EXILE AND THE FEMALE EXPERIENCE IN

THE POETRY OF CONCHA MÉNDEZ

CATHERINE G.BELLVER
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The Spanish CivilWar changed the course of Western history, dis-

rupted millions of lives in Spain, and left an imprint on the works of
most of the country's writers. For example,all the poetry Rafael
Alberti wrote during exile emerged from "la dolorosasombra de su
patria," and gained from that experiencea new dimension and a deep-
er meaning (Corredor-Matheos26). The modern and mechanized life
of the United States, which Pedro Salinas came to know in exile, influ-
enced both his choice of themes and the technique of his metaphors
(Young5). War and exile also left their mark on the poetry of lesser
known poets of the same generation. They cast a dark shadow over the
verses of Concha Méndez Cuesta, who, until 1936, in the words of
Francisco Ayala, wrote "Un espléndidocatålogo de valores: vitalidad,
fuerza, decisi6n,entusiasmo. Valoresj6venes en suma."l The pain of
exile was compounded in Méndez,a few years earlier, by the death of
her son and a few years later, by her separation from her husband.
The period between 1933and 1944was one of difficultyears for her—
years of great loss, multiple changes in residence, and economichard-
ships. If we examine her poetry of this decade,we find features akin to
those of her exiled compatriots and to all exiles of war: a preoccupation
with the horrors of war, an articulation of loss, pain, and despair, ex-
pressions of ambiguity, a somber tonality, and images of darkness and
negativity. The poetic persona that emerges in these poems is that of
one who possesses a remarkable capacity for self-renewal, for triumph
over adversity. While her reactions to exile generally coincide with

27
 ALEC, 18 (1990)
28
counterparts, some of the strategies ghe developqto
those of her male attributed to her female situation. I Will
be
transcend tragedy canMéndez' poetry within the context of the pat.
therefore, first surveyidentified among male poets and then considor
terns that have beenher work not present in their poetry.
those ingredients inWar, Concha Méndez wag a recognized poet and a
Before the Civil cultural circles, but the war that forced her into
full participant withinerased her from the literary annals. She ig not men.
exile also virtually histories of literature, and ghe ig excluded from
postwar
tioned in mostbio-bibliographical work on Spanish women writers pub.
the landmark L. Galerstein. In her youth, however, she wag
lished in 1986by Carolyn
her vitality, athletic prowess, and independence. For.
well-knownfor without money or knowledge of English, ghe
security and
saking family and a year later for Buenos Aires, where
sailed in 1928 for London,
in local journals and formed friendships with Argen.
she collaborated Upon her return to Spain, Garcia Lorca in.
tine and Spanish writers.
her to the poet Manuel Altolaguirre, whom she married a
troduced
later in a ceremony attended by many members of the Generation
year
(Morla Lynch 248-49). Together Méndez and Altolaguirre found.
of 27 Héroe, and Hora
and printed thejournals Caballo verde parapoesia,
ed
collections of such well-known poets as
dc Espaia. They also published Neruda. Juan Ram6n Jiménez
and
GarciaLorca,Cernuda, Hernåndez,
young woman in typeset.
has left behind for us this impression of the
ter's overalls: "Su mono afiil puede ser de cajista de imprenta, enrolada
de buque, fogonera de tren, poliz6n de zepelin, todo por la Poesfa de.
las cuatro måquinas"
lantera que huye en cruz de horizontes ante
(157). The small hotel room where Altolaguirre and Méndez lived
served not only as a printing shop but also as a daily meeting place for
the writers of the day (Briesemeister 95, 102).At the center of these
activities, Méndez enjoyed an important role, as poet, promoter, and
friend, on the literary stage of the late 1920s and early 1930s.One
American critic, in summarizing her biography, has called her "una de
las vidas mås activas, excitantes y productivas de este siglo. Su curiosi-
dad e inteligencia le dejaban gozar el contacto diario con las imagina-
ciones mås intensas de nuestra época. Entr6 en cfrculos donde pocas
mujeres participaron" (Resnick 132).
The CivilWar disrupted Méndez' life as it would her poetry. In the
Spring of 1937, she fled to France with her two-year old daughter. In
1939,after Manuel joined them in Paris, they left for Cuba, where the
familylived until 1943, when they finally settled in Mexico.Méndez'
first written comment on the war concerns family separation and the
common plight of women. In a letter to her husband, excerpted by him
in an article published in 1937, she tells how the emotional problem Of
 CATHERINE G. BELLVER
29
her train companion makes her recognize
tienes idea del dolor de esta mujer y 10 the pain of separation: "No
mucho que me impresion6su
caso. Cada vez pienso mås en 10
tristeque es y en lag
que puede tener una separaci6n" (Altolaguirre consecuencias
ment, Méndez reconfirms one of the features 310). With this state-
as distinguishing women's writings about that Shirley Mangini sees
the CivilWar from those of
men: a tendency to comment about family separation
and
themselves with the intimate details of psychological to preoccupy
survival rather
than with questions of battles and sexual prowess (14).As Gerda
Lerner has shown in her book The MqjorityFinds Its Past, culturally
and psychologically determined factors make women experience histori-
cal events differently from men. "Women's culture," Lerner tells us, is
not a subculture but a culture simultaneous with, albeit separate from,
general culture. Women, she says, live a duality—as members of the
general culture and as partakers of women's culture (168-80).If, as
adventurer, publisher, and poet, Concha Méndez can be closely identi-
fied before the Spanish Civil War with general culture, in exile she
takes an active part in women's culture especiallyas motherhood
emerges as a vehicle of solace, renewal, and redemption.
Poets writing about war concentrate on two mqjor themes: the
horrors of war and its adverse consequences. Because, like most
women, Méndez had no directknowledge of combat or bloodshed, she
tends to exclude these elements from her poems. Nonetheless,
thoughts of war provoke for her apocalyptic visions of spilt blood inun-
dating the landscape:

[No! iQue la mar es de sangre t

iNo! iQue la Iluvia es de sangre! ...
iNo! iQue se quejan los aires! ...
No abras, nifio, los ojos,
porque vas a asombrarte.

iNo te acerques a la lluvia!

iNo te acerques a la mar;
sangre
que el agua se ha vuelto
(SS 52)
y te vas a ensangrentar!
also
the lives of people, it
of war not only changes
The destructiveness
literally and figuratively, literally because battles
alters the land both
of the terrain and figuratively because images of
destroy the contours
memories of home:
war taint the poet's
30 ALEC, 18
(1999)

Manzanares iquién te vi6!

Pequefio rfo de un cuento,
hoy eon la guerra, mås Chico,
todo enfangadoy sangriento

Y el Madrid que tü servfas,

ya no es el mismo Madrid.
Te sali6 un sol de tragedia;
fuego volc6 sobre ti. (SS 38)

The land and places left behind assume for the exile a specialsißiifi.
cance that compounds loneliness because as one writer has pointed
out, "la tierra se queda sola, y el que se ausenta de ella no dejarå
nunca de sentir un hueco en su existencia" (Ciplijauskaité 199).Across
the thousands of miles that separate her from her homeland, Méndez
can hear the voice of "la parda Castilla" and the "voces azulesn of the
sea. Through the evocative powers of memory, she can again tread the
same streets, smell the same scents, and see the same colors, but she
can never escape the reality of distance and change.
Emilio Mir6 notices a modification in the timbre in Méndez' voice
as early as 1932 in Vida a Vida, where, he says: "Su canci6n risuefiay
marinera, jovial y deportiva, se ha interiorizado, se ha tefiido de sole.
dad y desolaci6n" (VV 21). In her following book, Niho y sombra, the
devoted to her over the death of her newborn son, a
definite elegiac tone surfaces, but it is not until Lluvias enlazadas,
written during the war years, that we begin to see the full scope ofher
pessimistic vision.
Combining poems from her two previous collections and the verses
she wrote between 1937 and 1939, this collection stands as a conglom•
erate testimony of loss, pain, and despair. The war only added another
motive for pain to the experience of loss and abandonment she had
already known when her son died. The poems in this collection are
charged with a sense of turmoil and tension. Looking at the poem en•
titled "Vine," at first we find a suggestion of activity and anticipation,
but later we see that change is the prelude to disorientation and si-
lence:

Vine con el deseo de querer a lag gentes

y me han ido secando mi rafz
Entre turbias lagunas bogar veogenerosa.
Deja estelas de fango, al pasar, la Vida
cada cosa ..
 CATHERINE G. BELLVER
91
No despierto a una hora que no
en un sordo silencio, una queja traiga consigo,
enganchada . . (LL 56)
The burdensome disorientation revealed in
this poem of 1937 grows as
the tragedy of war not only uproots the poet's
life but also dismantles
the very meaning of existence. In May of 1939,
she confesses her an-
guished bewilderment:
De distintospuntos que yo no
conozco,
oigo que me llaman voces que no
entiendo;
y me desespera el no entender nada
y me desanima verlo todo incierto.
A veces pregunto: ipor qué habré venido
a este laberinto de las soledades ... (LL 62)

Confusion, uncertainty, and alienation converge to make the poet ques-

tion the validity of a life severed by exile.
Little recourse is available to the exile at first except to lament—to
complain and cry, but as Méndez readily recognizes, her complaints fall
on deaf ears ("en un sordo silencio").Unconsoled pain inevitably com-
pounds the loneliness that separation from his/her homeland provokes
in the exile. This loneliness is the most fundamental feature of poetry
of exile (Ciplijauskaité 187-225);what varies are the specific responses,
which range from hostile estrangement or profounddespair to doleful
melancholy or subdued sorrow. For Méndez, lonelinessis real,expan-
sive, and palpable:

La gran soledad del mundo,

como ala me domina,
Ilevo sobre mf, y me arrastra
de una espina en otra espina.
Y el vuelo es tan grande a veces
que parece que se sale
del mundo y va a un universo
(SS 17)
donde no hay luz y no hay aire.

between 1933 and 1943, Méndez sees

Throughout the poetry she wrote even
substance, sometimes having
lonelinessas a weighty material
Whether through separation by death, by abandon-
color and texture. shows, harsh,
is,as the above fragment
ment, or by exile,loneliness
and omnipresent. Yet Méndez has a remarkable ability to
sinister, light.She can address
sadness as "mi
emerge from darkness into the
32 ALEC,
(1990)
the ominous loneliness hovering
hermana" or befriend While the underlying overh
mejor compafiera."
call it "la division, distance, and
structureofer Qhd
manifests patterns of conflict, exiles
balance the opposing poles in
struggle to find ways to counteracts their live8
Méndez the alienation
so many exiles, by converting
implicitin
tion through self-duplication, interior monologue
discourse that creates an
soothing double-voiced illusion ofunion

She reaches this eventual point of serenity only after fallinginto

youthful exuberance prevalent in
the depths of despair. The her early
poetry gave way to notes of pain; hope yielded to dejection;andlight
faded into dimness. The very titles of the collections
she wroteinthe
decade considered here—Niho y sombra, Lluvias enlazadas, andSo
bras y sueios—reveal the prominence of shadows and gloomin
period. Czeslaw Milosz, himself an exile, says despair is inseparable
from the first stage of exile (282). Describing the plight of thosewho
fled Spain at the end of the war, another writer also emphasizes
the
exiles: "An immense swamp seems to cover the moun.
despair among
tain, a morass of despair, of distress, of exhaustion" (Thomas203).
Méndez had left Spain before the Spring of 1939, but her despairwas
no less severe than that of those who left at the end of the war.The
numbing cloud of indifference distinguishable in assertionssuchas
"Nada me importa" sets the stage for the harsher moodof despair.
on two occasions, Méndez defines lifeas pain("es
Glossing G6ngora
ciervo herido sin remedio/ que las flechas le dan veneno y alas*[LL
("Que todo es viento y pasa en esta
58]) and existence as absurdity
Vida" [LL 60]).
Despair manifests itself in Méndez in different forms of negation—
In "Ausencia," one of her few
in those of absence and emptiness.
poems written specifically on exile, Méndez travels back to the past
along the tracks of memory in an effort to recapture absentimages,
but distance prevents her from transcending absence. The inaccessibil.
lifenot only
ity of the past destroys the normal sense of continuance of
question
severing the past from the exile's present but also calling into
Méndez sees human existenceas
the substantiality of that present.
nothing but an indefinable shadow:

Se mueve el mundo silenciosamente,

en él no somos sino una sombra;
es nuestro clima: soledad y descanso;
es el misterio el que nos da la forma. (SS 24)
 CATHERINE G. BELLVER 33

After losing her child, her country, and then her husband, her very
existence verges on nothingness. The poet sees herself as a transitory
soul in an absurdly meaninglessworld that leaves her no other re-
course than to seek total oblivion.In poems of Sombras y suenos she
implores "Dejadme que gota a gota beba en fuentes del olvido"(60),
and then declares, "Para sobrevivirme en 10posible,/ camino voy de un
mar, que es el olvido" (64). The negative theme is reinforcedby lin-
guistic negation in the frequent use of words such as sin, ni, no and
nadie and images connoting coldness or nothingness (desierto,Trio,
escarcha, nieves, eco, sombra, ceniza, niebla).
The exile's existence is ambiguous and unreal because the past is
lost, the present is unacceptable, and the future is irrelevant. As one
critic explains, "la ambigüedadproviene de estar aqui y no estar, de
estar allå y situarse de espaldas a su realidad: de no estar total y ver-
daderamente en ningün lado" (Marra-L6pez63). Or as an exiled Span-
ish poet declares: "Partido en dos mitades de repente / ... corro, ya
simil, paralelamente / con mi estantigua o réplica de enfrente. / De mis
dos medios seres aburrido,/ sufro a pares, por doble ... " (Domenchina
196). The inner trauma of the exile, then, becomesto find a way to
wrestle with this ambiguity and to reconcilethe divisionsbetween the
past, the present, and the future. But the disjunction evident in their
lives often drives exiles to underscore separation by counterpoising the
lost, happy past and the painful present. Méndez,like other exiles,
contrasts the then and the now:

Antes, me asomaba al mar

y el coraz6n en el pecho
se me ponia a cantar

Ahora cuando veo la mar,

escucho a mi coraz6n
y se me pone a Ilorar... (LL 57)
Although, to triumph over loss, exiles must allow the past to recede, a
strong desire existsamong them to reminisce and to remember. The
uniformity of this desire, says Richard Exner, is "appallingand cer-
tainly outweighs any and all details and variations" (286).Like other
exiles, Méndez, at first at least, struggles with nostalgia in its double
function as comforting refuge and source ofpain. On the one hand, she
evokes the afternoon when "en un g•an parque de una ciudad lejana /
para evadirme del rumor Ajeno / conmigo misma paseando estaba" (SS
 34 ALEC,
18
(1990)
12); but on the other, as already noted, she cannot erase
the
Of its many possible definitions, Julia Kri8tevaequat
eg exile
the dissidence that distinguishes "A New Kind of Intellectual. With
exile, she says, by being in the place where she is *
out-of-place,
represents a heterogeneous exception to the constitutionof
geneous group (119). While it may be true that the analytic,
dissidence Kristeva associates with exile is the necessary
the intellectual, the Spanish intellectuals exiled in
eral writers to be sure—reacted to exile, for the most part, erno.
tional, not intellectual beings. They did not sense the privilegedmar
ginality with which Kristeva herself identifies nor the conceptualized
alienation Paul Ilie studies. They denied the heterogeneous contiguity
that fascinates Kristeva, and they had lost the polarizedCO-existence
that interests Ilie. Speaking of the hollow left in the cultural entityof
Spain after the exodus of some of its best writers, Ilie maintainsthat
the gap can be filled by the "resident or inner exile" or compensated
for by the victorious culture through the delusion of self-sufficiency
(4). However, in comparison to the situation of the psychologically or
metaphorically exiled, the dilemma of the literal, physical exileismore
complex. For the man, it means not merely losing a portionofhis
totality, but becoming himself the severed, lost, and absent entity.The
implications ofexile are even more severe for the woman since,forher,
geographical separation compounds the metaphorical exileinherentin
her social position as a marginalized and differentiated being. For any.
one, exodus coupled with expulsion radicalizes estrangement; andthe
impossibility or improbability of return magnifies the relative valueof
the past left behind. Material loss tends to be compensated bypsycho.
logical consolations: memories , affective attachments, religious faith,or
ideological beliefs. The literal (non-contiguous) Spanish exilescould
follow one of three courses: they could accept the new culture in which
they found themselves, thereby sharing in a homogeneity that cancels
exile, seek tenuous links to their past that ratify their continuingexis.
avenues for futurere.
that open possibilities
tence, or discover new
newal.
stud•
The reaction to exile among the male poets of Spain has been
devoted to the question
ied extensivelywith whole books having been
of individual poets having been reviewedin
and the entire production
women
on
relation to this problem. However, littlehas been written
reaction to exile.
poets of the period and much less on their particular
the CivilWar
Regardingmale poets, we are told that shortly beforeloneliness
feelings of and
and especially during the war, they combined
inspired passionate political
fraternity. Their ideological commitment
 CATHERINE G. BELLVER
36
verses and engendered a sense of solidarity that
bestowed n positive
value on war and exile (Cipl(jauskaité188-93).Knowingthat
shared their fate made their own personal destiny others
more bearable, and
contemplating an improved future society kept their
vision fixed on a
common reality. A sense of commonality gave life a purpose
and
counteract despair. If it is true, as Unamuno maintained, that helped
all nar-
rative is autobiographical (and all autobiography is fiction), it is to be
expected that male authors write from the locus of their particular
experience of warfare, political engagement, and male bonding. Not
surprisingly women, like Maria Teresa Le6n, who participated in com-
bat also address the question of unity through a common political
cause. But for women like Méndez, who left Spain at the outset of the
war, battles were an imagined, not an experienced, reality and feelings
ofa collective struggle for a common cause were foreign. Isolated from
the participants in the war, she enjoyed no compensatoryemotional
support from kindred souls.
Deprived of exterior assistance, she turns inward to look for the
resources that will help her endure through adversity. Whether as a
mother when her son died, as a Spaniard when she went into exile, or
as a wife when her husband left her, Méndez reveals in her poetry the
sense of loss, loneliness, and pain that separation comprises in its vari-
ous connotations. And in each case she will transcend these adverse
conditions by withdrawing from the world and seeking within the crev-
ices of her own psyche the source of her renewal. Exiled Spanish male
poets also turn inward but, as Ciplijauskaitéhas shown, they tend to
dwell on memories that impede adaptation, to settle on vague general-
ized dreams, or to cultivate loneliness as a prelude to a mystical experi-
ence (209-15). When Méndez looks inward, she finds herself and be-
gins, as Hélöne Cixous recommends, to write her self. Self-referential-
ity in women has been interpreted by classic psychoanalysis and con-
ventional literary criticism as a limitation or deficiency;but self-refer-
ence can function effectively to exploit inner resources when exterior
support fails or to explore the inner forces that heal psychic fragmen-
tation. Méndez sinks to the depths of despair, but she recovers fairly
rapidly emerging with a new confidence and vitality like some phoenix
arising from the ashes of its own ruin able to proclaim: "iC6mo galopa
la sangre!" (SS 73) and "Y soy llama y soy luz y soy la fuerza" (SS 7).
Dejection and enerv, sorrow and renewal intertwine in Concha
Méndez. The title of her collection Sombras y sueios epitomizes the
equilibrium that prevails throughout her production. The shadows of
despair cast themselves over her verses, but the ability to dream, to
hope, and to struggle never leaves her, as can be clearly seen in the
followingpoem:
 36
ALEc,
(1
un solo instante.
No quiero descansar todas horas.
Quiero vértigo ser a
el largo sueño,
que ya vendrá despuésentre la sombra.
el reposar de piedra
mientras que aliente,
Quiero ser, renacer,
crear y recrear y recrearme,
de mi vida
y dejar una estela
acabarse con mi sangre.
que no pueda (SS 45)

"recrear," and
The desire to "crear," motherhood. "renacer," articulatedin
poem is fulfilled in part by to
Méndez' first experience
estrangement was attributable motherhood, but this gamechar
also alleviate the severity ofthe
istically female experience Will separa.
tion first from her country and then from her husband. AfterMéndez
with her two-year old daughter,
left Spain in 1937, she at firgtturna
suffering, in Lluvias
enlazadas and the
her thoughts to her first
part
ofSombrasy sueños. But once she can declare, "estoy intacta,
/.
/ ninguna de mis fuentes echo
paisaje interior me pertenece, en falta.
y reverdece" (SS 71), she
/ Todo en mí se mantiene re-emerges intothe
outside world and discovers, in a reality larger than her own, an ave.
nue for hope and companionship:

Te tengo frente a mí, camino nuevo;

en ti veo tormentas y bonanzas.
Un páramo es la tierra en donde piso.
Sola no estoy,que un ángel me acompaña.
Apenas tieneel ángel nueve años
y en él he puesto toda mi esperanza. (SS 80)
Her daughter not only points to new possibilitiesfor the future;her
youth also compensates for the author's loss of her past. As Emilio
Miró says, "la niña perdida que fue renace ahora en su propia hija'
(27).The tragic split from the past and the future that commonlytor•
ments the exile is,thus, remedied in the case of Méndez by her con•
sciousness of the presence of her daughter.
Besides this existential dimension, the discovery ofthe regenerative
potential of motherhood has definite psychological implicationsespe•
ciallyif we note that at about the same time her husband lefther,
Méndez' mother, whom she evokes in the last section ofthe book,died
Stripped of her roles as wife and daughter, the poet uncovers in her
role as mother not a reduction but an expansion ofher horizon.Re•