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COMPENDIUM CONSTITUCIONAL
25 años de jurisprudencia esencial
del Tribunal Constitucional por cada rama del Derecho
División de Estudios Jurídicos de Gaceta Jurídica
COM
PEN
DIUM
CONSTITUCIONAL
25 años de jurisprudencia esencial
del Tribunal Constitucional por cada rama del Derecho
jBF^glACETA
WbZJj U RIDIC A
Av. Angamos Oeste N" 526, Urb. Miraflores
Miraflores, Urna - Perú / 3(01) 710-8900
www.gacetajuridica.com.pe
COMPENDIUM CONSTITUCIONAL
25 años de jurisprudencia esencial
del Tribunal Constitucional por cada rama del Derecho
© División de Estudios Jurídicos de Gaceta Jurídica
© Gaceta Jurídica
Al cuidado de:
Manuel Muro Rojo
Edwar Zegarra Meza
5
Compendium constitucional
GACETA JURÍDICA
6
DERECHO CIVIL
CONSTITUCIONAL
INSTITUCIONES DEL DERECHO CIVIL
I
FUERZA VINCULANTE DE LA CONSTITUCIÓN
EN LAS RELACIONES PRIVADAS
9
Compendium constitucional
II
AUTONOMÍA DE LA VOLUNTAD
Y DERECHOS FUNDAMENTALES
10
Derecho Civil Constitucional
11
Compendium constitucional
0009 El respeto de los derechos fundamentales tiene efecto directo en las relaciones
entre particulares por lo que su vulneración está sujeta a tutela mediante los
procesos constitucionales
Los derechos fundamentales tienen eficacia directa en las relaciones ínter privatos cuando esos
derechos subjetivos vinculan y, por tanto, deben ser respetados, en cualesquiera de las relaciones
que entre dos particulares se pueda presentar, por lo que ante la posibilidad de que estos resulten
vulnerados, el afectado puede promover su reclamación a través de cualquiera de los procesos
constitucionales de la libertad. Exp. N° 0976-2001-AA/TC, f.j. 6, 13/03/2003.
Concordancias: art. 200 de la Constitución Política; art. X T.P. del Código Civil
0012 Los procesos arbitrales cuentan con una dimensión objetiva destinada a res
petar la supremacía normativa de la Constitución
Es justamente, la naturaleza propia de la jurisdicción arbitral y las características que la defi
nen, las cuales permiten concluir a este Colegiado que no se trata-del ejercicio de un poder sujeto
exclusivamente al derecho privado, sino que forma parte esencial del orden público constitucional.
12
Derecho Civil Constitucional
0015 Las normas de derecho privado que contravengan derechos serán inaplicadas
en función del control abstracto
[L]as normas privadas o particulares que sean contrarias a derechos constitucionales han de ser
inaplicadas dentro del ejercicio de control de inaplicabilidad que habilita el artículo 138, segundo
párrafo, de la Constitución. Todo ello, claro está, al margen del control abstracto de dichas normas,
que habría de gestionarse en la vía correspondiente. Exp. N° 06730-2006-AA/TC, f.j. 10,11/06/2008.
Concordancias: art. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. X T.P. del Código Civil
13
Compendium constitucional
III
ABUSO DE DERECHO
0016 El abuso de derecho es uno de los límites que encuentra el derecho a la liber
tad personal
La libertad personal es un derecho subjetivo reconocido en el inciso 24) del artículo 2 de la Cons
titución Política del Estado, el artículo 9.1 del Pacto Internacional de Derechos Civiles y Políticos
y en el artículo 7.2 de la Convención Interamericana sobre Derecho Humanos. Al mismo tiempo
que el derecho subjetivo constituye uno de los valores fundamentales de nuestro Estado consti
tucional de derecho, por cuanto fundamenta diversos derechos constitucionales, a la vez que jus
tifica la propia organización constitucional.
Es importante señalar que, como todo derecho fundamental, la libertad personal no es un dere
cho absoluto, pues su ejercicio se encuentra regulado y puede ser restringido mediante ley. Enun
ciado constitucional, del cual se infiere que no existen derechos absolutos e irrestrictos, pues la
norma suprema no ampara el abuso del derecho. Exp. N° 02096-2004-HC/TC, f.j. 2, 27/12/2004.
Concordancias: art. 103 de la Constitución Política; art. II T.P. del Código Civil
14
Derecho Civil Constitucional
en las relaciones que entre ellos se puedan establecer, estos están en el deber de no descono
cerlos. Por cierto, no se trata de una afirmación voluntarista de este Tribunal, sino de una exi
gencia que se deriva de la propia norma suprema, en cuyo artículo 103, enfáticamente, señala
que constitucionalmente es inadmisible el abuso del derecho. Exp. N° 0858-2003-AA/TC,
f.j. 22, 24/03/2004.
Concordancias: art. 103 de la Constitución Política; art. II T.P. del Código Civil
15
Compendium constitucional
y 29 de la Ley N° 26497. El DNI constituye la única cédula de identidad personal para todos los
actos civiles, comerciales, administrativos, judiciales y, en general, para todas aquellos casos en
que por mandato legal deba ser presentado; más aún cuando por Resolución N° 158-2001-JNE,
de fecha 15 de febrero de 2001, el Jurado Nacional de Elecciones declaró que los documentos
de identidad para los actos mencionados no requieren de las constancias y hologramas respecti
vos de sufragio, tampoco de dispensa por omisión a la votación e instalación de mesas de sufra
gio ni de pago de la multa por omisión a la votación. En consecuencia, el abuso de derecho que
implica la negativa del banco demandado de pagar los referidos certificados de depósito judi
cial, ha vulnerado los derechos constitucionales del demandante, consagrados en el artículo 70
y el último párrafo del artículo 103 de la Constitución Política vigente. Exp. N° 0999-200I-AA/
TC.ff.jj. 3 y 4, 22/08/2002.
Concordancias: art. 103 de la Constitución Política; art. II T.P. del Código Civil
0022 El abuso del derecho es uno de los principios que conforman el derrotero jurí
dico de la defensa de los consumidores y usuarios
El artículo 65 de la Constitución prescribe la defensa de los consumidores y usuarios, a través de
un derrotero jurídico binario; a saber:
a) Establece un principio rector para la actuación del Estado.
b) Consigna un derecho personal y subjetivo (...).
En el segundo ámbito, el artículo 65 de la Constitución reconoce la facultad de acción defensiva
de los consumidores y usuarios en los casos de transgresión o desconocimiento de sus legítimos
intereses; es decir, reconoce y apoya el atributo de exigir al Estado una actuación determinada
cuando se produzca alguna forma de amenaza o afectación efectiva de los derechos del consumi
dor o del usuario, incluyendo la capacidad de acción contra el propio proveedor.
Este colegiado estima que el derrotero jurídico binario establecido en el artículo 65 de la Cons
titución se sustenta en una pluralidad de principios, entre los cuales cabe mencionar los siguien
tes: (...) b) El principio de proscripción del abuso de derecho: Dicho postulado o proposición plan
tea que el Estado combata toda forma de actividad comercial derivada de prácticas y modalida
des contractuales perversas que afectan el legítimo interés de los consumidores y usuarios. Exp.
N° 3315-2004-AA/TC,f.j. 9. 17/01/2005.
Concordancias: art. 103 de la Constitución Política; art. II T.P. del Código Civil
16
Derecho Civil Constitucional
IV
APLICACIÓN DE LA LEY EN EL TIEMPO
17
Compendium constitucional
y situaciones jurídicas que se hubiesen agotado antes de la entrada en vigor de la nueva norma.
Exp. N°00004-2019-AI/TC,ffijj. 17, 18, 19, 20 y 21, 02/10/2020
Concordancias: arts. 103 y 109 de la Constitución Política; art. III T.P. del Código Civil; arts. II T.P.,
6 a 9 del Código Penal
V
APLICACIÓN ANALÓGICA DE LA LEY
18
Derecho Civil Constitucional
Concordancias: art. 103 de la Constitución Política; art. IV T.P. del Código Civil; art. IH T.P. del
Código Penal
VI
ORDEN PÚBLICO
Y BUENAS COSTUMBRES
19
Compendium constitucional
VII
INTERÉS PARA OBRAR
20
Derecho Civil Constitucional
de este, a través del juez, deberá satisfacer los presupuestos procesales de forma, y los presupues
tos procesales de fondo o materiales.
Los presupuestos procesales son: “las condiciones que deben existir a fin de que pueda tenerse
un pronunciamiento cualquiera, favorable o desfavorable, sobre la demanda, esto es, a fin de que
se concrete el poder-deber del juez de proveer sobre el mérito”.
Los presupuestos procesales de forma son: la demanda en forma, juez competente y capacidad
de las partes. En cambio, los presupuestos procesales de fondo son: el interés para obrar, la legi
timidad para obrar y la posibilidad jurídica.
Estos presupuestos en el Proceso Civil peruano son requisitos de admisibilidad de la demanda,
de ahí el nombre de Presupuestos Procesales, puesto que sin ellos no se iniciaría proceso, por lo
que la legitimidad para obrar constituye una condición esencial para iniciar el proceso.
Cuando se plantea lo que es la legitimidad para obrar se alude específicamente a la capacidad
legal que tenga un demandante para interponer su acción y plantear su pretensión a efectos de
que el juez analice y verifique tal condición para admitir la demanda.
Que la legitimidad para obrar es la posición habilitante en la que se encuentra una persona para
poder plantear determinada pretensión en un proceso. En este caso, la posición habilitante para
poder plantear una pretensión en un proceso se le otorga a quien afirma ser parte en la relación
jurídica sustantiva que da origen al conflicto de intereses.
En ese sentido, tendrá legitimidad para obrar, en principio, quien en un proceso afirme ser titu
lar del derecho que se discute. En el caso de la Acción de Amparo, tienen interés subjetivo, legí
timo y directo las personas físicas o jurídicas debidamente representadas, cuyos derechos están
contemplados en los incisos correspondientes del artículo 2 de la Constitución Política del Perú.
Exp. N° 03610-2008-PA/TC,ffjj. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 y 9, 13/11/2008.
Concordancias: art. VI T.P. del Código Civil; art. IV T.P. del Código Procesal Civil
21
PERSONAS NATURALES
I
CONCEBIDO
1. Derecho a la vida
22
Derecho Civil Constitucional
El cumplimiento de este valor supremo supone la vigencia irrestricta del derecho a la vida, pues
este derecho constituye su proyección; resulta el de mayor connotación y se erige en el presupuesto
ontológico para el goce de los demás derechos, ya que el ejercicio de cualquier derecho, prerroga
tiva, facultad o poder no tiene sentido o deviene inútil ante la inexistencia de vida física de un titu
lar al cual puedan serle reconocidos tales derechos. Exp. N°2005-2009-PA/TC,f.j. 9,16/10/2009.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
23
Compendium constitucional
fine de la Constitución, el legislador es competente para variar el contenido de los derechos fun
damentales, siempre y cuando se respete las condiciones generales consagradas en la Constitu
ción y no se quebrante su contenido fundamental. Exp. N° 0050-2004-AI/TC, f.j. 38, 03/06/2005.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
0042 El derecho a la vida tiene una doble dimensión: una de defensa y una de
protección
En este mismo sentido, el derecho a la vida cuenta con una dimensión de defensa y una de pres
tación. A través de la primera se exige que el Estado no intervenga o restrinja arbitrariamente
este derecho fundamental, en lo que puede entenderse como una obligación de no hacer, que es
de carácter negativo. Sin embargo, también se desprende del contenido de este derecho el deber
a cargo del Estado de adoptar todas aquellas disposiciones necesarias para poder resguardarla,
lo cual es conocido, también, como una obligación de faz positiva, que genera deberes de hacer.
Exp. N° 05641-2015-PHC/TC, f.j. 4.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
0044 El derecho a la vida tiene una relación estrecha con la dignidad humana
El derecho a la vida reconocido en el artículo 2, inciso 1 de la Constitución, tiene tanto una dimen
sión existencial como una dimensión material a través de la cual se constituye como una oportunidad
para realizar el proyecto vivencial al que una persona se adscribe. Y es que el derecho a la vida no se
agota en la existencia sino que la trasciende, proyectándose transitivamente en un sentido finalista.
La dimensión material del derecho a la vida guarda especial conexión con la dignidad humana
como base del sistema material de valores de nuestro sistema jurídico. Exp. N° 00489-2006-PHC/
TC, ff.jj. 13 y 14, 25/01/2007.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
0Q45 La persona privada de libertad es un ser humano antes que un objeto de ven
ganza por lo que la pena de muerte es incompatible con el derecho a la vida
En un sistema constitucional donde la persona es lo fundamental y la dignidad es un principio
incuestionable, el penado siempre será un ser humano con oportunidades, antes que un objeto de
24
Derecho Civil Constitucional
venganza, burla o absoluta indiferencia. Dentro de esta misma lógica, si se habla de la supresión
de la vida como una forma de pena, ello será, en no poca medida, incongruente, desde que los
objetivos de la pena son totalmente incompatibles con la muerte. La cercenación de la vida eli
mina cualquier posibilidad ulterior de reencuentro del individuo con sus valores y, lejos de ello,
solo es una muestra de que el castigo, cuando no la venganza institucionalizada, pretende ante
ponerse como amenaza latente que rompe o burla los esquemas de una verdadera humanidad.
Exp. N° 00489-2006-PHC/TC, f.j. 15, 25/01/2007.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
0047 En el campo científico existen diversas teorías que explican el inicio de la vida,
resaltando la teoría de la fecundación y la teoría de la anidación
Desde el punto de vista de la ciencia médica existen diversas teorías que pretenden identificar el
momento en el que la vida humana empieza. Hay quienes consideran que la vida humana surge
desde el instante en que se inicia la actividad cerebral (aproximadamente la sexta semana contada
desde la fecundación), pues resulta lógico que si la persona llega a su fin con el estado irreversi
ble de las funciones cerebrales, de la misma manera la actividad cerebral daría inicio a la vida.
Sin embargo, las más importantes -considerando el número de seguidores y que justamente han
sido ampliamente debatidas a partir del caso en cuestión- se encuentran en la llamada teoría de
la fecundación, basada principalmente en la existencia, ya en esta instancia, de una nueva indi
vidualidad genética; y la teoría de la anidación, fundamentada en la viabilidad del embrión y la
certeza del embarazo. Exp. N° 2005-2009-PA/TC, f.j. 14, 16/10/2009.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
25
Compendium constitucional
pues una vez que el óvulo ha sido fecundado por el espermatozoide, se ha dado inicio a un pro
ceso vital irreversible. Frente a ellos, se encuentran quienes consideran que, aun cuando la con
cepción se produce en la fecundación, esta se da recién en el momento de la fusión de los pro
núcleos masculino y femenino (singamia), conjugándose los 23 cromosomas paternos con los
23 cromosomas maternos, surgiendo el cigoto como realidad nueva, diferenciado de la madre
y del padre, y con autonomía genética para presidir su propio desarrollo; desarrollo que acaba
con la muerte y que durante todo su proceso ni la madre ni ningún otro agente externo le agre
gan nada a su configuración genética e individualidad ya establecida. Exp. N° 2005-2009-PA/
TC, f.j. 14, 16/10/2009.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
26
Derecho Civil Constitucional
0053 En las indicaciones de los productos para la AOE se señala un posible “tercer
efecto” referido a la interferencia en la anidación
Conforme se desprende de la glosa aparecida en el inserto de los cinco productos mostrados y
autorizados en nuestro país como Anticonceptivos Orales de Emergencia, en todos los casos se
hace referencia al denominado “tercer efecto”, esto es expresamente refieren, según el caso, que
además de inhibir la ovulación o espesar el moco cervical, previenen, interfieren o impiden la
implantación (...) Como se desprende de esta normativa, los insertos incluidos en los envases de
los productos farmacéuticos en general, y obviamente en los que corresponden a Levonorges-
trel en sus distintas presentaciones y marcas, no solo se trata de informaciones que los propios
fabricantes consignan sobre la base de sus investigaciones y experimentaciones con el producto
que colocan al acceso del público. También, y esto es sumamente importante relevar, constituyen
dichos insertos un pronunciamiento de las autoridades sanitarias peruanas, pues al momento de
otorgar el Registro Sanitario a un medicamento, se está aprobando su comercialización “una vez
pasado el proceso de evaluación” (evaluación que -se supone- es muy rigurosa, dada la naturaleza
27
Compendiara constitucional
del producto y su uso en seres humanos, debiendo establecer dicho registro el uso específico del
medicamento, las indicaciones y las contraindicaciones para su empleo. Exp. N° 2005-2009-PA/
TC, ff.jj. 41y43, 16/10/2009.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; art. 1 del Código Civil
0056 La anidación como parte del proceso vital y se ve afectada por la “Píldora del
Día Siguiente” por lo que se ordena el cese de su distribución
[T]eniendo en cuenta, por un lado, que la concepción se produce durante el proceso de fecunda
ción, cuando un nuevo ser se crea a partir de la fusión de los pronúcleos de los gametos materno y
paterno, proceso que se desarrolla antes de la implantación; y, por otro, que existen dudas razona
bles respecto a la forma y entidad en que la denominada “píldora del día siguiente” afecta al endo-
metrio y por ende el proceso de implantación; se debe declarar que el derecho a la vida del con
cebido se ve afectado por acción del citado producto. En consecuencia, el extremo de la demanda
28
Derecho Civil Constitucional
relativo a que se ordene el cese de la distribución de la denominada “píldora del día siguiente”,
debe ser declarado fondado. Exp. N° 2005-2009-PA/TC, f.j. 54, 16/10/2009.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 1 de la Constitución Política; ari. 1 del Código Civil
II
IGUALDAD ENTRE VARÓN Y MUJER
EN EL GOCE Y EJERCICIO DE LOS DERECHOS
1. Derecho a la igualdad
Tal como este Tribunal ha enfatizado en reiteradas ocasiones, la igualdad consagrada constitu
cionalmente, detenta una doble condición, a saber, la de principio, y, a su vez, la de derecho fun
damental. En cuanto principio, constituye el enunciado de un contenido material objetivo que,
29
Compendium constitucional
0061 La igualdad supone el obtener un trato igual aplicable a las personas físicas
y jurídicas
Como (principio la igualdad) (...) comporta que no toda desigualdad constituye necesariamente
una discriminación, pues no se proscribe todo tipo de diferencia de trato en el ejercicio de los
derechos fundamentales; la igualdad solamente será vulnerada cuando el trato desigual carezca de
una justificación objetiva y razonable. La aplicación, pues, del principio de igualdad, no excluye
30
Derecho Civil Constitucional
el tratamiento desigual; por ello, no se vulnera dicho principio cuando se establece una diferen
cia de trato, siempre que se realice sobre bases objetivas y razonables. Exp. N° 00048-2004-AI/
TC.f.j. 61, 01/04/2005.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VI T.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
0063 La igualdad solo es vulnerada cuando el trato desigual carezca de una justifi
cación objetiva y razonable
Sin embargo, la igualdad, además de ser un derecho fundamental, es también un principio rector
de la organización del Estado Social y Democrático de Derecho y de la actuación de los poderes
públicos. Como tal, comporta que no toda desigualdad constituye necesariamente una discrimi
nación, pues no se proscribe todo tipo de diferencia de trato en el ejercicio de los derechos fun
damentales; la igualdad solamente será vulnerada cuando el trato desigual carezca de una jus
tificación objetiva y razonable. La aplicación, pues, del principio de igualdad, no excluye el tra
tamiento desigual; por ello, no se vulnera dicho principio cuando se establece una diferencia de
trato, siempre que todo se realice sobre bases objetivas y razonables. Exp. N° 02766-2011-PHD/
TC.f.j. 4, 07/11/2011.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VI T.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
31
Compendium constitucional
priori y apodíctica de la homologación entre todos los seres humanos, en razón de la identidad
de naturaleza que el derecho estatal se limita a reconocer y garantizar. Exp. N° 0261-2003-AA/
TC, f.j. 3.1, 26/03/2003.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VI T.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
0066 La igualdad como principio se erige como un verbo rector de la actuación del
Estado
Como principio implica un postulado o proposición con sentido y proyección normativa o deon-
tológica, que, por tal, constituye parte del núcleo del sistema constitucional de fundamento demo
crático. Exp. N° 0261-2003-AA/TC, f.j. 3.1, 26/03/2003.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VI T.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
0069 La igualdad tiene dos dimensiones: igualdad ante la ley e igualdad en la ley
Constitucionalmente, el derecho a la igualdad tiene dos facetas: igualdad ante la ley e igualdad
en la ley. La primera de ellas quiere decir que la norma debe ser aplicable por igual a todos los
32
Derecho Civil Constitucional
0071 La igualdad ante la ley supone que esta se debe aplicar por igual a todos y la
igualdad en la ley implica que un órgano no puede modificar sus decisiones
en casos iguales
Constitucionalmente el derecho a la igualdad tiene dos facetas: igualdad ante la ley e igualdad
en la ley. La primera de ellas quiere decir que la norma debe ser aplicable por igual a todos los
que se encuentren en la situación descrita en el supuesto de la norma; mientras que la segunda
implica que un mismo órgano no puede modificar arbitrariamente el sentido de sus decisiones en
casos sustancialmente iguales, y que cuando el órgano en cuestión considere que debe apartarse
de sus precedentes, tiene que ofrecer para ello una fundamentación suficiente y razonable. Exp.
N° 02776-2011-PHD/TC.fj. 3, 03/05/2011.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VI T.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
33
Compendium constitucional
0072 El tratamiento jurídico a las personas debe ser igual, salvo en cuanto a la dife
rencia de sus calidades accidentales
El artículo 2, inciso 2), de la Constitución establece que toda persona tiene derecho: “a la igual
dad ante la ley. Nadie debe ser discriminado por motivo de origen, raza, sexo, idioma, religión,
opinión, condición económica o de cualquiera otra índole”. Al respecto, como lo ha señalado
anteriormente este colegiado en la sentencia recaída en el Expediente N° 0018-2003-AI: “(...)
el principio de igualdad no se encuentra reñido con el reconocimiento legal de la diferencia de
trato, en tanto esta se sustente en una base objetiva, razonable, racional y proporcional. El trata
miento jurídico de las personas debe ser igual, salvo en lo atinente a la diferencia de sus ‘calidades
accidentales’ y a la naturaleza de las cosas que las vinculan coexistencialmente”. Asimismo, “el
principio de igualdad no impide al operador del derecho determinar, entre las personas, distincio
nes que expresamente obedezcan a las diferencias que las mismas circunstancias prácticas esta
blecen de manera indubitable (...). Un texto normativo es coherente con los alcances y el sentido
del principio de igualdad cuando, ab initio, su imperio regulador se expande a todas las personas
en virtud de no acreditar ningún atisbo de discriminación; por ende, luego de haber satisfecho
dicha prioridad, adjudica beneficios o castigos diferenciadamente, a partir de rasgos distintivos
relevantes”. Exp. N° 05301-2008-PA/TC, f.j. 4,11/10/2010.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VIT.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
0073 La igualdad en la ley limita al legislador y la igualdad ante la ley limita a los
órganos jurisdiccionales y administrativos
El principio-derecho de igualdad distingue dos manifestaciones relevantes: la igualdad en la
ley y la igualdad en la aplicación de la ley. La primera manifestación constituye un límite para
el legislador, mientras que la segunda se configura como límite del actuar de los órganos juris
diccionales o administrativos, exigiendo que los mismos, al momento de aplicar las normas
jurídicas, no atribuyan distintas consecuencias jurídicas a dos supuestos de hecho que sean
sustancialmente iguales (Cfr. STCN“ 0004-2006-PI/TC, fundamentos 123 y 124). El presente
caso se configura como uno de igualdad en la aplicación de la ley. Exp. N° 04482-2011-PA/TC,
f.j. 11, 11/10/2010.
Concordancias: art. 2 inc. 2 de la Constitución Política; art. 4 del Código Civil; art. VI T.P. del Código
Procesal Civil; art. 10 del Código Penal
34
Derecho Civil Constitucional
35
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the “refined,” with an energy that again, in the most interesting way,
seemed to cause the general question of the future of beauty in
America to heave in its unrest.
Fifty times, already, I had felt myself catching this vibration,
received some vivid impression of the growing quantity of force
available for that conquest—of all the latent powers of freedom of
space, of wealth, of faith and knowledge and curiosity, verily perhaps
even of sustained passion, potentially at its service. These
possibilities glimmer before one at times, in presence of some artistic
effect expensively yet intelligently, yet even charmingly produced,
with the result of your earnestly saying: “Why not more and more
then, why not an immense exploration, an immense exhibition, of
such possibilities? What is wanting for it, after all, in the way of——?”
Just there it is indeed that you pull yourself up—ah, in the way of
what? You are conscious that what you recognize in especial is not so
much the positive as the negative strength of the case. What you see
is the space and the freedom—which at every turn, in America, make
one yearn to take other things for granted. The ground is so clear of
preoccupation, the air so clear of prejudgment and doubt, that you
wonder why the chance shouldn’t be as great for the æsthetic revel as
for the political and economic, why some great undaunted adventure
of the arts, meeting in its path none of the aged lions of prescription,
of proscription, of merely jealous tradition, should not take place in
conditions unexampled. From the moment it is but a question of
some one’s, of every one’s caring, where was the conceivable quantity
of care, where were the means and chances of application, ever so
great? And the precedent, the analogy, of the universal organizing
passion, the native aptitude for putting affairs “through,” indubitably
haunts you: you are so aware of the acuteness and the courage that
you fall but a little short of figuring them as æsthetically contributive.
But you do fall short; you remember in time that great creations of
taste and faith never express themselves primarily in terms of mere
convenience and zeal, and that all the waiting money and all the
general fury have, at the most, the sole value of being destined to be
good for beauty when it shall appear. They have it in them so little,
by themselves, to make it appear, that your unfinished question
arrives easily enough, in that light, at its end.
“What is wanting in the way of taste?” is the right form of the
inquiry—that small circumstance alone being positively contributive.
The others, the boundless field, the endless gold, the habit of great
enterprises, are, you feel, at most, simple negations of difficulty.
They affect you none the less, however, as a rank of stalwart soldiers
and servants who, as they stand at attention, plead from wistful eyes
to be enrolled and used; so that before any embodied symptom of the
precious principle they are there in the background of your thought.
These lingering instants spent in the presence of such symptoms,
these brief moments of æsthetic arrest—liable to occur in the most
diverse connections—have an interest that quite picks them, I think,
from the heap of one’s American hours. And the interest is always
fine, throwing one back as, by a further turn, it usually does, on the
question of the trick possibly played, for your appreciation, by mere
negation of difficulty. To what extent may the absence of difficulty, to
what extent may not facility of purchase and sweet simplicity of
pride, surprise you into taking them momentarily for a
demonstration of taste? You remain on your guard, very properly;
but the interest, as I have called it, doesn’t flag, none the less, since
there is one mistake into which you never need fall, and one
charming, one touching appearance that you may take as
representing, wherever you meet it, a reality. When once you have
interpreted the admonitory sign I have just named as the inordinate
desire for taste, a desire breaking into a greater number of quaint
and candid forms, probably, than have ever been known upon earth,
the air is in a manner clearer, and you know sufficiently where you
are. Isn’t it cleared, moreover, beyond doubt, to the positive increase
of the interest, and doesn’t the question then become, almost
thrillingly, that of the degree to which this pathos of desire may be
condemned to remain a mere heartbreak to the historic muse? Is
that to be, possibly, the American future—so far as, over such a
mystery of mysteries, glibness may be permitted? The fascination
grows while you wonder—as, from the moment you have begun to go
into the matter at all, wonder you certainly must. If with difficulties
so conjured away by power, the clear vision, the creative freshness,
the real thing in a word, shall have to continue to be represented,
indefinitely, but by a gilded yearning, the inference is then
irresistible that these blessings are indeed of their essence a
sovereign rarity. If with so many of the conditions they yet hang
back, on what particular occult furtherance must they not
incorruptibly depend? What are the other elements that make for
them, and in what manner and at what points does the wrong
combination of such elements, on the American scene, work for
frustration? Entrancing speculation!—which has brought me back by
a long circuit to the shining marble villa on the edge of Lake Worth.
I was about to allude to this wondrous creation as the supreme
instance of missionary effort on the part of the hotel-spirit—by which
I mean of the effort to illustrate and embody a group of its ideals, to
give a splendid concrete example of its ability to flower, at will, into
concentration, into conspicuous privacy, into a care for all the
refinements. The palace rears itself, behind its own high gates and
gilded, transparent barriers, at a few minutes’ walk from the great
caravanseries; it sits there, in its admirable garden, amid its statues
and fountains, the hugeness of its more or less antique vases and
sarcophagi—costliest reproductions all—as if to put to shame those
remembered villas of the Lake of Como, of the Borromean Islands,
the type, the climate, the horticultural elegance, the contained
curiosities, luxuries, treasures, of which it invokes only to surpass
them at every point. New with that consistency of newness which one
sees only in the States, it seems to say, somehow, that to some such
heaven, some such public exaltation of the Blest, those who have
conformed with due earnestness to the hotel-spirit, and for a
sufficiently long probation, may hope eventually to penetrate or
perhaps actually retire.
It has sprung from the genius of the divine Pair, the Dioscuri
themselves—as Castor and Pollux were the sons of Zeus; and has
this, above all, of exemplary, that whereas one had in other climes
and countries often seen the proprietor of estates construct an hotel,
or hotels, on a piece of his property, and even, when rigid need was,
in proximity to his “home,” one had not elsewhere seen the home
adjoined to the hotel, and placed, with such magnificence, under its
protection and, as one might say, its star. In the former case—it was
easy to reflect—there had been ever, at best, an effect of incoherence;
while the beauty of logic, of the strictly consequent, was all on the
side of the latter. So much as that one may say; but I should find it
hard to express without some air of extravagance my sense of the
beauty of the lesson read to the general Palm Beach consciousness
from behind the gilded gates and between the large interstices of the
enclosure. It had the immense merit that it was suited, admirably, to
the “boarders”; it preached them the gospel of civilization all in their
own terms and without the waste of an accent; it was in short the
apotheosis, the ideal form of the final home that may pretend to
crown a career of sufficiently expensive boarding. Anything less
gorgeous wouldn’t have been proportioned to so much expense, nor
anything more sequestered in the key of such a mode of life. But I
detach myself, with reluctance, from the view of this interesting
creation—interesting in its sense of bathing the whole question of
manners in a light. Anything that does that is a boon to the restless
analyst; and I remember rejoicing that he should have been
introduced promptly to the marble palace, which struck him as
rewarding attention the more attention was privileged and the
further it might penetrate. Such an experience was, all properly,
preliminary to a view of the rest of the scene; since otherwise,
frankly, in relation to what at all represented ideal were the boarders,
in their vast multitude, to be viewed?
For the boarders, verily, were the great indicated show, as I had
gathered in advance, at Palm Beach; it had been promised one, on all
sides, that there, as nowhere else, in America, one would find Vanity
Fair in full blast—and Vanity Fair not scattered, not discriminated
and parcelled out, as among the comparative privacies and
ancientries of Newport, but compressed under one vast cover,
enclosed in a single huge vitrine, which there would be nothing to
prevent one’s flattening one’s nose against for days of delight. It was
into Vanity Fair, accordingly, that one embraced every opportunity
to press; it was the boarders, frankly, who engaged one’s attention in
default of any great array of other elements. The other elements, it
must be confessed, strike the visitor as few; he has soon come to the
end of them, even though they consist of the greater part of the rest
of the sense of Florida. And he seems to himself to pursue them,
mainly, at the tail, and in the constant track of the boarders; these
latter are so numerous, and the clearing in the jungle so
comparatively minute, that there is scant occasion for the wandering
apart which always forms, under the law of the herd, the intenser joy.
The velvet air, the colour of the sea, the “royal” palms, clustered here
and there, and, in their nobleness of beauty, their single sublime
distinction, putting every other mark and sign to the blush, these are
the principal figures of the sum—these, with the custom of the short
dip into the jungle, at two or three points of which, approached by
charming, winding wood-ways, the small but genial fruit-farm offers
hospitality—offers it in all the succulence of the admirable pale-
skinned orange and the huge sun-warmed grapefruit, plucked from
the low bough, where it fairly bumps your cheek for solicitation, and
partaken of, on the spot, as the immortal ladies of Cranford partook
of dessert—with a few steps aside, the back turned and a betrayed
ingurgitation. It is by means of a light perambulator, of “adult size,”
but constructed of wicker-work, and pendent from a bicycle
propelled by a robust negro, that the jungle is thus visited; the
bicycle follows the serpentine track, the secluded ranch is swiftly
reached, the peaceful retirement of the cultivators multitudinously
admired, the perambulator promptly re-entered, the darkey restored
to the saddle and his charge again to the hotel.
V
It is all most agreeable and diverting, it is almost, the boarders
apart, romantic; but it is soon over, and there is not much more of it.
The uncanny conception, the rank eccentricity of a walk encounters
neither favour nor facility—but on the subject of the inveteracy with
which the conditions, over the land, conspire against that sweet
subterfuge there would be more to say than I may here deal with.
One of these gentle ranches was approached by water, as Palm Beach
has a front on its vast, fresh lake as well as seaward; a steam-launch
puts you down at the garden foot, and the place is less infested by the
boarders, less confessedly undefended, less artlessly ignorant in fine
(thanks perhaps to the mere interposing water) of any possible right
to occultation; the general absence of conception of that right,
nowhere asserted, nowhere embodied, everywhere in fact quite
sacrificially abrogated, qualifying at last your very sense of the
American character—qualifying it very much as a pervading
unsaltedness qualifies the taste of a dinner. This brief excursion
remains with me, at any rate, as a delicate and exquisite impression;
the neck of land that stretched from the languid lake to the anxious
sea, the approach to real detachment, the gracious Northern hostess,
just veiled, for the right felicity, in a thin nostalgic sadness, the
precious recall in particular of having succeeded in straying a little,
through groves of the pensive palm, down to the sandy, the vaguely-
troubled shore. There was a certain concentration in the hour, a
certain intensity in the note, a certain intimacy in the whole
communion; I found myself loving, quite fraternally, the palms,
which had struck me at first, for all their human-headed gravity, as
merely dry and taciturn, but which became finally as sympathetic as
so many rows of puzzled philosophers, dishevelled, shock-pated,
with the riddle of the universe. This scantness and sweetness and
sadness, this strange peninsular spell, this, I said, was sub-tropical
Florida—and doubtless as permitted a glimpse as I should ever have
of any such effect. The softness was divine—like something mixed, in
a huge silver crucible, as an elixir, and then liquidly scattered. But
the refinement of the experience would be the summer noon or the
summer night—it would be then the breast of Nature would open;
save only that, so lost in it and with such lubrication of surrender,
how should one ever come back?
As it was, one came back soon enough, back to one’s proper
business: which appeared to be, urgently, strictly, severely, the
pursuit of the boarders up and down the long corridors and round
about the wide verandahs of their crowded career. I had been
admirably provided for at the less egregious of the two hotels; which
was vast and cool and fair, friendly, breezy, shiny, swabbed and
burnished like a royal yacht, really immaculate and delightful; full of
interesting lights and yet standing but on the edge of the whirlpool,
the centre of which formed the heart of the adjacent colossus. One
could plunge, by a short walk through a luxuriance of garden, into
the deeper depths; one could lose one’s self, if so minded, in the
labyrinth of the other show. There, if Vanity Fair was not encamped,
it was not for want of booths; the long corridors were streets of
shops, dealing, naturally, in commodities almost beyond price—not
the cheap gimcracks of the usual watering-place barrack, but solid
(when not elaborately ethereal), formidable, incalculable values, of
which it was of an admonitory economic interest to observe the
triumphant appeal. They hadn’t terrors, apparently, for the clustered
boarders, these idols and monsters of the market—neither the wild
fantastications of the milliner, the uncovered fires, disclosed secrets
of the gem-merchant, the errant tapestries and bahuts of the
antiquarian, nor, what I found most impressive and what has
everywhere its picture-making force, those ordered dispositions and
stretched lengths of old “point” in the midst of which a quiet lady in
black, occupied with some small stitch of her own, is apt to raise at
you, with expensive deliberation, a grave, white Flemish face. The
interest of the general spectacle was supposed to be, I had gathered,
that people from all parts of the country contributed to it; and the
value of the testimony as to manners was that it brought to a focus so
many elements of difference. The elements of difference, whatever
they might latently have been, struck me as throughout forcibly
simplified by the conditions of the place; this prompt reducibility of a
thousand figures to a common denominator having been in fact, to
my sense, the very moral of the picture. Individuality and variety is
attributed to “types,” in America, on easy terms, and the reputation
for it enjoyed on terms not more difficult; so that what I was most
conscious of, from aspect to aspect, from group to group, from sex to
sex, from one presented boarder to another, was the continuity of the
fusion, the dimness of the distinctions.
The distinction that was least absent, however, would have been, I
judge, that of the comparative ability to spend and purchase; the
ability to spend with freedom being, as one made out, a positive
consistent with all sorts of negatives. That helped to make the whole
thing documentary—that you had to be financially more or less at
your ease to enjoy the privileges of the Royal Poinciana at all; enjoy
them through their extended range of saloons and galleries, fields of
high publicity all; pursue them from dining-halls to music-rooms, to
ball-rooms, to card-rooms, to writing-rooms, to a succession of
places of convenience and refreshment, not the least characteristic of
which, no doubt, was the terrace appointed to mid-morning and
mid-afternoon drinks—drinks, at the latter hour, that appeared,
oddly, never to comprise tea, the only one appreciated in “Europe” at
that time of day. (The quest of tea indeed, especially at the hour
when it is most a blessing, struck me as attended, throughout the
country, with difficulties, even with dangers; over ground where
one’s steps are beset, everywhere, with an infinite number of strange,
sweet iced liquidities—many of these, I hasten to add, charmingly
congruous, in their non-alcoholic ingenuity, with the heats of
summer: a circumstance that doesn’t prevent their flourishing
equally in the rigour of cold.) The implication of “ease” was thus a
light to assist inquiry; it is always a gained fact about people—as to
“where” they are, if not as to who or what—that they are either in
confirmed or in casual possession of money, and thereby,
presumably, of all that money may, in this negotiable world,
represent. Add to this that the company came, in its provided state,
by common report, from “all over,” that it converged upon Palm
Beach from every prosperous corner of the land, and the case was
clear for a compendious view of American society in the largest sense
of the term. “Society,” as we loosely use the word, is made up of the
fortunate few, and, if that number be everywhere small at the best, it
was yet the fortunate who, after their fashion, filled the frame. Every
obligation lay upon me to “study” them as so gathered in, and I did
my utmost, I remember, to render them that respect; yet when I
now, after an interval, consult my notes, I find the page a blank, and
when I knock at the door of memory I find it perversely closed. If it
consents a little to open, rather, a countenance looks out—that of the
inscrutable warden of the precinct—and seems to show me the
ambiguous smile that accompanies on occasion the plea to be
excused.
From which I infer that the form and pressure of the boarders, for
all I had expected of the promised picture, failed somehow to affect
me as a discussable quantity. It is of the nature of many American
impressions, accepted at the time as a whole of the particular story,
simply to cease to be, as soon as your back is turned—to fade, to pass
away, to leave not a wreck behind. This happens not least when the
image, whatever it may have been, has exacted the tribute of wonder
or pleasure: it has displayed every virtue but the virtue of being able
to remain with you. Its pressure and power have failed of some
weight, some element of density or intensity, some property or
quality in short that makes for the authority of a figure, for the
complexity of a scene. The “European” vision, in general, of whatever
consisting, and even when making less of an explicit appeal, has
behind it a driving force—derived from sources into which I won’t
pretend here to enter—that make it, comparatively, “bite,” as the
plate of the etcher is bitten by aquafortis. That doubtless is the
matter, in the States, with the vast peaceful and prosperous human
show—in conditions, especially, in which its peace and prosperity
most shine out: it registers itself on the plate with an incision too
vague and, above all, too uniform. The paucity of one’s notes is in
itself, no doubt, a report of the consulted oracle; it describes and
reconstitutes for me the array of the boarders, this circumstance that
I only grope for their features and seek in vain to discriminate
between sorts and conditions. There were the two sexes, I think, and
the range of age, but, once the one comprehensive type was
embraced, no other signs of differentiation. How should there have
been when the men were consistently, in all cases, thoroughly
obvious products of the “business-block,” the business-block
unmitigated by any other influence definite enough to name, and the
women were, under the same strictness, the indulged ladies of such
lords? The business-block has perhaps, from the north-east to the
south-west, its fine diversities, but any variety so introduced eluded
even the most brooding of analysts.
And it was not of course that the marks of uniformity, among so
many persons, were not on their side perfectly appreciable; it was
only that when one had noted them as marks of “success,” no doubt,
primarily, and then as those of great gregarious decency and
sociability and good-humour, one had exhausted the list. It was the
scant diversity of type that left me short, as a story-seeker or picture-
maker; contributive as this very fact might be to admiration of the
costly processes, as they thus appear, that ensure, and that alone
ensure, in other societies, the opposite of that scantness. With this,
as the foredoomed observer may never escape from the dreadful
faculty that rides him, the very simplifications had in the highest
degree their illustrative value; they gave all opportunity to anything
or any one that might be salient. They gave it to the positive
bourgeois propriety, serenely, imperturbably, massively seated, and
against which any experimental deviation from the bourgeois would
have dashed itself in vain. This neutrality of respectability might
have been figured by a great grey wash of some charged moist brush
causing colour and outline, on the pictured paper, effectually to run
together. What resisted it best was the look of “business success” in
some of the men; when that success had been very great (and there
were indicated cases of its prodigious greatness) the look was in its
turn very great; when it had been small, on the other hand, there was
doubtless no look at all—since there were no other conceivable
sources of appearance. The people had not, and the women least of
all, one felt, in general, been transferred from other backgrounds; the
scene around them and behind them constituted as replete a
medium as they could ever have been conscious of; the women in
particular failed in an extraordinary degree to engage the
imagination, to offer it, so to speak, references or openings: it
faltered—doubtless respectfully enough—where they for the most
part so substantially and prosaically sat, failing of any warrant to go
an inch further. As for the younger persons, of whom there were
many, as for the young girls in especial, they were as perfectly in
their element as goldfish in a crystal jar: a form of exhibition
suggesting but one question or mystery. Was it they who had
invented it, or had it inscrutably invented them?
VI
The case of St. Augustine afterwards struck me as presenting, on
another side, its analogy with the case at Palm Beach: if the “social
interest” had in the latter place appeared but of a weak constitution,
so the historic, at the former, was to work a spell of a simpler sort
than one had been brought up, as it were, to look to. Hadn’t one been
brought up, from far back, on the article of that faith in St.
Augustine, by periodical papers in the magazines, fond elucidations
of its romantic character, accompanied by drawings that gave one
quite proudly, quite patriotically, to think—that filled the cup of
curiosity and yearning? The old town—for the essence of the faith
had been that there was an “old town”—receded into an all but
untraceable past; it had been of all American towns the earliest
planted, and it bristled still with every evidence of its Spanish
antiquity. The illustrations in the magazines, wondrous vignettes of
old street vistas, old architectural treasures, gateways and ramparts,
odds and ends, nooks and corners, crowned with the sweetness of
slow decay, conveyed the sense of these delights and renewed at
frequent intervals their appeal. But oh, as I was to observe, the
school of “black and white” trained up by the magazines has much, in
the American air, to answer for: it points so vividly the homely moral
that when you haven’t what you like you must perforce like, and
above all misrepresent, what you have. Its translation of these
perfunctory passions into pictorial terms saddles it with a weight of
responsibility that would be greater, one can only say, if there ever
were a critic, some guardian of real values, to bring it to book. The
guardians of real values struck me as, up and down, far to seek. The
whole matter indeed would seem to come back, interestingly enough,
to the general truth of the æsthetic need, in the country, for much
greater values, of certain sorts, than the country and its manners, its
aspects and arrangements, its past and present, and perhaps even
future, really supply; whereby, as the æsthetic need is also
intermixed with a patriotic yearning, a supply has somehow to be
extemporized, by any pardonable form of pictorial “hankey-
pankey”—has to be, as the expression goes, cleverly “faked.” But it
takes an inordinate amount of faking to meet the supposed intensity
of appetite of a body of readers at once more numerous and less
critical than any other in the world; so that, frankly, the desperate
expedient is written large in much of the “artistic activity” of the
country.
The results are of the oddest; they hang all traceably together;
wonderful in short the general spectacle and lesson of the scale and
variety of the faking. They renew again the frequent admonition that
the pabulum provided for a great thriving democracy may derive
most of its interest from the nature of its testimony to the thriving
democratic demand. No long time is required, in the States, to make
vivid for the visitor the truth that the nation is almost feverishly
engaged in producing, with the greatest possible activity and
expedition, an “intellectual” pabulum after its own heart, and that
not only the arts and ingenuities of the draftsman (called upon to
furnish the picturesque background and people it with the
“aristocratic” figure where neither of these revelations ever meets his
eye) pay their extravagant tribute, but that those of the journalist, the
novelist, the dramatist, the genealogist, the historian, are pressed as
well, for dear life, into the service. The illustrators of the magazines
improvise, largely—that is when not labouring in the cause of the
rural dialects—improvise the field of action, full of features at any
price, and the characters who figure upon it, young gods and
goddesses mostly, of superhuman stature and towering pride; the
novelists improvise, with the aid of the historians, a romantic local
past of costume and compliment and sword-play and gallantry and
passion; the dramatists build up, of a thousand pieces, the airy
fiction that the life of the people in the world among whom the
elements of clash and contrast are simplest and most superficial
abounds in the subjects and situations and effects of the theatre;
while the genealogists touch up the picture with their pleasant hint of
the number, over the land, of families of royal blood. All this
constitutes a vast home-grown provision for entertainment, rapidly
superseding any that may be borrowed or imported, and that indeed
already begins, not invisibly, to press for exportation. As to quantity,
it looms immense, and resounds in proportion, yet with the property,
all its own, of ceasing to be, of fading like the mist of dawn—that is of
giving no account of itself whatever—as soon as one turns on it any
intending eye of appreciation or of inquiry. It is the public these
appearances collectively refer us to that becomes thus again the more
attaching subject; the public so placidly uncritical that the whitest
thread of the deceptive stitch never makes it blink, and sentimental
at once with such inveteracy and such simplicity that, finding
everything everywhere perfectly splendid, it fairly goes upon its
knees to be humbuggingly humbugged. It proves ever, by the ironic
measure, quite incalculably young.
That perhaps was all that had been the matter with it in presence
of the immemorial legend of St. Augustine as a mine of romance; St.
Augustine proving primarily, and of course quite legitimately, but an
hotel, of the first magnitude—an hotel indeed so remarkable and so
pleasant that I wondered what call there need ever have been upon it
to prove anything else. The Ponce de Leon, for that matter, comes as
near producing, all by itself, the illusion of romance as a highly
modern, a most cleverly-constructed and smoothly-administered
great modern caravansery can come; it is largely “in the Moorish
style” (as the cities of Spain preserve the record of that manner); it
breaks out, on every pretext, into circular arches and embroidered
screens, into courts and cloisters, arcades and fountains, fantastic
projections and lordly towers, and is, in all sorts of ways and in the
highest sense of the word, the most “amusing” of hotels. It did for
me, at St. Augustine, I was well aware, everything that an hotel could
do—after which I could but appeal for further service to the old
Spanish Fort, the empty, sunny, grassy shell by the low, pale shore;
the mild, time-silvered quadrilateral that, under the care of a single
exhibitory veteran and with the still milder remnant of a town-gate
near it, preserves alone, to any effect of appreciable emphasis, the
memory of the Spanish occupation. One wandered there for
meditation—it is not congruous with the genius of Florida, I
gathered, to permit you to wander very far; and it was there perhaps
that, as nothing prompted, on the whole, to intenser musings, I
suffered myself to be set moralizing, in the manner of which I have
just given an example, over the too “thin” projection of legend, the
too dry response of association. The Spanish occupation, shortest of
ineffectual chapters, seemed the ghost of a ghost, and the burnt-out
fire but such a pinch of ashes as one might properly fold between the
leaves of one’s Baedeker. Yet if I made this remark I made it without
bitterness; since there was no doubt, under the influence of this last
look, that Florida still had, in her ingenuous, not at all insidious way,
the secret of pleasing, and that even round about me the vagueness
was still an appeal. The vagueness was warm, the vagueness was
bright, the vagueness was sweet, being scented and flowered and
fruited; above all, the vagueness was somehow consciously and
confessedly weak. I made out in it something of the look of the
charming shy face that desires to communicate and that yet has just
too little expression. What it would fain say was that it really knew
itself unequal to any extravagance of demand upon it, but that (if it
might so plead to one’s tenderness) it would always do its gentle best.
I found the plea, for myself, I may declare, exquisite and irresistible:
the Florida of that particular tone was a Florida adorable.
VII
This last impression had indeed everything to gain from the sad
rigour of steps retraced, an inevitable return to the North (in the
interest of a directly subsequent, and thereby gracelessly
roundabout, move Westward); and I confess to having felt on that
occasion, before the dire backwardness of the Northern spring, as if I
had, while travelling in the other sense, but blasphemed against the
want of forwardness of the Southern. Every breath that one might
still have drawn in the South—might if twenty other matters had
been different—haunted me as the thought of a lost treasure, and I
settled, at the eternal car-window, to the mere sightless
contemplation, the forlorn view, of an ugly—ah, such an ugly,
wintering, waiting world. My eye had perhaps been jaundiced by the
breach of a happy spell—inasmuch as on thus leaving the sad
fragments there where they had fallen I tasted again the quite
saccharine sweetness of my last experience of Palm Beach, and knew
how I should wish to note for remembrance the passage, supremely
charged with that quality, in which it had culminated. I asked myself
what other expression I should find for the incident, the afternoon
before I left the place, of one of those mild progresses to the head of
Lake Worth which distil, for the good children of the Pair, the purest
poetry of their cup. The poetic effect had braved the compromising
aid of the highly-developed electric launch in which the pilgrim
embarks, and braved as well the immitigable fact that his shrine, at
the end of a couple of hours, is, in the vast and exquisite void, but an
institution of yesterday, a wondrous floating tea-house or restaurant,
inflated again with the hotel-spirit and exhaling modernity at every
pore.
These associations are—so far as association goes—the only ones;
but the whole impression, for simply sitting there in the softest lap
the whole South had to offer, seemed to me to dispense with any aid
but that of its own absolute felicity. It was, for the late return at least,
the return in the divine dusk, with the flushed West at one’s right, a
concert of but two or three notes—the alignment, against the golden
sky, of the individual black palms, a frieze of chiselled ebony, and the
texture, for faintly-brushed cheek and brow, of an air of such
silkiness of velvet, the very throne-robe of the star-crowned night, as
one can scarce commemorate but in the language of the loom. The
shore of the sunset and the palms, what was that, meanwhile, like,
and yet with what did it, at the moment one asked the question,
refuse to have anything to do? It was like a myriad pictures of the
Nile; with much of the modern life of which it suggested more than
one analogy. These indeed all dropped, I found, before I had done—it
would have been a Nile so simplified out of the various fine senses
attachable. One had to put the case, I mean, to make a fine sense,
that here surely then was the greater antiquity of the two, the
antiquity of the infinite previous, of the time, before Pharaohs and
Pyramids, when everything was still to come. It was a Nile, in short,
without the least little implication of a Sphinx or, still more if
possible, of a Cleopatra. I had the foretaste of what I was presently to
feel in California—when the general aspect of that wondrous realm
kept suggesting to me a sort of prepared but unconscious and
inexperienced Italy, the primitive plate, in perfect condition, but
with the impression of History all yet to be made.
Of how grimly, meanwhile, under the annual rigour, the world, for
the most part, waits to be less ugly again, less despoiled of interest,
less abandoned to monotony, less forsaken of the presence that
forms its only resource, of the one friend to whom it owes all it ever
gets, of the pitying season that shall save it from its huge
insignificance—of so much as this, no doubt, I sufficiently renewed
my vision, and with plenty of the reviving ache of a question already
familiar. To what extent was hugeness, to what extent could it be, a
ground for complacency of view, in any country not visited for the
very love of wildness, for positive joy in barbarism? Where was the
charm of boundless immensity as overlooked from a car-window?—
with the general pretension to charm, the general conquest of nature
and space, affirmed, immediately round about you, by the general
pretension of the Pullman, the great monotonous rumble of which
seems forever to say to you: “See what I’m making of all this—see
what I’m making, what I’m making!” I was to become later on still
more intimately aware of the spirit of one’s possible reply to that, but
even then my consciousness served, and the eloquence of my
exasperation seems, in its rude accents, to come back to me.
“I see what you are not making, oh, what you are ever so vividly
not; and how can I help it if I am subject to that lucidity?—which
appears never so welcome to you, for its measure of truth, as it ought
to be! How can I not be so subject, from the moment I don’t just
irreflectively gape? If I were one of the painted savages you have
dispossessed, or even some tough reactionary trying to emulate him,
what you are making would doubtless impress me more than what
you are leaving unmade; for in that case it wouldn’t be to you I
should be looking in any degree for beauty or for charm. Beauty and
charm would be for me in the solitude you have ravaged, and I
should owe you my grudge for every disfigurement and every
violence, for every wound with which you have caused the face of the
land to bleed. No, since I accept your ravage, what strikes me is the
long list of the arrears of your undone; and so constantly, right and
left, that your pretended message of civilization is but a colossal
recipe for the creation of arrears, and of such as can but remain
forever out of hand. You touch the great lonely land—as one feels it
still to be—only to plant upon it some ugliness about which, never
dreaming of the grace of apology or contrition, you then proceed to
brag with a cynicism all your own. You convert the large and noble
sanities that I see around me, you convert them one after the other to
crudities, to invalidities, hideous and unashamed; and you so leave
them to add to the number of the myriad aspects you simply spoil, of
the myriad unanswerable questions that you scatter about as some
monstrous unnatural mother might leave a family of unfathered
infants on doorsteps or in waiting-rooms. This is the meaning surely
of the inveterate rule that you shall multiply the perpetrations you
call ‘places’—by the sign of some name as senseless, mostly, as
themselves—to the sole end of multiplying to the eye, as one
approaches, every possible source of displeasure. When nobody cares
or notices or suffers, by all one makes out, when no displeasure, by
what one can see, is ever felt or ever registered, why shouldn’t you,
you may indeed ask, be as much in your right as you need? But in
that fact itself, that fact of the vast general unconsciousness and
indifference, looms, for any restless analyst who may come along, the
accumulation, on your hands, of the unretrieved and the
irretrievable!”
I remember how it was to come to me elsewhere, in such hours as
those, that south of Pennsylvania, for instance, or beyond the radius
of Washington, I had caught no glimpse of anything that was to be
called, for more than a few miles and by a stretch of courtesy, the
honour, the decency or dignity of a road—that most exemplary of all
civil creations, and greater even as a note of morality, one often
thinks, than as a note of facility; and yet had nowhere heard these
particular arrears spoken of as matters ever conceivably to be made
up. I was doubtless aware that if I had been a beautiful red man with
a tomahawk I should of course have rejoiced in the occasional sandy
track, or in the occasional mud-channel, just in proportion as they
fell so short of the type. Only in that case I shouldn’t have been
seated by the great square of plate-glass through which the
missionary Pullman appeared to invite me to admire the
achievements it proclaimed. It was in this respect the great symbolic
agent; it seemed to stand for all the irresponsibility behind it; and I
am not sure that I didn’t continue, so long as I was in it, to “slang” it
for relief of the o’erfraught heart. “You deal your wounds—that is the
‘trouble,’ as you say—in numbers so out of proportion to any hint of
responsibility for them that you seem ever moved to take; which is
the devil’s dance, precisely, that your vast expanse of level floor leads
you to caper through with more kinds of outward clumsiness—even if
also with more kinds of inward impatience and avidity, more leaps
and bounds of the spirit at any cost to grace—than have ever before
been collectively displayed. The expanse of the floor, the material
opportunity itself, has elsewhere failed; so that what is the positive
effect of their inordinate presence but to make the lone observer,
here and there, but measure with dismay the trap laid by the scale, if
he be not tempted even to say by the superstition, of continuity? Is
the germ of anything finely human, of anything agreeably or
successfully social, supposably planted in conditions of such endless
stretching and such boundless spreading as shall appear finally to
minister but to the triumph of the superficial and the apotheosis of
the raw? Oh for a split or a chasm, one groans beside your plate-
glass, oh for an unbridgeable abyss or an insuperable mountain!”—
and I could so indulge myself though still ignorant of how one was to
groan later on, in particular, after taking yet further home the
portentous truth that this same criminal continuity, scorning its
grandest chance to break down, makes but a mouthful of the mighty
Mississippi. That was to be in fact my very next “big” impression.
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
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H. G. WELLS on America.
By H. G. WELLS,
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“A Modern Utopia,” &c.
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Morals in Evolution
By L. T. HOBHOUSE,
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This book deals historically with the private and the moral
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