Madrid, Histological City: The Scientific, Artistic, and Urbanized Vision of Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Abstract

This essay seeks to synthesize the scientific production and artistic vision of Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the context of nineteenth-century urbanization. In particular, it underscores the technological advance of microscopic perception and Madrid's urban environment, which are manifest in his fantastical story titled “El pesimista corregido.” In this story, published in his volume Cuentos de vacaciones, one finds reason for understanding Ramón y Cajal's emphasis on a creativity that transcends the borders of a pure science. The three sections of the present essay expound upon the intersection of his highly visual sensibility and the visual discourses of urban life and modernity.

Keywords:

• art
• Madrid
• modernity
• “El pesimista corregido,” Santiago Ramón y Cajal
• science
• urban life
• visuality

Notes

1. See, for example, the classic essay by Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro titled “Causas del atraso que se padece en España en orden a las ciencias naturals,” in which the author laments the disgraceful state of the sciences in Spain. At the close of the nineteenth century, this situation had not improved—Durán Muñoz and Burón point out: “A primera vista España tenía sus Universidades, sus científicos, su cultura; pero sólo en la superficie, porque sin profundizar, bastando clavar la uña, se veía que todo era cartón y bambalina que sonaba a falso” (112). In Los tónicos de la voluntad. Reglas y consejos sobre investigación científica (1897), Ramón y Cajal himself writes that “España es un país intelectualmente atrasado, no decadente” (156; emphasis in original).

2. Tiempo de Silencio by Luis Martín-Santos—regarded as a difficult book that marks a transition away from the staid realism of literature under the dictatorship—novelizes the lack of support for science under the Franco dictatorship (1939–75), which followed the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) through its focus on a doctor-protagonist with insufficient resources.

3. The authors summarize a manifesto in this way: “We believe that it is time to demand a binding long-term commitment from all parties to equip the Spanish science system with stability and prestige; a real increase in funding for R&D, so that spending first equals and then exceeds the European average; and rational planning to support the different stages of scientific careers” (1078).

4. Durán Muñoz and Burón write: “Como pintor—fue la pintura su vocación primera y más fuertemente sentida—, entraba dentro de la pintura clásica, no aceptando la llamada moderna” (349).

5. See Laín Entralgo (296), Otis (Membranes 83–84).

6. Here Ramón y Cajal notes that “I owe to photography unutterable satisfaction and comfort” (“The Delights of Photography” 199).

7. “Escogió un desván de su casa, donde reunió algunos reactivos, y se compró en 140 duros, pagaderos en cuatro plazos, un buen modelo ‘Verik’ con todos sus acesorios. Después, y poco a poco, fue ampliando con un microtomo y otro útiles de micrografía” (99).

8. Lefebvre writes, “Without the progressive and regressive movements (in time and space) of analysis, without the multiple divisions and fragmentations, it would be impossible to conceive of a science of the urban phenomenon. But such fragments do not constitute knowledge” (The Urban Revolution 49; see also “The Right to the City” 94).

9. In Cerdà's aforementioned work, this perspective is manifest at the conceptual level through the persistent use of the metaphor of the city as a cadaveric organism that the urban surgeon-designer had to cut with a scalpel.

10. Juan thinks that “el entendimiento era rudimentaria máquina de calcular […] nuestro saber, libro viejo lleno de tachones y lagunas” (166).

11. Elsewhere, Juan points out that “el [sentido] visual nos muestra las estrellas como radiaciones en lugar de puntos luminosos, achica los objetos distantes, presentándolos sin relieve desde los treinta metros” (173). Note that the notion of the visual resonance of Ramón y Cajal's story—and even its relevance to an urban perspective—has been mentioned in an intriguing article by Juan Carlos Martín from 2011, although with more of an eye toward pedagogical application.

12. The text puts it this way: “[P]or las recónditas veredas del Retiro […] libre de turbulento oleaje de las sensaciones diurnas, podía pensar, recobrar la posesión de sí mismo” (209).

13. In this author's opinion, Otis's interpretation (Membranes 81) suggests that only one vision (either the normal or the scientific view through the microscope) would necessarily be insufficient. I believe that Ramón y Cajal criticizes each at once, insisting that only the vision of the “Motor del universo” is faithful as regards reality with phrases such as “la poderosa retina de Dios” and the mention of “su visión luminosa” (“El pesimista” 178).

14. This reconciliation was, clearly, key in a great many works of Spanish naturalist literature at the end of the nineteenth century, but the case of Ramón y Cajal demonstrates not only that the science, psychology, and sociology of the time influenced literary production, but also that artistic forces might influence science to a great degree as well.

15. José-Carlos Mainer points out that Ramón y Cajal's emphasis of the collectivity over the individual subject in this story can be explained purely in neo-Darwinian terms: “No existe—viene a decirnos, en estricta obediencia neodarwiniana—un sujeto individual sino colectivo” (213). It seems clear however, that Ramón y Cajal's political sympathies are equally capable of explaining this emphasis on collectivity, not only from a nationalist perspective (a la Mainer 214) but from a socialist perspective as well.

16. In the story, the analogy between human being and cells is rendered in this way: “Del propio modo que el principio vital, o dígase sistema nervioso, sacrifica la felicidad y libertad de cada célula asociada a la seguridad y permanencia de la colmena viviente, así el gran Impulsor de la evolución resolvió la contradicción de apetencias entre el todo y las partes, sacrificando los individuos a las especies y las formas ínfimas y rudimentarias a los organismos de superior jerarquía vital” (178).