Of all the currents that have crossed old Europe, one of the most suggestive is the bohemian one, which has become one of the first forms of youth counterculture, practically outside the system, as later happened with the hippie movement, which, certainly, had not discovered anything. new. It is also true that Parisian bohemianism ended up dragging all kinds of scoundrels of all ages, but the current representation is that of restless young people given over to experimentation, to hedonism bordering on nihilism.
Despite placing her historically in Paris as her heart, for me her magnum opus is «The Portrait of Dorian Gray»By an Oscar Wilde who exceptionally represented that life amid the shadows of hedonism, amid the wisps of the philosophy of experimentation, with that final touch of fantasy of terror that can be the awakening of that surrender of destiny to life without rules . Curious that the replica of a lifestyle associated with Paris since the mid-nineteenth century is found in other latitudes. But you only have to read this book to make sure that this is so.
In this novel by Nieves García Bautista we immerse ourselves in bohemian Paris from different perspectives. Living it in situ through León Carbó back in 1888, a boy from Barcelona in whose intention of paternal amendment, in the face of his exposure to all kinds of dangers, ends up being sent to a Paris that does not end up focusing his concerns. La douce nuite and his magnetism make him one of the plethora of creative geniuses who move between the imprint of his expressive need and his dedication to the experimentation of all kinds of pleasures and dangers.
From León Carbó and with the image of the painting (we recover the idea of Dorian Gray) in which the spirit of León is captured, of his discoveries and of the enigmatic woman brushstroke outside that painting, we advance together with new characters that complement that boiling point of the bohemian, of those days of discovery of the cultural as a transformative movement.
The story of León and the enigmatic woman seems to disappear between the Parisian nights of the late nineteenth century. And yet a small thread brings it to the present day, passing through light knots of the early twentieth century and reaching the present time of a couple of friends who, taking advantage of a work hiatus, take up an old project about a novel. A story that began in their youngest days, when peering into the days and especially the nights of the bohemia made them ignite in a passion that guides us all through the last testimonies of those days: the works of their creators and towards the resolution of a kind of existential mystery about the woman who looks, outside the painting, at whoever her painter was.
You can now buy the novel The Woman Outside the Box, the new book by Nieves García Bautista, here: