A Simple Question of Symmetry: Psyche as Structure in "Tiempo de Silencio"

Abstract

OF THE FEW WORKS that Luis Martin-Santos has left us, roughly half belong to a genre that might be called philosophical psychiatry.' In these forbiddingly abstruse treatises, the author combines modern psychological theory and German philosophy into a pessimistic and jargon-ridden explanation of the mind of man. One imagines that most readers find these labyrinthine abstractions more confusing than illuminating. Since such rarified intellection appears to shed little light on the more concrete, more topical obscurities of Martin-Santos' fiction, it is not surprising that critics of his splendid novel, Tiempo de silencio,2 have largely chosen to ignore the existential psychoanalysis that obsessed its author. Instead, the novel has almost invariably been discussed as a roman engage. This approach has brought much that is valuable to the surface, for the novel is unquestionably a critique of modern Spain,3 but as a consequence of this sociological bias the philosophical and psychological ideas which underlie the work and give it a more universal significance have been relatively neglected.4