sites that publish critical writings in postcolonial literature and theory. I
begin by reproducing a graph of my findings from the Modern Language
Association (MLA) Bibliography, as illustrated in Fig. 1.1 (Menon, 2010).
The horizontal axis represents a sample for each of five different authors
while the vertical represents the total number of critical articles found on
those particular authors. The cluster groups represents the years of their

Representation of Selected Indian Writers From MLA

Bibliography 1980-2004
600
490
500
400
290
300
200 120
50 60
100 14 7 27 34
5 7 20 6 20 46
0
1980-1985 1985-1993 1994-2004

Salman Rushdie Arundhati Roy Premchand

Rabindranath Tagore Naguib Mahfouz

Fig. 1.1 Survey of MLA bibliography indicating scholarly articles published

about these authors during the years 1980–2006
10 N. MENON

publication. For this sample, I have chosen three time periods: 1980–1985,
1985–1993 and 1993–2006. The reason for the unevenness of the three
time periods is that the shifts in critical attention change during those
junctures. I have differentiated them by using blue, maroon and yellow,
respectively, for the three distinct periods. I picked 1980 as the starting
point of my investigation as it signifies the time when postcolonial studies
was slowly beginning to attract academic attention. Rushdie’s acclaim and
the popularity of other postcolonial authors accelerated that interest, and
by the early 1990s, the discipline had a firm foothold in academia. As we
will see, it is around the same time that certain authors, writers and lan-
guages began to dominate the discourse and, I contend, have continued
to do so until the present.
In the above graph, the uneven and disproportionate concentration of a
few writers across the theoretical spectrum is obvious. Of the 3483 entries
for “postcolonial” as a category, 177 entries were about Francophone
postcolonial and the remaining 3306 were nearly exclusively Anglophone
postcolonial. Of these 3306 articles, Rushdie alone is the subject of 794
articles in the survey, and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is
discussed 67 times. Many Indian writers in English, including Githa
Hariharan, Bharati Mukherjee, Vikram Chandra and Shashi Tharoor, also
have a good number of articles between them. Needless to say, critical
articles about authors in languages other than English are few. As shown
in the above graph, most of these articles are barely visible between the
scales of 0 and 100. While I have chosen to represent some of the Indian
language authors here, it is the same for authors in African languages too.
The other notable point is the size of the bars that represent the span of
years 1980–1985. Articles about authors in Indian languages were more
prominent in the 1980s and progressively declined over the years, with the
latest between 2000 and 2006 nearly invisible on the graph. For example,
while Tagore and Premchand have 120 and 27 entries and Ghalib 34 in
the 1980–1985 category, they are virtually non-existent as subjects of
articles in the 1990s and completely disappear in the new millennium.
A surprising omission is Mahasweta Devi, whose translations by no less a
postcolonial authority than Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ensure a regular
presence in postcolonial curriculum. But that pre-eminence has not trans-
lated into closer study by other scholars in the field. Authors writing in any
language other than English do not register on the postcolonial critical
map. Some like Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar and Umashankar Joshi
are discussed for their films and plays but rarely as postcolonial exponents
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 11

Fig. 1.2 Representation Representation of Selected Writers from 2007-2015 in MLA

of selected writers from Bibilography
2007–2015 in MLA
2 20
bibliography 4

78
55

33
19

Amitav Ghosh Anita Desai Kiran Desai

Arundhati roy Premchand Salmon Rushdie
Rohinton Mistry

of either genre. Karnad is more visible than the others, partly because he
is a bilingual playwright who writes and translates between Kannada and
English.
Now, there are some changes between 2007 and now. So, to have a
comparative idea, I looked at the same database with a series of different
keyword searches but limited my results to between 2007 and 2015. The
MLA database now looks as shown (Fig. 1.2):
I also analyzed two other important journals of postcolonial research
and came to similar conclusions as those presented above. I looked at
Interventions, a radical publication for postcolonial studies, and The
South Asian Review (SAR), published from the University of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. As I mention in the beginning of the Introduction, a nar-
row selection of works also leads to a narrow range of theoretical assump-
tions. As we saw in the analysis of the MLA Bibliography, the range of
authors discussed was limited to postcolonial authors writing in English.
Even among those, select authors and their works dominated the dis-
course. Rushdie and Roy together accounted for 861 articles. In other
words, 25 % of the total number of critical articles were based on approxi-
mately four texts. I cannot imagine how the theoretical assumptions that
draw from such a small corpus could be either representative or com-
prehensive of diverse and disparate postcolonial realities. This disparity
will be further confirmed by an analysis of the postcolonial themes and
subjects covered in the two journals. Going through the issues from 1983
to 2005, Interventions has entire issues devoted to: (1) global diasporas
and (2) postcolonial American studies. In addition, a number of articles
12 N. MENON

in recent years focus on empire and neo-imperialism or US imperialism.

Transnationalism is also a constant presence, and postcolonial theory is
seen in the larger contexts of globalization, WTO and the environment.
The role of the diasporas dominates the conversation and articles, such
as “Postcolonial States and Transnational Resistance,” and underscores
their importance in the changing global scene. Some of the authors who
are repeatedly mentioned include Rushdie, Achebe and Coetzee; rarely is
any other author or work mentioned. In the issues from the mid- to the
late 1980s, there is not a single article about works or authors from either
South Asia or Africa, arguably two of the largest postcolonial spaces in
geographical terms.
The SAR paints only a slightly different picture. The canonical bifur-
cation continues here, with the bulk of articles focused on the same few
authors and the same themes. Interestingly though, the journal’s issues
of 1980, 1981 and 1982 have a much more varied selection of topics
and writers. One issue has articles comparing the writings of Gandhi and
Tagore, an analysis of different nationalisms. Another article in the 1982
issue compares Chandi Das with Dante and Raja Rao with TS Eliot. The
1981 issue discusses EM Forster’s A Passage to India. The same issue also
discusses Bhasa’s Pratima Natika and the folk form of Bhavai and its
position in Indian theater. Natyashastra and Yakshagana are compared
for their intersections of form and content dispelling or at least complicat-
ing the binary of classical-folk hierarchy. The 1982 issue of the journal is
exclusively devoted to a discussion of South Asian languages and linguis-
tics. I mention this to underline that from canonical twentieth century
writers to classical works, the journal published scholarship that covered
the range even if intermittently. This attention to different literatures from
the subcontinent has steadily declined in the 90s and to being almost
invisible in the new millenium.
In the graph in Fig. 1.3 below, I plot the contents of the SAR. Again,
I use the years 1980–2005 for the analysis.
During the given periods, I plot the percentage of articles that discuss
authors or their works in English, the ones that discuss authors or works
in languages other than English, and articles that do a comparative analysis
of both. The percentages are indicated on the X-axis, and the Y-axis has
the three categories. The Z-axis represents the three different time periods
for the analysis. As in the previous graph, yellow, blue and purple denote
the years 2000–2006, 1985–2000 and 1980–1985, respectively. As we
see, the purple tower is significantly higher during 1980–1985 and then
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 13

Representation of Scholarly Articles and Criticism in South Asian

Review 1980-2006
100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
English Comparative Analysis Other Languages

1980-1985 1985-2000 2000-2006

Fig. 1.3 Figure shows the distribution of English and other language authors
and their works for the said periods

progressively declines, while the yellow tower for English literally towers
over the other languages during the period 2000–2006.
The trend toward a focus on—and later, domination of—postcolonial
works written in English begins with a shift in the late 1980s and early
1990s, an exciting time with Indo-Anglian writers who were, to quote
Jusdanis again, “the flavor of the era.” Rushdie had become acclaimed,
and other Indian writers in English were being noticed and read and, most
importantly, were winning awards. It is naturally an exciting time for criti-
cal research too, and many of the above-mentioned journals started pub-
lishing more and more about these writers. It was certainly refreshing to
begin with, but when you see the same writers, the same questions and the
same themes continuing in these journals over the years, perhaps it is time
to pause and reflect: Is this interventionist field becoming more exclusive
than inclusive? Have we exhausted the limits of literary works available for
the discipline and explored all the challenges of postcolonial subjectivity?
A survey of major journals, articles and theorists in the discipline in the
last decade indicates a closing in rather than an opening of the discipline.
The SAR issues from the year 2000 onward are exclusively about the same
few authors and works introduced in the early 1980s, so they continue
to present articles about Salman Rushdie, Raja Rao and Arundhati Roy.
The same themes also continued with little variation of interpretation, the
focus moving from the hybrid to the migrant to the 2005 issue, a special
about “global diasporas.”
14 N. MENON

The disparities are even more pronounced when the articles for discus-
sion of authors in non-English (and non-French if the Francophone post-
colonial is included) languages are examined. Referring to the complexities
of African postcolonialism, Mamadou Diouf (Yeager roundtable) states
that the African continent has been subjected to colonialism from at least
the beginning of the slave trade, continuing in different forms until the
present one of Western imperialism. In this context, he says, African litera-
ture “underscores issues of continuity, not discontinuities, resurgences and
posts” (7). Diouf charges that most of the scholarly debate about postco-
lonialism and globalization about Africa is led by scholars in American and
Canadian universities. His complaint though is that “in Africa, postcolonial
studies speaks English, not French” (8). Postcolonial studies should actu-
ally speak not just English or French but a host of other active languages
that experience the postcolonial condition in many of these places. And
that is really the point here. Postcolonial spaces are vast and multilingual,
and no single language—be it English or French—can by itself be repre-
sentative of all the diversities of experiences and literary forms that emerge
from these places. The need is to decentralize the different representations
so as to imagine the much more linguistically varied spaces as they are.
David Damrosch observes that in “world literature” as in some Miss
Universe literary competitions, an entire nation may be represented by a
single author: Indonesia, the world’s fifth largest nation, is usually seen, if
at all, in the person of Ananta Toer. Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar
divide the honors for “Mr. Argentina” (Damrosch, 2003). This may be
said for postcolonial literature too, except that in this case, each of the
nations is represented by a handful of writers writing in English. What is
more interesting in these two representations is the “othering” process.
“World literature” is a quaint and problematic term because it represents
not so much the “world” but reiterates the binary of the West and the rest.
Western canonical authors are not included in this group; it is a token ges-
ture of acknowledgement of “other” authors from the less important parts
of the “world.” Similarly, with postcolonial literature, acknowledging only
writers writing in English as part of a postcolonial literary corpus smacks
of an imperial influence, not a postcolonial stance. Damrosch also points
to the existence of a shadow canon in postcolonial studies—writers who
everybody “knows” but are rarely discussed in print. Munshi Premchand
and Mirza Ghalib may be counted in that category.
The aim of the analysis is not to suggest that Rushdie is redundant.
The point here is that while Rushdie, like Wordsworth, is a wonderful
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 15

figure to discuss for many purposes, we do not have to keep coming back
to the same people and works. Expanding the canon allows us to expand
the ­varied and different representations that may or may not be similar
to the ones we have encountered, and offers exciting prospects of new
discoveries. By restricting ourselves to a select few authors in a single lan-
guage, we are creating a hypercanon within the field, even before a coher-
ent or inclusive postcolonial canon can be discerned.
I have demonstrated the narrowness of the Anglophone postcolonial
canon and its limitations in widening the theoretical concepts. It must be
obvious that there are literary works in different languages that have either
largely been ignored by the discipline or received only token acknowl-
edgement. To make the case for multilingual expansion of the canon, yet
another category was analyzed—in this case, regional language literature
from India. It is important to note that a linguistic expansion is already
underway in postcolonial criticism. This is almost an inadvertent devel-
opment with the entry of former Soviet Republics into the postcolonial
conversation. In addition, Latin American literature has added an entirely
new dimension to the discipline. Latin American postcolonialism is per-
haps the first truly bilingual conversation in the discourse because many
of the writers are read in translation. Not surprisingly, Latin American
postcolonialism also has some of the most vibrant translation theories,
which many in multilingual criticism may greatly benefit from. While hav-
ing such new entrants with different perspectives is exciting, the possibili-
ties and potential for postcolonial studies is by no means saturated in the
South Asian region. We do, however, need to look beyond Anglophone
literature to the many regional language literatures that thrive in the post-
colonial region.
A survey of the Sahitya Akademi awards for literature from 1980 to
2005 reveals that an average of 23 works in 22 different languages have
won the award, thereby being acknowledged as good fiction each year. In
the same time period, approximately 500 literary works were released in
these languages; those won some literary acclaim and have been translated
into other Indian and Asian languages and many into English too. Each of
these works should qualify as postcolonial. Not all of them will be literary
masterpieces or offer groundbreaking theoretical concepts, but if postco-
lonial scholarship does not even attempt to connect the dots or explore
new ones, then the theory will just be thinner for it. Figure 1.4 below
presents a graph for the Sahitya Akademi awards for fiction, poetry and
criticism in five different languages. Sanskrit is included in the graph only
16 N. MENON

Production of Indian Literature in Five Indian Languages Based

on Sahitya Academy Award
28
30

25

20
13 13 14
15 11
8 9
10 6 6 6
4 4 3 4
5 1
0
Hindi Malayalam Telugu Sanskrit Gujarati

Fiction Poetry Collection Criticism

Fig. 1.4 Graph showing literary production in five Indian languages during the
period 1986–2006

to demonstrate that even a language that is not as widely spoken as the

others, and that has been consecrated as an exclusively religious language
visible in the public sphere only in the areas of Ayurvedic medicine and
Yoga, has a healthy literary production.
The graph is plotted with the number of award-winning works on the
X-axis and the different languages on the Y-axis. I have further separated
fiction, poetry and criticism. I have randomly selected five different regional
languages. According to the information on the Sahitya Akademi’s website,
a graph of any set of languages will look more or less the same. I chose to
narrow my database by selecting the Sahitya Akademi awards for two rea-
sons: (1) Narrowing the database results in a manageable number to work
with and (2) these awards are instituted by the government and have gained
a certain respect among writers and critical circles in India. It should also
be mentioned that political considerations sometimes arise and that some
noteworthy writer or book in a given language may be missing from the list.
The scenario has changed little between 2007 and 2015. A similar
study of databases looks like this now (Fig. 1.5): A search on postcolonial
scholarship on JSTOR for 2007-2015 gives us the following visuals. As we
can see, our comparative analysis bar graph demonstrates the percentage
of English postcolonial works from India form 65% of the works whereas
those from Indian languages are abour 7%- a tiny improvement from the
1980-2004 scale but still very disproportionate.
 INTRODUCTION: THE RATIONALE FOR RE-MAPPING THE POSTCOLONIAL... 17

Fig. 1.5 Representation Representation of Selected Writers from 2007-2015 in MLA

of selected writers from Bibilography
2007–2015 in MLA 2 20
4
bibliography
78
55
33

19

Amitav Ghosh Anita Desai Kiran Desai

Arundhati roy Premchand Salmon Rushdie
Rohinton Mistry

Literary Production and Representation in Postcolonial Theory

120%
100%
80%
60%
98% 87%
40%
20%
13% 2%
0%
Literary Literary Literary Literary
Production of Representation of Production of Representation of
Anglophone texts Anglophone texts Regional language Regional Language
texts texts

Fig. 1.6 Liberty production and representation in postcolonial theory

And a comparison of the representation of different language litera-

tures in postcolonial discourse and research is as shown in the following
graph (Fig. 1.6).
For those who argue that such comparative study is the domain of com-
parative literature departments, I contend that “postcolonial” is, by defi-
nition, multilingual and is thus obliged to be comparative. So what does
this survey mean for postcolonial theory? How can it be a useful resource,
and can it widen our understanding of postcolonialism? Does it raise new
questions that might call for new tools and methodologies for understand-
ing? In Fig. 1.7, a comparative study of the three previous graphs gives
the following picture about postcolonial theory and discourse: The X-axis
is the two comparative bars for literary production vis-à-vis their repre-
sentation in postcolonial theory. As we can see, the Anglophone literary
18 N. MENON

Fig. 1.7 This figure Representation of Scholarly Articles and Criticism in JSTOR
is a comparative Database 2007-2015
analysis of the
previous three graphs
15%

27% 57%

Postcolonial Literature from India

Postcolonial Literature in English
Postcolonial Literature in Other Indian Ianguages

production in India is much lower than that in regional languages but is

disproportionately represented in the theoretical structure. Bar 1 is for
postcolonial theory and the second comparative bar is the literary produc-
tion, both approximately calculated for the years 1980–2005.2
For the years 2007-2015, I also look at another very important schol-
arly database JSTOR. The results are not very different as seen in the
graphs below. Indian writers in English continue to dominate the schol-
arship and theory draws majorly from the same select writers and the
themes have changed but little. Even as postcolonial theory has expanded
to include partition studies, one notices that comparative analysis between
texts of different language literatures are conspicuous by their invisibility.
A comparative graph of writers and literatures and languages in JSTOR
is presented below. There are too few literary texts and writers that the
theory depends on for formulating its concepts. These critical terms repeat
themselves in very similar interpretations. Thus, a handful of texts and a
few critical terms dominate the discourse to the exclusion of others. It is
easy to conclude that if the criticism keeps rotating between the same few
texts and same few writers only writing in English, the theoretical vocabu-
lary is hardly likely to expand. In my opinion, the case for a multilingual
expansion is fairly obvious. (Figs. 1.7, 1.8, 1.9)
The above analysis is not entirely new. Many scholars and especially
many of the materialist critics have pointed out the extraordinarily narrow
base of postcolonial literary theory and criticism. Aijaz Ahmad, Arif Dirlik,
Biodun Jeyifo, Neil Larsen, Benita Parry and Tim Brennan—to name a
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Los apostólicos
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at
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using this eBook.

Title: Los apostólicos

Author: Benito Pérez Galdós

Release date: December 11, 2023 [eBook #72373]

Language: Spanish

Original publication: Madrid: Perlado, Páez y Compañía, 1906

Credits: Ramón Pajares Box. (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOS

APOSTÓLICOS ***
Índice: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII,
XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII,
XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV.

Nota de transcripción

Los errores de imprenta han sido corregidos.

La ortografía del texto original ha sido modernizada de acuerdo con las normas
publicadas en 2010 por la Real Academia Española.
Las rayas intrapárrafos han sido espaciadas según los modernos usos
ortotipográficos.
Las notas a pie de página han sido renumeradas y colocadas al final del párrafo en
que se las llama.
 EPISODIOS NACIONALES

LOS APOSTÓLICOS
 Es propiedad. Queda hecho el depósito
que marca la ley. Serán furtivos los
ejemplares que no lleven el sello del autor
 B. PÉREZ GALDÓS
EPISODIOS NACIONALES
SEGUNDA SERIE

LOS
A P OS T ÓL I C OS

34.000

MADRID
PERL ADO , PÁEZ Y CO M PAÑÍ A
( Su ce s o r e s d e He r n a n d o )
A R E N A L , 11
1906
Madrid. — Imp. de los Sucesores de Hernando, Quintana, 33.
 LOS APOSTÓLICOS

Tradiciones fielmente conservadas, y ciertos documentos

comerciales que podrían llamarse el Archivo Histórico de la familia de
Cordero, convienen en que doña Robustiana de los Toros de
Guisando, esposa del héroe de Boteros, falleció el 11 de diciembre de
1826. ¿Fue peritonitis, pulmonía matritense o tabardillo pintado lo que
arrancó del seno de su amante familia y de las delicias de este valle de
lágrimas a tan digna y ejemplar señora? Este es un terreno oscuro, en
el cual no ha podido penetrar nuestra investigación ni aun
acompañada de todas las luces de la crítica.
Esa pícara Historia, que en tratándose de reyes y príncipes, no hay
cosa trivial ni hecho insignificante que no saque a relucir, no ha tenido
una palabra sola para la estupenda hazaña de Boteros, ni tampoco
para la ocasión lastimosa en que el héroe se quedó viudo con cinco
hijos, de los cuales los dos últimos vinieron al mundo después que e
giro de los acontecimientos nos obligó a perder de vista a la familia
Cordero.
Cuando murió la señora, Juanito Jacobo (a quien se dio este
nombre en memoria de cierto filósofo que no es necesario nombrar
tenía dos meses no cumplidos, y por su insaciable apetito, así como su
berrear constante, declaraba la raza y poderoso abolengo de Toros de
Guisando. Sus bruscas manotadas y la fiereza con que se llevaba los
puños a la boca, ávido de mamarse a sí mismo por no poder secar un
par de amas cada mes, señales eran de vigor e independencia, por lo
que don Benigno, sin dejar de agradecer a Dios las buenas dotes
vitales que había dado a su criatura, pasaba la pena negra en su triste
papel de viudo; y ora valiéndose de cabras y biberones, cuando
faltaban las nodrizas, ora buscando por Puerta Cerrada y ambas
Cavas lo mejor que viniera de Asturias y la Alcarria en el maleado
género de amas para casa de los padres; ya desechando a esta po
enferma y a aquella por desabrida, taimada y ladrona; ya suplicando a
tal cual señora de su conocimiento que diera una mamada a
muchacho cuando le faltaba el pecho mercenario, era un infeliz
esclavo de los deberes paternales, y perdía el seso, el humor, la salud
el sueño, si bien jamás perdía la paciencia.
En las frías y largas noches ¿quién sino él habría podido echarse
en brazos la infantil carga y acallar los berridos con paseos, arrullos, y
cantorrios? ¿Quién sino él habría soportado las largas vigilias y e
cuneo incesante y otros muchos menesteres que no son para
contados? Pero don Benigno tenía un axioma que en todas estas
ocasiones penosas le servía de grandísimo consuelo, y recordándolo
en los momentos de mayor sofoco, decía:
—El cumplimiento estricto del deber en las diferentes circunstancias
de la existencia, es lo que hace al hombre buen cristiano, buen
ciudadano, buen padre de familia. El rodar de la vida nos pone en
situaciones muy diversas, exigiéndonos ahora esa virtud, más tarde
aquella. Es preciso que nos adaptemos, hasta donde sea posible, a
esas situaciones y casos distintos, respondiendo según podamos a lo
que la sociedad y el autor de todas las cosas exigen de nosotros. A
veces nos piden heroísmo, que es la virtud reconcentrada en un punto
y momento; a veces paciencia, que es el heroísmo diluido en larga
serie de instantes.
Después solía recordar que Catón el Censor abandonaba los
negocios más arduos del gobierno de Roma para presenciar y dirigir la
lactancia, el lavatorio y los cambios de vestido de su hijo, y que e
mismo Augusto, señor y amo del mundo, hacía otro tanto con sus
nietecillos. Con esto recibía don Benigno gran consuelo, y después de
leer de cabo a rabo el libro del Emilio que trata de las nodrizas, de la
buena leche, de los gorritos y de todo lo concerniente a la primera
crianza, contemplaba lleno de orgullo a su querido retoño, repitiendo
las palabras del gran ginebrino: «así como hay hombres que no salen
jamás de la infancia, hay otros de quienes se puede decir que nunca
han entrado en ella, y son hombres desde que nacen».
Con estos trabajos, que hacía más llevaderos la satisfacción de un
noble deber cumplido, iba pasando el tiempo. El primer aniversario de
fallecimiento de su mujer renovó en Cordero las hondas tristezas de
aquel luctuoso día, y negándose al trivial recreo de la tertulia de
amigos y parroquianos, cerró la tienda y se retiró a su alcoba, donde
las memorias de la difunta parecían tomar realidad y figura sensible
para acompañarle. El segundo aniversario halló bastante cambiadas
personas y cosas: la tienda había crecido, los niños también. Juanito
Jacobo, ni un ápice mermado en su constitución becerril, atronaba la
casa con sus gritos y daba buena cuenta de todo objeto frágil que en
su mano caía. En el alma de don Benigno iba declinando mansamente
el dolor cual noche que se recoge expulsada poco a poco por la
claridad del nuevo día.
En el tercer aniversario (11 de diciembre de 1829) el cambio era
mucho mayor, y don Benigno, restablecido en la majestad de su
carácter sencillo, bondadoso y lleno de discreción y prudencia, parecía
un soberano que torna al solio heredado después de lastimosos
destierros y trapisondas. No dejaron, sin embargo, de asaltarle en la
mañanita de aquel día pensamientos tristes; pero al volver de la misa
conmemorativa que había encargado, según costumbre de todo
aniversario, y oído devotamente en Santa Cruz, viósele en su natura
humor cotidiano, llenando la tienda con su activa mirada y su atención
diligente. Después de cerrar la vidriera para que no se enfriara el local
palpó con suavidad cariñosa las cajas que contenían el género; hojeó
el libro de cuentas; pasó la vista por el Diario que acababan de traer
dio órdenes al mancebo para llevar a dos o tres casas algunas
compras hechas la noche anterior; cortó un par de plumas con e
minucioso esmero que la gente de los buenos tiempos ponía en
operación tan delicada, y habría puesto sobre el papel algunos
renglones de aquella hermosa letra redonda que ya solo se ve en los
archivos, si no le sorprendieran de súbito sus niños, que salieron de la
trastienda cartera en cinto, los libros en correa, la pizarra a la espalda
y el gorrete en la mano para pedir a padre la bendición.
—¡Cómo! —exclamó don Benigno, entregando su mano a los labios
y a los húmedos hociquillos de los Corderos—. ¿No os he dicho que
hoy no hay escuela?... Ahora caigo en que no me había acordado de
decíroslo; pues ya había pensado que en este día, que para nosotros
no es alegre y para toda España será, según dicen, un día felicísimo
todos los buenos madrileños deben ir o batir palmas delante de ese
astro que nos traen de Nápoles, de esa reina tan ponderada, tan
trompeteada y puesta en los mismos cuernos de la luna, como si con
ella nos vinieran acá mil dichas y tesoros... Hablo también con usted
apreciable Hormiga: pase usted... no me molesta ahora ni en ningún
momento.
Dirigíase don Benigno o una mujer que se había presentado en la
puerta de la trastienda, deteniéndose en ella con timidez. Los chicos
luego que oyeron el anuncio feliz de que no había escuela, no
quisieron esperar a conocer las razones de aquel sapientísimo
acuerdo, y despojándose velozmente de los arreos estudiantiles, se
lanzaron a la calle en busca de otros caballeritos de la vecindad.
—Tome usted asiento —añadió Cordero, dejando su silla, que era la
más cómoda de la tienda, para ofrecérsela a la joven—. Ayude usted
mi flaca memoria. ¿Qué nombre tiene nuestra nueva reina?
—María Cristina.
—Eso es... María Cristina... ¡Cómo se me olvidan los nombres!..
Dícese que este casamiento nos va a traer grandes felicidades, porque
la napolitana... pásmese usted...
El héroe, después de mirar a la puerta para estar seguro de que
nadie le oía, añadió en voz baja:
—Pásmese usted... es una francmasona, una insurgente, mejo
dicho, una real dama en quien los principios liberales y filosóficos se
unen a los sentimientos más humanitarios. Es decir, que tendremos
una reina domesticadora de las fierezas que se usan por acá.
—A mí me han dicho que ha puesto por condición para casarse que
el rey levante el destierro a todos los emigrados.
—A mí me han dicho algo más —añadió Cordero, dando una
importancia extraordinaria a su revelación—: a mí me han dicho que
en Nápoles bordó secretamente una bandera para los insurrectos de..
de no sé qué insurrección. ¿Qué cree usted? La mandan aquí, porque
si se queda en Italia da la niña al traste con todas las tiranías... Que
ella es de lo fino en materia de liberalismo ilustrado y filosófico me lo
prueba, más que el bordar pendones, el odio que le tiene toda la
turbamulta inquisidora y apostólica de España y Europa y de las cinco
partes del globo terráqueo. ¿Estaba usted anoche aquí cuando e
señor de Pipaón leyó un papel francés que llaman la Quotidienne?
¡Barástolis! ¡Y qué herejías le dicen! Ya se sabe que esa gente
cuando no puede atacar nuestro sistema gloriosísimo a tiros y
puñaladas, lo atacan con embustes y calumnias. Bendita sea la
princesa ilustre que ya trae el diploma de su liberalismo en las injurias
de los realistas. Nada le falta, ni aun la hermosura; y para juzgar si es
tan acabada como dicen los papeles extranjeros, vamos usted y yo a
darnos el gustazo de verla entrar.
La persona a quien de este modo hablaba el tendero de encajes, no
tenía un interés muy vivo en aquellas graves cosas de que pendía
quizás el porvenir de la patria; pero llevada de su respeto a don
Benigno, le miraba atenta y pronunciaba un sí al fin de cada parrafillo
Conocida de nuestros lectores desde 1821,[1] esta discreta joven había
pasado por no pocas vicisitudes y conflictos durante los ocho años
transcurridos desde aquella fecha liberalesca hasta el año quinto de
Calomarde en que la volvemos a encontrar. Su carácter, altamente
dotado de cualidades de resistencia y energía, que son como e
antemural que defiende al alma de los embates de la desesperación
era la causa principal de que las desgracias frecuentes no
desmejorasen su persona. Por el contrario, la vida activa del corazón
determinando actividades no menos grandes en el orden físico, le
había traído un desarrollo felicísimo, no solo por lo que con él ganaba
su salud, sino por el provecho que de él sacaba su belleza. Esta no
era brillante ni mucho menos, como ya se sabe, y más que belleza en
el concepto plástico era un conjunto de gracias accesorias, realzando
y como adornando el principal encanto de su fisonomía, la expresión
de una bondad superior.
[1] Véase El Grande Oriente.

La madurez de juicio y la rectitud en el pensar, el don singularísimo

de convertir en fáciles los quehaceres más enojosos, la disposición
para el gobierno doméstico, la fuerza moral que tenía de sobra para
poder darla a los demás en días de infortunio, la perfecta igualdad de
ánimo en todas las ocasiones, y, finalmente, aquella manera de hace
frente a todas las cosas de la vida con serenidad digna, cristiana y sin
afán, como quien la mira más bien por el lado de los deberes que po
el de los derechos, hacían da ella la más hermosa figura de un tipo
social que no escasea ciertamente en España, para gloria de nuestra
cultura.
—Los que no la ven a usted desde el año 24 —le dijo aquel mismo
día don Benigno, observándola con tanta atención como complacencia
—, no la conocerán ahora. Me tengo por muy feliz al considerar que en
mi casa ha sido donde ha ganado usted esos frescos colores de su
cara, y que bajo este techo humilde ha engrosado usted
considerablemente... digo mal, porque no está usted como mi pobre
Robustiana ni mucho menos..., quiero decir, proporcionadamente, de
un modo adecuado a su estatura mediana, a su talle gracioso, a su
cuerpo esbelto. Beneficios de la vida tranquila, de la virtud, del trabajo
¿no es verdad?... Todos los que la vieron a usted en aquellos tristes
días, cuando a entrambos nos pusieron a la sombra y colgaron a
pobre Sarmiento...
Este recuerdo entristeció mucho a la joven, impidiendo que su amo
propio se vanagloriase con los elogios galantes que acaba de oír. Eran
ya las once de la mañana, y vestida como en día de fiesta para
acompañar a don Benigno, esperaba en la tienda la señal de partida.
—Aguarde usted: voy a hacer un par de asientos en el libro —dijo
este sentándose en su escritorio—. Todavía tenemos tiempo de sobra
Iremos a la casa de don Francisco Bringas, de cuyos balcones se ha
de ver muy requetebién toda la comitiva. Los pequeños se quedarán
con mi hermana, y llevaremos a Primitivo y a Segundo. ¿Están
vestidos?
Los dos muchachos, de doce y diez años respectivamente, no
tenían la soltura que a tal edad es común en los polluelos de nuestros
días: antes bien, encogidos y temerosos, vestidos poco menos que a
mujeriegas, representaban aquella deliciosa perpetuidad de la niñez
que era el encanto de la generación pasada. Despabilados y libertinos
en las travesuras de la calle, eran dentro de casa humildes, taciturnos
y frecuentemente hipócritas.
Gozosos de salir con su padre a ver la entrada de la cuarta reina
esperaban impacientes la hora; y formando alrededor de la joven
grupo semejante al que emplean los artistas para representar a la
Caridad, la manoseaban so pretexto de acariciarla, le estrujaban la
mantilla, arrugándole las mangas y curioseando dentro del ridículo. A
cada instante acudía la joven a remediar los desperfectos que los dos
inquietos y pegajosos muchachos se hacían en su propio vestido, y ya
atando el uno la cinta de la gorra o cachucha, o abotonándole e
casaquín, ya asegurando al otro con alfileres la corbata, no daba
reposo a sus manos ni podía quitárseles de encima.
—No seáis pesados —les dijo con enfado su padre— y no sobéis
tanto a nuestra querida Hormiguita. Para verla, para darle a entende
que la queréis mucho, no es preciso que le pongáis encima esas
manazas... que sabe Dios cómo estarán de limpias, ni hace falta que
la llenéis de saliva besuqueándola...
Esta reprimenda les alejó un poco del objeto de su adoración; pero
siguieron contemplándola como bobos, cortados y ruborosos, mientras
ella, la sonrisa en los labios, reparaba tranquilamente las chafaduras
de su vestido y las arrugas del encaje, para abrir luego su abanico y
darse aire con aquel ademán ceremonioso y acompasado, propio de la
mujer española.
Entre tanto, allá arriba, en la vivienda de la familia, oíase batahola y
patadillas con llanto y becerreo, señal del pronunciamiento de los dos
Corderos menores, Rafaelito y Juan Jacobo, rebelándose contra la
orden que les dejaba encerrados en casa, en la fastidiosa compañía
de la tía Crucita.
—Ya escampa —dijo Cordero señalando al techo con el rabo de la
pluma—: oiga usted al pueblo soberano que aborrece las cadenas..
Verdad que mi hermana no es de aquellas personas organizadas po
la naturaleza para hacer llevadero y hasta simpático el despotismo.
Y dejando por un momento la escritura, entró en la trastienda
dirigiendo hacia arriba, por el hueco de la tortuosa escalerilla, estas
palabras:
—Cruz y Calvario, no les pegues, que harta desazón tienen con
quedarse en casa en día de tanto festejo.
—Idos de una vez a la calle y dejadme en paz —contestó de arriba
una voz nada armoniosa ni afable—, que yo me entenderé con los
enemigos. Ya sé cómo he de tratarles... Eso es, marchaos vosotros
marchaos al paseíto tú y la linda Marizápalos, que aquí se queda esta
pobre mártir para cuidar serpentones y aguantar porrazos, siempre
sacrificada entre estos dos cachidiablos... Idos enhorabuena..., a bien
que en la otra vida le darán a cada cual su merecido.
Violento golpe de una puerta fue punto final de este agrio discurso
y en seguida se oyeron más fuertes las patadillas infantiles de los
Corderos y el sermoneo de la pastora.
—Siempre regañando —dijo don Benigno con jovialidad— y
arrojando venablos por esa bendita boca, que, con ser casi tan
atronadora como la de un cañón de a ocho, no trae su charla insufrible
de malas entrañas ni de un corazón perverso. Mil veces lo he dicho de
mi inaguantable hermana, y ahora lo repito: «es la paloma que ladra».
 Esto lo dijo Cordero guardando en su lugar las plumas con el libro
de cuentas y todos los trebejos de escribir, y tomó después con una
mano el sombrero para llevarlo a la cabeza, mientras la otra mano
transportaba el gorro carmesí de la cabeza a la espetera en que e
sombrero estuvo.
—Vámonos ya, que si no llegamos pronto, encontraremos
ocupados los balcones de Bringas.
La joven alzaba la tabla del mostrador para salir con los chicos
cuando la tienda se oscureció por la aparición de un rechondo pedazo
de humanidad que casi llenaba el marco de la puerta con su bordada
casaca, sus tiesos encajes, su espadín, su sombrero, sus brazos, que
no sabían cómo ponerse para dar a la persona un aspecto pomposo
en que la rotundidad se uniera con la soltura.
—Felices, señor don Juan de Pipaón —dijo don Benigno
observando de pies a cabeza al personaje—. Pues no viene usted
poco majo... Así me gusta a mí la gente de corte... Eso es vestirse con
gana y paramentarse de veras. A ver, vuélvase usted de espaldas..
¡Magnífico! ¡Qué faldones!... A ver de frente... ¡Qué pechera! Alce
usted el brazo: muy bien. ¡Cómo se conoce la tijera de Rouget! De mis
encajes nada tengo que decir..., ¡qué saldrá de esta casa que no sea
la bondad misma! Póngase usted el sombrero a ver qué tal cae..
Superlative... ¡Con qué gracia está puesta la llave dorada sobre la
cadera!... Esas medias serán de casa de Bárcenas... ¡Qué bien hacen
las cruces sobre el paño oscuro...! Una, dos, tres, cuatro veneras..
Bien ganaditas todas, ¿no es verdad, ilustrísimo señor don Juan?..
¡Barástolis! Parece usted un patriarca griego, un sultán, un califa, e
rey que rabió, o el mismísimo mágico de Astracán.
Conforme lo decía iba examinando pieza por pieza, haciendo da
vueltas al personaje como si este fuera un maniquí giratorio. Don
Benigno y la joven, no menos admirada que él, ponderaban con
grandes exclamaciones la belleza y lujo de todas las partes de
vestido, mientras el cortesano se dejaba mirar y en silencio asentía
con un palmo de boca abierta, todo satisfecho y embobado de gozo, a
los encarecimientos de su persona.
—Todo es nuevo —observó la damita.
—Todo —repitió Pipaón mirándose a sí mismo en redondo como un
pavo real—. Mi destino de la Secretaría de Su Majestad ha exigido
estos dispendios.
 En seguida fue enumerando lo que le había costado cada pieza de
aquel torreón de seda, galones, plumas, plata, encajes, piedras y
ballenas, rematado en su cúspide por la carátula más redonda, más
alborozada, más contenta de sí misma que se ha visto jamás sobre un
montón de carne humana.
—Pero no nos detengamos —dijo al fin—, ustedes salían...
—Vamos a casa de Bringas. ¿Va usted también allá?
—¿Yo? No, hombre de Dios. Mi cargo me obliga a estar en Palacio
con los señores ministros y los señores del Consejo para escribir all
a...
Acercó su boca al oído de don Benigno, y protegiéndola con la
palma de la mano, dijo en voz baja:
—A la francmasona...
Ambos se echaron a reír, y don Benigno se envolvió en su capa
diciendo:
—¡Pues viva la reina francmasona! El desfrancmasonizador que la
desfrancmasonice buen desfrancmasonizador será.
—Eso no lo dice Rousseau.
—Pero lo digo yo... Y andando, que es tarde.
—Andandito... —murmuró Pipaón, incrustando su persona toda en
el hueco de la puerta para ofrecerla a la admiración de los transeúntes
—. Pero se me olvidaba el objeto de mi visita.
—¿Pues no ha venido usted a que le viéramos?
—Sí, y también a otra cosa. Tengo que dar una noticia a la señora
doña Sola.
La joven se puso pálida primero, después como la grana, siguiendo
con los ojos el movimiento de la mano de Pipaón, que sacaba unos
papeles del bolsillo del pecho.
—¿Noticias? Siempre que sean buenas... —dijo Cordero cerrando y
asegurando una de las hojas de la puerta.
—Buenas son... Al fin nuestro hombre da señales de vida. Me ha
escrito, y en la mía incluye esta carta para usted.
Soledad tomó la carta, y en su turbación la dejó caer; la recogió y
quiso leerla, y tras un rato de vacilación y aturdimiento, guardola para
leerla después.
—Y no me detengo más —dijo Pipaón—, que voy a llegar tarde a
Palacio—. Hablaremos esta noche, señor don Benigno, señora doña
Hormiga. Abur.
 Se eclipsó aquel astro. Por la calle abajo iba como si rodara
semejante a un globo de luz, deslumbrando los ojos de los transeúntes
con los mil reflejos de sus entorchados y cruces, y siendo pasmo de
los chicos, admiración de las mujeres, envidia de los ambiciosos, y
orgullo de sí mismo.
Cuando el héroe de Boteros, dada la última vuelta a la llave de la
puerta y embozado en su pañosa, se puso en marcha, habló de este
modo a su compañera:
—¿Noticias de aquel hombre?... Bien. ¿Cartas venidas po
conducto de Pipaón?..., malum signum. No tenemos propiamente
correo... Querida Hormiga, es preciso desconfiar en todo de este
tunante de Bragas y de sus melosas afabilidades y cortesanías. Mi
veces le he definido, y ahora le vuelvo a definir: «es el cocodrilo que
besa».
 II

¿Por qué vivía en casa de Cordero la hija de Gil de la Cuadra?

¿Desde cuándo estaba allí? Es urgente aclarar esto.
Cuando pasó a mejor vida, del modo lamentable e inicuo que todos
sabemos, don Patricio Sarmiento, Soledad siguió viviendo sola en la
casa de la calle de Coloreros. Don Benigno y su familia continuaron
también en el piso principal de la misma casa. La continuada vecindad
y más aún la comunidad de desgracias y de peligros en que se habían
visto, aumentaron a afición de Sola a los Corderos y el cariño de los
Corderos a Sola, hasta el punto de que todos se consideraban como
de una misma familia, y llegó el caso de que en la vecindad llamaran a
la huérfana doña Sola Cordero.
A poco de nacer Rafaelito, trasladose don Benigno a la subida de
Santa Cruz, y al principal de la casa donde estaba su tienda; y como
allí el local era espacioso, instaron a su amiga para que viviera con
ellos. Después de muchos ruegos y excusas quedó concertado el plan
de residencia. En aquellos días se casó Elena con el jovenzuelo
Angelito Seudoquis, el cual, destinado a Filipinas cuatro meses
después de la boda, emprendió con su muñeca el viaje por el Cabo, y
a los catorce meses los señores de Cordero recibieron en una misma
carta dos noticias interesantes: que sus hijos habían llegado a Manila
y que antes de llegar les habían dado un nietecillo.
Lo mismo don Benigno que su esposa veían que la huérfana iba
llenando poco a poco el hueco que en la familia y en la casa había
dejado la hija ausente. Pruebas dio aquella bien pronto de se
merecedora del afecto paternal que marido y mujer le mostraban
Asistió a doña Robustiana en su larga y penosa enfermedad con tanta
solicitud y abnegación tan grande, que no lo haría mejor una santa
Nadie, ni aun ella misma, hizo la observación de que había pasado su