Essay
Castilla
Not translated into English
Azorín · 1912
Synopsis
Fourteen short prose texts on old Castile: the railways and the first Castilian train, the inns and the relay stations, the bullfights, a town seen from a balcony, the cathedral, the sea, the clouds. Almost nothing happens in them; the real subject is time passing over things that endure, and the return of the same scenes from one age to another. Two of these texts take up classics, the Celestina and the Lazarillo, and imagine what became of their characters.
Context
Published in 1912, the book belongs to a moment in the author's work when he no longer seeks merely to diagnose the country's ills, but to deepen the Spanish cultural tradition through small observations of the landscape; he introduces in it a cyclical time that critics today compare to Schopenhauer. The short sentence, the simple syntax and the series of adjectives are characteristic of his style. Several of these texts have become anthology pieces; the book was translated into French in 1952 by Joachim Gadea-Fernandez and Jeanne Lafon.
Who it is for
Short texts, to be read separately; almost nothing happens in them, and that is precisely the point.
Prizes and reception
The best-known work of its author, several chapters of which appear in school anthologies.
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