Hiding the fact

By: Mario Vargas Llosa
Translated from the original by Bajram Karabolli

Somewhere Hemingway tells that in his literary beginnings, when he was writing a story, on the spot, he had the idea to leave out the main fact: where his protagonist hanged himself. And he says that, in this way, he discovered a narrative device that he would use so often in his stories and novels in the future. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Hemingway's best stories are full of meaningful silences, full of speed tricks to hide facts by a sly narrator. But he arranges things in such a way that even the silences are talkative and stimulate the reader's imagination so much that he himself fills those gaps in history with accusations and assumptions from his own pocket. Let's call this creative behavior "fact hiding". But, right away, it must be said that, although Hemingway gave us his own varied (often masterful) style, he is still not the inventor, because it is a technique as old as literary prose and that it is present in all the classics.

But the truth is that few modern authors used it with the skill with which the author of the work "The Old Man and the Sea" used it. Do you remember that other wonderful story, almost the best of Hemingway, entitled "The Murderers"? The most important thing in that story is the big question: why do those two fugitives who enter the small restaurant "Henry's" in that unknown locality want to kill the Swede Ole Anderson? And why does this mysterious Ole Anderson, when young Nick Adams warns him that a couple of people were looking for him to kill him, refuse to notify the police and submit to his fate? We'll never know. If we want an answer to these two questions which are crucial to this story, we the readers must find it ourselves based on the spare facts that the omniscient and generalizing narrator gives us: that the Swede Ole Anderson, before he came to that country, seemed to after being a boxer in Chicago, where he had done (some mischief, he says) that sealed his fate.

"Hiding the fact", or confessing with silence, should not be pointless and arbitrary. The silence of the narrator needs to be significant, to exert an unmistakable impact on the part of the story in question, to make that lack felt and to stimulate the reader's curiosity, hope and fantasy.

Hemingway was a great master at using this narrative technique, as seen in The Assassins, an example of narrative economy, where the text is like the tip of the iceberg, the small visible part that, with its chilling glint, it allows the reader to guess the whole complex anecdotal mass; measure that wanted to mislead the reader and on which that tip sleeps. Confessing in silence, through allusions that transform concealment into waiting for something and force the reader to actively participate in processing the event with guesses and assumptions, this is one of the most frequent tricks used by writers, thus enriching the experiences in the narratives of them and giving them persuasive power.

I don't know if you remember the biggest "concealment of fact" in Hemingway's best novel, in my opinion, "The sun also rises". Yes. That's who it is: the impotence of Jack Barnes, the novel's narrator. It is never clearly stated; it comes and appears – I would almost dare to say that the reader, moved by what he reads, will of himself put it on the character – through a telling silence, that strange physical distance, that sense of bodily relationship that unites him with Breta beautiful, woman whom he honestly loves and who, without a doubt, she too would have loved, if there had not been some obstacle or barrier between them, about which we have no precise data. Jack Barnes's physical disability is made quite clear by silence, a major shortcoming that becomes more and more apparent. The reader is surprised by the unusual and contradictory behavior of Jack Barnes towards Breta, and he will explain this in only one way: by discovering (or fabricating?) his own impotence.

Although silently, or perhaps precisely from the way it was given, this "concealment of the fact" sheds a very special light on the history of the novel "The sun also rises".

Robbe-Grillet's "Jealousy" ("La Jalousie", in French) is another novel where a fundamental component of the story - no less than the central character - is exiled from the narrative, but this absence is reflected in it in such a way that makes you feel at every moment. Almost, as in all of Robbe-Grillet's novels, in "La Jalousie" there is not exactly a story, at least, not as traditionally understood - an argument with a beginning, a continuation and an end - but, rather, signs or symptoms of a history, which we do not know and which we are forced to reconstruct, just as archaeologists reconstruct Babylonian palaces starting from a handful of stones buried over the centuries; or zoologists recreate prehistoric dinosaurs and pterodactyls based on a clavicle or a metacarpal. Thus, we can say that Robbe-Grillet's novels are all conceived starting from "concealment of facts".

So, in "La Jalousie" this method of proceeding is very functional, because, in order to make sense of everything there, it is necessary for that absence, that removed being, to become present, to take shape in the reader's consciousness. But who is that invisible being? A jealous man, as the book's title suggests with its double meaning (jealousy means a shutter, a barred window, but also jealousy), someone who, possessed by the demon of mistrust, carefully eavesdrops on all his own wife's movements, without being dictated by her. This is not clear to the reader; either he reaches the logical conclusion or he invents it, convinced by the very nature of the description: from an anxious gaze to minutely and foolishly control the movements, gestures and smallest undertakings of his wife. Who is this meticulous observer? Why do they take away the life of that woman, not removing her eyes? The "hidden facts" do not provide any answers within the novel discourse and the reader himself, based on the few clues that the novel offers, must illuminate and answer them. Those "concealment of facts" that are complete, that are permanent avoidance in the novel, we can call them elliptical, to distinguish them from the temporary ones that are made to the reader, from the novelistic chronological shifts that are made to create the state of expected, to keep the reader hanging, as happens in detective novels, where the killer is only revealed at the end. Instantaneous, displaced "fact concealments" we can call "hyperbaton fact concealments". Hyperbaton (displacement) is a poetic figure which, as you will recall, consists in the displacement of a word in the verse, for reasons of euphony or rhyme ("It was of the year the blooming season..." instead of the regular order: "It was blooming season of the year…”).

Perhaps the most prominent "concealment of fact" in a novel is that found in Faulkner's terrifying "Sanctuary," where the crater of the story—the corncob debauchery of the innocent teenager Temple Drake, by Popeye, a powerful gangster and psychopath – is shifted and scattered in bits and pieces of data, until the reader, retroactively and bit by bit, becomes aware of the terrible event. From this silence, where disgust and hatred are felt, the atmosphere that permeates the "Shrine" is created: an atmosphere of savagery, sexual persecution, fear, prejudice and primitivism that Jefferson, Memphis and other scriptwriters of this story give a symbolic character to the world of of evil, for the destruction and fall of man, in the biblical sense of the term. Before the horrors of this novel – Temple's rape is one of them; besides, there is a hanging, a lynching by fire, several murders, and a variety of moral indignities—more than the feeling of a violation of human rights, we are overcome by the faintness we would suffer before a victory of the infernal forces. , before a defeat of good by the spirit of evil, who managed to become the lord of this earth. The entire "Phaltorja" has been equipped with "hiding facts". Apart from the rape of the Temple Drakes, such important facts as the murder of Tom and Red or the impotence of Popeyes are, at first, silent omissions that the reader will discover only retroactively. Thus, the reader, thanks to those "hidden hyperbaton facts" will understand the incident well and establish the correct chronology of events. Not only there, but in all his stories, Faulkner has been a master of using the "concealment of the fact".

Now, to finish with the last example of "concealing the fact", I would like to go back five hundred years to one of the best novels of medieval chivalry, "Tirant lo Blanc" by Joannot Martorelli, one of the masterpiece novels for me. There the "concealment of fact" - in both its modes: as hyperbaton or as elliptical - is used with the dexterity of the best modern novelists. Let's see how the narrative material of one of the active craters of the novel is prepared: the secret marriages of the two couples, Tyrant with Karmesina and Diaphebus with Stefanina (episode that begins in the middle of chapter CLXII and ends in the middle of chapter CLXIII). The content of the episode is this: Karmesina and Stefania bring Tirantus and Diaphebus into a room of the palace. There, not knowing that Plaerdemavida is spying on them through a keyhole, the two couples spend the night immersed in love games; soft between Tyrant and Karmesina, extreme between Diaphebus and Stefania. The lovers part at dawn and, a few hours later, Plaerdemavida tells Stefania and Karmesina that she has been an eyewitness of secret marriages. In the novel, this sequence does not appear in the "real" chronological order, but in an interrupted way, through "temporary change" and a hyperbaton "concealment of fact", thanks to which the episode becomes a great wealth of experiences. The story is about prior agreement, Karmesina and Stefania's decision to bring Tirantus and Diaphebus into the room, and it is understood that Karmesina, knowing that there would be a "secret wedding party", mischievously pretends to have fallen asleep. The generalizing and omniscient narrator, within the "real" flow of the chronology, continues to show Tirant's great surprise when he sees the beautiful princess, how he falls on his knees and kisses her hands. Here occurs the first "temporary change" or disruption of the chronology: "And they exchanged many words of love. When they decided it was time to leave, they separated from each other and returned to their rooms." The story makes a leap into the past, leaving in that separation, in that abyss of silence, a wise question: "Be it love, be it pain, who could sleep that night?" Then, the narrative takes the reader to the next day.

Plaerdemavida gets up, enters Princess Karmesina's room and finds Stefanina "all full of calmness". What had happened? Why that lustful debauchery of Stefania? Indeed, the jokes, questions, taunts and insults of the pleasant Plaerdemavida will orient the reader and ignite his curiosity and insight. And, finally, after this long and cunning introduction, the beautiful Plaerdemavida tells that last night she had a dream, in which she saw Stefania ushering Tirantus and Diaphebus into the room. Here comes the second "time change" or chronological leap in the episode. The episode returns to the previous night and, through Plaerdemavida's supposed dream, the reader discovers what had happened during the undeclared marriages. The hidden fact comes to light, restoring the wholeness of the episode.

The whole episode? Not all of them. Because, apart from that "temporary change" that you saw, a "rare change" has also happened, a special change of perspective, because the one who tells what happens in secret marriages, is no longer the generalizing and exceptional narrator of from the beginning, but Plaerdemavida, a character-narrator, who does not intend to give an objective testimony, but with a charge of subjectivity (the cheerful, loose comments not only make the episode subjective, but, above all, relieve it of the savagery with which it could have been shown, otherwise, the virginity of Stefania by Diaphebus). This double change - temporary and particular - thus introduces a "Chinese box" into the episode of secret marriages, that is, an independent narrative (that of Plaerdemavida) included within the general narrative of the learned-narrator. (In parentheses, I will say that also in "Tirant lo Blanc" the method of "Chinese boxes" or "Russian dolls" is used many times. Tirant's deeds during a year and a day, as long as the feasts in the yard last of England, is not shown to the reader by the learned-narrator, except through the report made by Diafebus to the Count de Varonic; the adventure of the merchant Gobedi is the source of a story that Tirant tells the Widow Reposada.) So, in this way, with the example of an episode of this classic book, we proved that the wealth of procedures that often seem like modern inventions of contemporary writers, in they really belong to the great mountain of experience of literary art, so they have been skillfully used since the classical writers. What modern writers have done, in most cases, is to refine and refine them, experimenting with new tacit possibilities in some narrative systems, which often have their origins in older performances of written fiction.

Perhaps it would be worth while, before ending this essay, to make a general judgment, valid for all novels, regarding an inherent characteristic of the written part from which it originates. the technique of "hiding the fact". The written part of the entire novel is only a section or fragment of the story that tells: this, precisely developed, with the accumulation of all components without exception - thoughts, gestures, objects, cultural coordinates, historical, psychological, ideological and other materials, which the whole story presupposes and contains—involves material far more abundant than that expressed in the text, and which no novelist, not even the most lavish, the most profound, and the least economical in narrative economy, would be able to extended throughout its text.

To underline this inevitably partial feature of all narrative discourse, the novelist Claude Simon - who in this way wanted to mock the claims of "realist" literature to reproduce reality - started from an example: the description of a pack of cigarettes "Gypsies ". What elements should that description have to be "realistic"?, he asked. Without a doubt: the size, the color, the content, the letters, the materials that the packaging is made of. Yes, would that be enough? In a summary sense, no way. Even if we didn't leave any important data unsaid, the description would be incomplete. Even if the description included detailed information on the industrial processes behind the packaging, and why not, the distribution and trading systems that take that commodity from producer to consumer, it would still be lacking. . Would this be the end of the comprehensive description of the "Gypsies" package? Of course not. The consumption of cigarettes is not an isolated fact, the result of the evolution of habits and the spread of fashion. It is completely connected with the social history, mythologies, policies, ways of life of the society; and, on the other hand, it is a matter of a practice - habit or vice - on which publicity and economic life exert a decisive influence, and which has determining effects on the health of the consumer.

It is never difficult to conclude, with that road of demonstration carried to absurd extremes, that the description of any object, even the most insignificant, stretched out to say everything, simply conveys that utopian claim: the description of the universe.

A similar thing can undoubtedly be said about fictions. That if a novelist, when telling a story, does not adhere to certain limits (that is, if he does not undertake to hide certain facts), the story he would tell us would have neither beginning nor end, in a way to be a mixture of all kinds of stories, a fantasized totality, an imaginary and fruitless universe, in which all fictions coexist, entwined with thorns.

Then, if we accept this hypothesis, that a novel or, rather, a written fiction is only a segment of a whole story, from which the novelist is obliged to eliminate a large number of facts that are superfluous to him, to unnecessary, he himself must make them clear to us, igniting our imagination for them. There are various ways to distinguish those facts left out as clear or unnecessary, from what we called "hidden facts", which were discussed in this article. So my "hidden facts" are neither clear nor pointless. On the contrary, they have a full function, they have a great role in the weaving of the story and, precisely for this reason, their removal or displacement makes effects on the story that is told by giving shine to the details of the case or point of view.

Finally, I would like to repeat to you a comparison that I once made while commenting on Faulkner's "Shrine". Let's say that the whole story of a novel (the one written with facts both said and unsaid) is a cube. Let's also say that, in a particular novel, we purged unnecessary and implied facts from it in order to achieve a certain effect. In this case, the cube, that is, the whole story of the novel, has taken a certain form: it is an object, a sculpture, where the originality of the novelist is reflected. The shape of this sculpture is sculpted with the help of various instruments. But there is no doubt that one of the most valuable tools used to eliminate those ingredients that we have said, until the convincing and beautiful figure that we want is drawn, is that of "concealing the fact" (if you don't have a better name well to put to this procedure). /Taken from the book "The Challenge of Creation: Essays, Studies, Memoirs and Biography"/