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MEXICO CITY
From the beginning of his career, Camilo Jose Cela despises the aesthetic values of the Spanish literature. No time the author whose birth centenary is in door (11 May 1916) – is tired of satirize the Spanish “iberismo”. Without being properly a cultural critic, vituperation and divergence are the seals. Your opinion, either by raucous and provocative or fustigadora and independent, had great weight in his career.
In the catalog of his achievements besides having achieved the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 1987 the Nobel Prize for literature in 1989, the Cervantes in 1995- stands the foundation of a magazine he edited for 23 consecutive years, Papeles de Son Armadams, and the constitution, in 1956, the Alfaguara publishing house.
that aside, few are unaware that the family of Pascual Duarte condenses the best of genius Cela. The novel is inserted into a literary movement called alarmism, characterized by a special roughness in the exposure of the plot. The movement is not original, of course. Before Cela had practiced Thomas Borras and Francisco de Cossio. This is the Spanish realism rejuvenated. In any case, what is interesting is how Cela-via La Celestina , the picaresque, Quevedo and Valle Inclán gets scarecrows of weave his powerful literary skein. Thus, the low social background, vinegary language, the epic hunger, bitter irony, mustio sarcasm, violent chiaroscuro, are essential in this provincial and atrocious Spain who, like few others, narrated Cela there.
Nothing new, it will be said, for a man who drank his literary elixir, mainly in the picaresque. But Cela is more than that. Like any artist, it is a crossroads of influences, and also tested some quite existential philosophy and English and American art. The Family of Pascual Duarte , the influence of the picaresque novel is deliberate and the author is aware of that. The fast and light-hearted narration rhythm, pure-blooded language, popular twists that never debase but elevate, have a taste of the classics of the genre: The Lazarillo , The life of Buscón . And Cela never denied it.
On the existentialist influence would fit more questions. It is easy to argue that in 1941 Cela thoroughly knew this philosophical trend. Disclosure of Sartre and Camus novels in Spain is later. However, before existentialist heroes in the Spanish environment and had a great inclination towards philosophy of disenchantment, as seen in Unamuno and Baroja, who watered Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
natural; the ruins of the Spanish Civil War and the future prospects, which ended muddy the waters of disenchantment, created their own atmosphere of ennui. Thus, it would be incorrect to speak of a certain nihilism and angst in Spanish zeitgeist. In that period a review of all values, a critical assessment of the human and the divine, the positive balance was never raised. That air-common throughout Europe is that breathed Cela and Sartre. It is not a specific influence, but a conventional atmosphere. It is no coincidence that the French existentialism, the Italian neorealism and Spanish alarmism appear almost simultaneously.
As for the preparation of his speech, some stylistic procedures as the retrospection, the staccato dialogue, staunchly descriptions tendency to denounce its proximity to the EU novel. And if we go away with this, Cela seems to prefigure the Faulkner of Sanctuary .
Interestingly, while The Family of Pascual Duarte is a novel of ideas, also exhales populism. Not so much the picaresque what it survives, but that old Spanish fatalism -where combine Iberian roots. Senecan circumspection, Christian stoicism, Arabic Islam and that obsession honra- safeguard what prevails in its pages
in succinct terms, the novel tells the story of a farmer from Torremejía badajoceña in Extremadura until then perhaps the poorest region of Spain, who commits a crime spree proverbial driven by a dark fate that you never know well where it comes from. Pascual injures a man kills another and after brutally murdering concludes by his own mother. The scene is described in a violence hitherto uncommon in Spanish literature.
Neither the subject nor the details place the story in a specific year. Localism suggests that could happen anywhere in the world. In any case, Cela guide the story gets away from his nondescript sphere and becomes one of the most outstanding works of the Spanish imaginary. A century of the birth of “The bronco Cela”, as he called Paco threshold would be worth resuming his work starting with this corrosive novel
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