The 3 best books by the genius Leopoldo Alas, Clarín

1852 - 1901 ... History usually offers us, with undeniable doses of magical realism, some of the greatest geniuses persevering thanks to an opposite, to that other equally capable creator and on whose person the strange reciprocal object of admiration and admiration is established. the envy.

Something like that happened with Benito Pérez Galdós y Clarín, both survivors of a late nineteenth century that plunged the old Spanish empire into its melancholy shadow. A shadow that ended up sheltering under its dark cloak other great writers and chroniclers such as Emilia Pardo Bazán o Juan Varela.

As for the Clarín's dedication to the novel He is concerned, his debut feature reached such an impact that he was about to bury any other narrative will in that mixture of manners and realism in which the notion of the loss of a wounded country was inserted, without restrictions or hot cloths after the revolution of 1868. A revolution that also in the cultural field was a first attempt at modernity and liberation.

However Clarín is much more than La Regenta, because his prolific pen (with which, it is said, he scribbled in an unintelligible way for anyone else) never stopped, composing a sum of novels, short novels, essays and stories that today can be found in juicy volumes.

Top 3 recommended Clarín novels:

The Regenta

To Caesar what is Caesar's. And to Spanish realism what ends up raising it. Because nothing is more realistic than the female perspective of a world that besets her.

Ana Ozores is that woman sewn together by the old moral and customary patterns of a family that is nowhere near what it was. Ana lives in Vetusta, a city or rather a place suspended in gray times, heir to customs and always lurking with a thousand guilt and remorse.

Performing for Ana in that city is more than impossible. Impossible lover in a marriage feasible for survival. Pulses of a woman in a few days when having any type of impulse sounded like a moral affront.

A novel about the dissatisfaction of living and about the slightest temptation such as the assault on hell. However, everyone's iron corset must necessarily find a vanishing point, an escape route that ends up awakening the notion of the most twisted hypocrisy of a world that was constantly decomposing.

The Regent Alas Clarín

His only son

I don't know why this novel was labeled inferior to La Regenta at the time. Perhaps it is due to a certain touch more transgressive if possible in terms of the moral criticism of a hypocrisy that can reach something as sacred as childhood ...

Because the adultery was already coming from La Regenta. Perhaps it is that curl the curl of this plot with which infidelity is shared in time and space by husband and wife. Because Bonifacio and Emma are on an equal footing. They both succumbed to that unexpected passion from other arms.

Only that she harbors the fruit of a love chance in her womb and he will have to decide what to do once the truth is exposed by Emma, ​​because the truth is that she no longer wants him ...

His only son

Clarín stories

The lesser known Clarín is the one that lives in a multitude of stories and nouvelles that it is a pleasure to visit from time to time to enjoy those downloads of realism in essence, of a naturalism that takes on the challenge of starting to talk about history, about life and fate without any underlying artifice.

And the truth is that nothing is more unfair to the history of shorter literature than the forgetting of the first great storyteller of modern literature in Spanish. Some stories in which some characters inserted in small scenarios shine enormously so that they expose their truth, their particular vision of the world that they have had to live. Many volumes bring together great stories and short novels by Clarín:

Clarín stories
5/5 - (7 votes)

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