Gabriel Miró's "Figures of the Passion of the Lord"

 

A few years ago, I wrote an article about how the text of Scripture itself, though rich, is usually lacking in sufficient detail and action to provide for a typical literary narrative.  Because of that, writers have had to invent new elements when making narratives out of Scriptural topics.  (Another aspect is the simple desire to know more about what and who we read about in Scripture, without any literary aspirations: it is such a desire that, I think, was often a drive behind the oldest legends and traditions.)  

The story of the Passion is a prime example of this.  Marco Girolamo Vida's The Christiad adds so many new elements, such as a depiction of the Harrowing of Hell (which influenced Milton's depictions of Hell in Paradise Lost), or making Joseph survive until the Passion in order to plead on Jesus' behalf.  (In this case, it was a bit of a literary necessity: in accord with epic tradition, the story had to start in media res, but it had to provide the backstory, so Vida has Joseph and John recount Jesus' life prior to the Passion.)  Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ draws heavily on additional narrative elements from Anne Catherine Emmerich's visions; Andrew Lloyd Weber's Jesus Christ Superstar has its originality more in psychological exploration (most famously Judas) than in new narrative events, and something similar can be found in the story of Pontius Pilate within Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

Such a narrative expansion of the Passion has been on my reading list for a while, and I am finally tackling it out now: Gabriel Miró's Figures of the Passion of the Lord (Figuras de la pasión del Señor).  Miró (1879-1930) was a Spanish novelist with some connections to the avant-garde of his time; his novels are often described as mystical and lyrical, and critics generally focus on his particular style more than on the content of his works.  The Figures of the Passion (1916-1917) is considered one of his mature works, not an early one.

The Figures of the title are not literary figures, symbols or types: instead, they are characters, personages.  Each chapter of the work is named after a particular person connected to the Passion: Judas, "the Paterfamilias" (Jesus, acting as the head of household during the Passover meal: "because, there and then, Jesus was the paterfamilias" (1251)), "The Boy Who Abandons His Clothing," Caiaphas, etc.  I am still early in my reading, only in the third chapter, but it has so far felt like this work is more a case of an effusive addition of details rather than a deepening of psychology.

What is most striking is the sheer amount of information Miró brings into his descriptions, information both Scriptural and non-Scriptural.  The account of the Last Supper, for instance, is heavily based on the Seder meal as described in the Mishnah.  (Thus it reminds me of Dr. Brant Pitre's Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, though my criticism of that work still stands: the Mishnah is a text from after the fall of the Temple, and we cannot now know how well it reflects the practice during the time the Temple still stood; we are still greatly lacking in information and documentation about Judaism of the time just before Jesus, and surely the fall of the Temple would radically alter Jewish practice.)  So Miró's Jesus asks the typical questions ("Why, on this night, do we eat bread without leaven?  Why, on this night, do we eat bitter herbs?"), and all recite "the Haggadah of Deuteronomy" (1251), before Jesus "took of the bitter herbs a portion 'the size of an olive'" (1252).  (This size is the kezayit, a specified portion size used in the Talmud.)  Hebrew words continue to appear throughout the text: "My shammatha has been proclaimed!" (1252), "And, dipping a morsel in the charoset, He offered it to Judas" (1253).

A good example of the wealth of information Miró chains together can be found in his description of the town of Sidon:

Sidon the florid; her gardens, more pompous than those of Damascus; her orange trees, of sweeter abundance than those of Jaffa.  The stones and the air of the whole city, infused with the scents of delights.  Her fish, more numerous than the sands of its beaches, where the monster spit out the prophet who doubted.  The hillocks of purple conches shine like treasures.  The streets tremble with the thunder of looms.  Sidon, the profaned, the one cursed by Jeremiah, 'she who must drink the whole cup of the wrath of Jehovah'; house and mother of gallant and adventurous merchants, seated between spire and sea; she who gave her cedars, 'glory of Lebanon,' which roof the Sanctuary of the Lord; she who shaped, in her workshops, the bronze of the sacred lintels, received the smile of mercy from the Master, because the sons of the Gentile city marvelled at His words and attended to them with more fervor than the men of Israel.
(1245)

Here we see the natural wonders of the city and the pride of her craftsmen, as well as her constant appearance in the story of salvation: provider for the Temple; landing-spot for Jonah; target for Jeremiah's jeremiads; unlikely source of disciples for Jesus.  It is a wondrous tapestry, with some linguistic twists as well (like the alliteration entre el monte y el mar, which I reflected in between spire and sea).

More of Miró's wider range of knowledge can be seen in this discussion of Jesus' miraculous healings:

The Rabbi went about touching and healing twisted legs, dry hands, calcined pupils, thick tongues, stutterers, mutes, rabid men, wounds hidden behind clusters of amulets.

Semitic humanity had no help for their misfortune: neither the eyedrops, nor salves, nor herbs of the Essenes, who possess the text of the Sefer Refuot—the Solomonic book of cures—were able to cure them.  Because their evil is a punishment for their own sins or the sins of their fathers.  Their bodies are possessed by the Spirit of Sick Blood, by the Spirit of Silence, by the Spirit of Blindness, by the Spirit of Fever, by the Spirit of Malefice.  They are demoniacs, and only the mage, the Rabbi, the pious thaumaturge, knows the works of exorcism that free them from the demon.  And in every place the step of those men who bear the wonder in their voice and in their face draws near, and sometimes the distance is clouded over with the dust of His retinue, the crowd exults and huddles together and strips bare their miseries, and offers them beneath the sandal of the prophets.
(1238-1239)

I must applaud the amount of research Miró must have done to gather all this knowledge, and certainly flights of stylistic virtuosity like those I've presented are wonderful.  So far, though, the book as a whole has left me somewhat cold: the expansion of events and added details do not add too much to the characters (besides Judas, a man impoverished by the death of his family who seeks work on Peter's boats before being swept away by Christ, later complaining, "Without that prophet, I would have been a lucky man, with a wife and children, a craftsman like my father, or a fisherman with my own boat; I could have even bought Kefa's boat" (1243)).  I hope future chapters will change my view; at the very least, I am glad to finally be tackling this work, and at an à propos liturgical time.

Source: The Figuras de la pasión del Señor can be found in Gabriel Miró, Obras completas, 4th ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1961), 1233-1400.

Text and Translations ©2025 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.