Carmen Laforet: A Tentative Evaluation
1957; American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese; Volume: 40; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/334949
ISSN2153-6414
Autores Tópico(s)Spanish Literature and Culture Studies
ResumoIn the spring of 1945 Carmen Laforet's novel, Nada, winner of the Premio Nadal the previous year, took Spain by storm. Here, the critics announced, was a new writer of great promise. Of the novels published since the Civil War only Jos6 Camilo Cela's familia de Pascual Duarte had attracted as much attention. The author of Nada was a twenty-fouryear-old Catalan girl, a native of Barcelona, who, after spending her adolescence in the Canary Islands, had returned to the mainland to study at the Universities of Barcelona and Madrid. For seven years the appearance of her next novel was eagerly awaited, but she published only a few short stories and articles in various magazines. The reason for this relative silence was that she had married and produced four children. But with her family under way, Laforet stepped up her literary production. Her second novel, isla y los demonios, appeared early in 1952, muerta, a collection of eight short stories, late that same year, a volume of four longer stories, La llamada, El iltimo verano, Un noviazgo, and El piano, in 1954, and her third novel, mujer nueva, in December, 1955. In addition, two short stories, El matrimonio and El aguinaldo were published in a small volume in the Colecci6n Pandora. Now that she has five major books to her credit, it is perhaps time to make a tentative evaluation of her work, to see how fully the expectations engendered by Nada have been realized, and to appraise her place in contemporary Spanish fiction. Like most present day novelists, Laforet was less interested in the plot of Nada than in the characters and in the portrayal of the moral and intellectual climate of postwar Spain. The plot b sically is very simple. The protagonist and narrator, Andrea, comes to stay with her grandmother in Barcelona in order to attend the university. There, instead of leading the free, stimulating life she had dreamed of, she becomes hopelessly, tragically entangled with the various thwarted, abnormal members of her family. Her friendships with her fellow students, especially her wealthy friend Ena, enable her to get temporarily away from this sordid atmosphere, but even these relations with more normal people are not entirely satisfactory. The conclusion to the novel-she escapes from this mpasse by accompanying her friend Ena to Madrid-is artificial and contrived. The chief interest of the novel is centered in the various members of the family, their discordant relations, their frustrations, the futility of their lives, which is symbolized by the title, taken from a poem by Juan Ram6n Jim6nez. This spirit of nihilism, typical of the disillusionment of a country which has suffered the ravages of war, is emphasized by the dire economic straits into which the family has fallen and by the shabby, cluttered, filthy apartment in which they live. But the author is less intent on analyzing the causes for this atmosphere of spiritual decadence than in studying the characters themselves, their tensions and antagonisms. An uncle, RomAn, a promising musician capable of much charm, had done nothing with his gifts and was devoting himself to unscrupulous deals on the black market; another uncle, Juan, a mediocre painter, compensated for his failure by treating his wife and family brutally; her aunt Angustias had grown bitter after being frustrated in
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