Abstract
Published in the late spring of 1937 as a literary journalism piece and included in Martha Gellhorn’s second volume of short fiction, Heart of Another (1941), “Zoo in Madrid” poses engaging questions about the journalist’s role as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War and her allegedly objective reportage method. In the following article, I propose to decode some of the elusive symbols of the story, built up on Hemingway’s iceberg principle of writing, in connection with its propaganda message. My contention is that the zoo, a clear symbol of the total institution, operates as a microcosmic reflection of the city under siege. However, Gellhorn’s portrayal of the animals’ conditions in the zoo is one which, unlike her contemporaries’ grim reports, enhances images of fertility and procreation immersed in an Edenic enclave that, however, fails to banish death and betrayal. In addition to a detailed revision of some of the pre-war, war and post-war reports of the Madrid zoo, I will endeavor to elucidate the biblical and literary allusions and echoes scattered in the story with a view to understanding the American journalist’s ambivalent view of the Spanish conflict.
Highlights
On November 20 1975, the day Franco died, Martha Gellhorn returned for a brief spell to Spain and witnessed one of the silent demonstrations by more than 3000 people, before the towers of Carabanchel, the jail built by political prisoners immediately after the end of the Spanish Civil War, an enduring symbol of the Caudillo’s overarching power in a country where any form of dissidence was swiftly suppressed
Intended as a war dispatch that was rejected by the editors of Collier’s, “Zoo in Madrid” shows Gellhorn’s reportage method: one defined by the pursuit of an ideal of objectivity which did not preclude the masking of truths and the literary fabrication
The Spanish Civil War is “the Balkans of 1912”, Spain is fighting a battle against a world “whose bible is Mein Kampf”, the journalist observes (Gellhorn 2006: 60)
Summary
The Casa Real de Fieras del Retiro, to use its official name, the second oldest zoo in Europe (after the Vienna Zoo), was established by Carlos III in 1770. 5 Conceived as an animal menagerie enjoyed by the Spanish royal family in their hunting estate, it opened its gates to the public in 1868. I might go as far as to say that the Madrid Zoo is a “total institution” located in a city which has been converted into a huge totalitarian system monitored from within (by those who are the new vigilantes of the regime) and from without (by the Fascists’ aerial bombardment and land artillery) This Chinese-box structure endows Gellhorn’s story with a kaleidoscopic nature which enables us to discover, in addition to the tribulations and agony experienced by ordinary people in the capital in 1937, the American war correspondent’s ideological position in relation to her role as an external observer of the Spanish conflict. The writer insists on embracing life, love and creation over the ubiquitous destructive power of war: So we stood and enjoyed the lake and the air and the new green trees and the guard was very pleased that we had come all the way from North American to appreciate this fine Spanish park [...] A large rhododendron bush blooms in the midst of this and dozens of smooth white pigeons make a steady soft noise which is very far from war. (125)
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