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Abstract
The novelist Miguel Delibes (1920–2010) was both a passionate small-game hunter, who wrote several books on the subject during his lifetime, and a staunch ecologist. This article gives an analysis which reconciles hunting and biocentrism in his work and further probes the relation between the author's hunting books and his fiction. Beginning with a review of the history and culture of hunting in Spain, it emerges that Delibes applies an extremely strict definition to real hunting (la caza-caza), which he regards as a form of low-impact subsistence or self-provisioning and therefore ethically superior to stock farming. Additionally, the hunter identifies with animality and thereby overcomes the modern sense of apartness from nature. The article notes the stylistic affinities between Delibes’ hunting books and his novels, beginning with Diario de un cazador (1955)—particularly their non-standard literary representations of nature—and suggests that the author renovated his fiction from the 1950s onwards by redeploying techniques he had first developed in the hunting books. Unconventional literary techniques figure prominently in this crossover.
Notes
* ‘El cazador-cazador’ is a formula of words often used by Delibes when he discusses hunting. See, for instance, Miguel Delibes, El libro de la caza menor [1964], in Ramón García Domínguez's excellent edition of the complete works: Obras completas, prologue by Germán Delibes de Castro, 7 vols (Barcelona: Destino, 2007–2010), V (2009), 25–206 (p. 36); and César Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes (Barcelona: Destino, 1993), 152. His most succinct (perhaps because slightly nettled) declarations of hunting principles are: ‘Cuestiones de bulto’, from De pegar la hebra [1990], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1089–91; ‘El verdadero cazador’, from El último coto [1992], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 881–1053 (pp. 962–64). See also Carlos Blanco Álvaro, Entrevistas (Valladolid: Ámbito, 2003), 31–33.
1 See the testimony of his son Germán in his ‘Prólogo’ to the Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, ix–xxi (p. x). In Mi vida al aire libre: memorias deportivas de un hombre sedentario (Barcelona: Destino, 1992 [1st ed. 1989]), Miguel Delibes says that he began to hunt more regularly when in 1954 he acquired a Volkswagen (212).
2 The accident is recounted in the entry for 3 January, Miguel Delibes, Un año de mi vida (Barcelona: Destino, 1972); and again in Delibes, ‘Un cazador que escribe’, in Mi vida al aire libre, 201–22 (pp. 218–19).
3 Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 166. When Delibes made his inaugural address to the Real Academia Española in 1975, he drew upon views expressed in the Club of Rome's The Limits of Growth and Edward Goldsmith's Blueprint for Survival. See Miguel Delibes, El camino [1950], ed., with intro., by Jeremy Squires (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2010), 1–29. See also Miguel Delibes and Miguel Delibes de Castro, La tierra herida: ¿Qué mundo heredarán nuestros hijos? (Barcelona: Destino, 2005).
4 Miguel Delibes, ‘La caza: mi punto de vista’ [1996], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1108–10 (p. 1109). In El libro de la caza menor, Delibes describes how he ended up having to bury a fox he had killed realizing, with some disgruntlement, that its carcass served no useful purpose (35–36).
5 Delibes usually includes wild boar (jabalí) among the big game he avoided hunting. However, he was not always averse to taking a potshot at this less than doe-eyed creature. See, for instance, Javier Goñi, Cinco horas con Miguel Delibes (Madrid: Anjana, 1985), 54.
6 Miguel Delibes, entry for 27 September, in Un año de mi vida.
7 See Miguel Delibes, ‘Cuestión de bulto’ [1990], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1089–91 (p. 1091). See also, Delibes, La caza de la perdiz roja [1963]: ‘[el cazador] menos amigo de las escenas cruentas se siente muy capaz, en plena, ardorosa faena, de cortar el último resuello del animal herido con las propias manos. Hora después, enrolado nuevamente en la vida doméstica, es muy posible que el Cazador vacile en el momento de propinar un palmetazo a una mosca’ (Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1–23 [p. 9]).
8 Miguel Delibes, Las guerras de nuestros antepasados [1975], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, prologue by Víctor García de la Concha, III (2008), 481–730 (pp. 530; 507).
9 Miguel Delibes, Las ratas (Barcelona: Destino, 2000 [1st ed. 1962]): ‘le repugnaba la muerte en todas sus formas’ (34).
10 Miguel Delibes, ‘El matador de conejos número uno’, in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1083–84 (p. 1084). See also Miguel Delibes, ‘La caza de perdiz en ojeo’, in El libro de la caza menor (103–10): ‘Estos pirotécnicos, aficionados a la cohetería, adolecen del mal de la época: descubierto un placer, quieren sorberle de una vez’ (108).
11 Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), defines biocentrism as ‘the view that all organisms, including humans, are part of a larger biotic web or network or community whose interests must constrain or direct or govern the human interest’ (134).
12 Fernando Parra, ‘Delibes al aire libre: un ecologista de primera hora’, in Miguel Delibes: Premio Letras Españolas, 1991, ed. Dirección General del Libro y Bibliotecas (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1994), 74–93, rightly notes one development, however: Delibes moved away from regarding alimañas as vermin fit only for extermination (92).
13 Miguel Delibes, USA y yo (Barcelona: Destino, 1966).
14 Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 55.
15 Miguel Delibes, Diario de un cazador (Barcelona: Destino, 2003 [1st ed. 1955]. All subsequent textual references are to this edition. The present article is also indebted to the work of Federico Bermúdez Cañete, ‘Miguel Delibes y la ecología’, Camp de l'Arpa, 72 (1980), 35–41, and Josefina González, ‘Miguel Delibes y la autobiografía ecológica de “Un cazador que escribe”: Mi vida al aire libre’, Monographic Review/Revista Monográfica, 9 (1993), 83–92. Both critics absolve Delibes of inconsistency. Bermúdez Cañete writes that ‘[l]a caza, siempre que mantenga el equilibrio de la población animal, es un elemento más de regulación y estímulo de la vida salvaje, que se desarrolla en tensión frente a los deprededores y al hombre’ (37). González argues that Delibes assumes the latter-day mantle of hunter-king, both preying upon and protecting the environment (88).
16 Delibes, El último coto, 1016.
17 In El libro de la caza menor, Delibes is conscious that historically hunting was pursued by an elite capable of brutally repressing poachers (38).
18 John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), 237–38.
19 Miguel Delibes, Diario de un jubilado (Barcelona: Destino, 1995). Lorenzo scorns hunting as a ‘[Deporte] del tercer mundo’ (13). This point is made by Janet Pérez, ‘Miguel Delibes presenta la tercera salida de don Lorenzo, cazador andante’, Confluencia, 13 (1997), 52–62.
20 For example, Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 151. The phrase recurs in Delibes’ hunting books.
21 Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 152.
22 Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 153.
23 God tells Man to ‘have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’ (Genesis, 1:28).
24 Miguel Delibes, Con la escopeta al hombro [1970], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 207–326 (p. 324).
25 J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (London: Vintage, 2004 [1st ed. 1999]).
26 Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 150; Delibes, Con la escopeta al hombro, 326; Miguel Delibes, ‘La caza: mi punto de vista’, 1109.
27 Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 287.
28 Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago: Chicago U. P., 1992), 32.
29 Wendell Berry, ‘The Pleasures of Eating’, in What Are People For?: Essays by Wendell Berry (New York: North Point, 1990), 145–52 (p. 151).
30 Delibes, Las ratas, 26.
31 Goñi, Cinco horas con Miguel Delibes, 46.
32 Delibes, Con la escopeta al hombro, 317.
33 In Blanco Álvaro, Entrevistas, 31.
34 See especially: Delibes, La caza de la perdiz roja; the prologue to El libro de la caza menor; ‘Ortega y la caza’ [1993], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1114–15; ‘La profecía de Ortega’ [1995], 1070–72.
35 José Ortega y Gasset, A ‘Veinte años de caza mayor’, del conde de Yebes [1942], in Obras completas, 5th ed., 11 vols (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1961), VI, 419–91 (p. 480).
36 Ortega y Gasset, A ‘Veinte años de caza mayor’, del conde de Yebes, 487.
37 Delibes, Las ratas, 32–33.
38 Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 36.
39 Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 36.
40 Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 31.
41 Terry Gifford, Pastoral (London/New York: Routledge, 1999), 1–2.
42 Delibes, ‘Ortega y la caza’, 1115.
43 Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (London: Bloomsbury, 2003 [1st ed. 1989]), 61.
44 Delibes, El último coto, 885.
45 Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 78.
46 Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 85.
47 See, for example, Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 125–27.
48 On 22 March, Un año de mi vida, Delibes lists his reactions to the 1971 Ley de Caza. He welcomed its tightening of penalties and regulations, but objected to its allowance of beating, lures and modern technologies, as well as its failure to give sufficient protection to game on private estates.
49 Delibes, ‘La caza en España’, in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 327–56 (p. 353).
50 Miguel Delibes affirmed: ‘[…] he de reconocer que [Lorenzo] ha sido el personaje que he perfilado más parecido a mí, sobre todo en ese amor por la caza y la naturaleza. Quizá menos en su achulamiento y su lenguaje desinhibido, pero incluso en esto tal vez había un deseo reprimido que echaba fuera a través de un personaje’ (Ramón García Domínguez, El quiosco de los helados: Miguel Delibes de cerca [Barcelona: Destino, 2005], 575).
51 An exception to this general rule is Delibes’ first hunting book, La caza de la perdiz roja. Here he lionizes a poacher, albeit one who was conservation-minded.
52 Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth (London: Picador, 2001), 18.
53 Nevertheless, García Domínguez regards Delibes as ‘consumado paisajista’ (El quiosco de los helados, 454).
54 Delibes, Con la escopeta al hombro, 209.
55 Germán Delibes, ‘Prólogo’, in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, xxx.
56 ‘Era una buena pluma. / ¡Bah!’ (Delibes, La caza de la perdiz roja, 83).
57 Delibes, El libro de la caza menor, 38.
58 Miguel Delibes, ‘La escopeta extraviada’, Aventuras, venturas y desventuras de un cazador a rabo [1977], in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 411–579 (pp. 497–500).
59 Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, 116.
60 See Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 95. As a young man, Delibes had read a lot of adventure stories by Lajos Zilahy, Maxence Van der Meersch, Zane Grey, Emilio Salgari and James Oliver Curwood, and little besides. The last three were his favourite boyhood authors (see Footnotenote 68).
61 Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (London: Arrow, 2004 [1st ed. 1952]), 57.
62 Manuel García-Viñó, ‘Miguel Delibes: entre la primera y la segunda naturaleza’, Punta Europa, 9 (1964), 26–41 (p. 37).
63 Miguel Delibes, Cinco horas con Mario (Barcelona: Destino, 1966).
64 Alonso de los Ríos, Conversaciones con Miguel Delibes, 155.
65 In ‘Zoophilia and Zoophobia in Miguel Delibes's Las ratas’, MLR, 103:4 (2008), 1021–35, I try to show that Naturalism is attendant upon the encroachment of modernity and that the narrator's painterly eye for beauty tends not to be lyricism for its own sake, but a meticulously elegant expression of local knowledge.
66 Edgar Pauk, Miguel Delibes: desarrollo de un escritor (1947–1974) (Madrid: Gredos, 1975), 59.
67 Randolph D. Pope, ‘Miguel Delibes y el genio de una realidad imaginada’, Siglo XXI. Literatura y Cultura Españolas, 1 (2003), 203–14.
68 ‘Grey y Curwood me cautivaban’. Jules Verne, however, he found wearying. See Miguel Delibes, prologue, Obra completa, 5 vols (Barcelona: Destino, 1966), Vol. II; reprinted in Obras completas, ed. García Domínguez, V, 1138–40 (p. 1139). See also, Delibes, Con la escopeta al hombro: ‘A mí siempre me han fascinado los tramperos—reminiscencias, quizá, de mis lecturas de Zane Grey y Oliver Curwood’ (293).
69 James Kates, ‘James Oliver Curwood: Antimodernist in the Conservation Crusade’, Michigan Historical Review, 24:1 (1998), 73–102 (p. 91).
70 See Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994 [1st ed. 1992]), 231–42.
71 Delibes, El último coto, 962.
72 Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, 97.
73 Henry D. Thoreau, Walden [1854], ed. J. Lyndon Shanley, intro. by John Updike (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 2004), 210.
74 Thoreau, Walden, ed. Shanley, 211.
75 Thoreau, Walden, ed. Shanley, 212.
76 Delibes, Las guerras de nuestros antepasados, 581.