Catalonia has always preferred martyrs to heroes. Our tribe, as you know, loves to revel in defeat, to speculate about what might have been – or could have been implemented, as the pretentious would say – but which, in the last minute of the game, went to hell. In the absence of heroes and an ethics of affirmative, heteropatriarchal, and testosterone-driven masculinity (which is characteristic of other places and, specifically, of the castellanor, of people named Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, to be clear), the national ethic approaches the self-sacrificing work of the farmer, the poc a poc i bona lletra (slowly but surely) and the morality of those who don't want more problems than necessary and who prefer to be seen as donkeys for the sake of discretion. The genius Santiago Rusiñol knew this when he wrote L'Hèroe, a 1903 drama that is a theatrical masterpiece and which you can now see at the Tenecé directed by Lurdes Barba, if the Wuhan bug allows it, until next January 10.
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L'Hèroe is a beautiful text about a family of weavers where the sacred continuity of work and honesty is violated when the heir goes off to the Failipines to war. From the saber rattling, he returns a hero, a concept that neither his progeny nor the authorities can define precisely but which has filled the streets of his town with Spanish flags. Instrumentalized by politics, the lad reappears as a Don Juan (like the hero, the seducer is a figure not very nostrada, because succeeding with women, and in life in general, has always made us ashamed) and exercises his new condition by stealing his little brother's respective and Juan's, a crippled soldier who has returned to the same place without any honor, with just enough spirit to wait for death to help him end the anguish of trauma. When he has his own statue and honors galore, the hero squanders posterity by loafing, boozing, and womanizing.
Rusiñol's work bursts onto the scene more opportunely than ever, because as colleague Raül Garrigasait well reminds us in his beautiful book about the author (El fugitiu que no se'n va, Edicions de 1984), L'Hèroe is a piece about how the modern state permeates the lives of citizens to the limits of appalling intrusiveness, which throws us directly into our current time in which ordinary mortals have become accustomed to the administration, apart from stealing our money, organizing our revelry, dictating where we can go and even with whom to fuck. Raül is right in this appreciation that colors Lurdes Barba's histrionic approach to the most laughable scenes of the plot in which Mr. Tomàs, the justice of the peace, sings the new condition of the young man's cheap Übermensch and the Sergeant shines in traditional prose affirming that "He is of that wood, of that wood that would rather die than succumb!"
While attending the premiere, I couldn't stop thinking about the national epidemiologists, the new reference of the tribe.Rusiñol is skilled in telling us that erecting a hero requires a tamed people, a good propaganda apparatus, and the right mythification (while attending the premiere, I couldn't stop thinking about the national epidemiologists, the new reference of the tribe) so that the atrocities of war go from cruel to necessary for the survival of the social contract. When he mocks heroes, Rusiñol not only despises idolatry, but also directly attacks a current of Catalan intellectual opinion (first woven by Maragall and later finished by Ors) that seeks to found national pride, there Carlyle, in exemplary and salvific figuresthat, translated into the world of humanism, would come to be that much-worn and pompous thing ofMaître à penser. Rusiñol denies it, stating that the hero is nothing more than a victim, that beneath war medals only the worst of man is hidden, and that the only intellectual thing is to laugh at the sacred.
The counterpoint to the warrior is Joan, the soldier repatriated due to fever, who in my opinion is one of the most fascinating characters in our theater. When his exploits are recalled, and while the hero recites the litany of virile survival ethics, Rusiñol disguises the cripple as Walter Benjamin to remind him that only the dead can speak of battle and moral sacrifices: "Els hèroes són els que moren pels seus, pels altres, per la llibertat dels altres, ho entens? I no els borratxos de sang! Els hèroes són els que es defensen. Però tu? Tu eres una bèstia, que de tant que n'eres has causat l'admiració de totes les bèsties covardes." Run to the Tenecé, I insist, because Santiago's pre-Fabrian verbal pyrotechnics are tremendous, and not only for how he mocks heroes, but also for how he dynamites the Catalan morality of anar tirant and roc a la faixa that tries to oppose him in the name of seny. Rusiñol shoots and leaves no one without a bullet.
Correcting the cruel and malignant hero is easy, but in Catalonia the worker still has too good a reputation to touch himI would say that the important thing about The Hero it is thatto Rusiñol, the law of the strongest and the morality of divine artists seem as absurd as the working class's obsession with dignifying itself by embracing the loom as another family member.This is how the protagonist's father tells it:"Look at him work! Cric, crec! Don't you hear him sing? Well, he always sings, and singing he gives us a living, and if you leave him I will die with him! We will die like old wood!). It is not strange that, before Rusiñol's works, Catalan audiences still do not know whether to laugh or cry at the clinical accuracy of the portrait of our spirit ofshopkeeperexpired. Amending the cruel and evil hero is easy, but in Catalonia, the worker still has too good a reputation to touch him. The author does it with brutal malice and reminds us that the idolatry of false leaders is also attributable to the ego-inflating people.I suppose there's no need to specify analogies with the Procés, because they are too obvious.
Rusiñol has no mercy on the hero who ends up mad and drunk demanding blood (in what is perhaps one of the most brutal scenes in our literature, written with an enviable science, as if Rusiñol had studied the 20th century and known firsthand the post-traumatic stress faced by soldiers of the two world wars), but neither does he have mercy on the citizens who impassively witness the theft of their offspring and who do not renounce their condition as workers because the morality of the slave allows them to pass themselves off as good people. Despite the excellent work in the dramaturgy by Albert Arribas, one of the great values of our theater, I would say that this dialectic is a bit lame in the current direction of the National's production, where the hero's decadence is clear but where the individual dignity of the family still retains too much empathy for proletarian pride, which makes the text's punch lose strength.
I would give the same dose of comedy that the troop of botiflerots and soldiers (commanded by a brilliantly experienced Toni Sevilla) has to the actors of the family sector, adapting the tragedy a little more to farce to balance the sides: I'm sure great actors like Barceló and Renom can give even more depth to their characters (the one who tries hardest is Mima Riera, who plots a transformation from an ingenious pepa to a liberated woman with great skill). As for the prota, I understand that the laughable approach of the dramaturgy calls for an actor like Javier Beltrán, with an adequate primary spirit and with very deficient Catalan neutral vowels (the director works hard on the credibility of the role, but if I can forgive the vowels, I would like to notice the rest of the phonemes of my language intact...). But the lack of a more ductile leader can be forgiven, because the glory goes to Albert Prat, who is an immense actor.
Rusiñol's work is an uncomfortable mirror. That is why it is necessary to see it, as many times as necessary, even with closed eyesBut all this is secondary and the result of my opinion on the production, which has no importance whatsoever, because here what is truly transcendent is that we travel to the Sala Gran of the Tenecé to see how Albertí, and take advantage because the party will last us very little, continues to give us works from tradition in versions that revitalize the true essence of the texts, which is what this architectural disaster called Teatre Nacional should have done since its opening. That would be something from a normal country, and let's hope that the future director of the Nacional does not force us to miss a program in the Sala Gran that should be the norm, not the exception. Rusiñol's work is an uncomfortable mirror. That is why it is necessary to see it, as many times as necessary, even with closed eyes.This is not a country for heroes, nor for artists or workers. Here, if one wants to survive, one can only do so by being ironic, making fun of everything, and leaving nothing standing
How I thank you for reminding me, dear and wonderful Santiago, adored Rusiñol of my heart!
PS.- To review the text, buy Rusiñol's Teatre Polèmic published in 2018 by Els Llibres de l'Avenç.