The 3 best books by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán

There was a time in Spain when bohemia was basically literature and literature was the best form of bohemia. Because in those times a bohemian was basically one who did not fit with reality, ending up describing in literature that particular universe of those who liked to explicitly express disenchantment and surrender to that strange combination between hedonism and nihilism.

And that's where Ramon Maria del Valle-Inclan appears as an emblematic figure with his play "Luces de Bohemia", a reference for the generation of 98 and for the historical period lived in the awakening to the twentieth century.

But, despite being Luces de Bohemia, an accurate representation of that bohemian life that Valle-Inclan he met, despite transferring to the stage the imagination and ideology of all those creators moved between confusion and hope. Valle-Inclán was so profusely creative that he managed to free himself from the enslavement of a single masterpiece. Stated to write, this author covered novels, poetry, essays, stories and even journalism, managing to cover everything and become essential in the cultural society of the moment.

Tertullian of recognized prestige and a less fortunate florin duelist, he was able to combine both activities, losing his arm after a dispute in a heated gathering with Manuel Bueno Bengoechea.

In Valle-Inclán's literature one breathes the same decadence of a Spain dismembered overseas and threatened with ruin internally. Far from harboring hope, his work darkens as this old professor adds to his pessimism the sensations of old age. That's when Luces de Bohemia was born and its very famous grotesque in which the reality of his lived times is deformed, a sinister metaphor that in social and political terms has been perpetuated to this day, in my opinion.

Top 3 best Valle-Inclán books

Bohemian lights

Reading theater also has its point. See the changing scenes under the incomparable stagecraft of the reading imagination, always far above the best Broadway theater.

In the case of this work, the matter also takes on another higher level. Under the prism of Max Estrella we enter the days of the gatherings between ideological and existentialists, of the nights of estrangement of a decadent Madrid.

Among the brilliant, infuriated and critical dialogues we discover that wonderful Macbethian soliloquy that describes the grotesque, that speech that describes, from disenchantment, the loss of values ​​and the feeling of patriotic defeat insofar as it affects the social sphere.

A masterpiece full of symbols such as Max Estrella's own blindness or the famous distorting mirrors in which we all end up looking at each other when it comes to coping with the bitterness of circumstances.

Bohemian lights

Tyrant Flags

As far as the novel is strictly concerned, this work is the one that is most valued by the Galician author. Thanks to his trips to America, Valle-Inclán gathered social impressions to contrast with what was in Spain.

And this is how he created a new imaginary country that he called Santa Fe de Tierra Firme and that served to transmute the image of dictators from here and there, with the same ultimate result for the people, wherever they are located.

General Santos Banderas, a true madman in charge of the country, directs the country's designs with a heavy hand. In contrast to him, only a host of idealists are capable of criticizing the proposed social scenario.

In reality, the story opens up to the similarities between both sides of the Atlantic, united. In addition to the language, by the same traditions of a power committed to the annulment of the people, where only beings are found condemned to moral inferiority and the inability to govern their destinies.

Tyrant Flags

Wolf romance

In the well-known trilogy "Barbarian Comedies", this piece becomes the author's crowning creation. The Galician landowner Juan Montenegro looks at his last days with the persistence of someone who faces death with a vague hope of emerging victorious. The initial procession of souls can already be seen as that singular entourage in which we all end up parading.

The stubbornness of Juan Montenegro, paradoxically delivered to the arms of madness and despair after having lost everything, represents an image of courage in the face of the fatal. The omens of death are brilliantly performed in the overwhelming natural scenery of Galicia.

And yet, the character also has a part of assuming his sins before the end, as a contradictory good guy capable of harboring everything that is the human condition. The arrogance that accompanied him since his birth fades as he learns to discern those messages from the wind, the rain, and the lightning.

As a summary, it can be said that the set is a narrative essay on life and death and the discovery of the chain that links one to the other.

Ramón María del Valle-Inclán - Romance of Wolves
5/5 - (8 votes)

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