SOURCE: Anderson, Reed. “Tragic Conflict and Progressive Synthesis in Buero Vallejo's En la ardiente oscuridad.” Symposium XXIX, nos. 1-2 (spring-summer 1975): 1-12.

In the following essay, Anderson considers Buero Vallejo's ideas about tragedy and applies them to En la ardiente oscuridad.

En la ardiente oscuridad first reached the stage in 1950, though it was written in 1946, a year before the prize-winning Historia de una escalera which had launched Buero Vallejo's career as a dramatist.¹ En la ardiente oscuridad is a tragedy in the purest sense, and its treatment of conflict is uncompromising. The dramatic action moves compellingly and resolutely toward catastrophe, and the ending suggests the synthetic and affirmative reconciliation of the conflictive principles whose clash is the drama's primary motive force. While it is not my purpose in this article to discuss the concept of tragedy as such, I believe that it is only from the perspective of certain...