Mazurka for Two Dead Menwriten by Camilo José Cela |
 The Spanish Civil War intrudes almost casually on the
characters' picaresque doings in Cela's amorphous, bawdy novel, first published
in Spain in 1983. Set in the mountainous region of Galicia and redolent with the
Spanish countryside's wild beauty and its inhabitants' folkways, the work
depicts a gallery of sinners, fools and misfits in overlapping yarns that span
several generations. At the onset of the Spanish Civil War, "Lionheart"
Gamuzo is abducted and killed, thus setting off (to borrow from the Greeks)
a blood-will-have-blood revenge story. Tanis, his brother, knows that
revenge is his and avenges the death with trained
killer dogs..The blind Gaudencio, who works as an accordionist in a whorehouse,
plays the same mazurka to commemorate these deaths, framing a sprawling canvas
peopled with an enormous Rabelaisian cast, including j the widow Fina, who is fond of bedding
priests;
azz musician Uncle Cleto,
who vomits whenever he's bored; and Roque Gamuzo, who is famed for his colossal
member. Winner of the 1989 Nobel
Prize for literature, Cela ( The Family of Pascual Duarte ) garrulously conveys
the impression that "mankind is a hairy, gregarious beast, wearisome and
devoted to miracles and happenings." The musical translation captures his
lyricism and colloquial flavor. |
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Camilo José Cela Trulock was born on 11 May, 1916, in Iria
Flavia, district
of Padron, province of la Coruña. Cela's mother was of British origin and his father was a part-time author. He studied at Madrid University, and served in Franco's forces during the Civil War. His first novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942, The Family of Pascual Duarte), was banned for its seemingly gratuitous violence. The novel had enormous influence during the decade after its publication. Cela employs techniques drawn from the Renaissance Spanish picaresque novel to give first-person account. The range of his work is vast and varied, but he is best known for La Colmena (1951, The Hive), which recreates daily life in Madrid in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. In the fragmented chronology, which took more than five years to write, appears some 250 to 360 characters. In the purported autobiography, Pascal Duarte's prison memoirs, a primitive criminal awaits execution for the murder of his mother. Pascual Duarte is both a bloody criminal and victim of a destructive social environment. His life reflects the crude reality of rural Spain in Franco's time. The Hive portrays the poverty, degradation, and hypocrisy of post-war society. The work inaugurated a novelistic style known as objectivismo, a kind of documentary realism. The Hive was originally published in Latin America; in Spain it was banned because it was considered subversive by the government censors. His works are marked by overtones of existentialism, brutal realism and humor, and experiments with narrative time. In the author's pessimistic world the lives and violent emotions of several hundred personages are mixed together. Cela writes with great detail, describing landscapes and picturesque individuals, giving an aesthetic dimension to reporting. In 1944 he married María del Rosario Conde Picavea; they had one son, who became an anthropologist. The marriage ended in 1989. Just before the Nobel Prize Cela had met Marina Castaño, who was 40 years younger and they married in 1991.
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| Other Books of Camilo José Cela |
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