Thanks to the generosity of my colleague Diana Taylor, of New York University, I had access in the early 1990s to a copy of Triana's manuscript, at that time unpublished. In 1994, the first version (in Spanish) of this chapter -«Revolico en el Campo de Marte: Triana y la farsa esperpéntica»- was published in Palabras más que comunes: Ensayos sobre el teatro de José Triana, edited by Kirsten Nigro, but since then both Triana's play and my own understanding and critical comments on it have gone through important revisions. The changes that Triana made for the 1995 publication of Revolico in the pages of the journal Gestos revealed his recognition that this linguistically and theatrically complicated play needed more stage directions, which could help both reader and director to disentangle the playful and witty «enredos» created in this work. Triana has indicated that the play was actually written in 1972, and the copied manuscript indicates that it premièred in reading form on December 4, 1981, at the Warner Bentley Theatre under the direction of the author and interpreted by the students of a Spanish course at Dartmouth College. José Triana was born in 1931 in Camagüey, Cuba, and after returning from exile, he began publishing his plays in 1960. It was during this decade that he published one of the best-known plays in Spanish American theatre, La noche de los asesinos (1965), in addition to El Mayor General hablará de Teogonía (1960), El parque de la Fraternidad (1962), Medea en el espejo (1962), and La muerte del Ñeque (1963). With La noche de los asesinos, Triana received the Premio Casa de las Américas in 1965, and in 1967 La noche became the first Latin American play staged by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in London. Twenty years later, his play Palabras comunes (1987) was also staged by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Triana actively participated in Cuban cultural life after the 1959 Revolution, but, as Taylor reminds us, he was gradually marginalized, ceased to publish, and in 1980 again went into exile (En busca 3-4). Ceremonial de guerra, written between 1968 and 1973, was published in 1990, Cruzando el puente in 1993, and La fiesta o comedia para un delirio in 1995.

I place greater importance on 1917 because it can be seen as a culmination of a process of political and social corruption that began with the US protectorate in 1899.

Regarding the initial historical moments of the twentieth century and taking into consideration the circular view of history implied in Revolico, we focus on the similarities of two parallel instances in Cuban history -the 1917 «dance of the millions» and the economic growth of the first part of the 1970s. Hugh Thomas has stated: «Menocal reigned for another four years also, more or less as a dictator, governing largely by decree, drawing huge private profits for himself and his family, while Cuba itself embarked on a drive for unprecedented wealth -1917 was the year when the great new sugar plantations of Oriente began to bear fruit for the first time...» (531). For his part, Franklin Knight, discussing the economic development of the first half of the seventies, states: «Orthodoxy in the 1970s paid handsome economic dividends... In the mid-1970s, with consumer lines shortening, the Cubans had good reason to believe that they had turned the corner. For one brief shining moment it seemed that the good times had finally arrived, justifying the revolutionary sacrifices of a decade» (250-51).

Because of the difficulty of translating verse and because of the highly figurative nature of Triana's language, I offer my translations of Revolico en el Campo de Marte in prose. I include the Spanish original to give the reader the opportunity to experience the level of complexity, the chaotic and playful construction of Triana's language, and the text's humor, which are explicit elements of this play. Translations in this chapter are mine, save where otherwise indicated.

Kirsten Nigro cleverly compares Palabras comunes with La noche de los asesinos, underlining the theatrical games, the sexual and political levels, and the issue of class in both plays. Interestingly, these same strategies and preoccupations are dramatized in Revolico, written more than a decade before Palabras comunes. Therefore, it is also possible to establish a «contrapunteo» or interplay between these two works. For example, Triana's literal and metaphorical interest in Cuba's transitional years, from Spanish rule to quasi- or pseudopolitical independence in the latter part of the century and the beginning of the present one, is evident in the fact that the historical period portrayed in Revolico (1917) covers the years immediately after those of Palabras (1894-1914), just when the moral and economic structures of the nation were rapidly changing. But more significant -and also humorous- is that the characters' obsession with order, cleanliness, and decency in Palabras comunes, and the apparent rejection of everything that is «sucio, desordenado, indecente» (Nigro, «Orden, limpieza y palabras comunes» 70) is unabashedly exalted and comically dramatized in Revolico. Disorder and indecency are the order of the day in Revolico. Nevertheless, in both cases, and also in La noche de los asesinos, cleanliness and dirtiness, order and disorder, and decency vs. indecency in theatre, politics, sexual relations, and class structures share a common space, making these polarities almost impossible to distinguish.

Robert Lima states the following about the masking and subsequent coexistence of religious values and images in Cuban society: «Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean have come to call the worship of the Orishas Santería, a term which signifies the syncretic nature of the religion in the region, the result of dressing the African gods in Christian garb in order to circumvent the prohibition of their worship under Catholic structures in place since colonial times. Rather than abandon their deities when priest and master demanded conversion to Christianity, the slaves associated the Orishas with saints whose colors, accouterments, functions or other aspects were the same or resembled those of the African gods, gender notwithstanding» (34).

Shangó is the god of fire, thunder, war, and the drums; Yemayá is the deity of the sea catholicized as Nuestra Señora de Regla (Cabrera 88, 321).

In The Cuban Condition: Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature (1989), Gustavo Pérez Firmat explores Fernando Ortiz's metaphorical use of the Cuban ajiaco, or stew, which, in conjunction with the concept of transculturation, Pérez Firmat uses as principal ingredients to explain the Cuban condition: «[W]orks of critical criollism willingly get caught up in a contrapunteo between the native and the foreign. The best among them... find interesting and innovative ways of resolving the counterpoint... Fittingly enough, Fernando Ortiz imaged the results of process with a culinary metaphor: the ajiaco, a Cuban stew characterized by the heterogeneity of its ingredients. In the best cases, the translational, contrapuntal performances of critical criollism produce a savory linguistic and literary ajiaco: food for thought, words of mouth» (10).

Throughout Revolico it is possible to connect the use of hendecasyllabic sonnets with moments of introspective reflection on the part of the characters. They seem to have recourse to a more intellectual verse form when they are by themselves and are attempting to understand their feelings and the world in which they live (Revolico II, vii: 176).

As Rine Leal notes: «the buffo language... becomes a rhythm, a manner, a sound and a tongue different from that of Spain» (18).