In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

8 ARRAYS
rising star among non-European nations, and the resentful motherland
(Gumbrecht, 171f£.). The firms of Buenos Aires compete in publishing
high-spirited congratulatory addresses in the local newspapers and
magazines: "Franco! ... Messengers of peace from our beloved Spain.
To all of you, golden eagles of the Hispanic race, the firm of M. Zabala
renders the most fervent homage. Long live Argentina! Long live Spain!"
(Plus Ultra, 118). The celebration of Franco's flight makes it seem like a
resurgence and continuation of a glorious national tradition and thus
leads, paradoxically, to a shift from symbols of progress to metaphors of
frozen historical time. [see Present = Past (Eternity)] The name of
Franco's plane, the Plus Ultra ("Ever Farther") points to ceaseless efforts
to go beyond the boundaries of the known world, and also quotes the
motto of the Spanish king Charles I, "on whose territory the sun would
never set":
It is Spain-she who one day,
brandishing her sword,
transcended all human limits,
surpassed all human daring;
and both in peace and in war
captured the ocean in chains of servitude
and encircled the earth with the manacles of slavery
... She mastered time with her naked arm;
nothing insurmountable checked her stride,
so that the Plus Ultra engraved on her shield
is the glorious motto of a sun that never sets!
With aviation now a core reference for manifestations of national pride
and, subsequently, for feelings of national depression, the news that the
Allies have lifted their postwar restrictions on the German aircraft industry
is interpreted optimistically as marking a turning point in the destiny
of the nation. Meanwhile, glider flying has become a compensatory ritual
among the resentful German people (Fritzsche, 103ff.).
Motorized flying is an integral part of all collective and individual
visions of the future. Silvio Astier, the teenaged hero of Roberto Arlt's
novel El juguete rabioso (The Furious Toy), dreams of a life as a flight
engineer. But at the end of his first-and, as it turns out, only-day in
the employ of the Argentinian military, he learns that there is no place