Tag: literature

There is a very interesting passage in My first wife, in which Wassermann describes the psychological state that foreshadowed his protagonist’s downfall: at a certain point, he began to idealize a real person, that is, he began to confuse a living person with an imaginary creation. It is curious that Wassermann supposes such a slip is a weakness of writers, who are used to making characters out of real beings. Wassermann is wrong, although the supposition is interesting. But this trap is not only meant for writers: the one who fell into it was not Alexander the writer, but Alexander the man. There are many, many similar examples… Feminine idealization is a very natural trait of men. There seems to be, if not a necessity, a natural psychological course when he creates a bond and lets himself be carried away by the feeling. It is as if the experience had to extend itself on the mental plane, which, more lasting and present, ends up overriding it. We all fall, dear Wassermann, all of us… although not every abyss is of the same depth.

It is always a pleasure to come into contact with a living spirit like this Jakob Wassermann. If historian Peter de Mendelssohn’s statement that the novel translated as My first wife “is a work of exactest, most scrupulous autobiography”, “authentic to the last detail” is correct, one cannot help but read it with special attention. And there is definitely no stopping the laughter at the meticulous descriptions of the protagonist’s state of mind when he meets the woman who would destroy his life. The descriptions are so intense that they express, all at once, his psychological turmoil, the despair of his situation, and the indescribable remorse at what is being narrated. It is as if, with each line, his hair stood on end, absolutely amazed at what he has done. A work of this kind is not only for the author to vent: these are lines of such strong realism that they become real experiences for the reader as well.

Pío Baroja conducts this novel in an admirable way. It is curious to note how vary the manifestations of an Andrés, although it is inevitable that a character such as this sinks progressively as a result of his inability to stop thinking. Thinking, then, produces a constraint that only worsens with time, finally crystallizing in a declared inadaptation to the world. All this is natural. But Baroja operates, in the antepenultimate chapter, an impressive twist in the plot; one chapter further on, we no longer believe in the outcome that seems to be drawn. Then, skillfully, Baroja shatters the abnormality, and the story seems to end more naturally,—and perhaps more convincingly,—leaving Andrés at last at peace with his fellows.