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.
Tag: literature
El Árbol de la Ciencia, by Pío Baroja
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.
Making Good Verses Is Hard
The truth is that making good verses is difficult: it requires precision, patience, elevation of ideas… whereas, to make so-called good verses, an affinity is enough. It happens that being exotic, in poetry, is sometimes captivating; sometimes the technical novelty amuses and even impresses; however, after a few pages, it ceases to impress and the places inhabited by the creative mind become evident. If there is no ingenuity, if there is no greatness, if there is no depth, if the verses boil down to playfulness and futility, all of this becomes impossible to hide.
The Modern Poet, Adept at the Fashionable…
The modern poet, adept at the fashionable practices of exterminating punctuation, altering the spelling, ignoring capital letters, drawing with letters, repeating words exhaustively, etc., etc., has to concentrate very hard not to pass for a child or, in more serious cases, for a mental retard. How just a few pages are enough to make one sick of such gimmicks! Then we are left to wonder: what else? Often, we have to conclude that they are nothing more than disguises for an inability to work words in a dynamic and interesting way, showing mastery and making creative use of the resources offered by the language. We end up reflecting on what the Latinists repeat so often, and it seems that intelligence is related to the ability to articulate language…